From:             "Shaye Beaumont" 
Subject:          Revised: Epiphany 1/1 by: Shaye *US4 Spoilers*
Date sent:        Sat, 26 Jul 1997 03:09:20 PDT


Please distribute to archives with my name and title attached.
Do not post to ATXC
Title: Epiphany
Length: 1/1
Genre: MSR, S, A
Violence Rating: 1 (mild)
Spoilers: Gethsemane
Keywords: Mulder/Scully Romance
Rated: PG-13 for mild language and a few adult situations.
Author: Shaye
Feedback: driftster@hotmail.com
Summary: Learning the truth too late, M and S try to catch-up on their 
relationship before they are separated.

Disclaimer: Characters of the X-Files are the sole property of CC, Fox 
Broadcasting, and 1013 Productions. The author will not accept anything 
except constructive feedback for writing this story. All thanks should 
go to the show's creator for his wonderful paranormal world.

Special thanks to Kelli and Sarah for previewing.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Epiphany 1/1
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Velvet.

The warmth and smoothness of velvet is what I remember of our time 
together that night. Everything from the soft tone of his voice to the 
gentle touch of his caress. No one could ever reach into my heart or 
comfort my troubles that way again.

Never, because the person who possessed that power was gone.

I had been a candle lit from his flame, my passions dormant without him 
as a catalyst. With a single spark and one carefree moment our emotions 
were ignited. Unfortunately the happiness of discovering our love for 
each other was to be short lived. 

Darkness had descended upon me. As it had onto him. I could see our love 
slip away in the dead, black eyes that stared blankly upwards into mine. 
Those eyes were not his. It couldn't be. Mulder was too full of hope and 
excitement for the future. Our future.

Now he was gone. I felt trapped in an endless maze of possibilities and 
theories.

Did someone make this look like a suicide? Was this even his body? My 
intuition told me that this could not be him. Uneasiness stirred in the 
pit of my stomach. Mulder always had something to say or prove . . . so 
why wasn't there a suicide letter?

If others had ever thought that I was cold and unfeeling, I was more so 
now. Whoever did this to us was going to pay. So help me, I will make 
those responsible atone for every drop of blood they've spilled.

Months have passed since I made that promise to myself. Alone in this 
desolate existence I can only cling to my memories of him and wait for a 
chance to even the score. The conspirators that left my body a raped and 
barren plain will try to erase those memories. They will not succeed.

I am a dying and desperate soul who will fight at all costs to keep what 
is dear to me. There is an icy blood that courses through my veins, 
numbing my anger as thoughts of *them* seep through the glacier-hard 
barrier of my will.

Save your anger, I tell myself. Use it constructively to help him. To 
help yourself.

How could I carry on his life's work when I barely have a life to give? 
Not many would call my state living, but it is the best that I can hope 
for in the end.

The end eventually comes to all of us with its bottomless appetite to 
devour the souls of the unsuspecting. It also comes to those who welcome 
its release from their disease-ridden vessels that are no longer able to 
weather the pain. 

My place in this mortal spectrum is somewhere in-between. Sadly, I may 
not have to look any further than Mulder's death certificate for my 
future. No matter what my fighting spirit says, he was probably my last 
hope.

What sin had I ever committed that had made God's judgment swift and 
harsh? 

Is there even a God to hear my pleas?

I remember Mulder asking me that question about the existence of God. I 
didn't care at the time. Perhaps I chose to ignore it, afraid of the 
answer? 

It is obvious that I care now, that I need an answer. 

What I do not . . . what I *will* not believe is that Mulder is dead. He 
was taken away not by his own hand, but by someone else. This *is* a 
hoax. I know it is. Mulder had instilled too much hope in me that night 
to believe otherwise.

I will look for tomorrow in yesterday. There I can fall back into the 
comfort of his arms and he will tell me that everything will be all 
right.

Falling. Falling faster than the tears that stream down my face. Falling 
away from the shadows of evil that encircle my world to destroy me.

