Title: Dana's Memoirs
Author: Robin Watters 
Classification: Adventure/Romance
Rating: PG
Spoilers: None
Summary: Now in her 60s, Scully looks back on the final days of the
X-Files.  No Angst!!!  Romance and some humor.

Dana's Memoirs
By Robin Watters

An excerpt from the memoirs of Dana Scully written 6-14-2028:

It is ironic that in finding the truth he so desperately sought for six
years, Mulder lost the X-Files.  Even thirty years later I feel angry
and cheated on his behalf.  He, however, does not.

"It's the bureaucracy, Scully," he smiles. "I got what I really
wanted."

He means me, of course. But I digress...

There's no need to retell the big story here.  It's documented in
government reports, newspapers, popular magazines and books. It's all
there.  How we found proof of the existence of a grand conspiracy by the
Consortium.  The complex, highly secret and convoluted sting operation
orchestrated by Walter Skinner that exposed the men in that shadow
organization.  Mulder's discovery and my documentation of the existence
of alien life here on earth. The proof. The truth. It was always out
there. It just took us six years to find it.

What isn't documented was the effect it all had on us. On Mulder and me.
Not that there haven't been rumors. Out of some perverse sense of humor,
Mulder keeps a file of these rumors. He clips all the articles and keeps
them in a file cabinet. I have tried to persuade him to throw them out.
I don't care for them and he has them stored in his remarkable mind.  I
think his favorite is that we fell in love on the day we met and
peppered our work lives with strange, impossibly dramatic trysts in the
darkened corners of the  J Edgar Hoover Building. That's the way he
would like it to have been, I think.  My favorite is that I tricked him
into marrying me by faking my cancer.  We doctors know things. Secret
doctor things. That's the way I got my man - according to the National
Enquirer anyway.

I have always insisted on privacy where our personal lives are concerned
and I am loath to change my ways now. But to tell the story of the
Deposing of Fox Mulder properly I must tell how it happened that we went
from being partners and best friends to being - what? "Lovers" is too
mundane a term. "Soul mates" is trite. There is no word for what we mean
to each other. We are unique in the world.

And yet, it all began in the most oblique way.  We  had found the files
with which we would bring down the Consortium.  I had begun secret tests
on the tissue samples brought to us in exchange for amnesty by Alex
Krycek .  I might have seen it coming if I hadn't been so thoroughly
focused on the work we were doing.  I had noticed, but not attended to,
a change in Mulder's behavior.  As we sorted and sifted through the gold
mine of information that had come to us, he was less argumentative than
I had ever known him to be.  He was more receptive to my arguments in
favor of good sense and scientific documentation. He would nod
thoughtfully and say,

"OK,  do it, Scully. If we can't substantiate your way, then maybe we'll
try mine?"

He was more respectful of others, more politic. I remember one
disagreement with Walter Skinner during which Mulder clearly reigned in
his normal impulse to shout and opted for diplomacy instead. As we left
the office I  patted him on the back.

 "You're growing up, Mulder!"  I told him.

The look he gave me was measured and enigmatic. I waited for the snappy
comeback but none was forthcoming.

Then one Friday Mulder drove me home from the airport after a rather
grueling trip to Los Angeles.  Our flight had been delayed.    It was
raining. Neither of us had eaten since early that morning.  Mulder
insisted on helping me with my luggage and I allowed it on the condition
he let me fix him some coffee and something to eat before he made the
trip across town to his place. These kinds of events were rare in our
lives. We really did not socialize much and only very rarely visited
each other at home. Most of our after work contact took place over the
phone lines. I set up the coffee pot and shoved a frozen lasagna in the
microwave.  I excused myself and went and changed into jeans and a
sweatshirt, then came back to put together a salad of sorts from odds
and ends in my refrigerator.   Mulder had been sitting at the dining
table idly leafing through one of my trade journals but he rose and
entered the kitchen to lean against the counter and watch me.

"Scully?" he said.

I waited for his thought but was intent on slicing a bell pepper. After
a moment I looked at him, wondering what thought he hadn't completed.

"Scully?" he said a second time.

The expression on his face was...well, it was the one he gets when he is
about to lay his most outrageous ideas before me, wanting me to hear him
out before I debunk them.  That look contains an amazing combination of
fear, stubbornness and daring.

"What is it, Mulder?"

"Scully, may I kiss you?"

I felt my eyebrows shoot up in surprise.

"I want to," he added by way of explanation.

Now usually my mind works linearly, unlike Mulder's which sees the
gestalt of things. But I had an epiphany. I understood, all at once,
what had been happening with him the past months. It was like seeing a
stained glass window wherein all the discrete parts combine magically to
create a radiant picture. He had been working at being the kind of man
he thought I deserved. It was for me.  And something about the
domesticity of coming in from work and me making dinner for us moved him
to act.  After six years of flawless propriety I found in that instant
that I no longer cared what the FBI thought about fraternization -
funny, isn't it?

