From: Shawne <shawne@cyberway.com.sg>
Date: Tue, 22 Jun 1999 01:50:19 +0800
Subject: NEW: Private Perceptions (1/1) by Shirlock

**I did not write this; I am posting this on behalf of a friend. Please send
all feedback to shirlock@pacific.net.sg - thanks!**

======================================================

Title: Private Perceptions
Author: Shirlock
Rating: PG-13
Category: Vignette
Spoilers:  Ghost/most fanfiction which deals with MSR and their unprofessed
love/TFWID
Summary: My version of why Mulder and Scully are better than soul mates.
Disclaimer: All characters belong to Chris Carter, 1013 Productions and Fox.
If you sue me for using these wonderfully and tragically flawed characters,
then Im afraid youll have to sue the other 609,884 X-Philian authors
around the globe. Call it the global conspiracy to end all conspiracies...

Mulder's thoughts...
<It has been said that our partnership has grown since our first year, when
we were infants in the game of truth seeking. But sometimes I wonder about
my purpose in these matters. Whether there is a greater realm of truth so
vast that its perimeters embrace the heavens, or so narrow it can be
contained in the Messiah. Or that this old universe is but thimble-sized in
the larger fist of Allah. Grey aliens or humans, what if we were all but
creatures of the Creator? I smile at my own ruminations, created out of the
necessity to honestly ask myself the age-old question. Where do I fit in the
great puzzle of life? Am I happy? Descartes noted that we think and
therefore we are. But it is the actual content of our thoughts that make us
truly who we are. This simple process called soul searching amplifies the
spirit of the man inside us all.

Happiness is not a lot of things to me. It is the sum of three things. The
feeling of contentment, peace and love. Contentment borne from the fact that
I achieve through these talents bestowed, a useful career which has saved
lives. Peace is when I am reconciled with myself, and when I allow myself to
forego martyrdom by playing a normal man on the street. And love is when I
feel cherished and rewarded for the selflessness and kindness I display.
When these are present in my life, I feel drowned in a sensation I can only
humanly contain in a smile. But the gravity of that facial movement reaches
deep down into the chambers of my heart, filling the hurt with the brevity
of joy. I am as invincible to hurt as a dipped Achilles in the river Styx.>

Mulder spent the greater half of the Saturday morning running. It was the
only way he could physically will his blood to detour from pumping into his
brain. By doing the ten mile run, he was able to resist further thought into
the highlight of his ruminations. Where did Scully fit into all this? For
one thing, he realised he had missed one other ingredient to the potion of
happiness - hope. Hope was the power that propelled this formula, pushing it
forwards, enabling it to gather momentum like a snowball careening down the
slopes of a mountain but never reaching the foothills.

He had stopped at the tidal basin, sweaty palms on his knees and head dipped
towards his reflection, when the blood started pulsing through the carotid
into the forebrain where his last thought had stayed. Scully was not the
source of his happiness; she was the hope for the preservation of it. She
was part of his life the same way the people at the office were. Yet it
appeared as if she stood at the frayed outer edges of his heart, in which
brewed a whirlpool of indecisiveness, fear of failure and a poisonous
mixture of past disappointments.  He wondered about the intricacies of their
relationship but came up with something wholly undefinable.

<How does such a relationship fuel my happiness? A man. A woman. She and I
are not soulmates meant in all lifetimes to be joined as man and woman. But
is there something better? It appears that weve always been complementary
to each other, but not in the way that befits a married couple. Yet, we're
no brother and sister either. As strange as it sounds, there is no word
which comes close to distinguish the effortless male-female relationship
that we have enjoyed over the years. Respect is not all there is to it. I
admit there were moments when I had wanted to kiss her, but not to kiss her
as to be romantically involved, and thereby changing the dynamics of our
friendship. I wanted to be more of a friend, but nothing like a lover.
Platonic love is a classification of love that is one step short of reaching
the next level, whatever that level may be. The trust between us is now
stronger than ever, entwined cables of titanium that can only come apart by
mutual consent. I shake my head because I dont understand this freak of
nature and I sure as hell dont have another relationship with a woman that
comes anywhere within miles of this. Where does one go from here?>

He wondered a lot about her that Saturday morning. Then decided to wonder
about it no more.

=Scully's apartment

She opened the door, her face bright with curiosity and stifled queries
about his sudden appearance. He had changed into casual clothes, and he
walked into her living room, his mind still awhirring.

"Sorry. I was reading." Scully's apology was meant for the disarray of newsy
magazines and medical journals strewn all over her coffee table and spilling
onto the wooden parquet floor.

"Sorry to barge in on you-" he began, but she smiled and he stopped. This is
what he had been trying to figure out. This sensitivity that they both had
attuned to the highest frequency, with neither effort nor thought. "I wanted
to ask you something..."

Quickly her own mind formed two thoughts. <Its personal... and its
something he's probably dwelled on a lot. >

"Why don't you sit down, Mulder?" she asked, taking her seat on the other
side of the sofa. He sat down and rehearsed the question in his mind.

"Do you want something to drink?" she offered.

"No, no. I'm okay. Scully, I want to ask you something personal. And its
something Ive thought about, a lot," he said to her with a perfunctory
smile.

The silence was not a reprimand but her invitation to ask it.

"What makes you happy?"

The silence grew but it comforted him to not suffer the indignation of
laughter or have her echoing the question. She watched his face tentatively,
sighing inwardly at how similiar they had grown over the past six years. To
Mulder, she looked like she was seriously considering his question without
judgement.

