GraceRealized.html

Grace Realized

By Michaela
Michaela@stny.rr.com

Rating: PG, unless the F-word gets an automatic R rating? Situationally, it’s
PG.
Category: MSR, A
Spoilers: Beyond the Sea, Paper Clip, Wetwired, and as-yet undetermined fourth
season references, most notably Leonard Betts and Memento Mori as the story
continues. That pretty much gives you an idea of where THIS story is headed!
But in my alternate, although no-happier little universe, there is no
Gethsemane.
Keywords: Angst. Angst. And more angst. And that’s even before a character
dies. Sorry.
Summary: What if death isn’t the worst thing that can happen to you?

Author’s Note: I’ve always wanted to have one. An author’s note, I mean. So
there it is…No, seriously, folks, this is my first true attempt at fan fiction
(a real-life X-Phile vignette doesn’t count as fiction, in my mind) so please,
be gentle. I’ve had an enormous amount of fun(?), angst and general writer’s
trauma putting this one together, but to paraphrase Scully "I wouldn’t change
a day…Well, except maybe that hard-drive crash. I could have lived without
that one." <g> Some of you are going to hate this I myself break out in
nervous hives whenever a character dies in fan fiction, so I still don’t
entirely understand how I wrote this. In part, I was inspired by a rather
courageous young man and his family who lived and died just a little bit this
way. And maybe I was feeling just a little snarky at Chris Carter (*Five
months* without a new episode?! Are you EVIL?!?!) and decided to beat him to
the punch and kill his character myself, since he’ll never be crazy enough to
do it.

Oh, and I have to take this moment, before you step into the abyss, to thank
Anna Otto, fellow fan fic author, talented writer and my favorite Russian
goddess! She was the first (and last…sniff, sniff) to send me her kind praise
for my little reality vignette, and she’s been keeping me in line ever since.
(You should have seen her crack the whip on getting *this* story out the
door!) <g> Seriously, Anna, your suggestions, your encouragement and your
praise are the reason this story is finally getting posted! Thanks a million,
and keep a cup of Starbuck’s coffee warm for me in Seattle I’ll get there
eventually!

Disclaimer: Ewww, I really have to do one of these? Fine, but I’m setting it to
song (albeit weakly)…

(To the tune of "Dixie")

Ohhh, Fox and Dana I only borrow,
I’ll give them back before tomorrow,
Get away, get away, get away
Fox lawyers.

Chris Carter is the true, real owner
But on the ‘Net they are on loaner,
Get away, get away, get away
Fox lawyers.

Oh, I wish I had the money,
Hooray, hooray
I’d buy the show and make my dough
With Fox and Dana kissing.
Oh no, Oh no,
Oh I don’t have the money.

Sooo, there is no point in really suing,
For profit this I am not doing.
Get away, get away, get away,
Fox lawyers.

<<<sigh>>>
Still with me? Okay…here we go!
***************************
"Every moment in life, whether born of joy or born of sorrow, has the potential
for grace realized."
Author Unknown
***************************
Title: Grace Realized
Author: Michaela

She’d decided she was going to have to kill him.

She was an FBI agent and a medical doctor. She could do it. She could make it
look like an accident. Hell, she could make it look like a damn X-File if she
wanted to.

And the irony of that would not be lost on her wayward partner. It would be
nice, Dana Scully reasoned with the sort of eerie detachment that, throughout
the course of history, women have always mastered and men will always fear. It
was something Fox Mulder could let his eidetic mind mull over (Death by
X-File? Maybe Jose Chung would write it…) while she filleted his balls into
chicken feed with a dull butter knife.

To say Dana Scully was furious would be the most pedantic of understatements.
To say she was a boiling cauldron of pure primordial rage, spitting venomous
lava and capable of destroying entire cities with one scorching blast of her
blue eyes, leaving mere mortals quaking in her wake…well, you were circling
the neighborhood.

Scully had learned at a very young age to keep her emotions in check, the
dutiful daughter of a naval officer. She’d honed the skill as a medical
student, and her often-precarious position within the Federal Bureau of
Investigation had required her poker face to be the most reached-for weapon in
her personal arsenal. It had saved her ass almost as many times as her gun
had.

But there were those days, those exceptionally rare days, when Scully’s
stronger emotions simply refused to stay tucked away neatly behind the mask.
And on this particular day, the emotions steaming out were enough to make the
other agents in the corridor the tall, strapping, ridiculously masculine
ones, the ones who always gave her the speculative look that stripped her of
her professional credentials and made her a pin-up girl it was enough to
make them do a double-take, and look away. Quickly. And find something else to
do. Far away.

This alone might have made the whole experience worth it for Scully. But she
was too angry to notice.

The closed basement office door was suddenly in front of her nose and she
realized she had no firm recall of storming down the stairs or stalking
through the hallway to get there. She stopped, took a breath, then another.
Felt the corner of the "mask" slip near her lips and darted her tongue into
the corner of her mouth, flicking her tongue against the tender crease in a
nervous habit she adopted whenever she was agitated, whenever she had to make
sure her emotions were in check. Ran her palm over the crown of her head,
smoothing any red strands that might be considering mutiny. Made sure her
small, golden cross was perfectly centered in the hollow of her throat.

Dana Scully, Master of Control.

She opened the door.

"Good mornin’, Scully," Fox Mulder said laconically from his seat behind the
desk, feet propped on a stack of paperwork that he would never get around to
filing, a coffee mug in one hand and yet-another cattle mutilation photograph
in the other.

"Good morning." Calm, cool, no tremor that might betray her anger.
<Emmy-winning material right here, my friends,> Scully thought.

She focused every ounce of her concentration on walking to her desk and laying
down her briefcase and laptop computer as casually as she did every morning,
unpacking the contents, preparing for her day. Everything’s fine. Everything’s
normal. Nothing to see here, folks. Everything’s just peachy-fucking keen.

"How was your weekend?" Mulder asked, his eyes never leaving the picture in his
hands.

Until he heard the crash just behind his right ear.

It took him about 5 more seconds than he really needed to put together what had
happened. His hazel eyes scanned his desk, the floor around him, while his
mind sorted out the details. Loud crash. Glass. Plastic. A metal thud. The
filing cabinet behind him dented. A laptop keyboard on the floor beside his
chair, brutally severed on impact from its liquid crystal symbiote.

She’d thrown her laptop at him.

The damn laptop. Out of its soft-cover case.

At his *head*.

"Scully—"

"You son of a bitch!!!"

This surprised him more than anything, not just the words, but the tone. Scully
was a shrieking virago. She was throwing things at him. Swearing. Screaming.
Mulder glanced swiftly at the floor to make sure it hadn’t suddenly shifted to
quicksand when he wasn’t looking. No such luck.

"Scully—"

"Shut up, Mulder! Just shut up!" Her face was red, her eyes blazing, her voice
achieving a decibel level he’d only heard a few times in his life on Icy
Cape when they’d held their weapons on each other in the ultimate
demonstration of distrust; just before he’d crashed through the door and found
Scully and Skinner staring down the lengths of each other’s gun barrels; under
the influence of subliminal telecommunications evil, when she’d become
convinced that Mulder was out to get her. Come to think of it, the only time
he *had* ever heard her scream like this, she always had a weapon drawn. His
eyes darted nervously to her holster, strapped to her slender ribcage
underneath her blazer.

Luther Boggs would have recognized Dana Scully’s emotional state, although his
gassed remains were rotting in some anonymous cemetery, yet another criminal
buried by the state in a paltry grave, making it unlikely that he was going to
give Mulder any helpful hints. She’d come storming into Luther’s jail cell
once, desperate and frayed around the edges, and had vowed that she’d
personally throw the switch at his execution if Mulder died from Luther’s
machinations. She’d actually screamed at him, something that Luther, the
ultimate "people watcher" (How else did one fake being a psychic, after all,
but by reading the reactions of the people asking the questions?), would not
have expected of her. Not this petite, by-the-book redheaded woman. He’d been
surprised, although he’d covered it well. But admittedly, it had thrown him
and Luther Boggs was a man who had spent a Thanksgiving holiday murdering his
family, then sitting down to supper and football among the corpses. Not
exactly a man who shocked easily, by his own admission.

He’d misjudged this little redhead by an obscene magnitude.

And now it was Mulder’s turn. Boggs was probably laughing his ass off in hell.

