QUIDDITY
by - Joyce
June 1998

DISCLAIMER: The usual suspects belong to CC and Fox Broadcasting. I'm only borrowing them for a moment and will return them.  No infringement is intended.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: Thanks to Meredith for her inspired editing and for opening my ears to Scully's voice.

FEEDBACK: mab49@earthlink.net

SUMMARY: Scully ponders the question - why is she still with the X-Files?  Takes place before the movie.

 

 

He's gone...again. Rushing off to charge some damned windmill without once remembering that not only do windmills fight back - they also fight dirty. I'm holding a barely legible note in my hands mustering up the energy to go charging off after him -- Agent Scully, Mulder's own personal MASH unit.

Meanwhile, I'm standing here in his apartment savoring the old familiar feel of being left behind. One of these days I am going to have to seduce him. Maybe if I move in with him, I'll be a hell of a lot harder to overlook when these moods take him. If nothing else, I can handcuff him to his bed.

Now there's a thought. I can't help but ponder the intriguing possibilities for developing greater communication and trust with my partner that a simple pair of handcuffs and a bedpost provide. Not exactly strict FBI personnel protocol, but I haven't followed strict protocol in so long I'm not sure I'd know it if I saw it. I do know that the handbook outlining protocol and other helpful suggestions from the top brass on surviving and advancing in the FBI environment is currently stuck under the one of the legs of the wobbly desk I use in the basement gulag formally known as the X-Files office.

The memos from Personnel have been getting more strident since we opted out of that little training exercise in Florida. That was classic Mulder avoidance behavior at its best. The idea that maybe we could use a refresher course in communication never occurred to him. Nor did it occur to him that I might enjoy attending a conference and pretend, for just a few days, that we were normal, mainstream FBI professionals.

Personally, I was looking forward to the chance to test how well we do communicate under controlled conditions. As usual, the case he latched onto proved the need we have to actually sit down and discuss our feelings and theories, while demonstrating the inexplicable nature of our awareness of each other in a crisis.

We communicate. We just don't talk about it.

I have come to realize that aside from our work and the unavoidable intimacy I have with his family secrets, I know very little about my partner. Looking around his Spartan, cluttered living room, I glance at the small bookcase almost hidden in the corner. Curious about what books Mulder deems worthy of such preferred treatment - his usual method of storing books is in a pile on any available surface, I stoop down to scan the titles. Jung, Freud, B.F. Skinner - the working tools of a psychologist.

A smaller book, dwarfed by the heavy tomes surrounding it, catches my eye. It is a tattered copy of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. Memories of my father reading tales of knights and quests and the last days of Camelot come flooding back. I had forgotten them until now, but then they were tales he shared with all of us, not my very own special book he shared only with me.

Moby Dick and Ahab's doomed obsession. King Arthur's doomed utopia. It seems that Mulder and I share a common fascination with quests that end badly. If I see him as Ahab, where does he place me in the Arthurian quest. It better not be Guinevere. One of the knights, perhaps? Which one? It is impossible to guess. I'm not even entirely sure how Mulder sees himself. His mind is a mystery. Enlightened by this peek into Mulder's psyche, I am also frustrated by more mysteries. One of the pitfalls of snooping is that sometimes more questions are raised than answered.

At least he left me a note this time. Slowly, but surely, Mulder is learning to at least leave me a clue or two. I think shooting him opened his eyes to the fact that I can play hardball. Not that his notes are much help, but if I read them carefully and keep abreast of his often off-topic ramblings, I can usually piece together enough clues to get me started on his trail. I have started making a habit of reading through the files he leaves on his desk. It's not snooping if it means the difference between having a live partner and burying what is left of him.

I spend most of the time catching up to him devising new and painful ways to make my irritation clear. Unfortunately for my sadistic tendencies, by the time I catch up to him, keeping him alive usually becomes the dominant theme.

What a pair we are. A partnership born in hell...

No, I'm being unfair. Maybe just one born in the imagination of a very bored, mischievous angel.

Despite my anger, I simply cannot help charging off after Fox Mulder. It is the one immutable fact in our entire relationship.

