TITLE: Shadows: Discovery  
AUTHOR: Spooky's Girl  
DISCLAIMER: They're not mine, they belong to the XF god CC, and it's probably a 
good thing they do cause believe it or not, he treats them much nicer than I usually do 
RATING: PG-13  
CATEGORY: touch of MSR, angst
SUMMARY: An unsurprising lack of trust
SPOILERS: Season three, mainly 731, Nisei and Wetwired
AUTHOR'S NOTES: This is the third vignette in a series of nine.  Basically simple summary, one vignette per season, a reflection of sorts of Mulder's impact on Scully's life.  A complete list of titles in the series can be found at the end of the vignette. 
THANKS: To Nancy for the beta, and to Ashley for allowing me to continue with the idea even though she had the same one in mind. 
FEEDBACK: As always, I love feedback...that and chocolate are the necessary 
ingredients to life, and yes, I do respond back to it denisegilliland@hotmail.com 


The sounds of her sobbing echo throughout the house as her small frame sits low to the ground shaking while she embraces her mother.  All I can do is watch as I'm torn in two between running to her and holding her like her mother is right now and turning around and hunting those mind-controlling bastards down.  I know neither will help her though.  They're long gone, disappeared for the latter to occur, and she still doesn't trust me enough to allow for the former.

She doesn't trust me.

Those words cut to the quick and send a sobering thought through my mind.  She 
doesn't trust me, not that I have given her a reason to trust me lately.  

Attached to the name Fox Mulder comes baggage like nobody has ever seen, nobody 
but Scully who has born the brunt of it with her chin high and eyes determined to knock it down before it knocks her over.  After months of being lost myself, I had found her, and now the threat of losing her comes face to face with me again.  This time she won't be taken away by man, as she found out earlier this year, nor will she be taken by any otherworldly being.

The enemy is man-made cancer, and she will not be the first to be diagnosed with it.

Others.

There are others out there just like her, who had lost time, only multiple times unlike Scully's one abduction.  They underwent the same experimentations, the same tests.  They all carry implants, placed in the base of their necks, and they are only now finding out the consequences of removing them.

The future does not look bright, only I can't see what Scully sees.  She solves the mystery of her abduction, I run off on some train ride looking for answers that aren't in front of me, but in front of her, and I don't listen to her warning as I actively seek what would ultimately be my death if it wasn't for a mutual friend of mine and the enemy's.  

There is reason behind her mistrust, and if I could have done things differently, I would have.

However, since I can't, I embrace my punishment, my deceit, and my non-belief of what was plainly in front of us the entire time.  It's only fair that our partnership has seemed to fall apart along the seams.  It's only fair that Scully should shun me even when the events of today weren't my fault directly like they always are.  It's only fair that the past three years have finally caught up to her, and hopefully she'll see things like I do, see things the way they really are.

What is not fair is allowing her to accept the consequences of my actions on my behalf, allowing her time and time again to be hurt by the men who mean to hurt me.  She'll become another statistic, a memory like all those women in Allentown who will soon be thrown out once they have no more use.  Only thing is; Scully will always have use for me.

And no matter how hard I try, I'll always find a way to hurt her; I'll always find ways to blindly go forward even with the warning signs along the way.

And I'll drag her down with me one day.

So it isn't any wonder that she doesn't trust me, it isn't any wonder that she runs away from me and into her mother's waiting arms.  Her mother has always been regarded as her safety net; I'm always the one her drives her to it.

Allentown is in the past, the train ride of hell is in the past, those women will be forgotten, I'll never forget Scully, she'll trust me one day again.  Together we'll continue to move forward, leaving this year behind us, labeling it as unimportant and uneventful in both of our minds.

Until then, I'll stand by her side, proving to her time and time again that I am somebody she can trust, after all, she is the only I can trust.

~*FIN*~