Hidey ho fellow fanfic fans!  Ooh...alliteration!  Anywho, I don't own XF…if I did the show would not have seemed as if it were beating a dead horse during the last two seasons…  Please don't sue...all you'll get is some XF merchandise, a lava lamp, a little anime, and two really pissed off cockatiels.  Many thanks to my beta readers Discordia and Mars.  Love you guys…you build up what little confidence I have in my own writing.  If anyone is actually still paying attention, I would also like to take this chance to officially protest fanfiction.net's ban on outtakes and lists.  Well…actually just outtakes…I can understand banning lists.  I wrote some damn funny Princess Mononoke outtakes, and they got taken off, and I was very very VERY unhappy person!  I don't see a valid reason for banning outtakes.  They're fanfiction just as much as any grand sweeping epic is. 

Anyway, enough of my griping for now.  Read, Enjoy, Review.  Especially that enjoy part.  All flames will be met with an angry ignited author running down the street clothed in only fire.  And that isn't a pretty sight, folks….

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As she drifted into sleep on his couch, time froze, and then shot backwards at the speed of light.  She never had cancer.  Melissa never died.  She was never abducted and tested on.  Never met Mulder.  Didn't go into the FBI.  In an instant she saw herself ten years younger, asleep in the arms of Daniel Watterson, her mentor and lover.  Time paralyzed that moment before her. 

        

What's going on, she thought.  What's happening to me?

As fast as it had coiled back, it sprang forth, only this time it wasn't the life she knew.  In this life she married Daniel.  Went into practice with him.  Had a beautiful baby boy, and then a sweet little girl.  The woman before her was blissfully happy.  She didn't know of a vast conspiracy to deceive the world, to manipulate it to the will of a select group of men who act with impunity and have no regard for honor, or for human life.  She had everything she had ever wanted.

But this isn't me, thought Scully as she watched her life play out before her.  As appealing as that life is, it isn't mine.  

She watched as her family perished in an alien firebombing.  She was powerless to stop it, had no idea what was happening to her.  The year was 2012, and her family, her entire family---mother, sister, brothers, and children---was sitting down to dinner.  It was only two days before Christmas.  Before she knew what hit her, everything was in flames, and her family was dead, thrown around the room by the force of the blast.  The last thing the woman saw before she herself succumbed to the nothingness of death was an ominous black triangle hovering close to the ground. 

Then it all went dark.

That can't happen, thought Scully.  I'm not that woman.  I never have been, and I never will be.   I don't want that life if the world is fated to end and I have a chance to do something about it.

Suddenly she came to a realization. 

I don't want that life!

I'm not the woman Daniel Watterson loved!

I want…to be with Mulder.

I made the right choices, and I'm not going to look back at all that could have been.  All that does is blind me from appreciating what I have.  And what I have is my love for Mulder. 

Then suddenly she was awake, and alone on the couch in Mulder's apartment.  He had draped her in the old soft-worn Navajo blanket from his couch.

Go to him, a voice urged.  Go to him.

Her rational mind spoke up.  It was just a dream.  It doesn't mean anything.  Go home.

Dreams are answers to questions you haven't yet learned how to ask.  What questions are yours answering, Dana?

She rose and stretched muscles cramped from sleeping in a sitting position.

Go to him.

Go home.

She found herself slowly, hesitantly walking down the hall to his bedroom.

The answer is…that I want to spend the rest of my life with the beautiful man waiting for me in that room.  I'm not going to deny it any more.

She hesitated slightly before grasping the knob.

Are you sure you want this?

Yes, she confidently told herself.

Turning the knob slowly as to not wake him, she entered his room.  His sleeping form faced away from her, his chest slowly rising and falling.  She was reminded of how beautiful a man he was, both physically and spiritually.

I love this man who looks like a child in repose.

Slowly, carefully she slipped in next to him under the blankets.  She wrapped her arms around his chest and nuzzled her head into his shoulder.  Warmth radiated through his thin gray cotton shirt, and she breathed in his familiar, comforting scent.

His breath caught as he woke to the presence of someone else in his bed.  He went very still, then turned over to find himself gazing into her blue eyes.

He broke the short silence with his predictable innuendo.

 "You coming on to me, Scully?"

"What if I am?" she parried.

He smiled and readied another one, but stopped himself when he saw the serious look on her face.  "Are you ok?"

She faintly smiled back.  "I'm fine."

This earned her a concerned, skeptical look from him.

"Really, Mulder, I'm fine.  I'm better than fine."  She paused to think before continuing.  "I've just come to something of a realization.  Although I think I knew it all along."

He gasped in feigned surprise.  "You've found Elvis?"

She grinned and nestled closer to him.  He instinctively draped an arm over her waist.

"I realized that I am no longer the woman Daniel Watterson knew, and that I can never be her again."

A sharp pain struck his mind.  He remembered how much pain she's had forced upon her during her time with him, and can't help but blame himself.  He cast his eyes down in guilt. 

She saw this and called his gaze back to her own.  "Mulder, I realized that I don't want to be that woman.  I made the right choice." 

Her lips softly pressed against his forehead in the darkness, and tears pooled in her eyes.  "I also realized, Mulder, that I never want to spend another moment away from your side.  I love you, Mulder, I always have."

Those tears that were threatening to fall cascaded down her cheeks.  He bent down his head to hers and kissed them away.  His lips finally came to tenderly rest on hers. 

He broke the kiss as his own tears threatened to fall. 

"God, Scully, you don't know how long I've loved you."  He tightened his embrace around her.

"Just as long as I've been in love with you."  She kissed him passionately, all of the tension of the last seven years building up to an unbearable force.  He cupped her face in his hands and kissed her back with just as much fire.  She began to lift his shirt over his head when he pulled away, his breath ragged.

"Wait, Scully, don't you think we should take this a bit slower?  I mean…what if we regret this?"

"We've taken it too slow for far too long, Mulder.  I'm tired of this game, dancing endlessly around each other.  And I know you are too."

"I just---"

She silenced him with a soft kiss.  Breaking it, she whispered, "I know," then deepened the kiss. 

As he gently lifted her shirt above her head, the winds buffeting the window from outside changed course. 

That's all folks.  Pleeeeeeeeeease review!!