TITLE: Dark Angel AUTHOR: Sandra Winarta DISTRIBUTION: Anywhere, as long as the story is intact along with my name and disclaimer. CLASSIFICATION: V, A. RATING: G. SPOILERS: Redux II. SUMMARY: Mulder contemplates a life-changing decision at Scully's bedside. DISCLAIMER: I don't own FM or DS, nor do I claim to. CC and 1013 Productions do (and Rupert Murdoch too when I think about it)! DARK ANGEL by Sandra Winarta The day stretched on forever. I had seen my entire existence stretched apart in opposite directions until breaking point. I came into this sterile hospital room on the edge of despair. A woman lies on the bed. Her face was pale, thin, exhausted from fighting a war where she had been an unwilling conscript; a war with her own body where the enemy was winning. I saw the face that had become so familiar over the years. I marvelled at her strength. I had dragged her through horrors no person should never see, taken away her family one by one, and now put her through the torture of a slow, painful death. Yet she had never blamed me. Even on her deathbed she had been willing to shoulder the blame. I am the burden that she will forever shoulder. Only I possessed the means to set her free. Her salvation would mean living the rest of my life in the fires of hell; forced to perpetrate lie upon lie, live without ever knowing the truth. What did it matter, anyway? Truths were only concrete to those believed in them. I believed that aliens had abducted my sister. I had searched for her relentlessly, sacrificing my life in the process; when all along she was safe, cared for, living with a father who was my enemy, not knowing that she did not want to be found. These thoughts mangle my mind as I stood in the darkness of her room watching her sleep, caught between wanting to embrace her and letting her rest after a day's battle. Dana. Scully. I sank on to my knees. My head fell on to the bed, into the open palm of a woman who for four years had been my anchor. The woman I have destroyed. Dana. Scully. I was unable to stop the tears from falling, as twenty-five years worth of pain roll over me. I realised the reality of my own selfishness. I am her burden. Dana. Scully. I imagined her waking, her eyes focusing on mine so that I could concentrate on nothing else but their expression. I imagined the corners of her mouth turning upward to form what could only be the beginnings of a smile. I placed hope in seeing that uninhibited smile as I kissed her palm, unable to keep the love I held for her from escaping. Even with the knowledge that I would forever hate myself for what I am about to do. I am her salvation. I am her downfall. I am her dark angel. THE END.