Falling as I close my eyes.

I lie on my bed, too weak from the cancer to go out and search for him 
myself. Yet, I am still coherent enough to remember the rhythm of his 
heartbeat as I place my head against his gray coat. The scent of his 
cologne still lingers on its fabric and it seduces me to sleep.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXX

The room in which we stand in is dark. We have just found out that what 
Kritschgau said was true. I believed the D.O.D informant, but Mulder 
couldn't accept the truth. My partner's voice was sharp as it shattered 
the silence of death surrounding us. He wanted to know what Kritschgau 
had said to me that I believed him over everything else. So I told 
Mulder my reason, that those men had given me the cancer. 

The anger that Mulder had lashed out at me with accusation had suddenly 
turned inward to himself. I could read the horror in his eyes and see 
the fire of his anger quenched by tears. He stood motionless for only a 
moment longer. The look he gave me was as if death had passed over us.

I thought the guilt would kill him. More than any embarrassment he would 
suffer in front of his peers, this revelation had cut him deeply. I was 
so sorry that I had opened my mouth, but it was the only way that I 
could get him to realize the truth.

After a couple minutes I decided to go talk to him. He had always been 
there for me. Now we needed each others' strength. When we returned to 
his apartment hardly a word had passed between us until he turned on his 
computer.

"What are you doing? Mulder?"

"Take these disks to Frohike. It's the only safe place for them. I can 
well imagine that everything in the office has been destroyed."

"You're giving up? Just like that, Mulder? Finished?"

He turned his head in my direction. The light from the computer's screen 
illuminated his face with a lifeless eerie blue. He looked tired, the 
years of pressure under the weight of the Consortium had taken their 
toll.

"No, I'm not giving up. I'll do this on my own, but first I have to make 
them *think* that I have given up. I'll give them what they want. . . 
ruin my reputation. . .I never had much of one anyhow." It was then, 
when his voice dropped an octave, I knew that his reputation meant more 
to him than he had let on. "Just when they think I've destroyed my own 
credibility and have vanished from the forefront . . . I'll reemerge  . 
. ."

I couldn't let him finish. "What am I supposed to do? Vanish with you? I 
can't do that to my family, Mulder."

"Scully, you're not going to do anything. You are going to rest and try 
to fight this disease. You're dying and it's my fault." There was an 
urgency that laced his voice. 

He was trying to show me that I was the most important mission in his 
life. His sincerity touched me beyond words. How could I have been so 
fortunate to find such an unselfish person. This is not the Mulder I met 
four years ago. 

"Scully . . . I'm going to find the cure. I will make you well again. 
Afterwards, I'll deal with those bastards. The truth will be known and 
they will answer for everything they've done."

Always the hero, but an underdog. He wouldn't have a chance outside the 
Bureau. He wouldn't have a chance without me. We had always balanced 
each other out. 

He wasn't a quitter and neither was I. He knew that and he couldn't 
possibly think I would settle for anything less than to be in the fight 
together until the end. "Mulder, I'm dying, but I am not dead!"

It was then that I reached for his hand and placed it angrily over my 
heart. "Do you feel it?" Then I moved his hand to my neck. "Do you? I'm 
alive and I'm not giving up until the day . . . you place your hand 
there and feel nothing."

He left my grasp to gently sweep a tendril of hair from my face. "You 
know I look at you and wonder why the heck someone like me became an FBI 
agent. You're a brave and loyal soldier, Scully, but I can't afford to 
have you along on this one."

My anger grew. He was trying to ditch me again. "You're right, Mulder. 
You should have never gotten into this line of work. You can't handle 
the guilt that someone may get hurt. What about the fact that you have 
to answer to someone and play well with others, Mulder!? You cannot be 
the leader all the time and carry the weight on your shoulders. I am a 
partner in your mission, not a soldier."

