disclaimer: the X-files belong to its originator, cris carter and
his associate producers and directors, and the writers who
sculpt his concept so that the actors can animate its spirit and
elevate ours. NO infringement on anyone's copyrights is intended.

loc's appreciated. mgreten@xtalwind.net post & (re)archive
with my name. spoilers abound

story pg

SYNOPSIS: After her report to the committee, Scully accepts her
fate and from her hospital bed sets REDUX in motion

ISMS ARRANGED by Mary Greten.
ORIGINAL MATERIAL by Mary Greten.

IN OTHER CONTEXT: PRE REDUX: SOLID GOLD; LIQUID DIAMONDS

Privacy. It was her necessity, her solace, her regeneration.

Scully collapsed in A.D. Skinner's office after she had given
her final report to the committee. She didn't know whose heart strings
he had to pluck to get her this private room, but he had her eternal gratidude. Not that eternity was that far away.

Margaret Scully was at the hospital like reverse inventory: first in, last
out. She stayed with her daughter every visiting period assisting any way
Scully would allow. She left only the rare times more than one other
visitor arrived simultaneously.

After a more than cursory examination of conscience, Scully finally
admitted she was not "fine" and permitted her mother to "do" for her.
Not only did the decision ease her burdens, but it also alleviated her
mother's feelings of helplessness. Having put her affairs in order and
arrangements made, the time had come for Scully to confront living
with her cancer and to comfort her inevitable survivors.

Comforting Mulder was an exercise of telepathic dimensions. Every
night, before sedative sleep swallowed her, Scully let her mind utilize
whatever means of communication existed between them, which
bound them more tightly than friends, more intimate than lovers:

"I feel you close; for that I am grateful. And though we've traveled
far together, more than I could ever express, I need to know you're
out there pursuing your own path, in the continuance of a journey that
began not so long ago and which began again with a faith shaken and
strengthened by your convictions. If not for which I might never have
been so strong now, if I am ever to see through this."

Scully's fingers caressed the gold crucifix her father presented her on
her sixteenth birthday. She could not remember, when she
reappeared after a long abduction, whether it was before or after
Mulder brought her a Superbowl Highlights tape to which she
quipped even from her twilight sleep: she "knew she had
a reason to live", that he re-affixed the gleaming cross around her
neck. It was the only item she hadn't bequeathed yet. Maybe, she
would let her mother decide... afterwards.

She reached for the phone on the swing arm table and dialed.

"Sir", she said formally, "This is Dana Scully."

Skinner insisted she call him at his home to relieve her wading
through time consuming urbanities and protocols at the agency
number. They had always been direct with each other. Skinner
just extended the concept. Truthfulness, however, was relative
to the situation. Even then, their conversations were pointed and
occasionally barbed.

"Agent Scully, what can I do for you?"

Skinner would not accept her resignation. She was on an official sick
leave and technically still under his directorship.

"I called to thank you..."

For a breathless instant Skinner prayed that his treacheries and
treaties with the Consortium had paid off, and Scully was home, free
of her cancer.

"...for inveigling a private room for me here at the hospital".

Devastated, Skinner replied, "Agent Scully, you over estimate my
position in the chain of command."

"Sir, I checked. I know that my insurance is limited to semi-private
rooms unless I became infectious. I am in no way contagious. The
records show your name and signature."

"Agent Scully, listen to me. I do not know who did it nor how it happened.
I advise you to not let your curiosity effect your better judgment."

"Like you, sir, I not always follow my own advice."

"Skinner was riveted to the phone. He surmised she suspected some
of his machinations to save her life. That she knew everything
shamed him brutally.

"Agent Scully, I.."

She cut him off. "There is something else. Sir, Do you have Blevins'
phone number...I need him to contact someone for me."

Skinner, off his guard, wanted immediately to run interference for
her. "Perhaps. I can relay the message?"

"I don't think so. I don't know his name. He was in Blevins' office
when I was assigned to the X-files and when I gave my first report to
Blevins. He is black haired, age: fifties early sixties, about 5'9" to six
feet, 180 pounds, wears black suits and is a chain-smoker. Morleys,
if I remember correctly. Blevins would recall him, sir. Thank you
very much anyway."

