Tell Me I'm Not Your Her: Ending 2

And then she heard the word that transformed her universe -- irrevocably, eternally.

"What?"

With the one word, with his incomprehension, a cold bleak mass of hopelessness lodged itself in the pit of her belly. It's not you....

"Scully?"

"Never mind," she managed to choke out.

It's not you.

She didn't know what she was doing until suddenly she was doing it: snatching up her purse, her coat -- she heard Mulder speaking to her angrily, but it was as if he were a million miles away, and she couldn't make sense of the words, nor did she try.

The cold air slapped against her face, bringing her roughly back to the here-and-now as she ran down the avenue, knowing that driving and parking would never bring her there in time. It's not you. Which meant that there was a Mark out there, waiting for his Lisa -- and suddenly the need to see him, to know him, burned within her like the sole spark illuminating an endless void.

How hurtful it was, to have her hopes so cruelly dashed -- and at the same time, liberating: freeing her to hope anew.

She was breathless by the time she reached the restaurant, looked around frantically -- no one was waiting outside; she thought about checking inside, but no, he said he'd be here, and if she went inside she might miss him, if she hadn't missed him already... and caught up in the sudden churning miasma of worry, she almost didn't hear the small, hesitant voice that spoke up from behind her. "Lisa?"

Slowly, Scully turned.

He wasn't tall.

He wasn't dark-haired.

In fact, he was heartbreakingly familiar in every respect.

"Frohike," she whispered.

His eyes widened as he stared at her. "Oh, shit," he muttered under his breath. "Look, um, I'm really sorry, I didn't know it was you, I was just..."

In the same vague fog in which she'd departed the basement office, she felt herself grab him, felt herself slam him up against the wall, felt herself draw her gun and shove it up against his face, all the while wondering: is this really me? And then she felt the rage, boiling up inside her, and spilling over in a massive red wave of flame. You little son of a bitch...

"If anyone ever hears about this," she said, slowly and distinctly, "you are dead. If you so much as breathe the slightest inference about any of this to anyone, from now until the day you die, I will hunt you down and rip you apart, one little fragment at a time, until you beg me to kill you and put you out of your misery. Is that clear?"

In his eyes, she read sheer terror, and knew that her message had been adequately communicated. "Uh-huh," he stammered.

She let him go, then, and watched as he exited the scene at top speed, looking back once like a frightened rabbit glancing back at a pursuing predator; felt the anger drain away from her, leaving her cold and lifeless.

So, she mused, there really is no hope.

It took her much longer to return to the office, for her steps were slow and leaden; her legs felt too heavy to move, but somehow she managed. "Thought you were bringing back dinner," she heard Mulder say, in a caustic voice; and at that moment, in her current frame of mind, it was all she could do not to draw her weapon again and blow his brains out for daring to speak.

"Fuck off, Mulder," she said instead, not looking at him, and sat down at the desk.

No hope. No kindred soul to understand her heartbreak. Just a little perverted toad of a man, getting off on her misery. Leading her on, setting her up for the fall. She would never forgive him for that.

Nor herself, for believing in the dream.

She glanced up at Mulder then, poring intently through file folders, and was startled to feel -- nothing. None of the old ache in her soul that had plagued her. None of the old yearnings. As if that emotion had burned itself out in the flares of hope and rage that had assailed her so ruthlessly and so swiftly, leaving her drained.

It was lonely, that emptiness within herself; but it was also a blessed relief.

Silently, she returned to the paperwork -- the X-Files that constituted the entirety of her relationship with Mulder -- and prayed that the deadness within herself would linger.

Her dream was dead -- and, it seemed, her soul as well.

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