By: Blair Provence
mhroemer@artsci.wustl.edu
 

Date: Thu, 1 Jan 1998
CLASSIFICATION:  RVH  Mulder/Other  OtherAngst
RATING:  PG - for language; no graphic sex
ARCHIVE:  Okay for Gossamer.  Anyone else, ask - I like to know where they
go.
SPOILERS:  Nothing obvious.  You'll have to dig for it.
SUMMARY:  Another's candid view of Mulder and Scully, or "An Essay on Why
It Sucks To Be The /Other - by Cassidy Neill"
DISCLAIMER:  Not mine.  Duh.
AUTHOR'S NOTES:  This is my first story in the X-Files fanfic genre, and I
decided to try it from a first-person point of view.  The inspiration for
this story came from a discussion I had with a friend of mine about the
viability of any relationship Mulder or Scully entered into with someone
other than each other.  Her contention was that Mulder was too damaged for
*any* kind of meaningful relationship, and that Scully could, and should,
do much better for herself.  But I contend that their relationship is such
that any *other* relationship would suffer for their closeness, i.e. the
only thing they aren't getting from each other is sex.  This is my attempt
to write a story from the point of view of that *other* person - in this
case, one involved with Mulder.  Depending on the response, I might also
tackle the same topic from the Scully/Other angle during the same time
frame.

FEEDBACK IS WELCOME AND APPRECIATED THOUGH NOT FINANCIALLY
REMUNERATIVE!!!
Send to Blair at mhroemer@artsci.wustl.edu.

NEW: "Banging Your Head Against a Red-Haired Brick Wall" (1/2)
By Blair Provence
 

"Never fall in love with a cop."

That's what Ma always told me - it's practically the sum total of the
advice she felt it necessary to offer me on the subject of love and
romance.  Not that she's an uncaring mother - she just has an unwavering
faith in the discover-the-pitfalls-yourself school of child-rearing.  In
general, I appreciate this approach, but lately I find myself wishing
she'd at least pressed her chosen point a little more forcefully.

Now I know what you're thinking:  she's overprotective, doesn't want her
baby involved with someone whose life is so dangerous, yadda, yadda, etc.
etc.  The more uncharitable of you out there might sense an element of
snobbery, but nothing could be further from the truth.  Which is, in all
honesty, that my mother loved a hard-drinking, hard-loving bulldog of an
Irish cop until the day he died five years ago - a singularly nonviolent
death that took place in an easy chair in front of a Sunday Redskins game.
All in all, probably the way he would have wanted to go, had he had any
kind of choice at all in the matter.

It took me just a little too long to figure out why Ma gave me that
particular bit of advice.  In my own defense, I was still just a kid when
Pop's partner Ray died in a shootout at a convenience store downtown.  I
do remember weeks of silence between the funeral and the trial, and that
afterward Pop began to drink a fourth of whiskey with dinner more often
than not.  Ma used to tell me not to bother Pop when he locked himself in
the den for hours at a time.  "He misses Uncle Ray," she'd tell me, an
insufficient explanation for a kid who just wanted a little attention from
her father.

It was only later that I began to understand what she meant, and why she
didn't want me to follow her path in life - that she didn't want me to
have to share my husband's heart the way she had shared Pop's with Ray.
Because cops depend on their partners to the exclusion of all other
people, and that can be a little hard on a marriage.  I know, I know, it's
not an uncommon complaint, and it's a pretty widely known statistic that
cops are more likely than most to end up divorced.  In my own defense, I
didn't go out *looking* to fall in love with one.

And he wasn't exactly a *cop*, either.

Just an FBI Agent.

With a partner.

A *female* partner.

Geez, Ma, you couldn't have been just a *little* more specific?

***

I met Special Agent Fox Mulder one Saturday afternoon on the jogging
trails of Rock Creek Park.  Jogging in Washington D.C. always has a
competitive element to it, like everything else in our fair nation's
capitol city.  I'm not above an impromptu race or two myself, but my major
occupation while *enjoying* my exercise is guy-watching.  Yeah, yeah, I'm
not much for political correctedness.  I tell my friends I admire the
human form for artistic reasons - I'm a graphic designer, so as an excuse
it can work, but it's kind of a stretch.

