A Few Witches Burning By Dom Parker (Domino F16@aol.com) Category: A Rating: PG-13 Disclaimer: I don't even know if I want to lay claim to this one yet...so it's probably just easier to give all the credit to CC, 1013 Productions and Fox and assure all human beings and lawyers reading this that I'm not making any money off it. Dammit. Dedication: To CW and DS, who have both held my hand while I write on more occasions then I'd like to remember Author's Notes: This story is the product of one of those insane impulses that drives fanfic writers to their computer keyboards at odd hours of the night after seeing an XF episode...you know, the impulse that demands you transfer your own frustrations onto one of the main characters in order to vent in a manner that will possibly result in feedback that does not include the word "suck" in it. Anyway, I wish I could say that this is a very deep, lyrical piece, but it's not. It's also not a romance because I can think of no plausible way to pull smoochy face from the 6th season's premiere. I can't even promise it won't suck, because I'm harboring a suspicion that it does. Feedback Plea: Throw me a friggin' bone here, people! * * * * Sometimes I really hate him. It goes beyond resentment and anger and hurt. I'm talking about actual hate. The desire to hurt him, to see him hurt, to cause him pain and to leave him for good. It's not even watered down loathing of his actions, but actual hate of him...as a person. Tonight I hate him. So why am I punishing myself? My body is screaming. My lungs are burning, my entire body shakes with over-exersion, but ultimately, it's the ripping pain in my side that doubles me over and halts my progress. My eyes are stinging from the sweat pouring into them, and I blink hard to clear them a little. From my position, bent over at the waist, I finally begin to pay attention to where I ended up. Wonderful. Just fucking wonderful. I'm in the middle of a darkened park. I'm in Washington DC, in the middle of a dark park. I am officially suicidal, because I am in Washington DC, in the middle of a dark park, and I am wearing sweat pants and a sports bra and I am not carrying my gun. Worst of all, I can't summon up any part of myself that cares that I am essentially a dare for any unsavory characters, in a place doubtlessly crawling with unsavory characters. The prospect of being raped and possibly killed isn't even registering as a blip on my emotional anxiety scale. I feel nothing. Thank you Fox Mulder. I start working with you as a regular woman with regular fears, and I end up an emotional ice cube with all the feeling of Al Gore on prozac. I can't decide what was worse about this god-awful case...not getting the X-Files back, Diana Fowley, Jeffery Spender, or Mulder's decision to freeze me out simply because I wouldn't tell the committee that I had proof that aliens were trying to colonize the planet and infect us all with a virus that would gestate into an EBE when I didn't. Sometimes Mulder's lapses in logic are too astounding to take seriously. Take for example how upset he got when I "resigned" from the Bureau when I was being reassigned to Salt Lake City. Supposedly, he was broken up because I was leaving him, abandoning him when he needed me most. Like hell. What the hell was I supposed to do for him in Utah? How was I supposed to contribute my part to the partnership? He feeds me some out there theory over the phone and I fax him a photocopy of 'the skeptical eyebrow'? Of course, that was just a warm-up for this last job he's done on us. I've just realized that Mulder and Diana Fowley are a very bad combination for my mental well-being. Fuck. I didn't want to think about her. The pain in my side has dulled to an only slightly agonizing ache and I begin to run again just to stop myself from feeling. I can't stop thinking, but the physical exertion keeps my emotions from engaging. Diane Fowley blazed into the picture with all the subtlety of Madonna. She wanted Mulder back and she wanted the X-Files back and to her credit, she made no efforts to disguise her aims to anyone. The X-Files she has, and it's more than likely she'll get Mulder back as well. I'm jealous of her, more jealous then I've ever been in my entire life. Not because of Mulder though. There are parts of Mulder she's simply incapable of exposing and taking, and the parts she might be able to have are decidedly shallow. No, I hate her because she has the X-Files, and she has no claim to them. I crucified myself for those damn files. I burned my bridges on the alter of the "truth" those files contained, and I added the lives of my sister, my daughter---and all my children that may have been---to the blaze for good measure. My integrity, my career, my reputation, my family, my friends and my social life are all ash. The X-Files are mine as much as they ever were Mulder's, and unlike Mulder, I'm dedicated to the notions of justice and truth for their own sake, and not my own personal vendetta against life and it's inherent cruelties. Diana Fowley has given nothing for those files, and she has no claim to them. Sitting in her