*************************************************************************** Leyla Harrison's email address has changed to: sparkle72@videotron.ca *************************************************************************** From: "the *enigmatic* Dr. Scully" Date: Tue, 19 May 1998 12:38:20 -0700 Subject: NEW: Chinese Butterfly (1/1) by Leyla Harrison Chinese Butterfly by Leyla Harrison Disclaimer: Mulder and Scully belong to the Big Man who sits in the Big House in Los Angeles. I'm just borrowing them for a while. I'll give them back, I promise. Classification: VA, Mulder/Scully friendship Rating: PG Spoilers: Memento Mori. This story takes place somewhere in the midst of fifth season after Redux II. Summary: Something important goes missing -- but has Scully lost everything she needs? To Shannon for the inspiration -- my dear, you have the strength to do anything. **** For some inexplicable reason after my diagnosis, I went to see the Bureau's counselor. She referred me to a cancer support group. I took the card she handed me and slipped it into my pocket without looking at it. The day passed and the card was forgotten. I didn't find it until later that night when I was getting undressed and emptying my pockets. I stared at the card until the letters blurred. Was I going to do it? Was I going to make that phone call? Show up at that first meeting? Admit I was weak? God. I don't want to be weak. I've *never* wanted to be weak. There was one thing I couldn't deny, though. I was scared. Quite an admission from a woman who has never spoken those words aloud before. At the first meeting, I barely spoke, save for my name. After that, I just listened. The people in the group were all women, all about my age, all professionals. All of them had cancer. I listened to them carefully. Each word was loaded with meaning and I watched each woman's face. I didn't see weakness there. What I saw was strength. And it moved me. I was undeniably envious of something that I felt I didn't have. The second meeting came and I showed up. I sat again with the same group of nine women, and this time I spoke when the conversation turned to fear. My breath hitched as I spoke the words. "I'm afraid I'm going to die." "You can't look at it that way," a woman to my left spoke. "You have to face each day with hope. I know it sounds trite -- but it's true. Every morning I wake up and I realize that I'm still alive -- I still have my family; the people I love have another day with me. What you need is strength." But where do I get it from? I wondered silently. There was no answer -- not that night, anyhow. The meeting ended. I was getting some coffee as the women mingled around a table with cookies. I couldn't face them -- they were all so strong, and I still felt weak. A gentle hand touched my shoulder. "Dana?" "Yes?" "Why don't you take this. It's given me strength when I needed it." The woman who had spoken to me in the meeting handed me something. It glittered in the half-light. I took it in my palm and looked at it. It was a small gold coin, with a butterfly embossed on one side, and as I turned it over, I saw a Chinese letter on the back. "It's the symbol for strength." "I can't...I can't take this." I tried to hand it back to her, but she closed my fingers around it. "You can. You have to." It was a strange gift from a person I had never met before, and would never see again. I didn't know her name, and I wouldn't see her again at subsequent meetings. **** "Agent down!" The words crackled into my earpiece. Jesus, Mulder. Mulder. No. I didn't remember running. I didn't remember bending down and turning over the man wearing the dark coat with the large white FBI letters emblazoned on his back, blood draining from a bullet wound in between the F and the B. I did remember turning him over. Agent Drew. It wasn't Mulder. I wanted to cry. I yanked my walkie-talkie from my pocket and started yelling. "We need EMT's over here. Now! Agent Drew is down. Repeat, Agent Drew is down. We need EMT's over here right away." Tears clogged my voice as I was trying to get the words out. Other agents began to descend on my location, and I could hear the sirens from a distance, their wailing getting louder as they drew closer. I pulled my own jacket off and covered Drew. He wasn't conscious. It wasn't Mulder. Thank you, God. A hand on my shoulder. I looked up and into Mulder's face. He was breathless. "Scully. Are you OK?" "I'm fine, Mulder," I assured him, wiping the tears from my cheeks with embarrassment. "I heard agent down and I thought..." he trailed off, helping me to stand. He thought it was me. Christ. What a pair we make. The EMT's pushed him aside. I turned to them and quickly told them what I knew. "GSW in the back, through and through, pulse weak, resps about 44." "Scully." Mulder took my arm and pulled me from the scene. I didn't stop him. **** The prospect of losing my partner is something that I cannot face. I sit here today in this office, watching him surreptitiously from across the room as he works on papers from the most recent case. Mulder is a paper and pen kind of a guy, while I prefer to hide behind the monitor of my computer screen. I cannot lose him. Not now, not ever. After all I have lost. This office would not exist without him in it. I glance over his shoulder at the wall. Newspaper clippings are scattered everywhere, held up by small silver thumbtacks. A photo of Duane Barry. His "I Want to Believe" poster. I do, Mulder, I tell him silently a hundred times a day. I want to believe. I just don't know if I can