TITLE: To Inhabit My Days AUTHOR: Leslie Sholly E-MAIL: PennySyc@aol.com DISTRIBUTION: If you like it, it's yours. Just leave my name and address attached. And please let me know, if possible. SPOILER WARNING: Patience RATING: PG CLASSIFICATION: VA KEYWORDS: MSR, ScullyAngst, Post-ep SUMMARY: Scully opts for action. DISCLAIMER: Chris Carter, 1013, and Fox own these characters. I mean no infringement or disrespect. AUTHOR'S NOTES: Many thanks to BoneTree for providing the poem at the end. FEEDBACK: Cherished and always answered. Please let me know what you thought. Pennysyc@aol.com (Leslie) ********************************* To Inhabit My Days by Leslie Sholly ********************************* ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ "It'll wait out there as long as it takes until you can't take it anymore. How long can you wait, huh? A lifetime? To live in fear like this, a young woman--are you prepared to sacrifice family, children and spend your life terrorized by a monster?" -- Ernie Stefaniuk in "Patience" "I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue, unexercised and unbreathed, that never sallies out and sees her adversary, but slinks out of the race, where that immortal garland is to be run for, not without dust and heat." -- Milton ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ When I visit him in the hospital after the incident on Bird Island, Doggett confides with a laugh that he's been having nightmares about the bat creature. I tell him that if he stays on the X-Files for long, he'll become used to encountering nightmares in the flesh. But I don't share my own night terrors with him. Bird Island haunts my nights, too. But I don't dream of the bat. I dream of Ernie Stefaniuk. Ernie Stefaniuk, who gave up his life to skulk on a swampy six acre island for forty years. Ernie Stefaniuk, who lived in constant fear, always knowing that despite his elaborate precautions, a monster lurked in the darkness and could strike at any time. I understand the fear that drove Ernie to a life of obsession and seclusion. I know what it is to feel that my life is not my own. I know all too well the reality of having an enemy I can never hope to escape, whose actions I cannot predict or prevent. But hiding's not my style. Nor was--nor *is*-- it Mulder's. For seven years we have continued to work, refusing to give up our lives in order to escape the ever-present eyes of Spender and Krycek and their cronies. Neither Mulder nor I is the type to step aside from danger. No matter whether we asked for it or wanted it, the responsibility for dealing with whatever remains of the Consortium, with Krycek, with whatever alien threat there may be, lies with us now. Which means, for the moment, that it lies with me. Skinner and the Gunmen are pressing me to protect myself and the baby by leaving the Bureau and going into hiding. They want to give me a new name, a new job, a new life. But that's not me. I'm not Ernie, and I'll be damned if I'm going to hide on an island. If I had been Ernie, I would have gone on the offensive 40 years ago. I would have made it my business to find that bat thing *before* it could find me, to hunt it down and kill it so that I could get on with my life just as I have worked for seven years to unearth the Consortium and put an end to their work. And so I will not run away and live a stranger's life. I will not die far from home to be laid to rest under an assumed name. If I believe--and I do--that my life has a plan and a purpose, then I choose to fulfill that plan and that purpose. I will find Mulder and together we will do our best to fight the forces arrayed against us. I will protect my baby, or die trying, but it will be on *my* terms, on *my* turf. I know my work is dangerous. And when I leave my home each morning, I don't underestimate the treachery that lurks in the shadows. I know I'm living on borrowed time. But aren't we all? Are any of us sure that we will live to see another sunrise? Ernie gave up 40 years, and died in the end anyway. As for me, I will live this life that is mine. I will live to see another day. I will fight, and I will win. "I will not die an unlived life. I will not live in fear of falling or catching fire. I choose to inhabit my days, to allow my living to open me, to make me less afraid, more accessible, to loosen my heart until it becomes a wing, a torch, a promise. I choose to risk my significance, to live so that which came to me as seed goes to the next as blossom, and that which came to me as blossom goes on as fruit." -- Dawna Markova THE END Thanks for reading! Did I succeed in redeeming the episode even a little bit? Let me know at PennySyc@aol.com (Leslie).