Author's Note: I realize that I never put any kind of disclaimer or note at the beginning of the story! Silly, silly me; must be that chip in my head. I wrote this story in 1998, and it has sat on my computer (actually, several computers) since then. I have written several fanfics for another show, and when I bumped into this story recently, I thought, what the heck, it's done, might as well post it. I am going through and editing the chapters now (it's nice to know my writing has improved a bit over the past 13 years!), and I should have the entire story up by tomorrow. I hope I justly portrayed the heart-breakingly beautiful, bone-deep "Skully angst" that made me love her character, and the show, so much.

Oh yea, disclaimers: I don't own the characters of Dana Scully or Fox Mulder. And the X-files aren't mine either. If they were, I would have no idea where to put them in my house . All hail Chris Carter!

Tuesday, April 8

8:35p.m.

Scully's apartment

Scully jumped of her car and grabbed her things from the back seat, hardly noticing slow heavy drops of rain that started to fall. She looked up and noticed that she was parked right behind Mulder. Oh crap, she frowned. He's going to be pissed that I'm so late.

Rush hour traffic was heavy, and it took much longer for her to get to the gym than she had anticipated. She did 30 minutes on the StairMaster, and then headed home without even showering. If we had just stayed at the office and worked, we would be almost done by now, she thought guiltily. But instead, she had three hours of paperwork and an impatient Mulder waiting for her. Scully couldn't hold the heavy sigh that escaped her lips.

She ran up the stairs to her apartment and dropped her belongings at her feet as she fumbled with the keys. She opened her door, expecting to see Mulder sitting at her dining room table pouring over the files. Instead, her apartment was pitch black. Wonder where he is, she mused, concern leaking into her consciousness.

Scully turned on the light in the entrance way to her apartment, and then noticed Mulder's form sitting with his head down in a chair in the corner of the living room.

"Jesus, you scared me, Mulder. Why are you sitting in the dark like that?" Mulder didn't answer. Jeez, he really is pissed off.

"Listen, I'm sorry I'm late. Traffic was terrible. Let me grab a quick shower and then I can get the pasta ready. I'm starved."

She stepped forward and turned on the living room light, and then bent down to take off her shoes. "Actually, if you wouldn't mind boiling the water while I shower, this would go a lot…" She stopped. Scully looked up at Mulder, and he had one of those frozen looks on his face that made her heart race from fear. Oh god, what now, what happened.

Scully took a step toward him. "Hey Mulder, are you okay? Is something wrong? What do you have in your hands?" She stopped in mid stride as Mulder held up what he had resting in his lap. Oh dear god no no no, please. This isn't happening.

Morphine.

She stopped breathing. Inanely her mind traveled back to the time when she was 15 and her father caught her smoking. She was so afraid of his reaction that she thought she would die on the spot from a heart attack; she was certainly wishing she would. That's how she felt now, watching Mulder hold the morphine bags in his hands. Her secret, her escape.

"What the hell is this, Scully?" His voice shook slightly.

You know damn well what it is, she thought. She said nothing.

"Dammit, what is this for? I asked you a question!"

Scully felt her throat tighten and the pulse in her temple pounding. "How dare you speak to me like that! And how *dare* you snoop through my apartment! Where the hell do you get off…"

Mulder interrupted. "I fell when I was walking up the stairs to your apartment this evening." He opened his palms to her, both which revealed deep stigmata-like scrapes. "I was looking in your bathroom for some Band-Aids and antibiotic cream. Instead I found these underneath the sink." He gestured to the IV bags in his lap. "Now I answered your question, so answer mine. What is this for? I don't peg you as a druggie, so I am really at a loss to explain this."

Scully looked him in the eye. " It's none of your business."

"Cut that crap out, Scully. Your health is my business, whether you want it to be or not. Either you are a lot sicker and in pain than I think you are…"

"I'm fine, Mulder! How many times to I have to keep telling you that?"

"…or you are planning to commit suicide."

Scully could not escape his ice-cold stare. She wanted to look somewhere, anywhere, than at the taut line along his jaw and his angry eyes, but she couldn't look away. I have nothing to be ashamed of, she thought. I will not stand here like a guilty child and stare at my feet.

Still, she said nothing.

