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 . 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