"How was my weekend? *How was my weekend, Mulder*?!" Scully’s voice was
trembling, seemingly in synch with the shimmering waves of rage that were
almost visible to the eye. She was humming like a tuning fork after it has
sounded, leaving that barely audible, timpanic resonance in the air.

"Yeah," Mulder said cautiously, his voice soft, confused…afraid? Absolutely.
He’d amended his earlier opinion he’d *never* seen her like this, not even
when she had suspected him of treachery during the
subliminal-TV-impulse-from-hell case. At least then he’d figured out where the
hell her behavior was coming from. This…this was terrifying.

"How do you *think* my weekend was, Mulder?" she asked in an awful, quiet
voice.

<Not so good?> He bit back the glib reply, seeing how close she was standing to
her desk, to the stapler, her coffee mug, a lamp. <When the hell did her desk
become an arsenal?> Mulder wondered wildly. Instead, his gaze directed at the
floor, where it was safer -- where he didn’t have to stare at this woman he
didn’t even recognize -- he made some noncommittal, throat-clearing sound in
the back of his throat.

"How could you, Mulder? How could you?"

Mulder snapped his head up, his hazel eyes searching for and locking on hers.
Her tone had been softer, nonviolent, but still not like anything he’d heard
before. It trembled. It sounded so hurt. She was staring at him, the most
guilelessly betrayed look in the blue pools of her eyes. Her hair was mussed
from her exertions, a strand falling against her flushed cheek. He responded
instinctively, rising from the chair in a fluid, rapid motion that brought him
closer to her.

"What did I do, Scully?"

She laughed, mirthless and defeated.

"As if you don’t know."

"I *don’t* know, Scully. What do you think I did?" Mulder was moving closer to
her now, carefully, as if she were a skittish colt.

"I don’t *think*, Mulder, I *know*. I saw you."

"What did you see, Scully?" It seemed so important to keep saying her name, and
only in part because he knew it was a viable psychological technique in crisis
situations. It was also a comfort to him, as if to verbally remind himself
that this woman before him was still his partner, still his best friend,
still…his.

"How could you?" Scully repeated, this time in a tear-choked whisper. He shook
his head, at a loss for words, completely and utterly at a loss. She glanced
around the room wildly, as if searching for a weapon, and Mulder took another
step forward, as if to restrain her. But instead, she seemed to be searching
for words. She met his gaze again. "She’s my sister, Mulder. Why would you do
that?"

"What?"

"Why my sister? Why not…" She trailed off, looking away, shaking her head.
Mulder watched her warily, desperately turning every word she’d spoken over
and over in his head like a puzzle box, trying to make sense of it. She didn’t
really think he’d killed Melissa Scully, did she? She couldn’t really believe
that. And why now? Why two years later?

"You don’t think I had anything to do with…" He couldn’t bring himself to
continue.

"Melissa, Mulder! Melissa! Don’t you even remember her name?!" She’d shouted
again and he jerked his head back, as if it were a physical blow. Bewildered
and frustrated, he snapped back.

"Dammit, Scully, of course I remember her! I stood by her bedside "

"Shut up. I don’t want to hear about you and her, I saw it with my own eyes, in
your apartment, not even 48 hours ago! Don’t lie to me! Don’t even try, or I
swear I will hate you for the rest of my life," Scully vowed, and her eyes
were wet, but her gaze was scorching.

"Jesus Christ, what are you talking about? What did you see this weekend in my
apartment?"

"I saw you, Mulder." Scully’s voice was quiet again. "I saw you…making love to
my sister."

Mulder reeled back, horrified. Stunned. Ready to vomit. I’m hallucinating, he
thought in a maelstrom of panicked thoughts, clutching at the edge of the desk
to steady himself . I’m dreaming. Gotta be. She didn’t actually say that I
took her sister to bed two years after she *died*. She didn’t really say
that. Doesn’t really *think* that. She can’t.

He took a deep breath. Swallowed hard. She was glaring at him in fury and some
sort of triumph, apparently interpreting his reaction as an admission of
guilt. He felt horrified, the hairs prickling up on the nape of his neck.

"Scully," he said finally, and his voice was so terribly quiet. "Scully. You
didn’t see me with your sister this weekend. How could I? Your sister…Melissa
died two years ago."

She went utterly still, her gaze boring into his and he found that, for the
first time ever, he couldn’t see what she was feeling in those expressive
eyes. Except shock, and that was the one thing he’d hoped he wouldn’t see.
<She didn’t know. Somehow…somehow, she didn’t remember that her sister is
dead. Sweet Jesus.> She said nothing. She was perfectly, completely still, as
if even her heart had stopped beating. <How is it possible for someone to be
that still?>

"Oh my God," Scully breathed, absorbing his words.

"Oh my God," Mulder swore simultaneously, lurching toward her. A small gusher
of blood had just begun pouring out of her nose, like there had been a small
explosion in her brain, and was spattering down on her simple white blouse
like deadly rain.

She was oblivious, not even noticing. She was hearing his words as if they’d
been delayed by satellite transmission. And suddenly she knew. Melissa was
dead. Of course she was. She knew that. How had she not known that? How had
she ever forgotten? How had she…

Mulder caught her in his arms just before she hit the floor.

Chapter Two: Grace Realized

Author: Michaela

The words marched relentlessly through Dana Scully's brain, pounding behind her forehead, seemingly in collusion with the headache that already resided there and was beating its own insistent rhythm. <Not true. Not true. Not true. Not true.>

She opened her eyes almost without realizing they'd been closed, and stared at the doctor who was watching her now with the most concerned of expressions. She was sitting on the hospital bed they'd brought her to, still in her tailored suit, perched on the uttermost edge of the mattress as if on the verge of flight. Perhaps she was. She had never wanted to run from a hospital more desperately than she wanted to right now, and God only knew she had plenty of other visits to compare it to. Hers. Mulder's. His mother's. Her sister's…

How had she forgotten Melissa's death? How? When she had thought that memory charred and sooty on the flesh of her brain. When every moment of it had been - and at this very moment was *still* -- as precisely defined as a razor's edge in her mind's eye. Scully could still remember the lingering smell of gun powder mingling with the scent of Missy's skin when she'd bent to kiss her still form in the hospital bed. The specific timbre of one of the nurse's voices outside Missy's room. The exact texture of the sheets covering Missy's body. In Melissa's death, she had Mulder's eidetic memory: It was not something she would ever forget. But she had…

"Miss Scully?" The doctor gently appealed for her attention, and she surrendered it to him only with the greatest reluctance, forcing her gaze up the perfect white of his lab coat and perfectly knotted tie to his gray eyes - such a perfect, unflecked gray, she noted with odd detachment - and flicked her glance upward briefly to his perfectly-coifed brown hair. <I hate doctors who look too neat,> she thought with a vehemence that was startling, since the thought had never occurred to her before. <Makes me wonder if he'd be willing to crack my chest open to save my life because it might get messy.>

"Yes?" Scully said finally. <Not true. Not true. Not true. Not true.>

"Are you all right?"

I'm fine. The thought was automatic, so ingrained into her personality that it was trying to force its way between her lips before she could even consider its truth. No. No, I am not fine. No. You just told me I'm not. Scully slammed her usual reply back onto its mental shelf, giving the doctor a look so incredulous, so scathing, he rocked back on his heels.

"What do you think, Doctor?" she hissed with uncharacteristic hostility. "You've just told me I'm losing my mind. I'm losing my *goddamn* mind. That before this cancer kills me, it's going to suck me dry. Take every memory. Drain me of everything I know or remember or love. I'll be dead long before my body ever figures it out. So tell me, Doctor, do you fucking *think* I'm all right?"

"Scully-"

She turned her head toward Mulder so quickly that her neck spasmed its protest. For the first time in the four years that she'd known him, she'd forgotten he was there, standing beside her as loyally as he ever had. She had not been achingly aware of his presence as she always was. This was as strange as everything else on this day. She was in hell, she was trapped in a hell more horrible than any she could have devised herself, and she'd forgotten about Mulder. She felt guilty for forgetting him, then felt angry about the guilt. She was in hell. Mulder would have to forgive her if she was too busy dancing with the devil to hand him the sheet music.

"Mulder." The tone was flat, not conveying all the subtle nuances that usually swam in the rhythm of her voice saying his name. He would willingly drown in the sound of his own name coming from her lips - but now, nothing. Nothing to give him any idea of how…He looked into her eyes, and immediately regretted it.