Anyway, Mulder's form has much about it to be appreciated, if you know
what I mean.  Especially if he's been running for a while, and his t-shirt
clings to his torso in all the right places.  I don't know what bizarre
impulse that day led me to upgrade from watching to meeting, but even now,
I can't bring myself to regret it.

Midway through his second circuit around the park I fell in step with him,
our feet striking the pavement in perfect concert.  I have rarely been as
appreciative of my height as I was at that moment - he's quite an athlete,
and it took a bit of effort to keep up with him.  But I have to admire a
man who doesn't make allowances just because I'm a girl.  He turned his
head to glance at me for a moment, seeing, I suppose, a tallish, thinnish
brunette with blue eyes and a swinging ponytail.  Not exactly glamorous,
but healthy enough.  I'm pretty rigorous about my exercise regime, and I
see no reason not to be proud of it.  God knows, it has few other
benefits.

I didn't introduce myself that day, and neither did he.  In fact, we
didn't say a word.  We must have run about five miles before he peeled off
the path with a nod and a friendly wave.  I felt a pang of mild
disappointment, but I didn't give it much more thought than that.  I mean,
he was cute and all, but I draw the line at falling for someone without
even talking to him first.  I'm not *that* much of a hopeless romantic, no
matter what my best friend Carly says.

I wasn't even looking for him the next Saturday, and it was he who fell in
step with me.  I glanced at him, but he was staring straight ahead at the
path, his lip quirked in a wry smile.  Our run that day ended in a
handshake.  "Mulder," he said, in a low, modulated voice, his palm smooth
in my hand.

"First or last name?" I asked, smiling at him as I felt a tingle of
electricity shoot up my arm.

"Let's just say it's the only one I'll answer to," he returned, eyes
sparkling.

"Cassidy Neill."

"Nice to meet you, Cassidy Neill," he said.  And then he was gone.

***

I didn't see him again for three weeks, but I though about him a lot.
Wild, crazy, monkey love dreams, Carly calls them.  It's a version of the
game we play on the subway, when we pick a person and try to figure out
why he or she is on the train.  Is she a secretary on her way to meet her
boss-slash-lover?  Is he a college student racing for that last final
exam?  Or is that pair of suits over there a set of secret agents, casing
the train for a defecting spy?  The stories vary from day to day,
depending on our moods and what television shows we watched the night
before.  They aren't ever just everyday commuters slogging to and from
work, though.  Booooring...

I came up with some great stuff for Mulder, and I'd tell you about it, but
it turned out kinda tame compared to reality, and, anyway, some of it
seems a bit stupid now.  Suffice it to say, it my fantasies he did a
little thinking about me, too.  Knowing what I know now, I'd be surprised
if he ever even gave me a thought.  Not very flattering, I'll admit, but
I'm trying for truth in the retelling.

On that third Saturday he showed up late in the afternoon looking pretty
much the worse for wear with the vestiges of a beaut of a  black eye and
an aircast on his arm.  It lent him an air of rakish charm and did nothing
to quash my fantasies.  He was sitting on the grass in front of a stone
bench, stretching in preparation for his run.  I jogged to a halt in front
of him.

"Hey, Mulder," I offered, trying for cool disinterest, as if I'd only
recalled his name by chance.  "Looking pretty bad there, buddy.  Hope the
other guy looks worse."

He grinned up at me, squinting into the sun.  "So, you're the only woman
in the universe not suffering from the Florence Nightingale syndrome, huh?
God, that's a nice change of pace."

I offered him a sympathetic grimace.  "Been mother-henned a bit, have you?
Wife?  Girlfriend?"  <Not that I'm dying to know or anything...>

He sighed dramatically and shrugged his shoulders.  "My partner's mother.
She made me about a thousand casseroles to eat during my so-called
convalescence.  I had to throw out some prime three week-old Chinese food
to make room in my refrigerator."

"Oh, you poor, put-upon man...However will you survive such torture?"
<Partner...hmmm...interesting.>  "You a cop?" I asked, keeping my voice
light.  "Get banged up nabbing a vicious jaywalker?"

