When you live with regrets, you die with regrets.

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Once when we were driving through some random state, the name of which I cannot recall, we passed miles and miles of horse farms. As we drove, some of the foals would try and race the car, running next to the fences until their spindly legs grew tired and they lost interest in chasing after our garish and metallically loud Taurus.

I made some flippant comment about horses while this was occurring – I think it had to do with Catherine the Great, but I could be wrong there. You replied to my juvenile jocularity with a sarcastically raised eyebrow and a remark about how, as a young girl, you’d always wanted a horse.

Jumping at the chance to gain insight into the heavily guarded secret that was your childhood, I begged elaboration in a single word – “Really?” In truth, my surprise was not feigned. Samantha had a horse phase too – I think all girls do – but you always seemed like the type to buck stereotypes.

You launched into a tale of how you attended horse camp when you were a girl, of how you wanted to ride more but your family couldn’t afford it. Instead you played soccer and swam and dreamed of being an equestrienne. It wasn’t just about horses or the love of riding, although that was part of it. It was about owning something that was totally yours, that Bill and Missy and Charlie weren’t clamoring after. It was about settling down, investing in the stability that a horse farm afforded. A farm far, far from the transience that the ocean signified.

We could have settled here, Scully, and raised horses. The middle of Wyoming, with the Rockies looming above us – purple mountain majesty, Scully. Yours was the All-American family; I don’t even know the rest of the song. If you were here you’d supply me with the rest of the words, not reacting adversely to this latest disclosure about my dysfunctional family life. My dad betrayed your family; he didn’t even teach his children the Pledge of Allegiance, much less of any of those patriotic ditties that you probably sang to your entire first-grade class.

The mountains can hide things, too many things. It took us too damn long to figure out that was where a purported abductee had fled to, with his girlfriend and young daughter as hostages.

The sun is too bright here. It should not be shining. It shouldn’t be carrying on at all. Doesn’t it realize that the world has ended, that it no longer has anything to shine for?

He picked an old ranch house that his grandfather owned. Abandoned, without livestock – when we first went through the place, before we found him, I was reminded of your childhood love of horses. I thought of how you dreamed of a place like this, before you stopped wishing and started achieving. I thought of how I’d never seen you wistful, and I felt a pain in my chest because I’d never seen a part of you. Never known a part of you.

That hurt me, Scully.

You were always so closed off. You should have told me what you were planning once we heard the first gunshot, could have communicated it in the glance we shared that was so typical to us. But you didn’t have it planned then, did you? Because after the first gunshot we both heard the little girl screaming, shrieking in a fear that you probably related to in that portion of your mind that remembers where you spent those three months that you weren’t with me. That wasn’t your sole motivation, though. There was your integrity, your desire for justice.

There was the lingering scar of Emily, casting its hollow shadow across every other reason you might have held.

It was at the second gunshot, the one that silenced those screams, that you moved into action. I was supposed to take the front door to whatever we discovered, and you were supposed to cover me – the better shot always covers the bulkier person, that’s just how it’s done.

Of course, I was also supposed to be the impulsive one.

You barreled towards the sound, which had led us straight to that secluded shack. “Shack” would be a bit complimentary for the place; it was little more than just a group of nailed-together rotten boards. You kicked in that door with such speed and ferocity, I thought you could take out the whole world.

I was right behind you the whole time, ready to defend against anything, but his gun was already raised when we entered in unison. You and I both held our guns out and pressed our triggers – but he was one step ahead of us, and you were in the line of fire.

Skinner was already on the way, had already been contacted by the local PD when we found the ranch. If he’d shown up right then he would have seen me standing above the body of Raymond Nader, still clicking the useless trigger of a gun that had long since run out of bullets.

I was covered in your blood, and I heard you choke out a sob. He’d shot you in the upper chest. He’d shot you right in your heart, had the audacity to make you bleed in the one part of you that I never seemed to be able to reach. In a split second, a single bullet had shown me up and shot straight through a part of you that I’d spent six years trying to pierce.

I’d thought you’d never be brought down by a means so disgustingly human, so completely opposite to your superhuman existence, but I guess I was wrong.

I held my hands against your wound and willed you to live, wished I had your medical know-how, wished I was Jeremiah Smith.

I prayed to a God that I rejected long ago, prayed to him because you were too busy struggling to survive to be able to speak to him on your own behalf. I know you hated it when I did things for you, Scully, but I had to do just that one thing. I had to try everything either of us knew to prevent the end of the world.

You were conscious for such a short time. All you could do was raise your hand to my chin and look at me before you passed out from the pain and the blood loss and the imminence of your death. All you could speak – not even speak, really, more like breath – was one tiny phrase.

“I’m sorry.”

And then you passed out.

I was glad that you didn’t see me desperate and crying and begging you to live.

I was glad that you didn’t see me threaten to kill Skinner when he told me to move away from you, to let the paramedics through.

I was glad that you didn’t see me throw the paramedics’ equipment when they told me that you were dead, that even if they could repair the gaping hold in your aorta without a twenty-minute helicopter ride to the nearest hospital, you’d lost too much blood and you’d lose more within that time frame and they were very sorry but there was nothing that they could do…

And now the mountains are mocking me, in my facsimile of an existence. You would be so disappointed in me, Scully. You’re probably looking down from the Heaven you placed such a strong faith in – a faith that I could never understand – and raising your eyebrow at me in that scornful expression you wear when I don’t act like I should. Like when I made that stupid, stupid comment about Catherine the Great instead of pulling over and thanking you like I never got the chance to.

