Title. Cognition
Email. IndigoMuse@aol.com
Rating. Not Rated
Category. A
Spoilers. None...but assume this takes place before
Season 6...as that hasn't happened here yet!
Summery. Musings on Scully's motives. Character death!
Disclaimer. No-one belongs to me...anywhere. Sad really.
Cognition
Some perverse God dealt these cards. It is so rare that
I am ever in her apartment and so the likelihood of it
being me who picked up that call was so minimal as to be
negligible. The likelihood of my having been anywhere in sight
in fact. I was quite possibly the least appropriate person to
carry her through. If I had I known beforehand? I am enough
of a coward that I would have stayed away. I try to give
myself credit for the fact that I am at least honest enough to
admit it.
Now though I am certain, in light of what I came to realise
in the short time window during that longest of nights that it
needed to be this way. If she had been alone, if she had not
had me there...? In light of what I learnt that night I am sure I
would have lost her.
I can't even remember now my intent when I went round,
exactly what I hoped to achieve, rehashing the same tired
old argument. It was true to say I was 'in the area'...I could
hardly just have scootled over on a whim, distance being what
it was and I was so transparent that it would hardly have been
difficult for her to guess at my motives. She certainly knew this
was not intended as a casual visit. We didn't do that. We didn't
make social visits to each other. I think to the larger degree
that's my fault. There's no denying I alienated her, but I had
always hoped she would come to understand why - to realise
I had only her best interests at heart.
I just never thought to ask *her* what they were.
She hadn't bothered to hide her indifference when she had
opened the door. Her words were welcoming as always but
her eyes told me that my presence was of little consequence
to her. She was in no hurry to reopen the debate and
ushering me in with an impatient wave of her hand
announced that she had just been about to shower...make
myself at home...see me in a few minutes.
It was only seconds after the water started that the phone rang.
I picked it up automatically not really thinking that she might
not want me answering her calls. The voice at the other end
was surprisingly matter-of-fact. I had never realised before how
it could be possible to deliver this sort of information with so
much indifference. For a moment I admired it. With the wisdom
of hindsight I stand bitterly ashamed of my initial response to
what I was hearing. I felt only a sense of relief, the victors cry
not expelled but echoing loudly round my head. But even that ill
placed euphoria could not detract from the daunting task ahead
though...*I* had to tell *her*.
I knocked on the bathroom door only to be greeted with
a non too polite suggestion of where I could stick various
pieces of my anatomy if I didn't just leave her alone for a few
minutes. The unexpected waver in my voice as I called out
that I had something to tell her obviously went undetected...she
snapped at me to spit it out. I shouldn't do this through the door
but I couldn't go in. I tried again...she shouted at me again and
my resolve snapped. I swear I would have softened it, made
it sound as if it mattered to me too, for her sake, but she
goaded me into bellowing the news, through wood and
running water.
I had been prepared for any reaction but the silence.
She was suddenly through the door, water flying off her,
towel discarded, either unaware of or indifferent to my
view of her nudity, as she grabbed clothes and frantically
tugged them on. Truth be told, past a momentary realisation
of what she was doing I barely noticed. I had something
else to look at, something I had never seen before despite
all the times I had looked at her. Not merely written on
her face but gouged into it, absolute terror.
And cognition regarding all that I'd misjudged began to form.
"Take me there".
She is silent in the car. I know that there is nothing to say.
She has no questions for me because there are no answers that
she wants to hear even if I could give them. I will not patronise
her with platitudes. And what could I really say to her, unsure
as I am of exactly where she would be hearing me from.
I take the opportunity, as best as I am able whilst driving, to
look at her...possibly for the first time with eyes that view
through a lens tinted with respect for the choices she made.
Since this began, whenever I've seen her I've looked not at
her but through her, searching for something beyond or beneath
the actual person, looking for the weakness in her I'd imagined
must have led her down this path.
She is rigid in her seat, body pressed forward, feet pressing
against the floor as if she could somehow get us there faster
like this. I cannot see her eyes but I am certain that they are
heavy with unshed tears, tears she will certainly keep hidden
from me. I am shocked to realise that she is beautiful. It is
a revelation to me. I am not a man much given to consideration
of the physical and I've certainly never looked at her with anything
but the utmost indifference to her actual physicality before.
Couple this outer beauty with the person she is and I realise again
how much she could have had, how much she had taken away
from her. Yet she could have changed direction...she placed her
life in a definite runner-up position, losing so much along the way.
