From: "Darcy Galvan" Date: Wed, 20 Jun 2001 22:18:51 -0700 Subject: My Own Destruction by mscribe Source: direct Reply To: mscribe@angelfire.com Title: My Own Destruction Author: mscribe Classification: VA-Vignette/Angst Rating: G Spoilers: DeadAlive Summary: An instant in Doggett's POV upon seeing Scully and Mulder Disclaimer: Notminenotminenotmine Author's Notes: Dogget's expression in that instant he sees Mulder and Scully really struck me. I jammed this out in about five minutes so forgive the rambling train of thought feel to it...although I could lie and say that was done on purpose for artistic reasons to reflect Doggett's state of mind, but that would be total BS so...read on. My Own Destruction by mscribe I swung the door open to find Scully. My face still ached a little from the bruises but it had begun to dull. Stepping across the threshold I froze. No dully aching face could compare to what twisted through my chest in that instant. She lay there, her soft cheek pressed to his fragile chest, her fiery locks splayed across the blue- and white-print hospital gown he wore. Scully clutched at him with all the desperation and love that had built up over the past months with nowhere to go, the one person she showed them to unable to comfort her, to hear her. Now that person and the object of that emotion was in her embrace and awake. Mulder was awake. His dark head turned to the side, pale face leaning ever so lightly upon her hair. He was turned away from me, but I could see that smile that meant he was home. Mulder was awake and I was out. I know that Scully would never say so, but I knew that I had no place now. She might try, but it would never be the truth. The man who had captured Scully had returned to her and her heart had returned with him, forever out of my reach although I doubt I ever had her though he'd been gone so long. I'm not sure when it happened, but I know it has. Maybe since the first moments we met and Scully threw that water in my face. Seems a pretty crazy place to fall for a woman, but her wild strength and spirit caught me from that first icy glare. It's ironic that what brought us together is suddenly tearing us apart. We worked so long and hard to find Mulder, put in so many hours and so many late night phone calls. I don't know if she ever felt what I did. I know she came to trust me and respect my opinion just the way I did her, but the emotions pushing behind that...I don't know. Those months she searched for Mulder she seemed to come to accept that he was gone. Even if she never gave up -- and I knew she never would -- she at least became accustomed. But that pain and sadness had to have gone somewhere and I never realized that it just pulled away inside to fuel that love that she now laid out over him like she laid out her own body. The search for Mulder brought us together and now it's solution was my undoing. He was back and I realized that I was only a pale filler in the time that he was absent. I was there to keep her eye distracted. The tall, dark form in a trench coat that, if she looked at it out of the corner of her eye, just the right way, maybe, just *maybe* it would fool her heart. Maybe that split-second of false hope between heartbeats where anything could happen would sustain her that much longer and keep her from giving up on the next pulse of blood. Sustain her until the next beat and the next assurance that she was alive and maybe he was too. Maybe I helped her trick herself into surviving those months. It didn't matter now. Nothing I could do would matter when I had been skeptical for so long. I had tried to keep her from running to him that horrible moment when her hopes were dashed and she found him cold and still inside a pale, battered skin that shouldn't have been his. I had tried to reason Skinner out of trying one last time, tried to deny him that last desperate attempt to hope. Then I had given up on Mulder in the hospital room. I only wanted to protect her, to harden those blue eyes so they wouldn't shine quite so brightly with tears, so they wouldn't break on his last breath, reflecting the delicate already tortured heart inside her. So they wouldn't break me. Damn wrong way to protect her. I realized that when Skinner locked the door and my lungs suddenly stopped working. I kicked it down and kicked my stupidity and selfishness down with it. She didn't need me to protect her, she needed me to help her, reassure and support her. She probably didn't need me to love her, but it was too late for that so I threw Skinner against the wall, ready to protect the man I'd looked so hard for. To protect the man I'd suddenly come to hate, for the woman I'd come to love. "You're killin' him!" I bellowed because I knew that he was killing her too. And now she looks at me not quite knowing what to do. The tears are falling that only he will be able to stop and she wants to smile or tell me we're all right but she doesn't. I see the truth and she sees it too. The apology buried in that look is what breaks me and though her eyes try to find mine, I won't return it and I won't respond. Instead I lean back and close the door. I've already gone too far assisting in my own destruction. You can't ask me to finish it. THE END