Forecasts
By MCA (mcaxf@juno.com)

Timeline:  Post "The Truth"

Summary:  Why do I tell you about the weather?  Perhaps it is
the only simple thing left.

Rating:  PG-ish, I think 

Disclaimer:  The X-Files and its characters are the property of
Fox Broadcasting and 1013 Productions.  No infringement is 
intended and no profit will be made.

Notes and thanks at the end.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ 


Dear Mulder:

Twilight has finally brought some relief from a long day of heat
and humidity.  I am sitting on the porch, gratefully relaxing in
a breeze coming in from the East, and trying to find the words 
to start this journal.

Once before I kept a journal, trying to explain my thoughts and
decisions to you during a dark and difficult time.  It was a time
when I thought our journey together would reach too abrupt an end.
I tried to use those pages to help myself understand the byways 
of what I thought to be my final days and to help you understand
how important our journey had been.  I needed you to know that I
wanted to travel with you as far as I could, but thought I would
not make the final distance.  As with so much in our lives, those
circumstances changed, and I found myself leaving that journal 
unfinished. 
 
Now I find myself taking pen to paper again.  Beginning a record
of another difficult time.  We are apart once more. For how long
we do not know. And I cannot see clearly to the end of the road 
when I hope our paths will converge again.  We are out traveling 
in an uncertain world and there are arduous journeys ahead of 
each of us. That this parting is voluntary does not, I find, 
make it any easier.  That we agreed to this new separation brings
little comfort in the small dark hours of the morning.
 
I miss your voice, Mulder.  I sense that you miss mine as well.
So I write to you here, in the hope that my words or at least the
thoughts behind them will somehow reach you wherever you are 
traveling.  In the hope that our journeys will not be as long as
I fear.  In the hope that you will be home to me soon.
 
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
 
August 23
 
It rained again today.  
 
Since we decided to part, to take up our separate missions, I have
concentrated on gathering the data from the older experiments that
we suspect were scattered throughout the country. My work is 
proceeding. I have gathered about half the research material I need
and am close to tracking down that documentation on the labs that
we believe were involved.  It is exacting and tedious analysis, but
I believe I'm making progress of sorts.  It would be easier with 
some of my old resources, but we make do with what we have.
 
I have had to make extensive use of the university library here. 
Some of the older data are so "out of date" (little do they know) 
that they have never been archived on the Bio Lab's research website,
so I have to delve into musty stacks to find what I'm looking for.  
It's strange to be back in the mode of full-time student/researcher.
After med school was over, I didn't expect to find myself ever living
this kind of life again.  But my life has been full of the unexplained
and unexpected since I met you.  So, I continue to hunt for obscure 
texts and pose riddles to research librarians.
 
There is a worry, of course.  Will my work attract the wrong kind of 
attention?  Will my requests for manuscripts long since sent to off-site
storage send up alarms? I'm careful, of course, to disguise my research 
- to check out masses of stuff that has nothing to do with what we're 
after, but I worry.
 
We had so many discussions about security.  About how to cover our 
tracks, and why we couldn't contact each other during these long days.
It is why I make no attempt to contact you directly, even though I 
suspect I know where you are.  It is why I am so cautious in this 
town - never engaging in long conversations, never drawing 
attention to myself.  I take seriously all those things we 
talked about.
 
On some other level, though, I think maybe it doesn't matter.  
The ubiquitous watching eyes we lived with for so long are still 
out there or they aren't.  It's why I allow myself to keep this 
journal - this extended letter to you, which could be its own 
form of betrayal if it fell into the wrong hands.
 
I need this journal even more than a false sense of security.  
I need to keep talking to you in these pages - if only to keep 
from talking to myself too much. If only to keep from wanting 
to scream. 
 
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
 
September 4
 
It's sunny today.  The sunlight makes me feel lost and small.  
It is too bright and I want to hide.  It's a silly reaction, 
to feel so exposed.  
 
