Only the Good Die Young
by IfMulderCouldSeeMeNow

Email: Ifmuldercouldseemenow@yahoo.com
Rating: G

Summary:  She'd heard that 'Only the good die young' so what
did that mean of her years; nearly 130 from the start of the
2012 journal labeled: 'Dana Katherine Scully'.


"Memories warm you up from the inside. But they also tear you
apart."
 - Haruki Murakami,Kafka on the Shore

"Mulder," she whispered, her voice raspy and sleep-deprived.
He nuzzled his head into her neck with a soft sound
acknowledging that he heard her. "Do...Will you miss me?" He
shifted, bringing her closer to him, suddenly evident of the
seriousness of their conversation.

"Of Course," He responded in the most serious voice he could
muster. She shifted in his small hospital bed and looked in his
eyes, tired and wrinkled at the edges like crink-cut French fries.
He was only 55, but he was dying. Leaving her. The world was
cruel.

"What's going to keep me going," she asked, tears forming in
her eyes as he ran his shaking fingers through the strands of her
long strawberry locks.

"If you quit now, they win." And he smiled. Smiled. He planted
a kiss on her temple and she dragged her face up, claiming his
lips, demanding to feel their warmth. "Remember me.
Remember that I love you." *Give me love.* She fell asleep in
his warm arms and awoke to the screaming heart monitors. The
nurses pull her body from his as she sobs for him to come back
but knows he won't. She's not aging. She hasn't for a while
now. How long will she be here?

*'I need this memory too.'*

*'Ple-Please, I have so few left' she begs* 

She woke up from her dream and shook her head. She kept
having these dreams where someone was taking her memories,
but the funny thing is- she could never remember what they
took. When she woke, she remembered it for a second and then
it was gone, like it was never hers to begin with. Despite the
lost memory, she can still hear the voice in her head. It's the
one voice that's remained consistent over her many years. She
began writing in a journal, now battered and broken years and
years ago, when Dana Scully realized she wasn't aging. She
calls the woman Dana Scully because she's not her; hasn't been
for a while. Dana Scully had a Mulder, and a son. People
named Reyes, Skinner, Dogget and a mother. She has none of
those things, not even the memory of them. The woman sitting
in bed, absently pushing long hair like rope from her face reads
about these characters like they are form the fiction novels of
the past, which to her, they are. Dana Scully adopted an alias a
while ago, and it is what everyone in this world knows her as:
Laura Petrie. She would have no memory of being a 'Dana
Scully' if not for the book, with pages marked all the way back
in 2012. She was alive in 2012...2012! According to the book,
she once had memories of colonization but now she only has
the handwritten journal scrawled in handwriting that is a bit
neater than her own, like a professional, and the history books
that line the library. From the book, she knows that her
memories have been being removed for nearly 100 years, and
every time she pulls up the page marked particularly to remind
her of the fact, she is startled. Whoever is trying to remove her
memories, albeit successfully, is sure taking their time. Dana
wrote in the book that she felt like Jim Carrey in 'Eternal
Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,' but she doesn't really
understand the reference. She'd searched the databases in the
past for a Jim Carrey but found nothing. Whenever she has one
of these experiences, she writes it down in her book, following
the pattern that Dana Scully set up years ago, and falling under
the alias that Scully (she doesn't know why, but Scully sounds
so much more comfortable than Dana) set up. Now she uses
Laura Petrie. Maybe this is another reference that Scully would
enjoy because she wrote about 'snuggling up like baby cats' in
parenthesis, possibly hoping that her future self will have some
sort of epiphany and remember. She doesn't. Her friends call
her Laura. She never tells them everything, but her friend
Martha was close to her; she noticed things...felt things.