That sounds so pathetic. For a moment I cease scrying the note he left behind. Do I really feel like I am nothing more than a sounding board for Mulder's off-beat theories; nothing more than a comic sidekick to his tragic hero? Dear God, I hope not. If I've sunk so low in my own estimation, I need to seriously re-evaluate my motivations. Putting my exasperation with my errant partner aside for the moment, I take a long hard look at the reasons I have not walked out of Mulder's life. There, beneath the contradictions of reason and faith, lies the truth.

I'm no martyr. Despite my occasional lapse into self-pity, I can't imagine a place I'd rather be than at Mulder's side. Of course, I usually have to hustle to actually be at his side, but at least boredom is not an affliction I'll ever have to worry about.

I'm no child to run crying to teacher that Mulder is being mean to me again. I can't help laughing, a rare occurrence these days, at that image. If I truly felt I was being ignored or slighted, I'd be out of here so fast Mulder wouldn't know what hit him. He knows that. I see it in his eyes whenever we butt heads over a case. He can no more not argue with me than stop breathing, but I see the fear that one day he'll go too far or I'll get tired of the struggle and he'll be left behind to argue with the four walls of his empty office.

He has come too close a few times. I have been angry enough at his cavalier dismissal of my theories to consider leaving. He is arrogant, blind to any other course of action but his own and often completely irrational in his choice of actions. He is my antithesis, yet I cannot imagine life without him.

The truth is that I am no better than he is. He ditches me physically, running off after his questing beast, helpless to resist its call. I reciprocate by ditching him emotionally, hiding myself behind walls I began building as a child. They are very strong and very high and I hate them, but I dare not let him breach them to find all the fear, the doubts and the anger I have hidden inside for thirty years.

He chases off after illusions and wraiths, challenging me, forcing me to confront the darkness that creeps outside the feeble light science has cast on the mysteries of the universe. In turn, I resolutely refuse to concede the existence of anything science has not officially sanctioned. We are both well aware that reason and faith are not mortal enemies, but merely mirror twins, like ourselves. Sometimes, I'll admit, we get bored with our usual arguments and, in some kind of unspoken agreement, we will switch sides. I'll admit, I don't do faith quite as well as he does, but I'm gradually getting the hang of it. To my everlasting disgust, Mulder does reason very well.

The man can be infuriating at times. He is brilliant to a fault, yet prefers his leaps of assumption to the tedious task of building up his arguments step-by-step based on solid rules of evidence. I cannot abandon him. He is as wild and unruly as the restless sea, demanding nothing less than the best I can give. He challenges me, forces me to confront the limits I have placed around my view of the universe. He has shown me Camelot. It's my job to make sure we both survive the quest to live to ride triumphantly through its gates. He shows me how to soar on the rising winds. I remind him to stay out of downdrafts and keep on flapping his wings.

I understand, now, what lured my father time and again from safety of the shore to dally with the treacherous sea. I was only half-alive until I met Fox Mulder and left all hope of a safe and normal life behind. I have traded the certainties of life for the exquisite pain of living life on the edge. There are times I seriously consider committing Mulder for criminal lunacy, but then I would also have to commit myself.

On my worst days, words like co-dependency and passive/aggressive behavior patterns spring to mind, but which of us is the abuser and which the victim is not clear. Like so much else, the lines between us have blurred and twisted until I am him and he is me in a damned psychedelic kaleidoscope of psyches.

We are mirror twins. His mother is a cold, distant woman who barely intrudes in his life except to hoard secrets and lies. There are times I envy him. My mother is loving, outgoing, caring, interfering and frequently exasperating in the extreme. She smothers me with family and love and there are times I want to tell her to get lost. I fight a constant, daily battle to be myself, an adult capable of making my own decisions for my own reasons without consulting anyone - not Maggie's brilliant baby girl.

Mulder lost his sister when he was twelve years old and that single loss transformed his entire life into a quest. Never once grieving since he never accepted the loss. Only recently, when his sister magically appeared, healthy, whole and obviously quite content with her life without big brother, has he begun to grieve.

If an alien, or some mysterious government agent, had asked me at age twelve if I minded if they abducted my older brother, Bill, I'd have gift-wrapped him for them. My brother is an ass, a bully and a smug self-satisfied Navy prick. Mom thinks I should be more charitable. I am. I haven't poisoned him, yet. I love my brother, but I don't have to like him.

