TITLE: Her Own Society
Author:  Bluesea567@aol.com

Distribution:  Gossamer, Ephemeral, Spooky, anywhere
Rating: PG 13
Spoilers:  Eighth season through Roadrunners
Classification:  V, SA,  post-ep Roadrunners

SUMMARY:   Doggett contemplates his "partner."

Feedback:  Please

Disclaimer:  Property of 1013



"The Soul selects her own Society^"
Then^"shuts the Door^"
. . . . . . . . . . . 

I've known her^"from an ample nation^"
Choose One^"
Then^"close the Valves of her attention^"
Like Stone--  "

---------Emily Dickinson


She's like no one I've ever met before.  Hard as steel.  Yet so 
tiny.  She weighs less than a bird.  I know---I've picked her up 
and checked, even in a moment of extreme danger, to make sure she 
was still lying in my arms.  Her weight wasn't even enough to 
register.

Yet she's so strong.  When I was bleeding and sinking to the 
floor in that cabin in Idaho, she caught me, held me up, lowered 
me safely.  Treated my wounds.  And, for her, turnabout is fair 
play.  She's just as strong when she's the one in trouble.  I 
thought I'd gag when I walked into that shabby room in Utah and 
saw that meteor-sized crater in her back.   The seeping blood was  
enough to turn my stomach.  Yet, she was on her feet the moment I 
freed her, accepting my support.   With a hole like that in my 
back, I'd be out of it for six months.

But I'd be kidding myself if I said that her strengths were 
primarily physical.  It's her mind, her hard, determined mind 
that fascinates.  And her relentless, implacable will.

She fascinates me.  Even if I didn't have an urgent need to know 
and understand her, as the most promising living clue to Mulder's 
whereabouts, she'd still hold me in her thrall.  She isn't at all 
what she appears to be.  I sat in the waiting room, took a look 
at her, and chose my approach.  It may be the biggest mistake 
I've made in my career.  Since when have I let the cover of a 
book deceive me so completely?  Must have been the early rumors 
about Spooky and Mrs. Spooky that got me so far off the rails 
where she's concerned.

She's very quiet.  Most of the time, I don't have the faintest 
idea what she's thinking.  This is because her face---with a few 
notable exceptions---is made of stone.  Even when she appears to  
share her thoughts, open up a bit, I doubt her.  In Idaho, 
sitting in a car with her for hours and hours, what did I really 
get to know of her?  Not much.  She confessed some uncertainty 
about her theories, but then, it takes confidence to appear less 
than certain.  A truly insecure person would bluster his way 
through it, not show a hair of doubt.  Like the lawman in that 
case, who wound up getting chomped by Batman.  Those who are 
certain often end up dead.  (The origin of the phrase 'dead 
certain'?)  She's smart enough to know that.

And one thing for sure, she's really, really smart.  Brilliant, 
in fact.  But she's still not willing to give me much.  She goes 
off on her own, as she did to her regret to Utah.  She runs away 
from me, refusing to share her theories.  Back at the school for 
the deaf, she walked away rather than answer my questions.  I 
guess it's my own fault, for making that false initial approach.  
I began our relationship with a lie, and she won't forget that.    
Maybe it's expecting too much at this point to think she might 
give me any information other than what's required for our 
safety.  Especially someone like her, used to playing her cards 
close to her vest.  Someone inured to ridicule and disbelief.  
Someone who does not trust, with one notable exception.

I could see that my initial lie really got to her.  Even her 
stone face didn't quite cover up her reaction.  Whatever was 
going on between her and Mulder, to her, it's big.  That whole 
first day, she was in agony, behind the carefully maintained 
facade.   If there's anything in this world that she wants to 
believe, it's that she knows Fox Mulder better than anyone else.  
That is THE fact of her life, the bedrock of her existence.  It 
was almost sad to watch her that day, faced with evidence of 
unknown travels and mysterious tombstones and undisclosed 
illnesses.   My dilemma----was she lying?  Is she a superb 
actress who was in Mulder's confidence the whole time?  Does she 
know where he's gone?

The sad expressions that settle on her face when she thinks no 
one's looking persuade me she doesn't know where he is.  The way 
she crumbled in the hospital room, lying there beside a puddle of 
green goo---that was the face of despair.  I picked her up, tried 
to offer some simple human comfort.  She didn't realize my hands 
were touching her.  She didn't even know I was there.  All she 
knew was loss.  She was alone, despite the crowd of agents and 
medical personnel that eventually appeared.  Her solitude was 
tangible.  It filled the room, sucking out the oxygen.  It was 
hard to breathe.