Ridiculous, I know.  I used to love the sun.  It was something 
I learned when we lived in San Diego.  Despite all the years 
I lived in the DC-Maryland area, I never quite forgot what 
it was like to live in the sunshine.
 
Now, though, it seems too much.  How can anything be that 
bright and cheerful in the midst of all that is going on?  
Again, I know I'm being ridiculous.  There is sun 
regardless of the state of the world.
 
I'm just tired and frustrated.  The research didn't go well 
today.  The data I was hoping to find turned out to be a mere 
chimera.  The abstract of the manuscript had led me to hope 
that one of the missing peptide sequences had been found 
back in 1965 in an experiment that was supposed to be doing 
something else entirely.  I'd forgotten how badly written 
some of these abstracts could be.  It was a dead end.  
Something you'd think I'd be used to by now, but today's 
disappointment seems more bitter than I'd expected.
 
Maybe I imagined that if I'd found this one thing that I would 
be within some tangible reach of our being back together.  
Of getting back to...if not normal life, at least something 
more normal.
 
It's the small things I miss.  Not looking over my shoulder 
all the time.  My real hair color. The ability to call my mom 
to just chat.  Knowing that I am an FBI Agent.  It is strange 
to no longer have a professional identity.  To no longer know 
quite how to describe myself to others.  
 
In a university town, there are always itinerant scholars of 
somewhat dubious professional credentials, so I can blend into 
the quiet denizens of the libraries and lecture halls here, 
but I know that I am not an academic.  I don't know yet what 
I am now.  Who and what have I become in this new life of ours?  
I am your partner.  I hold on to that thought.
 
Someone asked me how old I was the other day and I had to 
stop and try to remember whether my birthday had passed 
without my noticing.  When did that happen to me?  When 
did I forget to keep track of the small but vital details 
of my life?
 
When did my horizons narrow to encompass nothing but this 
work I'm desperately trying to complete?
 
We put so much of ourselves into this work.  It is 
sometimes difficult to remember that we had lives 
before this.  It is difficult to remember what those 
lives were like.  But as consumed as I am by this, 
and as tired as I am tonight, I think I am more alive 
now than I was before the X-Files.  Before you.  
 
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
 
September 15
 
Rain again.  There are puddles everywhere, tiny oceans 
washing up against the shores of curbs, trees, edges 
of the grass.
 
I realize I don't know why I begin every letter to you 
with a weather report.  It's so mundane, but maybe that 
has become the point.  The weather is one of the few 
things that remains just as it was for me.  Rain is 
still rain.  And so I tell you what it is like where 
I am.  Or at least I tell you what the weather here is.
 
What it is like here, without you, is something else 
entirely.
 
Maybe I tell you about the rain, or the sun or the wind 
because they are simple phenomena in a life that has 
lost so much of its simplicity.
 
Maybe I tell you about the weather because it is the 
one thing I can think about and not want to weep.   
But that's overly dramatic, and we have no time 
for drama, do we?
 
I never expected to grow up and be a Navy wife - my 
husband gone for months at a time to sea.  You are not 
my husband, and yet...I finally appreciate some of both 
my mother's anxiety and her strength.  Ahab's 
deployments lasted a minimum of six months at a 
time.  There were so many years when my mother had 
to give up 50% of her life to a partnerless state.  
She was resilient, she managed our household, got 
us to school on time, cooked our dinners, handled 
the small everyday crises and still managed to 
attend the Officers' Wives Club lunches.  For 
the first time, though, I understand the look I 
would sometimes see in her eyes late in the 
evening when she thought none of us was really
seeing her.
 
It is so strange to be without you.  I miss talking
to you, our familiar arguments, the give and take 
over theories, ideas, beliefs.  Without you here, 
I know that my analyses may not be as complete, or 
at least not as stringently tested and questioned.
 
You know me.  I worry my theories, prod them, 
test them, hold them up to the light.  Sometimes, 
to amuse myself, I play Devil's Advocate, trying 
to imagine what you would say about my approach. 
Trying to see the world through your eyes.
 
