Major spoilers for the movie Fight the Future (duh!)
Minor reference to the fifth season episode Folie a Deux
Undeniable
After being with a person practically every day for five years, no matter the reason, you can only ever love or hate them. By then you will see and do too much with them, know them and their feelings, share their thoughts and lives, for there to be any sort of middle ground left. There is no 'I guess they're okay' or 'I don't have an opinion' left, no almost-friends or semi-rivals. It's all love and hate and sometimes even both.
And, after five years, it becomes too much, because by then you've completed the test, taken a poll, run the race and the results are in. By then its strong, its real, its undeniable, and you can't hide.
There is a kaleidoscope of emotions running rampant in my brain as I sit my apartment, and all of them are screaming for attention. There is concern for the truth, I always have been and probably always will be. I add to that concern for those bees we saw, because without an examination you could never been sure if any bee was carrying a strain of the virus. As always, in the back of my mind, I still worry that Samantha is involved in some way, and that scares me.
But now my worry is mostly for my partner, one Special Agent Dana Scully. We flew the entire way from Texas with her in a panic, going over what she was going to say and how she was going to present the information we have managed to gather. Not that it's all that much, really.
These days I see something different in her, something that wasn't there before. I don't know exactly what is changing, but it isn't good. I think part of it is this reassignment business.
I refuse to work with anyone else. I can't think of another soul within the FBI, now or ever, that will help me look into the paranormal with the open mind yet reality-based mind that she does. Sure, she's skeptical and insists on rational explanations, but no one else will even listen to my theories. When we first met I gave myself the goal of making her a believer, rather as I suspect that that she gave herself the goal of making me believe purely in science. In the end, I think we've both won and lost – and it's not something I will trade for the world.
My own words from a hospital room not too long ago echo in my head. 'Scully, you have to believe me. Nobody else on this whole damn planet does or ever will. You're my one in five billion.' It's as true now as it was then, as it has been since I stopped seeing her as the enemy and starting seeing her as my friend…maybe even more.
If she does leave there will be a huge hole left in my life I don't think I can fill. Five years it has just been me and her, her and me, two of the FBI's most unwanted, swept under the rug to control embarrassment. We were Mulder and Scully, the only agents stupid enough to even consider the X Files real work, the only two with track records of poking our noses exactly where they were least wanted. If I loose her now I'll loose a half of myself, a piece I didn't even know was missing until she stepped into my office and life five years ago.
Will I go so far as to call it love?
Yes, I will. That part of me is real. We love each other, I can see it in her eyes even as she destroys my theories, I can feel it spreading all over me as I fight down the annoyance I feel toward her unwillingness to stop thinking and just be, just believe.
But will I go so far as to call it being in love, a romantic love instead of the affection of friends?
That I don't know, and can't even begin to describe. We're something, yes, but it defies all explanation. I could almost open an X File on it, because it's paranormal when you look at the clear boundaries of other relationships. Before, when I would date other women, the boundaries were as clear and clean-cut as the difference between night and day. We were one or the other.
But Scully and myself, we're those twilight and sunrise hours that at first glance can't be differentiated. It's a strange mixture of all sorts of things, all jumbled together into a huge conglomerate, a mass of emotions so intertwined together you can't tell were one starts and another ends.
A sound from the doorway breaks into my thoughts, and I turn to see her standing in the doorway. She has that look in her eye again, the one I've been seeing more and more. She just stands there, and I just look at her.
"What's wrong?"
"Salt Lake City, Utah. Transfer effective immediately." That is pure Scully, coming out and stating the facts. The look in her eyes is replaced by a shallower one, a look that tells me she is repressing her emotions, steeling herself for her next words. I know what they are going to be even as she opens her mouth. "I already gave Skinner my letter of resignation."
"You can't quit now, Scully." I'm fighting to keep any panic out of my voice. I don't know what it would be like, loosing half of myself. And I don't want to find out.
"I can, Mulder. I debated whether or not even to tell you in person, but…"
"We are close to something here! We're on the verge!" And so we are. I don't want to admit it, but I couldn't get far in my investigations without her to help me. She is a touchstone, a sounding board, a way to refine and reinforce my theories. She is the only reason the X Files even appeared to be remotely substantial, something more than a hollow personal cause of mine.