anymore. I can't lose him. I can't be without him. I cannot, I cannot. My mantra. Despite the obvious overwhelming relief that the "cure" brought me, my life has been reduced to nothing but need and I hate it. I am no longer the person I was before my diagnosis. Even though I am in remission, I am still not the same. Closure that I seem to need is unattainable. The closure will only come from whatever it is that I feel is my inner strength. And for some reason, I don't have that. Why not? I instinctively reach into my pocket for the little gold coin. It's not there. "Fuck," I mutter aloud. "What did you say, Scully?" Mulder asks, looking up from his desk. "Nothing." I get up and check the pockets of my coat. There's nothing in either one. No little gold coin. No strength. My eyes well up with tears. I push them aside and stride towards the door. "Where are you going, Scully?" "I...I have to get some air, Mulder. I'll be back." The truth is, I don't want him to see me cry. **** It's not the coin that gives me strength, and I know it. It's not the fact that I can hold it in my hand, that I can trace the wings of the butterfly with my fingertip and then turn the coin to read the Chinese letter on the other side. It has nothing to do with that. It has to do with the strength that I've accumulated like poker chips over the last few months, strength that I have so desperately needed to get back after the cancer, after the remission. Strength that seems to fail me each time I reach for it. Somehow, because of that small symbol, I've learned how to get some of my strength back. Even though it has nothing to do with the coin itself, without it, I feel as if I've lost everything I've worked so hard to regain. It feels like it's all gone to ashes. "Scully?" Mulder's voice startles me. I look up as a slight breeze catches his hair and tousles it. "What are you doing here?" Here is the place where I go to reflect. Here is the place where I find solitude. Here is one of the courtyards in the Bureau building, which is usually deserted. When agents want to get air, they head down to a coffee shop or for a walk around the block. I instead choose the stillness of the courtyard where I can sit on one of the empty benches among the trees, the massive Bureau building looming all around me, the walls of it surrounding me. The walls both protect me from the outside and cage me in. "You've been gone a while. I was wondering if you were coming back." No, Mulder, I don't want to come back. I don't want to face any more serial killers or mutants. I don't want to face the darkness of the basement. I don't want to be trapped there with all that fetid air. I say none of this. "Actually," he confesses sheepishly, "I was wondering what was wrong. You seemed a little...upset back there." Great. The last thing I want is for Mulder to worry about me. We both have spent far too much time worrying about each other. Today we both worried that the other had been shot. We both were worried -- no, terrified -- that without one the other would collapse. My sadness over the loss of a small coin seems trivial next to that. My soul feels empty. From that emptiness, I decide to go out on a limb. "I lost something, Mulder." Mulder does not answer immediately. I think that he understands that losing a glove or a pair of sunglasses would not have me behaving this way. "What was it?" he asks finally. "A coin. Someone...someone from the cancer support group I was going to gave it to me." Mulder arches his brows at me. I know what he's thinking. A coin? My voice low, I tell him the whole story about the coin. How I carried it with me. How I came to know that the strength did not come from the coin, but from my heart. But how I feel as if my heart doesn't know how to find it without the coin in my pocket. Finished, I look up at him sheepishly. "I have no idea where I could have lost it," I say in answer to his unasked question. "There's no way I could go back and re-trace my steps since yesterday morning. It could be anywhere." "I have a question," Mulder says carefully. He pauses, then says, "You were going to a cancer support group?" Oops. There's one more thing I forgot to tell him. That I was weak. That I was scared. That I had no idea where to turn, and so I went for help. Unable to say these things, I simply nod. Silence falls between us. There is really nothing more to say. After a few minutes, I sigh heavily. "I'm going to go back in, Mulder," I tell him, getting up. "Are you coming?" "I'll be there in a minute." I leave him there in the solitude of the courtyard, inside the walls that I know both confine him and keep him safe, just as they do for me. **** I am empty. I am nothing. I stare at my reflection in the mirror dejectedly. What is the matter with me? Why can't I get it together? The cancer is in remission. I'm not dying anymore. So why hasn't there been closure? When will it come? The support group is not working. I don't want to sit in a psychiatrist's office. These things are not what will bring me to the answers I am looking for. I am searching within myself for those answers, and I am coming up empty-handed each time I reach deep down inside myself. Since I have lost the coin, I have noticed that I have been depressed. Melissa would have called it a dark space. Work has become slow and meaningless. With no new cases, I end up coming in late and leaving early. I have plenty of unused vacation time, and Mulder hasn't argued or questioned me when I've told him that I'm only working a half-day. Mulder. I've barely seen him these last