"Scully, you know damn well what I mean. There were others that I've 
worked with that got hurt or died. . . and I've always had to answer to 
someone and play by the rules of their game. What I cannot handle is the 
fact that I've quite possibly killed someone that I care about very 
much. Will a simple *I'm sorry, Scully* be enough!?"

He was shaking and I knew he wanted to shore all this pain by himself. 
"Stop with the excuses. Stop blaming yourself, Mulder. If it wasn't you 
and I, it would have been someone else. It's bigger than you and it has 
been going on long before you were born. Ever since Samantha's 
disappearance you have been living in the past."

 I had to catch my breath and relax. I couldn't lose it, because he 
needed my stability. He had always touched me deeply, bringing out the 
best and sometimes the worst of my personality. "Mulder, you're doing 
the same thing now, thinking that you could have done something 
different that would have prevented my illness."

I searched his face for answers to see if anything I was saying was 
getting through. He averted his eyes from mine and shook his head in 
disagreement. "No, Scully, I'm thinking about all the loved ones that 
we've lost. Is this really going to be worth it? Because if it isn't, I 
don't know if I can stand to lose another person that I love."

"Mulder, I can never replace your sister. Please, do not dote over me 
like I am one. I am a fully capable government agent."

He laughed a bit. I couldn't figure out why. Whatever had come over him, 
it made me smile. I felt the tension between us disappear for a moment.

"Well if you're not my sister, would you settle for being a "kissin' 
cousin"?" His laughter was more forced than genuine. 

He knew were he had gone. I had rarely held anything against him, but I 
couldn't let his words go scot-free. I crossed my arms and backed slowly 
away, frantically trying to assemble my mental defenses. 

"You don't want to go there, Mulder. If you could take anything back in 
your life . . . you should take that back. I think it would be best for 
me to leave, now." The space between myself and the door seemed to be a 
mile away. I couldn't reach there fast enough for my liking.

"Scully."

I stopped without turning to face him, just short of my salvation to the 
outside.

"Take these disks I made to Frohike. I can't get near the Gunmen. I'll 
give you the phone number to his mother's house. She'll relay a message 
to him in a code we use. He will probably want to meet you at a 
laundromat downtown. It's a favorite hangout of his to check out women's 
underwear."

Damn him. I tried to summon my steely composure, but it melted away when 
I looked into his eyes. His face was peaceful and his gaze 
understanding. I knew he wasn't going to push the subject. On the other 
hand, I knew he saw right through me. He saw my secrets as clear as day 
or he wouldn't have even tried.

My hand shook as I reached to take the disks from him.

"Scully, listen, I'm sorry."

"You're right, Mulder, in what you had said before. *I'm sorry* doesn't 
make it better." Emotions had taken over and I had begun to cry. My grip 
on the disks was firm, but I couldn't stuff them into my jacket pocket. 
I couldn't move. I was coming apart from the inside-out. One person had 
turned the tough-minded Dana Scully into a panicked wreck of a woman.

Mulder's expression grew hard as he briskly turned his back to me. My 
tears were too painful to watch. He sat down at the computer and began 
to format the drives to destroy our work. The final admission of his 
feelings came when I saw that the password on his computer had been 
changed from TrustNo1 to Starbuck.

My legs, willed by my heart, moved my body stiffly towards him. Common 
sense, my golden rule, had been thrown away. I stood behind the chair 
and gently wrapped my arms around him. Together we stared at the 
computer's screen, viewing the deletion of files.  

Everything we had done together in four years rapidly disappeared. Our 
history was being obliterated with the press of a button. What would 
remain to prove we existed? 

His body was strangely relaxed as if he had often thought of a moment 
like this occurring between us. Gently I laid my cheek against his and 
shut my eyes. It was not at all like I had imagined. His skin was warm 
and soft, not rough. Even his jaw that was always held in rigid form was 
at ease.

It dawned on me that perhaps I hadn't really known the true Mulder at 
all. 