I am rarely successful.  You always surprise me, 
Mulder.  It's just one of many things I miss 
about you.  I miss being surprised by your 
unexpected analyses and arcane knowledge.  I 
miss the passion of your convictions and the 
way you would hold to your beliefs and theories 
sometimes out a sheer stubbornness simply because 
you knew you were right beyond any sort of 
conventional logic or wisdom.
 
I miss your passion and focus.  But sometimes, 
in the dead of night, when I can't sleep and 
all my logic has deserted me, I worry about 
your passion for the quest.  I worry that it 
will consume you again and you'll forget to 
come home to me.  And you owe me that homecoming, 
Mulder.  Don't forget the promise you made.  
You promised you'd be back.  I'm going to hold 
you to that.
 
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ 
 
September 25
 
It's overcast today, neither warm nor cold, 
just a strange in between.  The air seems 
very still.
 
What are you doing this Saturday?  Do you even 
remember what a weekend is?  I'm not sure 
I do anymore.  
 
The library is closed today and the town 
nearly shut down for some kind of Fall 
Festival.  I seem to recall seeing flyers 
about pumpkins or scarecrows or something.  
So I am at loose ends for the first time in 
a long time.  When did I lose track of the 
seasons?  How did it get to be fall? 
 
Have we really been gone for so long?  I find 
I cannot write entries in this journal every 
day.  To do so would be too visible a reminder 
of the passing of time, and how long we've been 
apart.  I only write to you when I can no 
longer stand not to be talking to you.  When I am 
missing you too fiercely. 
 
Have you found what we are seeking?  I don't think 
you have yet, or else you would have found me by now.  
I somehow don't fear that you are dead - I think I 
would know, somewhere in the center of my being if 
you were no longer.  I do worry that you are hurt 
or lost, but through everything else, I believe 
you will return to me.  It's odd what beliefs we 
finally cling to.  Belief is, itself, an inherently 
irrational act, a reaching out into a vast and 
unblinking unknown, but somehow comforting. I 
believe you will return.  I believe in you.  
I believe in us.  
 
I know we agreed that this was what we needed to 
do.  Our paths had to separate for a while.  The 
work we needed to do required our different skills, 
in different parts of the world.  This was the 
logical thing to do.  We made a decision like this 
once before; our reasons at the time also grounded 
in logic and reason.
 
I am suddenly sick of logic.  
 
It seems like we spent so many years dancing around 
each other, an intricate pattern of advance and 
retreat interrupted by abductions, conspiracies and 
stupidity.  God, it all sounds so melodramatic, doesn't 
it?  But our lives are the stuff of melodrama.  
How else can you describe them? 
 
But then, after all that, we were miraculously 
together, in the same time and space.  I can still 
feel that peace and fragile happiness - that moment of 
"yes" as we lay together on that cramped motel bed.  
I can smell you.  There are moments when I believe 
you smell like secrets.  It is more erotic than you know.
 
I can feel your arms encircling me, the heat of your 
body a darker, softer heat against the backdrop of the 
desert that surrounded us.  I want to be back there so 
much I ache.  I can only live in the hope that we will 
be together again soon.  That we will have another 
moment of peace before it is all far too late.
 
You were such an unexpected thing in my life.  I still 
don't know quite how it happened, when it happened, why 
it happened.  I only know that somewhere very early on 
in our partnership I realized I never wanted to work with 
anyone else.  And then, a little later, I realized you 
were a permanent part of my life.  I didn't put labels 
on it, I simply knew that you were meant to be there.  
Always.  That you were the solution to the equation 
of my heart.
 
It's getting late.  The candle whose light I am borrowing 
to write this letter is burning down.  I think I will 
go to bed now.  If the fates are kind, I will dream of 
you.  Good night, Mulder.  I hope wherever you are 
your sleep is peaceful.
 
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
 
November 2
 
Cloudy, windy, grey.
 