Scully's thoughts.
<Strange how Ive asked myself that many times since the beginning of the
year. How do I answer his question? Am I happy? Well, I'm content, I
suppose. Material comfort. A job Im proud of. I am not worried about dying
tomorrow. I am at peace with God. And I feel cared for by my family and
friends. I know I am loved. Happiness? What is this elusive thing? The
normal wish for a husband, house, dog, family, children is no guarantee to
happiness even though I entertain that thought if only to contradict what I
already know is my own destined happiness.

To me, happiness is the opposite of being hurt, not sadness. Sadness is the
result of hurt. Maybe in another way, happiness isn't so much the opposite
of hurt as healing is. To be healed. Freedom from hurt is my happiness. And
what makes me happy must be the security I feel in having that freedom from
hurt. I know I feel secure having Mulder as a friend and partner. I know
that he's probably the best bet for keeping me safe or as unharmed as this
world can afford the luxury of such fleeting moments.>

She paused to think about his question again. And she returned him an answer
without any more hesitation.

"Secure relationships. Secure relationships make me happy."

"Define. Secure." To Mulder, 'security' was dichotomous. Secure as in bound;
and secure as in safety. He was wondering if she meant both.

"Relationships are the only things we'll bring into eternity with us," she
said, realising she'd just opened a can of religious worms.

"You believe in reincarnation?" His face showed traces of skepticism.

"No. I believe we live but once. Reincarnation is the antithesis of life. It
doesn't only cheapen it... its the cowardly way out, to accept second best
and believe 'I'll do better in the next life'. I believe in doing only the
best in this life within the constraints of time and space."

"Your faith assures you of heaven?" Mulder realised he had never wanted to
believe but there was something so calming about her giving in to faith that
it moved him deeply. He knew she had to move mountains of scientific
evidence to embrace that. Intangibles that could not be refuted as having a
reality in our universe. "You cant be sure, Scully," he added.

"I believe theres a place of peace, of paradise and of eternal beauty. I
know I'll see Melissa and Ahab again. I'll know who I am and I'll recognise
who they are. Infinite time not merely for rehearsals to finally get things
right, but enough time to work out who we are in relation to everyone else
and to God. My faith is not the substitute to certainty. It is a bridge."

Mulder pursed his lips in deference to her growing faith. If she had grown
any since their first case, it was this new perspective of hers. He
marvelled at her belief and her striving to balance it out with what her
science could prove.

"Security is really an amalgamation of basic human desires," she clarified,
"- of love, peace, hope, contentment. A secure relationship is one that
nurtures those intrinsic desires. One that allows each of these to permeate
the layers of everyday hurts to heal deeper wounds of hate, bitterness, pain
and loss." Scully heard the nervousness in her own voice made calm by
Mulders reassuring nod.

"We have something extraordinarily good, Scully. I just wanted you to know I
appreciate everything youve brought into my existence," he said, as he
placed his hand on her shoulder.

She dropped her gaze and returned, "I'm glad, Mulder. Thank you. I feel we
have come a long way... not to meet, but to keep an earlier appointment."

He smiled his appreciation at her kind words. There was a lull of peace that
descended upon them. Two distinctly different individuals with the
syncopated beat of one heart.

Mulder's thoughts:
<I am suddenly reminded of an ancient Mayan myth that colours the story of
the creation of mankind. In the painted subterranean cavernous walls of Lake
Titicaca, the moment when the sky touched the face of the earth on the
furthermost horizon, they transformed themselves into two human forms. Where
the man would end would the woman begin and where she would end would he
begin again. The earth and sky never ceased being different from the other
but it was the closeness they shared that bound them. But if one had wanted
to pull away from the other, the stars would fall from the skies and the
tremors in the core would shatter the earth.>

"What makes you happy, Mulder?" she asked, her intelligent eyes seeking an
honest reply through a steely gaze.

He smiled that smile again. The one that was brimming with hope inside and
out.

<I watch her small movements of breathing in and out, or shifting her weight
against the cushion, of gently lifting her brow a fraction of a millimeter.
And I understand the story of sky and earth. She is my exact equal half. And
I am her exact equal half, bound only by the trust that we are complete
wholes by virtue of the others existence. We never needed to be married; we
were born from two sides of the same reflection. While the journeys of two
individuals need time to fit into a rhythm of courtship and marriage, ours
is a more ancient ritual. It was sealed in her briefest act of entering my
basement office a short lifetime ago.>

That happiness found in the honest dissection of his patient heart
resuscitated his need to share that with her. It dawned on him that
everytime he vocalised his innermost thoughts; it was accompanied with a
happiness he couldn't wait to share with her. What made him happy? That was
the simplest question, to which he bestowed the simplest answer.

"These moments, Scully."

"Always, Mulder..." She touched the back of his hand, then, "...but if you
could change anything?"

He breathed in deeply, his hands mimicking that moment in his hallway,
cupping her chin and looking tenderly at her, "If I could change anything, I
would want to believe in God and spend eternity perfecting who we are to
each other." That moment of truth came when the earth touched the expanse of
sky and from the distant horizon, one could not tell where the blues of the
atmosphere merged with the sea green of the ocean.

END

Authors Notes:
The Mayan myth doesnt exist. I wrote this after reading something like four
hundred and twenty-nine other fanfics dealing with their explosive coupling.
Ive enjoyed them tremendously. Still, there is a lot to be said for the
unsullied male-female relationship that is all about compassion, trust and
respect. CC must be given credit for 6 years of nothing more than foreplay.
Of course I wrote this blind to the fact that Mulder and Scully are two
impossibly beautiful people without sexual needs of any kind. Yeaaaah,
right.

Feedback to shirlock@pacific.net.sg