Is redemption truly possible?

Of course it is.

There has to be some way for people to find the means to start over. We can't ever truly start over, not from scratch, because we can't go back and erase our pasts. Time isn't that forgiving, and neither is life. There's no immediate, easy way to atone for past mistakes, but the most sensible one is to believe that over time, we can start to somehow mend the broken things in the years that have gone by and make something more beautiful and bright than what was there before.

I don't know if redemption is the same in the eyes of everyone, and in fact I doubt it would be because then it would be almost easy to acquire, but I do think that no matter who you are or where you come from, what you believe in, that you can redeem yourself if you want to. It wouldn't be an easy process or everyone would do it immediately, but it is possible.

And the things that are the hardest to obtain are often the ones most worth fighting to have and call our own.

Muse: Dana Scully
Fandom: the X-Files
Word Count: 190

Unable are the loved to die. For love is immortality. ~Emily Dickinson

”Death by lethal injection.”

John Doggett's face blurred before her eyes, shifting and changing as if by a watercolour painting caught in the rain, emotions seeping downward in a slow, miscoloured run. Scully's face contorted, a shifting and moving of her own feelings, circling in a slow, painstaking orbit around the inevitable despair that she knew would break her apart if she gave in to it. But there was nowhere to go anymore, nowhere other than where she was headed, caught in the whirlpool of her own loss, an anguish that wouldn't be soothed.

It was over.

And yet she wondered if she had known, somewhere in the back of her mind, that it was over before this day. Scully had knelt on the cold, concrete floor and watched Mulder where he lay in a cold imitation of sleep, his hands tucked between his knees for some shred of warmth. He had frightened her then with what he had said, because the words were punctuated with a condemned man's surrender, and she didn't want him to surrender to anything, now or ever again.

But the trial – the disgraceful, sham of a trial – had been nothing more than a false formality. Mulder's fate had been sealed courtesy of the forces he had been fighting all his life the moment he had been caught, and there had been no going back. There was no way out then, and there wasn't going to be one now. It was over.

Time passed in a shift of aching sadness, but Scully didn't know just how much time had come and gone. It didn't matter, either, or rather it didn't seem to, not with the sentence looming its ugly, cold stare on the future's horizon. She almost didn't move when Monica Reyes touched her shoulder, first with the faint pressure of compassion and then again moments later with a hard push of urgency.

“Dana. Dana, get up. Get your coat.”

Why?

“I don't -”

“There isn't time. Get your coat and go with Gibson.”

The urgency in Reyes' voice had stirred a dim rush of adrenaline she had believed to be dead, and Scully smeared her fingertips across the fringes of her eyelashes to bring the world into focus again. Gibson was there now, sitting across from her and looking at her intently with round, bespectecled eyes.

“Scully,” he said quietly, “we have to go. We have to go now.”

The question why? was ringing around in the back of her mind, starting as a dull whisper and then raising to a deafening scream, but Scully shifted the weight of her aching heart and pushed it aside for now, for the sake of one final stretch of faith.

She pushed her feet into her shoes and pulled her coat from the closet.

Spend a quiet moment where you show someone your feelings, without words.

It wasn't the first time she had watched Caddyshack. Her DVD and movie collection wasn't as colorful and diverse as Mulder's but Scully did have an eye for the classics, for movies that brought back a pleasant kind of memory. But the entire movie seemed different in the interior of Mulder's apartment, as if she was seeing it with fresh eyes, or for the first time.

The groove of his couch had long since crossed the point of being well defined, now hollowed and irrevocable by the slope of his long, strong body sleeping there every night since she had known him, and many more before. If she sat back far enough, Scully could sink into it and need to forcefully pull herself up and out if she wanted to stand up again. Before, she had tried to wrestle herself upright, but over the past few months it had become a place of comfort and familiarity that she didn't want to leave.

So this is what it's like to feel content.

The beer bottle wasn't cold anymore and the condensation had left a chilled mist on her palm. She wanted to smooth it against her leg to push the coldness off onto the fabric, but that would be too obvious, too deliberate an indication as to what she wanted to do next. And more than anything, Scully wanted this to be subtle, undetectable at first It would be the scientist, the medical professional, who planned out spontaneity, but she wasn't going to think on that too closely now.

Someone told me once that if you want to hold his hand, bump into it with yours a few times. But I'm not very good at bumping. And those kinds of movements and gestures were for women who were trying to find out where they stood, to see what places could be transcended by a friendship or an accidental meeting, or a first, slightly awkward, date. Years in the federal building removed those fears from her mind, left them in the dusty cavern of past relationships that had never gone down this particular road. There had been others in the past, but no one like this. Nothing that made Scully question, for brief seconds, whether she was doing something the right way. She rarely had moments of doubt, and now her heart was beating in her throat and wrists as if she were a teenager again.