Where are you today?  What is the weather like where you are?  
Why do I write you questions I know will never be answered, 
or at least not answered in anything resembling real time?
 
It's been several weeks since I wrote the last entry.  
I'd gotten word through some of our old friends that 
there was some lab activity in Iowa that I needed to 
check out.  It was a long way out there and back.  I 
know you aren't really aware of the passage of time 
between one entry and the next - I have nowhere to 
mail these letters I am writing to you - but I still 
feel as though I should be apologizing to you for the 
long silence during my trip.  
 
I'm weary and there is little of interest to report.  
It was a long journey for nothing.  The site I was 
directed to had long since been abandoned.  It's 
possible that it was once part of the work we are 
trying to trace, it's also possible that it was 
nothing more than a bunch of fairly well-educated 
drug manufacturers cooking up meth and LSD on a 
grand scale. There was nothing left to tell me 
anything conclusive.  
 
I had a scare while I was traveling.  Somewhere in 
the long passage between here and there, I thought 
I saw Krycek.  I know he's dead, but for just a moment, 
on a quiet street in a nameless town, I swear I
saw him.  He watched me for a moment or two, that 
calculating, questioning gaze, and then he turned 
and unhurriedly disappeared in the shadows between 
two buildings.
 
I was gassing up the car, and was just about done.  
It took all my will power not to run after him and 
demand an explanation. Old habits die so very hard.  
They leave me wanting to chase even ghosts to demand 
answers to questions I still barely know how to ask.
 
It left me shaken for days.  So many old memories 
stirred up.  I know he's dead.  You told me how he 
died, but I still have trouble believing that 
Skinner would have acted as you described. Or 
that you could witness such an act so dispassionately. 
But I also have no idea what living under Krycek's 
constant threats would do to someone.  How the 
unendurable pain and uncertainty would wear away the 
disciplines and control of a lifetime.  I sometimes 
feel that Skinner was another casualty in our war, 
one of the walking wounded who is nearly dead but 
has too much obstinacy to actually fall over and die.  
 
We've lost so many along the way.  And sometimes 
parts of ourselves.
 
During this long separation I have had more time 
than I want for reflection.  It is inevitable that 
none of us is the same person as when all this began.  
Human beings grow and change in reaction to their 
surroundings and circumstances, and our lives have 
given us more than the usual amount of stimuli to 
react to.  
 
Do you ever wonder how your life would be different 
if we hadn't met?  I wonder sometimes about where 
I would be and what I would be doing, and I find 
that I cannot imagine a present that doesn't include 
us.  That doesn't include this work.  I didn't look 
for this, but it found me anyway.  There would seem 
to be something to this fate business.
 
So I am what I have become and could be nothing else, 
I think.  It has not always been an easy journey, as 
you know.  But I am stronger than I have ever been, 
and I am a different, more confident woman than I 
was 10 years ago, and I wouldn't give that up for 
anything.  I know things about myself that I didn't 
expect to know - how far I can be pushed, that I 
could actually shoot to kill or protect, that I 
can lie to save a life.  That I could give away 
our child...
 
There are some lessons I have learned at too high 
a price.  But what you pay for something is all 
relative in the end, isn't it?  I am here, you 
are here, and we know why we are doing this thing.  
We have lost parts of ourselves along the way, 
but we have gained so much more.
 
I seem to be talking in circles tonight, but 
perhaps it is only just. We do not travel in 
straight lines, you and I.
 
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
 
November 12
 
Cooler now, but a sunny day, leaves blowing and 
crunching along the sidewalk.  Winter can't be 
far away now.
 
There are children in this town.  Lots of them 
running along the sidewalks, riding their bikes, 
playing in the park.
 
It hurts, Mulder.  I look at their bright, laughing 
faces and I think about William and Emily and can't 
help but grieve for what we didn't get to have.  
There are days I can barely stand the sight of 
children, when a woman pushing a baby carriage 
down the street makes me want to weep until 
I am blind and choking on my own tears.
 