*"You haven't aged a day since we met nearly 10 years ago,
Laura."*

*"You flatter me."*

*"No, really. Remember when you used to talk about those
memories of a past self, about losing your memories...I think
you were right."*

*She's alarmed, happy that someone believed her but so
terrified at the same time; for so long she wanted someone to
believe her and now she doesn't know how to handle it. "No,"
she hesitates, not telling the woman about the journal and
offering a chuckle to lighten up the mood, "there's no reason to
tease me, Martha."* 

*"Seriously, Laur"her friend flips her brown curls behind her
shoulders and pulls a book from her purse. "Remember when
you said you had memories of being 'Dana Scully' I looked her
up and she's in our history books!" The woman flipped the
thick book open after smelling it and moved her agile fingers
until she finds the page she wants "you know, this was a
bogger to find, real books. There's so few now and I tracked
this down in the 17th district and bought it off of one of those
craxy underground collectors." She moves her eyes over the
page and starts pointing like a madwoman. "See, here she is!"*

*As Laura reads over the pages, she realizes that she was
right, that she wasn't crazy. She also realizes that she no
longer has the memories of fighting against the aliens in
Colonization. From Martha's ramblings she knows she once
spoke of Colonization like she'd been there, but now all she had
was a second-hand account from her journal, just like the book
she was currently reading. She didn't have the heart to tell
Martha these memories had been taken years previously, so
she just nods and says 'Wow,' ever the skeptic.* 

*"Wow is right, Laur! I mean," She whispers, as not to be
heard by those who may be listening, "Have you ever heard of
past lives?" When Laura shakes her head, despite suspecting
this initially and then tossing the idea, her friend goes on. "Just
think, ok, hear me out. So, you were this Scully woman, what
50 years ago and when she died, you were reborn! See, See
right here," she points at the book. "Right after Colonization
was stopped, she disappeared. The book says that she couldn't
stop her son when he was a small kid, maybe she offed
herself?"Laura recoils, remembering the stories she read about
Dana Scully's boy, William, in the journal. She was happy she
had no memories of him because from what she could tell, they
would leave her shattered.*

*"Then why would I be here?"*

*"Well, we're like 50," Ok, sure we are, Laura let her have that
one; it wouldn't do her good to tell her friend that she had no
childhood memories, that she just...was. "Girl, that's 50 years!
Don't you see, you're like her reincarnation or something!"
Laura leaned back in her chair, recovering from the chills up
her arms. Had she really not been 'Dana Scully' for 50 years?
Sure she had a boatload of memories as Dana Scully but they
were bits and pieces. She used to have a coherent,
comprehensive timeline of life but now she had bits and pieces.
A birthday here, Skinner there, but always Mulder. So many
memories of Mulder. Mulder walking, Mulder smiling,
breathing, running, winking, talking. She wondered how long
she would have memories of Mulder and how many she'd lost
already, already feeling disconnected from the man that she
knew she knew so well. She got chills from the thought and
leaned back.*

*"What Laur? Think I'm spooky?" Goosflesh spread over the
entireity of her skin. That line, being 'Spooky' was important to
her, but she couldn't remember why. The woman raised her
eyebrows and smiled, placing the book back in her purse.*

*The next morning she woke to find that her friend was killed
for treason. The book was a rare find, supposedly burned years
ago.* 

That was 80 years ago, and Martha was long dead. There have
been other Martha's, Mary's, Rachel's, Lauren's since then, but
nothing as like Martha. She hasn't shared 'Dana Scully' with
anyone except her book since then. In all fairness, she's no
longer Laura Petrie, or any of the aliases she uses. One day
she'll figure it out. She's jumped districts, finally realizing that
at one point she was this 'Dana Scully' and wishes to rid herself
of her, if only so she could live her own life. Of course in the
80 years since Martha she's been Laura Petrie again, but in
another district, one far away.

