This vignette, my second work of fan fiction, arose from a few stray images that came to me as I listened to a rather melancholy composition for double string orchestra and solo quartet. Though I had been in the midst of a longer work, this one seemed to want out first, so I took a break and wrote it. "The Haunting" was first posted to alt.tv.x-files.creative on 1 August, 1998. Since then, I have revised it slightly, in order to iron out a few wrinkles that I inadvertantly left in the initial draft. Thus, the version posted here is slightly different than the version posted to the newsgroup. This story is rated PG. Disclaimer: Fox Mulder and Dana Scully, along with all other characters and situations related to "The X-Files," belong to Chris Carter, 1013 Productions, and the FOX network. I am using them without permission but intend no copyright infringement. Please read the HTML version below or download the text.

The Haunting

I take the last turn and drive slowly toward the grounds. We're almost there, now. I look over at my partner, but she does not see me. Her gaze and her thoughts are elsewhere.

This has not become a ritual for us -- in fact, I am seldom present for these moments -- but I have been here enough to know the routine. Dana Scully performs the rite alone and in silence, while I remain in the background, less substantial than a ghost. It doesn't bother me any more, not too much. I know my place, and have accepted it.

Agent Scully is my partner, and I would do anything for her. That she requires so little is merely my private regret.

When I first began work on the X-Files, I hadn't known what to expect from her. She had a reputation for being cold and aloof, given to her along with an unfortunate moniker by disappointed male colleagues whom she had rejected or who had never found the courage to approach her. And in some ways, she has lived up to that reputation. Not once has she used my first name, addressing me always as "Agent Sutton," nor is there warmth in her visage. When I look at her, I see a lush beauty subdued by grief, a woman caught within a wall of thorns.

Yet she is not unkind. Scully demands a lot from me, professionally, but she has taught me much in return. From her I've learned more about being an investigator than I ever did in training, or the earlier phases of my career. And there is goodness in her, compassion melded with melancholy. Scully is a serious woman, not much given to humor or small talk, but hers is a generous spirit, that gives what it can, despite her burdens.

There is steel in her too. In our work, we have encountered horrors that, just two years earlier, would have frozen my blood. Scully does not flinch before them, though, and that has kept me going. My first few X-Files were rough, and had her fortitude, and my own shame, not helped me to continue, I would have asked for a transfer out of the division.

A.D. Skinner would have let me out, I think, had I asked. But I did not. Something made me want to stay, and it has become easier, now, to endure. Scully is hard, a most demanding taskmistress, but our work is necessary. She needs me to watch her back, and her courage and skill have taught me what I need to know to keep myself alive, and sane.

There has been a price, of course.

I don't know how or when I fell in love with her. I wish I hadn't. But she captivates me, and I cannot break the spell. She has some quality, a liveliness of intellect that shines through the cloak of sadness she wears, that I can see because I'm close to her.

As close as anyone can be, that is. She doesn't let people come within a certain limit.

That I would love her seems ludicrous, in some ways. I am 29 years old; she is nearly 10 years older. And though she is beautiful, in her own, haunted way, she is not young. She is not what you might expect a man like me to fall for.

Yet I have fallen.

Scully has never encouraged my affections, though I think she must know by now, and I realize that there is no hope for me. I cling to my devotion, though, grateful that she hasn't sent me away for my temerity. I will be content with what little she is willing to give.

I stop the car and wait without speaking. It has been a difficult week of investigation, and we have returned to Washington later than usual. Getting here before dark meant coming straight from the airport, with just a brief stop at a florist's, and so I put aside my own plans and brought her to this place. She did not ask me to, but I know that this is important to her. Besides, it's not as though I had anything better to do.

After a moment, Scully breathes a "thank you" and climbs out of the car, a single white rose cradled in a gloved hand. I wait briefly, letting her walk ahead, and then follow. I pause part-way up the hill, not accompanying her to her destination. I will remain here and watch, not intruding.

Once, more than a year ago, I did follow her, stood next to her as she placed the rose on the grave. She is not demonstrative, and so the tears she shed then surprised me, prompted me to reach out to comfort her.

