Auto-Focus By Leyla Harrison Disclaimer: Chris Carter owns Mulder, Scully, and likely half of the Western world at this point. And yes, damn it, I'm jealous. Classification: VA, Mulder/Scully friendship and a small dash of UST Rating: PG Spoilers: None. Summary: Scully uses a new tool to take a look at her life -- both with and without Mulder. Oh, and a character dies, but I don't think it's someone that readers will be very upset about. Thanks to Stacey, Angie, Rebecca, Shannon and Danielle. I know it's a long list, but you guys are the best. The box arrived at my house two weeks ago. At first, I was perplexed. Who on earth would have sent me a birthday present? At this stage in my life, I have few friends left who even send me a card. My father always used to send flowers. My mother always took me out to dinner. And Mulder -- well, his presents never exactly fit into boxes. I was even more surprised when I opened the box. It was a JVC camcorder, complete with extra videotapes, a carrying case, and a video converter so I could watch the tapes after recording them. And the biggest surprise was yet to come: the gift was from my mother. She had enclosed a card, one of those pre-printed things that they usually enclose when you order something for someone else via mail-order. A little dot matrix printer spits out a piece of paper about the size of an index card with the sender's message on it. "Dana: Happy Birthday. Use the camera well. Love, Mom." What the hell was she thinking? It wasn't like I was prone to attending events that were worthy of recording. I wasn't going to weddings or christenings, I wasn't getting married myself, and I wasn't still in my 20's when a gift like this would have given me hours of endless amusement, recording the silly things my friends would say and then consider each line spoken to be cinema verite. Not to mention that a camera like this must have cost her a small fortune. Over the last two weeks, though, I discovered that my mother knows me better, apparently, than I know myself. I've filmed more than 40 hours of footage, making a stack of little videocassettes on my dining room table that I have no idea what I'm going to do with. I've gone to the park and filmed people walking and holding hands, I've watched parents pushing their children's strollers along the paths and stopping occasionally to look at the leaves and to kiss each other. I made one tape of a rainstorm that happened last Saturday afternoon; I sat on a park bench underneath an umbrella and filmed each raindrop that fell from every tree, bush, branch and leaf for almost 90 minutes. I realized something this afternoon when I was watching a tape I had made of a tour of my apartment. I haven't said a word during my 40-plus hours of footage. I had walked through the apartment slowly, filming each room of the house as if I were a real-estate agent giving a very careful and precise tour. I filmed the refrigerator, the sink, the apples piled in a bowl on my dining room table. My bedroom: the dresser, the bed, the nightstand, the small pearl earrings Mom gave me for my 21st birthday resting in the little porcelain dish that Missy gave me back when I finished med school. I even filmed the bathroom, most of it on super zoom. I was fascinated by how close I could get to the towels and actually see some of the stitching on the edges. I filmed the soap in the dish by the sink and the bottle of shampoo and conditioner in the shower, along with the row of bath oils I've been collecting on and off for the last few years. And I never spoke, not one word. Watching the tape, I've realized that what has been giving me so much pleasure is apparently not worthy of words. I have an apartment; a nice apartment, actually, with nice things, and I'm not able to say, this is what Missy got for me when I graduated, this is the lamp that my father helped me pick out for my first apartment, I really should clean the soap scum out from the grout on the tiles in my shower. I'm mystified. Is my life truly that empty that I can't think of a thing to say about it? I would never tell Mulder about the videocamera; God knows what he would want to borrow it for. And I would get it back, damaged perhaps, with empty promises of it being fixed soon. Or maybe he'd ask me what the hell I could possibly have going on in my life that's interesting enough to make a record of it. And suddenly, I realize I've hit the nail on the head. My mother wanted me to have this camera to make a record of things. A physical object that will serve as a memory. God, she should have thought of this when I had cancer. I would have loved it then. I've made a record of the things that are beautiful