Date: Thu, 30 Jul 1998 22:02:32 -0500 From: Deirdre Subject: Hopes and Betrayals: The Question of Truth Rating: PG Spoilers: None Summary: An encounter during lunch time leads to questions for Scully. Archive: Archive freely; this story is released into the public domain. Disclaimer: FOX and 1013 owns the X-files. No copyright infringement intended. Author's notes: Once upon a time (a long, long time ago) this was part of a series called "Childhood Promises/Hopes and Betrayals" that I spent a lot of time plotting and outlining. It was actually the final story in the series. Then I began archiving. Although I've still got the outline and the summaries I wrote for each part, I'm never going to get around to writing the other sections. This story was posted as "The Question of Truth" to M&S several months ago. If you want to know a little of what's hinted at in here, take a look at "Childhood Promises: Making Promises" on the completed stories archive and "The Fates Will Find a Way" on the unfinished archive. A chapter I wrote for "Fates" was the original inspiration, and "Promises" was originally part III of the series. This story was written prior to *season four*. ***** "There are things no one should know, and no one should want to discover." The tall, slender woman stood behind Dana, directly in her path as she turned away from the hotdog stand where she'd gone to find lunch. She was gazing directly at Dana, taking in her business suit, her neatly styled hair, her leather briefcase. Dana glanced around her, but the summer tourist crowd she'd been fighting for the past half hour had temporarily eased, leaving her as the only one the woman could have been addressing. "Excuse me?" "You search for the truth, right? Well, the world doesn't exist in your shades of black and white. How can you find the truth when each person knows a different truth? There is no one, solid overriding truth that answers all the questions of the world. Knowing the truth, or whatever part of the truth you can grasp does not lead to answers, but only more questions." Dana stared at the woman for a moment, wondering what was going on. She looked pretty sane, dressed neatly in suburban clothing, the type you'd seen haunting a golf course during summer mornings before the sun climbed too high. Perfectly white tennis shoes, hair in a ponytail ... "Who are you?" "Whomever anyone wants me to be. Aren't we all? We behave the way others expect, we create our images the way that we think others expect us to ... doesn't that make us just the creations of others? Not our own people, but the idea of us that others have." She gritted her teeth and looked for a way to escape. She didn't know what this person was about, but she clearly didn't have all her marbles. "Excuse me, Miss, but I have to get back to the office." "You really don't get it, do you, Dana Scully?" "How do you know my name?" "I know almost everything there is to know about you. Your sister's name was Melissa, your brothers are Charles and William. You were daddy's little girl, who rebelled and thought you lost him ... "Who are you?!" "I am nobody. I am everybody. I am whomever someone wants me to be. How can I know who I am when people are constantly redefining me in their own view? Just as they do you, and Fox ..." "I know who I am." "Do you? To some you are Fox Mulder's little puppy dog, following him loyally into any situation. To others you are the Ice Queen, the bitch without feelings who feels more at home with dead people than with breathing, speaking people. To some, you are the brilliant doctor, whose curiosity pushes in directions she can't believe in, but must investigate. Think about it. Aren't you all those people?" Dana shifted her weight from foot to foot and glanced at her watch. Whomever this woman was, she knew way too much. "Sure, I am all that. You can have many different sides, but still be yourself." "But doesn't ‘yourself' change from day to day, from situation to situation, from idea to idea? Don't you act the way you think you should?" "Of course. Everyone does." "Exactly. Everyone in this world changes as we pass into different peoples' attention, as we affect and are affected by choices other people make. We affect the world, and the world changes us." "But at our core, we are the same." "Are we? Are you still the same person that walked into Fox Mulder's office one day, ready to disbelieve all evidence of the paranormal and extraterrestrial? What would have that woman thought of the shadowy government conspiracies you chase, of the faint tentacles of evidence that you grasp for? What would have that woman, the woman that the upper echelons of the FBI thought perfect to take down Mulder, have thought of you?" "What?" "You were then who those people wanted you to be. An instrument who needs *facts* and who couldn't be swayed by a persuasive personality. But you changed too easily, *because* you believe in the scientific method. Because you found the facts they thought you too straight- edged to pay attention to. Because you became who Mulder needed you to be - a scientific foil that can also take things on faith, when needed." "I have never changed. I was given the evidence, and I incorporated it into my view of the world." "But would have the you of six years ago have ever believed that such evidence could have existed?" Dana was almost fuming at the woman's circular argument. "Arguing possibilities and alternate realities will never get us anywhere. Yes, if I had never seen the evidence that I did, I would have never believed some things possible that I do now." "See, you changed - because of who you encountered. You changed because of facts, but only accepted those facts *because* of the view