Pain. It was the pain in her eyes. Pain so huge, so ravenous, that it reached out from those pale eyes and grabbed him with vise-like claws by the throat, choking him even as it must be suffocating her, gnawing on him as it devoured her whole. She was dying inside, not from the cancer, but from the prognosis the doctor had given her. He could see it in her eyes, as expressively as if she'd spoken the words aloud or whispered them into his ear alone.

He couldn't speak. Wasn't capable. But his eyes spoke volumes back to her and she found some strength in it. In him. <Oh my God, Scully thought. Someday I won't remember the way he's looking at me right now, like the most beautiful, most tragic poem in the world is written his eyes.>

"Miss Scully?" The doctor touched her arm to get her attention and she stiffened imperceptibly before dragging her gaze away from Mulder's and looking at him. "Do you understand what I'm telling you, about your cancer?"

"Did I not mention that I am a medical doctor?" Scully replied sarcastically. She knew she was being unfair - this anger, it wasn't about the doctor. It wasn't about Mulder. It wasn't about her. It was about this cancer, this thing growing inside of her body, threatening parts of her that were more precious to her than life. But dammit, getting angry at the cancer wasn't going to help. She'd spent months being angry with the cancer, and where the hell had it gotten her? Right here in another hospital bed.

He nodded understandingly, his eyes indicating he understood where this hostility was coming from, and Scully wanted to laugh and cry. Sympathy. Empathy. Detachment. He was being a perfectly fine physician. So why did she want to lock her hands around his throat, and squeeze it until she felt his vertebrae snap one by one? Ha. Maybe she could blame on the cancer.

<Sorry, Your Honor, I didn't really mean to strangle my physician. But this tumor in my head was talking to me, and suggested I give it a try. So I thought, what the hell? It can happen. Ed Jerse's tattoo talked to him. He gets a talking tattoo. I get a tumor. Where's the justice in that?> She smiled. It wasn't a pretty smile.

"How long?" she said finally, her voice husky. She looked away from him, staring at the wall, feeling somehow that if she could pretend no one else was in the room when she heard the words, they wouldn't be completely true.

"Six weeks optimally, I think. No more than two months. Your tumor-"

"It's not mine, Doctor," she interrupted in a monotone, still staring at the wall. "I don't own it. I don't want it."

"The tumor," the doctor corrected smoothly, "is growing exponentially. It's putting pressure on your brain. And what we didn't consider is that it would cause…brain damage…before it grew to…fatal proportions." He was having trouble now, this perfect doctor. It upset even him, the great impartial one, to deliver news like this to an obviously bright, vibrant young woman. "We can expect for you to have memory lapses similar to the one you experienced earlier today. Behavior uncharacteristic of your personality. Possibly hallucinations. The symptoms will become more and more frequent until…"

"Until I stop being me altogether."

"Until your brain is damaged to the point where you will, most likely, slip into a painless coma. You will sleep. It won't be painful, Miss Scully."

"Only to the people watching it," she replied, and she turned her head finally to look at Mulder. He was utterly expressionless. Pale. Gray around the eyes and lips. She wondered suddenly if he was going to faint. <Get him out of here. Get him moving. Keep him busy.> There you go, Special Agent Dana Scully, protecting her partner once again. "Mulder, I…I need you to call my mother."

His eyes widened. Panic. She recognized it, pitied him just a little…Who wanted to deliver news like this to a mother? Particularly a mother who had suffered as much as Margaret Scully had the past few years. But she needed him to leave the room. For his own sake. And for hers. Because, frankly, she wasn't sure how much longer she was going to be able to hold it together. And since Mulder had been an unfortunate bystander at her little "memory lapse" earlier that day, she didn't see a need for him to watch her hit a new high on the stark-raving-hysterical emotional spectrum, too.

"Please, Mulder. I…I can't."

Hearing Dana Scully admit that she couldn't do something was something akin to telling Fox Mulder that Barry Manilow was the fourth Lone Gunman - it tilted his entire world on its axis. Scully didn't have weaknesses. She was strong. She could do anything. So to hear her say that she needed him…He rose without a word, gave her a succinct nod <Thy will be done> and walked out the door.

"We'll need to get you checked in, Dr. Scully," the doctor said once Mulder had left. She startled. She'd forgotten he was there. She wondered if that was considered a tumor-related memory lapse or if she simply had other things on her mind. <Ha! On my mind, in my mind…> Where *had* this morbid sense of humor come from, Scully wondered absently.

"What?" she asked him, only half-listening still. She was more attuned to this strange sense of peace that had come suddenly out of nowhere to sideswipe her, then envelop her in gossamer wings. This…this felt *wonderful*. Where the hell had it come from?

"We'll need to arrange for your admission into the hospital," Dr. "Perfect" said with his now-annoying gentleness.

"No, thank you," Scully said politely, as if she were declining tea rather than refusing medical advice. She was listening, listening to herself breathe, listening to her heart thud comfortingly in her ears, listening to her blood pump. She felt a serenity that seemed to obliterate everything else she'd felt, making it seem irrelevant and useless.

"But, Dr. Scully-"

"I'm going home." She stood up, braced herself for dizziness but felt none, and took strength from that, too. She would leave this hospital stronger than when she came in. What a refreshing change of pace. "I'm going home," she repeated, as if for good measure.

"Over time, Dr. Scully, your care is going to become too advanced for home care, as the tumor-"

"I'm going home," she repeated with utter calm. She slipped into her blazer, tugging on the cuffs, buttoning the front with crisp, efficient movements. <See me. I'm still here. I'm still Dana Katherine Scully. You'll remember me this way.> She looked up at him, almost smiling at the stymied expression on his face. "Frankly, doctor, if you'll pardon the expression, I'm sick to death of hospitals. I won't spend my last…my last memories aren't going to be of this room, and this equipment, and doctors and nurses. In fact, I've already started praying for the time that I forget this moment ever existed."

She headed for the door, proud that she was walking, proud that her nose hadn't taken that moment to spring a leak and ruin the whole damn effect. She was doing it. She was carrying on. And she really believed it.

"I'm glad I met you, Dr. Scully," the doctor said in a soft voice, awed by this strength of character. She turned, gave him a smile that she usually reserved for her mother, or Mulder when he was rousing from yet-another deathbed slumber. The bright smile. The pretty smile.

"I'm glad you met me too, doctor," she said blithely, and pushed out the door. To find Mulder.

***********************************************

Chapter Three: Grace Realized

Author: Michaela

"Mulder, stay with me."

For as long as Mulder lived - and admittedly there were times in his life when he prayed it wasn't long - he would remember those words. The exact way she'd said them, the inflection, the tone, the cadence of her voice. He would remember forever that Dana Scully had whispered those words. To *him*. Fox Mulder.

And he would feel the same humbling, almost embarrassing wave of gratitude sweep over him as it had the first time, making him want to fall to his knees and thank whatever god might be listening that she'd said them. And meant them.

It wasn't the first time he'd ever heard those words from a woman's lips, but certainly never from Dana Scully. And, perhaps for the only time in his life, hearing the words hadn't had sexual connotations. Hadn't meant "Stay with me tonight in this bed and make love to me" or even "Stay with me and let's have mind-blowing sex on the washing machine." Frankly, in comparison, it would have been trite.

Instead, when Scully looked up at him from beneath tousled red hair, curled up on her couch, cradling a cup of fragrant tea between perpetually-chilled hands, and she'd whispered "Stay with me, Mulder"…it had been the single most amazing moment of his life. Because what she'd meant was "I need you, Mulder." "I don't want to be without you, Mulder, not now, not ever. Not for as long as I have left."

He would have willingly handcuffed himself to the nearest heavy appliance to make sure no one ever took him away.

Not that this was necessary. She'd asked, he'd stayed. No one showed up to drag him away.

It had been a week since "Dr. Perfect" - as Scully had rather humorously taken to calling him aloud - had given her the prognosis. Seven days since she'd insisted Mulder take her home. Five days since she'd handed in her resignation to a visibly shaken Walter Skinner. And two days since she'd revised her will, despite Mulder's admittedly feeble protests that she was giving up.

But they both knew she wasn't giving up. And she wasn't giving in. All of a sudden, Scully had the answers, or better put, the lack of questions, for the first time in her life. She felt more at peace, more certain, than she had in her entire adult life; certainly more so than she'd ever felt during 5 years of the X-Files. She'd been right that night in Betty Hagopian's house, but not how she'd meant it then: The truth *was* inside her. But it didn't have to make sense. It just had to *be*.