few days. That's not entirely true. I've seen him -- I just haven't noticed him. I haven't noticed much of anything. I'm sick of seeing this in myself. It's a bad way of dealing with a seemingly minor problem. It's an obstacle that I should be able to face without much difficulty. The Dana Scully of the past would likely leap this hurdle without thinking twice. Which leads me to wonder what's wrong with the Dana Scully of the present. **** Another half-day. Paperwork -- expense reports, I think. I lose my train of thought more than I care to realize. I look up at noon and see that Mulder's gone. I hadn't even heard him leave the office. I get up and cross the room to his desk, looking over what he's been doing. Various new leads he's checking into are scattered on the surface. Nothing looks concrete or important enough to worry about following up on. On top of everything, there's a small square of white paper. The handwriting is Mulder's -- there's no mistaking his uneven printing. I'm where you go when you want to get away from all of this, the note says. **** I see him as soon as I step into the courtyard. He's sitting on the bench I always use. He doesn't look up until I'm about five feet away. "What's going on, Mulder?" "Sit down, Scully. You should relax, enjoy the scenery." I sit. There's nothing to enjoy. The brown building with identical window after window is not exactly what I would call scenery. "I was thinking, Scully," Mulder says, "that what we have, our partnership, is built on trust. Wouldn't you agree?" He's in too much of a good mood. I can see something coming, but I don't know what it is. "I think so," I answer him. He looks at the building, waving his arm at the windows. "There's nothing here, Scully. Nothing here for you. Because I trust you -- " and he looks at me when he says this, "I'm going to be honest with you and hope that you don't think I'm a complete idiot." "Okay," I tell him, still unsure of what he's getting at. Usually I'm better at reading him than this. "You're the best partner I've ever had, Scully. I've allowed myself to trust you more than I've ever trusted anyone else in my life." These are large admissions for Mulder, and I take them seriously. I nod my head at him. "I know how much you depend on your strength, Scully. I know how important it is to you. It's something that I know you don't want me to see -- how much you work to be strong." You have no idea, Mulder, I think. "Sometimes I think you work too hard at it, Scully. You're just about the strongest person I know. I see strength in you every day." I close my eyes. His words hold no meaning for me. I don't feel strong. I don't feel strong at all. "Give me your hand, Scully." My eyes blink open. "No, keep your eyes closed." "Mulder --" "Please, Scully. Trust me." And so I do. I close my eyes and give him my hand. He strokes my palm gently with his fingers. Then I feel a cool weight being placed in the very center of my hand. "Mulder?" I ask questioningly. "Don't open your eyes. Use another sense." I close my fingers around something round. My other hand comes and with one fingertip I feel the raised lettering of what I know is a Chinese letter. My breath catches in my throat, and I open my eyes. The coin is in my hand. I turn it over. The butterfly on one side, the letter on the other. "Where...how did you get this?" My shock is complete. Mulder looks positively radiant with happiness. "I found it for you. I re-traced your steps and found it." "You couldn't have. You couldn't have," I repeat over and over, the coin clasped tightly in one palm. He shrugs. "No big deal." No big deal, Mulder? I reach out and pull him towards me into an embrace. I cannot hold him tight enough. My eyes are fill with tears. I wonder if he knows just how much this means to me. I have no idea how he did this, and I actually don't care anymore. "Thank you," I murmur into his ear. "Thank you, Mulder." **** Home. Warmth. My house looks different to me the next morning when I wake up and get ready for work. The sun streams in through the curtains, filling the living room with a yellow glow that I don't recall seeing before. I stretch and smile before heading into the bathroom to take a shower. I know it's not the coin. But in a strange way, it is. Dressed and ready to go, I reach for the coin, which is resting on the smooth surface of my kitchen table. I slip it into my pocket and then pause. You're the strongest person I know. I see that strength in you everyday. Mulder's words to me. I know he meant them. And I know he meant that he saw that strength not just when I got the coin, but before I was diagnosed. I finger the coin in my pocket, turning it over and over. I slip it out of my pocket and carefully place it back on the table, butterfly side up. In losing it, I thought I lost my strength. In getting it back, I realize that I never lost anything at all. Mulder and my partnership with him helps sustain me from day to day. I am strong alone, but stronger when he and I are together as a team. I have many reasons to be grateful. I leave for work, closing and locking the door behind me, knowing that the sunlight is glistening on the coin on the table inside. Pausing outside the door, I realize that strength isn't always something tangible that you carry with you. It is what I can't physically hold on to that makes me the strongest. END -- http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Vault/1377 ****************************************** "I'm standing on the edge of common sense here." --Dana Scully, The X-Files