The more I talk about writing with people, the more I realize how important mood and literary style are to me as a reader. This story worked so well for me as a story that I guess I was willing to look past the fact that Scully wasn't quite the same Scully she was in the series. Or perhaps simply willing to analyze how she was different and which one I responded to more. (Answer: this one. Something never rang quite right to me in the more "religious" episodes.)

I confess to being equally baffled by what exactly was happening towards the end of the story. In a sense I like being baffled. I know there are some stories that I pick up and turn over in my mind from time to time, trying to figure out what a particular phrase or last paragraph really meant. Sometimes it's just bad writing. But those are the ones that stay with me.

When it comes to this particular story, I don't know that I thought it was bad sex or that it meant it would never happen again. What I took from it is that intimacy is complicated, that we don't always have the feelings that we feel we ought to have, or feelings that our partners understand. Who knows what Mulder was regretting? The suffering that he had inflicted on Scully and his family over the years? The fact that he had waited so long? The fact that they were still distant from one another even though they were together? I don't know. Maybe all of these.

What the story is about, I think, is knowing that all the choices you make in life involve suffering and regret sometimes, accepting the fact, and going on making those choices anyway. It's that bittersweetness of life and I think the story captures it beautifully.