Why are you nervous? It's Mulder. Just...do it. Just take his hand.

Her fingers moved to touch the backs of his knuckles, a slow and almost accidental brushing of contact, but instead of drawing away, she let her hand linger there. Another heartbeat's time gave her the means to take in a breath and then her fingers nosed their way into the palm of his hand. She felt his hand twitch, as if by surprise, then relax and she took the opportunity to let their fingers entwine.

It was the first time she'd held hands with someone in years, with the exception of Daniel who was a chasing ghost from her past. And for a wild, single moment, Scully became acutely aware that she wanted to do it again.

So this is what it's like to fall in love.

Muse: Dana Scully
Fandom: the X-Files
Word Count: 544

"Since when do I have to agree with you all of the time?"

Part of what made us into good partners was the lack of moments where we agreed with each other. Had it been the kind of companionable style of company where we never said one unkind, off center word to each other it wouldn't have done anyone any kind of good. Mulder would have spent his days chasing after leads that were impossible as well as implausible and I would have fallen over my own feet trying to walk a path that I didn't think was right in any respect.

He always told me that I was good for him because I challenged him. Because there was a realm of difference between us, one that stretched a wide, great distance between one possibility and the next. And without that distance, we never would have found the space in between that was home to the answer.

Scientific breakthrough always meant transcending the impossible and finding a new answer, an undiscovered solution. But I found more answers that mattered and held greater value in the basement than I'd discovered in most laboratories. I ended up questioning possibilities that I hadn't known to exist.

And I know at the end of the day that I wouldn't have traded those years and that partnership for the most comfortable, agreeable career in existance.

Muse: Dana Scully
Fandom: the X-Files
Word Count: 217

"Questions are a burden to others. Answers are prison for oneself. " The Prisoner

The worst thing a person can be is afraid to ask a question. Being afraid comes with the previously spoken territory - there can be more to fear than fear itself but that's all par for the course - but being afraid of expressing curiosity is a horrible, crippling sensation. It would sound strange coming from me, but I believe there is more than one answer to any question if there is only enough motivation and desire to look for it. And for one to be willing to look past the first presented answer for deeper meanings, further and more progressing thought patterns, that in itself would require a heart set on adamant dedication. There is no shame in that, only praise to be found.

I never feared the idea of asking questions when I was in school and classes. I wanted to learn, I wanted to know that I could figure out what I was being told and taught even if I didn't comprehend it right away, at that moment. I didn't want to think anything was beyond the reaches of my mind, and the truth is that it wasn't, I just had to know that it was all right to stumble a little along the way.

Sticking only to one answer simply for the reason that it's the first is what paralyzes thought. And with that crippling notion in place, there's no room for any kind of growth.

That potential lack of development is what scares me the most.

Muse: Dana Scully
Fandom: The X-Files

Chance.

Our whole relationship happened by chance. That's probably one of the strangest things about it, that I never would have seen it coming. Even if someone would have told me it was blazing down the highway towards me at an eighty mile per hour clip, it still would have been completely out of my realm of expectation. Because I didn't like chance, not really, I didn't like the idea of chance dictating my life when I wanted to be the only one in any kind of control of my life and the future that I had in mind.

But the truth is, I met him by chance. We fell in love by chance and my world changed - all by chance. And that's what's strange, thinking that love is something that belongs to a greater kind of force and knowledge than anything we can wrap our minds easily around, because love is probably the most powerful force that we have in our lives, and we have less control over it than we believe. We can't choose who we love, we just know when we do and how deeply we do, and then from there it's all we can do to hold on.

Muse: Dana Scully
Fandom: The X-Files
Word Count: 202

When you're looking for a muse, what draws you to them? Is it the actor/actress, the genre, the hype, peer pressure? Are you one to travel the muse fads swapping muses as if they were a change of clothing as each and every new film comes out? What might compel you to make an OC instead of adopting an existing fandom muse?

The funny thing about muses is that usually, nothing specifically draws me to them. I only write for female muses, something which I guess is a bit restrictive in the eyes of some but makes me happy because I like writing for female characters. But in truth, I don't often go searching for a muse, I just let them find me. I have to feel some kind of connection, some sort of element in myself that makes me connect to them in some way.