From the book, she knows that there once weren't districts,
although their history would say otherwise. There were always
districts, it is the way out government has always worked and
the way it would continue to work. The tattered pages tell her
differently. They say there were once seven continents, and she
lived on the one that housed 'The United States,' a group of
states that formed a Country. Clever. At the moment she's
Laura Petrie, but it won't be long before she has to move, and
bid Jessicina, her latest friend of ten years goodbye. This non-
aging skin really was quite a bother, but she was adapting.
She'd tried dying her hair grey (which the journal had already
warned against) but when you had blazing red roots pick their
way through, the desired effect was lost. The charade could
only carry on for so many years. Soon she'd be Georgina Hale,
GG for short, and then maybe Tiffany Truman. These aliases
were hard to come by, but luckily she had the book, giving her
a handy list.

None of her friends call her 'Laur,' like Martha had, it's always
been Laura since Martha-every time faithfully. The memories
of fighting in Colonization have long gone and all she has are
the memories of reading the book with Martha, smiling at
Martha and later talking about the next handsome fellow she
was going to set her friend up on a date with. *'You're too hot
to be alone, really Laur,"* she would say, putting a finger to
Laura's flesh and making a psssss sound. *"See? And it's time
someone cleaned the cobwebs out, oiled the engine." * She'd
slapped her friend on the arm for that remark, internally
realizing that she only had memories of sex with Mulder, who
in all actuality didn't belong to her. It felt wrong being with
anyone else though. But now, things were different. Almost all
of her memories of an old life, a life that her friend once called
a *'Past life'* were gone. She could imagine being with
someone. Last she'd counted, she had two memories left of
Dana Scully's conscience, and that means she needed to be
careful and listen to Scully's warnings. Before she had the
memory of meeting Mulder and - and she couldn't remember,
dammit. She can hear his voice in her head, soothing her and
even though she can't remember why he's so important, she
knows he is. And she loves him. Funny isn't it, to love someone
you've only read about in a book and met once in your
memories. He loves her too, that much she knows. Sometimes,
she can hear him whispering to her, but she can't recall when he
did so or why. She can't picture his lips saying the words
because she only knows the grouchy Mulder; the one that
questioned her integrity and was the FBI's most unwanted. He
was different to the person whose memories she no longer
possesses. That much she knows.

*I love you, Scully. Don't give up. If you quit now they win.
He's beautiful, Scully.* 

She smiles when she hears one of his whisperings, but the most
common one was:

*If you quit now, they win* 

So she went on. People hoped and they lived. People lived and
they died; except she didn't. She'd heard that 'Only the good die
young' so what did that mean of her years; nearly 130 from the
start of the 2012 journal labeled: 'Dana Katherine Scully'. She
had no idea how old Scully was before 2012, but from the
looks of her never-aging skin...maybe 40? 'Dana Katherine'
didn't sound right. Scully. Yeah, Scully. She hadn't quit. Scully
begun a journal that read like a cruel fairy tale, telling her to
write down when she'd had a dream of losing a memory and
what she could remember. It read like a storybook, but it never
seemed like her own. The fight against aliens was Mulder's
quest and it soon became hers; that much she knew. She'd read
so in her journal. The aliens were gone, she'd made sure of it.
She believed that at one point she had the memories that
explained properly what her motivations were for continuously
fighting but they were gone now. Now she was Laura Petrie,
soon to be Georgina Hale and so on. This was a weird life.

Her memories disappeared, as if they were being collected
meticulously by someone. She knew she was Scully and that
she had a Mulder, but why was Mulder so important? Why
wasn't he here with her if he was so damn important? Why did
he need to collect her memories? She'd read why Mulder was
so important but it just didn't make sense to Laura. She liked
the name Laura too, loved being Laura-it was her favorite.
Mulder was frequently written about over the years but now she
only could remember being Dana Scully once in her life, when
she walked into his office. She couldn't remember how she got
there, who her parents were, or why she was at the door with
the plaque that said 'Fox Mulder' but she knew that behind the
door he was Mulder. This was the only memory she had of
Dana Scully and the only one she had of the alleged Mulder. In
her dreams, this memory always played, as if it were somehow
a filmstrip, repeating itself until she woke up in the morning.
From what she knew of Fox Mulder memory-wise, she couldn't
see why Dana Scully had fallen for him. He was rude, arrogant,
smug. *And Cute. And he read your dissertation.* She didn't
like him much, he was rude- but he *had* read her dissertation.
That was kind of him. She didn't know what happened from
that initial meeting except from the small paragraphs Scully
had managed to etch in the book before the memory was gone
forever. It didn't feel real though reading it from a book. She
couldn't get the memory, the last memory, out of her head as
she packed up the small amount of items she'd collected from
her time in this district as Laura Petrie and prepared to move.
By the time she'd finished it was nearly night and she
remembered the paragraph somewhere in the beginning of the
book by Scully.

