From: "Easterhawk & Eagleclaw" Date: 25 Jun 1999 12:41:28 -0700 Subject: xfc REP: Decisions 1 TITLE: Decisions AUTHOR: Easterhawk E-MAIL ADDRESS: aerierlh@gnv.fdt.net DISTRIBUTION: Anywhere is fine, just let me know so I can come and visit!! DISCLAIMER: Not mine (I wish!) - the belong to Chris Carter and the extremely talented David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson! Bless them! SPOILER WARNING: Through all current season episodes - but nothing specific RATING: R - language CLASSIFICATION: MSR A KEYWORDS: MSR A SUMMARY: Scully must make a difficult decision - or is it really all that hard? AUTHOR's NOTES: I am reposting this for any of you who missed it the first time around as it makes more sense if you read this one first and then the second in the series. This is not nearly as dark as "Alive" and is the first installment in a series. Feedback is GREATLY APPRECIATED! Dana Scully's Apartment Sunday 6:05 a.m. Looking at the situation from a logical perspective, the truth of the matter was that I really only had two viable options: make love to him or kill him. I chose the harder of the two, which is how it came to pass that Fox Mulder is lying spread out across my bed, immobile and broken and I, Dana Scully, have to figure out what to do with the body. I mean, it's not as if I can just leave him lying there all day. Well, I guess I could. It is Sunday after all. Nobody will miss him today. Besides, I really need to go meet my Mom for church service. I keep seeming to have too many other things to do on Sundays. It's been months since I have gone to confession. I really need to do that. Get some of these things off my chest before they eat at my soul. Today more than ever. I have a lot of things to think about, and to pray about, and a lot of decisions to make. What happened this morning is not going to go away. What I did this morning cannot be undone. Yet, even if it could be changed, if I could make it so that this was nothing but a bad dream, I would not change the outcome. Perhaps I might consider changing the way I reached this point. But not the fact that it has finally come about. I knew that I could no longer pretend that things were the same for us. Things were, quite simply, not working out. I did not have his trust. I did not have his love. And he was rapidly gaining my hatred. It was inevitable. There are, however, a few things that still confuse me. Not the least of which is the fact that I really don't quite understand what led me to this point in the first place. That is to say, I understand the last six years perfectly well, or as well as they can be understood, given the strangeness of the things that have happened to me. What I don't understand is the events leading up to now. This moment. The last four hours. And what I have done. I have changed my life. Nothing will ever be the same again. ************************************************************************ Fox Mulder's Apartment Sunday 1:45 a.m. Her blood. Her blood is all over my hands. I can see the life slipping away from her, dying behind the blue of her eyes. Her soul has left me. If it was ever even with me to begin with. I do not know now. I will not ever know. And it is my fault, my fault entirely. I am the reason she is dying here now. I am the cause to her effect. Yet, even as I know the end is drawing near, I cannot say the words that could allow us to carry on after this life is over. I cannot give myself that absolution. I cannot say that I love her. For, in my salvation her damnation lies. She stares up at me, pleading with me to say the words. Hers is a silent plea. Death has taken her voice already. She cannot echo the words to me, even if I chose to speak them. It is too late. Our time has come and gone without ever really being ours at all. She reaches towards me with the last of her failing strength. She aches for me to touch her one last time before she goes. She longs for the comfort only I can give. Yet I cannot. I turn away. I am walking through the darkness, leaving her behind to die. She is dying alone and I am walking away. Why am I doing this to her? Why can't I turn around, face her, face myself, face us? Time stops. I force myself to turn around. I have traveled so far in these few moments that her dying body is nothing but a speck of dust on the horizon. I am running, now. Running back towards her. I need to touch her, hold her, tell her. I need to be there to let her know that I will meet her on the other side. I reach her and she is already gone. I am too late. And I am damned. ************************************************************************ Dana Scully's Apartment Sunday 1:51 a.m. I am perfectly content, sleeping peacefully and dreaming about happy times. My bed is comfortable. It is not too hot. It is not too cold. Nothing hurts. Everything, in fact, is about as good as it has been in quite a long time. It's funny how perfection never lasts for very long. The phone is ringing. I look at the glowing red digital display. Through blurred vision, I can just make out a one and a five. It is close to two in the morning. Mulder. That is the only possibility as to who it could be. I ignore it and bury my head deeper under the pillows. The machine picks up on the fifth ring. "Scully? Scully, it's me. Are you there, Scully?" Something in his voice tells