Title: Chances
Author: Cassandra Mulder
Rating: PG
Feedback: Will be handled with care, and promptly replied to. Flames will be used
to toast marshmallows in my fireplace through the month of December.
dana_mulder31@hotmail.com
Spoilers: Season 8 through "Roadrunners"
Classification: Scully Vignette; MSR
Disclaimer: I do not own Scully or the X-Files, but if I did I'd fix this mess!
They all belong to the *geniouses* (can you hear the sarcasm?) at 1013 and
FOX. Now, let's see if I can forget that, and move on.
Date Written: December 4, 2000
Summary: Scully thinks about all the chances she takes and what they could
cost her.
Author's Notes: No big explanation here, Scully just started talking in my head
last night, and this is what she said. See, she really does still care about Mulder,
it's just that those nuts at 1013 told her not to express anything to them! hehe...
****************************************************

I don't know how much longer I can take chances. There's not just my life to
consider anymore. The life of my child is more important than anything I've
ever been responsible for. And somehow, I keep screwing up.

I can't seem to stay out of life-threatening situations. In less than three months,
I have been thrown-hard-against a wall, I foolishly traipsed out into bat
creature-infested woods, and I tried to elude my new partner on a case
where I was trapped in a strange town, then played host to one of the most
disgusting creatures I've ever seen in my life. With the exception of Flukeman.

I should know better, and yet I keep plunging ahead, to no avail. I'm still no
closer to Mulder, or answers, or a part of me that is missing. I'm lost without
him, and I just don't know what to do anymore.

I've become weak, when I never was before. Maybe I wasn't the Super Woman
everyone thought I was, or even Mulder's uber-Scully, but I could hold my own.
I *always* held my own, never let anyone push me around.

Then the new guy came along.

He thinks he's in charge, but he forgets that the X-Files are mine now. He's
cocky, arrogant, and thinks he can walk all over me. But he's wrong. I've
thought about pulling my gun on him more than once. But I'm sure my baby
will have enough problems without having to be born in prison. I have to tolerate
him as best I can and move on.

They say God works in mysterious ways. He must've known that without Mulder,
I would need an anchor to keep me steady. Maybe it was God that allowed this
miracle in me, and not some government conspiracy. I still don't know how it
could've happened, so I grab onto the nearest logical explanation, which is still
something I can't see or prove.

It just seems like that's the way my life is these days. Everything rests on theories,
hypothesis, vague explanations. Not that I've come to expect proof or hard evidence
in the last eight and a half years of my life. Somehow, with Mulder, the unfulfilled
didn't seem so unfulfilling. He filled voids in my heart, my soul, my life, that I didn't
think anyone ever could. That made anything else that was empty in any other thing
seem that much less important. Now there are holes, voids, spaces everywhere that
nobody can fill.

Now I cry my tears in my own private darkness, and put on a staunch, professional
face at work.

How many more chances can I take before there are no more? Till I've done something
wrong, and there's no way for me to go back and fix it?

I have to make sure this tiny life inside me survives. I have to make sure that Mulder
gets back to me safely. I know the value of chances, I've had many in my life, in
recent memory. I must grab at the right ones to put the shattered pieces of my
life back together. When they will come to me, I don't know. But when they do,
I won't pass them by or give them up. Life is precious. Mine, my child's, and
Mulder's. We'll be together soon, before our chances run out.

THE END