Disclaimers: They're not mine, and there was a time not so 
long ago when I thought I'd given them back for good, but 
apparently Chris Carter had other ideas. So, since it's his 
fault I still want to write about them, he won't mind if I 
borrow them just a few more times, right?

Feedback: PLEASE! To <drjekel@hotmail.com>.

Archive: To Gossamer and Ephemeral. Anywhere else, just ask 
first, please.

Spoilers: "Requiem," "Within," and "Without."

Category: VRA

Keywords: MSR, S/D UST, Scully first person POV, companion 
to "Unrequited."

Note: Yes, the title was shamelessly swiped from the Alanis 
Morissette (sp?) song--what can I say, it fits!

Acknowledgments: Again, Ladyhawke for her beta. :-)

Summary: Scully struggles to hang on to her antagonism 
towards Doggett in the wake of his kindness to her.


"Uninvited"
by Julie L. Jekel

I want so much to keep hating him, Mulder. I have to. To 
accept him in any way would betray everything you and I 
have been to each other. It would betray you.

It was easy, at first, to hate him. Between the fact that 
he was Kersh's go-to guy and the nerve he had to suggest 
you'd confided in other women about problems you had with 
me...well, you would have been proud of the disdainful way 
I tossed the cup of water he'd gotten me back in his face. 
I despised him in that moment, and for some time after as 
well.

But there's a problem, Mulder. Agent Doggett took me by 
surprise. He's not just another willing puppet of a 
hostile system. He's an agent of skepticism and integrity, 
who has been taken down from his rapid climb up the ladder 
to play chaperone to the FBI's most unwanted, the Bureau's 
alien-hunting pariah. In other words, he reminds me a lot 
of the person I was when we first became partners seven 
years ago. And in that reflection I come to see how much 
I've become you in your absence. 

Mulder, it frightens the hell out of me. Because the 
person I was seven years ago is the one who gradually fell 
in love with you, and the person you came to love in 
return. And I'm so afraid that this desperately lonely 
heart will look to repeat the pattern with this man who is 
here while you are so far away.

I think he's already falling in love with me. The 
gentleness in his hands when he pulled me into his arms in 
the hospital--God, why did I let him?--was so much like 
your own loving touch. And the apology in his voice as he 
told me he'd been assigned to the X-Files...assigned to 
take your place...somehow I can't believe, no matter how 
much I want to, that it would have been there if he didn't 
know and care how much you mean to me. And--God help me--I 
forgave him for it.

He's taken your place in our office. I won't let him take 
your place in my heart.

I can't.


END