Spoilers: Duane Barry, Ascension, One Breath, Irresistible, Quagmire and Chinga are all slightly spoiled. The End and X-Files: The Movie are more heavily spoiled.

     Time Frame: Takes place shortly after the XF movie.

     Rating: PG-13 for one slight profanity that can't air on television.

     Disclaimer: All characters contained in this story, either by action or mention of, belong to 1013 Productions. I'm just borrowing them for a teensy story.

     Note: This is the first time I have written in the first-person form and only the 2nd time I've written from Scully's perspective only (and this one ain't mind candy).

     Another Note: This is a reflective piece, but definitely alludes to and I would say contains, romance, so if you are against the idea that Mulder and Scully love each other (but wait, what's that I hear? Yes, it's a replay of Chris Carter saying the words "Scully loves Mulder and Mulder loves Scully.") Where was I? Oh, yes, if you are against the idea that Mulder and Scully love each other, you probably may not agree with the reflective ideas contained herein.

     Comments? Questions? Love Notes? Flames of 6th Degree Burns? Insane Musings on Cancer Man? Send 'em here -- arabian@ite.net

     The room is dark and although I can't see him, I can sense him. His keys jangle as he slips them in his pocket, presumably the pocket of his leather jacket. I wonder if I've ever told him how much I love that jacket on him. Probably not. There is so much I haven't told him. So much I don't tell him.

     Simple things . . . like the fact that when not working, curled up alone at home, I like to sit back and read romance novels, the type with the bodice-ripping hero on the cover. I suspect he would be surprised to find that out.

     I have never told him my favorite childhood memory. It is one of my father and I standing aboard the deck of the first ship he captained. It is a memory of silence, silence filled with joy, the wind blowing over us, his hand resting securely upon my shoulder. The two of us had stood there silently, happy in each other's company . . . so very long we had stood, it seemed, looking back. Perhaps, it wasn't that long, but in memory we can exaggerate the good and minimize the bad.

     There are other things I haven't told him. Things such as how much I love the feel of his hand on the small of my back. And his lips. I love his lips, particularly his lower lip and how often his tongue darts out to wet it.

     I've never told him how being locked in the trunk of a car by a madman feels. I've never told him what memories -- although few and far between -- have haunted me from the missing three months of my life. Nor have I mentioned the many faces of hell I envisioned over Donnie Pfaster.

     I have not talked in-depth about my religion with him. The tales of Sunday School and my catechism, I've kept to myself . . . for he would not understand. Unidentified Flying Objects. Little Green Men, or are they Gray? Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe. These are the symbols of his religion. The crucifixes and holy water of mine hold little value for him.

     Jesus Christ was a man, not the The Son in his eyes.

     He knows a little of my father. He knows that I call my father 'Ahab' and that Ahab read "Moby Dick" to me as a child. He knows my mother and she cares for him, although I fear that Bill has clouded her judgment of late. And yes, he knows Bill, but Bill does not know him.

     Fox Mulder, with a background in behavioral psychology, had deduced correctly that William Scully Jr. is a hard, yet caring man. A disciplinarian like his father who shows little emotion, and yet loves. A man who is unwilling to forgive a slight against him or his family, whether that slight is real or not. A selfish man who seeks to redress all wrongs . . . except his own.

     My brother -- the older brother with whom I've never had much in common -- has deduced several things about my partner as well. Alas, all of his assumptions are simply those: assumptions. In the world according to Bill Scully, my partner is selfish as well, and uncaring. A man who is blind to whatever pain or suffering I may be going through. He thinks more of his religion, his Little Green Men, or are they Gray?, than he does for me, his partner.

     My brother is wrong.

     I am Fox Mulder's lifeline. I am his savior. I have made him whole. He said those words to me, "You made me a whole person."

     I have never said such words to him. Perhaps, because I did not believe that I meant as much to him. He does after all have his religion. He has his beliefs. He has Diana Fowley. And a wife. A wife he has mentioned only once. Long before I became his lifeline and he, mine. He told of a woman he'd known, after Phoebe, but before another -- Diana, I must now assume. In a drunken act of chivalry and craziness, they had gotten married. And it had not lasted.

     He told me of her long before it would have hurt to have known about her.

     He did not tell me about Diana Fowley. To this day, he still has not told me about her. I suppose, it doesn't matter now. For I make him whole.

     He said the words to me. "You made me a whole person."

     I sit here in the dark of our office. Our office, my name is beneath his (but of course) on the door of *our* basement office. The smell of paint is still fresh and new. It is less cluttered. And I have a desk. It is opposite of his.

     It is late. A little after 7:00 on Friday evening. There is no need to be here now, but all was finished two hours ago and I needed to see our office. I expected him to be here already . . . in our new office. That he was not, surprised me. But I knew he would be here shortly.

     I admit, I was happier than I thought I would be, that they had retained the use of the basement for us. Working side by side with him in an office in the upper floors of the building, where anyone could see us -- pop in, spy on us -- is not something that I relished. But it was not to be, for we are where we belong; we have the privacy of our basement again.

     I have a surprise for him. When I arrived a short while ago and he was not here, I was at a loss. I had had a speech practiced. I was going to give him my gift and tell him what it meant. I was going to tell him a thing I had never done before. One of the many things I have never told him.

     I believe in him. I believe in his work. And I believe that his work is now our work, just as his office is now *our* office. His quest is mine. His journey is no longer and will forever no more be a solitary one.

     All that he is is mine and all that I am is his. I make him whole. As he does for me. But he was not here. So my speech, my pretty words are unnecessary. Perhaps it is better this way. Words are so often unnecessary between us. Instead, he will see it laying upon his desk -- his desk that faces my desk -- and he will know what it means. He will know all I would have said.