When specifically referencing to Scully, I think what drew me to wanting to write her was that she was a challenge. I've seen her taken on in other ways that I just didn't think were true to her characterization in the past and I wanted to make sure that I really put my mind to focus and work and made sure she was accurate. There was a lot of canon to take in, a lot to pay attention to and a lot of changes to make certain that I honored considering which time periods I wanted to write from. Season one was actually the hardest for awhile because she was so new then, so uncertain as to what was facing her, and writing out that sense of wonder was a different thing than what I'd experienced before.

But what keeps me writing a muse is a combination of myself and the people of whom I'm lucky enough to write them with. If I didn't have some of the great writing partners that I do now for the three muses I write the most, I don't think I'd have quite as much fun as I would have to try and have on my own. It's about the experiences and the parts of ourselves that we let show through while trying to keep a canonical character true to what's around them. And it's part of that challenge that I love so much.

What did you dream last night?

I dreamed about William.

I always dream about him, if I'm being completely truthful with myself. Dreaming about anything else would be mediocre in comparison, and I wouldn't be much of a mother, in mind if not in technicality, if I didn't constantly think of and dream about the son I'd had to lose. The loss is still there, it's still aching and nagging, it hasn't changed and it hasn't lessened. Anyone that told me it would is a fool, or must not have children of their own because that kind of loss doesn't go away. It doesn't change, it doesn't fade, it just moves to a backwards place in a person's mind or life and stays there, quiet and persistent, waiting for the next moment of weakness so it can strike.

The venom of that kind of strike is far worse than any snake. I'd rather get down in the dirt with a copperhead and take my chances than go through this again, but we don't always get to choose that which we'd want and that which we'd rather just leave on behind.

But this particular dream wasn't frightening, and I think I wish it would have been because then I could have screamed myself awake and Mulder would have been there with sleep encrusted eyes and open arms to draw me away from hysteria's edge and back down to a place in reality. He wouldn't tell me it was all right because he'll never offer empty platitudes to coax me back to relaxation, but he'd have comforted and that would have helped.

It wasn't that kind of dream. It was something much worse.

I could feel the sun warm on my face and smell freshly cut grass. There wasn't a white picket fence because that would have almost been obscene but I was standing at the sidewalk's edge, Mulder's voice coming behind me from somewhere inside the house. I couldn't hear what he was saying but there was laughter interwoven through it and it was real, warm, rich. I turned my head to look back at where he was and caught a half glimpse of yellow and black as the school bus pulled to a screeching stop, puffing a gasoline smell of exhaust into the air. Two children scampered off before I saw the small, round face, the denim jacket and red sneakers all in a flurry, a flurry because he was running to me. I bent at the waist to gather him against my chest and pull him aloft, against my hip, and he showed a construction page of paper with paints glossy across its surface, the stick figures representative of myself, him, and Mulder, outside a representation of the house we were about to walk into. I was laughing, Mulder was laughing and he - William - was giggling because we were, not because he knew what was so funny or worth laughing about, but just because we were.

When I woke up my pillow was soaked with tears, and Mulder was breathing softly against my shoulder. I wanted to wake him because I wanted to be held, but instead changed the pillowcase and closed my eyes again because if he was dreaming, I didn't want his to end too soon, the way that mine had.

Muse: Dana Scully
Fandom: The X-Files
Word Count: 550

Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested. – Francis Bacon

The only book I can remember taking in completely, wrapping myself up in and never lifting my head once from until it was finished was Breakfast at Tiffany's. I'm not the only woman who's done that, I'm sure, but I loved that book. There was something warm, impossibly bright and yet completely heartbreaking about that book that made me want to read it once and then read it again to see if maybe, somehow, the cat would come back when she called for it.

I went out and hugged my dog that day, when I finished that book for the first time, brought him into my room and let him lay in my bed with me, because I didn't want to think about any kind of time where he might think I didn't want him. And again, I'm sure I'm not the only person who had that kind of reaction after reading about Holly Golightly and her benign yet completely flawed method of thinking that nothing possibly bad could ever happen at Tiffany's.

Mulder never let me hear the end of it, but that book has never ceased to hold a special place in my heart. I keep a copy, hardcover, next to my bed to remind me of the time when I actually believed in those kinds of things.

Muse: Dana Scully
Fandom: the X-Files
Word Count: 220

The world is going to implode. What're you going to do to stop it?

I think we've been at this point before, gone to this place and held hands with this kind of fate. I don't remember the day but I remember the look in Mulder's eyes when we realized there was a degree of impossible danger and we might or might not have a way out of it. Those are the things that no one wants to face or have to admit that it might be possible to have happen. The world isn't supposed to end, it's supposed to keep going on and never show any sign of disappearing.