another had of you. Had Mulder not been so hostile, would you have attempted so hard to prove yourself, and followed his ideas as deeply and closely as you could?" "I don't know. I have to get back to the office ..." Scully began to move sideways, looking for some way to escape. Her cold hotdog dangled in her fingers and she glanced around for a patrol man she could wave over to help her. Although she couldn't justify pulling a gun on her, getting her occupied with an officer on possible harassment charges was looking very nice, indeed. And she didn't know what this woman wanted out of her. She clearly wanted something - and wasn't the crazy she appeared to be. Another agent of the black-lunged bastard. What information were they after this time? Indications of anything that could get her tossed out of the X-files? She really didn't understand what they were after ... "So you don't care about who I am anymore, do you. I can see it in your eyes, the suspicion. I've already become someone in your eyes, and that idea will stick with you should you ever see me again. Every encounter will be colored with it, and your attitude towards me will affect me. Don't you see?" "Who are you, then?" "Who am I?" Her voice grew bitter. "Let's see .... the perfect agent, brought up into my role. Lover of desperate man, a man who betrayed and who was betrayed. Daughter of one of the most powerful men in the country, idealized sister of one of the determined. I slip into and out of roles, I am whomever someone needs me to be. Right now, I'm the crazy woman who thinks that I can help, that I can break someone I've watched change and grow out of the cycle I see her settling into. I am the one who already gave up on another, who watches him stumble around an endless maze he will never find an end to. Because no end exists. Only more questions, and more secrets. Secrets buried so deeply that no one knows that they still exist. I am a traitor, and a loyal American, depending on who's making the distinction. Someone with delusions, or someone perfectly stable, depending on whom I'm talking to. I am whatever you expect me to be." Dana stared at her for a moment, taking in the narrow face, the curly dark hair. Thinking through her description. And even though parts of it completely evaded her understanding, the pieces began to fall into place. "Samantha?" "Who is Samantha? What is Samantha? I am not Samantha - not Samantha as Fox conceives of her. Not Samantha as you conceive of her. But everyone still carries a different picture of who she is. I may have once carried that name, but *what* does it mean to me?" "You have to decide that." She laughed, a dry, desperate laugh. "I have to decide that. I who was intentionally shaped by events decided on by other people into what they wanted me to be. I have to decide that." "Samantha ..." "Don't call me that! Just listen to me: get out of here. Out of the X-files, out of anything dealing with the government. Find yourself a nice home somewhere, a nice career that allows time for a real life. A life that keeps the shadows and the lies away from you." "But we have to continue what we're doing, we have to keep searching." "Don't you get it? Just like we change from person to person, the truth changes from person to person. There *is* no truth! No tidy solution that you can reveal to the world and make everything all right. Fox's search would never be over if he found me - he would keep searching for the little girl he's created in his mind. He wouldn't want a psychological hysterical mess of a woman. He will never find this one ‘truth' he's created in his mind. It just doesn't exist!" A sudden thought hit Dana. "You want me to convince him of this." "Yes. You are the only one that can." "You care enough about him to want him out of it all." "I wouldn't say that ...." "Shut up." The woman looked up, startled. "You still care enough about him to want him to find some sort of happiness. You don't see him ever finding happiness on the path he's following because you never have. You still love him enough to worry. Sam's still in there - the little girl who worries about her big brother, but would never reveal it." "No." "Yes. Remember, I have an older brother, I know how it goes. You are still there." "You don't get it." "Yes I do. You're just like your brother, trying to decide what is best for others. Blindly blundering into situations that create more pain because you won't take into account that others are willing to suffer alongside you and share the pain. I think that Mulder could accept what he would find here - I don't think he's so naive. But you won't give him that chance, will you?" "You mean reveal myself to him? Are you out of your mind?" "No, are you?" "Damn it. I should have know. You're never going to leave, you're just going to keep going. Keep following him." "Now you're creating an idea of me." "I'm out of here. You don't know what I risked coming to you, damn it." She turned and began rapidly walking away. "Samantha ..." "I am *not* Samantha!" Dana watched the woman storm off, her heart aching. "You are definitely Samantha." She whispered towards the departing figure, and looked down at the cold hotdog resting in her hand. With a sigh, she threw it into the nearby wastebasket, and headed back. As she entered the basement, Mulder looked up. "How was lunch?" Her eyes traced the familiar features, the narrow face and hazel eyes. For a second she was tempted. But it would help neither. His search would still not end, and she would remain in the shadows, bitterly watching. "Fine, pretty quiet except for the tourists." "You want to take a look at this for me? It's a new case Skinner threw down to us ..." End deirdre@x-philes.com