It has been a month.  A month since Emily had died.  A girl that for all intents and purposes should mean nothing to me.  A girl who I spent the total of 3 minutes with.  But she's not just any girl.  She was Scully's daughter.  "Scully's daughter."  The words sound foreign to me.  Perhaps I had always hoped that if ever Scully had a daughter, her daughter would be mine as well.  Hence, "Our daughter."  In many ways, for that brief time she was alive, I did consider her mine as well. 

                I fought desperately against time trying to find some help for Emily.  All the while with a fear in the pit of my stomach that I haven't felt since Scully was abducted 3 years ago.  As an FBI agent, you come across horrible things that happen to people, and you perform your job to the best of your abilities, but you never lose your calm professionalism.  With Emily, I did perform to the best of my abilities, but "calm professionalism" was out the window.  I was frantic and desperate with a haunting thought that if we lose this little girl, I would lose a part of myself that I never knew existed.

                Sure enough, here I am, all alone in my apartment aching from that empty space that I never knew existed.  It's not that I miss Emily.  How do you miss someone you never even knew?  But I am in pain, because of her.  I grieve for her.  I grieve for what could have been. 

                Scully was going to adopt her, atleast she was trying to.  I'm pretty sure she would have eventually.  We have friends in high places; a bit of red tape wouldn't have made a difference.  Of course, had this scenario played out, who better to become Emily's father figure than me?  I know I would have loved her as my own.  In my mind, I supposed it fit.  Scully, me and our daughter.  Of course Scully and I technically aren't a couple.  But I always felt that there was this unspoken consent that I was hers, and she was mine.  After what happened last month, I'm beginning to believe that it was only my imagination.

                I'm worried about Mulder.  He has been acting somewhat distant this past month.  Not in an obvious way.  Most people would probably not even notice it, but I'm not "most people."  He has been so wonderful to me this past month, comforting me, helping me get through Emily's death.  But at the same time, he's been so… … distant.  I wonder if that even makes sense. 

                He's been more professional lately, towards me.  He still makes his jokes, but in moderation.  And when he does make jokes, they almost seem forced.  He still brings me back food when he buys them, but he doesn't eat with me anymore.  We haven't had our usual lunch together in over a month.  Whenever I ask him if he's ready for lunch, he always tells me, "maybe tomorrow, Scully, I have some errands to run." I ask, "what kind of errands?" and all he tells me is "stuff." 

                At first I thought it was nothing, and he probably just thought that I needed some space to grieve for Emily, but now a month later, I think it goes way beyond that.  Last week, we got a new case, and for a brief time, there was enthusiasm in Mulder yet again.  I thought things were looking up for us, and that things would start to return to the way they used to be.  However, as usual things just never go right for us.  The people upstairs apparently had something against the case, and they made Skinner pull the plug on the file.  I saw the clear disappointment on Mulder's face when Skinner told us the file was closed.  Afterwards, Mulder didn't say anything, and just started rearranging some files. 

                Later that evening, I dropped by his apartment to keep him company.  This wasn't the first file that was pulled out from under us.  All the times before, Mulder would come to me and talk about his disappointment over losing a file and how the men upstairs are trying to keep us from finding the truth, etc. etc.  In a way, whenever we were shut down for something, it never registered to me as a total loss because I knew I'd have an excuse to spend a bit of extra time with Mulder out of work.  Often times, when we talked under these circumstances, we would talk about the case for the first 10 or 15 min. then our conversation would wander into more personal topics.  But Mulder wasn't at his apartment that night.  It confused me somewhat because if he knew me at all, he should have been waiting for me to knock on his door.

                But that's not what confirmed to me that something was wrong.  It was what happened the following morning.  The following morning on my way to work I stopped by the post office to drop off a letter and bumped into, none other than, Byers, Langly and Frohike.  Dear friends better known as the Gunmen… The Lone Gunmen.  "Oh hi guys!" I had said, "surprised you even use the post office anymore considering you have all that high-tech stuff collecting dust up at your headquarters."

"Hey Scully!" Frohike greeted me first, "what brings you here this early in the morning?"

"Oh nothing, just dropping off some mail before I head out for breakfast."

"Yeah, a lot of time to kill after losing that case huh?" Byers chimed in.  That surprised me.

"Umm… you heard about that?" I asked, nonchalantly.

"Believe me, that's all we heard about last night.  Mulder wouldn't stop going on and on about it.  Poor guy, it was obvious there was more on his mind, but he just kept babbling on about the case."  Langly answered.  "It was so obvious something was wrong, he never talks to us about work stuff unless there's something we can do to help."

So I was right.  I wasn't imagining things.  Even the Gunmen noticed something's bothering Mulder.  "Didn't you ask him what was wrong?" I asked.

"Well, when I finally decided to just come right out and ask, Mulder got up and headed out." Frohike said, obviously worried too about what was going on with Mulder.  "I actually thought you'd know.  Guess not."

Yeah, guess not.  "Ok, well I have to go now, take it easy guys."  Then I headed out and we said our quick good-byes.  I couldn't believe it!  Mulder went to the Gunmen's last night?!  They listened to him babble all night?!  That was my job!  Anyway, that was pretty much the last straw, I'm going to Mulder's tonight, and he's going to give me an answer.

So guys, how do you like it so far?  Well, as always I love getting feedback of any kind.  Maybe you guys could put in a suggestion as to what you want to see happen.  Thanks for reading J