to me: my apartment, nature, people in love, children. What's next? ***** I've taken the camera to work. This may or may not be a good idea, depending on what happens. It's Monday morning and I'm in before Mulder, which is a rarity -- since the X-Files were re-opened he's been here so early sometimes that I wonder if he's been sleeping here some nights. I have the office to myself, for a little while, anyhow, and I set up the camera in a corner on top of a file cabinet. I curse this new office; the old one would have helped this camera to disappear into the shadows in no time. But there are no shadows in this new office. Mulder and I have been moved up from the basement, onto the 11th floor, into a two room office that resembles the corporate more than the covert. But Mulder's already added his own little touches to make it seem more like home -- he closed the blinds on the one window we had, disabled the overhead fluorescent lights and requisitioned some desk lamps so that the room is still darker than most offices in the building. I check the viewfinder of the camera multiple times to make sure that I'm capturing Mulder's desk and the chair in front of it that I usually occupy when we talk. I charged the battery pack before I left the house and have put in a fresh two hour cassette. I'm all ready. I'm actually still fiddling with the camera when Mulder comes in, surprising me. I hurriedly turn it on and move away from the file cabinet, hoping that he won't glance in that direction, hoping he won't notice the camera and ask me what the hell I'm doing. He doesn't notice. In fact, he doesn't even seem to notice me as he comes in the room and hangs up his trenchcoat. He crosses the room without acknowledging me and sinks into his chair, into a near-slump. I take my seat across from him, well aware that I'm on camera, yet still genuinely concerned about him. "Mulder? What's wrong?" Mulder sits up straighter in his seat, then leans forward, putting his elbows on the desk and resting his head in his hands. "Mulder?" I ask again. He lifts his head, and his eyes are red and swollen from crying. "It's my mother." "Has she had another stroke?" "She had a massive heart attack, Scully. She died late Friday night. By the time I found out she was already dead." Oh, God. Immediately, I get up and come around to Mulder, wrapping my arms around him, finding him stiff. He doesn't relax into my awkward embrace, and I don't know what to say. So much pain is tied up with his mother and her passing means more than one thing for him. Knowing him as well as I do, I know that he's likely feeling guilty for not having made peace with her, and yet with her death, more secrets have gone to the grave, with little chance of ever surfacing. "Why didn't you call me?" I murmur into his shoulder. He straightens up, and I release him, stepping back as he stands. "I don't know," he says as he crosses the room to the door. My eyes follow him, and my vision drifts over to the red light of the videocamera, still recording, damn it. I had forgotten that it was there. God, please don't let him see it. Please. Mulder is facing the door now. I'm still standing behind his desk. "Maybe I shouldn't have come in," he says. "I just got back from Connecticut late last night, and I have to go back." "I can come with you," I immediately offer. His back is to me, but I can see him shake his head. "You don't have to do that, Scully." "I know, Mulder, but I want to. Let me help you." I don't feel a lot of sadness with this woman's death, save for how it will affect Mulder. I realize dimly, as I have on a few other occasions, that I usually only care about things deeply when they affect how Mulder feels. Mulder reaches for his coat, the coat he has taken off just minutes before. "All right," he says wearily, quietly, and I can hardly hear him with his back turned to me and his voice so low. I watch as he puts his coat on and straightens the collar, slowly and deliberately. Finally, he turns to face me. "I'm going to head home and change clothes. Can you meet me there in a few hours?" I nod. "I'll just head home, and then I'll come back to pick you up." "Thanks." He turns to leave, but then hesitates, his hand on the doorknob. He turns back around and walks over to me, looking right at me, pulling me into his arms, and hugging me tightly. I'm surprised by the force, but I hug him back fiercely anyhow, and when he doesn't let go, I close my eyes and just breathe him in, my hand going up to the back of his head to stroke his hair. After what seems like hours, he finally releases me, and there are tears in his eyes. "Thank you, Scully," he says. I nod, my voice caught in my