She couldn't have been clearer if she had it blinking from a
"bleep"ing blimp. "YOU'VE RISKED ENOUGH. HE IS MINE NOW."

"All right, Agent Scully, I'll get you Blevins' home number."

When Skinner finished reciting the number. Scully couldn't resist a
gibe and a warning.

"Sir, Come up and see me sometime... soon ...in the room you didn't
request for me. And Please Take Care."

She glanced at the clock on the opposite wall. Blevins should
be home now. She dialed his number. Knowing Skinner, Blevins
would get the message in duplicate.

Time to send more good thoughts to Mulder. Mind mails, M-mails.She
smirked wrinkling her chin. And then to dream...She was at the Jefferson
Memorial waiting for Mulder, talking to a woman she had never met
about her career, her cancer, her mother, her taste in recreational reading, whether she could take Jose Chung books as a tax deduction and angels on the Internet of all things. Weird, but then, she was used to weird.

The weekend past. Her brothers and sisters-in-laws and their children
visited. She welcomed them warmly and refused to let doldrums
deter her enjoyment of her nieces and nephews. Scully did not feel
as tired as she thought she would. During the non-visiting hours,
when not in therapy, she ate and rested sufficiently to sustain her
strength. Nothing about Scully's cancer was "textbook", her
oncologists were mystified; sometimes, it seemed no therapy was the
best. Yes, the test showed her cancer had metastasized, but her
physical strength remained higher than should be expected. No tests
could measure her fortitude.

She still cared about her appearance. Her hair, for what ever reason,
stayed with her fairly well, so far. She had it trimmed, perm-ed
loosely, washed and set as her last gesture of defiance before
committing herself so totally to the hands of others. Her mother put a
few sponge curlers in her hair during the last daily visiting hours, but
Scully combed it out herself in the mornings before she made up her
face. Although she never had to test the adage so strenuously before,
it continued to hold true: "Look good, feel better." And, she was still
F...B...I.

Monday morning, Margaret Scully, knowing well that her daughter
would be fully presentable, brought her parish priest with her. She
had invited him to a family party in an attempt to shepherd Scully back
into the Fold. Scully drilled a look through her mother to which even
Mulder would dare not ask "What look is that, Scully?" so she would
not reply "I would have thought that after four years you'd know "exactly"
what that look was."

Her mother, serving at the other end of the table, hadn't heard her
response to the curate; Scully reiterated her dictum.

"I haven't felt a need, Mom. I have strength. And... and I'm not going
to come running back now. It's just not who I am. I'd be lying to
myself and to you."

"Dana, honey," Margaret Scully only lightly chastised, "I've already
lost one daughter without benefit of the Sacraments, I don't want to
lose another that way. Do it for me."

Scully wondered if the gospel writer had not omitted that last
sentence from the mother of Jesus' request for more wine at the
marriage feast at Cana.

Confront, Comfort, Consent. What next would she have to do?

Of course, Confess. "You don't have to leave, Mom."

To the priest she proffered without preamble,

"Except for missed masses and communions and general
disillusionment at Holy Mother the Church's anthropomorphizing
itself as female then rejecting "her" daughters as priests, all other
trespasses since my last confession were committed under
canonically mitigating circumstances and thereby are venial at
most and not obliged to be mentioned."

The priest, taken aback at her knowledge and rebuttal of Canon Law,
accepted her confession, savored the saving of another soul.

"For your penance. say..."

"For my penance, Father, I have this cancer."

Had Scully been older, she might have expected his next words to be
"Absolvo te", but instead, the words of the two Sacraments, one of
Penance the other of the Sick, were in English and not at all dire in
content. They were rather upbeat actually. And left her oddly
reassured. The odd part was she didn't know about what.

That evening, Scully asked her mother not to set her hair. Margaret
Scully raised her eyebrow at the prospect of late night visitors.
From her career as the wife of Navy captain, she understood that
Scully, her father's daughter, would book no questions.