me that he needs me. He always needs me. To tell you the God's honest truth, I am getting a little bit tired of his neediness. And yet, when I hear that tone in his voice I cannot help myself. Time and again I fall for it. And for what reason? What does he offer me in return? This time, I will ignore him. He is my partner. I care about him. But that is all. he is not my friend. he is not my lover. He is not capable of understanding these two concepts. I need to be the one to step away. The phone is ringing again. Damn him. He is not going to leave this alone. He is going to keep on dialing my number until I pick up the phone. If I don't, he will show up at my doorstep begging me to let him in. I have to end this. I pick up the phone. "Mulder, go away. Stop calling me. Stop needing me. Just go away." I hang up the phone. I do not wait for his answer. I cannot wait for his answer. if I do, he will surely hear it in the background when my silent tears give way to full fledged weeping sobs. Then he will know that I cannot give him up. Not while he and I still live. Perhaps not even after death. I take the phone off the hook. I listen to the sound of the dial tone and wait for the operator to come on the line asking me to hang up and try again, to dial her if I need help. I need assistance, all right. But I don't think she's qualified to give it to me. Somewhere in the other room, my cell phone is ringing deep inside my jacket pocket. I close my eyes and listen to the sounds of my demise. ************************************************************************ Fox Mulder's Car: I-95 2:07 a.m. I will not let it end this way. I will not allow her to discard me from her life, from her heart and her soul, without giving me one last chance to make things right between us. I will not deny the simple fact that this is all my fault. I am a coward and worse. I have hurt her time and again with my unwillingness to listen to reason, my stubbornness in the face of even the most concrete of evidence, and my careless behavior with regards to her feelings. I cannot live without her. She completes me. If I cannot have her in my life, my life becomes far less than the nothing it already is. It is time, past time, to face the truth behind the lies. If she is going to turn me away, than let her turn me away completely. I cannot walk the path alone. I am driving in the darkness, watching the rain run rivulets of blood down my windowpane. I have no sanity left to save me. There can be only one salvation. Either I will reach the light or I will die and breath my last on a slow cascade to eternal hell. For, you see, I do believe. ************************************************************************* Dana Scully's Apartment 2:35 a.m I hear him knock at the door. I am not sleeping. I knew that he would come. I stand in the darkness, breathing in the shadows that dance across the living room rug. I hold the gun firmly in my hand, a testimony to the strength of my resolve to end this once and for all. He knocks once, perfunctorily, then slides his key into the lock and turns the handle. I have chosen the darkness for a reason. I cannot look into his eyes. If I do, I will not be able to keep the vow I have made to myself. He opens the door and searches the darkness, "Scully?" His voice is thick with tears, broken by the weight of sins he thinks that I can absolve. I step forward into the path of light created by the moon as it shines a swatch of phosphorescent glow between the slats of the partly closed blinds. I raise the gun. he sees it. He does not back down. "Get out, Mulder. Leave. Now." "No." "I will use this if I have to. I have asked you nicely. Please leave." "No." "Do you want me to shoot you, Mulder? You know that I can." And yet, my hand is shaking and I feel my resolve beginning to crumble in the face of him. "If that is what you want, Scully, then do it. I don't care anymore. My life is nothing without you." Damn him. I cannot do this if he insists on saying things like that to me. Yet, I must. Because I know in my heart that his words are meaningless, just another ploy to keep me as his safety net. I am a human being. A woman. Not his faithful dog to be kicked and beaten and beg for his love. "Mulder, shut up. Just shut the fuck up, okay. I don't believe you anymore. I don't need you anymore. And you don't need me. Take your sick games and play them somewhere else. With Diana, perhaps. You belong together. you are two of a kind. Play with her. But not with me." "I don't want her. I want you." "No you don't, Mulder. You just think you want me because you can't have me. You had my love and you threw it away." I see him start to collapse before me, falling to his knees as if in prayer, and I want to go to him. But I do not. "Then just shoot me, Scully. Get it over with. I have made too many mistakes to ask for your forgiveness, but I am too far gone to live without you. I love you, Scully." "You don't know what love is." I walk behind his kneeling for to close the door. I do not look at him. I can feel the heat of his body and I am drawn to it, but I will not cave before him, not now. No words of emotional collapses can bring me back to him. I cross to the sofa and sit, facing him. He has not moved. he kneels on my floor with his head in his hands. if I did not know better, I would believe that he was