Title - Personal
Author - Jessica
E-Mail address - JessLB@aol.com
Rating - PG (for some swear words, but nothing too extreme)
Category - V, A
Spoiler - Obvious ones from Two Fathers/One Son and Fight the
Future; pretty much anything else is fair game, too, but nothing
substantial.
Summary - Scully contemplates her partnership with Mulder in
wake of the events from One Son.
Feedback: All questions, comments, and death threats accepted. As
a first-time fanfic author, I'd like to know if what I write is any
good. 


Personal
~ Jessica
2/19/99


I could kill him.

I really could.

If I were a smart woman, I'd do it.

I should leave him. Just walk out the damn door and never look
back.

And I'm tempted.

*Very* tempted.

If I did either of those things, I know my life could be better. No
more late night phone calls or chasing little green aliens. Excuse
me -- grey.

No more being infected with an extraterrestrial biological virus.
No more racking up my frequent flyer miles on my way out to
Nowhere, USA to hunt down flukemen or vampires or ghosts on
Christmas Eve. Vampires....He slept with a woman he thought was
a vampire once, while I was missing. Christine or Kristin or
something. He doesn't know I looked at the file, so I've kept it to
myself.

No more monthly trips to the ER with gunshot wounds while one
of us paces outside the OR praying that He'll give the other a
second chance. No more running from the men who gave me my
cancer. No more infertility or pain at having lost the daughter I
never knew I wanted until she died in my arms. The list could go
on.

But I can't kill or leave him. As much as I hate to admit it, I can't. I
won't. I tried to once before and where did it land us? In his
hallway, on the verge of a long-awaited kiss that quite possibly
could be have been the best thing to happen to me since
chocolate ice cream, followed by a bee sting and an untimely trip
to Antarctica, a la the same men who almost killed us numerous
times. We haven't talked about it, so I decided to let it go. I really
did want to kiss him that day. The memory of it is almost enough
to make me forget why I'm pissed off at him. Almost.

Diana and Dana. The past versus the present. Evil, calculating,
manipulating bitch versus the caring, skeptical-but-always-willing-
to-hear-yet-another-theory partner. Separated by one letter, one
little tiny i. When I first began to realize that there was a definite
past between Diana and Mulder, I have to admit that I was a little
taken aback. It doesn't take a genius to spy the coincidence
between our names. Of course, I can't vocalize that opinion; I don't
have the right. I'm nothing to Mulder, and he's nothing to me.

Well, that's not exactly true. He's my best friend, and I know I'm
the same to him. That doesn't necessarily mean that I mean as
much to him as he does to me. Still.

I admit it completely: I *was* making it personal. It *is* personal.
My only motivation to go digging on Diana was out of some
feminine instinct to claw the eyes out of the competition. So when
the Gunmen showed me that screen with the peppy picture of my
nemesis, my instinctual reaction was to call Mulder, get his ass
down there, and prove to him once and for all that she wasn't on
his side.

He's so damn blind sometimes. He can find a theory out of
anything; give him a shovel, plant him in the desert, tell him the
truth is out there, and he'll start digging, I think I told him once.
But tell him an ex-girlfriend is quite possibly not the innocent he'd
like to remember her as, and he laughs in your face.

Sometimes I wonder if he knows what power he holds over me.
Don't get me wrong; I'm not some clingy woman who needs
constant approval by the man in her life. Not by a long shot. But
somehow, Mulder holds the power to break or make me. Anyone
else compliments me, say, and I'll roll my eyes. Mulder does it and
I have to hide a blush. If a girlfriend broke plans as much as
Mulder did, I'd tell her how I felt and end the friendship then and
there. He ditches me, and I either wait impatiently for him to
return to me with his new theory, or I go after him.

"You're making this personal, Scully."

Damn right. What was it he said to me once, "What will it take,
Scully, for the truth to come and bite you on your ass"? That's
Mulder, ever the eloquent speaker. I think I've tried, once or twice,
to put it into perspective, to try to figure out why exactly it's so
personal to me. And then it bit me on the ass, if you will: it's
always been personal to me. It was personal with Phoebe, with
Detective White, with Lucy and with her, I knew it was just his
brotherly instinct, and now with Diana. Over the years, somehow, I
had begun to think of Mulder as mine, and Fowley's re-entrance
into the picture fairly threatened that view.

I wonder if he knows how much he can hurt me. Apparently not. I
don't really know what I had expected. For him to throw up his
hands, shout, "Okay, Scully!" and waltz off into the golden sunset
with me? This is real life, not Titanic. I understand where he's
coming from, to a certain point. Hell, didn't I do the same thing
with Jack Willis six years ago? But that was different; it was. Jack
wasn't a threat to our lives, there wasn't a sneaking suspicion that
he was working with the same people who could very well kill us
with the flick of a wrist.

So when he gave me that Look, the look that said "You're going to
have to do better than that, Scully," I was hurt. Who wouldn't be?
So I told him how I felt and left. He left. I watched him go. I
waited for my cell to ring. It was silent for nearly three hours. I
don't know what he did during that time, and I guess I don't really
want to know.

When I finally worked up enough self-confidence to call him and
tell him what Spender had told me, what did he say? "I'm with
Diana." Was that me, or was there the slightest bit of hesitation
when he said that name? Perchance Mulder isn't as blind as he
appears to be. I didn't ask why he was with her. I don't think I even
want to know.
Who the hell am I kidding, it's killing me not knowing.

I should leave him.

God, what a jealous creature Dana Katherine Scully has turned out
to be. This is like prom night with Marcus all over again. I should
leave. Walk out the door, never come back.

If I did, I'd never get a phone call at midnight from him needing
reassurance that I was there. I wouldn't have to hear my mother
listing his good points in an effort to set me up. I wouldn't have the
opportunity of pulling off of the road at night on our way to a case
and watching him sleep. I wouldn't be able to brush back that lock
of hair that always falls in his eyes and soothe his fears away when
he's in the grips of yet another nightmare. I wouldn't walk into
work every morning and feel my heart skip a beat when I see him
lounging his chair.

So I stay. I forgave him, I think, the minute I got pissed off at him.
Because while he's an obsessive, compulsive, unbalanced
workaholic, he's Mulder. And he's my Mulder. He never said he
was sorry. Not in so many words. He called me on my cell
phone after we heard of Agent Spender's apparent suicide.

"Where are you?"

"I'm on my way home, Mulder. Why?"

"Nothing, nothing. I was just wondering if you had plans."

"You coming on to me, Agent Mulder?"

I could feel his grin miles away. "Pizza okay?"

"Pizza's fine. And Mulder?"

We both said it at the same time. "No anchovies." I smiled, turning
the phone off, and put the car in park. It was apology enough.

It was only hours later, when I felt myself dozing on his couch, the
TV muted and glowing brightly in the dark room, his arm lazily
thrown around my shoulders, that I realized I had unconsciously
been driving to his apartment.

So I forgave him.

I guess I really was on my way home after all.


Fini.