She was living with grace. Dying with dignity. It was no less than anyone would have expected, least of all Fox Mulder.

Mulder had come to see her that Monday afternoon, a week after her prognosis, having given up on the very *extreme* possibility that he would be able to concentrate on an X-File when her empty desk taunted him across a room that suddenly seemed devoid of oxygen. So he'd tossed the paperwork onto a rickety table, grabbed his coat, driven all the way across town to buy a particular brand of herbal tea that he knew she liked, and driven all the way back across town to deliver it to her door.

He didn't know, in retrospect, what he'd expected to find on the other side of her door. He'd been so thoroughly stunned and angered by the thought that he was losing her -- *losing* her, goddammit - that he'd been less attuned to her emotions than usual. How was she coping? What would he see when she opened the door? Would she be angry? Despondent? Depressed? Full of forced cheer for his benefit? Would she even let him in?

Instead, she'd opened the door and, after her eyebrows had arched in that infamous Scully not-really-surprised expression, the one that made him want to grin like a half-wit, she'd smiled. A slow smile. A quiet smile.

She'd stepped aside silently to let him pass, and had watched without speaking as he made his way to the kitchen, intending to fix her the tea. She was surprised by his appearance, although she realized she shouldn't be, and by this rather meek, subdued aspect of him. It was almost…domestic. A domesticated Fox, she thought with a wry smile, before following him into the kitchen.

"You brought me tea." <Idiot. Idiot. Of *course* he brought you tea> she thought, half serious and half amused at herself. <What else would explain why he's boiling water and putting little tea bags in cups? A cure for cancer, now with lemon flavor?>

"It's that kind you said you liked. Raspberry mint," Mulder said awkwardly, almost shyly, and Scully was painfully reminded of the way he'd spoken to his mother after he'd risked his life with that horrible memory-recall experiment, confronting Mrs. Mulder in her Providence home with his accusations about her real relationship with the Cigarette-Smoking Man. He'd stood in the foyer, face cast in shadows, and he couldn't even look his mother in the eye. His gaze had been focused somewhere on her chin and he'd seemed so boyish and uncertain, desperate for the truth and afraid of offending while he asked for it.

Amazing how she'd once hoped to be able to forget that aching, awkward memory for her partner's sake, and now she clung to it as one more nuance of this man who had come to mean everything to her, something she could examine and savor and taste as part of his whole, until the memory was stolen from her forever.

"It is my favorite," Scully admitted finally, soft and velvety her voice, as if she were afraid of speaking too loudly and breaking the spell, the spell that had him standing in her apartment, making her tea, and talking to her, even if inanities were coming from their lips.

He'd been so distant all week, even while he'd helped her put the pieces of her life in place once and for all. Somehow, he'd seemed farther away from her then, more inaccessible to her when he'd been helping her fill out her leave forms and the Durable Power of Attorney for Health Care paperwork and taking her to the attorney to revise her will. He'd helped her sort out some weighty, substantial issues, winding through the bureaucratic mazes with her - and somehow, she felt closer to him when he was talking about raspberry mint tea in her kitchen.

They were silent, lost in their respective wanderings, until the tea kettle shrilly reminded them that Mulder had fashioned an excuse, albeit a weak one, for stopping by. He poured the water into the two colorfully-printed mugs -- "FBI, Quantico" and "Forensic Pathologists Like 'Em Stiff," Scully noted with some amusement - and handed the FBI mug to her without seeming to notice what he'd been left with.

She bit her lip to stop herself from making a joke that might ruin the moment <Moment? We're having *moments* now? When did you start thinking like that?>, and led him back to the sofa, curling up in one corner of it and tucking the afghan around her legs. She'd been so cold lately; the tea would be a comfort. Mulder sat at the opposite end, seemingly unsure of what to do with his long legs, deciding ultimately to stretch them out in front of him, beneath the coffee table.

"How are you, Scully?" he asked finally, then mentally beat himself over the head with a blunt object for asking such an obtuse question. <How do you think she is, shithead? She's *dying*.> But to his utter amazement, Scully laughed.

"Do you know you're the first person to actually *ask* me that?" she said, her tone musical and obviously delighted. "Everyone else seems to tiptoe around it, afraid to ask, like they're thinking 'How do you think she's doing? She's dying.' As if I've stopped feeling anything but my own mortality."

Mulder looked away quickly, guilt-stricken at being mentally caught in the act, and Scully observed this as easily as she'd ever been able to read him. She leaned forward, put her hand, warm from the heat of the ceramic mug, on his arm and squeezed gently. He looked back toward her, cheeks slightly flushed.

"I'm okay, Mulder," she said softly. "I really am. And thank you for asking me. I don't think anyone else would believe me."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, I think I'm supposed to be angry still, or in denial, or…I don't know, raging against the dying of the light, to put it in a very Dylan Thomas kind of context," she mused, pausing to take a sip of the tea, obviously relishing how it tasted. He'd noticed a lot of that in the past few days, no matter how distant he may have appeared to Scully. He'd been watching everything - and lately, she would stop in the middle of whatever activity was occupying her time, notice some tiny sensation and pause to relish it, because it very well might be her last. It was tragic. And beautiful. He might never have tired of watching her do it, had it not also been a constant reminder that some day he wouldn't be able to anymore.

"But the thing is, Mulder," she continued, and her eyes were on his now, blue and bright, "I don't feel those things. I've looked for them, God knows. I know that I'm *supposed* to be going through the stages of grief. I've tried to feel angry. But…I just…don't. I can't explain it, Mulder. But when I was in that doctor's office, it just became so…clear. I felt so peaceful, for the first time in a long time, maybe the first time ever. And I didn't need to be angry anymore. I'm *not* angry anymore. And it's okay."

How could he not believe that? All Mulder had to do was look into her eyes, shining now like a hundred candles had burst into brilliance behind those blue irises, and he saw what she believed. Truths that he'd never sought the answers to before - the only truths Scully had ever been willing to accept without scientific evidence. Faith. Utter spiritual faith in whatever lay beyond this life and its aliens and conspiracies and villains. The expression "God speaks through you" had never seemed more…believable than when he looked into her eyes.

"Well, *I'm* angry," he heard himself say bitterly, and he could have kicked himself again. This wasn't about him. He had no right pushing his emotions onto her right now.

"And that's okay, Mulder," she replied, amazing him anew. "You go ahead and be angry. Be angry for both of us, if that's what you need. I just…I don't want to waste my time being angry. I don't want the only memories I'm left with to be angry ones. Time and memories. We both know there's not much of either left to me now."

He was silent for a moment, considering her words. So very much the Dana Katherine Scully he knew, amazing him and bewildering him at any given moment, just when he would think that after four years, he might have had a minute chance of predicting her response. Then, wham, out of left field, she'd react to something, whether trite or consequential, in a way that he would never have predicted. She had an uncanny knack for doing that, even on their cases. He'd never realized how much he'd come to enjoy it.

It was ironic, Mulder supposed, that when Scully had first been diagnosed with cancer, she had been so entirely stoic, so contained and professional. Her reaction had been to check herself into a hospital and accept whatever treatment might be afforded her, when he had expected her to "rage" against whatever machinations had put cancer in her brain in the first place, to look for answers, to look for the truth. .It was only after she'd been confronted with a conspiracy too large to name that Mulder had seen the reaction he'd first anticipated - the one where she vowed to fight it, fight it all, and step out the fray as victor and conqueror.

And now, when she'd been dealt yet another blow in a life that had become a vicious and never-ending boxing match - one sucker punch after another -Scully turned around and did the unexpected yet again. He'd expected her to rage, he'd expected to see the anger -- *had* seen it for a moment in that hospital room with "Dr. Perfect" - and then, suddenly, she'd completely turned it around on him. Again. And here she sat, drinking tea, radiating a peace that he would never have believed possible, and quoting Dylan Thomas.

"Dylan Thomas?" he said finally, a half-smile on his face as he met her eyes again. She grinned almost sheepishly.

"One of my favorites," Scully admitted. "`Do not go gentle into that good night,' 'Rage against the dying of the light,' et cetera, et cetera. I think I always tried to somehow live my life by that phrase… But you know, it occurred to me a few days ago, not long after you brought me home. Something rather profound."

She paused, staring into the murky depths of her tea, and Mulder found himself leaning forward, waiting for her to continue. Anything Scully said could be counted on to be intelligent - Scully at her most introspective had to be truly wondrous.

