Title: Catching the Train Author: Meredith Rating: R for language Category: V,A Spoilers: My, yes: fourth season up to "Kaddish." Summary: Set during "Kaddish." Mulder agonizes over how their current case seems to mirror the agents' personal crises. Completed: February 1997. Feedback: Oh boy, do I need feedback. Really. Please, please e-mail me at the address at the end. If you think this is any good, you can thank Miki; I sure do. Thanks for everything, M. XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX It has been 7 days. I suppose I could be wrong, but I think she would have told me. I know she would have. Now, anyway. We've been working to find the answers, lulled into a false sense of security by what we haven't seen, what she hasn't experienced. She looked good. Hell, she looked more beautiful than ever. As usual, we've been tackling her illness from two different directions: she has been scouring every medical database in the country, every treatment, gene therapy. I, on the other hand, have pursued more unorthodox means. I knew eventually our paths would converge somewhere in the middle, because Scully and I are reconnected, once again functioning in tandem. But we're not making much progress yet. *I'm* starting to feel time like a fucking bullet train. Of course, it was impossible to stay out the field forever; we could only dodge cases for so long before it got obvious. Besides, Scully was determined not to let cancer stop her from doing her job. But this case... And she wonders why I don't believe in a god. If a supreme being does exist, he sure has a twisted sense of humor. XXXXX Our invasion of their home was a necessary evil, but the smell, the weight and thickness of mourning were things I could not face. I didn't want to be there. From the beginning Scully took the lead in this case. She wasn't denying or avoiding her illness. She was back. She was working. She was. The Weisses seemed to know that; they directed their anger, fears and questions to her. But it was to me Jacob asked that painful rhetorical question. "Where were you when Isaac needed your protection?" I couldn't look him in the eyes, but not for the reasons he thought. It has been 172 hours. Outside that suffocating apartment we functioned like an investigative wet dream. Oh yeah, Mulder and Scully were back, rooting out bigots and plundering graves. Golems and ghosts and racists, oh my. Fuck it. *Get this solved, get home, get back to finding a cure.* I chanted that to myself like a mantra of conviction. I knew we needed to get to the bottom of this case soon. I just wasn't that interested -- even when the small, leather- bound book spontaneously caught fire in my hands while we sat in the bottom of Isaac's wet grave. Normally, I would have hopped out of that hole shrieking with joy. But it wasn't the miracle I was looking for. It has been 10,200 minutes. We had been debating what leads to follow the next morning while eating a late-night smorgasbord of vending machine snacks. It felt so good to bicker, laugh, to just be with her. But there is danger in forgetting. The local TV station droned softly and the lights were low, comforting; but not low enough for me to miss the trickle of blood appear above her lip as she leaned over to retrieve a dropped paper. Another cruel image burned into my psyche for eternity. It had been more than six hundred thousand unretrievable seconds since her last nosebleed. Six hundred thousand more seconds lost forever. I crossed the small space between us quickly and brushed the blood away with my thumb before she had a chance to turn away. "Don't." It was a warning; I ignored it. Flight or fight, Mulder. "Scully." A statement. I had every right, and she knew it. And for once, I won the stare-down. She was simultaneously soft and strong under my arm as I led her to the bathroom, where we stopped the flow and washed her face. I will never get used to seeing her blood swirl so delicately in the basin, gracefully flowing away. Will this be how she is taken from me? One vital drop at a time? XXXXX Faith is the belief of something for which there is no proof -- complete trust. Faith connotes a belief in a higher power. Faith, belief, trust. Their meanings have always intermingled for me, knotted in a definition that is nothing god-like. It is all too earthly, too mortal. Faith is Scully. Faith is Samantha. If Scully is taken from this earth, I won't curse fate. A certain cigarette-smoking mortal won't be the only being to blame for wasting such a pure and beautiful life. Hell. I want to blame an entity I don't even believe in. Maybe I'm not such an atheist after all. Is it hard to tell that someone has no faith? Funny how the Jewish archivist looked at me in disbelief when I told him I didn't speak Hebrew. I guess he knew. It's as plain as the...whatever. I wonder what he would think if he watched a woman wed her dead lover -- and then watch that same man crumble away like so much dust. What if it were his wife? His lover? His partner? How strong would his faith be then? They never had a fucking chance. By the time Scully came up there was nothing left of Isaac Luria. All we could do was stand there and watch Ariel say goodbye. We stood there too long. I finally placed my hand softly on the back of Scully's neck and whispered that we should go. I could feel her heartbeat under my skin, a soft rhythm of wheels on a track. Tick tick, Mulder. _____________________________________________________________________ Comments, please! Please! Meredith40@juno.com or meredith_elsewhere@yahoo.com