But if that did happen, if things did begin to fall into that degree of place, if the world was going to fall and catapult into nonexistence and everyone was in danger because of it, because of some reason that I can't even wrap my mind around, then I don't know what I'd do. I don't know how I'd begin to fight something like that, but I do know that I wouldn't fight it alone.

We didn't spend all of this time, our lives, working to try and save a world from an impossible fate to just to let something stop us from giving it that happy ending. I might be completely scientific, but I do believe in that bit of a happy ending.

Muse: Dana Scully
Fandom: the X-Files
Word Count: 220

~ she doesn't like to show you her tears
she doesn't want feelings to get in the way
somebody hurt her a long time ago
she sealed up her heart
and that's how it will stay
"She Keeps Her Love Away" ~ Alice Ripley

It had been twenty minutes since she had stopped crying, but his arms hadn't relaxed around her shoulders. Mulder had become accustomed to staying at her side when she couldn't sleep and as much as Scully didn't want to appear in the slightest bit weak - to him or to anyone else - she couldn't deny that he brought her a degree of impossible, irreplaceable comfort. The rhythm and pattern of his breathing had become a warm, impossible thing that she didn't really believe she could fall back to sleep without even if she tried harder than she had at anything else in her life.

"Can you go back to sleep?" His voice was as rich and warm, strong as the arm that he wound across her stomach and held her against his chest with. Her own hands were pillowing at the curve of her jaw, keeping her from falling into too uncomfortable of a position, but he was also making certain of that without her even being coherently aware of it.

They were partners, and they took care of each other. Looked out for each other, even when the other didn't know it.

"I can," she said quietly, and he kissed the place above her ear before laying his cheek against hers and letting sleep come to the both of them again.

Muse: Dana Scully
Fandom: the X-Files
Word Count: 223

List five times you got in trouble because of toys. (Naughty or Nice)

1. When I was ten, I spent too much time with my Barbies. I didn't dress them up the way I was supposed to, instead, I tried to fix them when they came down with varying medical illnesses. Of course this involved painting them in colors to compliment various skin disorders, and that was just for starting. It didn't go over well.

2. I liked to race my brother's remote controlled cars. Again, it didn't go over well.

3. When I was eight, I brought a Barbie to school in my backpack. Doctor Barbie, with a lab coat. We weren't allowed to bring toys to school, of course, so again I ended up in trouble.

4. The incident from number three was magnified when I snuck into the teacher's office to get her back. I did get her, but my mother wasn't happy.

5. Last year, my nephew was unhappy with me because I couldn't find a certain action figure. I did manage to find one on Christmas Eve, so the holidays were saved.

Muse: Dana Scully
Fandom: the X-Files

Ten Christmas Traditions

1. Last minute shopping.
2. Working too much
3. Returning about a half dozen phone calls from family and close friends.
4. Sending out Christmas cards that might actually get there on time.
5. Trying to figure out what to get for Mulder.
6. Still trying to figure out what Mulder would want.
7. Wrapping the presents for my family.
8. A last minute trip to the post office.
9. Vowing to never wait that long to mail things again.
10. Canceling family plans to spend Christmas with Mulder.

Muse: Dana Scully
Fandom: the X-Files

Which fictional character would you like to be?

If I could be a fictional character, I'd want to be a superhero. Wonder Woman, maybe, or someone with some kind of impossibly strong power. Mulder would know more about this than I would, he'd probably have a whole list of people that he wishes he could be, but the truth is that most of the time I'm too wrapped up in the medical science around me, in everything that I have to face in a day to think about those kinds of things too closely.

Mulder would tell me to relax and take a vacation, and I would tell him to just get serious for once. We conflict in so many ways, and make sense in so many others.

But the truth is, I haven't really thought about it. I don't think about wanting to be anyone other than myself because that's all that I am and all that I have to offer. I can't change my entire life in a few seconds, can't just assume a new identity because it would be easier. I don't think about it too much, because there isn't a lot of point. But if the chance did come to me, I'd want to be someone with unspeakable power so I could do unspeakable good with it. Power that would let me heal the sick, or something along those lines.

As long as I can make a difference that's good and positive, I'm fine with anything.

Muse: Dana Scully
Fandom: the X-Files
Word Count: 242

Make a list of songs you sing in the shower.

- Walking in Memphis
- I Am Woman
- I Am a Scientist
- Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic
- I'm a Believer Mulder loves this one best.
- Do You Believe in Magic? this one, too.
- I really don't sing in the shower well, though. It's kind of embarrassing - more than a little - and Mulder never lets me hear the end of it when I do. Sometimes he teases me about breaking the glasses in the cabinet, but I always find a way to get him back for it.

