Scully

"For the first time, I feel time like a heartbeat. The seconds pumping in my breast like a reckoning. The luminous mysteries that once seemed so distant and unreal, threatening clarity in the presence of the truth, entertained not in youth, but only in its passage. I feel these words as if their meaning were weight being lifted from me. Knowing that you will read them and share my burden, as I have come to trust no other; that you should know my heart, look into it, find in this the memory and experience that belong to you- that are you- is a comfort to me now; as I feel the tethers loose, and the prospects darken, for the continuance of a journey that began not so long ago, and which began again with a faith shaken and strengthened by your convictions- if not for which I might never have been so strong now; as I cross to face you and look at you incomplete, hoping that you will forgive me for not making the rest of the journey with you."

-Scully, "Momento Mori"

These truths, and many others, Scully came to realize through her bout with cancer. At the end of this episode, she was filled with hope, and determination that she'd continue her work and her quest with Mulder. They'd find the Truth, find these men who had given her this disease, and expose them. Now, it was personal.

His quest has become theirs.

Dana Scully's character is that of a true shero as she has shared with Mulder a journey of faith, contradictions, deaths, horrors, disappointment, and wonder. Science is her footing, while "a faith shaken and strengthened" ("Momento Mori") is her backbone. Scully possesses a strength to which we measure our own, and a vocabulary that will most certainly help my SAT score.

With a name- Dana Katherine Scully- that is entirely Irish, she was raised a Catholic, and the tiny gold cross necklace which she wears around her neck symbolizes this faith and the hope that she and Mulder share. Mulder wore it around his neck during the entire period she was gone during her mysterious disappearance in 1994.

Scully is a source of hope, not just for Mulder, but for all of us. Cancer patients have looked to her character for inspiration and strength, and young girls like me see her as a model of the woman we hope to be someday.