Scully knew if he was going to come it would be after visiting hours
and before the night shift. The greatest dangers to a person avoiding
notice was too many people to cause mishaps and too few to be
intuited out of place.

She deliberately refused her sedative/painkiller welcoming the pain
to keep her alert. She turned on her side to face the door. She
doubted she would hear him come in.

The door opened slowly and silently. The only light in the room was
from the florescent bulb above her head and that was more for
patients to be observed as they slept than for patients to see their
observers.

Scully recognized his arrogant carriage.

She did not want to speak to a shadow.

"Sit by the bed."

He held a cigarette in his hand, lit end inside his cupped palm so as
not to drop the ashes. He pocketed the ashes then pinched the lit end
until it was completely out and pocketed it. He seated himself next to
Scully.

"Does that pocket have an asbestos lining?", Scully jested.

"The entire complex is smoke free. I do what I can to obey the law
given the circumstances."

"It has been my experience that those who consider themselves
above the law don't usually break them; they have others do it for
them."

"Agent Scully, I am here. What is it you want of me? My time is
valuable."

Scully's voice hardened.

"And my time isn't? I won't keep you too long. Just a few questions to
clarify a woman's reason for dying. Why did you come?"

"We feel we owe you at least this much".

"How kind of you all.", Scully retorted.

"Your next question please, Agent Scully, I can do without a cigarette
for only so long."

"Why was I chosen to work with Agent Mulder?"

"You were so very knowledgeable, so very young, so very gullible
and, our mistake, we thought you would be so very pliable. Instead
of inhibiting Agent Mulder's insatiable need to know what we didn't
want known about us, you became the catalyst for him to delve even
further into our affairs. He had to prove it to you."

"'So', in effect, you are saying they gave me this cancer because they
failed to provide an accurate job description. Why not, if I was so
gullible, feed me some plausible allegation of misconduct on the part
of Agent Mulder or anything else to put me" Scully saw his hand
move, "in your pocket...so to speak."

His fingers edged his "non-asbestos" lined pocket. Scully's remark
prompted him to mind his bedside manners. He withdrew his hand
without his ubiquitous pack of Morleys.

"I thought it best not to, Agent Scully. Any information disseminated
to make a you believe the lie could have uncovered the truth too
quickly."

"You thought? Too quickly?"

He hesitated so imperceptibly that only Scully's subconscious
detected it. He shrugged her off with nonchalant disdain.

"What truth?"

"Take your pick. There are so many of them.", he sneered.

Without a Morley hanging from or held near his mouth, the effect
appeared less than menacing. His need for another cigarette was so
palpable that flashbacks of the times Scully brushed by him in
headquarters' passageways raced through her mind. It was almost as
if the cigarettes were a prop or, at least, began that way. Dismissing
the question of why should she think that now, she trusted her
instinct. Why would he need a prop? To perpetuate a persona? Why
does he need a persona?

"Oh, God", Scully closed her eyes and grimaced. She pressed the
button on her intravenous morphine line to cover for her lapse of
control.

Her feint accentuated his discomfort. He made ready to rise from the
chair.

"Not yet", Scully stopped him. "I need you to help me a moment."

"What is it?, Agent Scully, I am not a nurse. "

"The chain around my neck, it is beginning to chafe. Unclasp it for
me. Please."

He bent over the bed's railing. Scully arched her head back giving
him access to her throat. He cautiously rotated the chain until he
found the clasp, undid it, tugged the chain gently away from her neck
and placed it in her hand nearest him.

In a single movement, Scully's other hand was holding him down.
The element of surprise gave her one second:

"How long?" She growled.

He comprehended her inquiry wasn't medicinal; that she already
painfully knew.

"Since 1776, it seems."

"That long. You must be weary."

"I go on. I have to."

"Bend closer. I have just two more words for you. "

He did not falter. She could have killed him already if that were her
intention. He fully expected an expletive which he would only accept
from this woman fate forced him to deliver to the devils who put her
here.

"I...Forgive." She whispered. Then turned away.

