TITLE: The End

AUTHOR: Jillian

RATING: PG

FEEDBACK: Of course! Anything and everything to JILLIBEAN@aol.com or just click that review button on the bottom of the page!

TIMEFRAME: Post-episode for Elegy.

CATEGORY: Major ScullyAgnst! Oh, and Scully/Mulder friendship.

SPOILERS: Memento Mori, major for Elegy (post-episode)...Basically, the Cancer Arc up to Elegy... Any nosebleeds or headaches, that's really it.

SUMMARY: Post-episode for "Elegy," right as the episode ends. In one of the darkest points of her life, Scully muses on what she has left. Cancerfic! Please read/review.

AUTHORS NOTES: Not a fluff-fest, folks. Scully POV on her cancer, on what she has left, and on accepting what she believes will be her fate. It's depressing, which I usually stay away from. This, honestly, is what I believe Scully would be feeling at this dark point in her life. It came to me the other night, lying in bed, trying to fall asleep. I never wrote a cancer-fic before, although the Cancer Arc is probably my favorite arc ;) Anyways, I hope you all like it. Please review!

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Cancer. We say it as just a whisper, as if it's a bad word. Cancer. What do we think of when we hear it? Pain, chemotherapy, losing all your hair, becoming weak, death. You never think, not in a million years, that you'll be there someday. At the end of the road, being defeated by an enemy you cannot fight. It takes its toll on you, physically and mentally, until you're too weak in both respects to continue on. Slowly, I feel myself walking down that road, and I swear I can see the end.

I have cancer. The words sound strange coming out of my mouth. I'm a young, healthy woman. I shouldn't have cancer, especially brain cancer. I'm going to become weak, I'm going to lose my will to continue. Cancer. It's more than a disease, it's a state of mind. It reminds me, constantly, of what I'm going to lose. What I'll never experience, what I'll never have.

I am dying. It's not something I can push from my mind. It's always there, that voice reminding me of my seemingly sealed fate. Mulder doesn't want to give up, he demands that I keep telling him everything. This is something I need to face on my own, as I am approaching the end of that road. As much as I want him to be beside me forever, I cannot pull him into this. It is my battle. It is my path, my road to walk down. That walk must be solitary.

The nosebleeds are more frequent now. The headaches are more painful. I tell Mulder "I'm fine," but I'm not. I'm dying. The doctor knows it, I know it, Mulder knows it. It's terminal cancer, it's going to defeat me. Sometimes I wonder why I keep fighting when I know I cannot win, short of some miracle. Mulder instills in me that glimmer of hope, that shining light of survival. Sometimes I think I have the strength to turn around, to walk back down this road, away from the end and towards life. Towards Mulder. So I tell myself, I tell him, I will keep fighting. To walk back down that road towards Mulder.

Sometimes, like now, that road seems more than ever like a dead end. Today I was reminded that I am dying, not by my own nagging brain, but inadvertently by Mulder himself. I had a vision, but I didn't tell him. Why would I? I had insisted it wasn't possible, and yet there I was experiencing it. Then he told me everyone who had seen a vision was dying. When I told him I had seen one, I could see regret on his face. If I had told him about the vision, he would have never told me all of us were dying. He would have hid that from me, and I know it. He wants me to be honest with him, but he doesn't want to be honest with himself. I am going to die. I am accepting it, why can't he?

Of course, I pretend that it doesn't bother me. People live with cancer. I keep saying that to everyone--Mulder, my mother, myself. People live with cancer. Yes, they did. But will I? Sometimes I feel like nothing is wrong, like I could live forever. Times like these, however, my spirit has been weakened. I was as close as possible to pushing that ominous reminder out of my head, convincing myself I *would* make it through this... I was really believing I would. And yet here I am, crying in my car, by myself. Maybe I have to accept I am going to die. And maybe Mulder needs to accept it too. I don't know why it's so hard for him to see that.

In a way, however, I do. Because it's not happening to him. He doesn't live with the knowledge of what's going to kill him and that it's coming in the near future. That there isn't a damn thing he can do to stop it.

I tried to convince myself Harold was not dying, but that he died as a result of being denied medication. Somewhere inside myself, I knew he was dying. I know I'm afraid of having the same fate, and I know that's what Mulder is afraid of too. I became so close to death over the past four years, doing autopsies regularly, working in a career where death was all around me, all the time. After you cut open so many dead bodies, it doesn't affect you any more.

Not until you put yourself on that autopsy table. Not until you realize it's going to be you someday. I'm going to die. I always knew I would die someday, but I never feared it until it was so close, until I could see the end of the road. What if there's no turning back? What if this is it? That within a few months, I will be dead? I'm almost sure of it inside. I am defeated. I am ashamed.

I fear death. I hate being afraid. I'm still sitting in my car now, crying, unable to stop the tears. They are a reminder that I am growing weak in spirit. "I'm fine." Yes, fine, for a person with terminal cancer. Fine does not mean well anymore, fine simply means I'm not yet dead. I'm still on that road, my body, my mind, deliberating whether or not it has the strength to turn back, or if it will be swallowed up by the inevitable end. I don't want to die. I don't want to leave behind my family, the X-Files... I don't want to leave behind Mulder. I don't want him to have to continue our search alone. My last journey, however, he cannot join me on. I am the one on this road, not Mulder. I am the one who is looking towards death, wanting so desperately to look back at life again. I know where I want Mulder in relation to that road... I want him standing in the blinding light of life. I know it's where he would want me to be, too.

Cancer. The enemy. The enemy I can never defeat. In Mulder's eyes, I saw the same fear that lies within mine, but behind that fear there is hope. I pray that inside me, that hope can still exist beneath all of this fear. I don't want to let Mulder down, but I'm almost certain of my end. The end of the road gets closer and closer each day. I continue to appear strong most of the time, but inside I am falling apart. I can't let Mulder see that, I can't disappoint him. I took life for granted. I want more time, to finish all that concerns me here in this life. To uncover the truth, to let Mulder know how much he really means to me, how deeply I feel for him. I don't know if I even have enough time to simply figure out how I really feel for him before I reach the end of this road. I want to finish our journey... But my journey looks as if it is coming to an end.

The end just seems too near.