Muse: Dana Scully
Fandom: the X-Files

New

Everything about it is new. The relationship itself could be compared to growing up, to something that wasn't hard to see as happening because we had spent so much of our lives together, watching the world change around us and spin madly, insanely by. Sometimes it was only his hand that I could hold onto whether I wanted to or not, and most of the time I found that any protest I might have been able to make was halfhearted at best.

But everything, really, was new.

When we moved into the house, a secluded and isolated home in the middle of nowhere that we had to open and unlock gates to get to (safer that way, what we both wanted for his own protection) all I could think about was how new it was. The home itself had been around for years, there was no question, but this was a new step in a new direction in our new lives that had somehow come together.

And yet when he put his hand in mine, when he closed his fingers around my palm and pressed his thumb between the small place between two of my knuckles, I thought that somehow I had come home without even knowing I had left.

Muse: Dana Scully
Fandom: the X-Files
Word Count: 210

Shadow Play

She came awake with a start and there was predictably darkness in the apartment, the soft kind that came every day around the same time. The day moved to twilight, a change she rarely saw from inside the basement office where four walls obscured the outside sun but that didn't mean it slowed down or didn't happen. It was just something she didn't see. Now, though, she felt the presence of the night and the stars veiled by pillowed clouds, even with the curtains drawn closed over the windows and the ceiling fan humming in the background.

Mulder's bedroom felt less foreign than it had a month ago when they had first begun to pass nights at his apartment together. The couch had been the initial attempted place to fall asleep but after two hours spent curled up with his knee between hers and a strong forearm supporting the small of her back he had muttered something along the lines of "maybe we should try and find the bed after all" which had made her grin into the slightly damp slope of his collar bone.

Ten minutes later they had found the bed and Scully had found a new place against his shoulder which formed a warm, comfortable pillow. Had the dreams not come to her again Scully might have slept through the night uninterrupted.

"You're awake." Mulder's voice was a sleep-heavy murmur at the back of her shoulder, his lips moving where it curved up into her collarbone.

"I'm sorry," she murmured. It was all the explanation she offered, uncharacteristic of she who thrived on having a situation outlined to every explicit detail. His breath moved the small hairs at the nape of her neck once, twice, three times before he spoke again. Third time's the charm rang about in the back of her mind like the feeble ending to a bad joke.

"What's the matter?"

"It was just a dream."

"About what?"

"Padgett." The admission of the name was whispered into the room's darkness and for a moment Scully would have sworn on her medical license that the shadows moved, shifted into a different structure and stayed there, winking a greeting to her mind now thick with the fatigue of sleep. Her heart jumped, colliding abruptly with her ribcage before settling into a rapid, back and forth rabbit's pattern.

Mulder's hand passed over her bare shoulder and down, across the tangle of sheets she had wrapped around her chest and let his palm come to rest on her stomach. His fingers spread in five different directions against the bunched fabric and pressed slightly, a coaxing urge to draw the curve of her spine against his chest. The beating of his heart was faster now, punctuated with adrenaline in the kind of rush that came paired with anger or the desire to close a case or any of the thousands of dangerous scenarios they walked into the footprints of daily. Padgett had incensed him even before the end of his story had loomed on the horizon and until recently, Scully hadn't understood why. Now, though, it was impossibly clear.

"I can help you forget," he whispered, his lips moving the words against the pendant of her earlobe and a shiver curled up her spine with a fire-tipped finger, pressing down at the aching sore which seated itself at the base of her soul. It was enough to draw a low murmur from the back of her throat and he pressed his hand more tightly against her stomach, arching her hips back into his.

"Can you take the shadows away?" she asked, her voice a note or two softer than the darkness itself.

His lips pressed against her shoulder. "If you'll let me."

Scully turned in his arms, twisting at the waist enough to bring her mouth to his and his fingers came up to the high, pale arch of her cheek, supporting there as he laid her head back against the pillows. His breath and warmth surrounded her, filled the air between them in the small spaces they would fill if only they were physically able. The sheets were twisted around her calves and the tips of her toes were cold where the covers had been shifted away but she didn't care about those inconveniences, nowhere near as much as she cared about his liquid hazel eyes hovering inches above hers, the tip of his nose as it bumped against her cheek.

Her hand cupped his cheek and kept his mouth against hers, the only pardons granted between contact for the necessary inhales of breath and silently she begged him to stay there, which he did without question. Even while rearranging the covers to bring his skin back into contact with hers he never stopped kissing her and even though the world stayed dark outside the presence of the shadows in the room began to fade away.

Muse: Dana Scully
Fandom: The X-Files
Word Count: 818