Mulder realized that this was a battle of wills. He also knew he had put her on the defensive, and every time he did that, Scully either froze him out or came at him with her claws extended. This time it was the former. Her silence only made him more infuriated.

"Listen, I may not be a doctor, but even I know that this is enough morphine to snow a horse. And I don't think you picked this up at the drugstore along with your toothpaste and Tampax. You obviously got this for a reason, and I think I have a right to know why. What is going on with you?"

Scully's face got red, and her breath quickened. "You know exactly what it is for, so cut the bullshit. You want to run away from my cancer, pretend it is all a bad dream so you can continue combing the earth for your beloved aliens and your unending search for the truth. But I can't run and wish this away. I'm dying, Mulder. I am rudely reminded that my body is housing a golfball size tumor with each nosebleed and headache. Every time I'm particularly tired, or my stomach hurts, or I get dizzy, I worry that the cancer had metastasized, and before long I'll be in a hospital bed, unable to move or think or even breathe on my own. The hell I am going to let that happen, Mulder. The hell…"

Her words caught in her throat and turned into a sob. She sunk into the chair she was leaning against and covered her face with her hands. "Damn you, Mulder, for finding those," she said softly, trying not to let the tears in her eyes roll down her face. Do not cry, do not cry, she chanted over and over in her head, like a mantra.

"I refuse to accept that you want to die, Scully. I refuse to accept that you would just give up and kill yourself. That's not who you are, that's never been who you are. I watched you survive a coma when everyone else had given up on you. You didn't give up then. Why now?" Scully looked up at him, sitting across the room with a tortured look on his face. You would think by looking at him that he is the one who is dying, she thought.

"Mulder, you can accept what you want to, but denial is a luxury I can't afford right now. I am not a cat, and I do not have nine lives. People wake up from comas every day, but no one survives a malignant nasopharangeal tumor. The medical fact is that…"

"To hell with your goddammed medical facts!" Mulder roared, as he jumped to his feet and started toward her. He looked to Scully as if he was coming over to shake her by the shoulders. "There is no rationality in death. How do you think your family would feel if you gave up and took your own life? What would that do to your mother to know that you took the easy way out with an armful of morphine rather than fight this?"

Scully got to her feet and walked over to Mulder, her face inches from his. She took deep ragged breaths, trying with every fiber in her body to resist reaching out and hitting him. "Would she feel a hell of a lot better watching me waste away in a fucking hospital bed? Would you, Mulder? Would you? Because we both know this has nothing to do with how my family would feel, but how you would feel. Would it kill you for me to take my own life when the pain got to great? Were you getting off on the idea that some alien would swoop down in the eleventh hour and save me? Then you could prove their existence and save your partner at the same time, how goddamned noble of you. Or would you prefer to watch me die slowly in pain in some hospital bed, so you could nurse every bit of guilt you could from my death? Would that feel good to you, to add it to the laundry list of things you feel responsible for, starting with Samantha. Tell me what it is, Mulder, since I'm damn sure that this has absolutely nothing to do with me or what I want."

Mulder looked like he had been slapped. Spare me the puppy dog eyes tonight, she thought. I am no longer susceptible.

"What do you mean, this has nothing to do with you, it is what I want. I really doubt you were thinking about me, or anyone else, when you got that morphine. This has nothing to do with me, Scully. It is your decision to take the easy way out."

Scully laughed, a bitter, sarcastic laugh. Such lies. Such self-blindness.

She decided to speak the truth to him.

"Mulder, everything is about you. It always has been. You see everything in the world in the context of how it affects you, only you, never as an entity unto itself. I know perhaps all people are somewhat like that, but you are the most brutally honest about it. My cancer has nothing to do with my life, my death. It is about you losing a friend, a partner, making you a few feet farther from truth. Your concern wraps around me, through me, but ultimately returns back to you. I know that, I have accepted that. But this needs to be different. My death is mine, alone, by itself, and for once has nothing to do with you. Please accept that."

Mulder turned slowly and sunk back down in the corner chair where Scully had found him that evening. He stepped over the bags of morphine that had fallen from his lap when he jumped up so angrily. They lay on the floor like two dead fish with blank eyes staring at him. He looked at the IV bags for a minute, and then looked back up at Scully.