I remember how she started when I touched her arm, looking at my hand as though it were leprous. I withdrew then, leaving her alone. At that moment, I understood something that had eluded my earlier attempts to divine it.

A few months after I'd been assigned as her partner, my career with the FBI had nearly come to a premature and violent end. Despite almost six years of experience, I had made a rookie mistake, letting myself be distracted by the horror of the case and thus exposing myself. Scully had fired once, twice, over my shoulder at the...thing...that would have killed me, dropping it just before it would have been too late. In the aftermath, sick with adrenaline and the terror that comes once danger has passed, I'd babbled my thanks to her, admiring her precision with the handgun, unable, for some reason, to shut up.

Scully had not said much, simply warning me to be more careful. But even in the state I was in, I'd realized that she too was shaken. "Next time, I might not be fast enough," she had said, and there had been a tremor in her voice. By then, I had worked with her enough to know that almost nothing could faze her, and so I'd been shocked at the emotion she displayed.

Late that evening, thinking her gone for the night, I'd entered her basement office to pull a file. She had been there, sitting alone in the darkness, weeping quietly. The image was one I could not have imagined prior to that moment.

I knew that there had to be something behind it.

Of course, I had heard about her former partner. He'd been killed in the field, shot by a suspect. It had not been anyone's fault, but naturally Scully had felt the guilt that any agent would in such circumstances. But that had been two years before -- she had gone more than a full year without a partner when I was at last assigned to her -- and surely the pain should have lessened with time. Yet it seemed it had not.

And so I began paying attention, noticing little things I had not seen before.

A snapshot of her and her former partner, taken years earlier and now kept in a small frame on her desk, angled in such a way that a casual observer would not notice it. There had been joy in her face, then, laughter that no longer shone in her eyes.

Small gestures, body language that seemed to allow for the presence of someone who was not there.

Moments of distraction, reveries brought on by a chance phrase or scene, the contents of which I could only guess at.

And now and then, on long drives or airplane rides, a name murmured in the midst of her slumber -- his name.

Watching her, I felt my devotion grow and my hope fade. And standing next to her in the graveyard that day, I finally understood. Her connection with the dead was not that of a former partner. It was something more.

Naturally, I was not content with that realization. I sought out Melvin Frohike, a man to whom Scully at times went for quiet assistance with sensitive matters. He was surprised to see me at the offices of 'The Lone Gunman' without my partner, but he was sympathetic. I asked about Scully and Mulder, prompting a rueful head shake from the small man. Swearing me to silence, he told me what I needed to know, that my partner was a widow.

Not in the legal sense, of course -- Mulder and Scully had never been married. But the rumors were true. They had been lovers. And more important, they had been in love.

Now, she is alone with her love, and her grief.

I watch her walk away from me toward the gravestone that simply reads F.W. Mulder and gives his dates. She will stand there for a while as the light fades, her dark red hair contrasting with the black trench coat she wears, and then she will bend and place the rose at the foot of the stone. This is how she ends the work week.

Like I said, I know the routine.

It is not supposed to be this way. A woman should mourn and then move on, building a new life for herself. But not Scully, I think. She devotes herself to our work and holds onto her memories, seeking no replacement for the one she has lost.

She is alone.

Or perhaps not. Perhaps she reaches some communion with the man who rests in this place. Perhaps he comforts her, somehow.

She does not see me. God help me, I love her, but my reach exceeds my grasp.

A ghost stands between us, and I gaze upon her through a mist.

At last, she turns and walks back toward the car, settling into the passenger's seat without speaking. I follow, starting the engine and looking over at her. She is lovely -- wine red mouth and blue eyes bright with moisture. She does not look back at me.

"Home?" I ask her. She nods.

I drive her to her apartment, dropping her off at the front door. She thanks me politely and vanishes within, pausing only to greet the aging security guard on duty in the lobby. I won't see her again until Monday morning, unless the chase resumes before then.

I head for a bar. There is a glass of scotch waiting for me. Maybe more than one.

"Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp,
Or what's a heaven for?"

-- Robert Browning, Andrea del Sarto<

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