The losses were not only hers though, and mutual pain is a strong
bond. I wonder why it bound them but never us?
I knew a little of what had started all of this. Not as much as there
was to know but more, despite her reluctance to ever even enter
into the topic with me, than she suspected. I certainly
understood why she had initially been placed in the position she
was in.. I understand perfectly why they'd assigned her to
the X Files....they could not have doubted for a moment
that her youthful determination to succeed, to excel herself,
coupled with her rigid adherence to protocol, obedience to
those rules laid out for her and those of her own creation,
would make her just the weapon that they had wanted her
to be. What they underestimated, or perhaps just misdefined
was her resolute integrity...her absolute need to do what
*is* right and not just what is seen to be right. She knew
the difference whereas they did not. Integrity can only go
so far in explaining this to me though.
Was she taken in by the work? Did she really alter her
perceptions to an extent that might explain? I don't
believe so. I know she had her moments but ostensibly
she remained a cynic. She respected the beliefs but at best
tolerated the insistence of them as reality. I've sat , witness
to quite a few partial conversations over the years, listening to her
dissect, explain, define....and justify. Even when she clearly
despaired of the validity of the argument she never criticised the
rights to hold those beliefs. She achieved an almost flawless
balance of dual loyalty...those values equal and opposite to her
own. Loyalty is something but it still doesn't explain it all. Why?
When we arrive she is out of the car and half way to the
building before I've even turned the engine off. By the time I
catch up with her she is engaged in a furious debate with an
orderly who is barring her route through a door which her
eyes rake with desperation. I want to turn her around and
force her back into the car. I want to pull her away from
here, pull away from what I am realising far too late, is
more than she can bear.
All this time I have thought that I was trying to protect her
when all I was really doing was indulging my own emotional
need to direct blame. Clarity has come too late. Now that
I realise what protection is, there is none that I can offer.
"Let her in." He looks surprised, doesn't recognise me
but understands instantly that I will brook no disagreement
and he ungraciously moves aside. As soon as the doors are
open her will seems to fail her...she turns to me almost in
supplication but realises who I am - all that I've raged at her;
realises that I can offer no salvation or comfort and turns away.
When she first sees him through the glass her legs just
buckle under her. I reach out to catch her, but she has
already steadied herself against the wall. The eons that
pass are probably not even seconds. Her previous haste
is replaced by a deliberate sloth...she is barely moving at
all as she passes through the doorway and moves over to
the bed as if delay, as if taking too much time will somehow
change what she can see before her..
I feel like the most despicable of voyeurs, as I watch
entranced as her hand reaches for his. She opens his palm
as lifts it to her cheek, pressing it hard against her flesh.
She is rocking, the movement barely perceptible. So
slowly she moves the hand to her mouth and places a
line of kisses across the palm and along the inside of his
wrist before placing his arm back beside him, so gently
as if not to wake him.
She is bent over him now, tears falling freely as she kisses
the top of his head, his forehead, his cheeks. I am
inexplicably appalled at the display of intimacy as her
tongue seems to caress his lips, working moisture where
there is none, before she presses her lips hard to his. Her
pain is corporeal, pushing through the glass at me so I
cannot help but catch my breathe, tense against it as she
places gentle kisses over his eyes.
I cannot believe that I have been so consistently blind.
I cannot believe that I have been so consistently cruel.
I blamed him. I accused him, railed against him. I derided
anything she ever said in his defence until she gave up trying
to drive the reality home to ears that listened but never heard.
I never let her tell me what she needed to. She had never
followed. She had chosen a path by his side.
I cannot believe that I can have failed to understand this.
The answer so simple and so complex.
"Excuse me...?" The voice intrudes and I turn to see a young
doctor..."Are you family...?"
"No...yes...hers". I gesture helplessly towards my sister.."Scully -
I'm Bill Scully."
...and who is that in there with Mr. Mulder?
His wife?"
The lie comes easy to me because I understand that in any
sense that matters it is the truth. I don't need to see the words
she forms over him to know the answer now. She loved him.
*Loves* him.
I've never considered myself a sentimental man but as
she slowly draws the sheet up over his still face I can almost
imagine that I hear the crack of a heart breaking...and I am not
so sure that the echo is not my own.
End.
Feedback appreciated. Constructive criticism absorbed.
IndigoMuse@aol.com