"Is that really what you think of me, Scully? That I am incapable of seeing anything else except how it affects me? Is that really your perception?"

I can take this all back, she thought. I can apologize, I can assure him I was wrong and I didn't mean it. I am used to walking the tightrope of Mulder's psyche. I can make this all go away.

But she heard herself as if she was on top of a mountain listening to a whisper emanating from the cannon below. "Yes, I do, Mulder. I really do." She couldn't believe her own cruelty.

Now it was his turn to bury his face in his hands.

What have I done, she thought.

She crossed the room hurriedly, almost tripping on the IV bags. She knelt down besides Mulder and touched his shoulder. He flinched.

"Look Mulder," she started almost pleading, "we are both tired and under a lot of stress. We said some things we didn't mean tonight, so could we both forget it, please? We have a lot of work to do to prepare for tomorrow, and we need to get started. Fighting isn't going to help us figure out this case. I am going to take a quick shower, and when I get out, I'll make dinner and we can eat as we work. Okay?"

Just look at me, she thought. Just once.

Scully saw the slight nod and interpreted it as forgiveness. She got up, glad to finally be away from Mulder. She headed toward the bathroom and shut the door. She turned the shower to its hottest and took off her clothes to let the steam envelope her naked body, part of her wishing she could disappear into the cloud. She stepped into the nearly scalding shower, hardly noticing the heat on her skin. She buried her head underneath the shower head, feeling the water wash down her back, between her breasts, into her ears. If only I could undo this night, she thought. If only I hadn't said what I had said. If only I had gotten to my apartment first. If only he hadn't found that damn morphine.

If only I didn't have cancer.

She didn't know at first that she was crying; not until the saltiness reached her tongue did she realize that it just wasn't the shower that was burning her face. She scrubbed her cheeks, forehead, neck with soap, hoping somehow to wash away her tears so Mulder couldn't see their traces. Don't cry, don't cry, the mantra rang in her ears. Scully washed her hair, then the rest of her, and then stepped onto the bathmat dripping wet and reached across for her towel. She caught of glimpse of herself in the steam-covered mirror over the sink. She walked over and wiped the mirror off with her right hand, just enough for her to see her face clearly. Red eyes, dammit, she thought. She turned away and started vigorously drying herself off. She found her old white robe, slipped into it, and quickly exited the bathroom and headed toward the bedroom. Scully threw on an old pair of jeans and a sweater, and pulled her still-wet hair back in a scrunchy. She reached into her bedroom dresser drawer and found some powder and lipstick, which she quickly applied. Who am I trying to impress, she thought. I could walk out to the living room stark naked and Mulder wouldn't notice.

After slipping on her Keds, Scully took a deep breath and plastered a smile on her face. She walked out to the living room, calling Mulder's name in what sounded like forced cheerfulness.

No answer. He's still brooding. Great. This is gonna be a wonderful evening. She looked around. No Mulder. She walked into the dining room. No one. Scully turned back and headed toward the bathroom, but stopped when she noticed the door was wide open, just as she had left it.

The house wrapped its empty arms around her and squeezed.

He left. He walked out on me. Wouldn't be the first time, she thought bitterly. But this wasn't the case of him abandoning her to chase after some minutia of evidence. They were in the middle of a serious argument and he chose to walk out. Damn him for this.

She instinctively began to reach for the phone on the kitchen wall and hit the memory button with Mulder's number on it. She woke up and pushed down the receiver before the phone even began to ring at his apartment. No. I have done nothing wrong, and I am not going to apologize for any of this. He had no right to question my personal choices. As for the rest of the conversation, well, maybe it was time Mulder heard that his self-centeredness has become almost a vortex, and she was tired trying to fight against the forces sucking her in. From now on, this is about me. But her declaration of independence from Mulder rang hollow in her soul.

As she hung up the phone, she leaned heavily against the kitchen counter, realizing how tired she was. Something in the sink caught her eye. She walked closer, and fought another bilious wave of anger that came into her throat when she saw what was there. Lying in the sink were the two bags of morphine. They had been slashed by the kitchen knife that lay beside them, and the precious fluid had run down the sink. Scully stared in horror for a second, and then picked up the knife and threw it against the wall with all the strength she possessed.