"Something like that," he murmured, pulling a knee up to his chest.
"Ready?"  And without another word, we set off.

***

It was another month before I found out he was an FBI agent.  We'd
progressed from running together to getting a bite to eat afterward at a
hole-in-the-wall cafe a block from the park.  He ate artery-clogging food
that completely obviated whatever good the jogging had done.  I can't tell
you how tempted I was to follow his example, but, really, what's the point
of exercise if you're just going to make it irrelevant?  I certainly don't
do it for the runner's high.  Anyway, I'd been telling him of Carly's
visit back home to see her family in Oklahoma, which made him grimace a
bit.  He said he and his partner had once worked a case there.

"Bad one?"

He shook his head as he swallowed a bite of greasy hamburger.  "Bad
weather."

"Well, they're known for it.  Tornado capital of the universe, and all
that.  But why would D.C. cops be investigating a case in Oklahoma?"

He took a sip of coffee, eyebrows arched in surprise.  "I thought you
knew.  I'm not a cop.  I'm an FBI agent."

I think he must have wondered why I smiled so broadly at his reply.  All I
could think was, "Boy, will Ma be relieved."  Here I was already planning
our future together, and he'd never even asked me for my phone number!  I
didn't even know if he *did* have another name besides Mulder.  But if I
draw the line at falling in love without speaking to someone, I do not, on
the other hand, require full disclosure of all pertinent information.  At
least I didn't then.  Maybe that'll have to change.

And I was *way* gone by that point.

I think Carly believed for a while that I'd made him up, using what she
calls my 'artistic imagination' - which is an insult, no matter how it
sounds.  Under protest I consented to allow her to hide behind a tree in
Rock Creek Park one Saturday in August in order to enact a little covert
surveillance of the civilian kind.  Her resulting conclusion was "Hot guy,
babe," but she commented that it was strange that I knew so little about
him.  "Maybe he's married, girlfriend," she told me, a note of warning in
her voice.

It's difficult to figure why that particular reason for his reticence
hadn't even occurred to me, or why I dismissed it out of hand when she
brought it up to me then.  He just didn't *seem* married, somehow.  Maybe
it was the lost puppy dog look he got sometimes, or his occasional remarks
about the mountains of laundry awaiting him at home.  <I know, I know,
it's the nineties, but I'd still be willing to wash his socks anytime.
Sue me.>  And of course, there was the partner's mother's casseroles,
which seemed to indicate a lack of closer female companionship.  Hell, if
he were mine, I'd have mopped his brow and fed him soup with the best of
them.

Had a few fantasies along that line, I have to admit.

In any case, the mountains of laundry to be done on Saturday night cheered
me for what they implied about his social life - it was distressingly
similar to my own, it seemed.  That's why I was bouncing off the walls
when he finally, *finally* asked me out to dinner after our run one
Saturday in November.  Okay, it was pizza and beer at the sports bar in
the downtown Hyatt, cheering the downfall of Notre Dame football.  But it
was a start.

Sports became a major theme of our relationship - if you could call an
intermittent one-day a week, basically superficial contact a
'relationship'.  We talked about football, baseball, basketball, hockey,
and on one memorable occasion, the intricacies of cricket.  (He talked and
I listened, but I *still* argue that it isn't actually a sport.  It's more
of a tea party with bats and white knickers.)  He knew my teams, I knew
his, and we won computer trivia three nights out of four.  We were easy
and comfortable with one another, a lot of laughs and no tears.  And it
was fun...but I wanted more.

The second Saturday in March I got it.

I think he was more depressed than usual that weekend.  It had taken a
while for me to realize how truly unhappy he generally was - he hides it
very well under a facade of sardonic humor, but the truly obsessed - like
me - learn to read the subtlest nuances.  And truth be told, he wasn't all
that subtle about it...those puppy-dog eyes again.  And I, exhibiting the
Florence Nightingale gene that I'd heretofore denied having, decided I was
the perfect prescription to make it all better.  A few more beers than
usual ensured a shared cab ride home, and an offer of a nightcap in my
apartment won me a shy, uncertain smile and a slight nod.

