Rated: PG

Category: MSR, Vignette, Scully POV

Feedback: patfiler2016@outlook.com

Archive: Gossamer, any other nice home. Please
ask first.

This is dedicated to DD at Mulder's Refuge,
The first line originated elsewhere. Whoever you are,
I salute you.


He's cheaper than an electric blanket for warming the sheets
and a tastier pillow dressing than chocolate mints.

Yes, I can say that now, but a few years ago I wouldn't have
thought that would ever be the case. I was assigned to monitor
an oddball in the X-Files Office--a non-mainstream department
that dealt with inexplicable phenomena and extremely
unbelievable reports.

The day I met him, I was first strongly urged to report all his "out-
of-this-world" pursuits almost verbatim, and debunk and disprove
all of this weirdo's theories. I changed my mind after I heard the
sad tale of one young boy whose sister went missing, never to
return. The circumstances were extremely disturbing, and the
case we were investigating in Bellefleur just proved to me that this
man was suffering deeply.

At the time, I was so strongly stuck on the idea that seeing is
believing, give me the proof, and all the science rhetoric that my
training had instilled in me. I was wrong. Here was someone who
was hurting deeply. He wanted nothing more than to find out what
happened not only to his sister, but to so many other people.
Eventually, I became one of those people. The experiments were
excruciating, I suppose, although I cannot fully remember the details to
this day. Perhaps some time in the future I will be able to face those
trials and learn that remembering is okay.

Yes, when I first met Fox Mulder, he seemed like a crusty roll. Yes, he
was crusty, on the outside. Once I got to know the man, I found that he
was crusty on the outside, a protective shell to guard against the arrows
that had constantly hit him. But inside this crusty roll is a tender and soft
center. With a little warming up and buttering up, he is absolutely the
most delicious man in the world. Ask anyone who knows him now.

It's like I first said: He's cheaper than an electric blanket for warming the
sheets and a tastier pillow dressing than chocolate mints.

Dana Katherine Scully.

As told to Pattie.


END