TITLE:  The Other Path
AUTHOR:  Phantom Chic
RATING: PG
CATEGORY: Scully Vignette, post-ep
SPOILERS:  mostly "all things"
ARCHIVAL:  Ephemeral, Gossamer, Spooky's, Gate_Philes, any
where else is fine just let me know.
DISCLAIMER: The characters herein belong to Gillian Anderson,
Chris Carter, and David Duchovny.
SUMMARY: Dana Scully-Waterston contemplates her life and the
path she didn't choose.
FEEDBACK: Ooh, please! I can not emphasize how much feedback
does not suck. Just make sure the subject line says "fic feedback"
or something similar so it will make it past my mail filters.
NOTES: Inspired by the plays "A Doll's House" by Henrik
Ibsen and "Strange Attractors" by David Adjmi.  Special thanks to
Jenniferanne for the great beta.  You're the best!

******
"How did I get here?  How did I end up stuck in this bourgeois-
Ibsen Hell?"  Dana Scully-Waterston looked around the living room
of her two bedroom suburban home with disgust.  To the
uninformed observer it would appear to be the perfect dream home,
part of a perfect domestic life.  In fact it was everything Dana
Scully-Waterston had ever thought she wanted from her life.  The
wonderfully decorated house that was always so perfectly kept it
could be a page out of Martha Stewart Living, the well-manicured
lawn complete with white-picket fence, the dog that greeted her
eagerly when she walked in the door, and the two cars.  And, of
course, Daniel.  Her husband and Chief of Staff at the hospital
where she was a pediatric surgeon.  It should've been the perfect
life.  Even her family had eventually come around and accepted
Daniel.  Dana knew she should've been blissfully happy, but
somehow she wasn't.  It was something that she contemplated
every day of her seemingly perfect life.  Why wasn't she happy?
Sometimes she thought it was that she couldn't have any children
because Daniel had had a vasectomy before they met.  Yet she
worked with children all day, it was the one part of her life from
which she did seem to gain some measure of satisfaction.  She
loved her job, despite her occasional yearnings for something more
exciting and intellectually stimulating, and had come to believe that
she was simply not meant to be a mother.  Other times she thought
it was the residual guilt that Daniel had left his wife and daughter
for her.  But if she had learned nothing else about Daniel in the time
they had been married, it was that Daniel had been dissatisfied with
his family life for a long time and she had simply been the catalyst
for his actions.  And now it was she who was dissatisfied.  At that
moment, as she surveyed the idyllic home she shared with a man
who clearly loved her, she realized what it was that was missing. 
While she had all the trappings of the life she had pictured as a little
girl, she didn't have the feelings.  That sensation that she was
sharing her life with someone who held the other half of her soul. 
She did love Daniel, but as Missy had pointed out on numerous
occasions, it did have a Electra-complex feel to it at times.  It
wasn't the all-consuming type of love.  She had always dreamed of
a man with a beautiful mind who could make her heart flutter with a
touch of his fingers or the mere brushing of his lips.  The type of
man with whom she would be an equal, not someone who felt the
need to dominate her as Daniel clearly did.  A man who would go
to the ends of the earth for her and hold her when she needed it
without being overprotective.  She felt as though she was missing,
or perhaps had never found, a touchstone.  As though somewhere
along the line she had missed her true path. 

"It's time to go," she said aloud.  She turned her head fractionally
and closed her eyes as she heard the slamming of Daniel's car door. 
She took a deep breath and opened her eyes to look down at the
packed bags at her feet.  She looked up as the door opened and
Daniel walked in.

"Dana, honey, you're home early." Daniel stopped abruptly as he
saw the bags at his wife's feet and the determined look in her eyes. 
"Are we going somewhere?"

"I am." Dana said calmly.  "I'm sorry, Daniel.  I just can't live in this
doll's house anymore.  This life just isn't right for me.  I want the
path I didn't choose."

"Dana, you're not thinking clearly.  Where would you go?  Is there
someone else?"  Daniel's voice hardened as he contemplated the
possibility that Dana would do to him what he had done to his
family.

"Actually, Daniel, I'm thinking clearly for the first time in a long
time.  It's time for me to live my life.  I don't like what I see in the
mirror anymore, I need to become someone I can live with again."
Dana paused, then decided to answer his final question.  "And yes, I
believe there is someone else.  At least I want to believe that he's
out there."

"Who?" Daniel asked tersely.

"My one in five billion.  Good-bye Daniel."

*****

Scully woke abruptly as the dream ended.  'A dream is the answer
to a question we haven't yet learned how to ask,' she thought as she
rubbed her stiff neck and moved her legs off Mulder's coffee table. 
'Mulder.' She remembered falling asleep on his shoulder as they sat
on his couch.  He had been talking about how all the paths in their
life had led to that one moment and that one wrong turn and they
wouldn't be there.  She realized that was what her dream had been--
a vision of what her life would be if she had chosen to spend it with
Daniel.  She had been right when she told Mulder there was only
one right path--the one that led her to him.  It was time to take the
next step on that path.  She pushed the blanket to the side and
stood up.  She hesitated for only a moment in the doorway to
Mulder's bedroom.  Then she stepped forward to find the answer to
her dream's question.

*****
The End