I didn't expect that.  I didn't expect for there 
to be this hole in my heart that won't ever 
fully close.  
 
It is perhaps my only regret about our partnership - 
that we will likely never have the ability to simply 
be a family.  That I ultimately felt that William 
had no chance at life unless he wasn't with us.  
I know that you don't blame me for the decision 
I made, and I hope you know that I have never 
blamed you for finding myself in the situation of 
having to make that decision.  It is simply a 
grief I bear.  
 
It is these moments when I'm glad you won't actually 
read these letters.  As far as we've come, there 
are still some things I'm not sure I'm ready for 
you to know.  May not ever be ready for you to know.  
I don't think I have the strength to try to convince 
you that my sorrow on this point has nothing to do 
with you. This grief I carry is simply one more 
price for living, and I know that.
 
Someday I think we will talk about this, but I am 
not ready yet.
 
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
 
November 20
 
The first snowfall of the year.  A very light dusting, 
but an unarguable announcement of Autumn's end.
 
The seasons are changing again and still we are apart. 
I thought I would have heard from you by now, but 
there has been no word.  Have you traveled even 
further than we thought you might have to?  Have 
you found unexpected detours?  
 
In the books, the heroes always win - they triumph 
over adversity through character-building tests and 
decisions.  Real life is so much more complicated. 
Good people get ground up in the system, the wrong 
people die, the wrong people win.
 
I didn't expect to miss the Gunmen so much.  I didn't 
know them well, but I came to think of them as 
allies and friends over the years.
 
I don't think I ever told you about the night Frohike 
came over when you were missing out in the Arizona 
desert.  It was something like 2 am. He'd had far 
too much to drink.  Swaying in my doorway, apologizing 
for his presumptuousness in coming over.  But he was 
grieving for you as much as I, so I invited him in 
and we sat at my kitchen table and talked.  He 
tried to tell me how much you'd meant to him.  
He called you a "redwood among mere sprouts."  It 
was both sweet and ridiculous in the way that only
Frohike could manage.  He talked for a long time 
and I finally persuaded him to pass out on my couch.  
When I woke in the morning, he was gone and I 
didn't see him again for some time.
 
But at a time when so many of our "real" colleagues 
were treating me like a leper, I cannot forget the g
enuine act of courage and sweetness that it took for 
him to venture from his cave to seek me out.
 
I didn't expect to miss them so much.  
 
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
 
December 15
 
A little snow, just enough to provide a light cover 
over the sullen mounds of ice and snow that remain 
from last week's storm.
 
My work here is nearly done.  The final calculations 
and analyses should only take another day or two.  
I have what we were looking for here.  It is not the 
answer we had hoped for, but it is enough for the 
next stage.  I think.  
 
I'm exhausted.  The final stages were exacting and 
difficult, but I managed to extract the compounds 
we need and develop the formulas for the follow-on 
work.  I have that triumphant tiredness that I 
used to feel after a big round of finals at med 
school.  I wanted to share that triumph with you.  
Instead I feel as though I could sleep for a week.
 
In the supermarket today, there was a tabloid with 
a headline about a rain of fish in Montana.  I 
turned to tell you about it, to joke about opening 
a case file, only to realize for the thousandth 
time that you weren't there with me.  
 
Missing you is no simple thing.  I spent so many 
years without you, but now I expect to find you 
there always, like my shadow, or my right hand.  
You are a part of me, somehow.  I wonder how often 
you turn to tell me something only to realize 
I'm not there.    
 
There has been no word from you.  I should have 
heard by now.  I still believe in my heart that 
you are out there, but where?
 
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
 
January 5
 
It is a few days into the new year.  It was cold 
and bright today - sun glinting off the ice and 
snow.  Trees dusted with snowflakes that refracted 
cold rainbow-hued halos.  The sharp brightness of 
the light made my eyes water as I stared unseeingly 
over the landscape.
 
