TITLE: Exegesis (1/1) AUTHOR: Avalon EMAIL: avalon@fuse.net RATING: R for one very short moment of strong language SPOILERS: All mytharc and anything to do with Scully. Post-episode for Tithonus, so everything up until then is fair game. CATEGORY: VA KEYWORDS: A slight reference to some UST, but mostly a lot of Mulder angst. And as far as this piece goes, Season 7 never happened. DISCLAIMER: Not mine, never were, never will be. We owe all this fun to you, Chris. No infringement intended. FEEDBACK: Always like to grease the wheels, thanks. ARCHIVES: Gossamer, Ephemeral, Spooky's, anywhere, really, but if you're not one of those, please let me know so I can visit. SUMMARY: At Scully's hospital bedside, Mulder contemplates the meaning of fear, death, and love. AUTHOR'S NOTES: Always at the end, please. Exegesis There is a beauty, a silence, an inevitable release called death. It is something that many people run from, people that seek its meaning in religion, or its nuances in science, or its esthetic in poetry. They are scared, as most human beings, to take its final step, to walk that last journey, to finally understand the passage and the hope of rebirth, or of paradise. I have never been one of those. I have never felt that fear, at least not for myself. I work in a dangerous profession, surrounded every day by weapons, bombs, and firearms. I make my living interviewing serial killers, writing profiles of their psychological make-up, wrapping my own intellect around their twisted brains, trying to glean some knowledge of why they slaughter in order to better understand them. It is in understanding that we can identify, and in identifying, that we can possibly prevent. And these glimpses make their home in my own head, nestled alongside the memories of my sister and the notes to myself to call my mother over the weekend. It is normal for me, something that I have grown used to and don't analyze. I don't fear these people, these animals that society has somehow unleashed upon itself. My only fear seems to arise when I look at the possibility of the death of someone else, someone close to me, someone I trust. The fear that I will have to carry on alone. I was alone before, but six years of partnership have brought me to another place, a haven that can only be occupied by Scully and me, together. She has become the other half of me, the cord that ties me to myself and allows me to be human. She is the person that has brought feeling back into my life. For so long, before she was with me, all I can recall is a numbness. My brain clicked and functioned, doing its job on autopilot, positioning me in the Bureau as a golden boy. I ate, I slept, I talked, I worked. I even had relationships, every now and then, with women, women who tried to draw me out and tried to get close. But the robotic part of me that kept propelling me forward slapped their hands every time they reached for me. Yes, I touched them, sometimes, that need its own human function, but it was never more than that. Not with Diana, not with any of the ones who came before. And of course they eventually left me, which is exactly what I wanted in the first place. To be alone, the crusader, the singular knight on his own wild quest, seeking with a vengeance his own Holy Grail. But then they gave me Scully. At first, I was suspicious, always baiting her, always asking for proof of her loyalty, leaving her behind to run off and chase the monsters I didn't think she was ready to see or understand. But she did understand, and she followed me, no matter where I went or what I did or how many times I put both of us in danger or in hot water with the Powers-That-Be. And slowly, deliberately, she chipped away at my veneer of self-imposed isolation, until she was no longer standing at arms length, but right beside me. And now I am beside her, listening to her soft breathing, watching the slow rise and fall of the light sheet over her shoulder as she sleeps on her side, her chin tucked into her chest, her hands curled like a child clutching a favored stuffed toy. The hospital monitors hum their monotone, and I can see the heart machine silently tracking her rhythm. The up and down jagged lines flash and pulse as her heart pumps her liquid life, the blood that almost drained completely from her to sweep her away from me. I think of the countless times I have sat like this, my legs stiffening in an uncomfortable hospital chair, my insomnia keeping me awake and vigilant through the long nights. And I think of how many times I have laid in the bed instead, opening my eyes to see Scully seated where I am now, her lips curving into that slight smile of hers when she sees I have not left her. I consider how many times her rigid belief in medical science has brought me back from the edge of infinity, and how many times I have gone right back to my endless pursuit the next chance I had, only to come full circle to the hospital again. But that is my life. As I said, I don't have a fear of death. Just a natural inclination to get on with my search, to keep hurtling forward, no matter what the cost. I almost lost her before this. The first time, the pain was tremendous, a shocking and unreal sensation that came without warning, spiraling around me along with a guilt that sliced at me like a drug addict with a switchblade. It was the pain that made me realize that I could feel again. It was the pain that made me realize that I could actually love. I had thought that ability had been taken along with Samantha. The ache that her absence brought to me proved that I was wrong. Her cancer brought another panic to me, the thought that I could not help her, could not save her from what was growing and taking over her tiny body. And when I was given a choice, an opportunity to possibly allow her to live, but with the knowledge that it could be orchestrated by a man I could not even begin to trust, I grasped it and shoved it at her, demanding that she consider it, knowing in my heart I only did it for selfish reasons. Because I had come to know that I couldn't live without her. And then to have her taken from me again, poisoned by something so insidious, using her body to incubate a horror only imaginable in a fictionalized world...I felt something inside of me snap then, the fragile grasp I finally had on a human existence like the guy next door splintering off and falling away. I realized then that mine would never be normal; my life would continue to be an endless parade of conspiracies, death, and betrayal. Only Scully would be my constant, my touchstone, the endearments that I had begun to call her if only in my head that perhaps someday I can articulate to her. And so I fought, and I found her, and I dragged her back once again from the edge of death, even though perhaps she would have been better off there, without me mucking up her every breath with my insanities and my theories and my goddamn stubbornness. That infamous