Rewrite proxypass

Hi,

I have a Apache 2.0 web server. When a users comes in to sitea.com a check is applied if the path ends with *t*, the user hits a rewrite rule that adds an environment variable called x is hit with a proxypass. This has worked successfully in the past, but recently I added another rewrite rule that states if file is not found in document root then look at this path on the file system. If the file is in another path then the document root, the user is prompted with a 404 error. If I remove the proxy pass from the first rewrite rule that adds a variable then everything works fine. Does anyone know why this occurs? I know I can fix this issue by removing [P] from the rewrite rule, but what is explanation to this problem?