Disclaimer: The characters mentioned in this brief vignette belong to Chris Carter, Ten-Thirteen Productions and The Fox Network. I mean no infringement. Rated PG for adult theme. Spoilers for Memento Mori. Hey, if everyone else can write a Scully Journal Entry, why can't I? Category: V, A Aftermath by Anne Haynes AHaynes33@aol.com March 1, 1997 Dana Scully's Journal We are born dying, Mulder. It is an inevitable fact of life that even as we draw the first traumatic breath, we have begun the inexorable journey toward death. Each heartbeat, each respiration is like a clock winding down toward an inescapable end. As a pathologist, I am an authority on death. I can tell you the hows and the whys, the whens and the wheres. I can pinpoint the tiniest clues that tell the tale of mortality in a human corpse. I can tell you what a person's last meal consisted of, whether or not she was a mother, whether he was a drinker or a smoker. I can deconstruct the body organ by organ, like a mechanic taking apart an engine, and tell you if something was taken or something was added to upset the delicate balance of cells that form the fragile thread of life. Death is not a puzzle to me. I do not fear it. I fear only the aftermath. I have built my life on a detached pragmatism that has served me well. Moving from Naval base to Naval base every two or three years requires an equanimity that most people never have to cultivate. I learned early how to step back, to maintain objectivity. It was painful to become deeply involved with people I knew I would be leaving in three or four years. So I applied my passion to the pursuit of knowledge. Science is universal and constant. Though our understanding of the world around us changes moment by moment, the process by which we gather this information is unflinching. Observe. Test. Apply. The method grounds me. I find strength in its immutability. But I can't step back from my impending death and look at it as a scientist would, measuring nosebleeds and headaches as a record of the passage of a life. Because there are people who will miss me when I am gone, as surely as I have missed my father and my sister. People who love me as I love them and no more wish to live their lives without me than I wish to cause them pain by my absence. My mother, my brothers, my colleagues. You, Mulder. My father once told me a story about a time, early in his Navy career, when he and a co-pilot had to eject from their crippled fighter. Landing in the water, miles from the carrier, they fought to maintain contact with each other in the cold, heartless sea, each afraid of being set adrift to face death alone. You're afraid of being set adrift. I see it in your eyes, in the words you do not say to me. Before I came to you, you were alone, untouched by the world around you, cocooned in your splendid misery. Necessary companions came and went, walking by your side at a distance as you toiled, together but separate, toward a common goal. You told yourself that you were happier alone, that your relentless solitude was vital to your pursuit of the truth. This I know about you. But I have touched you like no other. I have entered your sanctum sanctorum and laid bare your true self, the man-child who longs for my love and approval with a desperation that breaks my heart, who loves me with a blinding passion I have never known before. I believe I have accomplished something for you that no other person has ever done--I have given you hope again. This I know about myself. I can't bear the thought of leaving you alone. My family will mourn me, but they will have each other. My colleagues will find my death a sad tragedy, but their lives will go on, affected but not transformed. But my death will change you irrevocably. Samantha's disappearance was an amputation. A limb ripped from you, a wound that opens from time to time to bleed and throb again. But you function. You cope. You survive. My death, I fear, would be a decapitation. Exsanguination. Evisceration. Fatal. So I cling to my life against all hope or reason, depending on sheer will to sustain my pulse and respiration, to hold at bay the deadly stranger who has taken up residence in my body. I am not fighting for myself alone. I am fighting for you, Mulder. I am fighting for the one supernatural thing I believe in without question--the magical mystery of this thing called partnership which has transformed us into an integrated whole far greater than the sum of our parts. This is a battle I will not lose. I must not. The End.