"Everything Changes"
by Julie L. Jekel

Disclaimers:  Who owns Scully?  I don't! I don't!  Who owns Mulder? I
don't!  I don't!  Who gets paid here?  I don't! I don't!

'nuff said.  :-)

Rating: PG

Category: VA

Spoilers: "Christmas Carol," "Home," "Memento Mori," and some (probably
unfounded) rumors about the rest of season five.

No blatant MSR here.  A little implied, but not so much that
Friendshippers and NoRomos can't ignore it and thus enjoy the story too.
:-)
 

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Summary:  What would Scully say to Mulder if she decided to resign to
take care of Emily?

"Everything Changes"
by Julie L. Jekel
 

December 26, 1997

Dear Mulder,

It's strange how quickly things can change, isn't it?  Only a few months
ago, we were hunting monsters in Florida to escape of a team-building
conference, almost as if my cancer and your 'suicide' had never
happened.  But now...

I can just hear you saying, "Now...what?" with that heartbreaking
confusion in your eyes.  What's changed?  And why do you feel like this
letter is a goodbye?

Because it is.  I'm sorry, Mulder.  I'm so, so, sorry for deserting you
now, when I know you need me.  But I just can't go on like this.  I've
been given a second chance at life, Mulder--a third, actually--and I
can't keep living surrounded by death.  I can't keep waking up every
morning wondering who's going to die today, worrying that it might be
me, and terrified that it might be you.

If you could only see her, you would understand.  She's beautiful--just
like Melissa was.  And don't try to tell me you didn't notice Missy was
beautiful--there was no way any man with a drop of red blood in him
couldn't notice my sister.  And I happen to know you don't bleed
green--I've had your blood all over my hands too many times not to know.

The incredible thing is that she's not Missy's child.  She's mine.
The child I started wishing for a year ago, not long before that awful
case in Home, Pennsylvania.  The child that I knew I would never have
after finding out about my cancer...and the child who has suddenly been
placed back in my hands along with the awful knowledge that I will not
have an average lifetime to get to know her.  Is it any wonder I haven't
been able to get her face out of my mind since the moment I saw her?  I
knew from the beginning she was a part of me, I just didn't know how big
a part.

I don't know--maybe if I present the agency with physical proof that she
is my biological daughter (though heaven knows how I'm going to explain
that I didn't know this before) they won't ask me to give up my work to
take her.  The court system can be so lax where blood ties are
concerned.  But even if they did, I couldn't do it.  If I can't handle
it myself, I certainly can't ask her to live with that uncertainty.  Not
when she's already got close ties to death...far too close.

Oh, God, Mulder!  I'm still so overwhelmed by the whole idea!  I have a
daughter--a child, a piece of eternity sculpted out of my being.  And
yet, I feel so horribly robbed because she is a child I never got to
carry, and that is a chance I know I will never have again.  I missed
out on some of the most precious moments of her life--her birth, her
first steps, her first words...I won't even be the first woman she calls
"Mommy"!  They stole that from me, and I feel the pain of it as keenly
as if my cancer had returned at deadly strength.

But even knowing that if I choose to be her mother on more than paper I
will have to watch her die, I can't turn away.  Any more than my mother
could have walked away from me when I was wasting away in that hospital
bed.  Any more than you could not have tried to bring Jeremiah Smith to
your mother's bedside when she had her stroke.  And...dare I say it?
Any more than either you or I could have ever abandoned each other all
those times we sat at death's door.

And I'm not giving up on you now, Mulder.  I know you can go on without
me, even though you might not know it.  You're stronger than you
know--if you weren't, you would have punched my brother long ago, and
rightly so.  (Yes, I know what he said to you, and no, you didn't
deserve it.  Which I told him at length as soon as I found out.)  As I
told him that day, he doesn't have all the facts.

I want you to go on.  Oh, I know it would be easy for you to argue that
there would be no reason anymore if I left, but that's not true.  The
truth is still out there, and it still needs to be found, for both our
sakes.  I know how much Kritschgau's story shook you.  I know how much
it hurt you to let Samantha go, after dedicating your life to taking
hold of her again.  I know it would be so easy for you to give up, to
make me the only reason to continue...but you can't.  You're the only
one holding the darkness at bay now, Fox--and please don't tell me not
to call you that, because you have to understand how much I mean
this--and I need you there.  The whole world needs you there, as silly
as it might seem.  And, though I know you've never believed in God, I
have to tell you that I know He wants you there.

It's so strange how well I can picture what you must be thinking right
now--if you can't give up, what gives me the right to?  I'm not giving
up.  I'm walking away, but I'm not giving up.  And I'm not really
leaving.  I'm placing our quest back into your capable hands, where it
has been since the beginning, with full faith and confidence that it
will be achieved.

And when I am gone, you have to promise me that you will not shut me
out.  More than ever, now that we are not going to be working together,
I want you to be a part of my life, and a part of Emily's.  She's lost
as much as we have, and perhaps the three of us can find something of
what we've lost in each other.  But it will take effort, Mulder, now
that we won't be together every minute of almost every day.  I won't
give up on our friendship, and I pray that you won't allow bitterness to
cause you to do so.

I told you once, in my journal that you were never supposed to read,
that I wanted you to know my heart, and that upon looking into it you
would find there the memories and experience that have made you who you
are.  That has not changed--I hold you in my heart today as surely as I
did then, and only my certainty that you are strong enough to continue
on the journey would allow me to come to this place of departure, just
as it was when that departure would have meant my death.

You can go on, and you will go on, and someday you will bring the Truth
we sought to light.  I believe that with every part of my soul, even the
part that is you.

So please, don't ask me to stay.  When Skinner comes to you to tell you
that I have handed in my resignation, don't fight him, don't demand that
he fight me on this.  I have made my decision, and at least as long as
my daughter lives, nothing will sway it.

Please, try to understand.

Love always,
 

Scully

PS--Genesis 31:49
 

FIN

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