He moved his hands to mine and gave them a gentle squeeze. "You better 
go. I've got a lot to do before I break clean from them. On your way out 
could you put my NASA tape in the VCR?"

"Sure." My reply was immediate, but far from the confidence of being 
*sure*. I didn't want to leave him here.

"I. . . I guess listening to other babbling fools like myself, makes me 
feel better. Except, their work was proven and accepted."

"Mulder, you are not a fool. Someday soon you will be accepted. The 
truth will be known and the world will listen."

"Scully, I don't know if I could handle the publicity, because just 
getting you to believe me was astonishing enough." He had kept a hold of 
my hands as he turned the chair around to face me. "Stay out of trouble. 
I'll be in touch." His words were friendly, but direct.

"So if I was going to get into trouble, I better do it now?" 

Did I really say those words? Apparently I had, judging from the amused 
look he gave me in return.

"I don't know, Agent Scully, is it the kind of thing I can include in my 
report?"

"No one is going to believe you, remember?"

>From the heavy silence that lingered in the air, I knew that our 
light-hearted conversation had ended. 

"Yeah, but let's not make a decision out of sympathy for each other." He 
stood up and escorted me to the door, managing a brief smile, trying to 
regain a bit of happiness. "Don't forget to feed my fish. They're in 
your protective custody." Mulder made a funny puckered fish face while 
looking towards the aquarium.

He had an innocent quirkiness about him, even now as everything was 
falling apart. Only he could laugh in the face of chaos. I couldn't 
resist my feelings any longer. Without hesitation I raised my hand to 
his face and brought him down for a kiss.

Seize the moment before it's gone. How true those thoughts would be. In 
less than eight hours I would have to come and identify his body. Or 
what someone wanted me to believe was his body.

His lips had tasted of the sweetest drops of honey, and I never wanted 
to part from there. The excitement that he stirred in the core of my 
soul was intoxicating. 

My hands trembled as they felt the firmness of his back and moved to his 
shoulders and finally upward through his hair. I wrapped as much of the 
silky chestnut strands as I could around my fingers.

He was enjoying the kiss, but his hands remained paralyzed on the middle 
of my back. He wanted to take it slow; to make sure it was right. 

I let him pull back and place tiny kisses on my face and neck. I craved 
to get closer to the heat of his body, wanting him to lift me up so I 
could wrap myself around him. 

After the four years that we had spent together, I cannot explain the 
magnitude of passion that we had denied each other. For truth seekers we 
surely lied a lot. We had always had a certain rapport from the very 
first day we met, but it wasn't until much later in the partnership that 
I dared to wonder if I loved him.

It was during the aftermath of the committee hearing that I realized the 
fact that I had never told him that I had loved him.

The meaning of hitting rock-bottom was quite clear. I was there, looking 
up, knowing he wasn't there to throw me a lifeline.

"Scully, you better go. We're getting caught up in something that we 
better wait to enjoy. I know this is hard, but we're not saying 
good-bye. I promise you."

I kissed him one more time before I left. He had given me his life's 
work on these disks, but I had also left my life in his hands. I prayed 
that God would let my battered spirit watch over him until he was able 
to come back to me.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

I want to call him and tell him how my days are passing. A stupid wish, 
really, it is more like a form of self-torture that I am putting myself 
through. I should have never have left him that night. I should have 
told him that I loved him.

Violence had never been my way of solving problems, but the hate that 
was contained in my heart for those men was unfathomable. Rage was 
pushing me along, whispering to my subconscious that it would be okay 
for me to open the flood gates of my emotions.

I acted upon my own advice.

I swung the gates wide open and screamed at the top of my lungs. I took 
my badge and threw it across the room before shredding all of the photos 
of myself at the Academy. There was to be nothing left to indicate that 
any loyalty remained between myself and that corrupt organization that 
had imprisoned us.

When I was finished I noticed tiny droplets of blood falling onto my 
shirt. Another reminder. Except I couldn't  rip it up and throw it away. 
This reminder, the ugliest of them all, would haunt me every waking 
moment.

