Title. Cognition Email. IndigoMuse@aol.com Rating. G Category. MSRish. 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 critisism absorbed. IndigoMuse@aol.com