It's kind of sad that someone so amazing needs to be seduced into making
love.  It's almost as if he can't believe that anyone would ever want to
be with him - anyone that's not as damaged as he is, anyway.  I have my
flaws, but I'm basically a happy-go-lucky, reasonably hardworking,
family-loving, normal-type person.

I must have seemed as strange to him as the man on the moon.

Actually, now that I think about it, to him, the man on the moon might
have been a bit more familiar.

His seeming reluctance to enter into a more intimate relationship with me
by no means implies that he's anything other than absolutely fabulous in
bed, mind you.  Which is not all that common among your incredibly
good-looking men, no matter what the soaps say.  Most of them (not that
I've taken a personal survey, don't have a heart attack, Ma) seem to feel
that their good looks are all they need to contribute to the whole
experience, if you follow my meaning.

But Mulder was different.  Mulder showed an almost disturbing need to make
sure that our afternoon together was everything it could be for me and
more.  By the time he left that evening, I was more exhausted, sated, and
plain wrung-out than I had ever been before in my life - and that's a
*good* thing.  Who am I kidding?  That's a great thing, a mind-blowing
thing...an
I'd-love-to-see-you-again-sometime-more-than-all-the-chocolate-in-the-world
kind of thing.  Suffice it to say, the memory of that afternoon in March
is indelibly burned upon my brain, and no one under seventeen is admitted.

I thought we'd finally overcome the hurdle in our relationship at that
point.  I was deep, deep, *deep* into plans for our future together.  As
Carly says, "Hearing wedding bells a ringin' and rice we'll be a
flingin'".  The fantasies that week were definitely something to write
home about...or write to HBO about, in hopes of inspiring an erotic TV
movie.  Rated XXX.

So I waited for the opening of our hearts and souls that would accompany
the sharing of our bodies.  I waited for the exchange of deeply personal
intimacies, embarrassing childhood foibles, future hopes and dreams.  I
waited for silly gifts on Valentine's Day and hokey pet names for each
other.

I waited for him to *call* me, dammit.

I'd given him my number.

I'd given him a sultry good-bye kiss.

I'd given him my heart.

I can only thank the Lord and whatever guardian angel watches over me that
I never actually *told* him that last bit of news.  Even with all about
him that I didn't know, I guess I'd somehow sensed the one thing that
would have sent him running for the hills.  But then again, for all his
exceptionalism, Mulder is nothing if not one hundred percent male.  He's
got the reaction to commitment down cold, and somehow I knew it even then.

Or maybe I just knew I wasn't the one he'd be willing to change it for.
Wish my subconscious had thought to notify the rest of me of that little
realization before I'd gotten in any deeper.  But maybe my subconscious
figured the rest of me deserved to have fun for a little while.

And God was it fun!

He never did call, and I moped about it for a week, berating myself for
not seeing it coming, whining to Carly about how he was just like all the
rest, only interested in one thing.  She listened, and commiserated, but I
don't think she realized how important he'd become to me.  I don't think
she could understand how an intermittent encounter one day a week could
become the most significant event in someone's life.  Looking at it
written out in stark letters here on the computer screen, I find it a
little hard to understand myself.  But when you're alone in a room with
Mulder, it makes perfect sense.  Trust me.

Despite his new status as Cassidy-Enemy-Number-One, I found myself setting
out for my jog as per usual the next Saturday.  I was determined to
respond with an icy cold shoulder should the dog have the nerve to show
his face.

Which he, of course, did.

Unfortunately, the planned icy reaction melted into nothing the moment I
got a look at the matching set of shiners he sported and immediately went
into Nurse Nancy mode.  (Damn that Florence Nightingale!)  He smiled when
he greeted me, reached out to give my arm a quick, reassuring touch, and
mumbled something about a 'tough' case in Maine.  He didn't offer any
specifics, and I didn't press, perfectly content to imagine him tied to a
chair for a week, out of easy reach of a phone.  <Deeper and deeper into
Delusionville I travel.  Denial, it's not just a river...>

So shoot me.  Having had a taste, I wanted more.  And I got it that
evening, when I discovered that he had bruises all *over* his body, in all
sorts of interesting places.  I'm sure some of my tried and true remedies
for...er, *healing*...would have been severely frowned upon by Miss
Nightingale, but, then, who the hell cares what she thinks, anyway?