I'm not belittling the agony Mulder's loss inflicted on him. What is so sad is that he looks at my life and envies me. I even think he would have been glad to have an older brother, someone to take the burden off his own shoulders, even if that meant putting up with the bullying and the abuse. He envies me for what he never had and I occasionally envy him for not having it. Sad.

Sitting here, holding Mulder's scrawled note in my hands, piecing together the clues he has left me, I wonder how outsiders see our relationship. Do they see me as a victim, the abused wife who keeps coming back for more, lacking the will to walk away? Do they list all my sterling qualities and profess astonishment and dismay that I would stay with, not to mention support, a man who doesn't properly show his appreciation of me? There have been suggestions, more than once, from colleagues that Mulder doesn't deserve me.

Bullshit!

If pushed, I'd have to agree that if I had never met Fox Mulder, I would probably be an ASAC somewhere or, at the very least, well on my way to being an administrator somewhere in the forensic sciences department. As a respected forensic scientist or field agent, my ideas and suggestions would be listened to and heeded by my colleagues. I might even actually go out on a date instead of spending hours trading verbal jousts with Mulder trying to transform one of our cases into a proper report that won't give Skinner a stroke or us mandatory sessions with the Bureau shrink.

And I would be bored out of my ever-living mind. I have felt the rush of stepping off the cliff into the unknown with Fox Mulder. I can't go back to what I was before; it would be too much like dying. I have never felt more alive then when I have been within an inch of dying. Because of Fox Mulder, I have learned what it means to face down venial politicians, confront nightmares, and find within myself the sense of honor and duty to a cause no one else deems worthy, but which may be the greatest cause of all - truth.

I'm not nobly sacrificing myself to help a wounded, dysfunctional man. I'm an equal, helping a partner who is decidedly unorthodox in how he approaches problems, but who has survived more mental and physical trauma than I'd care to experience in several lifetimes. I am Mulder's equal in selfishness, arrogance and blind devotion to my particular point of view. I'm just better at camouflaging it.

Neither one of us is a candidate for sainthood, yet somehow, our flaws come together to create an effective, fearsome whole that is slowly, but surely, forcing the people behind the conspiracy to take us seriously. This is a good thing, I think. Of course our success raises the chances that we are also becoming dangerous to their security. If they decide that the threat is unacceptable, I believe our lives and reputations are a small price to pay for trying to force the truth into the open.

I've learned to let go of my false belief that I was in control of my life. Mulder has taught me how to free-fall. The scary thing is that I rather enjoy it. I keep denying it, of course, and throwing up the carefully crafted image of Agent Scully, a cool, reserved scientist with a no-nonsense attitude and a by-the-book lecture for every occasion. I suspect Mulder is beginning to see through that illusion. Shame. It has served me well for years.

He runs from me and I pursue. I retreat and he plants himself outside my walls and refuses to abandon me to solitude. Each of us keeps the other from self-destructing. This strange dance of ours is complex, bewildering and often infuriating, but is ultimately worth any sacrifice, any price. We know each other so completely that trust, loyalty, even love seem pitiful words to describe what we share.

Mulder's scrawl is finally yielding to my determined scrutiny. Bees. Muncie. Camp Hachagumee - at least I think that's what it says. Wonder if Mulder remembered to pack his insect repellent? The mosquitoes will probably regard him as a very large mobile snack.

Guess I better start moving and see if I can't keep Mulder from getting himself killed. In a most uncharacteristic flight of fancy, I imagine us as two tarnished knights wearily pursuing the elusive Grail. Mulder's quest is no longer his alone. I have become fully integrated into it. The tragedy is that both of us know we may never even get close to the Grail, yet we are unable to lay down and rest.

I hear the sounds of the questing beast calling to me. I never heard the beast before Mulder. Now I don't think I will ever not hear it.

Hold on tight, Mulder. I'm coming. Though we are going to have to have a talk about your handwriting sometime.

THE END

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Author's Note: Quiddity - the essence or nature of a thing - that which answers the question, 'quid est?' = what is it?
 

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