praying. I place the gun on the table beside me, crossing my hands in my lap, and wait for him to continue. I will allow him this last confession. it is the Christian thing to do. "Scully, I had a dream tonight. You were dying. Your blood was on my hands. I looked into your eyes and you begged me to love you. You could not speak. I had to be the one to say the words. the words would not come." I was beginning to see where this was coming from. A nightmare. Typical. Mulder has a nightmare so Scully has to ease the pain. Not this time. "So what, Mulder? It was a dream. Big deal. Then what?" "You reached out to touch me, Scully. you reached out towards me with the last of your strength and I turned away. I walked away and left you to die alone." "This surprises you, Mulder? You've been leaving me to die alone for quite some time now. Why should it be any different in your dreams?" "But I came back, Scully." "Too late." "I know. I know it was too late. But that was a dream. This is reality. I came here to prove to you once and for all that I am here. I am not leaving. You have my love, you have my trust. You want to know about Diana? About Antarctica? About anything. I will tell you. Just give me the chance to tell you. Then, if you still want me to go, send me away. Shoot me. I don't care. They'll say it was all for the best. You'll probably get a commendation on your record. Just let me answer your questions first, please?" He was sobbing before me, and all of my resolve was gone. He fell to the floor, huddled in a heap, holding himself. I knew then that no one had ever held him before. I was faced with a decision. It's like when you have an animal and it is dying in pain. You can either try to save it, or put it out of it's misery. Either one is the humane thing to do. I could kill him, physically, with a bullet to the head. I could kill him, emotionally, by shutting him out forever, or I could let myself love him. I rose from the sofa and picked up the gun. I walked towards him, crossing to kneel beside him in the dim light, close enough so he could see me. I held the gun towards his face. He did not even close his eyes. He welcomed death at my hands. "It's not loaded, Mulder." I showed him the empty clip. "I could never kill you. I could never let you go. I love you." I fell to the floor beside him, reaching out to gather him into my arms. We held on to each other, sobbing violently. I buried my head against the warmth of his chest and tried to draw him deep inside of me. "I love you, Scully. I love you. God, I love you." His hands were in my hair, stroking methodically. We helped each other to sit. I looked into his eyes and, for the first time, I saw his soul. I can always see inside of him, but he has never let me in completely. This time, all of the barriers were gone. I saw love and trust and complete devotion. And then I saw his lips begin to descend towards mine. First contact. No alien life form could compare to what raged inside me when our lips first met. He was hard yet yielding, and we flowed together like two rivers meeting on their way to the sea. He rose and gathered me into his arms. He carried me to the bedroom and placed me gently on the bed. I expected him to make love to me. I would have let him. He did not. Instead, he sat beside me, stroking the bare skin of my arm and sending shivers up and down my body like little jolts of electricity. "I'm sorry I woke you, Scully." "We needed this, Mulder. This....catalyst. I need you." He smiled at me and my heart broke. I reached out my hand towards him and saw the look of panic cross his face. "It's just like the dream, Scully. When you reached out for me." "This is real, Mulder. It's your choice. Stay or go." His answer was to take my hand in his. He would stay. I pulled him into the bed beside me, keeping him as close to me as possible. "Hold me, Scully. Please, just hold me." "Always," I replied. And in my arms he slept. ************************************************************************* Dana Scully's Apartment Sunday 6:35 a.m. I have been watching him sleep for over half an hour now. When I awoke in his arms everything felt so right. We have taken a step. A giant leap, actually. I wonder what it will be like to make love to Mulder. The depth of his passion is so all consuming. First, we will have to talk. There are many things left unsaid that, if not brought out into the open, will return to haunt us. I want to know about Diana. I want to know about Antarctica. I want to know about his past. I need to tell him about mine. Later. Now, I will just watch him sleep. I will call my mother, in a few minutes, and let her know that I will not be in church this Sunday, yet again. She will be upset, but only for a moment. I will tell her that Fox needs me. She's the only one who can call him that without causing him pain. And she will tell me to stay with him, to be with him. She wants this almost as much as I do. Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned. I have wasted six years of my life avoiding the one true love that you have sent for me. I have ignored this, your most precious of gifts, for far to long. He is moving now, in his sleep. He reaches out for me and knows that I am not there. before he has the chance to panic, I slip back into the warmth of him embrace. I let him hold me. We are complete.