Agent Dana Scully

What does unconditional love mean to you?

I don't think unconditional love is blind, but rather it's love met with a wide, bright eyed gaze that turns itself to everything that it can see. There's no way for one pair of eyes to see all that has been, all that is, and all that could be but when what they see is enough to make them sure of the rest of their lives, as sure as they can be, then what more is left to decide? I won't be overly romantic and say that I knew from the moment I met Fox Mulder that I knew where I would be for the rest of my life, but things did change from that first day.

And when things change, they do so drastically. The world shifts its colors, becomes brighter, and everything falls into a place you didn't think it belonged, yet fits so perfectly that you wonder how you ever mistook it for anything else to begin with. It's simple and completely complicated all at once, and I wonder what took me so long to figure it all out when at the same time, it was the most impossible thing I ever experienced.

I love him and he loves me. We're supposed to be together, so we will be. Isn't it that easy? I think it is, I think it always has been, and I'm just glad that even though it's taken us this long to get here, we're here.

What was high school like for you?

High school was, for me, like it would be thought of for anyone else. I didn't stand out but I didn't quite blend in, I was somewhere in the middle. Of course I knew who I was, my identity wasn't wrapped up in what other girls thought of me or who did or didn't act as if I was pretty or welcome in their crowd. I was fine with going forward on my own path in life, I knew that I loved science and medicine and all the things that came with them. Where others preferred assumptions and gossip and imagination, I was fine with sticking to things that I could prove.

When I graduated I was towards the top of my class, not because I was an academic grind but because it was easy for me to stay on top of my studies. They were important, of course, because with high school graduation came college admissions and with that came, tucked safely alongside, medical school. I knew where I was going, I always had, and I was ready for the future. So for me, high school wasn't anything major or life defining. It was just another part of my life that I went through, enjoyed while I was there, and later kept tucked in the back of my mind.

Faith is a passionate intuition. - William Wordsworth

When faith is all you have, it's what you invest everything in. It's what you see when you close your eyes and the thing you reach out for a hold on, except it's too broad to actually grasp. Faith is one of those things that you either have or you don't, there isn't any kind of in between, and more people believe than not, they just haven't admitted it to themselves yet.

I should know. Because for awhile, I was one of them. I used to have faith until it was shaken, and I found myself wondering why, what I had done wrong to have it happen that way. And then life taught me more, took me to a different place than where I had been a few years ago, and everything changed.

When the changes settled and I found my footing again, I realized that all I had was oddly enough the same faith that I had been questioning. And I guess that proved to me that more than anything else, faith is really one of the most powerful emotions that exists. It’s just a matter of where it’s placed, and how strongly it’s believed in.

Picture prompt

"Mulder?"

The rushing noise blew any other spoken word right away from her path of hearing, and Scully shut her eyes against the hissing because it burned and made it hard to see. Whatever that thing was - a vortex? portal? wormhole? - was about twenty feet down, off the cliff's side, like it had yawned itself into existence in some kind of greeting. And of all the things she'd seen in her life, of the strange and unusual, the bizarre and completely unpredictable, Scully had never seen anything like this. The reports hadn't lied, they had said the noise was some kind of hissing -

"Scully?"

Mulder's voice, accompanied by Mulder's hand closing about her shoulder, strong and warm. Scully turned her face away from the wind to meet his profile as he did the opposite, looking down into the same thing she'd been staring at for five minutes, the time it had taken for him to climb up and join her. The look on his face was astonishment coupled with elation and wonder, the expression of a boy who had just seen Santa Claus take flight over his house with eight reindeer and a sleigh, all doubts and disbelief be damned.

"Mulder," she said, wanting to say something, anything, even though words were so woefully inadequate for what was before them right now. She didn't think he heard her, but was proven wrong when he said her name again - "Scully," - and stepped from her side, peering down further into the gap that was nothing more than air and void. The cliff was steep but not so much that it couldn't be climbed or scaled, with little pockets that would serve as foot holds if someone was insane enough to take that kind of risk -

"Mulder!"

Scully's voice rang out into the cacophony, swallowed up as quickly as it had been said. Mulder had crouched down onto his knees and swung his leg over into the abyss, climbing down with his hands against pockets for holds already. Her heels slipped a bit on the gravel but Scully ran to the side anyway, looking down at him with her mouth agape.

Mulder looked up at her again, and the same boyish smile was in place. The look that had resulted in more trouble for them both than either could imagine, and yet was the same one that always made her stay. He was climbing down still, faster than he had been before, but threw his head back to call up to her once more.

"Scull-aaay!"

The wind flared around her again, and Scully felt fear, apprehension, irritation, and something likened to a laugh all bubble up in her chest at once. He was completely crazed at times, and yet what other choice would she make? What other choice was there but to follow?

Against the hindering of sliding gravel and rough surfaces, Scully eased herself over the edge and began to climb.

It's the end of the world and you're the last man standing. Where do you go from here?

First of all, that would never happen. And I don't care what the situation is or what probability is against me, or any other kind of evidence that you bring to me, throw down at my feet and tell me is the truth. I don't care. Because I'd never be the last person standing at the end of the world. Mulder would never let that happen.

I went through my life without having a great deal of reason to believe in anything that couldn't be proven. All that changed abruptly when I was assigned to the X-Files, and something that I thought would make a complete skeptic out of me for the rest of my days actually ended up being the most important turning point in my life. There wasn't just a job anymore, there was a purpose, and alongside the purpose came the man that carried it.

But if you'd like to re phrase that question and ask what we'd do together at the end of the world, where we'd go? We'd go the only place that we could go, and that's forward. Together, we'd go forward and from one end of the world to the other, if we had to. Whatever it took to find the answers as to why the world had ended, and to find out how we had to survive from there.

Most importantly, though, we'd do it together.