That evening I came to several realizations, most of them unwelcome.  The
first came as a bit of a laugh when Mulder ordered the pizza - he paid by
credit card, and that's how I came to find out that his first name was
Fox.  I asked if I could call him that.  His response...well, let's just
say, the answer was no.  I can't imagine what kind of torment he endured
as a child with a moniker like that one.

It was sobering for me to realize that I'd actually had sex with a man
whose name I wouldn't have been able to pick out in the phone book.  Which
would have been a necessity, since I still didn't have *his* number, nor
did he appear to be about to offer it.  Canny little me didn't press the
issue, still comfortably living in the visions of wedding bells dancing in
my head.

But as we began our customary conversation about the baseball season over
pizza and beer, I began to worry that the deeper relationship I'd hoped
for wouldn't materialize from our new closeness.  I tried a few light
verbal probes into the subject of family, only to be met by a wall of
silence and indifference that proved impossible to breach.  Knowing what I
know now, I can understand why it's not his topic of choice.  But it still
hurt.  A lot.

I never told him that.  Maybe I should have.  Maybe I should have tried a
little harder, pushed a little more.

Or maybe I'm just hopeless.  Because I know that it wouldn't have made a
difference.  He didn't need me for that kind of sharing, he had someone
else that owned that part of his life.

He needed me for sex.

Even now I can't bring myself to hate him for it.  He never made me a
promise he didn't keep.  He never made me a promise, period, as a matter
of fact.  It's not his fault that I have a more active fantasy life
than...well, anyone else in the known universe.  I'm sure if I'd confided
in him about his starring role in my future - and our children's futures,
and our grandchildren's futures - he would have set me straight in no
uncertain terms, right before he took off for parts unknown, never to
return.  He'd have been sorry for misleading me, too, even though he never
really did.

Even though he broke my heart.

***

I don't know exactly when it was that I realized we were never going to be
more than a lot of good laughs and a roll in the hay every couple of
Saturdays.  I can't say it came to me in a blinding flash of light.  It
was more like an accumulated sense of my importance to him...a slow,
painful realization of my position way, *way* down on the totem pole.
Quite a blow to the ego, really, but, then I'm not saying I came out of
the experience without a few scars.

And it's really kind of refreshing to find a man who values sex so little
in comparison to other, more cerebral and heartfelt kinds of things.

Or it would be if I weren't the sex kitten in question.

I'm not saying I threw in the towel, either.  To my distress, with Mulder,
I found out that I could become one of *those* women - you know, the ones
who convince themselves it's possible to *make* a man love them, if they
only work hard enough at it.

Sorry, Ma, but it's nothing you taught me, I swear.  And, God, have I
learned my lesson.  But, you know, I think you might have understood it
had you ever had the opportunity to meet him.  At least I didn't make a
fool of myself over some everyday, ordinary schmoe.  Nope, no sir, not me.
When *I* fall, I do it from *way* up high.

And fall I did.

***

You might be wondering by this point why I chose to begin my narrative
with Ma's little riff about the importance of avoiding cops as possible
lifemates, or why I made such a case about my father's partner Ray.

It has to do with the *other* woman in Mulder's life, the one who - I came
to find out later - got all the parts of him I had such a yen for.  For
months after we'd first met, I had no idea Mulder's partner was a woman.
Comments about "Scully" had of course dotted our conversations
periodically, as co-workers do in discussions between workaholics.  I most
definitely had the sense that he and his partner were close, but I'd have
to say I didn't dwell on it.  Ma's warning was the furthest thing from my
mind on those lazy Saturdays we spent together.

I found out near the end of April that Mulder's fabled Scully was a member
of my fair gender.

He was taking a shower in my bathroom when his celphone rang.  I debated a
few seconds before taking it out of his coat - he was a federal employee,
after all, and Lord knows what kind of heinous crime compels the
government call an FBI Agent on his day off.  And I had no idea whether or
not answering somebody else's phone could be considered a federal offense.
But curiosity, as it often does, got the best of me, so I pulled the phone
out and flipped it open.