So without more than a moment's hesitation I asked him if he wanted me
to stand on a chair. The smile on his lips, the joy in his eyes was
worth everything.

"No. I'll come to you," he said and he leaned down and we kissed.

It really should go down on record as the world's sweetest kiss.

It really should.

I don't want to discuss this any further except to say that he stayed
that night and the two following as well.  And by Monday morning I felt
thoroughly worshipped and adored.

I said I didn't want to discuss this any further but, again, to tell the
story I want to tell I will have to say more than I really want to.
Perhaps it was because he had been lonely for so long, deprived of
simple displays of affection since his childhood but once Mulder got a
taste of touching, he could barely control the desire.  I am speaking,
not of sex, but of human contact.  At home when we watched television or
worked on reports  he always had his arms around my waist or rested his
head in my lap.  In the kitchen he stood behind me with his cheek
resting against my hair and his hands on my hips.  Even in his soundest
sleep he was like a second blanket, unconsciously covering my body with
his own.  Eventually I learned to save myself from suffocation by
placing my open palm on his chest or hip as he dropped off to sleep. As
long as he felt some contact with me, he did not feel the need to come
seeking it.

At home I indulged him because it pleased me, too. But at work it was a
constant struggle to make him keep professional distance. He was as
alarmed as I was to find his hand reaching toward mine as we walked in
the halls.  Or the time he very nearly bent to kiss my neck while we
stood at the coffee machine - the memory of total body spasm he
experienced to pull back (worthy of Jerry Lewis)  still makes me laugh.
I became adroit at the quick sidestep and the warning look.  Poor
Mulder. He just couldn't seem to stop himself. And that really was the
beginning of his undoing.  For the record, he disagrees with me on this.

After the big story had broken and we had brought all the truth of the
Consortium's conspiracy to market mankind to an alien culture into the
open, the public latched on to any and all information about the FBI,
about our work and  about us as possible. That's understandable. We were
the heroes that saved the world - at least in their eyes if not in our
own. It was months before we realized what was going on in the media
because we were so busy testifying before Congress, organizing our
information for the thousands of agencies that would need it,
responding to enquiries originating worldwide about the aliens and
helping to formulate a defense against them.

I have to give credit to Walter Skinner for shielding us during that
time.  I am eternally grateful for his efforts to keep us out of the
limelight and unencumbered by publicity. But he was only one man, the
only honorable man - willing to stand up against the pressure to be
involved in the public relations campaign the government set up to
appease the public. But it was a juggernaut.  When we finally were able
to lift up our heads from the work and take a breath, we were horrified
to discover that we had become celebrities. Our pictures were plastered
across the covers of newspapers and magazines everywhere. Sounds bites
of our congressional testimony had become a staple of the evening news.

At first we shrugged, realizing that this was, indeed, big news. And
those first reports were factual and formal. Us in our suits, giving
testimony.  Me in my scrubs dissecting alien remains for members of the
World Health Organization.  Mulder And Skinner speaking at press
conferences.

But then the mail began to pour in. Most of the letters were poignant,
heartfelt thanks for the work we had done. Increasingly, though, they
began to include the bizarre. Mulder and I both received dozens of
marriage proposals and propositions of a more informal nature -
including nude photographs.  We began to get offers for product
endorsements - I think my favorite was the fellow who wanted to use
Mulder's likeness for his Roswell Burgers chain which featured beef from
mutilated cattle.  People magazine wanted us. David Letterman wanted us.
Japan - the entire nation - offered to make us living treasures if we'd
just move there and change citizenship. And, to my eternal chagrin, a
cosmetics company wanted me to endorse their line of hair color!

Naturally, there was speculation regarding our relationship but, through
Skinner's careful intervention, we were never interviewed directly and
there was no evidence anywhere to confirm or deny. Until that fateful
day when Mulder, without thinking...well, you've seen the footage.  It
was just as much my fault, I guess. If I had taken that extra minute to
slip my papers into the file folder instead of carrying them loosely
under my arm - but I was so eager to get out of the office and go home.
I was tired and punchy.  Mulder was too.  My arm slackened for an
instant and the wind caught my papers, whirling them about us like
dervishes.  We both snatched at them, gathering them up.  He handed his
share back to me and then, like any good mate, he gave me a quick,
reassuring kiss - in front of the entire Washington press corps and all
the hangers-on.

That moment is so clear to me. The look of horror in his eyes when he
realized what he'd done. We turned and he took my elbow guiding me down
the steps toward the car. We ignored the shouted questions.  We ignored
the smirks. Inside the car he sighed just once and then leaned over and
rested his head on my shoulder.

