From: "Cheryl DeBlauw" Date: Mon, 7 Jul 2008 16:03:05 -0700 Subject: Realization by ceediane Source: direct Title: Realization Author: ceediane E-mail: ceediane@gmail.com Feedback: yes, please Rating PG Setting: post Amor-Fati, Scully POV, Angst Ever since that night in the parking garage, ache and loneliness had become as much a part of her morning routine as a shower and coffee. With the buzz of her alarm came consciousness, awareness and the feeling of a dull and heavy pressure on her chest. Upon awaking, she would push herself through these feelings like a swimmer, chest deep, emerging from a current. Methodically, she would shower, dress, take breakfast and the ache would lessen, ebb, and quiet until she entered the halls of the Hoover Building. Realization was like a billboard. "I love him." It was an image in her brain, interpreted before she had time to block or banish it. "I love him." It was neon and would flash, unbidden across her consciousness. "I love him." It would come to her on her drive in to work or her ride down the elevator. And always, the thought was a razor sharp pain. Before she knew what it was, she welcomed it. It was there in the presence of the lone gunmen. Standing outside their door, she would feel herself knit to him with a fine and invisible thread of connection. He would knock and the two of them would enter. Here she was elevated to the role of uber-female, mother, goddess. She. And in the palpable femininity these moments induced, she would secretly warm, revel, luxuriate. Was it that their existence seemed a silent acknowledgement of Mulder and Scully's pair status? That they were the children to Mulder and Scully's parental unit? Perhaps, it was this: in the presence of other men, she was so clearly the possession of one. But now, that role was called into question. He possessed her heart, but did she possess his? She now felt the tearing apart of their connection would be an undoing, a desecration, a painful sundering like the loss of a limb or a sensory organ. She could not do without him. Or if she must--in those moments she allowed herself to contemplate this--it would be to go on without an essential part of herself. It would be an existence devoid of the capacity for hope. A year missing one of its seasons. Shelter devoid of walls. It would be existing with an acute consciousness of incompleteness. Of missing something that once was. Even if she could "get over it," she would never, ever, ever want to. How had she become this sick? This disfunctional. She must look for the number of a therapist. Analyze, process and box up these feelings. But if she were honest, part of her didn't want to box them up. Part of her wanted to continue on, slightly crazy, a little out of control, and see if some "accident" or careless moment pricked, ignited or tipped her partner into awareness. Was he aware? There was nothing she could discern--or worse, she thought maybe her own feelings and fears had so colored her reaction to him that she had no ability to correctly interpret him. Was a look a gaze, or just a look? Was physical contact a touch, or simply unintended proximity? Why was her brain interpreting the electrical impulses touched off by Mulder's hand differently than that of Skinner or Frohike or her mother, for heaven's sake. Why did the tips of his fingers grazing her skin feel like tongues of fire? And why was theirs such a glacial movement forward? Had there even been forward movement or had her mind simply imagined it? If she hadn't had cancer, she would never even have examined and acknowledged her feelings to begin with. And even those hadn't strayed so far as to include the possibility of Mulder. That period of journaling had forced her to answer questions about herself--her need for love, her desire for a family--it had emerged as a crystalline truth. Always before, she had set those questions aside. She looked at other couples and saw compromise or something worse and she rejected romantic love as a lesser calling. Maybe her work, her freedom and her independence were enough. Did she dare hope she could find a man trustworthy enough to give over her heart? Or even more, the heart of her children? Did she even want children? Cancer had forced her to look at those questions. And in the not-knowingness of whether or not a future existed, those questions were answered in the affirmative. Once the cancer was gone, as much as she wanted to carry on as before, it was impossible. To the outward observer, nothing had changed. But her inner self had grasped truths which were now hardened and permanent. She couldn't deny what she wanted. But even in knowing these things, there was one question she had yet to examine: the question of Mulder. In those months after the cancer, it hung there in the edges of her consciousness. It was like background noise that she couldn't isolate or focus on because of her distraction with the present. It was that thing she couldn't hear until she was alone, in the dark, in the silence, listening to a quiet buzz that was a roar.