I have desired to go
Where springs not fail,
To fields where flies no sharp and sided hail,
And a few lilies blow.

And I have asked to be
Where no storms come,
Where the green swell is in the havens dumb,
And out of the spring of the sea.

  “Heaven-Haven: A Nun Takes the Veil” – Gerard Manley Hopkins.

She had never seen so much pain in a person’s eyes as she did in his when she gave him the news; it was almost enough to make her reconsider, but only almost.  How could she let the man’s insecurities stop her making the life choice that, she now knew, she had secretly always wanted?  She couldn’t be co-dependent forever.  But there was the other side of the coin.  How could she leave him, now, when he was in such a mess emotionally?  The question would haunt her for months.

She had known for a while that he loved her, and how much.  She knew this because she loved him, too; as much as and more than she had ever loved anybody before.  But she could not decide whether it was enough, enough to justify throwing everything else away.  Whether it was enough to save her from mortal sin.  She had been a lapsed Catholic since her early twenties, but some of the old beliefs had lingered on; chief amongst these was that she would never, after death, be able to see her Saviour if she did not heed His call.

She still had doubts, however.  Huge ones.  There were occasions when all she wanted to do was to run over to him and envelop him in a huge hug, telling him that she loved him, she wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon without him.  But each time she considered this, there was always the small voice inside her head, insisting that if she didn’t try this, she would never know whether this was the life she was born for.

So she decided.  Arrangements were made, and finally it came to her last day at work, followed by her last day at home.  The pain was so intense she didn’t know how she could bear it; saying good-bye, when everything in her was crying out to stay, was the hardest thing she had ever had to do.  Or so she thought.  She had thought that it would be worst having to say good-bye to her mother; boy was she wrong!   Saying good-bye to him had been physically painful – how she had ever thought it would be easy to leave him was beyond her; it took her hours before she felt able to face her family again once he had left.  Later, once she had given it more thought, she supposed that she had figured that years of solid friendship (not to mention the relationship she had never given a chance to get off the ground) would make a parting easier.  No, no … no.  She knew now that the day it would be easy to say good-bye to him would be the day that Hell froze over.

She had not expected him (a man who was in constant, painful denial about his own Jewishness) to understand.  After all, if she were honest with herself, she didn’t understand her own actions.  She could only describe it in terms of having been ‘yanked’ out of one existence to another in which she could make more of a difference.  She’d been unable to save him from himself when she had been in the world.  Maybe praying for him, outside it, would make the difference.

Every day had been more painful than the one before it; the period of her postulancy had been pure agony.  She had missed him acutely from the very beginning – the sound, smell and sight of him – and the hole that he had filled in her seemed to be growing ever larger.  She couldn’t find anything to fill it in his stead, and the more she tried to fill it with God the more confused she became.  She spent hours on her knees, both in chapel and in her cell, praying to the God she still only half-believed in, trying to make sense of what she was doing here at all.  Did she belong here, she wondered, after all?  Or had she made a terrible mistake?

Finally, the first ceremony – the clothing – loomed ahead.  She had invited her family – and him, too, for some reason still desperate to see him for that one last time.  She still couldn’t wrap her mind around the face that she would be disappearing from his life completely and utterly.

Her dress would be her mother’s, last used over thirty years before, but she did not know what to use for a veil.  Her mother’s had been torn beyond redemption many years before – by Missy and herself, she remembered ruefully, in a dress-up game they had once had.  Her mother had for years bewailed the fact that she hadn’t put it somewhere safe, out of their reach.
 
And so, the day of clothing arrived, and for the last time she was wearing normal things instead of the habit she would wear for the rest of her life.  The dress had been sent in ahead of time, as requested, but when it arrived there had been an extra box.  Curiosity for once overcame her, and she took a peek.  The box had contained a cloud of gossamer silk veiling, fine enough not to cloud the fiery glory of her hair, and she had always wondered who had sent it.  When she made to put it on, she found out – a tiny card lay at the bottom of the box.  It was a holy card, with a picture of the Virgin on it, so she assumed it was from her mother after all.  But when she turned it around, she saw the familiar scrawl of his writing, with his initials and a simple message – “The spirit is the Truth; God go with you” – and she knew.  He understood … he understood, and had forgiven her.

Her first profession of vows had followed that ceremony, two years later.  This time, there were no family members present – this ceremony was for the community, not for the families.  After all, the families had given up their daughters in the ceremony of the clothing.

All through her novitiate she had been longing for the time when she could take first vows, when she could exchange the white veil for the sombre black.  She had not forgotten him – the hole was still there – but the fierceness of the longing had dulled with time to an ache, omnipresent but not too much to bear.  Her love for him had grown stronger, not weaker, but she knew there was nothing to do but ‘grin and bear it’.  She was here for life.

The day they pinned the black veil over the white one was followed by eighteen months of bliss, where she was content in her decision and comfortable with it and her God.  She spent her days between work and Chapel, and her love for him transmogrified itself into a love of her work.  He was in her prayers daily, along with her family, and in her fortnightly letters home he was always mentioned.

Six months before her final profession, where she would be tied to the monastery for life, the doubts began to resurface.  The tales she was told in the letters she received from home had disquieted her for years, but she had always put them to the back of her mind in the sure conviction that this was where she was meant to be, and that God would protect them all.  But now, with the most important decision in her life before her, she was no longer so certain that she was meant to be here after all.  Maybe she had been wrong.  Maybe her vocation was in the world outside after all, instead of outside it.  Maybe she had been meant to be there for Mulder all along.  Sweet Jesus, she prayed silently, please don’t let this decision have been for nothing.

But the doubts refused to go away.  There was something not quite right with her life here, and although she couldn’t work out what it was, it was certainly there.  She had talked with her confessor about it, and with the abbess, and neither of them had been able to think of anything that might help – although her confessor had gently asked her to consider whether the doubts she was having were a simple result of panic.

Once panic was mentioned, she really began to worry, and, in time, to find herself unable to stem the rising tide of panic that ensnared her.  Maybe, after all this – after everything – Mulder had been right, in the end.

She knew she had to decide, and soon; the end of her temporary vows was fast approaching, and after that she would be expected to stay forever.  Zero hour was coming, fast, and she could not afford to make a second mistake.

Her feelings for Mulder, long since subdued, returned in full force three months before her final vows were due to be made – three months after the first doubts had begun to resurface.  And instead of being able to subdue them and put them in their proper place in her mind, she found herself dwelling on them more and more.  His face haunted her dreams and his voice echoed through her brain during her waking hours.

Her prayers were suffering, and it was only a matter of time before her work would begin to suffer the same fate.  She knew, then, that she would not be able to make her perpetual vows after all, which saddened her in one respect but filled her with joy in another.

She meditated on it for days, as she had long since been taught to do, and finally she made up her mind.  With the Scully stubbornness that had always characterised her, she knew that she had made the right decision.

She was going to return to Mulder.  Her guilt, her religion and her dead daughter had no power to hold her there any longer.

It was time to go back.