I still haven't heard and now I don't know what 
to do.  I will move on to the next location and 
begin what I think needs to be the next phase of 
the work, but for the first time, Mulder, I am 
deeply uncertain.
 
The world has frozen around me, and I am so very cold.  
 
After med school, when I was doing my Pathology 
internship, I spent long hours in morgues working 
on autopsies, and analyses.  They are cold, windowless 
places and I learned to work in the silence and chill.  
The dead are usually quiet - some of our cases 
notwithstanding - and I came to appreciate the 
solitude, the cold quiet of their company.  I was n
ever spooked by the bodies, never felt haunted. 
 
Now, though, the cold and silence that surrounds me 
here is oppressive.  I feel cut off from the living 
world.  My work done here, there is no one to talk 
to, and I spend too much time staring out the window 
of my apartment and thinking about all the things I 
never said to you.
 
Do you know how much I respect you?  As much as we 
argue, as much as we disagree about some of the 
fundamental ways we believe the universe is constructed, 
I never treat your serious theories with anything 
but careful consideration, regardless of what my 
attitude may have indicated to you at one point or 
another.  I don't think I have told you this, but I 
hope you have come to understand it over these long 
years.
 
Do you know that I think you're funny?  I have to force 
myself not to laugh at your more outrageous comments 
sometimes because I don't think your ego needs constant 
feeding, but I value that sense of humor so very much 
for the unexpected light it has produced in the midst 
of the idiocy that sometimes surrounds us.
 
Do you know that I have no regrets about our work, our 
partnership?  You have, at various times, intimated 
that I would have been "better off" doing more normal 
FBI work.  I should have been clearer with you that 
there was never any turning back for me after that 
first night, when, by candlelight, you allayed my 
fears about the mosquito bites and then proceeded to 
tell me about what you were chasing.  That was it.
 
Do you know that I love you?  I think you do, but I 
am so careful with my words around you that I fear 
I may never have told you so in exactly those words, 
and I should have.
 
I love you, Mulder.  Come back to me.
 
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
 
February 12
 
Cloudy, but with the promise of sun later in the day.
 
This will be, I hope, my last entry.  I received your message,
and am leaving today to meet you.  At least I hope I am.  The
message seems to have been delayed in transit, and I wasn't 
sure how long you intended to stay at the rendezvous point.  
I will be traveling as fast as I know how.
 
I am uncertain how to conclude this journal.  This has been 
an interlude, a pause between acts in this strange drama we 
are playing out.  I will no longer need to speak to you 
through the pages of this book.  Soon we will be face to 
face.  I will see your face again, and I am living for 
that moment.
 
But for now, I feel as though I should be trying to find 
some way of bringing this all together.  Of trying to find 
some neat way of summarizing what I have felt and discovered 
while we were apart.  I don't know how to do that.  I have 
been aware, while writing this, that I was speaking as much 
to myself as to you.  That I was trying to puzzle my way 
to answers about some of the mysteries that surround us 
and the way our hearts intersect.  I have always believed 
that there are answers out there.  I just don't know if 
there are any in these pages.  
 
There is much still ahead of us.  If the future is anything 
like our past, we will have winding roads, and obstacles and 
setbacks and still we will travel, sometimes in circles.  I 
may miss you at the meeting point, and have set out looking 
for you in all the improbable places you might be.  But even 
if we don't meet tomorrow, I know that we will travel and 
travel until we circumnavigate the globe and find each 
other again.
 
That, maybe, is the only answer I need.
 
THE END
 
 
My very deep thanks to the Fab Four Betas - To QofMush for 
enthusiasm and catching the small, but important things.  
To Nlynn for precision, comma patrol, and for a couple great 
suggestions. To Bonetree for seeing the big picture. And 
to Meredith, the Alpha Beta, for always seeing and saying 
exactly the right thing.
 
I had many trepidations about taking on a challenge story,
but in the end it felt good to flex those particular 
muscles again.
 
Many thanks, also, to Lilydale, an excellent swap 
recipient, and to Maureen B. Ocks, whose story I adored.