file cabinets is my blood and tears and life and the notion of her waltzing in and simply taking them on a whim is enough to have me seeing green. I hate Diana because of Mulder too. I hate that she made me hate him. She showed me how weak he could be, how ready he is to throw away the real truth, what we are and how I feel about him, for the easy path--- someone who will whisper into his ear how brilliant he is, and how he's always right, and that I am not being supportive enough for not accepting his alien tangents without proof. I hate coming face-to-face, yet again, with the fact that Mulder will stampede over me if I'm in the way of what he wants. He wants to see aliens, and if I stand in his way, blocking his view with my pesky insistence on some sort of scientific evidence, than he'll run me down. I hate the way Diana brings out the worst in him. Mulder is selfish and arrogant and often neither noble nor honest. She not only allows him to be this way, she encourages it. The quest shouldn't be about proving the existence of extraterrestrial life. Who gives a flying fuck, in the greater scheme of things, if there's little gray men or not? Mulder loves to say that it would change everything in our world...how? What would truly change? A new threat to mankind? Would evil cease to be evil, or good good? Would the earth stop on it's axis, and would society crumble? The quest should be about truth and justice, but she doesn't insist on that. She feeds into, and justifies his selfish desire for there to be aliens---born out of his need to think that whatever took his sister was too big, too advanced, for him to stop. He hopes to absolve himself by proving that whoever, or whatever took Samantha was beyond him. Diana encourages Mulder to fight for himself and his own needs and to block out the rest of the world, and it makes him an ugly person. I hate Diana for what she makes me into. I hate feeling insecure, and I hate that she can undermine our whole partnership by offering him what amounts to empty lip service. I hate that I become so afraid of losing him to her and her admiring looks and the fact that she nods at everything he says and claims to believe in him, that I lose my backbone and become a coward. I should have slapped some sense into him but I was afraid to because treating him too harshly would send him running to her. Maybe that's why I'm running too fast and not pacing myself in a dark park in the middle of the night. Maybe that's why the pain feels like a validation and a twisted pleasure. Maybe that's why I'm punishing myself...because I hate myself sometimes. I used to know who I was. I used to be able to say exactly who Dana Scully was, and my recitation wouldn't be limited to titles and degrees. A bitter laugh huffs out past my lips. Who am I? Special Agent Dr. Dana Scully. I'm an agent with the FBI, I'm a medical doctor specializing in forensic pathology, I'm Agent Mulder's partner, I'm qualified to perform the autopsy myself... Anymore, I'm doubting that there's a woman in there somewhere. I really liked being my father's Starbuck. I respected myself, back then. I didn't depend on anyone, but I cared for people, and they cared for me. I had friends, and my family was proud of me. My father wouldn't know me now. He wouldn't like me either. I'm cold and hard and my only emotional weakness is a man who hurts me as easily as he says my name, and begins the heal me only when I'm in immediate danger of shattering into a million pieces. Ahab would hate what I've become---that I've become the ice queen everyone accuses me of being, simply to protect myself from my world. Ahab was who he was; as implacable and unchanging as the seas he sailed, and I never saw anything alter that. He tried to instill in all of us a deep sense of self that would survive any onslaught. I tried to protect that person he'd raised me to be by freezing out my emotions and isolating that part of myself away from my day-to-day life. I locked it away to protect if from the siege of Mulder and life on the X-Files, and now I've lost the key. He would be so disappointed in me and I have to hate that about myself too. Unlike Mulder, I take no satisfaction wallowing in self-loathing. In fact, I find it a distinctly unpleasant experience. In a vain attempt to drive out the demons nipping at my heels, I speed up, pushing my body to the absolute limit. I've lost all form and am simply fleeing, my footing uneven, breaths taken in ragged gasps. My hair is slicked back against my head with sweat, and despite the cool night air my body burns and my skin drips. A distant part of my mind warns me that if I don't stop soon I'm going to dehydrate and simply collapse. I run anyway. I run until I can't run anymore and I stumble to a shuddering, gasping halt. Exhaustion has rendered my brain a welcome blank, leaving me strangely numb. The numbness persists as I make my way to a boulevard on shaking legs and hail a cab, giving the driver my address. Leaning my hot forehead against the cool panes of glass in the back-seat, I stare at my reflection, pale and insubstantial, hating it's weakness.