~~~ October 13, 1997 ~~~

She woke as if pulled from the sea, gasping in startled 
surprise to find herself alive again.  Her lungs seized and 
she rose from the pillow, coughing weakly as her mother 
rushed to her side.  Maggie put a hand to the back of her 
head, her rings catching in Scully's hair as she held up a 
plastic cup of tepid water.

Scully took a few tiny sips, gravity doing most of the work 
to get the water down her throat.  "Thanks," she whispered 
when she was done, and tucked herself back under the covers 
with a shiver.

Her mother hovered with the cup still in hand, creating a 
looming figure framed by the bright sunlight steaming from 
the windows.  Scully squinted and shielded her eyes from the 
glare.  She guessed it to be high noon from the angle of the 
sun, which meant she had slept half the day away already.

"No, don't," she said to her mother as she moved to close the 
curtains.  "I like them open."

Maggie dropped the curtains instantly and turned around 
again.  "Are you hungry?  They stopped by with a tray earlier 
but I didn't want them to leave it to get cold."

"No, I'm not hungry."  They had her on enough drugs to numb 
most of the pain, but the strange, empty feeling took up all 
her insides.  There was no room left for food.

She stretched until she could reach her watch from the 
nightstand.  It read eleven-twenty on October thirteenth.  
Satisfied, Scully returned the watch to its resting place and 
drew her hands back under the blankets.  

She had one mission left: don't die today.

"Mom?  Can you do me a favor?"

Her mother came to stroke her hair.  "Anything, baby."

"Could you please go to the gift shop and pick out a birthday 
card?  It's Mulder's birthday today."

Maggie bit her lip for a second, her hand still on Scully's 
head.  "Of course I will," she said softly.  "I'll go right 
now, okay?  Any particular requests?"

"Something simple.  Maybe something funny, if they have it."

Maggie forced a smile.  "Funny it is."

The door closed behind her mother, leaving Scully alone in 
the bright room, surrounded by medical equipment and the 
sound of her own shallow breathing.  There were worse ways to 
die; she had catalogued dozens of them over the years as the 
victims laid sliced open on her table. 

Her biggest regret was that this would be everyone's last 
memory of her, thin and pale and unable to get out of bed 
even long enough to use the bathroom.  Her traitorous body 
had been dissolving in slow motion all year long, and she no 
longer had the energy to fight it.

God had been on her mind a lot recently, but she wondered if 
that was because she had no one else to talk to about her 
limited future.

Her brother was too angry, and she didn't have time for 
anger.

Her mother was too sad.  Scully could barely look her in the 
eye sometimes, for all the shame she felt at dying right in 
front of her.  Anything she revealed about her own fear would 
multiply her mother's agony a thousand times, so she held her 
tongue.

Mulder was too desperate.  The man who would believe anything 
was categorically incapable of talking about her death as a 
concrete reality. She ached when she thought of him finally 
confronted with it, wondering how many losses he could take 
before he became broken forever.

Resolute, she struggled to sit up against the pillows.  Not 
today, she vowed.  It would not be today.

Her mother returned with a small paper sack, which she handed 
to Scully.  "I hope this is okay," she said.  "I can go back 
if you think it won't do."

Scully slid the card out and looked at it.  A bunch of cows 
were playing baseball on the front.  "It's your birthday," 
read the script.  Inside, it said, "Party 'til the cows come 
home."

Scully sniffed and gave a watery laugh.  "It's perfect.  
Thank you."

"Is it?  I can go back..."

"No, it's great.  Mulder likes baseball.  Now I just need a 
pen."

Her mother supplied one, and Scully dragged the rolling table 
closer so it stretched across the bed.  The effort left her 
breathless and tired.  She rested with her eyes shut, pen in 
hand.

"Mom?" she said, her eyes still closed.

"Yes, honey?"

"Do you think that you could you arrange for Father McCue to 
come by sometime today?"

Her mother didn't answer right away, so Scully opened her 
eyes.  Maggie had blanched, her mouth open and trembling, but 
she recovered quickly and nodded.  "Of course I can."

