Lifeline

by Katharine Millay

He could not recall the exact moment that he fell in love with her.  He was assigned to Mulder years ago and keeping tabs on Mulder meant keeping tabs on Scully.  In the beginning he thought of her as an appendage, a thing to be tolerated.  That is when he thought of her at all.  Keeping track of Mulder's half-cocked exploits was enough work in and of itself and because of her quiet rationale she seemed to melt into the wordwork.  Her calm, logical demeanor was transcended by her partner's almost maniacal passion for the answers he sought.  So in truth, he rarely noticed her.  And if he did it was never as a woman.  In his profession one tended to think of people as things, never human beings with hearts, minds, souls.  To think of them in such terms would be to destroy the carefully constructed wall that he had built around his heart.  If he thought for one second the person he was about to murder in cold blood was someone's husband, father, or friend, he would never be able to pull that trigger.  And if he didn't pull that trigger he was as good as dead himself.  So, his detachment was purely out of necessity.

Somewhere along the way, though, all of that began to shift.  He didn't know when exactly the switch was flipped inside of him, he only knew that suddenly, one day, the realization hit him that he no longer saw her as her partner's shadow.  He saw her as she was, a stunningly beautiful woman, with extreme intelligence and rare courage.  And if this realization stunned him, how much more astounded was he the morning he woke up and realized that he was hopelessly, throughly, and irreversably in love with her.

The End

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