*A person is defined by their memories, and since I am losing
mine, I don't know who will be reading this, if anyone at all. So
far, this process has been gut-wrenching and startling, so I
hope that by trying to fill in some details of my conscience, I
can shed some light for you. I don't know what to call you, so
I'll use the alias I'm using now, 'Laura Petrie.' I imagine the
displacement of my memories is going to continue to I only ask
this. Once you have only one memory of being me, Dana
Scully, left, burn this book. Burn in, for when you wake up,
you'll no longer be weighed down by me. Laura, you'll still
remember reading the book I believe, but it will be just like a
storybook and you needn't drag it around like a ball and chain
forever. So burn it for me, for us. It's weird talking to my future
self-not self, and I know Mulder would get a kick out of this. I
don't know where my memories are going, but I hope, I believe
that someone must be collecting them and that maybe it's for
the best. I want to believe.* 

*Me, you, us.* 

Her head was against the pillows now and she waited for sleep
to come. She burned the book weeks ago after she moved and
now she just waited. She'd kept the name Laura. She was tired
of changing it. Laura sounded right, reminded her of Martha
which comforted her when she to have the same dream repeat
on and on. She would dream of him; of the first time they met
and then she would wake up and go on, although she didn't
quite know what that was any longer. But what if he was
coming tonight to take her last memory of him? What if tonight
was the night? Would she still love him, only having memories
of reading of Mulder in books? Would she wake up as the same
person still? Who was she? Certainly not Scully anymore.
What was a person without their memories? She'd found
friends in this world and they called her by different names;
never Scully. Scully belonged to Mulder; she didn't; she wasn't
her, only having one memory and the readings of a journal.
What would happen when he took the last memory she had of
life before? Would she die? Of course not. But would she want
to? Would she be enough? Would he love her, love her like
Mulder and Scully loved each other? Was she capable of that
kind of love-she wasn't Scully. She closes her eyes, welcoming
whatever life has to offer.

She's fading now, fading into the past. She no longer has the
body of a 40 year old with long strawberry hair and freckled
skin. She's young, younger than she looks now, her hair a dark
curtain and her suit dreadful; Shoulder pads were so last
century. But she's not her. She's Laura and that's Dana Scully.
This is different from the times before, when she was Dana
Scully. She didn't feel like Dana Scully anymore, like she'd
switched bodies. She should knock now. That's what she did
every time she had this dream. She would always knock. He
would say 'Sorry, nobody down here but the FBI's most
unwanted,' and she would scoff under her breath. She wouldn't
knock this time, because she couldn't bear to hear him say he
was unwanted. From what she'd read in the book, Dana Scully
wanted him more than anything in the world. She'd
remembered spending long nights up crying over Mulder,
crying over Dana Scully's life. She wanted him, needed him,
and even though Laura couldn't remember why, she knew
Scully loved him. She pushes the door open without knocking
and stops when she's surrounded by herself on the walls like a
movie different pieces playing out on its own part of the four
walls. This is different.

She feels Dana Scully. Feels Dana Scully taking over, finally
able to see who Dana Scully really is. She's always felt odd
living out her memories, knowing they weren't truly hers.
Watching the *real* Scully feels right. And she's happy.