A breathless (in the sense of being in a hurry, I mean, get your mind out
of the gutter) female voice plunged into a long, involved commentary
before I could even say hello.

"Mulder, it's me.  I ran a toxicology on the blood found at the scene.  It
doesn't match that of the deceased, and it tested positive for trace
amounts of..."  etc. etc. so on and so forth.  I only understood about
every third word of it, anyway, and couldn't remember it accurately if my
life depended on it.  But you get the idea.  FBI stuff - blood, guts, and
gore.  Yick.

Finally, I cut into her monologue.  "Uh, hello?"

A brief silence fell on the other end of the line, before her voice came
back, sharpened by suspicion.  "Who *is* this?"  Drill sergeants couldn't
possibly sound more commanding.

"I'm Cass...uh, Cassidy.  I'm a friend of Mulder's.  He's...er...in the
shower.  He should be out in a minute or two.  Can I take a message?"

Another silence, but this time I could hear her soft breathing.  "Tell him
Scully called," she said finally, her tone unreadable.  "Tell him I have
the results from the autopsy and he needs to meet me at the office right
away."  She hung up before I could reply.

"Did I hear the phone?" Mulder asked, toweling his wet hair as he entered
the room.  He wore a pair of faded jeans and well-worn tennis shoes, and
water droplets glistened on his damp chest.

I started guiltily and dropped his celphone, which effectively answered
his question.  His gaze narrowed.  "Cass?"

I felt my cheeks redden.  "Er, yeah.  I thought I could take a message for
you."

He nodded.  "Well?"

"It was Scully."  He didn't react to the news, just raised his eyebrows
questioningly.  "She said she has the results from the autopsy and
something about blood not matching...I didn't really get that part.
Anyway, she needs you to meet her at the office."

He nodded again and disappeared back into the bedroom, shortly reappearing
with his shirt and dufflebag.  "Mulder?"

He paused in the doorway, his fingers poised mid-button.  "Hmm?"

I tried for a jaunty smile.  "You never told me your partner was a woman.
Keeping it a secret for some reason?"

A furrow appeared on his forehead.  "Scully?  Scully's just...Scully.
I've got to go.  Sounds like she found something to break this case wide
open, as usual.  I'll see you later, Cass."  And then he left.

It wasn't exactly a bolt of lightning from the sky, as you can see.  It
took me a very long time to unravel all of the layers present in that
day's conversation.  But I was left with a vague feeling of disquiet,
which I dutifully tried to quash, unwilling to believe that I was capable
of petty jealousy.  I'm not one of those people who believe that men and
women can't be friends without the sexual component.  I have a lot of guy
buddies myself.  I'm also not generally a jealous, possessive type person,
either, since I have a relatively healthy sense of self-esteem.

But something about this Scully-person was really wigging me out.

***
 
 

That Saturday afternoon in April changed something for Mulder and me.
Well, for me, anyway.  Mulder pretty much acted the way he always had -
funny and interesting...detached and remote.  I suppose it was my
expectations that changed.  The wedding-bells fantasy was on its way out,
in favor of less grandiose visions of him telling me his favorite color
and the name of the town where he grew up.  Not all that much to ask,
really, but the answers weren't forthcoming.

And I stopped asking the questions.  Somehow it began to seem as if that
would be cheating.  I wanted him to *volunteer* the information because he
*wanted* to tell me.  (I know, I know, but remember, I was deeply in
denial by this point.)

I did, however, try to find out more about the mysterious Agent Scully, in
my own inimitably subtle way.  Which is to say, I came out and said, "Tell
me about your partner, Mulder."

We were, of course, sitting in my living room eating pizza, drinking beer,
and discussing the intricacies of the designated hitter situation.  Mulder
seemed surprised by my abrupt change in subject.  "What about her?"

I averted my gaze and concentrated on removing the pineapple from my slice
of pizza.  (Mulder has severely disturbing ideas about what constitutes
appropriate pizza toppings.  Pineapple is one of the more harmless
selections.)  "Well, how long have you been partners, for starters?  My
Pop had the same partner for twelve years.  He said they got to the point
where they could finish each other's sentences."

