Ephemera
By RocketMan

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Disclaimer: Mulder and Scully belong to CC, 1013, and Fox. The word
ephemera was used in a Madeleine L'Engle book and so I guess she kind of
owns this idea too.....well, she fostered it. Go check out from your
local library a book called "A Live Coal in the Sea" It's worth it. Her
stuff is very real.  She is someone I aspire to.

Ephemera - a person or thing that only exists or lasts a short
transitory time.

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I am dying and this is a truth I have come to face with open eyes and a
relatively clear mind.

I hope to die in peace and with a sense of accomplishment, that my short
life has made a difference for good.

As one of my professors, a beloved mentor, said, "Use your powers for
good, not evil."

I hope I have used my powers, whatever they may be, for good.

I hope I have done Mulder some good, that my leaving will not hurt him
more than if I had never been in his life.

He sees leaving as a betrayal though, and it comes back on himself,
making him twistingly believe that it is somehow his betrayal, and that
correlates into self punishment.

I do not want to be a cause for more of that.

I think Mulder is the only man that can care so much and yet make it
seem that he cares so very little.

All the time.

I know he cares, but he shows quite the opposite every day I have ever
worked with him.

He doesn't know how I guess.

And that is a poor pitiful excuse for a grown man.

I have seemed to let it excuse him though, haven't I?

I am but a small, very small, person in this whole universe, and yet I
have so much power for good or evil.

I have not always picked the good. I have not always helped Mulder or
been tolerant of his actions.

Sometimes Mulder is more than one very small person in the whole
universe can handle.

But I have tried most times to be whatever he needs. And I have always
failed and he has run off and gotten hurt, come back and reunited
himself with me in some hospital, claiming that his powers have been
used for good.

But it has been used for bad with me.

So how many wrongs make a right?

And how many rights make up for so many wrongs?

I am sometimes very glad that death approaches, although Mulder does not
realize the enormity of it all.

I am still immortal to him. I cannot fail. I cannot die.

I will.

And when I do, he will maybe realize what he missed out on realizing
before. Or he will find that ocean-chasm of hurt that churns inside him
and drop another coal into the sea.

It maybe won't make much difference.

Or it will set off a chain reaction that has needed to explode for so
very long. An ablution of everything. An emotional purging that will
rival hurricanes in intensity.

Through it all, Mulder will survive. He has always, and always will. He
has that specialness about him that allows everything to hurt him
terribly, but not make a crippling wound.

A wound, yes. But it will never plunge him into misery and destitution.

I am calm now, rationalizing this all in my mind.

He will renew his strength with my death, and maybe eventually, he will
find the truth about Samantha, about the whole messed up lives of his
parents that he was born into.

He will find his Truth, whatever that might be, however false it might
be.

I know my truth at this moment, and I know it may be shaken later, or
tested or corrupted, proven to be wrong, but I still know it now.

My truth is my life.

I have lived and it has been good.

I have laughed and it has been good.

I have cried, sworn, won, lost, fought, hurt, grown up, and it has all
been good.

I have had my life, ephemeral though it may be, and who can take that
all away?

I have lived.

And it has been good.

end
adios
RocketMan