From: "PaperbackWriter " Date: Tue, 8 Sep 98 19:01:17 UT Subject: "Desktop Ramblings" (1/1) by Starbuck I DID NOT WRITE THIS STORY. I AM POSTING THIS FOR THE AUTHOR. PLEASE SEND ALL FEEDBACK TO starbuck1001@goplay.com -------- "Desktop Ramblings" Disclaimer: I did not create these characters -- Chris Carter gave them names and words, Gillian Anderson and David Duchovny gave them soul. They are collectively owned by 1013, Fox and whatever corporate entity has swallowed whatever other corporate entity this week. I'm not hurting them; I'll give 'em back; Please don't sue me, all you'll get is what you already have: X-Files paraphernalia. Rated: G Spoilers: Let's say.. Momento Mori, umm.. A general knowledge of the Scully cancer episodes helps... Maybe a TINY bit of FTF. Keywords: Mulder/Scully UST, Vignette, and it's a bit Angsty by Starbuck Feedback to: starbuck1001@goplay.com Summary: Response to challenge: What if Mulder found Scully's diary while searching for an old x-file? *~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~* Let's see... Over there I've got A-D, E-H, I-L, M-P, Which makes this... Ummm... "Q"... Queequeg... Nope... "R" Reticulans... Nope.. Umm.. "S".. Here we go! I flip files behind me, looking for the file on "Philip Scart". He's been missing for twenty years (give or take a month), taken when he was a kid. I'm trying to keep an open mind on who took him but when I think about it he was taken almost the same time Samantha. His disappearance is as much of a mystery as Samantha's. But now that he's re-appeared they're charging him with the murders of his family who were also reported missing. The family members all re-appeared fifteen years ago, dead, when the youngest Scart didn't reappear the authorities presumed him the killer. I'm not sure how they worked that out maybe simply: "If after twenty years no killer appears blame the person who was missing all along". Whatever. I think there's an alibi in this folder that'll clear him, so that the authorities can try to find the *real* abductors. Maybe they'll even look *up* in their search. Right. For now I've got a job to do. Let's see, "Sa", "Sb", "Sc"... Scart's file isn't there. It's missing. I move forward another file, maybe I (or the last person to use it) filed it in the wrong place... The next name on the list jumps out at me: SCULLY, DANA As I stare down at her file I feel a multitude of emotions stir in me. Sadness at being the person who was forced to immortalize her here, in the X-files and anger at Duane Barry for forcing upon her that which she did not want. There are many, many other emotions I feel at this moment so many that I cannot identify them all. One of them, one of the stronger ones takes control and opens up the report on her kidnapping. I skim through it, my photographic memory assisting me in grasping it's meaning. I know this file well, I wrote most of it. I pick up the name "Duane Barry" every here and there and a soft curse escapes my mouth, un-noticed, whenever I read about what he did. He's been the source of so much of my.... *Our* pain. Concealed behind the reports of her kidnapping I find a slender document, telling the legacy of her cancer, from diagnosis to remission. Crammed hastily into the midst of the cancer papers is a small notebook; I open it lovingly. It's her.... I'm not sure what to call it, "journal"? "diary"? I know it's really not polite but I feel so distant from Scully at this moment that I open it up to read it. Perhaps this binding of papers will give me insights into her that will reduce the length of the distance, bring us closer together. I read the first paragraph and almost choke. I feel my knees buckle, and slide almost unaware of it onto the floor. I didn't know what to expect but I most certainly didn't expect this! I read it again.. This time out loud: "Now, for the first time, I feel time like a heartbeat. The seconds pumping in a my breast like a reckoning. The numinous mysteries that once seemed so distant and unreal threatening clarity in the presence of a truth entertained, not in youth, but only in its passage." She's actually opened up.... Told me what she feels, told me what it is like... More accurately then she could ever have done, whenever we sat together to talk, as few and unexpected as those occasions have been. I remember two times when we actually talked, once in Florida when I'd gone into shock and once, on a lake, right after Queequeg died. This journal is so much more descriptive, so much easier to understand, it's as though her words transcend my body and implant themselves directly into my soul. Then I realize something, she didn't *mean* to tell me. I flip back to the cover of journal, then read the first page. In her hand writing there is a note: "Mulder- I write this for who knows what reason. Maybe it is the urge we all have to be understood, to be known, even if that knowledge is spread among only a few. The few people who will understand this are the ones who know me best, the ones whom I trust with my life, and my heart. I trust you fully, perhaps that is why I write this, so that I can prove just how fully I trust you to show you how much my trust exceeds all else. Read these pages, Mulder and understand what you never could while I was alive, understand all. I want you to know, I want you to understand." I'm not supposed to read this unless her cancer carries her off, I realize. Unless it rips her from me as a school yard bully extorts money from a child. I can't help myself, I read on.... "I feel these words as if their meaning were weight being lifted from me. Knowing that you will read them and share my burden as I have come to trust no other. That you should know my heart, look into it; finding there the memory and experience that belong to you -- that are you -- is a comfort to me now as I feel the tethers loose and the prospects darken for the continuance of a journey that began not so long ago and which began again with a faith shaken and strengthened by your convictions. If not for which I might never have been so strong now as I cross to face you and look at you, in complete. Hoping that you will forgive me for not making the rest of the journey with you." She's speaking to me here... And me alone. I feel a single tear trickle down my cheek, and raise my hand to wipe it away, I swear silently to myself that I will not cry at this journal again. She trusts me. She wants me to know her what is in her heart. She... She lo--- I can't bring myself to think it. I can't bring myself to take that next step. The step that'll make it all clear.... Before I can brood too deeply I read on. "In med school I learned that cancer arrives in the body unannounced. A dark stranger who takes up residence, turning its new home against itself. This is the evil of cancer. That it starts as an invader, but soon becomes one with the invaded. Forcing you to destroy it; but only at the risk of destroying yourself. It is science's demon possession. My treatments -- science's attempt at exorcism. Mulder, I hope that in these terms you might know it, and know me. And accept a stranger so many recognize but cannot ever completely cast out. And if the darkness should have swallowed me as you read this, you must never think there was the possibility of some secret intervention. Something you might have done. And although we have traveled far together, this last distance must, necessarily be traveled alone." She's succeeded in telling me what it's like to have cancer, she's succeeded in that above all else... One phrase in this part sticks out at me, "This last distance must, necessarily be traveled alone." So like her, to put this in. Hasn't she figured it out yet, that neither of us ever does anything alone? Even if she walks alone in death for a time, that time will end. Nothing is set in stone. If she dies now we *will* be reunited, even if we're both dead at the time. Either my strength or hers will pull us back together. What holds us together is our lo--... I still can't bring myself to think it, but I know what we share. We share something that goes beyond all other possible feelings, it's so deep that neither of us can ever escape, our own gravity holding us in place. "I have not written to you in the last 24 hours because the treatment has weakened my spirit as well as my body. Mulder, it is difficult to describe to you the fear of facing an enemy which I can neither conquer, nor escape. Penny Northern has taken a downturn. I now look at her with the respect that can only come from one who is about to walk the same dark path. Seeing her, I can't help but see myself in a month, or a year. I pray that I have her courage to face this journey. Mulder, I feel you close. Though I know you are now pursuing your own path. For that I am grateful. More than I can ever express. I need to know that you're out there if I am ever to see through this." I cannot believe this. Seeing her so vulnerable, so isolated... I would not have had the strength to do what she has done, to face such an evil. How could *she* have the strength to? How could she have the courage to do what I have not... could not? I am shaking a bit from suppressed sobs, my attention so engrossed in the file that only then do I sense a presence behind me. A presence that I know so well. Hastily I shove the folder back into her file and continue to search through the cabinet... What was I looking for? Ummm..... Start?? Scarf?? No... It was.. Umm.. Scart.. Yeah, Philip Scart. I feel Scully come up behind me, and bury all my attention in the file, not wanting her to know that I've been reading such a private thing and that it evoked such a response in me.... She puts a hand on my shoulder "Mulder, what's wrong?" Damn, she must have seen my suppressed sobs... I strain to make my voice sound level, cool "Nothing, Scully. I'm fine." My lack of cheeriness or persuasiveness surprises me, I can usually cover better then that. She looks at the file cabinet and sees where I am.. I didn't flip fast enough, I'm only on: SCULLY, MELISSA "You were reading.... My file, weren't you?" she knows what I was doing, she only wants confirmation. I can only nod, afraid that if I speak the tears I have shed over her will start again. "Then you know," she says it softly, it's not a whisper but I still have to strain to hear it. I get up from my half crouch on the floor, it is a very ungainly way to sit and look down at her.... She suddenly looks afraid, like a child, but I know her fear isn't from the cancer... She is afraid of me knowing about how she... Feels. I envelope her in a hug -it's pure instinct- and she clings to me, suppressed sobs wrenching at her body. I bring my hand up behind her head and smooth her reddish hair, saying soft comforting things to her all the while. As she stands here, clinging to me as though I'm some rock, a stable factor in her life, I begin to realize how much she depends on me. Of course we depend on each other like any good agents but it goes further then that, much further. She means everything to me, and I return that. We hold each other in place, one of us always strong when the other is weak, one of us permanent while the other is transient. I am the strong one now, the permanent one, the one who could be relied upon, the one who had to support. Scully is absolutely terrified, I know that, for she seldom cries and when she does it is almost always in private. *She is really terrified if she is going to cry in front of me.* I gaze down at her, only her hair showing from my somewhat lofty view above her. I curve my head down and brushed my lips against her hair, breathing in her scent deeply as I do so. She looks up at me, her eyes questioning, rimmed with unshed tears. Scully buries her face into my chest, sobs once again passing through her body. *God help me to have the strength to do this.* I silently pray. I release her from our hug, and speak softly, "Scully why didn't you let me read this sooner?" She rubs at her eyes, "I was afraid. And also I knew that you'd read it eventually, that you'd get bored, or be looking for some file and stumble across it... And you have this curiosity, Mulder," she smiles wanly. We hold each others gazes, my heart in my eyes, I'm swimming in her ocean ones. I want so badly to confess everything to her, as I have done only once before. I want her to know how I feel, to know that the encounter in my hallway wasn't simply a fluke, that I meant each and every word that I said. That she means so much to me that I can't live without her, that I *wouldn't* live without her. But I'm not sure if I can, not sure that if I speak those fatal words I won't scare her off, permanently. I've had my heart ripped out of me too many times, I don't need it to happen again. But she has no intention of letting *me* be the one to confess this time..... Scully wraps her arms around my waist, loosely, and pulls me closer to her, "Mulder you mean everything to me. For every time you I have saved you, you have saved me six. When I lay in a hospital bed sick with cancer and dying, your strength kept me going, kept me alive. Knowing that you were out there, trying to help me, was my fuel, it held me here, forced me to maintain life." I put my arms around her shoulders and for the second time we hold each other, neither of us sad this time, simply happy to be as we are. Friends and partners, not wanting anything to break our contentment at this time. After what seems like only a few seconds but is probably minutes she releases her hands about my waist and takes my hand, a half smile crossing her face, tinged slightly with sadness at breaking the moment, and leads me out of the side room where I was searching for the Scart file. "Scully?" I question, "I trust you that way too, you know," I pause, "I've only got one question: Know what happened to the Scart file?" She points at our desk, where X-file X-954780 lays, titled, "Philip Scart". *~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~* Finis