Mulder's lip quirked in that wryly adorable way.  "Oh, well, I imagine
Scully could finish my sentences, but she wouldn't like what most of them
had to say."  His laugh was rueful.  "Let's just say we tend to see things
rather differently."  He glanced up at the muted television and reached
for the remote.  "Hey, the game's on.  I'll bet the dishes on the
Yankees."

And that was it.

***

I'd say that by the beginning of May I pretty much had the whole picture.
 
Carly, who was, by that point, understandably quite sick of my moaning,
told me that I should "Dump the guy".  She was very incensed at him on my
behalf, the way only best friends can be.  "He treats you like a lapdog,
Cass," she opined with regularity, urging me to find my suddenly absent
backbone of steel.  Very good for my self-esteem, is Carly.  And she often
gives me the kick in the butt that I need.

I ran over various breakup scenarios in my mind - if you can truly call
the end of an association such as ours a "breakup".  More than one of them
ended, I'll admit, with Mulder falling down on his knees in front of me as
the sudden realization of my importance in his life dawned upon him.  I
could never quite work out why he'd have a handy engagement ring in his
pocket, but I became quite adept at composing flowery, extremely
unMulder-like proposals for him to utter.  But somewhere underneath it all
I was quite aware that the possibility of those outcomes tended
vanishingly toward nil.  If I broke things off with Mulder, he'd accept
it, and that would be that, and, frankly, it was extremely difficult to
imagine my life without him in it.  So I waited, and stalled, and
procrastinated...

Until it became too hard to live with things the way they were.

Something had been wrong with him for weeks.  We hadn't made love in over
a month, and it wasn't just my growing doubts putting even more distance
between us than usual.  And then I didn't see nor hear from him for almost
three weeks in a row - though, admittedly, I myself was out of town at a
convention for ten days.  When he finally showed up at the park the second
Saturday in June, I was spoiling for a fight, in my own understated way,
and his mood had altered drastically as well - only in his case, for the
better.

"Hi, Cass," he offered cheerfully, his face splitting into an all-too-rare
smile as he stretched his legs in preparation for our run.  "Long time, no
see."

His good mood made mine even worse, if that were possible.  I glared at
him, my hands on my hips.  "No kidding.  Come on, you couldn't have
*called* me, Mulder?"

He looked slightly taken aback, as if I'd just made an extremely improper
suggestion.  "What?"

My lip twisted bitterly.  "Oh, I forgot, that's too much to ask, isn't it?
I mean, it's not as if I *matter* to you or anything.  We only sleep
together, after all."

His eyes narrowed speculatively as he considered my expression and my
words.  "What's this all about, Cass?"

I let out a pained laugh.  "Exactly *my* question, Mulder.  What *is* this
all about?  What *are* we?  Lovers?  Friends?  Acquaintances?  Virtual
strangers who happen to have sex periodically?  What?"

Mulder glanced at the all-too-interested pair of senior citizens feigning
obliviousness from a nearby bench, but I was past caring whether or not we
had an audience.  "Well?  Answer me, Mulder!"

His hazel eyes darkened angrily.  "I don't know what you're asking, Cass.
What exactly is the problem?"

<That's it!> I thought, enraged further by his oblivious reply.  "The
*problem* is that I don't have any idea where I stand with you, Mulder.  I
don't have any idea how you feel about me, or about us, or about whether
or not we have a future, and I'm so damn tired of living in limbo!  Talk
to me, Mulder!"

The anger had drained from his expression as my tirade continued.  By the
time I finished, he was regarding me with a mixture of guilt and
resignation, and I was terrifyingly certain that I had just passed the
point of no return.  "I never lied to you, Cass," he stated quietly after
a moment.

I snorted.  "You never lied to me, because you never told me dick," I
retorted crudely, holding up a hand to forestall an indignant reply.  "And
maybe you never broke a promise to me, but that's only because you never
made any in the first place."  My voice dropped to a whisper as
long-quashed frustration and pain overtook my fury.  "Why, Mulder?  Why
wouldn't you just *talk* to me?"

His eyes held a mixture of sorrow and pity, the latter of which made me
avert my gaze.  That was the last thing I wanted.  "I'm sorry, Cass.  I
didn't know...I didn't realize how you felt about this...about me."

