From: Michele Lellouche Date: Mon, 06 Nov 2000 04:18:31 GMT Subject: THE X-FACTOR No Spoilers THE X-FACTOR By Michele Lellouche mdanl73@gmail.com SPOILERS: Season 7 RATING: PG ARCHIVE: Anywhere AUTHOR'S NOTE: At the end THE X-FACTOR by Michele Lellouche mdanl73@gmail.com MCI Center Washington DC November 5 Scully wondered exactly what she was doing in this crowd. So many young people, old 60s survivors, no place for a fed. The Gunmen looked more at home here Frohicke and Byers had come grudgingly at her and Langley's insistence and now all of them were waiting to enter the arena. "So where's Dogbert?" Frohicke asked. Scully could not break him of calling her new colleague (she would not refer to him as "partner") that. "Voting for Bush--or maybe Buchanan." Scully would not admit that earlier this year she would not have been here among the nearly 12,000 either. Somewhere after Mulder's abduction, in the midst of her first downward spiral, she had been lying on her couch fighting morning sickness into the afternoon. Flipping channels listlessly, she caught Ralph Nader's acceptance of the Green Party nomination on C-Span. Intrigued by her longtime hero's appearance, she stopped to watch. She and Mulder had spent the early part of the year catching politics in snatches between cases and lamenting their choices. She wished he was here to see Nader accepting the nomination (Mulder told her once he had worked for the Greens while at Oxford, although she suspected he had been wooing women not stuffing envelopes). She still hadn't really seized on the campaign until she read the coverage of the first debate, when Nader had been hauled away from even watching, let alone participating. That night, she dreamed of Mulder. He was not tied to a chair being tortured this time but he was still hurt. She instinctively recognized the hospital she had dragged him into last fall. Wearing fresh scars in his short cropped hair, souvenirs of the DOD facility, Mulder was propped up in the bed, trying to remember all he could, recreating his own dreams of hell, induced by Cancerman. "He told me I was no martyr, no hero, I wasn't even Ralph Nader." She cocked her head, meeting his smile with her own. "Oh, I don't know. I see a lot of similarities." "Our tendencies to tilt at windmills, our devotion to our causes?" "I was thinking more that neither of you can find a suit that fits." She had seen Mulder dragged away, screaming the truth to those who wouldn't listen, more times than she could count. Something about Nader's fight, struck a chord in her, beyond all the positions she agreed with, besides having a Native American woman as running mate. Over the next weeks, in the midst of following leads that went nowhere, she read every bit of coverage she could find. Back in DC, she wore her button everywhere. The more her Democratic friends criticized her, told her she should vote for Gore, that she was throwing her vote away, the more she dug in her heels. Mulder had never backed down in the face of overwhelming arguments (including her own, she realized in shame). So neither did she. She had become Mulder in so many ways, resisting authority was natural now. The first sojourn under Kersh had taught her to fight. This time, even with Skinner to run interference, was worse. There was no commiseration, no one to share the struggle. Then again, if Mulder had been here, she wouldn't be sharing the X-Files office with the Testosterone Prince. The fact that her support of Nader annoyed John Doggett no end was icing. So she helped the Gunmen sign up subscribers at their folding table, wearing a Nader shirt and the green suede jacket Mulder loved. She spent four hours listening to speech after speech before joining the march for DC statehood. Never bored, she listened to speaker after speaker, from Phil Donahue to one of the Beastie Boys, testify with a fervor she hadn't heard since her partner at his most evangelical. She fervently wished Mulder was here to see her now, to chant "Go, Ralph, Go!" along with her. She had been talking to their child, a child she was scared for, because so many evils stalked its parents. She couldn't imagine voting for the lesser of two evils again, of not setting an example to their child before it was even born. In the midst of all the speeches, one line struck her hard, gave her hope again: "Remember what Gandhi said. First they ignore you. Then they laugh at you. Then they attack you. And then you win." _I hope that's true. God, I hope that's true._ AUTHOR'S NOTE: First, thanks to NBC for giving me the title of this effort--they titled their coverage of Nader's last rally, this one I used in the story, "The X-Factor." Exact punctuation. So how could I not use that? Forgive a political campaign story but the Green Party has urged us to get out the vote by sending emails, etc. I was planning on writing this story anyway, so I decided this was my campaign contribution. I'm sorry if it offends anyone, but I've always thought Mulder and Scully were liberals and if anyone could galvanize them and the Gunmen, I decided Nader would be it. And after listening to the rally this afternoon, I had to finish this story and get it out. For the first time in my voting life, I will actually be thrilled to cast a ballot. Go to http://www.votenader.org/