But it is more than that, it is also me. I stand here today, in front of her, my own thoughts from moments before crashing into me with renewed knowledge. Iam on the verge of something new, but I can't go there alone. It has to be with her, or I won't budge.
"You're on the verge, Mulder. Please don't do this to me." A note of pleading creeps into her voice despite her best efforts to control it.
"After what you saw last night, after all you've seen a done, you can just walk away?" I demand, rising with my voice, and the look in her eyes becomes harder, colder.
"I have. I did, it's done."
"I need you on this, Scully." It has become my turn to plead with her, my final trump card. But as she looks at me I can see that it hasn't done a thing.
"You don't need me, Mulder. You never have. I've just held you back." She pauses, and her words stab me right in my gut, twisting and striking deeper than anything has before, deeper than Diana and Phoebe and maybe even Samantha's disappearance ever did. And in her words I hear something else, as though she had stopped talking about the current case a while ago. I know I had, but maybe she really did understand what I was trying to say through that unspoken bond we share. If anyone could, it would be her.
The moment passes, and she turns. "I've got to go."
I pause a moment myself, knowing what I have to do but not quite sure I can. But the truth is the entire conversation wasn't really about the X Files to begin with.
And we both know it.
If I let her walk out of here thinking that's the end of it, then I'm only going to take two steps back from the verge we've found ourselves on, the verge of something a little more personal. We can't spend our lives staring it down, and I can't spend my life knowing I let her walk away just because she was too scared of what lay beyond.
She's Dana Scully, the only person I can really trust. If I can't trust her with my own personal truth, then who can I?
"You want to tell yourself that so you can quit with a clear conscious, you can, but you're wrong!" I call as I go after her, and she stops and whirls to face me. She is set in her conviction she is just what the Bureau wants her to be, a tether around my neck.
"Why did they assign me to you in the first place, Mulder? To debunk your work, to rein you in, to shut you down…"
I've heard all that I want to hear. Its time to stop this stupid thought of hers right now. It's my turn to shoot down a theory, and this one I relish.
"But you saved me!" She looks confused at my words, but I press on ahead, not wanting to loose my newfound courage. "As difficult and frustrating as it's been sometimes, your goddamned strict rationalism and science have saved me a thousand times over. You've kept me honest…you've made me a whole person." There it is, out in the open. I can see the walls coming down as my voice begins to soften. I look her right in the eyes, willing her to read the truth in my own. "I owe you everything Scully, and you owe me nothing. I don't know if I want to do this alone…I don't even know if I can. And if I quit now, they win."
She looks on the verge of tears, trying to say something although no words present themselves, staring at me as my words run through her head. I don't even understand fully what made me say all of that, or even where it came from. But I know, without a doubt, that it is the truth.
Scully steps toward me, her eyes reflecting her inner battle, and I reach out to hold her as I've done so many times before. I know that she's torn. Even if she doesn't feel for me as I feel for her, she feels something. And that something is stronger than any force we've ever faced. If she leaves now who knows when next we'd meet. If she stays she goes to Utah and prays for a miracle to bring her home.
Pulling back slightly, just enough to see my face but not enough to leave my arms, she plants a gentle kiss on my forehead. The touch is electric, sending a current of feeling through my body I've never experienced before. She rests her forehead against my own, and suddenly it becomes too much. She's right here, her face so close to mine that her breath dances across my skin.
I reach out to her, gently grasping each side of her face as I guide her head back so I can look into her eyes. She smiles at me, although it wavers ever so slightly as I study her. I can't help the magnetic force that grabs me, pulling my face slowly toward hers. She looks almost afraid at first, but she doesn't pull away, even though she has plenty of time to do so.
This is it, the culmination of five years. We truly are on the verge of something completely undeniable.
Our lips are mere millimeters apart when she jerks to the side, her head on my shoulder as her hand flies backward to her neck.
"Ow! Jesus!" she hisses.
"I'm sorry." I try to conceal my disappointment.
"No, something stung me."