     Our eyes will meet and once again no words will be necessary.

     But I wonder, my mind going in circles, if some words between us *are* necessary. Until he said the words, "you made me a whole person," I did not know them. And if another had spoken them, I would have dismissed them.

     Yes, I am important to him. I hold the most importance of all in his life. In his world. I have surpassed the holy grail that is Samantha. Just as he has surpassed the memory of my father.

     He does love me. As I love him. But to believe that I make him complete . . . . I make him whole . . . . I have feared, in this secret aching void that lies within me, that I hold him back, that I have held him back. I believe what that woman, Diana Fowley -- a woman who was near death's door and I could not summon anything stronger than a slight sorrow at her state -- has said. She believes that I have held him back.

     He told me those words of hers and he laughed at them. He laughed at the notion, but he did not say the words to me, dismissing them outright and so I could not laugh, for truly, was there not a grain of truth in them? Had my "goddamned strict rationalism and science" denied him answers that he would have reached much sooner without me? I believed so. As I sat before the OPR meeting, these thoughts churned in my head.

     And when they re-assigned me, took me away from him, I believed, well and truly, that it was a good thing. That now, *now* after five years, Fox Mulder would finally be able to go out on the limb that I'd kept pulling him back from. And I was filled with sorrow, because I knew that once he did make that leap, he too would know what I had kept from him.

     That is what I believed.

     But he dismissed that belief. As he has dismissed so many of my rational, scientific, eminently logical beliefs. And I was glad.

     "You made me a whole person."

     Funny, that all it took were the words coming from his lips and I believed. And when he said the words, all of the times he had said it without speaking -- with his eyes, with his actions, his behavior -- reinforced the belief in his words.

     But it took the words to make me believe.

     He made me believe that night in the hallway of his apartment building. And once he'd done that, he'd held me and I had held him. And the line was crossed. So many words that had never been spoken hovered in the air between us. And of all of the things I had never told him, the words 'I love you' suddenly seemed most important.

     And I would have said them, but he looked at me and without words, his eyes conveyed his love and he had almost kissed me. I had felt the faintest brush of his lips on mine or perhaps it was only the whisper of his breath before I'd pulled away. Not from him, but from the pain of the sting of the bee.

     He hadn't known that. As my senses seemed to dwindle around me, I heard him murmur into my hair, "I'm sorry" and if the pain had not been so sharp and if the disorientation so real and wretched, I would have held him tighter and I would have completed that kiss.

     I would have reassured him that I was not sorry and he need not be. And I realized with my last cogent thought that I should have said the words. I had not believed until I heard them from him. Why would it be any different from his point of view?

     Who had loved him? Truly?

     Not a single soul. His parents? I fear, until he met my mother and heard me speak of my father that he thought he'd been loved. His wife. A woman whose name remains unknown to me, but one who could not have loved him, for loving him she never would have left him. The other women in his past?

     Who had loved him? No one.

     How could he believe? Despite all of my actions, my behavior, my gaze that must have told him a thousand times over, how could he believe without the words? I had not.

     Before he'd gazed at me with his love . . . before the phantom memory of a kiss that didn't happen took place . . . I should have said the words.

     And then he would have believed, as I at last did. All it had taken was a few words. Yet, I had not. And so he did not.

     And time has passed, so much happening in the space of that time and still I have not told him. And he has not broached the subject of the kiss with me.

     We stand at a precipice, yet we are not unsteady. Our foundation in one another is as strong as before, if not stronger. The words need not be said, I think. And I feel my decision is made.

     I sit here at my desk as he stands before the closed door. He is not moving. Perhaps he is savoring the moment as I did when I first walked in.

     He doesn't speak, but neither do I, although I know he is aware of me, as I am aware of him. And then he takes a step forward, in the dark and suddenly I feel as if I am living in a metaphor.

     And he is my metaphor. He is taking a step in the dark as should I. And the words come out before I can think of why they should not be said.

     "I love you," I say and he is still once more.

     I had expected fear, apprehension in myself in the moment the words were said. But there is no fear, although I can not see his face. And there is no apprehension, although I can not see his eyes.

     For I believe. "You made me a whole person." He had said the words before I. It is my turn and there is no fear.

     There is only love. And he and I.

     "Scully?" is his response and I want to laugh. And I want to see him, so I reach over and turn the knob on my desk lamp on and we are illuminated. And it is as I expected.

     He wants to believe, but there is disbelief on his face. He did not know, or he knew but could not believe because it was too right. But I have said the words and so he will believe.

     And he does. The smile spreads across his face. And he takes a step towards my desk, but I stop him.

     "I have a gift for you," and he does stop. And he looks at his desk.

     It had taken me almost two hours to find the little shop that sold the poster, but I had found it. I used a stapler, a tape dispenser, a coffee mug and a paper weight to hold the four corners down and spread it across his desk.

     He is smiling as he gazes at the words I WANT TO BELIEVE lying upon his desk and then he looks at me with another smile and holds up his hand. Rolled up is, I can only assume, a copy of the same poster.

     And he laughs. "Matching his-and-hers posters. Better than hand towels, if you ask me."

     And then he walks to my desk as I arise from my chair. He lays the poster down and I stand before him. His laughter is gone. And in his eyes are the words he has told me over and over again.

     IloveyouIloveyouIloveyouIloveyouIloveyouIloveyou.

     And when his lips brush against mine, there is no whisper, but instead a shout of joy as contact is made and we believe.