"You realized something profound?" Mulder prodded. She looked up, grinned suddenly.

"Yeah. I realized this: Dylan Thomas *sucks*," Scully replied, and Mulder could not bite back the sharp, startled bark of laughter that escaped him. She smiled herself, and a slight rosy stain of color washed her too-pale, too-slender cheeks.

"*Sucks*, Scully?" he echoed with a grin. "Would you care to, uh, elaborate on that particular critique? Don't get me wrong, yours was succinct and fairly powerful, but it leaves me lacking a little in terms of details."

"I'd be happy to. Dylan Thomas sucked. What the hell did he know? `Do not go gentle into that good night. Old age should burn and rave at close of day. Rage, rage against the dying of the light.'"

"It's a beautiful piece, Scully," Mulder said softly, mesmerized by her tone and the words.

"Oh, yeah, it's great. Nice idea," she agreed, unexpectedly flippant. "Dylan Thomas died just after his 39th birthday as a result of alcoholism. He spent the last years of his life regretting his tempestuous and wasted youth, despite all he'd accomplished in such a short time, and he died a lonely alcoholic. So much for 'raging.'"

Trust Scully to know everything there was to know about Dylan Thomas. Trust Scully to know everything there was to know about *everything*.

"So I started thinking, what the hell does Dylan Thomas know? I mean, the more I thought about it, the more I realized - hey, I have spent more time, put more of my life's actions, into 'raging' than Dylan Thomas ever did in his life. Have you ever thought about it, Mulder? How much the X-Files, the work we do, the truth we seek, is like a Dylan Thomas poem? Burning and raving, not going gently? And even before the X-Files, I went into professional fields entirely dominated by men - forensic pathology and the FBI. I sought myself, I sought my own truths. I raged. I burned and raved. So why does Dylan Thomas get to make me feel like I'm giving in when I decide I'm done raging?

"And then I realized: he doesn't. See, I'm not giving in. I just…I don't see nearly as much wrong with going gentle now. Of all the things in my life that I would do gently, with compassion and faith and love, it would be these last moments that I have. I don't want to burn and rave. I want to feel and be and try to remember it all while I still can. There's a big difference between Dylan Thomas and me, Mulder. He called dying and whatever lies after it the 'good night' sarcastically, as a paradox of terms. Me, I really do see it as the *good* night."

Mulder stared at her, awed and frightened and even a little bit envious - yes, envious - of this peace, this utter faith, that had fluttered down on its feather-light wings to envelop her. A peace that he'd been searching for all of his adult life, pinning its worth to his quest for the truth, the answers, and here Dana Scully sat, surrounded by it, finding it at last. He really was jealous. He might have been utterly green-eyed over it, had this woman not been paying the ultimate price for ownership.

And there was another bit of irony for Mulder to gnaw on: He'd been willing to die a thousand times for that serenity, bartering his soul in the only currency he knew - the truth - and the fact was, Scully had found her answers, and was dying for them instead.

It was all his fault. He wasn't entirely sure how; he would sort it out later and use his special brand of rationalization to make *sure* it was his fault - iron out all the particulars -- but for now, he simply accepted the mantle of blame, slipping it on as comfortably as a pair of old loafers, and mentally reaffirming it to himself: This is my fault.

"Well, um…I'm going to go ahead and go. Let you rest," he said finally, anxious to leave so that he could torture himself on his home turf and, paradoxically, he was reluctant to go. He needed Scully, had needed her probably since their first case, when she'd stood in the rain in a cemetery and laughed hysterically at his wild theories because they were starting to make *sense*. And he'd thought, I can get this woman to listen to me. Even when she thinks I'm nuts. She actually listens to me.

Funny that he hadn't realized how much he'd needed that until he was suddenly faced with it.

<Let me stay, Scully> he pleaded in his mind, where she'd be sure not to hear him, as he rose reluctantly to his feet. <I need you. I don't want to waste a minute. There aren't many left, and there are so many things I want to - need to - say to you. To hear from you, if you'll let me. To take deep inside myself and hold when I can't hold you anymore. To soothe myself and torment myself for the rest of my miserable life.>

"Mulder, stay with me," she said suddenly, jerking him free of his thoughts. He looked down at her, had to sit suddenly as his legs no longer seemed capable of supporting him, and simply stared at her. She smiled, shy and rueful. "Stay. Please."

"Okay." Well, if anyone had ever wondered, here was the moment that could utterly annihilate the vocabulary of a well-educated man.

She turned to face him completely, the afghan twisting around her legs, her eyes oh-so-serious above the rim of her cup.

"I'm going to ask you for something and it's very selfish. I know it's selfish, and it's the last thing that you of all people need," she said, and he raised his eyebrows, wondering what exactly she was going to ask of him. "You have an enormous capacity for punishing yourself and what I'm about to ask you is going to play right into it, give you even more ammunition for your personal arsenal…But I…" She took a deep breath, prepared for the plunge.

"I'm asking you to stay with me," she continued. "Not just now, not just tonight, but until…until the end. I don't want to die in a hospital. I want to stay here. This is my home. And I don't want strangers in my house looking after me. I know my mother will try to do it all herself, and I can't let that happen. I'm asking you to stay here. Help her. Help me. But I'm not asking just for her, or just for an extra set of hands. I also want you to stay because…I want you to be here. We don't have a lot of time left together. I don't want to waste it. I want you here because I need you."

They were both silent for a moment, staring into each other's eyes, each acknowledging to the other the absolute power of that statement. When had Dana Scully, Warrior Agent, ever admitted that she needed anyone?

"You have me," he said simply, and it was enough.

"Thank you." And that was enough, too.

******************************************************************************

"Close your eyes and let me see who you used to be, left without a warning.

Who knew one so big could grow so small? Lighter than the writing on the wall…"

-- Janis Ian, "When Angels Cry"

***************************************************************

Chapter Four: Grace Realized
Author: Michaela

Later, Mulder wished he could tell people that the remainder of Dana Scully’s
life just a gallingly short five weeks -- was beautiful and romantic and
peaceful. Like something out of "Little Women," where Beth simply slipped
away, gentle and quiet and painless. But he couldn’t say that. He was too
honest to lie about something so important.

There were moments that had been utterly ugly, tragic and so bitter that bile
would rise up in the throats of those who witnessed it. Scully had not always
been peaceful, not always at the end, when she wasn’t capable of controlling
herself anymore, when they weren’t sure she was aware of *anything*, let alone
that beautiful peace she had so miraculously found. And while Mulder and
Scully had finally found each other, in the truest sense of the word, in those
last short weeks, there was nothing at all romantic about her watching *him*
watching *her*…die.

No, Scully’s last weeks weren’t always pretty; it wasn’t like the fine
literature Mulder had devoured in his youth, reading and rereading like the
sensitive, intelligent boy that he was. He’d been drawn then to gentle,
classical literature "girlie books" as the other boys, his own father, had
teased rather than science fiction or action adventures. Even then, Mulder
had an enormous capacity for understanding and embracing the human condition,
in all its forms. But it suddenly became more difficult when the condition you
were embracing belonged to a once vibrant, healthy, intelligent young woman,
cut down in her prime.

Inevitably, Mulder and Margaret Scully had been required to assume
responsibility for Scully’s most personal care, as her body, and later her
mind, deteriorated to nothing. That had been difficult, of course taking on
the simplest and most intimate tasks for the most independent of women was
nothing short of heartrending for everyone involved, even if Scully had born
it with good cheer and a wicked sense of humor. <Come on, Mulder, like you
haven’t seen it all before.> But for Mulder, the most horrible days, the ones
that galled him and that his cruel memory insisted on recalling in vivid
detail, were the ones where Dana Scully had simply ceased to *be* Dana Scully.
There was no ugliness on earth, neither X-File nor serial killer, that would
ever rival those moments for Fox Mulder.

He still had to fight the gorge rising up in his throat when he remembered the
day Scully had simply…lost it. There was a clinical term <hallucinate> but the
words didn’t wrap around the nightmare as fittingly for Mulder’s reasoning.
Scully simply lost it, as surely as she’d ever *had* it. Margaret and Mulder
had been in the kitchen, each coaxing the other to "eat a little something,
you’re not taking care of yourself." They’d left Scully napping, presumably
peaceful, in the bedroom.

