Date: Tue, 10 Feb 1998

No Longer The Path
AUTHOR:Nikki February 1998

KEYWORDS: Mulder, Scully
CATEGORY: V, A
RATING: PG
SPOILERS: Not necessarily spoilers, but brief references to: Tooms,
The Blessing Way, Herrenvolk, Never Again, Redux II, Emily. Of
course, the whole story is based on a rumored spoiler for
the latter half of US Season 5.
SUMMARY: Mulder confronts Scully about information that she has been
witholding from him.
NOTES: Special thanks as always to Carly, Gerry, Traci, Raine and Sylvia.
FEEDBACK: Yes, please. nikoleaw@aol.com
ARCHIVE: Anywhere you'd like, just keep my info attached and let me know.
DISCLAIMER: The characters within are the property of Chris Carter, 1013
Productions and 20th Century Fox. I mean them no harm. This is done
for fun, not profit.

After six years, she still hadn't unlearned the habit of knocking on the
door before she came in. It was, after all, still his office, despite the amount
of time she spent there. Despite the presence of a desk and worktable which
held her computer and neatly organized files alongside a few cherished
family photos. Despite some invisible essence that she always left behind
that alerted others to the fact that this was a shared space. He knew, that
she still felt, in her mind, that this was his office, his space, and that she
should alert him prior to entering it.

She was reaching for the light switch when she heard a raspy "Don't." The
voice startled her, and she strained to see where in the office it was
coming from. He repeated it, stronger this time. "Don't. Just leave it off."

Scully felt the hairs on the back of her neck rise, although she had no idea
why she suddenly felt so uncomfortable. Fighting it off, she cautiously
stepped further into the office, careful to leave the door slightly open,
allowing a small shaft of the dull fluorescent light from the hallway to
enter and guide her.

"Mulder, are you alright? Do you have a headache?"

"No. I'm fine, Scully." His tone was acid and biting and his words, a
perverse echo of those spoken by her so many times, told her that something
dangerous lay ahead.

"I just like the darkness. I think we both do. It's much easier to hide
things in the dark, don't you think?"

But before she could ask another question, he flicked on a small desk lamp.
Her desk lamp.

"Mulder, why are you sitting at my desk? Did you finally lean back too far
and break your chair?" She knew her attempt at humor was weak at best,
but she hoped it would help to break the tension that she could feel
building like static in the air.

"No. I just wanted to make sure that you got this." He turned his palms
skyward and extended his arms forward as he gestured towards a plant that
was sitting on her desk.

"What? What is it? Some kind of plant?" She stepped closer to her desk.
She was reaching out to pick it up when Mulder's next words stopped her
cold.

"It's a going-away present, Scully. From Kimberly. See, she's going on
vacation for the next two weeks, and she wanted to be sure that she got it
to you before you left."

Scully closed her eyes for a second, and then picked up the plant, a small
rose cactus in bloom, and removed the small card that was nestled in a
plastic pitchfork in the dirt. A lovely card, with bold lettering brightly
proclaiming, "We'll Miss You--Best Wishes for your new life!"
And underneath, in Kimberly's looping
script, "Things won't be the same without you!" with a goofy smiley face
drawn in to emphasize the good-naturedness of the comment. She
continued to finger the small card as he continued.

"So, planning a new life, Scully? One that doesn't involve the Bureau? When
were you going to tell me? Or were you? Were you just not gonna show up
and leave me wondering what in the hell happened to you? Or were you gonna
wait until your last day and then just as you were leaving say, 'Oh and by
the way Mulder, I won't be back, ever.'"

His voice was rising in intensity, though not in volume, and Scully knew
that if she didn't say something soon, the situation was going to get out of
control.

She raised her head slightly to look at him. His head was raised, his chin
tilted at a defiant angle, allowing shadows to play on his barely
illuminated face, and obscuring his eyes from her view.
"No, Mulder. I was going to tell you.
But I wanted to wait until the time was right.
I had planned to take you out to dinner this weekend and tell you."

"Oh, so me, your partner, can't be told until the time is right, but
Skinner's secretary can just be told at any old time? Is that it?"

"Mulder, I didn't tell Kimberly I was leaving. I haven't told anyone other
than Skinner yet. I would suspect that he gave her the paperwork regarding
my pension and continuing my health insurance and things like that and
that's how she found out."

"So how long has he known?"

"I submitted my resignation about two weeks ago. I wanted to give
adequate...."

"Two weeks?" His voice was disbelieving. "You've known you were
leaving for two weeks, and in all that time, the 'right moment' to let me
know never came? And Skinner, we've had two meetings with him and he never
mentioned a word. What did you do? What'd you give him for his silence?"