She had enough sense left to cover her face.  She knew that 
otherwise, all would be able to see a woman who had lost it.  Not 
just in the sense of breaking down, but of realizing for the 
first time that maybe she'd reached the end of the road.  In that 
instant, I'm convinced she thought that all was lost.  I think 
that may have been my only truly honest glimpse of Dana Scully.  
And of course, after that first split second, she covered her 
face to conceal the force of the blow from me and from the world.  
She's so closed.

I think my problem began before I was assigned this case. I 
didn't start out with the right expectations.  Mulder/Scully, 
wackos notorious throughout the Bureau.  She'd been tarred with 
his brush, but she's no wacko.  I should have taken care to find 
that out, study her further before beginning with a lie.

I keep forgetting she's a doctor, a scientist, and an extremely 
experienced, tough agent.  I've seen for myself that she's a 
terrific shot and a thorough investigator.  That no matter what 
happens, even when she harbors a monster within her and is 
wracked by agonizing pain, she keeps her head and remains in 
command.  In any situation, she refuses to back down.  When all 
is done, she may BREAK down, but back down she won't.  No matter 
what I tell her, no matter what we find out, nothing will break 
her faith in Mulder.  She's like some kind of bird that mates for 
life.  The kind that will pine away once it's separated from its 
mate.

I guess she's pining.  She tries to put on her work face, but 
she's close to the edge.  I can feel the unease radiating from 
her being.  She's so afraid, so isolated.  Even *I* have come to 
hope that Fox Mulder is the man she thinks he is, not the wacko 
traitor Kersh thinks he is and expects me to prove he is.  I've 
never had a great love for Fox Mulder, but my . . . my feelings 
for Dana Scully grow by the day.  She is everything I've ever 
admired in a person, let alone a woman.

Yeah, so maybe I'm a bit sexist.  The fact that she's a woman 
does not readily leave my mind.  I notice---constantly---that 
behind the perennial sadness concealed by her professional mask 
is a gorgeous woman.  Her eyes, blue as the sky on its best days, 
are endless, a sea any man could fall into and drown.  Sometimes, 
I wish they would focus on *me* --- not her enemy, or, at best, 
the co-worker who's been forced on her until the moment, that 
mythical moment, when her true partner returns.

What HAPPENED between those two?  How did he win her over so 
totally?  She is obviously a sensible person who, even now, 
cannot quite believe it when a far-out theory emanates from her 
mouth.  Yet she would die for that man, is pining away for him.  
Her very voice is deadened by sadness.   It's as though a part of 
her, a very large part of her, has withdrawn.  She is in the 
process of shutting down.  I wonder what would happen to her if 
she didn't have the work to distract her?

Mulder's work.  She's made that quite clear to me, the usurper.  
Once the True Prince returns, I'll be outta there like a speeding 
bullet.  She's so possessive about the X-Files, Mulder, his 
reputation.  She loves him.  Nothing is clearer than that.  He is 
the only thing in her universe, short of staying alive until he 
returns.  If that means keeping me alive and accepting my help in 
maintaining her life until that moment, she'll put up with me.

I shouldn't be so harsh.  She IS kind, when she remembers that I 
exist as something other than a vehicle to let her continue the 
work of the X-Files.  She calls me from the road when she really 
needs information, although she didn't see fit to take me along 
on the case.  She accepts me enough to let me have a desk in her 
precious basement.  She consents to let me carry her when she is 
too disabled to walk.  She is gracious enough to give me credit 
whenever I do something that will keep her alive until the return 
of the Walking Grail.  But she doesn't actually give a shit about 
me.  One of Mulder's precious ships could lift me off the face of 
the earth tomorrow and Dana wouldn't notice that I'm gone.  She'd 
just keep searching and pining for Mulder.

Was it sex?  Is that how he won her?  I study her.  I try to 
figure that out.  Her making herself at home in his bed certainly 
suggests it.  But I'm not sure.  She is so hard to read except 
for one basic fact---that inside she is dying, that she is 
clinging to a slender thread, waiting for Him to return.  Other 
than that inadvertent information that seeps through despite all 
her efforts, she simply does not share.

I remember her face when I stepped out of the chopper in the 
desert night.  That was not the bright light she hoped to see in 
the sky, nor was I the man she wanted to see step out of the 
light.  Then, she looked at me as if I were the stupidest agent 
she'd ever had the misfortune to come across---I had dared to 
send agents to guard a boy we'd all been searching for.  But, 
shit.  Turned out she was right, Skinner was nearly killed, the 
kid was about to be taken, and --- Dana Scully succumbed to a 
broken heart.  Her faade crumbled, and I got to see for myself 
that she is not as brittle as she would have me believe.

