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Title:      Catching the Train
Author:     Meredith

Rating:      R for language
Category:    V,A
Spoilers:    My, yes: fourth season up to "Kaddish."
Summary:     Set during "Kaddish." Mulder agonizes over how their 
current case seems to mirror the agents' personal crises.

Completed:   February 1997.

Feedback:   Oh boy, do I need feedback. Really. Please, please 
e-mail me at the address at the end.

If you think this is any good, you can thank Miki; I sure do. 
Thanks for everything, M.


XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

It has been 7 days.


I suppose I could be wrong, but I think she would have told me. 
I know she would have. Now, anyway.

We've been working to find the answers, lulled into a false 
sense of security by what we haven't seen, what she hasn't 
experienced.

She looked good. Hell, she looked more beautiful than ever.

As usual, we've been tackling her illness from two different 
directions: she has been scouring every medical database in 
the country, every treatment, gene therapy. I, on the other 
hand, have pursued more unorthodox means. I knew eventually 
our paths would converge somewhere in the middle, because 
Scully and I are reconnected, once again functioning in tandem. 
But we're not making much progress yet.

*I'm* starting to feel time like a fucking bullet train.

Of course, it was impossible to stay out the field forever; we 
could only dodge cases for so long before it got obvious. 
Besides, Scully was determined not to let cancer stop her 
from doing her job. But this case...

And she wonders why I don't believe in a god. If a supreme 
being does exist, he sure has a twisted sense of humor.

XXXXX


Our invasion of their home was a necessary evil, but the 
smell, the weight and thickness of mourning were things 
I could not face. I didn't want to be there.

From the beginning Scully took the lead in this case. She 
wasn't denying or avoiding her illness.

She was back. She was working. She was. 

The Weisses seemed to know that; they directed their anger, 
fears and questions to her. But it was to me Jacob asked that 
painful rhetorical question.

"Where were you when Isaac needed your protection?"



I couldn't look him in the eyes, but not for the reasons 
he thought.




It has been 172 hours.

Outside that suffocating apartment we functioned like an 
investigative wet dream. Oh yeah, Mulder and Scully were back, 
rooting out bigots and plundering graves. Golems and ghosts and 
racists, oh my. 

Fuck it.  *Get this solved, get home, get back to finding a 
cure.* I chanted that to myself like a mantra of conviction. 
I knew we needed to get to the bottom of this case soon. I 
just wasn't that interested -- even when the small, leather-
bound book spontaneously caught fire in my hands while we sat 
in the bottom of Isaac's wet grave. Normally, I would have 
hopped out of that hole shrieking with joy.

But it wasn't the miracle I was looking for.



It has been 10,200 minutes.

We had been debating what leads to follow the next morning while 
eating a late-night smorgasbord of vending machine snacks. 
It felt so good to bicker, laugh, to just be with her. But 
there is danger in forgetting. The local TV station droned 
softly and the lights were low, comforting; but not low enough 
for me to miss the trickle of blood appear above her lip as she 
leaned over to retrieve a dropped paper.

Another cruel image burned into my psyche for eternity.


It had been more than six hundred thousand unretrievable 
seconds since her last nosebleed. Six hundred thousand more 
seconds lost forever.

I crossed the small space between us quickly and brushed the 
blood away with my thumb before she had a chance to turn away.

"Don't." It was a warning; I ignored it.

Flight or fight, Mulder.

"Scully." A statement. I had every right, and she knew it. 
And for once, I won the stare-down.

She was simultaneously soft and strong under my arm as I 
led her to the bathroom, where we stopped the flow and washed 
her face. I will never get used to seeing her blood swirl so 
delicately in the basin, gracefully flowing away. Will this be 
how she is taken from me? One vital drop at a time?


XXXXX

Faith is the belief of something for which there is no proof -- 
complete trust. Faith connotes a belief in a higher power. 
Faith, belief, trust. Their meanings have always intermingled 
for me, knotted in a definition that is nothing god-like. It 
is all too earthly, too mortal. Faith is Scully. Faith is 
Samantha.  

If Scully is taken from this earth, I won't curse fate. A 
certain cigarette-smoking mortal won't be the only being to 
blame for wasting such a pure and beautiful life. Hell. I 
want to blame an entity I don't even believe in. Maybe I'm 
not such an atheist after all.

Is it hard to tell that someone has no faith?

Funny how the Jewish archivist looked at me in disbelief 
when I told him I didn't speak Hebrew. I guess he knew. 
It's as plain as the...whatever.

I wonder what he would think if he watched a woman wed her 
dead lover -- and then watch that same man crumble away like 
so much dust. What if it were his wife? His lover? His partner? 
How strong would his faith be then?

They never had a fucking chance.


By the time Scully came up there was nothing left of Isaac 
Luria. All we could do was stand there and watch Ariel say 
goodbye. We stood there too long. 

I finally placed my hand softly on the back of Scully's neck 
and whispered that we should go. I could feel her heartbeat 
under my skin, a soft rhythm of wheels on a track.

Tick tick, Mulder. 

_____________________________________________________________________
Comments, please! Please!
Meredith40@juno.com or meredith_elsewhere@yahoo.com