Title: "I Don't Want To Believe"
Author: Crysta Novelli spacecase_7@yahoo.com
Rating: PG
Archiving: Gossamer, Ephemeral. Anyone else please ask first. I doubt I'll say no. :)
Category/Keywords: D, V
Spoilers: Season 8, up through "Empedocles"
Feedback: Oh yes please!
Disclaimers: My name isn't Chris, it's Crys. I don't own 'em, I just play with them a little and then give them back when I'm done. Many thanks to Gillian for the beta.
Summary: Just what was Agent Doggett thinking at the end of "Empedocles" as he watched Katha through the glass?
A disease.
Webster's defines it as an alteration in the state of the body, causing pain and weakness. A malady; infection; illness.
It also defines it as a morbid corrupting quality that poisons the mind or soul.
Complicated terms describing a complicated entity.
This woman is ill, of that there is no doubt. The doctors have confirmed it, and have locked her away in this private, secure room because of it. But why is she ill? What does she have? A disease? The same disease that killed her brother?
But no disease killed Jeb Dukes. His immediate cause of death was the bullet hole Monica punched through his chest. The coroner's report confirmed that fact.
Unless you want to argue Mulder's case here, and say that these people were infected - by evil. But evil isn't a disease. At least not in the contemporary way. Sure it's a morbid corruption of the mind or soul, but it's not medically defined. Evil is not a disease that can be caught by sharing glasses or blood with an "infected" person. You can't "catch" evil like you can catch the flu, or HIV.
Sure I understand how being hurt or wronged can leave people open and vulnerable. The human soul can only take so much pain and torment. People snap under the pressure, and do things they will later live to regret. For others, the pain festers like an open wound, until infection sets in and the evil has become so deeply rooted in them that rehabilitation is almost impossible. Prisons are full of such people.
But I don't buy for an instant that this woman, Katha, caught a disease from her dead brother, who in turn caught it from Bob Harvey, the man who killed my son, who just happened to die in a car accident outside the building where Jeb Dukes murdered his boss. No. It's too much of a coincidence, and Agents Reyes and Mulder are grasping at straws.
There isn't even any physical evidence in this case to make it an X-File. The only "lead" they have besides the fluke of Bob Harvey dying near the scene is a so-called vision an agent claims to have seen. Two agents, one by his own admission, who will believe almost anything.
I looked at that woman's body as she lie there in the woods, in exactly the same position as Luke lie when they found his body. This time though, I didn't see it. The body was not burned beyond recognition. Not even for a moment.
She told me I didn't see it because I was afraid. I didn't see it... because it wasn't there.
She's damn right I'm afraid though! I'm afraid that I'm going to find something I could have done to save him. Something else I could have tried; someplace else I should have looked. Something that had I only thought of earlier, might have brought him home alive.
What good does reopening his file do? It won't bring him back to us. It can't bring justice. There is never any justice to be found when a life is stolen from us. Even taking the life of the killer isn't justice. And if Bob Harvey is the man that killed him, he is dead now anyway.
I will never see my son again. I will never hear his sweet laughter again; never gaze into those bright blue eyes; never tuck him into bed beneath his favorite superhero sheets. There are no more stories to be read, and no more trips to the park to play football.
All that is left are files - one full of memories, and stored in my head; the other filled with gruesome facts and held in the hands of two probing, prying Agents who can't leave well enough alone.
It isn't like Monica to beat a dead horse, unless she firmly believes the damn thing will actually get up and walk away. She knows how much finding Luke took out of me. She had to have known how much pain reopening his file would cause me. Yet she did it anyway. All because she had a vision. A vision of evil.
I know Mulder didn't see it. For all I know, he's only agreeing with Monica for the hell of it - to poke into my affairs as much as I had to prod into his. It's obvious the man doesn't like me, though none of that is my fault. I've taken over his position in the Bureau, his office, his desk, and his partner. I tried to give it back, but Kersh wouldn't let me. Mulder thinks I'm out to get him - this may very well be his way of trying to get back at me.
And Agent Scully... A blind man could see the jealousy in Mulder's eyes. It's understandable, in some essence, but the man should have more faith in her than that. Yes I moved in while he was absent, but she isn't the type of woman who seeks comfort in another man's arms in times of tragedy.
Not that I haven't wished she would have, at times... But I respect her, and Mulder. I would never interfere. It's not my place, and the decision isn't mine. If the man would only give me an honest chance, he'd see that he has nothing to be jealous of. I mean, it's not like I'm the father of her child or anything. Dana Scully's heart is true, and will never belong to me, no matter how much of my own heart she steals in the process.
The man is stubborn. Almost as stubborn as I am. He won't accept that I want to help him, not ruin his life, any more than I can accept the crazy half-truths to all these cases.
And all of a sudden, I realize what Agent Scully meant about being afraid to believe. I can't accept these "paranormal" explanations, because I don't want to believe. I am afraid of what that will do to me. Blindly accepting these phenomena; it's like taking a leap of faith off a tall cliff and hoping someone will catch you before you hit the bottom. I look at Mulder, and I see what his willing belief has done to him. It's made him into a sort of madman whose life is nothing but chaos and confusion. I look at Scully, and see what Mulder's convictions have done to her.
I look at them, and I'm afraid.
I don't want to believe that there are unseen forces out there that I can't control; that I can't catch; that I can't send to prison like normal criminals. I don't like thinking that there are things out there that are above the law. Inhuman things that can't be explained by any conventional terms; that can't be tagged and processed and filed away in an evidence locker.
Maybe it is okay with Mulder to write these phenomena off as X- Files, but I don't think it will ever be okay with me to do so. Although I realize that Agent Dana Scully probably told herself the very same thing 7 years ago. She probably repeated it to herself several times a year, and each time it probably dwindled in conviction, until finally the unthinkable happened.
She was no longer afraid to believe.
I don't know what it took to overcome her fear. Maybe it was love, which is a blind leap in and of itself. I took that leap once, and look where it got me. No wonder I'm afraid to take another.
Maybe this case does have something to do with the evil that killed Luke. Maybe it doesn't. Maybe by studying this woman, we'll find the connection that Monica insists is there. Or maybe we won't find a damned thing.
Either way, it won't change my mind. It won't make me see things their way. I will not cave in.
I don't want to believe.
~ Fin ~
"You can't help a man who won't help himself." - Agent Fox Mulder
"He's worth it, Mulder." - Agent Dana Scully
End notes ~ This is only one possible way his thoughts might have gone at the end of that episode. Another direction is how they would go if he did actually see the vision with that woman's body in the woods. I humored one plot bunny. Anyone want to take the other road?