It was a sudden and horrible shrieking, the sound of glass shattering, that had
sent them scrambling, almost falling in their haste, back to the bedroom.
Scully had been throwing herself repeatedly against the full-length wall
mirror from the sounds they’d heard and her appearance, they guessed she’d
managed to do it six, seven, maybe eight times before they’d rushed in and
stopped her. She’d shredded her nightgown in places, lacerated her own pale,
tender skin, stomped the shards of glass on the floor into her feet and even
when Mulder had grabbed her, dragging her back to the bed and keeping her
imprisoned in his arms, she’d shrieked, struggled, fought as if the hounds of
hell were on her heels.

It was only later that they were able to piece together, with Scully’s muddled,
tearful fragments of explanation, that she’d thought "Cancer Man" was in the
room with her and she’d thrown herself into the mirror, convinced it was the
door, and she’d kept running into it because the man had threatened to hurt
Mulder next, and that was the only way out of the room to save him.

As soon as they’d calmed her down, given her one of the sedatives Dr. Perfect
had prescribed, Mulder had fled into the bathroom and thrown up.

Then he’d joined Scully’s mother in the kitchen and, in another of those truly
appalling moments, <All in one day, how lucky am I?> he and Margaret had
actually discussed putting Scully into the hospital, for her own protection.
It had been an awful dialogue, one he still regretted to this day, but at one
point, it had seemed the only solution. Until Margaret Scully had simply said
they would have to "baby-proof" the apartment -- <Baby-proof!?> Mulder’s mind
had revolted at the very thought, but Scully got her pragmatism from her
mother, and Margaret saw no reason to beat around the bush. So they’d
baby-proofed the place, and had never, *ever* mentioned that conversation
again.

Bitter. Vile. Nightmarish. No one word could ever describe what it was like to
watch Dana Scully die.

But, with the true contradiction that only mortality can offer, those last
short weeks had also been the most profound, the most genuine, and the most
graceful and dignified moments anyone could hope to witness in their lifetime
on this earth.

Dana Katherine Scully had faced her death with a courageousness, nobility and
humor that awed all who were near her. She had been determined to savor every
last sensation, to remember everything until the last possible moment. And
once again, as with everything of importance in her life, she was the victor.

The morning after Scully asked Mulder to stay with her, he’d hurried home to
grab some personal items pitifully few, knowing how long he would, in
reality, be with her. It made him angry just to look at that one duffel bag,
to see the remainder of Scully’s existence, like an hourglass, essentially
zipped up in a nylon pouch. He’d ridden a wild beast of fury all the way back
to her apartment, railing anew at the injustices, and when he’d walked back
into her apartment, he’d found her sitting on the floor beside her coffee
table, scribbling furiously onto individual pieces of note paper. They were
everywhere, scattered over the table top, surrounding her on the floor it
amazed him how many pieces of paper she’d been able to fill in the short time
he’d been away. Or maybe she’d been up all night doing it, during the times
where he’d guiltily drifted into a fitful sleep while she’d remained awake.

"What are you doing?" he asked softly, pushing the door closed behind him with
his foot, clutching the duffel bag in one fist.

"Remembering," she said, her voice muffled as she clenched a second pen between
her teeth, not stopping her frantic writing.

"Remembering?" he repeated. She spit out the pen with a lack of grace that made
him grin despite himself, and turned to look at him, her eyes bright and
cheeks flushed.

"Making lists. Checking them twice," she explained good-naturedly. "Putting all
the naughty and nice moments down on paper. Got any you want to add?"

"On the record? No way." Mulder forced a laugh with his witty quip, dropping
the duffel bag and finding the courage to step forward, to walk to the couch
and sit down on it. He stared at all of the pieces of paper, trying to figure
out why he couldn’t make out her handwriting. And then he realized the
sudden moisture in his eyes was making the words blur. He closed his eyes to
shield them from her. No pity parties now, my friend.

"Pity. I was thinking I’d give the really good ones to Skinner for blackmail
after I’m gone," Scully said with a laugh of her own, so cheerful and
matter-of-fact that Mulder felt ashamed of his own fears and furies. Then she
sobered suddenly, turning from the coffee table to face him. She put a hand on
his knee and he forced his eyes open, pretending there were no tears and
hoping she’d do the same. As always, attuned to his emotions, she did.

"I have a favor to ask you. Another one," Scully said seriously. He nodded. He
was hers for the taking. He’d made the promise and he’d meant it. "These
lists. I’m going to keep writing down everything I want to remember, and I’m
going to read them, and I’m not going to stop reading them. And for as long as
I have, my memories will still be mine.

"But there is going to be a time when I’m not going to be able to read them
anymore. Whether the tumor takes my eyesight, or I…uh…there is just too much
brain damage for me to be able to read. When it’s time and you’ll know when
it’s time will you keep reading them to me? Just keep reading them, when I
need to hear them? So that I don’t forget. Or so that you can remember them
for me. Can you do that?"

"Of course, Scully," he managed, trying not to choke on the lump in his throat.
Her chin quivered and he took a deep breath, trying to force some of the
earlier levity back into their conversation. "So, do I get a sneak peek at
these lists beforehand?"

"Nope," she replied breezily, matching him tone for tone, appreciating his
effort. "I shall keep you breathlessly waiting. Anticipation is really the key
to good literature, don’t you agree?"

"Of course," he replied with mock solemnity. He grinned suddenly. "You know,
I’ll bet you were one of those children who didn’t immediately rip into the
presents on Christmas morning. You sat and looked at each box, shook it,
wondered what was in it. It took you four hours to open all your gifts,
right?"

"Guilty as charged," she admitted with a faint blush. "And you? Something like
four seconds, right?"

"Oh, Scully, I’m wounded," he said, feigning a hurt look. "As I recall, if
there were presents in my house, I found them while they were still in their
hiding places, before they were wrapped. Used to drive my mother crazy."

"Quite the little investigator, even then," Scully said fondly, her mind
seizing the memory, filing it away for another list she would make before it
was too late, even as she marveled at how easily he had spoken of his
childhood and his mother subjects he didn’t discuss readily, even with her.

The rest of that day, like those that would follow, flew by with cruel haste,
minutes and hours being snatched away as if Death were jealous of even
granting them a few short weeks together. At the end of that day, "The List
Day," as Mulder would think of it later, they had been sitting on the couch,
watching some terribly under-budgeted B-class horror film that he’d learned
were Scully’s true weakness. And she had turned to him suddenly in the dark,
the flickering light of the television screen the only illumination, and she
had said suddenly,

"Mulder, you know how the doctor said this tumor would make me do things out of
character? Behave how I normally wouldn’t behave?"

"Yes, Scully, I remember," he said carefully, slowly, feeling the ache in his
gut flare anew at the mention of it. She paused, pondered for a moment.

"Well, if something has been on your mind for a long time, something that
you’ve always wanted to try, and you’ve never acted on it before, but now
suddenly, faced with your own mortality, you have this overwhelming desire to
do it…would you consider that out of character? Not normal?"

She sounded so worried, so anxious for his reply. What could she possibly want
to do? Bungee jumping? Sky diving? He’d hijack the plane himself, if that’s
what she was worried about.

"No, Scully, I don’t think that’s out of character at all."

She breathed a sigh of relief, and he stared at the television without really
seeing it, waiting for her request. Listening for her. Realizing that she was
leaning toward him, crawling almost catlike across the couch cushions to where
he sat on the other end. When she pressed her lips, feather-light and
scorching hot, against the faint pulse under his jaw, he nearly bolted out of
his seat.

Or he would have, had he not been glued to it, absolutely terrified to move for
fear that she’d stop.

"Are you sure that’s not out of character?" she asked huskily, near his ear,
and he sat frozen, eyes almost comically wide. He felt, rather than saw, a wry
smile play across her lips.

"I suppose not, Scully," he managed to croak, his voice sounding positively
rusted. "No more so than this."

And with just the slightest turn of his head, he brought their lips together
for the first time…and one of the last.

They had become…intimate Mulder used the word reluctantly because they had
been *emotionally* intimate for years as easily as that, although the time
they had together for "intimacy" was pitifully short. Oh, Mulder had certainly
tried to fall back into his familiar patterns of guilt, accusing himself of
taking advantage of a dying woman, but Scully, having always been too smart
for him, saw right through it. Anticipated it. And helped him to accept that
it wasn’t true. Had never been true. This was right. Always had been. Always
would be, for however long was left.

