Phoenix by Brunhilde Spoilers: some for IWTB but no major plot lines. Summary: Scully's thoughts after 'I Want To Believe'. Dedicated to Kim Manners - no artist ever truly dies. Archive: Yes, please, anywhere! Feedback: brunhilde1013@hotmail.co.uk Disclaimer: X Files isn't mine, I wish it was, but it isn't... **** I tried for so long to get out, I didn't realise when it left. It was like emerging, gasping, from an ocean, breathing air for the first time, wondering how I'd managed to survive under the surface. Like being reborn. Suddenly there was a world, light, colourful, and I had time to enjoy it. If I didn't look hard, I didn't see the shadows that the light cast. Was it so wrong of me to want that, for a while? After everything I lost - everything we both lost - why couldn't I take time to breathe in the air, to believe that the darkness had gone? After all, almost half my life had been spent chasing monsters, clearing the shadows. If I couldn't believe I'd made a difference, what could I believe? That everything had been futile? So I threw myself in to it, this world of light, tried so hard not to see beneath the surface, that for a while I let myself believe that was it, no more, no less. The knowledge of the truth was there, but I hid it from myself. I had to. Six years, every one harder than the last, living the lie becoming almost impossible. And then I met Christian. Ironic, that name, because he *was* my faith. I put my hopes in to him: he represented everything I'd worked so hard to save. So it was almost fate that, at the same time, the FBI came back in to our lives. My faith, Mulder's faith...somehow they linked, co-incided, all our fears exposed. I couldn't bear to lose him to his all-consuming quest again, but at the same time I knew that I had to trust him to be strong enough. Christian was my redemption, Father Joe was his, our lifelines out of the light and back in to the black-and white. I'd lost the strength to believe, given up on anything that had led me to the greatest loss of my life. Floating through life in the last six years, my only anchor and constant a man who needed me as much as I needed him, there had always been the knowledge that I had failed our child. My miracle, the one thing I longed for - my baby - I'd abandoned him, run away from the responsibility in an attempt to ward off the pain. Instead I was haunted by what might have been, never knowing if I would have had the strength to protect him. In a way, Christian healed me - as far as that wound can ever be healed. I took responsibility for his life and did everything in my power to keep him alive, and it was as if everything before had been leading up to that: penance and atonement. Exorcism. And at the same time, Mulder was battling his own demons - demons we shared. Looking in to the darkness is sometimes necessary to find the light, and that the light was a psychic priest and a paedophile....As ever, we came to our separate conclusions, but this time we emerged together, some of the scars of so many losses washed away, each accepting what the other believed. The darkness will never disappear, I know that, but when it comes for us again we will fight it in the name of everything we believe, and we will both be stronger for it.