Fish food and car rental receipts weren't the only things I uncovered in Agent Mulder's desk drawer; I wonder if Agent Scully is aware that he kept a journal? I don't think so. She didn't seem to be looking for it the morning I found her in his bed.

As the task force leader heading up the search for our missing agent, I was practically required by law to read it; however, keeping it under wraps all these months is another story. I guess I could be reprimanded, maybe even suspended, if I were discovered to be hiding evidence pertinent to an official FBI investigation. But I'm beginning to think that there are some things in this world that were never meant to be "evidence."

The journal is a thick, aging book with entries dating back to Agent Mulder's discovery of the X-Files. He seems to have used it, in the beginning, anyway, as a way of working through cases and profiles: long-winded notes to himself, diagrams, random ideas scrawled in his strange handwriting. He even mentions Agent Scully's assignment to the X-Files in a cryptic manner:

"New partner assigned: Agent Dana Katherine Scully. Medical doctor. Bright, small, naive. Trying to act tough; worried about her career? Me? Could be a spy; who sent her?"

He seems to have disowned this fear fairly quickly: within a year, his references to his partner have evolved completely. Now they begin with "Scully says..." or "Scully thinks..," evidence of an obviously growing trust in her. I wonder if she knows just how much he valued her opinion; whatever tone he may have taken with her during their cases, his private thoughts suggest that her doubts and skepticisms were the acid test of his theories.

Up to this point, although the entries are characteristically sporadic, they're still as verbose as ever. Reading the journal gives as much, if not more, background on some of the X-Files cases than what's available in Agent Mulder's files at work, and I begin to see the strange workings of his mind. I feel a little like Salieri to Agent Mulder's Mozart; I see the beauty of his solved cases, but I just can't understand how he managed to arrive at his conclusions. I can't comprehend his logic.

Neither, apparently, could Agent Scully: "Scully disagrees" is a fairly common refrain.

Somewhere along the way, though, the tone of Agent Mulder's references to Agent Scully changes. It only takes one sentence, and even I feel the weight of his words:

"She is missing."

No indication of who "she" is, but it's clear. From this point on, "Scully" disappears from the journal for good, replaced by the only "she" that seems to have mattered to Agent Mulder; there aren't any others. She doesn't "think" or "say" as much as she simply "is."

"She's back, and she's alive."
"She's sick; cancer."
"She's dying."

These entries are few and far between, sometimes punctuated by dried, round blotches blurring the ink. I knew that Agent Scully had had cancer; I had no idea the toll it took on her partner. His former verbosity is gone, replaced with a tense terseness. His usual sprawling handwriting gradually collapses in on itself, growing smaller and tighter as his partner grows sicker.

Months pass with no entries. If he was working on cases, he kept them locked inside his head; there's no evidence of them here. When he begins writing again, it's to record this one piece of information:

"She's in remission. She's going to live."

With this, the cases all but vanish. The journal is handed over to Agent Mulder's private life, and it's because of this that I've hid it even from his partner. I can't let her read his thoughts while there's still a chance that we'll find him alive.

He doesn't wax lyrical or indulge in tortured angst; instead, what he does is make lists. Dozens of lists, all revolving around his partner. Possible birthday gifts (including, if I read his handwriting correctly, "baseball?" Was he planning to give her a ball? Is she a fan?). What she wore to work (black high-heels; black jackets; black bras...I'm not sure I'll ever look at her the same way again). Things she says, excuses she makes, looks she gives him, things she eats...like he's taking snapshots of Agent Scully without the aid of a camera. Capturing her; keeping her.

The journal peters out somewhere within the last year before his disappearance. There's no mention of his illness, no mention of his trips to North Carolina; another reason not to hand it over as evidence. It wouldn't help us anyway.

But one thing has made me doubt my decision not to show it to Agent Scully. The last entry before his disappearance is also a list, but it's typically cryptic, and I'm not entirely sure what it means. I have a theory; but, if I'm right, I don't know if it would be kinder to show it to Agent Scully or to continue keeping it from her:

"On our bench
At the office
At the batting range
In the rain
Sitting on my couch
In the desert outside Roswell (how?)
In an autopsy bay (she'd kill me)
In her bed?"

Below the list is a reminder to himself, scribbled in excited, looping lines:

"Pick up, Thurs. June 5 noon. Tiffany's"

I'm hoping we find him before I make up my mind.

~finis~