[There's the edge of an old frustration in her voice and in the helpless gesture she sketches in the air, a simple parting of the hands. She knows what she'd rather believe and she knows what she's seen and she knows what she's managed to gather hard evidence to support and the three don't always align as neatly as she'd like.]
I don't know what to believe, but there's got to be something I can find evidence to support.
[The possibility of the rest isn't something she necessarily wants to touch. She certainly doesn't want to feed his paranoia by mentioning that she's encountered men she was told were aliens, men who could look at any moment like anyone they wanted, nigh unto unkillable bounty hunters who'd nearly killed her and Mulder more than once. He doesn't need to know about the black oil, or the crashed vessel she'd found on the African coast with the Bible and the Qur'an etched on its surface in ancient Navajo, which had brought the dead back to life and made the sea run red like blood. He doesn't know that she's fallen to her knees in front of seraphim or met a little boy who could read the thoughts of those around him. Mulder's conviction has always been that the truth should be known, that what they do should be accessible to the public, to the world. That proof belongs to the people.
Scully, on the other hand, has seen what the pursuit of it has done to him. To the both of them. To their families, and what scant handful of friends they might once have had. People die for this sort of thing, and they die senselessly.
It isn't, ultimately, that she thinks him crazy. She doesn't think he's right, and she'd put her money on delusion, but it doesn't sound any less rational in a way than anything Mulder puts in his reports or posits on a case, and she sees the value in him. That is in a way her purpose these past seven years: to see value. To believe as earnestly as she can bring herself to believe that Mulder — and by extension this man — are worth no less for what they believe and whatever has made them believe it. Years ago she might have scoffed, but more recently she's sat at the bedside of dying women who believed they were paying the price of what they believed to be their abductions and she could find no evidence to tell them no, even if she had been able to find the heart.
Maybe that, ultimately, is why she says it, looking down at her own hands.]
Five years ago I went missing. Nobody could find me. Not the police, not the FBI. I was taken... by a man, I remember that much. To a mountain. I was gone for four weeks before someone deposited me in the ICU of a hospital in D.C. in a comatose state. We still don't know how I got there or who brought me.
My partner thinks...
[He can work it out on his own, no doubt. Do you believe in the existence of extraterrestrials?
Logically, I'd have to say no.
That was a long time ago. Now she is, in spite of herself, less sure.]
Never mind what my partner thinks. I don't remember much, and the only evidence I've ever found implicates the US government, not visitors from another planet. So I don't know, I have no idea what to believe but I can tell you with certainty that people with enough power and motivation to do terrible things to other people will do those things. That's somewhere to start.
no subject
[There's the edge of an old frustration in her voice and in the helpless gesture she sketches in the air, a simple parting of the hands. She knows what she'd rather believe and she knows what she's seen and she knows what she's managed to gather hard evidence to support and the three don't always align as neatly as she'd like.]
I don't know what to believe, but there's got to be something I can find evidence to support.
[The possibility of the rest isn't something she necessarily wants to touch. She certainly doesn't want to feed his paranoia by mentioning that she's encountered men she was told were aliens, men who could look at any moment like anyone they wanted, nigh unto unkillable bounty hunters who'd nearly killed her and Mulder more than once. He doesn't need to know about the black oil, or the crashed vessel she'd found on the African coast with the Bible and the Qur'an etched on its surface in ancient Navajo, which had brought the dead back to life and made the sea run red like blood. He doesn't know that she's fallen to her knees in front of seraphim or met a little boy who could read the thoughts of those around him. Mulder's conviction has always been that the truth should be known, that what they do should be accessible to the public, to the world. That proof belongs to the people.
Scully, on the other hand, has seen what the pursuit of it has done to him. To the both of them. To their families, and what scant handful of friends they might once have had. People die for this sort of thing, and they die senselessly.
It isn't, ultimately, that she thinks him crazy. She doesn't think he's right, and she'd put her money on delusion, but it doesn't sound any less rational in a way than anything Mulder puts in his reports or posits on a case, and she sees the value in him. That is in a way her purpose these past seven years: to see value. To believe as earnestly as she can bring herself to believe that Mulder — and by extension this man — are worth no less for what they believe and whatever has made them believe it. Years ago she might have scoffed, but more recently she's sat at the bedside of dying women who believed they were paying the price of what they believed to be their abductions and she could find no evidence to tell them no, even if she had been able to find the heart.
Maybe that, ultimately, is why she says it, looking down at her own hands.]
Five years ago I went missing. Nobody could find me. Not the police, not the FBI. I was taken... by a man, I remember that much. To a mountain. I was gone for four weeks before someone deposited me in the ICU of a hospital in D.C. in a comatose state. We still don't know how I got there or who brought me.
My partner thinks...
[He can work it out on his own, no doubt. Do you believe in the existence of extraterrestrials?
Logically, I'd have to say no.
That was a long time ago. Now she is, in spite of herself, less sure.]
Never mind what my partner thinks. I don't remember much, and the only evidence I've ever found implicates the US government, not visitors from another planet. So I don't know, I have no idea what to believe but I can tell you with certainty that people with enough power and motivation to do terrible things to other people will do those things. That's somewhere to start.