And me? Well, I got the giggles.

In the following days we found, to our surprise, that the public loved
the idea of us as a general rule.  Well, the tabloids don't go in for
romance much so they did provide a counterpoint of sensationalism. But
for everyone else we had become the Royal Couple of the nation.  In
fact, it was not even our idea to get married. We had never discussed
it. One day in a meeting that included members of the congressional
special committee and the Press Secretary among others, it was made
clear to us that it would not only boost public morale for us to marry
but it would resolve certain concerns regarding the impropriety of our
unmarried relations. Mulder, Skinner and I nearly popped arteries
jumping to our feet and yelling in defense of our private lives. And for
the first time in my professional life I left the room in tears.

Later when we were alone Mulder wrapped me in his arms and we stood
swaying gently. "Those guys stole my thunder, Scully. I had it all
planned out. How I'd soften you up, make you all receptive and
vulnerable, then pop the question." he mourned.

"Where's the ring?" I asked looking up at him accusingly. It got me the
laugh I wanted to hear.

Well, we did get married. And we didn't elope although we wanted to. Our
wedding was an orchestrated circus but we did win some small victories.
We did not get married in the National Cathedral but in one of the White
House gardens. I dug my heels in and refused the designer gown that
someone was so sure I'd love.  I wore an off-white wool suit and a small
hat with a cocktail veil, suitable to an afternoon wedding.  Mulder wore
a dark suit and one of his wonderfully horrid ties.  Skinner gave me
away since my brother Bill would have nothing to do with my wedding to
Mulder. My mother cried. His mother cried. Samantha cried. Mulder cried.
Skinner and I both claim to be the only dry eyes in the house. The press
got pictures of everybody coming and going and crying. The nation was
thrilled. We got the hell out of Dodge and enjoyed an incredibly
decadent, romantic, carnal honeymoon in a secret location that, to this
day, we refuse to reveal.

When things quieted down we came back. I guess we had it in mind that we
would now be able to go back to our little basement office and pick up
the X-Files again.  Our work. Our history.  But our office was gone,
turned back into a storage room. The files had all been moved to a large
high-profile office with windows and a coffee machine. And, to our
surprise, we had a staff! In the past several months the X-Files had
become the assignment of choice among FBI agents. Skinner was as
apologetic as he could be but he had been overridden in his attempt to
see that no changes were made to our office in our absence. There were
now a dozen special agents attached to The X-Files Department and more
were clamoring at the door, so to speak.

Then the first shoe dropped.  I was to be reassigned. Teach at Quantico
or Public Relations, those were my choices. But the FBI would not allow
married agents to work together and they were not going to make an
exception, even for the Royal Couple. Well, I showed them!  I quit the
FBI altogether and took a job with the Surgeon General's Office.  I
realized, you see, that no work would ever be as engrossing and
enjoyable as working with Mulder on the X-Files had been. So it really
didn't matter where else I went.  I just wanted to strike out at the
Bureau for what they had done to us.

Then the second shoe dropped - on Mulder.  After a few months it became
clear that due to his high profile, he was virtually useless as a field
agent. In the first place, where he used to have to dig up nuts with
far-fetched stories, they now came looking for him in droves.  Secondly,
he could hardly conduct an investigation with autograph hounds crawling
all over him.  And to his surprise and dismay, he had become something
of a heartthrob. Women threw themselves at him everywhere he went. Hell,
everywhere *we* went. Even with me right by his side.  The poor man
never knew what hit him.  And he's so adorable when he's confused.

So, after a few months of chaos Walter Skinner called him in for a
talk.  He explained kindly and sorrowfully that Mulder had become a
liability in the field and that he could no longer do the work he
loved.  Mulder was to be pulled from the X-Files and reassigned to the
Violent Crimes Division to write up criminal profiles - no field work
allowed.  Mulder took it with good grace, I must say. He asked for a few
days off - which he used to stay home and cuddle with me until he felt
better - and then reported to DVC and went to work as a profiler.

The day after their talk Walter Skinner resigned from the FBI in disgust
and moved to New Mexico where he still runs a landscaping business. We
visit him from time to time at his ranch. He  married happily and raised
a daughter. Even now, at 75 years of age, he is a fit and devilishly
attractive man.

Mulder and I worked at our jobs studiously ignoring publicity. After  a
decade or so, the nation moved on to the next media event. Eventually,
I  went into private practice and Mulder was able to go back to field
work in a limited capacity. Sometimes, looking back on it all, I ask him
if he would, were it possible, take back that kiss - the one that had
sent everything spinning out of control.

"Scully," he tells me "I wouldn't trade a single one of our kisses for a
whole building full of X-Files."

Now that, gentle reader, is true love...

The End

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