From: Gemini599 Date: 26 Nov 1999 23:39:48 GMT Subject: For This Moment (1/1) by Jessica TITLE: For This Moment AUTHOR: Jessica (Gemini599@aol.com) RATING: PG SPOILERS: The Field Where I Died DISTRIBUTION: Anywhere, please just ask. CATEGORY: VR ScullyAngst DISCLAIMER: property of CC etc. SUMMARY: Scully returns to the field to reflect on Mulder and their partnership NOTE: This is my first post so please be kind. :) I want to say thanks to Sandy (Starbuck92@yahoo.com), who is the true Scully expert, for proofreading and for helping me think up interesting titles. (Although I didn't use any of those...) :) Ironically it was DD's performance in TFWID that inspired me to write this, but it ended up as a Scully POV. Feedback would be much appreciated. (Gemini599@aol.com) XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX I return here sometimes, to the field where you died. I stand in the sodden grasses and watch the trees sway slightly with the breeze, the golden sun of daytime fading to the rosy glow of evening and finally darkening to the blue of twilight. Thinking of you. It is so peaceful here. So peaceful and silent and still, seemingly a utopia, nature's utopia, away from the hate and the fear that plague us as human beings. Yet, so many died here, at one time. You died here. And I grieve for Sullivan Biddle, and for you, Fox Mulder, you who have come to remember your past self, and to know that even then, as another face in another time, you were not free of the horrors that you continue to face in this life. An eternity of suffering, then? Oh, Mulder. Not for you. Not for you. You don't know that I come back here. I would never tell you, and you would never think to ask. We put this behind us that day three years ago, after I found you in this very same field clutching two tattered pictures in your hands, tears drying on your cheeks as a testament to your grief. I led you away and drove us far from this field, and like so many other things, we put this incident away forever. Even if I knew you were hurting. Even if I was hurting too. To say that what I felt toward Melissa Ephesion was jealousy would not only be a sheer understatement, it would be an utter cheapening of the emotion. Oh, yes, I was jealous. I was jealous, Mulder, because I was your partner, and I was your friend. And I had never admitted it to myself up until that day, but I was also proud to be those things. I was honored to be the one you turned to for everything. The one you laughed with and shared your insights with and trusted above everyone else. I was your Scully. But yet, even with all this, what I was feeling wasn't only jealousy of the woman who had suddenly and without warning intruded on our cozy existance. I was hurt. Dismayed. Shocked to find that I was not the one who you had always turned to. Because I believe in past lives, Mulder. I do. Your practical, scientific partner - naysayer of all that is paranormal - believes in past lives. Not because of your experience. Not because of Melissa's. But because of mine. Your hypnotic regression was the catalyst, although I was slow in remembering. It was weeks after the incident before I began to piece things together, mainly through waking dreams that I could not explain away. And little by little, bit by bit - just as I've come to acknowledge the existance of extraterrestrials - I came to understand. I had not always been your Scully, but I had always been yours. Since the beginning. Since forever. Whether you - or either of us - knew it or not, I was yours. And you were mine. Sometimes as friends. Sometimes as lovers. Sometimes living two separate lives without knowing of the others existance. Where we would only be a ghost of a whisper in each other's dreams, to be forgotten with the morning. I wish I could assign some scientific phenomenon to these "memories" but I cannot. Not when I feel this much. Not when the love and the longing and the pain of centuries rest upon my shoulders in this lifetime, and threaten to break me. These pent-up emotions only have control of me when I come to this field, the field where you once took your last breath. But I continue to come, because I need this connection to you. This proof, if you will. That we do indeed share something infinitely more precious than either of us will ever know or be able to understand, and that our existances in this lifetime - side by side as partners - are worth it. As long as we have each other. I have no doubt that you loved Melissa, or Sarah, as she was known then. No doubt whatsoever. Our bond does not make us incapable of loving another. And I am not jealous of that. What I am jealous of - if you once again excuse the insufficiency of the word - is that Melissa watched you die in this field. And that Melissa found you in this lifetime, and told you. And that it was Melissa you grieved for standing in the very spot I stand in now, clutching your pictures. Melissa whom you remembered as having loved. Because she was the one who watched you die, Mulder? Or because she was the one who wept for you in this field three years ago, reaching out blindly as though she could somehow touch you, find you, the man you were when she was known as Sarah Kavanaugh? And I - your Scully - did nothing but stand stoically by your side. I stand here now, quite stoically I imagine, gazing across this field long overgrown with weeds. The March wind is biting, stinging my cheeks and turning them a curdled red. I tuck my bare hands beneath crossed arms and watch the sun sink behind the silouette of trees to the west. And I am crying. For you, Mulder. For Melissa. For me. For humanity and for love and for all that we take for granted in a lifetime. I weep, and the tears sting my cheeks, but I do not brush them away. Oh, Mulder. The field where you died. You will inevitably die in this lifetime - you, who I have come to love with all my heart - and there will be another field at which to mourn. Maybe not a field persay, but a place, and date. Marking the end of your existance as Fox William Mulder. And someday, my days as Dana Katherine Scully will end also. And there is the fear that you and I, in future lives, will