Stunned into silent stillness, he coerced himself to leave her. Once in
the passageway, he fled the hospital with the agility of a man who
plans exits well in advance.

Outside, striding toward his car, he fumbled for his pack of Morleys
and lighter. Passing a ground level office window, he stopped to light
the cigarette and inhaled deeply. As was his habit, his eyes scanned
the area behind him by looking at its reflection in the window.
Returning the Morleys and lighter to his pocket, his fingers picked up
a recently familiar object. He gathered it into his hand and held it up to
shine in the magnesium lights of the parking lot.

Damn these cigarettes! He fumed. Damn that woman! Dying, she
demanded a reckoning. She ferreted me out. The compromises, the
unfulfilled promises, the people I had to sacrifice to keep ahead of
those bastards. Samantha. Bill. Her. Mulder. Too late, the bastards
saw their error. Then I convinced them to not return her would send
Mulder more amok rendering him useless to them. She got too close
again. They hired an inept hit man who killed her sister, Her cancer was
their insurance to eventually destroy an obsolete tool according to
their schedule. I can't tell her the markers I am calling in. I can't give
her hope because we may not be ready in time with our counter
measures against the larger evil.

He took another drag: All this, she saw in a scintilla of a second.
She knows I may have to give her up too and she forgives me.
I don't need her forgiveness. I didn't ask for it.

Another part of his mind, long suppressed now freed by the
force of Scully's convictions, responded: That's the rub about forgiveness;
you don't always have to ask.

It was a long while before he noticed the street again, so transfixed
was he by the tears flowing from eyes of the man who watched
presidents die.
'
Margaret Scully noticed the cross missing the next morning.

Scully raised her hand to her throat and, giving her second best
performance, gasped, "The clasp must have broken. Mom, would
you please alert the hospital housekeeping staff. I shouldn't have
been wearing it the first place. I kept taking it off and on before and
after tests. I only wanted a piece of Ahab and Mulder with me."

Her mother nodded empathetic understanding. "Tomorrow, I'll bring
you your father's St. Elmo medal, I had made for him.".

Two days later, Security Specialist Agent Abel Baker, came to Scully
with an envelope.

"What is it, Charley?" Scully asked elbowing up to a sitting position.

"This came for you at the office. It was scanned and dusted. It's clean.
A.D. Skinner sent it over.".

Scully took the envelope and hefted it.

"Charley, I want you to know how much I appreciate your taking the
job as head of my security team here."

"Agent Scully, I was honored that A.D. Skinner remembered me.
But, I would have been here on requested leave had he not." Patting his
generous bulk, "Who knows, I may lose some weight with only this
hospital food to eat."

Scully smiled broadly at the young agent to whom she owed so much.
After the Eddie Van BlundHt episode, he helped her keep the X-
Files opened until Mulder's suspension was over. He was the only
man she trusted in Mulder's stead.

She unwound the string that secured the flap of the inter-office
envelope. She took out a security blue check envelope. Its seal had
been broken by the fellows and gals in the lab. She halted for a
memory. Pendrell... jumping at the sound of her voice..."What a
doof", he called himself. He didn't know she had heard. "Lab boy, I
hardly knew ye", she sighed.

She took out a yellow flyer. She proceeded to unfold the flyer.
As she peeled each layer, she felt the form of the wrapped item
surer in her hands.

She looked up at Agent Baker whom she hadn't dismissed yet.

"Is this the original wrapping?"

"That is procedure. It isn't evidence." Agent Baker reminded her.

The flyer announced the hours for the Jefferson Memorial during the
week Fourth of July holiday. There were no markings on it, but she
noted how the flyer's fold was so crisply creased under a day and time.
Scully leaned her head back against her pillow to ponder the events
since her hospitization. Jumping at her was her weird dream last week
and the Cigarette Smoking Man's answer to the question she growled
at him.

"Charley, I know, as head of my security team here, it galled you to
honor my request the other night."

"It still rankles." Agent Baker said dourly.

She held up her chain and crucifix for Agent Baker to clasp around
her neck.

"For the record, no one came."