temper of mine flared, at least inside me, when Kersh paired her with another agent in New York to probe this photographer and the mysteries swirling around him. But I knew why. She is an excellent investigator, her mind quick and precise and insistent when putting the pieces of a puzzle together. If she hadn't spent the last six years by my side, I could only imagine where she would be within the Bureau now. Upper echelon, an A.D. perhaps, most definitely respected and highly regarded. But she hung herself by staying with me. I love her for it. God help me, I am a selfish bastard, but I do. And now I think about how I nearly lost her again, this time not to a conspiracy manipulated by men who seem hell- bent on torturing us, but to an inept agent with his own personal ladder-climbing agenda. I think about Fellig, or whatever his real name was, and how he had endured and lived for so many years because he had denied Death the first time He came looking for him. And I think about how Scully may have looked at Death, looked Him straight in the face with that boldness that is hers alone, and instead closed her eyes to Him. Why would she do that? To come back to me? To come back to what we have become? What kind of life do we have? I have accepted this journey, this walk that reminds me more and more of the stroll that prisoners take to the electric chair. And it is comforting to know that there is someone walking beside me, someone whose head can fit just under my chin when I embrace her, whose blue eyes reflect back to me something soft and gentle and reassuring in this world of lies and deceit. But I hate myself for making her walk with me, for fucking up her life as royally as I have fucked up my own. I told her once to leave me. After bringing her back from that arctic hell, I stood in the sunlight of a Washington spring day and told her to get as far away from me as she possibly could. And she grasped my hand, her fingers small and so very delicate, and told me that she would not leave. I could still see the red patches on her face where she had been branded with frostbite, and although I smiled and nodded, inside, I nearly wept. She wouldn't leave me. And I let her stay, knowing that she would hurtle even closer to Death again since she had denied Him once more. That I had forced her hand into denying Him. I know she longs for more than this. I realize that she wants a family, a life without chases and aliens and men in black who talk in circles of deception. I realize that because of me, she has been denied the chance to have a child, and she has alienated at least one of her brothers. She has lost a sister, to death, which is at least some sort of sinister comfort to me, knowing that Melissa could instead just be missing, like mine. And the righteous part of me, the part that is still giving, screams at me to push her completely away while she still has time to gather up the pieces of her life and start over, in a Mulderless world, one bright with hope for the future. But that thought scares me more than if Death Himself swept through the hospital door right now and demanded my company. I would rather die unfulfilled than have to live without her. I am a selfish bastard. I told her once that I loved her, hiding it beneath the vapor of drugs in another hospital room much like this one. And of course, she had dismissed it, just as I knew she would. I can't do anything right, not even when it comes to sharing my most intimate feelings, even though I know how caring she is. But would she reciprocate those feelings? I have no earthly idea why she should, why she would love me when she could have so much more. And so I continue to cower, hoping endlessly that my love for her, my desperate need and longing for her, shows itself in other ways. I know this is wrong. I know that she deserves better. I would like to be the one to give it to her. But every time I think we might make some progress into a more normal existence, something comes along and slaps us back down. I have a tendency to believe it is Fate. Scully, of course, doesn't believe in Fate. She believes that we choose our own path, and I wonder solemnly if she has truly chosen to be where she is now. I doubt if she has. It has to be orchestrated somehow, just like everything else in this sick existence of mine. I don't realize that a tear has slipped from the corner of my eye until I feel its wetness on my lips and taste the saltiness there. And the understanding that I am crying once again at her bedside releases a torrent inside me, the frozen waterfall of emotion melting and washing out of me. I lean forward and sob soundlessly into my hands, once more afraid to lose what I have fought so hard to hold onto. I feel those soft, dainty fingers against the top of my head, lightly brushing through my hair. I raise my eyes and see that Scully's are open not a foot away from me, regarding me solemnly through the shadows of the dark room. In this light, they are silver, but nothing can mute the compassion that radiates out of them. Her fingers grab mine, and I know she can feel where my palms are wet. The sound of her voice brings another burning in my throat as I choke back more tears. "Mulder," she says, her voice as soothing as a mother's hand, "don't cry." My voice breaks. "I almost lost you again, Scully." I squeeze her hand, hoping that I am not hurting her, yet wanting to telegraph the only fear that I have. She somehow pulls me out of my chair and onto the edge of the hospital bed, where I nearly collapse. Her strength is, as always, amazing to me, and I want nothing more than to be near her. She scoots back in the bed and silently urges me to climb up next to her. I do, feeling her mold herself into my back, wondering how she can do all this with a bullet hole in her abdomen. Her hands are still entwined in mine, and I bring the fingers up to my lips, pressing them there and closing my eyes against the bittersweetness of the sensation. I feel her breath against my neck, and her voice is near my ear, soft and affectionate. "I'm not going anywhere, Mulder. You're stuck with me for a good, long time." I smile, feeling the tears drying on my cheeks. "I wouldn't have it any other way, Scully." And suddenly, I am tired, and my eyes drop heavily, the instant cure for my insomnia nestled next to me, rocking me with the cadences of her breathing as we both slip together into sleep. ***End*** AUTHOR'S NOTES: This started out simply as a thought and metastasized into something completely different. Mulder is, to me, the epitome of angst, so I guess I shouldn't be surprised that this piece veered off into anguish heaven (or hell, since we are speaking about pain here). Thank God for Roget's Thesaurus for giving me a title after I sat and stewed over it for a good hour. Feedback is always appreciated and responded to...send it over: avalon@fuse.net Thanks for reading, and I hope we meet again soon.