But, as Scully grew sicker first physically weaker, and then mentally weaker
physical intimacy had become inappropriate, then impossible. They missed
each other, in that particular sense of the word, but they knew that sex,
making love, whatever people wanted to call it, was ultimately the *least*
important thing in their relationship. So they fondly said goodbye to that
part of themselves, and clung more tightly to what was left.

And so Mulder and Margaret Scully slowly began taking over parts of Scully’s
care, the days becoming routine only by the sheer lack of routine each day
brought some new wonder, or some new horror; a particularly poignant moment,
or a bitter one.

One of those days, both poignant and horrible, was the day that Mulder had
dreaded would become List Day, Part Two. The day when he would need to read
Scully’s lists to her because she was no longer able to do it herself. She had
been right, of course. He *had* known when it was time. He’d been sitting
beside her bed, where she was curled up under the blanket to take a nap, and
she’d simply looked at him with the most bewildered expression on her face.
She’d opened her mouth, but couldn’t seem to find the words.

He’d picked up the top sheet of paper from their permanent station on the table
beside her bed and held it up, asking the question without words. And she’d
smiled such a peaceful, trusting smile and leaned back against the
pillows, closing her eyes. She’d fallen asleep almost immediately, leaving him
to pour over the lists, at least two hundred of them, all of them in Scully’s
familiar handwriting, some of it more trembling than the others, as her motor
control had started to leave her.

If he’d ever, ever doubted the woman lying before him ever doubted the
strong, intelligent, emotional and humorous woman she was the proof of it
was spread out on the bedspread and floor around him, page after page after
page of the most important and the most trivial moments of her life. All there
for the remembering. Comical, tragic, heartfelt…

‘How many ways Mulder can get into trouble.’ He noticed with a grin that alien
viruses and tall blonde police detectives made the top ten.

‘My favorite Mulder ties.’ ‘My favorite room in every house I ever lived in.’
‘My childhood crushes.’ Mulder noticed with sheepish embarrassment that he
found himself getting just slightly jealous of Tommy Peterson, Brad Johnson
and all the rest even the 5-year-old kid who’d lived in the naval housing
unit next door.

‘What Mulder smells like.’ Okay, that was gratifying, he admitted. Leather.
Trees. Gun oil? He wasn’t sure if that was flattering it was probably true,
the last one anyway but she apparently seemed to like it, so he’d have to
accept her word for it.

The lists went on and on. ‘The lyrics to every Billy Joel song I like.’ ‘Every
Hootie and the Blowfish song I hate.’ <All of them, Scully?> he noted with a
grin. ‘Every teacher I ever had.’ ‘Consortium people to watch out for.’ ‘My
very least favorite mutants.’ And Flukeman dutifully listed at the top.
<Hmm…the Humbug made the list?>

‘The best episodes of The Brady Bunch.’ Only three episodes were listed, and
Marcia’s broken nose was number one…and number two… ‘My favorite Shakespearean
sonnets.’ ‘My favorite baby names.’ ‘Those moments I would do ‘all over
again’.’ Mulder noted with pride, awe and a twinge of guilt of course that
he’d made the list in several places.

‘My favorite sexual positions, in ranking order.’ <Scully!!!> ‘The best-tasting
spots on Mulder’s body.’ <*Jesus, Scully! Your mother might see this!!*>

‘Ten favorite come-on lines I could have used on Frohike but never did.’ Mulder
almost laughed aloud, stifling it only in deference to the sleeping woman next
to him, squinted, and saw a note at the bottom of the list. "Mulder: Feel free
to show this list to Frohike after I’m gone. Unless you think it would be too
cruel…" Mulder thought he just might show the little gnome, if only because he
knew how incredibly touched Frohike would be that Scully was even thinking of
him at the end. The Lone Gunmen didn’t seem to realize just how much Scully
actually appreciated them. He glanced at the next list and smiled.

‘Reasons why I actually like those paranoid freaks at The Lone Gunmen, even if
I’d never admit it.’

He looked up, watching Scully sleep, a faint smile on her lips as if she were
remembering something, even in her dreams, and he felt his eyes well up.

"I’ll remember all of this for you," he vowed, his voice husky and over-loud in
the quiet room. "I won’t ever stop. I won’t let anyone forget."

**********
Time has slowed somewhat, jerking and stopping in erratic bursts, as if Death
at its cruelest wants to eke out each moment to its most poignant and tragic
conclusion before rushing to the next. It is a never-ending stream of grace
and tragedy now, all wrapped up in Dana Scully.

Even now, now that the best of Dana Katherine Scully has faded away…something
is left. She spreads her lists out across the bedspread, running her fingers
over them, down them, across them, pouring over them almost obsessively even
though nobody is entirely sure if she can even read them now, if she even has
that faculty left to her. She’ll look at them for hours. She never lets them
out of her sight. Sometimes she presses them close, against her heart, and
simply closes her eyes, as if she’s trying to absorb them inside. Sometimes,
sometimes, a tear escapes beneath those thick lashes, coursing unheeded down
her cheek. And then a hand is there to wipe the offender away, and it is
always the same hand. His hand. And she opens her eyes again and holds the
papers out to him, beseechingly, desperately, mute now. And without a word, he
accepts them. And he reads them aloud to her, even though nobody is even sure
if she comprehends speech anymore. Reads them over and over until she finally
sleeps, and only then does he allow his voice to catch, to quiver, as he
continues reading them to her…because he promised her once, an eternity ago,
he promised her he would never stop. He would never let her forget because he
would remember for her. And he does.

Sometimes she just cries. For hours. Without stopping. Just a silent sobbing
that is heartbreaking to behold, clutching herself through the thinness of her
nightgown, rocking back and forth, limpid blue eyes staring at nothing. Saying
nothing. Revealing nothing. Some days, or some minutes, she is *there* -- even
if it’s only for a few moments, and she smiles that radiant smile, and she
knows she has been gone a long time. And she refuses to waste her time
regretting her absence. So she smiles that smile, the one that makes hearts
somersault, and she offers a bit of twisted humor, or a dirty joke that
surprises everyone, or a dredged-up memory of something obscure that suddenly
takes on the most profound of meanings, because she *remembered* it.

Those days, those minutes, are fewer and farther between now. There hasn’t been
one for a long time. But he keeps hoping.
***************

Dana Katherine Scully died on a chilly, rainy Wednesday morning, when the rest
of the world was speeding along the interstate in a rush to get to work on
time; but for the people in Scully’s life, time had stood still at last.
Mulder and Margaret had been with her at very end, while Skinner, the Lone
Gunmen, Scully’s nomadic brothers and family and a few loyal FBI colleagues
had crowded in her living room, silent in their vigil and their tribute.

Mulder wished he could say that she had had one of those amazing deathbed
moments, where she’d woken suddenly from her deep sleep <Coma, Mulder, let’s
be honest> and offered some sage and moving words of wisdom to those left
behind before slipping away. But life rarely worked that way, and it didn’t
happen for Scully either. But it had been peaceful, and painless. She’d held
the Apollo 11 key chain Mulder had given her for her last birthday against her
chest, and she’d simply stopped breathing. It had been so gradual, so gentle
that Mulder and Margaret had both thought they were imagining it.

And then they’d looked at each other, and they’d *known*. Known without
speaking, in the same way that Mulder and Scully had spoken volumes to one
another with their eyes. Like mother, like daughter. A pained smile had
strained at Margaret’s lips, and she’d leaned forward, smoothed back the
familiar russet hair, kissed her daughter’s forehead, and left the room,
squeezing Mulder’s arm as she passed.

He’d sat there with her for a long time, while Margaret was in the living room
breaking the news to the rest of the gathered. No one ever knew what Mulder
did or said while he was alone with what remained of Scully, but when he came
out, an eternity later, he seemed less tortured than they might have expected.
Peaceful, in a sense. He held a sheaf of papers, tight against his chest,
almost but not quite wrinkling them. And he’d managed to smile, say a few
words to each of them in turn, even comfort a visibly shaken Walter Skinner.
He and Margaret had hugged, reassured each other about the arrangements that
had Scully had requested, choked down a few bites of the food that someone had
thought to bring.

It was all that it could have been, the day Dana Scully died. It was all she
would have expected.

***************************************************
"But if the while I think on thee (dear friend),
all losses are restored and sorrows end." William Shakespeare
***************************************************

Chapter Five: Grace Realized
Author: Michaela

Mulder sat in front of the television in his apartment, not sprawled on the
couch as he usually was, but sitting tensely on the edge of it, perched as if
on the verge of flight, his posture much like that of Scully when she’d heard
the horrible news of her tumor only weeks before.