Christ, she was so tough those first few days.  I was the 
archfiend in her eyes.  I wasn't worth sharing any facts or 
theories with.  And the pain of it is, she was probably right.  I 
was nosing out what Kersh had ordered, forgetting one of the 
prime rules of investigation:  don't theorize in advance of the 
facts.  The fact is, there are things out there that I don't 
understand.  I need to see and interpret what's there, not make 
up my mind in advance.  Until Idaho, I would not have believed in 
a real-life Batman.  Until Utah, I would not have believed that 
people could be moronic enough to believe in a slimy lobster-like 
god.

And then there's the focus of all this---Mulder.  I don't think 
Mulder can actually walk off a cliff and scamper away.  I DO have 
evidence that a, a, uh, person changed himself to appear as both 
Skinner and Scully.  Therefore, I have to accept these things, 
absurd as they are.   Welcome to the X-Files, friend.  Wackos R 
Us.  Soon, I'll be a laughingstock too, a sub-FBI dweller sinking 
beneath the contempt.  I can take it.

So can Dana.  It is amazing with what equanimity she accepts all 
the shit that's thrown her way, whether it's by her so-called 
colleagues in the Bureau, the lawmen in the field, her superiors, 
whoever.  She just wipes all expression from her face, looks the 
miscreant in the eye, and speaks objective words in a level tone 
of voice.  Sometimes, I think *she* is Wonder Woman, not that 
scantily-clad bimbo with the tiara.  And Dana's twice as 
beautiful, with that wild mop of red hair she tries so hard to 
subdue.  I suspect there's a lot of wildness in her that is 
masked by her professional manner.   I also suspect that this 
will remain a theory, as far as I'm concerned.  To her, I am the 
Invisible Man.

I *do* trust her, oddly enough.  Odd because she has lied to me, 
concealed truth, refused to share information, avoided me 
whenever possible, and made me feel generally unwanted.   Maybe 
that's why I trust her, though.  She's not even bothering to 
pretend I'm welcome.  This same take-no-prisoners attitude 
explains why I've concluded she doesn't know where Mulder is---- 
she's convinced he's on a spaceship somewhere, not lounging on a 
beach in Rio with a tropical drink in his fist.   

I'm sure I don't know the whole truth about her.  Hell, I think 
her depth is such that even Mulder the Great doesn't know it all, 
or maybe no more than a fraction.  Obviously, you have to earn 
your way with her.  And I started in the minus column.  Maybe 
someday, I'll work my way back to even and have a chance to see a 
little further than the mask.

She lets the mask slip sometimes.  In the desert, outside the 
helicopter, she showed me her contempt and disbelief.  In the 
hospital, I glimpsed her despair.  In Idaho, she showed me that 
she'd take care of me in the field.  In Utah, she showed me so 
goddamned much about herself, it boggled my mind.  What a woman!

I looked at her back and felt like heaving.  She simply said, 
"Get me the hell out of here."  No hysterics, no self-pity.  She 
is pure strength.  With help, she could walk.  And her mind never 
once shut down.  She knew where the bus was and led me there, 
despite her excruciating pain.  When the creature became too 
threatening, she once again took charge.  She told me to cut it 
out.  She ORDERED me to cut it out, with no pain killers, no 
agonizing, nothing but the screams of pain.  I like that she 
didn't hold them back, that she gave me that much of her feeling.  
I suppose that's an indication of how horrendous that pain was, 
as I  cut through her flesh and dug out what surely would be 
thrown out of any self-respecting horror film.  She NEVER lost 
control.  Jesus, she is something.

Afterwards, she again showed her mettle.  No harsh words about 
those brutes who'd nearly killed her, just a statement of their 
beliefs.  And then her generosity blossomed again, just as it did 
the day she talked about the desk.  She knows, and I know, that 
truly there was no need for me to accompany her on a routine 
forensic consult.  Yet, the big person who resides in that tiny, 
delicate body, in hindsight, apologized for a mistake that would 
have been fatal only in this million-to-one situation.

I played a role, gotta admit it.  I want to be there for her in 
the future; I want her to let me in.  So, I seized the moment, 
telling her:  "You screwed up."

When she said, "And I won't do it again," I believed her.  As I 
said, I trust her.  I want to be with her.  For one thing, she's 
where all the action is.  For another, she is, as I said, 
fascinating to me.  A beautiful soul in a beautiful body.  How I 
hated to see it marred by my own knife.

She's like a giant (albeit tiny) jigsaw puzzle.  So many pieces, 
so intricately carved.  And so worth putting together and seeing 
some small portion of the exquisite whole.  Truly something to 
aspire to.  

I want to see her whole again.  Hell, I *long* for that, to see 
a smile on her face that reaches beyond her mouth muscles, that 
holds no tinge of bitterness.   One that radiates joy.  I wonder 
if that's possible without Mulder's return.  I've come to doubt 
it.  I can do little for her except find the large missing piece 
of HER puzzle.  For her, I'll try my best.  As long as it takes.

END