From: eponine119  <eponine119@att.net>
Subject: NEW: Scully's Demons 1/1

	She didn't understand.  She sat at the table where she'd plugged in her
laptop to work since she still didn't have a damned desk.  She'd even
written her report.  But she just could not fathom why he had done this.
	How desperate does a man have to be to seek a treatment that defies all
logic and judgment?  What went on in his mind to the point that would
make him say, "Hallucinatory drugs and electroshock therapy through a
hole drilled in my skull - yeah, that sounds great.  Do it!"  She gagged
thinking about it and gulped in a deep breath, honestly thinking she was
going to be sick remembering the blood - his blood - on the dentist's
chair where that pseudo shrink had butchered with his mind.  Her heart
was pounding. Oh God, what had he been through?
	She looked at the laptop.  Her words reflected back at her. She had no
idea.
	She thought she knew him.  She thought the wounds in his psyche were
healing.  After the Paper Hearts case, she truly thought he'd faced the
fact that he would never know.  Instead, it had become a festering wound
in his soul, driving him to do anything to silence those questioning
voices.
	She hadn't tried to listen to his conversation in his mother's house. 
But they'd been shouting; it was impossible not to hear Mulder's doubts
and accusations.  And not one word of denial from his mother.
	No confirmation, no denial.
	Status quo.
	Checkmate?
	She sighed.  Nothing had changed.  After all he'd seen, after all
they'd been through, Fox Mulder still cared about one thing and one
thing only. Samantha.  His sister.  The answers were worth anything to
him.  Even the loss of himself.
	She turned off the small computer and went home.
	She couldn't get him out of her mind as she mechanically at her
dinner.  She didn't taste a bite.
	Thoughts of him filled her mind as she tried to sleep.  Images of his
suffering.  He was naked and freezing in a bathtub full of steam; he was
convulsing on the ground at her feet; she could hear his screams in her
mind as he submitted himself to torture, just to remember...
	She woke choking on blood.  Instinct made her gasp as she tried to pull
air into her lungs and she felt it heavy and thick in her throat.  She
sat up, coughing as she remembered how to swallow suddenly and the blood
went down her throat.  She grappled with the lightswitch in the dark and
finally it came on, even as her heart continued to pound and she tried
to steady her breathing.
	Oh God.  It was everywhere.  Blood stained the sheets - a lot of blood
- and it matted sticky in her hair.  As she tipped her head forward, it
began to stream from her nose again.  She grabbed a handful of tissues
and tried to staunch the flow as she jumped out of bed and ran blindly
into the bathroom.
	In the mirror, she looked like a victim in a Stephen King  movie.  She
managed not to think for a few minutes as she cleaned herself up and
pulled her bathrobe around her shoulders.  Her nose was still bleeding
when she sat down on the closed toilet lid.
	This has got to stop, she thought.
	But there was nothing she could do.  She went to the doctor once a week
to be checked: the hours spent in the cold, silent MRI tube consuming
the time she had left.  The doctors had told her this would continue to
happen.
	She was helpless.  And she hated it.
	Who did this to me? she wondered, not for the first time.
	But there wasn't even anyone who she could blame.  She punched the wall
in frustration and it left a bloody smear in the paint.  Penny Northern
had told her the memories would return.  But they didn't come - no
images, no feelings, nothing.  Nothing.  Just a blank spot in her
memory.  She'd tried hypnosis that time and it hadn't worked.  Now she
wanted to know.
	She wanted to make them hurt.  She wanted their names and their faces. 
She wanted to make them suffer.  She wanted to make their families watch
them die.
	Because without those memories - those names and those faces - there
was only one man to blame for what had happened to her. And it wasn't
his fault, she knew; she couldn't blame him.  But even as she tried not
to, she could feel the cold knot of hatred her heart held for him.  She
didn't let it show; she tried not to feel it. Regardless, it was there. 
Making part of her despise him just because it was easy.
	It made her hate herself.
	If she just knew who they were...
	What would she be willing to sacrifice to know?  What could hurt worse
than what she'd lost already?  Her sister, her family, her innocence,
her faith...what was truly left?
	Would it really be so horrible if in the end she had her answers? 
Hallucinations, seizures, shock...it was all temporary.  She'd recover -
as she wouldn't from cancer.  It would be worth it to know, wouldn't it?
a voice slithered through her mind. Temptation.  It was self destructive
but if she had no self left to destroy...?
	A part of her was ready to pick up the phone and call Mulder.  Tell him
to come over in the middle of the lonely, seductive temptation of night
and do to her what had been done to him.
	A part of her knew she never could.
	Realizing the flow of blood had stopped, she removed the tissues and
drew a deep breath through her nose.  Let it go, Dana.
	Let it go.

=30

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eponine119  - eponine119@att.net