An irrational anger toward the small creature flares inside of me as she withdraws a bee from the shirt. I look to see a small red circle where the sting must have been, and rub at it gently.
"Must've gotten in your shirt."
I hear an intake of breath, and Scully looks into my eyes, the faintest traces of fear creeping across her face. "Mulder…something's wrong."
"What?" I ask, confusion no doubt evident in my voice.
"I'm having lacerating pain in – "
"What?" Confusion gives way to fear as I grip her shoulders to stop the slight sway that has appeared in her stance.
" – my chest."
"Scully…"
"My motor functions are being affected." She collapses toward me, and I grab her and lower her to the floor, trying to contain the fear that is slowly taking over me.
"Scully…" I say again, unable to think of anything else. I am not the doctor here.
"My pulse is thready…a funny taste in the back of my throat." Always the professional.
"I think you're going into anaphylactic shock." Had the situation been less serious I would've laughed at what she's done to me. She made me learn something useful, something based around 'real science'.
"No…I have no allergy."
Realization dawns on me. Texas, the bees. Somehow we missed one, and it came back with her. She had been so late to her meeting with OPR she hadn't changed yet. Leaving her for what I silently promise will only be a moment I race into my apartment and grab the phone.
"This is Special Agent Fox Mulder, I have an emergency! I have an agent down!" I shout. I know it isn't necessary, that the operator can hear me just fine, but I can't help it. Scully was wounded.
"What's your address, sir?" she asks, and I quickly rattle it off without much thought. I hear her hollow promises of instant help, but don't bother to stay. Throwing the phone back into the cradle I return to the hallway.
Blue eyes are peering blearily around the hallway, eyelids slowly threatening to close. I kneel beside her, gently lifting her onto my lap and cradling her head between my arms.
"Try and stay with me, Scully," I plead, and the concern is so overwhelming that I know it's bleeding into my vocals. She tries to lift her head, but drops it heavily after only a few seconds.
"Not…going anywhere," she insists. But still I hug her to me, unwilling and unable to let her go.
We're silent, and I listen for the sounds of the ambulance. Already I can hear a faint wailing sound, the one I've heard so many times before.
"Would it matter?" she croaks suddenly, and I look at her in confusion.
"What?"
"If I went anywhere…would it matter?" she tries again.
"Of course," I breathe, unable to believe she has asked me that. "Weren't you listening?"
"Yes, but that's…not what I meant," she murmurs, her eyelids drooping lower. "Even if I do go somewhere…you always…find me. I wasn't so worried…about leaving…because I knew you wouldn't give up…like me."
"You're stronger than you know, Scully."
"You'll find me," she insists. "I know you will. So don't worry."
"Scully…" I try, but no words come. She smiles at me, that one she always smiles to tell me she already knows the words that I can't say, the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. I'd disparaged her faith more times than I care to imagine, but in this one moment I bring myself to believe, if not in God then at least in angels because I am holding one right now.
This is, without a doubt, the sappiest, most romantic piece of trite I've ever said, or rather, thought. Look at what this woman does to me.
"Don't worry Mulder. I only trust you," she stresses. "You'll…find me…you always…do…"
Her voice fades, her eyelids close, and for a moment of sheer panic I believe that I've lost her. But my fingers clumsily find her pulse, faint but present.
The sirens stop, and there are footsteps on the stairs below, racing toward us. Her words replay in my mind. 'You'll…find me…you always…do…'
And it is undeniably true. I always have, and always will, look for her until I drop. Oh yes, what I feel for her is love, I can't mistake that. I can't even hide it from myself anymore. Like too much oxygen in a human lung this feeling burns my heart, making it swell until I feel I will explode.
What is that song again? Oh yes… 'Hurt so good, come on baby, make it hurt so good, sometimes love don't feel like it should, you make it hurt so good'.
'How appropriate,' I think to myself as I look down again at the woman beside me, the one that can never quite be called delicate.
The paramedics come into view, and I back away from her to allow them to help her. It doesn't matter where they take her, or what happens. I will go into the depths of hell for her, a cliché yet true phrase. Now isn't any different.
She says she trusts me. And I won't give her a reason to change her mind.