throat, and he leaves the office, leaving me alone. I know Mulder's mind and I know how it works. I know *him*, I know how he feels and reacts and I know his emotions almost better than I know my own. But I don't know what's going on in his head right now. I also don't know what arrangements need to be made, who needs to be called, and I don't know if he has the presence of mind to remember himself. As a matter of fact, I'm sure he doesn't. My thoughts are momentarily interrupted as I remember the camera on the file cabinet. Quickly, I retrieve it and shut it off, looking at the closed door that Mulder just exited out of for a long moment before I can gather my things and leave. ***** It doesn't take me long to pack what I'll need for the next few days. I'm used to leaving on short notice and so I usually know exactly where to find everything I'll need. I'm finished packing in a matter of a few minutes. I turn on a light in the bedroom and one in the living room, the ones I always leave on when I'm out of town. I'm in the living room when I spot the videocamera, safely ensconced in its carrying case on the dining room table. I hesitate. I should just leave and go to Mulder's; he's likely in a daze right now and I know he needs me. But there's something to be said about curiosity -- I just *have* to see the tape I made in the office an hour before. I want to know what Mulder and I look like -- I want to see the documented evidence of us, of him and I. I put the small cartridge in the converter, which looks like a normal videotape, and pop it into my VCR, sitting down on the edge of the couch with the remote. I turn the TV and the VCR on and press play. Our office fades in and I can see myself, a dark blur as I step in front of the lens, which must have been when Mulder walked in. I had set up the camera perfectly; as soon as the camera does its auto-focus, I can see Mulder sit down at his desk, me across from him and I watch as we have our conversation. I'm startled by my appearance. I don't look anything like I do when I look in the mirror. I don't sit up straight enough, and I speak too quickly. My hair looks much more out of place than it did when I had left the house this morning, and I'm almost glad that I can't see my face from anything more than a side profile. I'm hugging him now, and from this angle I can see why he didn't hug me back. I was wrapping my arms around his shoulders from behind, almost preventing him from moving his arms at all. But wait -- I missed something. I quickly rewind a few frames and watch again. As I wrapped my arms around him, Mulder's eyes, which were open and weary, closed with what almost looked like relief. Mulder gets up on the video and crosses the room -- out of frame. I'm left alone in the shot, behind his desk, watching him, talking to him. I can remember that he was slightly hunched over, his shoulders slumped. But I didn't see my own face, my own body, how my body seemed to strain, strangely enough, towards him, towards the side of the room that the camera could not see. I'm not listening to anything that we were saying to each other; instead I'm taken in by the images that I'm seeing. "Thanks," Mulder says on the screen, quietly enough that the mike on the camera barely picks it up. And then he comes back into the frame, towards me, behind his desk. The image blurs for a moment, and then the auto-focus kicks in, and I can see clearly just at the moment that he embraces me. I can only see his back, not the fabric of his suit that was covering his arm and shoulder that I was looking at when I was hugging him. I can see my hand come up and stroke his hair, tenderly, almost more like a lover than a friend. I know he thanked me again, but he spoke too softly for the camera to pick it up, and so all I can see is him walking out, and then I am alone in the frame. Alone, and looking towards the door. There is pain and love and a million other emotions on my face. I suddenly look at the camera, directly into the camera, which must have been when I remembered that it was still recording, and then I come closer and closer under I am just a black mass on the screen, and then the video ends. My phone rings and I reach for the cordless, which is on the coffee table. "Hello?" I ask, clearing my throat. "Scully?" "Mulder." "Are you still coming?" His voice is not necessarily needy, but frightened and alone. "I can't do this, Scully." I smile into the phone, even though I know Mulder cannot see me. "I'm leaving now. Hang on, Mulder." I hang up the phone and gather my things. Before I leave, I turn the TV and the VCR off, leaving the tape in, knowing I will want to watch it again. END Leyla Harrison