I wish you hadn’t apologized. I wish I could be angry at you for abandoning me instead of being pitifully grateful that you’d remained with me at all.

You would tell me that this is not my fault, that the burden of this guilt is not mine to bear. But it is, Scully. Remember that unspoken communication that I mentioned to you once? The one that we supposedly shared? It failed me. I failed you. I should have known not only what you were planning, but what he was planning, and it should have been my role to step between you and his gun.

You were too vital to die, I think. I can recall a thousand moments, a thousand brief touches that could have stretched into lifetimes if only we’d had the courage to let them. I remember how I tried so desperately to make you happy; each smile I managed to elicit was a tiny victory, your rich laugh the ultimate conquest.

I remember the last Friday, such a short time ago, when I showed up at your apartment because I had nothing better to do. Lately, I’d been thinking of my video collection as tawdry; my mind wasn’t able to focus on any of the casefiles I was reading. They all read like tabloid stories, nothing worthy of our investigation.

I went running and wound up at your apartment, subconsciously driven, and because I had no real reason to be there I said that I just wanted to talk.

We didn’t do much talking, really. We just looked at one another awkwardly before you mentioned that “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” was on AMC. We wound up sitting and watching together. We’d never really done that much, never just been friends outside the context of work. I know I’d never teased you about your cinematic habits before, like I did after the movie ended. Your defense was that you were a younger sister – you were raised on horror and sci-fi just to prove that you had a stomach equal to Bill and Charlie’s.

I forget where the conversation wandered to after that, but after awhile things became deep. There was a long pause, during which you started to chuckle slightly. I asked what you were thinking of, and you said something about how I’d apparently taken lessons from Eddie Van Blundht. I didn’t know how to respond to that, so I questioned you. I asked you if you’d rather I leave, and you said no.

We began to skitter around the edges of our relationship, and it was only a matter of time before we tiptoed into the thick of it.

You insisted on driving me home, and I accepted the offer because I was reluctant to put a halt to the way things were progressing. We drove in comfortable silence, and when you pulled up outside of my apartment you put your hand over mine. That meant so much to me, Scully, that small gesture. I looked at you and you gave me a small smile, and for some reason I felt secure enough to lean over to you.

You leaned into it too, admit it.

The kiss was brief, a bare grazing of our mouths to one another’s, and hopelessly chaste. When I pulled back, afraid that you would break it off and tell me you weren’t interested, I saw such a tentative, childish hesitancy in your eyes that I nearly cried for the both of us. You had no reason to be hesitant around me, Scully. Did you know then how much I loved you? Do you know now how much I love you still?

I stepped out of the car, hope tangling with fear of the inevitable to form a double helix within my soul. We never mentioned it all the next week, because on Monday we were faced with a new case and I was reduced to worshipping you from afar once more.

These moments will never be mine again. I had too short a time with you, Scully. I envy your mother; she knew your whole life. She didn’t need to hear you recount your love of horses, she experienced it. I wish that I had that reserve to draw on – instead all I can see is your ever-grave face, lined with pain but stoic in spite of it, offering me comfort in your own denial.

I would have given you anything, Scully, if only you’d asked. I was an idiot not to pull over that night and buy this damn ranch before it could turn into hell. We could have raised horses here, together, and been happy. We could have shared the mornings and given one another the nights. We could have left behind all the hurt and pain and anger that defined our lives and lived simply.

You would have stood out in this majestic landscape like a Monet amidst paint-by-numbers.

I would have taken that bullet for you in a second. But instead you did what I knew you would, lived and died by your integrity and your desire to do right by justice and principle. It was hero’s death, according to the local paper – and I would have to agree. It was my plains of Armageddon, and you were my heroic martyr.

But that doesn’t excuse it. I would have gladly lived in hell on Earth with you – as long as you were there with me, it could never truly be Hell.

Without you, though… without you I do not need devils and death. Hell is being fragmented, unbound because my glue, my cohesiveness, is gone.

I killed you, Scully. Your blood branded me as surely as a scarlet ‘A’ emblazoned across my chest ever could. I let you die. I didn’t protect you like I should have.

You told me that Friday night that self-flagellation was my least attractive trait. I’m trying to be strong for you, Scully, strong like you would have been – but it’s so hard. Now that the Great Wall of Scully has fallen, the People’s Republic of Mulder is crumbling.

I think Skinner was afraid when he gave me the time off that OPR demanded; afraid that, if I couldn’t indulge in the slow, self-destructive burn of work, I might try something more radical. He counseled against my coming out here, nervous, I think, that I might try to join you.

He shouldn’t worry.

You’re not here. I don’t know where you are and I’m trying so hard to reach you, but you’re not here.

I’m holding your cross so tightly in my fist that my palm is bleeding, but there is no pain.

I hate this place, I think, I want to nuke it, to obliterate it from existence.

I turn and head to my car. You’re not here, but you must be somewhere.

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