"Thank you."

"I'll go call right now, okay?"

She left Scully alone again, this time with the task of 
filling out Mulder's card.  "Dear Mulder," she wrote. "I--"

She stopped, the pen sagging to half-mast as she tried to 
think of what to say.  

Mostly, she was grateful.  Grateful she had known him.  
Grateful that he refused to give up on her.  She had been 
afraid that she'd always come in second to the X-files, that 
she would take her last breaths with him off chasing dog-men 
in the moonlight.

Now she was afraid of the opposite.

Her mother returned without Scully having managed another 
word.  "Father McCue is on his way now," she said, obviously 
trying to sound cheerful about the visit.

Scully let her head loll back, tired and nauseated.  She 
could figure out something to write in Mulder's card later; 
he had the hearing today, so he would not be by until much 
later, if at all.

"I'm just going to grab some coffee," her mother said.  "Can 
I get you anything?"

Scully hummed a negative reply and lay down again, the card 
tucked safely beneath her pillow.  Just rest a little while, 
she told herself.

It seemed like only seconds later when she heard the door 
open.  She made herself look, expecting her mother again, but 
Mulder entered instead.  "Good morning," he said.

He looked tired, his skin sallow and dark circles under his 
eyes, but his suit was clean and pressed.

"What are you doing here?" she asked him as he drew up a 
chair next to her bed. "You have a hearing."

"Yeah.  I came by last night, but I... I didn't have the 
heart to wake you."

She lay still and quiet as he told her about some deal he'd 
decided not to make.  The specifics he would not share, but 
the gist was that he would not testify as asked against 
Skinner at the FBI assembly meeting.

Her heart broke a little, imagining the fallout and knowing 
she would not be there to pick up the pieces.  "Then they'll 
prosecute you," she said.

Mulder could end up spending his birthday in jail.

He bent his head in acknowledgment.  "Yeah, they have 
evidence against me.  They know I killed that man."

"Mulder, even with the ballistic evidence, I can still be the 
shoot--"

He shook his head, cutting her off.  "Scully, I can't let you 
take the blame. Because of your brother, because of your 
mother, and because I couldn't live with it."

"Then why'd you come here if you'd already made up your 
mind?"

He laughed helplessly. "Because I knew you'd talk me out of 
it if I was making a mistake."

The door opened again and Father McCue stood on the 
threshold.  Scully grabbed for Mulder's hand and held it with 
all her remaining strength.  If the FBI held him over for 
trial, this might well be the last time she saw him.

Tears clogged her throat as Mulder returned her squeeze.

"You'll be in my prayers," she whispered. 

Mulder leaned over to kiss her good-bye, and she smelled his 
aftershave.  "Have the father say a few 'Hail Mulders' for 
me," he murmured to her, and then he was gone. 

Father took over Mulder's chair and gave her a warm smile.  
"Dana, it's good to see you.  How are you feeling?"

"About like one might expect," she replied, and it occurred 
to her that he must have a lot of experience with this end of 
death.  She merely tended to the bodies afterward.

"Your mother said you had some things you wanted to talk 
about," he said gently.

She nodded, her hair rustling like straw on the pillowcase.  
"But first thing is a little unorthodox."

He raised both white eyebrows a bit.  "I've heard a lot in my 
forty years on the job," he reassured her.  "It's hard to 
surprise me anymore."

"I need for you to make sure I get an autopsy."

Shock colored his features for a brief moment.  "I..."

"My family won't understand," she said steadily.  "They think 
this is a simple cancer, but it's not.  Ordinarily I would 
trust my partner to see this through, but I don't know that 
he'll be able to make the request in this case."

Even if, by some miracle, he did not land in FBI custody, she 
did not believe he could bring himself to ask for her 
autopsy.

In the end, he would thank her.  It was fine to place her 
above the truth now, but she was going to be gone and the 
truth would still be out there.  The self-defense classes she 
had taken taught you first how not to become a victim, but 
then if you were to be one, to ensure that you left evidence 
of yourself behind to aid the prosecution.