Scully heard the hurtful accusation in Mulder's question. "Mulder,
please...try to understand, I wanted to have some time to think about what I
was going to say. To figure out how to explain to you why I have to do
this. And I knew you'd react like this, and I needed to prepare myself for
that as well. I asked Skinner not to say anything to you about it until
after I'd come to talk to him. He wasn't happy about it, but he had a
feeling about how you'd react, and frankly, I think he was grateful to be
able to put it off for a little while longer."

"How else am I supposed to react? Am I supposed to be happy? Am I
supposed to say, 'Gee Scully, I think it's great that you're abandoning all
the hard work we've done over the last six years! I'm so happy to find out
that you really didn't believe a damned thing I've said all these
years and now you're just giving up and walking away!'"

He forced himself up and out of her chair violently and stalked over to a
filing cabinet by his desk. Turning to face her he went on. "I'm really
excited to know that everything that we've seen and gone through means so
little to you now! It tickles me to think that searching for the truth
doesn't matter to you anymore! I'm just thrilled to know that you're
leaving me and...and..." He was shouting and out of breath.

Scully had seen him like this before. When he felt as if his search was
futile and everyone had conspired against him and there was no point in
going on, when his anger and pain merged together and became
indecipherable. She had expected an angry reaction from him, but not quite
like this.

"Mulder, I have to do this. I have to. I've cheated death too many times
now. I have to get out while I still can. It doesn't mean that I'm
abandoning you. It doesn't mean that I don't think that what we've done,
that what you do, isn't important. But it's not what I need to do."

She stepped closer to him, then stopped. "I've spent the last six months
thinking about this, about us, about what we do, this, search for the truth,
and how we do it." Scully paused, and the sadness in her next words almost
made Mulder forget his anger. "Mulder, I've found my truths. My truth is
that my sister is dead, killed by a bullet that was meant for me. My truth
is that I will spend the rest of life wondering if the remission will end.
My truth is that Emily is gone and so are my chances of ever having another
little girl like her to carry on for me."

In a stronger, more positive tone, one which reverberated with her need to
make him understand, she went on. "My truth is that I have to take what's
left of my life and make the best of it. That I need to bring some meaning
to these truths, and that I need to find answers for them, answers that I
can live with."

She'd seen him flinch with each admission, as if each one tore away another
small piece of his heart. "These things, my truths, are not your fault,
they're not my fault. Just as your truths, that Samantha is gone, that your
soul will never be at peace until you know how and why, aren't your fault
or my fault. They just are. The result of the actions of so many men from
so long ago. But not having any one individual to place the blame on
doesn't change my need to make sure that none of these horrible things
happened needlessly.

And I don't think that the X-Files, or even working with the FBI, is the
path for me to follow to those answers anymore." Her voice dropped and took
on a hint of a quaver as she took a few more steps towards Mulder. "And I
worry that, maybe, it's no longer the path for you either. That it hasn't
been, for a long time."

"Scully, I trusted you."

His voice spoke of late night surveillances, stray dollops of barbecue
sauce, tears at his mother's bedside, and so much more.

She didn't want to reopen a painful scar, but she needed to get him to see
things from her perspective. She knew he still felt guilty about having kept
the secret of her infertility from her and hoped that he could see the
parallel she wanted to draw.

"And I've always tried to be deserving of that trust, and to return it in
kind. I never meant to make you think otherwise. But you know, some times
you can't just tell someone something upsetting. Sometimes you have to
wait, and you hope that the person doesn't just find out, like I did with
Emily, or like you just did." She paused and sighed before continuing.
"I just needed time...time to make sure that I'd made the right decision,
before I told you. And I wanted it to be at the right time and place."

He looked at her intently for a few seconds, before reaching over to his
chair and retrieving his suit jacket. He put it on and brushed past her as
he stepped into the hall.

She turned and faced him, the light surrounding him from the hallway
making her blink as her eyes tried to adjust. "Mulder, please understand
that I'm not leaving you, or what you believe in so much as I'm trying to
get back to me."

"I want to believe you, Scully. But when I know how long and hard you
worked to get in the Bureau, the problems it caused you with your family,
for you to now just give it all up?

"I know you've told me before that not everything in your life is about me,
but it's hard for me to accept you saying that it's not me that you're
really leaving. I'd want to take one more long look at my reasons if I were
you." He took a step backwards and then said, "Lock up when you leave"
before he turned and quickly walked to the stairs, leaving her standing by
the door with the darkness from the office spilling into the hallway.

The End

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