Scully was sitting at her desk staring out of the window. A dark evening with some gloomy spots from the streetlamps was glancing back at her. She sighed. She gave up asking herself how she felt, because she was not able to describe it. Her feelings were somehow too good to be real, but also too bad to be right.

"A six-pack full of happiness", Scully wrote on the bottom of the piece of paper her hand, armed with a pencil, was lying on. Actually, Will was sleeping in his bedroom silently and calmly and her mother didn't need to come around so often anymore, because slowly Scully was getting her new lifestyle under control and was finding a balance. So she was able to spend the evening by herself and with her abstruse emotions, which seemed to be caught in a whirlwind. In fact, she knew this whirlwind was a development that started over a year ago. Her pregnancy, Mulder's absence, Doggett's arrival...she just had entered a new life, but was realizing this only now.

Though Scully was not a very good artist, she tried sketching a six-pack of beer around the words she had written down. Out of it she began drawing the whirlwind with coarse contrasts from the pencil's grey. The contents of the whirlwind were the names Mulder, William and Doggett. Scully smiled and took a red-coloured pencil and marked the space around her son's name red. About these feelings there was nothing to discuss.

Again she took the pencil and wrote diagonally, in the middle of the page in thin letters that could hardly be seen "Mulder". With Mulder's prolonged abscence and no real knowledge of when, if ever, he'd return, Scully's image of him on her mind's eye was fading. She sighed. How she had wanted him to be with her, when he was kidnapped. How she had wanted him to be -- to be alive, to be a father, to be a lover. She had wanted him like himself in their older times, but simultaneously she had wanted him changed, assimilated to her new life. Well, now she knew, she was expecting too much. But she believed he had tried to fulfill her too-high expectations. Scully wondered whether perhaps this was a reason for his leaving, his renewed absence.

On the one hand she missed him, on the other hand her life was just okay like it was in this moment. Besides, she knew her contact and friendship with Mulder would never end.

A little smile danced over her lips. She continued drawing his name again and again in a diagonal line that led to the edge of the paper, the strokes becoming clearer and clearer, especially when the end of the paper was reached. Actually, he wandered not out of her heart like the first impression of the drawing seemed to say, rather he would always stay there. But the feelings that had seemed so clear in the past had now changed. That was the cue for the next name, the next person called John Doggett. Well her first impression, before she had even met him, was not a good one and their first meeting had supported this first impression. But he had become her partner and she was forced to accept him, she was forced to trust him. In contrast to the beginning, she did it now with pleasure. She was glad that he had forgiven and forgotten this fault.

In the left free space of the page Scully wrote in block letters "first impression", but crossed it out demonstratively and wrote under it "second guessing" and in more beautiful letters still "John Doggett". She smiled when she remembered his face, his body and the little butterflies in her stomach. With a normal, neutral form, Scully drew three question marks and the name "Monica Reyes" also followed by three question marks.

When her mother had helped her to reach a constant normalcy in her new life with her newborn, she found her feelings for Doggett had changed. She had realized that the feeling, which she named a good, comfortable partnership before, was or became nothing more than a little love. She had become more and more attracted to this man. But, she sighed -- there was always a "but" -- but she wasn't sure what he felt, not only for her, but also for Monica Reyes. Doggett and Reyes were totally different, but trusted each other deeply. Just like Mulder and herself. There was a strong emotion that connected Reyes and Doggett. So Scully had gotten the impression that their strong partnership and friendship also could be something more, like love.

Pushing the pencil on the paper, she made some nearly black lines, forming square. There it was, her little desperation.

Scully stood up and walked from the desk through the apartment to Will's room. He still slept calmly. Scully smiled. Her emotion's trouble felt okay; there was a balance between the little love and the little desperation.

Glancing at her child, everything just felt all right.

Having returned to the desk and to the piece of paper, she took a blue fountain pen and wrote the name "John Doggett" again and then beneath it: "Everything you're looking for -- you'll know when it's real -- you'll know when you've found it by the way you feel".

Scully looked out into the night. She took the piece of paper, opened the window and let her feelings fly away. Scully watched the paper disappear out of her sight very fast and shut the window. Staring to the dark heaven, she suddenly was afraid of the fact that someone could find it, read it and know her, but this fear didn't last long. So Scully allowed herself a glass of wine and just relaxed in front of the TV.

* ~ ~ ~ *

Doggett couldn't sit calmly in front of the TV. His thoughts always returned to Dana Scully. He felt, he even knew, she had changed. Hell, she had changed a lot since the time he had first met her. But she had changed lately as well. Even if they didn't see each other very regularly, he noticed it. He had become sensitive for this woman.

Doggett got the feeling she was building a little fence between them. Usually he could see how she felt, but lately she became closed-up, reserved. He had no idea whether she was content, happy or even sad. She seemed just to be professional and he didn't like that. He cared a lot about this woman -- maybe too much. But he couldn't stop his impatience, his restlessness. He wanted to know what was going on in her private life, whether she needed something or maybe someone, whether she was handling Mulder's leaving or needed any help or any support.

Pushed by these thoughts, he switched off the TV and drove to Scully's place. The clock showed half past nine when he arrived. Surely she wasn't sleeping yet, Doggett hoped. He parked at the curb and stepped out of his truck. At that moment he saw something fly out of a window of the apartment complex. It looked like a piece of paper, so he didn't care. But when he was about to open the front door of the building, he took a look at it and saw his name. So he grabbed the piece of paper and thought that this must have been sent >from heaven -- in fact, somehow it was.

* ~ ~ ~ *

Scully heard the knock on the door and went doubtfully to open it.

"Agent Doggett?" she questioned. Then she saw what he held in his hands.

He trembled a bit and was also a slightly out of breath. So he must have run upstairs, Scully thought incidentally. Mainly she just felt ashamed of what he had found. She stared at the paper in his hands.

"Where did you get this?" she whispered.

"It was sent from up above and hopefully I interpreted it right," he answered, looking straight at her as she took a glance at him in surprise.

Scully reached out and took her feelings out of Doggett's hand. Immediately he stepped closer to her. Slowly he touched her lips briefly with his.

"There is nothing like this between Monica and me," he explained in a low voice.

Scully looked surprised; this was going a bit too fast, wasn't it?

"Is it so hard to believe?" he asked gently -- and he wasn't talking about his relationship to Monica. No one gave way from the other.

"Yeah," Scully replied.

Doggett felt a bit of confusion, "Why?"

Scully touched his cheek -- he was really real, she thought.

"Don't you know that I fell for you a long time ago?" he asked, enjoying her tender touch.

Doggett took her hand and kissed her fingers. This broke her doubt; now she realized it. So she pulled him into a soft, long kiss.





The end.