It had been a week since Scully’s funeral, and Frohike had arrived, unannounced
and very much unexpected, at Mulder’s door, bearing a cardboard box. A box
full of videotapes.

"I have my own videos, Frohike, I don’t even want to see yours," Mulder had
managed, dredging the expected quip from somewhere in his mind that hadn’t
entirely forgotten what life had been like…before. But Frohike hadn’t
responded in kind. The somber little man had simply pushed the box into
Mulder’s arms.

"You don’t have these," he said finally. "But you’re supposed to. She wanted it
that way."

And he turned and left, shutting the door behind him. And Mulder didn’t have to
ask who ‘she’ was there had only been one ‘she’ in his or Frohike’s lives
for the last four years, and particularly in the last four weeks. He’d put the
box down on his coffee table, carefully but hastily, as if he was afraid of
being burned. It was too painful, at times, being around anything that had
been Scully’s, or recalling memories of her. He alternatively cursed and
blessed his eidetic memory, because he could summon at any given moment the
exact look of Scully’s face or the tone of her voice unfortunately, his
powers of recall were cruel: the memories he tended to beckon were the sad
ones, the tragic ones…the ones he *didn’t* want to remember.

So he’d looked at the numbers on the outside of each video tape, found the
cassette marked "1" and put it in the VCR, taking the remote into his hand.

And here he’d sat for the past 15 minutes, trying to call up the courage to
press the play button.

<Dammit, she didn’t spend any of her last weeks being afraid. So start the damn
thing and stop being a coward> he snarled at himself, and he stabbed at the
remote control as if it were personally responsible for the death of Special
Agent Dana Scully.

There she was. Flickering and then beaming pure and strong out of his
television. Just by looking at her image, the faint half-smile on her face,
the look of her eyes, the sweater she was wearing, he could name to the day
when this videotape had been made. Ten days after she’d come home from the
hospital, two days after he’d brought over the herbal tea and stayed for the
rest of her life. His heart clenched as if it had been suddenly squeezed by a
powerful fist. <So it’s really true. Your heart *can* break> Mulder thought
almost wondrously. He’d always thought it was an expression.

Her lips parted, she took a breath, and Mulder held his, waiting so tensely
that his muscles were quivering with the strain.

"Hey, G-Man," Scully said teasingly, into the camera, and her eyes bored into
his as they always had, direct and strong and confident.

"Hey," he said weakly, without even considering that he was talking to a
*video*.

"I asked Frohike to bring you these when you needed them the most," she
continued. "I guess that would be now. I hope…" Her smile faded a little bit,
her lips pressed together, and when she spoke again, her voice was a little
thicker, her eyes slightly damp. "I hope you’re doing all right, Mulder. I’m
sorry that I can’t be there to…to help you through. You know I wish I could
be."

Mulder was swallowing hard, unable to take his eyes off of her, although her
image was blurring through the haze of tears in his eyes. On the television,
Scully made a visible effort to gather herself.

"I’ll bet you wondered why Frohike kept visiting me while you were off running
my little ‘errands’," Scully said in a lighter tone of voice. "Maybe you
wondered if I’d started using the pick-up lines on my list of ‘Frohike
teases.’" Mulder choked, half-laugh and half-sob he *had* wondered why
Frohike was turning up at the door so much, and leaving under such
cloak-and-dagger circumstances…even for Frohike. He’d wondered if maybe Scully
had finally softened on the little guy when she’d faced her own mortality.

"It occurred to me, though," she continued, "that there was going to be a
serious problem after I was gone. I wouldn’t be around to keep an eye on you
anymore, at least, not so you’d be able to see. So, I asked Frohike if he
would come over, set up the video recorder for me, and take care of each of
the tapes as I finished. There should be a fairly large box in front of you
now, if I’ve managed to hold up my end of the deal."

He looked down at the box 40, maybe 50 videos in there. Yes, Scully as
always had held up her end of the deal. His face contorted in a crooked,
wobbly grin.

"So, as you’ll notice, each of these tapes is available with the appropriate
advice or personal moment labeled on each one." He picked up a tape, noticing
for the first time that they each had titles `Things to Tell That
Black-Lunged Son-of-a-Bitch When You Catch His Ass Red-Handed.’ He laughed,
amazed that he remembered how.

"I’ve tried to predict each and every moment that I won’t be there for," Scully
continued, tears welling in her eyes again. He retrained his eyes on the
television screen, drinking in every nuance, mentally thanking Frohike for
giving him this gift, this ability to see her whenever he needed to, without
having to rely on the mind. Because the mind was a tricky thing, Mulder knew
that lesson well.

"I’ve got a tape in there for when you get your next partner." His mouth was
already opening to protest, to automatically deny it to her televised image,
when she "interrupted" him. "Don’t argue with me, Mulder," she continued,
smiling and pointing her finger into the camera. "You *need* a partner. As
you’ll recall, List 54 specifically discusses the number of ways you can get
yourself into trouble. And, as you’ll also recall, *I’m* the one who always
got you out of all that trouble. So you’ll need someone else to do the same…"
She softened slightly, gave him that same piercing stare through the camera
lens. "Don’t feel like you’ll betray me by having another partner, Mulder. You
aren’t. Of course, if *that* partner gets to call you ‘Fox,’ I might be a
little annoyed."

She laughed, and the sound of it simultaneously shredded and soothed the
remains of his heart. He gulped past the lump in his throat, his hand covering
his mouth as tears threatened to breech his closed eyelids.

"And I’ve got a tape in there for when you find your sister, because I *know*
you’re going to find her, Mulder," she said, and his eyes flew open, riveting
on her image. The utter faith she showed in him, time and again, never failed
to awe him. Even in death, she was willing to go to the wall for him. "I’ve
also got a tape for Samantha to watch, from me. It’s kind of personal, though,
so try not to watch it, okay? Restrain those ‘investigator impulses’ if you
can. It’s a woman thing. I’m just…I’m just sorry I didn’t get to meet her.

"I hope that I managed to live the last moments of my life with dignity and
grace. With peace, the way I told you when you came to stay with me. There’s a
bit of poetry I once heard that read, ‘Every moment, whether born of joy or
born of sorrow, has the potential for grace realized.’ That’s how I want my
life to be remembered. And I truly believe that it’s how you’ve lived your
life, Mulder. You are a noble, kind-hearted, honest human being. A true
prince, even if you never see it yourself. You’ve shown me ‘grace realized,’
Mulder. I hope I did the same for you."

She might have said something more, but he barely heard her over the sounds of
his own sobbing, his blood roaring in his ears, the maelstrom of a devastated
soul. Grace realized. He’d seen ‘grace realized’ from the moment he’d first
looked into her eyes.

"One last thing, Mulder. Look at me." He made a concerted effort to blink away
the tears, willing himself to stare directly into her eyes, the way he used
to. "Look at how I am right now. Remember this. I don’t want your last
memories of me to be my lack of them. Your memories of me shouldn’t be what I
must have been like at the end. Because that’s not it, that’s not me. I want
you to remember me remembering *me*. Remembering *us.* Remembering everything.
I want your last piece of me to be my knowing it all, just like I always
have." She couldn’t resist a challengingly raised eyebrow at that, and a cocky
grin. He grinned, shakily but genuinely. Scully couldn’t have asked for more.

"This is why I made these tapes for you, Mulder. Because I want the last part
of me that you have to be beautiful, to be whole, not to be what I was at the
end. I know you, Mulder, I do." <You do, Scully. You always have.> "You’ll
torture yourself with the worst of how I died, blaming yourself for it,
instead of…instead of accepting the best of how I lived. And accepting that
you were an important part of *that*. My life would never have been the
beautiful, amazing gift that it has been, without you sharing it with me. I
meant what I said, Mulder. I wouldn’t trade a day. So this is what I give to
you, Mulder. The only thing I can now. The memories of me let them be happy
ones. Think on me…and let your sorrows end."

****************************************************
That's the end, folks! PLEASE, e-mail me and let me know what you think. Don't
make me beg. It's not pretty...

Michaela
*** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** ***
"Every moment in life, whether born of joy
or born of sorrow, has the potential for grace realized."
--Author unknown
*** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** ***
"Mulder, you're nuts." --Dana Scully