Scully was damned sure leaving evidence.

"I can tell you whom to call," she told Father McCue.  "I 
think Mulder will go along with it.  Please," she said when 
she saw him hesitating.  "I need someone to do this."

"Okay then," he replied, clearly still uncomfortable with the 
idea.  "Tell me exactly what to do and I will be sure to do 
it."

She got out the pen she had been using to write Mulder's 
birthday greeting and jotted down the names and numbers.

The Father took the paper, folded it, and tucked it away 
inside his coat pocket.

He wanted to pray with her, and she knew the words from 
childhood.  She could feel them pulling one by one like a 
long string of beads from inside her, leaving her lighter and 
untangled in their wake.

But as she asked God for mercy on her soul, her thoughts were 
on her body and the autopsy table.  Her heart was swollen 
with so much feeling, she imagined it overflowing on the 
scale.

By the time Mulder reappeared that night, she had lived and 
died a dozen times.  More sleeping.  More tears.  More tests.  
Each hour was another reprieve, and somewhere around six 
o'clock she felt she had accomplished her goal.  This was not 
to be the day of her death.

Then at seven the doctors came with the shocking news: no 
sign of the tumor.  

Mulder walked through the door at eleven and she still 
couldn't make herself quite believe it.  Her body continued 
to feel like it was dying.  Tumors could disappear but the 
damage done by her treatments did not, at least not by 
whatever magic had abracadabra-ed her cancer away.

Mulder's birthday had turned out to be a rebirth day for her; 
that they traveled the same path had never been more clear to 
her. If only she could find a way to articulate it to him.

When she saw him, a lump sprang up in her throat.  As much as 
their good-bye had hurt, that was how good this reunion felt.

"Hey," he said in that tender voice he had been using with 
her lately.  "I thought you'd be sleeping."

Or, you know, dead.  The lack of sleep and adrenaline had 
made her almost giddy.

"You're here," she said as she reached for his hand.  

He sat on the bed next to her.  "I'm here," he said, tucking 
a band of hair behind her ear.  "Turns out they were more 
interested in locking up the real mole than they were in the 
dead guy at my apartment."

She widened her eyes at him.  "The real mole?  You mean that 
you found him?"

"It was Blevins."

"Oh my God."

"I know," he said, but he sounded distracted, as if this 
stunning revelation had happened a hundred years ago to 
someone else.  He rubbed his warm hands over hers.  "You 
should get some rest now, hmmm?"

"No, Mulder.  I have to tell you something."  She smiled in 
spite of herself, and he ducked down, trying to meet her 
eyes.

"What is it?"

"The cancer is gone."

"Um..." He tilted his head like a dog trying to make sense of 
its owner's language.  "What?"

She clutched his hands and grinned.  "It's gone.  The PET 
scan shows no traces of it, and they can no longer detect 
cancerous cells in my bloodstream."

"Scully, that's..."

"I know!  I know."

He crushed her to him in a tight hug and she went along for 
the ride, holding on for dear life as he rocked her back and 
forth.  God, she was tired.  But happy.

"This is amazing," he said, easing her back just a bit.  
"What happened?  What made it go away?"

"I don't know.  Right at this very second, I don't care."

He gave her a conspiratorial smile and leaned his forehead 
against hers.  "Me either."

He hugged her again, jostling her backwards this time, and 
something crackled under her rear end.  "Oh," she said, 
reaching under herself to pull out his now-wrinkled card in 
its envelope.

"What's this?"

"It was supposed to be your birthday card."

He checked his watch.  "It's still my birthday for another 
half hour.  Can I open it?"

"I didn't finish it," she said as he took out the card.

He smiled at the cows on the front and then flipped it open.

Scully held her breath.  She had never gotten beyond, "Dear 
Mulder.  I..."  She had no words to put to what he meant to 
her.

Mulder's smile faded a bit as he read her puny script, and 
then he gathered her into his arms again, the card scraping 
against her back.

"Oh, Scully," he said, his voice hoarse in her ear.  "Me 
too."

~~~~~~~~~~

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