not remember how much we meant to each other in this one. Even if we love each other. Even if we love each other with all that we are. God, Mulder. Now you understand why I only come here once in a long while. I could almost go crazy standing here thinking these things, yet all I do is shiver against the bitter wind and allow my tears to dry where they fall, stubbornly resisting the urge to retreat to the warmth and shelter of my car. I came here today, Mulder, because everything is changing. We are close, so close, to knowing everything. And perhaps the end of our work is close at hand also. Our partnership. I miss you already. Seven years, Mulder. And in a surreal, hazy way...lifetimes. Lifetimes we've known each other. Touched each other's lives in a way no other person could. I am only thirty five years old - caught in the limbo between youth and middle age. Yet I feel old. I have spent the past eight years of my life with the Bureau, and the past seven by your side. And now I cannot help but feel it is all ending. Here, today, I'm finding that I connect with Sullivan Biddle, but not with you, Mulder. Not as much as I should. Why can't we just tell each other these things? Why, after so many years, is talking such a struggle? Such a thing to be avoided? We are afraid, I think. But afraid we will feel too much, and too intensely? Or afraid the other person will care too little...or not at all? I think I know that you care for me, Mulder. I would even presume to say that I am the most important person in your life. Not because I have dreams that portray us as soulmates eternally, but because of what we've come to mean to each other in this life. I try to imagine living without you now, and all I can see ahead of me is a long narrow road, stretching bleakly to the horizon. But I digress. Right now the sun has nearly slipped below that horizon, and the field around me is shadowed and silent save the intermittent bird call. The temperature has dropped steadily all day, and it is now quite cold, because I can no longer feel my fingertips and I'm sure my face would be icy to the touch. I am debating whether or not to go when I hear another sound - that of an engine. I can vaguely hear a car pulling into the parking lot beyond the Temple of the Seven Stars, and the thought that it might be a policeman or night watchman prompts me to turn. I squint in the dim light and watch as the car pulls into the space next to mine. Your car. I stand quite still now, the bitter cold forgotten, as you get out and pull your trenchcoat tighter around you. You turn as though you have some sort of Scully radar attuned to my whereabouts, and pause for a moment. Even though it is dark and you are quite far away, I can tell that you see me. Then you begin walking, slowly, moving to the edge of the parking lot and starting across this field. I am wondering how you found me here, but that isn't first and foremost in my mind; what I'm concerned with right now is what I'll say to you when you reach me. Will you be angry? Confused? You must care a little, otherwise you wouldn't have bothered to come at all. It seems to take you forever to cross this field, but finally your steps slow and stop completely, and you're standing only feet from me. You look at me wordlessly, and I find myself speechless. Your face is in shadow, and your breath clouds with each exhalation, as does mine. "Mulder," I finally say, breaking the echoing stillness. Its the first word I've spoken in over four hours, since I arrived here with only my troubled thoughts to accompany me. "What...what are you doing here?" You shift slightly, hands twitching involuntarily at your sides. It's a nervous habit of yours that I've picked up on over the years. "Shouldn't that be my line?" you ask. I smile slightly, more to dispel the tension than anything else. I feel your hazel eyes leave me, drift over my shoulder. "So," you say finally, "come here often?" It's meant to be a joke but I hear the underlying seriousness in your tone, and respond in kind. "Not often. Once in a while." I pull my coat tighter around me. "Any particular reason?" It isn't said critically or mockingly, and I relax the tiniest bit. I glance down at the ground, stamping my feet slightly to get the circulation going again. The wind ruffles my hair and stings my cheeks, and I shiver. "A lot of reasons," I say finally. "I'd be happy to discuss them with you, but preferably over a steaming bowl of french onion soup in a heated restaurant." You chuckle a little, and reach out suddenly, grasping my hand in your much larger one. Your skin is warm, a sharp contrast from mine. "Jesus, Scully," you say, stepping closer and cupping my hands in both of yours, rubbing in an attempt to warm them. "You're freezing." "Yep," is all I say, and you give a startled laugh. After a moment I join in, and the tension is broken. "Come here," you say softly, and pull me into the circle of your arms. For a moment I hesitate, then sink willingly against the rough wool of your coat, seeking shelter from the biting wind. I can feel your body heat radiating through your jacket and into my own, warming me instantly. You smell of soap and cologne and something else distinctly you, a woodsy, familiar scent that relaxes me because I know it so well. I can feel your fingers against my scalp, lightly stroking my hair. Your other hand is warm on the small of my back. It isn't often that I allow myself to be held, but I can't deny that I enjoy being held by you. No one gives a hug quite like Fox Mulder. And no one, I can assure you, enjoys being on the receiving end of those hugs more than I do. It took me a while to admit that to myself, but I feel as if I'm ready to admit it to you. In a few minutes you'll pull away, or I will, and we'll leave this barren field in search of a warm restaurant and a long heartfelt discussion. But for now we simply hold each other, and are content to do so, worrying not about the future nor about the past. Living for the moment, only for this moment in which there is only us. I have achieved what I came here today to do. I have found you, just as you have found me. And for now, it is enough.