From: Nynaeve <mtknigh@ibm.net>
Date: Sat, 10 Apr 1999 22:34:50 -0400
Subject: NEW: Faith 8: Me (1/1)


Faith 8:  Me (1/1)
by Nynaeve
e-mail:  mtknigh@ibm.net
Rating:  G
Category:  V

Spoilers:  little ones for various episodes,
mostly pre-season 6

Keywords:  Scully angst, implied MSR, but No-Romos
shouldn't be too traumatized.

Summary:  Scully looks back on how Mulder has changed
 her life and how she has been
an active and willing participant in those changes.
Not song fic, but inspired by Faith Hill's "Me".
I didn't even use any of the lyrics in this one!

Disclaimer:  Yes, I know, they belong to Chris Carter,
1013, and a bunch of other legal entities.

Dedication:  This one is dedicated purely to JC.
Your friendship is deeply meaningful to
me.  Your praise has been the stuff dreams are made of.
You have written words to me that no one, aside from
my darling mother, ever said and have given me such confidence.
Thank you.

Notes:  I love the song this is based on, called "Me".
It's about a woman who comes into her own, which is what
Scully has certainly done.  But, more than that, I owe the writing
of this story to the greatest living American author, Pat Conroy.
I stayed up too late re-reading "Beach Music" and then the
rhythms and melodies of this story would not leave
me alone until I wrote it down.  If you've never read Conroy,
I can't even begin to tell you what you are missing.  His has a
gift rarely matched in any language.  I highly recommend
going out and immediately reading "Beach Music" or
"The Prince of Tides".  OK, I've had my say.  If you've hung
with me this far, then let me quote Mulder and say, "Let's get
it on...".



What a world we inhabit, Mulder.  You and I.  A world
populated by shadow-chased men whose fear-haunted eyes
are so well hidden beneath their convivial masks of disinterested
ruthlessness.  Driven by the all-encompassing human desire
to sustain themselves at any cost, they surrendered their
souls to the darkness within as they struck monstrous bargains
with odd faced, smooth skinned, otherworldly terrorists.

I used to think this was a dream, Mulder, from which I would
wake, in the safety of your arms.  Your fingers would brush
away the hair clinging to my cheeks.  Your tender lips would
kiss away my tears.  You would murmur my name, part mantra,
part paen, part balm to my wounded soul.  Now I know, Mulder,
that this nightmare is our life. The only place in which
I will ever wake up, safe and comfortably ensconced in your
arms, is, ironically enough, in my dreams.

So, Mulder, we traverse the landscape of this lie-studded
world, vainly sifting the sands for grains of truth.  The
Navy Captain's daughter awaits a battle plan that's as yet unformed
because we can see not our enemy.  She struggles to define the
rules of engagement of this world.  Rules etched, variably,
in pudding, in snow melting in the desert, in the blood of
families, in the Black Oil.  Alien oil stained  black with the
indelible ink of fear, destruction,  death, *and* answers.
Endlessly we march to a fate we but  dimly sense, to a
rendezvous both required and hideous. This is our life, Mulder.
This world we inhabit.

I wish, Mulder, that I could blame you for making me a
citizen of this bleak fatherland.  I've tried a few times,
shifting the guilt to your soul, but I found it was all the
same real estate, just a different subdivision.  The truth
is I chose you.  The night I let you tell me about Samantha,
I chose to begin my tentative exploration of  this territory.
I began moving my belongings over the border the first time
I reported to Blevins, open faced, heart  racing, knowing
that for nearly the first time in my adult life I was doing
that which no one expected of Dana Scully.  I applied for
citizenship the day I overheard some describe me as 'Mrs.
Spooky', and ignored it.  You've spent years instructing
me in its mutable laws, treading its quicksand highways,
inculcating in me a distrust of nearly everyone who's never
visited our little demesne.  You taught me to examine the
passports of those tourists who wandered our way, turning
many back at the frontier.  Every lesson I sought
to learn   and to learn well, studious out  of necessity,
still a good pupil to the last.

You found in me, Mulder, reserves of strength, depths of
emotion, and fires of passion I hardly knew I possessed.
You handed me the keys to this vault and ushered me within,
but the taking of what was there was all mine.  The strength we
found I hide under tailored suits, well written reports, and
unfailing marksmanship.  None of these are strength
themselves, only cold manifestations of it.  Only in you and
with you is this strength allowed its true form.  The emotion
we unlocked I allow to roam beneath my skin, to race
along the courses of my blood, rarely entering my eyes.
Afraid to love none but those I was bidden to by the ties
of family, I learned from you the great price true love carries
and the great rewards it brings, all without uttering a single
word.    The passion we awakened shocked and terrified me.
Before you, all my passions were easily categorized and
referenced.  You brought to my life a need for a
truth greater than the cold details of science.  I learned
to seek truth in all  things. I began to demand  truth
complete  with all its murky implications,
its messy exhortations, and its incoherent imprecations.
With you I exchanged a life  of sterile order for the dual
citizenship of madness and chaos.  And for that, I thank you.

You've freed me, Mulder, with your unconventional  thinking
and your disregard of protocol, to be that which I  never was
before.  I was Starbuck, Captain William Scully's favorite child.
A heavy burden borne willingly by a loving daughter.  In Melissa he
found a rebel; in Bill a self-image more naval than himself;
in Charlie an image blurred by softness; in me he found himself.
With me he shared his passion for the sea in all its forms,
taught me to respect it, and to relish it.  Always a just man,
his favoritism never extended to matters of discipline.  He made
certain I was as well schooled a sailor as my siblings, but it
was the look in his eyes he could not disguise.  A look missing
from those eyes when Missy, Bill, or Charlie disappointed; a
look infinitessimally different from the one that lurked in the
halls of his eyes when I disillusioned him, and a look I alone
could read.  As a child, as an adolescent, as a young woman, it
was my father's disapprobation I feared, his pride that in which
I luxuriated.  A strict man, a loving man, a man who taught me how to
love difficult men, men unaccustomed to the softer uses of language.

I loved my father, Mulder.  Make no mistake.  He prepared me for
the woman I became.  He prepared me for you.  At first I even saw
you as I saw my father, a man to please.  I changed my hair, chose
my clothes by gauging your reactions to me.  Then I found that in
this world, our world, you weren't seeing any of those things, not
really.  You were wired to a camera, about to face a madman with an
awesome ability to bend the wills of others to his own.  You knelt
in front of me.  You had asked me to smile and I tried.  I watched
you stare into my soul and read every word written there, etched in
the sandstone layers of my heart.  In a world where souls are lines
on a map dotted with land mines, ours join together to form a powerful
realm.  As you read my soul, I read yours, delighting in what I
found there.  I am torn that in that moment there was no room
for response.   Ache set in later, when we shut the doors, tacit
and wordless, on that  response, waiting for the day we flee
this haunted land.  A day that  grows dimmer and less possible
with every minute we endure here.

In this world, our world, Mulder, I am fully me.  All the components
of my life, of my character came together in this place we inhabit.
I am not separate from the woman I was once; I am her, completely and
totally now, as never before.  I never would have found all
of her anywhere but here, with you.  For in this world is my strength,
my love, and my passion.  They  shine in this world, a lamp, a
beacon in the shadows and the dark men take aim at that light.
They take aim at you, Mulder.  And in this dark, dank world where
we battle demons unseen by eyes not our own, I am you, Mulder,
and you are me.