*'Thank you'* Laura hears, so she leaves the body, somehow
still watching the situation playing out in front of her. She sees
herself no longer as Dana Scully but Laura Petrie. The story of
Dana Scully is now full circle; no longer fragmented pieces of a
life once lived. Scully is a piece of her, she has her features, but
she feels herself; knows who she is after countless years of
fear, doesn't know what it is like to be a Doctor, or a forensic
pathologist, or a FBI Agents. She knows how to be herself,
though... Being Scully is just like a dream, a story she will look
back on and tell if she chooses, and she will. This is the life of
Dana Scully, not her own and it's time for her to go back her
own. So she does. And when she wakes up in the morning, she
will no longer have memories of Mulder, he'll just be like a
character in a book once read fondly, except he was real once.
He was real to her and he was real to Scully. Scully was real,
and she saved them all.

Dana Scully is standing in the room and looking at Mulder.

Her memories rush back into her mind like a raging river and
she feels complete. Was this where he was collecting her? She
sees her mother and remembers Maggie Scully, remembers her
William- remembers *Mulder* in his entirety. She sees the
back of his head, his hair thick and brown as he pours himself
over slides, labeling them with her name, as if he doesn't know
she's there. He was so beautiful. She misses him. She
remembered the memory wipes, remembers writing about the
fear of no longer being herself. Is this the final wiping of her
memory? Giving them all back in this room before erasing
them completely? She knows what happens next, she'll say
eagerly 'Agent Mulder. I'm Dana Scully. I've been assigned to
work with you.' She'll smile and offer her hand and he will
speak of being highly regarded and tell her about her
dissertation. He'll be sarcastic and curt and get under her skin
but still make her smile. But she says nothing. She just wants to
look at him. She doesn't know where she's been all these years,
but she misses him. She just stands there, looking at his back,
relishing in this moment before it disappears and she loses him
again. No, this time is not like the others. She wants more;
demands more. She's Dana Katherine Scully, but just Scully to
him. She won't let him go like the other memories that have
slipped from her mind over the years. She just got them back.
She has them back and she wants to keep them. Instead she
tests the waters with one word:

"Mulder." He turns around in his chair, shocked and smiles.

"Finally, Scully," he laments. "Do you know how long I've
been waiting for you?" He turns around in his chair. "I finally
collected all of you," he sighs pointing to the slides that he was
previously hunched over at his desk a minute ago. He grabs his
coat and the box with the slides, labeled 'Scully' and begins
leaves the office briskly.

"Mu-Mulder!" She shouts after him, running to catch up, her
dainty heels clicking on the cement. She's confused but happy
because she's with him. She saw him die in his hospital bed.
Why was he here now, years younger with round classes
hanging on his nose and boyish features? She didn't know what
was happening to her but she was happy to have him back. She
finds that she's following him out of the basement and into a
light corridor she's never seen before and isn't surprised at all of
her actions. The light is blinding and she wonders if it's
symbolic for all the times she followed him blindly. Maybe.
But she wants to know what all of this is. "Mulder, where are
we going?"

"That depends Scully, do you want to believe?"

"Always."

"Good; I've been waiting to prove Clyde Bruckman wrong for
years and Will's been impatient waiting."

The light swarms around her; it's warm as it swims over her
skin. She can hear the voices, and begins to walk faster, tears
brimming in her eyes.

*Starbuck. Ginger. Pippy Longstockings. Dane. Dana. Dr.
Scully. Dana. Scully. Scully. Scully. Mommy.* 

*Mommy.* 

She stops walking at the sound of her son's voice. Mulder is
smiling and she can't help but feel the tug of her lips when he
cups her face and smooths away the tear tracks. She can hear
his voice in her ears and feel his hand on the small of her back,
ushering her forward.

"Never give up on a miracle, Scully."


"Nothing is ever really lost to us as long as we remember it."
 -  L.M. Montgomery, The Story Girl

"Sometimes things become possible if we want them bad enough."
 -  T.S. Eliot