The Courage to Go On
Goo



"I miss you so much."  She crouched, reaching out to trace the letters
etched into cold granite but the cold meant nothing.  In memory, Dana
Scully felt warm flesh under her hands.  Warm hands that caressed her with
a lover's ardent passion.

She wished she could visit him more often.  The thought sent her gaze
skittering nervously over the stones that stood silent witness to the grief
of others.  Stone and wood, tree and grave, but thank god, no watchers.
Not this time.  She let herself look away, back, to the grave of her love.
The man who's approval, whose respect, had helped her find herself.  The
man whose love had taught her the highest station to which a woman could
aspire - to be wife, lover and loved.  The man whose death had taught her
the widow's pain.  A widow's pain, she thought, touching her smooth, pale
left hand.  "Yes.  I am your widow.  We married in love, in the eyes of
God, and the eyes of man and the law can be damned."

Dana.  He had called her Dana, letting the soft, gentle sound of her name
tell her how much he'd loved her.  And she him.  He'd been older than she,
and wiser.  But she had taught him much, too. She'd taught him joy and
laughter, passion and pleasure.  She remembered, too well.  Too little.
Remembered the thrill that had sung in her veins each day that she'd fled
the prison of the Hoover Building, fled the life of pretense and falsehood
that had defined her world.  How had it come upon her?

"I was so innocent.  You remember?  I looked up to you so much."  Dana.
Yes, she refused to call herself Scully here, in the private time she could
spend with him, that she could leave the cold mask of her professional self
behind.  Dana leaned forward and softly kissed the cold stone, resting her
cheek against a surface as fierce and strong as her love for the man
beneath it.  Her lipstick, the warm fog of her breath marked the stone when
she leaned back on her haunches.

Barren stone.  As barren as she.  This life of falsehood had stolen her
innocence and her womanly self, first in image, then in fact.  In the
X-Files she'd had to become Scully, a sexless soldier for a nameless and
meaningless truth.  And that world of lies had taken everything, her youth,
her time, and her womb had all been paid for a quest that could never be
fulfilled.  And now, finally, that quest had taken her love.

But, oh, it could not take her memories.  Her eyes sparked and prickled
with salty tears of pain and joy as she wrapped her arms around herself.
Such small hands, not like his.  Not large and strong.  And the breath on
her neck was only the western wind, not his loving kiss.  But she
remembered.  The joy, the games.  Kisses in secret, games and laughter and
love.  She remembered streaking home from another fruitless, sterile
pursuit to laugh as she'd found the old clothes.  They still fit!  The
uniform of her senior year in high school and the rigor of diet and
exercise paid off as she pulled on the short, pleated skirt, the sweater.
Ohhh, yes.  The knee socks.  And the new, shiny saddle shoes she'd bought
just to share with him, her one, her true love.  He'd started when he saw
her, then smiled slow and warm.  "Is this your way of telling me about
May/December romance?"

She'd flounced, shivered with delight at his laugh.  "You know I just want
to please you.  I just want to make you happy."

"Oh, Dana.  My Dana.  You do that, sweetheart.  You always have and always
will."  Scully blinked the tears away, arranging and rearranging the
flowers she'd brought, knowing he'd love them. He'd loved those little
gestures of hers.

And she had shared so many.  In private she'd shown him how to find a
pleasure that he hadn't known in years.  Perhaps never.  She savored the
brief joy of the light in his eyes, the flush in his cheeks.  She'd given
her life to him, made his cause hers.  For him she'd lied, cheated, stolen.
For him she'd spied on those closest to her and the lies had become her
daily world.  But she'd made him proud.  She'd been true to the cause, true
to him and their love.  From a callow girl, fresh from the Academy, she'd
grown in his regard.  She'd come to be not just lovely, but a trusted
helpmate.  A true soulmate.  And her work had made him proud and made the
world a little safer from the madness and chaos that always threatened to
topple peace and truth and reason.  She'd been sorely tested but had
remained true.

And his love had saved her.  In his love she'd found herself.  His love,
finally  had brought her home when her work had endangered her beyond all
belief.  His grief and love had driven him ceaselessly until those without
mercy had found it expedient to spare her.  And then, later, as her she lay
dying, it was his love that brought her the cure from the bosom of secrecy.
His love that had saved her again and again and now she could not repay
him.  She could never repay that love, never touch him or hold him or love
him again.  She missed the stubble of his cheeks, the soft flesh of his
body, the musk of a grown man strong in his sense of right.  But finally,
it was the work that had killed him.

The work, the work.  His quest to reveal the lies and the danger had turned
upon him and taken his life.  But it was still his work.  The work she kept
on even now, in homage to her lost love. Scully   The work she pursued once
from the passion of love, she pursued now with the heat of revenge.  Dana
Scully reached out again to trace the shapes that could never be as sweet
as her lover's name.  Whispered them to herself.  "It's all right," she
murmured.  "It's all right, Scott.  I'll never forget you.  And if I must
pretend to be Scully for the rest of my life I'll bring down Fox Mulder for
you, my love.  Your Dana will bring him home to you, Scott."

It was late, and it was dangerous but she missed him so much. Dana kissed
the "S" in Scott, the "B" in Blevins, and somewhere in the ashes of her
love found the phoenix of revenge.  "Good bye, Scott.  Until next time.
You give me the courage to go on."