Slowly I rose from the sofa to go into the bathroom to stop the 
bleeding. I viewed myself in the mirror and cried. With a washcloth I 
wiped away the blood the best I could. Faint reddish stains lingered 
above my lip. 

I couldn't stand what had become of my life. I have never felt so 
vulnerable. Those were my last thoughts before I fell to the floor. The 
cancer was winning. Soon the temporary blackness of unconsciousness 
would be permanent. The cancer wanted to leave me dead in a pool of my 
own blood.

Time was running out.  

The day of Mulder's funeral my family attended the service. My brother 
stood beside me, but did not say a word. He didn't have to, because I 
could see it in his eyes. He looked at me with contempt. It was almost 
like he was happy that Mulder was dead. 

Why did Bill feel this way? Mulder wasn't responsible for Melissa's 
murder or Dad's death. Why? If my family only knew how much Mulder loved 
me they wouldn't judge him this way.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Mulder has been gone for three months. I still sleep with his jacket 
every night. It's a tangible part of him that keeps me warm and protects 
me. 

My mother wants me to go back to the hospital, but I told her that there 
was nothing the doctors could do for me. I would rather fight this 
battle on familiar territory. In the end I will beat this monster that 
grows inside me. In the end I will live out my days with him.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXX

"Mr. Mulder, you are no longer an agent for the Bureau. You are now 
owned. . . belong. . to this Organization."

Fox was dressed in a dark gray suit. He sat at the end of a long 
mahogany table, listening to the Smoking Man brief him on his new line 
of work.

"You do realize, Mulder, that you can never go back. If you do, we will 
kill you and all your hard work will be for naught. Although, I will 
give credit where credit is due; you just about got away with it. No 
matter, you will take over your father's position."

Mulder narrowed his gaze at the Consortium member's offer. "And you will 
cure Agent Scully of her cancer? What I don't understand is why Barnacle 
Bill here couldn't make a deal with you." 

The Smoking Man smiled slightly and looked towards Bill Scully who was 
standing behind Mulder.

"That's a good question, Mulder. Well, you see, Mr. Scully doesn't have 
anything to deal with. A small incident that killed several Navy crewmen 
on his ship led him to our service. An unfortunate accident such as that 
could ruin one's career and proud family reputation. Not to mention the 
potential loss of a large military pension. He's a hit man, Mulder, but 
he will assist you and see to it that his sister is cured."

Bill Scully laid a heavy hand on Mulder's shoulder and eyed him 
threateningly. "I'm sure Mulder and I will work well together."

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

9/15/97

Scully, I keep this journal for my sanity as I am forced to carry out 
their work. I can't tell you how many lives they have ruined, how many 
people they have pinned under their thumb. What I want to tell you is 
that your brother and I are doing what they want so you can be cured. 
Yes, these bastards have gotten to Bill too. What I didn't know was that 
your brother has been working together with Kritschgau. With their help 
I will find a way out of this. Someday soon we will crumble this 
organization from within and the truth will be known.

Stay strong, Scully. Don't give up hope. There are still good people in 
this world who want to make a difference. Do you know that occasionally 
I check on you? Remember, I still have the keys to your apartment. I 
stand there in the dark while you sleep, wanting to take you in my arms. 

You are so valiant and beautiful, but I can never look at you for too 
long. The sight of you holding on to my jacket rips me apart. You never 
told me, but I know what you couldn't say before. Those tears that 
linger on your face, that sparkle in the darkness tell me all. 
Time has not passed easily for us. 

I understand why you wrote that letter to me in the hospital. You know 
the one I wasn't supposed to read. What's funny is that I don't want you 
to read this, either. Not out of embarrassment, but because I would 
prefer to tell you in person those three unspoken words.

FWM

*********************************************************************
End 1/1
E-mail: driftster@hotmail.com
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