I looked back toward him, hearing the goodbye that underwrote his words
and suddenly unwilling to accept that this was the end.  Now that the
moment was at hand, panic froze me to the spot.  "Mulder-" I began, but I
had no idea what to stay to stop him.

He regarded me silently for a moment, his face expressionless.  "I never
meant to hurt you, Cass," he finally said simply.  I realized that it was
an apology of sorts, but also a telling admission of his own feelings - as
in *Sorry for your pain, but I'm really not feeling any myself...*  Our
gazes held for another moment, and then he nodded a goodbye and turned and
walked away.

I watched him until he vanished around a curve in the jogging path behind
a line of trees.  My hands trembled against my side and tears streamed
down my cheeks.  "Bastard," I muttered underneath my breath.  The two
senior citizens/eavesdroppers turned to regard me expectantly.  <Don't
want to disappoint your fans,> I thought bitterly as months of suppressed
anger surged upward inside my chest.  So I screamed it.

"Bastard!"

***

It wasn't exactly the mature, dignified denouement that I'd planned, I'll
admit.  Once I'd calmed down a bit (and cried my way through two pints of
Ben and Jerry's Cookie Dough ice cream), I felt faintly ashamed of the way
I'd reacted.  He never *had* promised me anything, nor misled me in any
way, not really.  I don't suppose it was his fault that my dreams got way
out of hand.  Did it really make sense for me to blame him for being
exactly what he'd been all along?

Carly, my ice cream vendor, was inclined to be a lot less charitable.  "He
was a loser, Cass.  You're better off without him."

I spend a lot of time trying to convince myself of that, and as the days
dragged by, I met with some measure of success.  I found another park in
which to jog and avoided watching sporting events on television.  I took
up needlepoint.  I discarded needlepoint.  I cleaned my entire apartment
from top to bottom - four times.

I ate a lot of ice cream.

But by August it *was* getting better.  I went for hours without thinking
of him, and the memories themselves were getting progressively less
painful.  I went out with other guys, laughed a lot, drank a little...I
never slept with any of them, but I chalked that up to healthy
dating-caution in the nineties.  I was back to my reasonably happy self,
and Carly wasn't the only one who was relieved.

Until the day I heard Fox Mulder's name again.

I don't generally watch the local television news, because here in D.C. it
tends to be simply a catalogue of who was murdered where with what exotic
weapon, kind of like that board game Clue, only with real dead people.
Mostly I just watch CNN so I can be a reasonably well-informed citizen,
and, incidentally, understand what the hell people are talking about at
parties.  But that Tuesday evening Entertainment Tonight had done a story
on the new upcoming Star Wars film, and I'd been too lazy to get up and
switch off the TV.  (One casualty of my breakup with Mulder had been a
functioning remote control - what is it about guys that makes the damn
thing work for them and not us, anyway?)  So I was lying on my couch,
watching the parade of violence through half-closed eyes, when a reporter
mentioned "Special Agent Fox Mulder".

He'd been injured - of course.  I don't know what kind of physical
training program the FBI has, or how in heaven's name Mulder managed to
pass it even though he's got to be the clumsiest man in God's creation.
His insurance rates must be through the roof by now, if his list of
injuries from the past year is any indication.  Anyway, the reporter
mentioned that he'd been shot during the resolution of a hostage situation
downtown, and was in a hospital in Georgetown.

I didn't think.  I just acted.

In retrospect it seems a little odd that my first impulse to rush to his
side was not discarded upon further reflection.  At no point during the
seemingly endless drive to the hospital did I second guess my need to see
him, or question whether or not it was even a good idea.  He was hurt,
that's all that mattered, and knowing that I never would have found out
about it had I not seen it on the news did not diminish my certainty that
he needed me there.  Maybe it was the Florence Nightingale thing, or maybe
I just hadn't let go of my dreams nearly as completely as I thought.

Whatever the reason, I was standing in the lobby of the hospital less than
forty-five minutes after I heard the news.  It was there that my headlong
rush came up against a hard wall of reality, in the form of hospital
security guards, who were apparently assigned to keep out the press, the
ambulance-chasers, and anyone else they didn't like the looks of.  Which
included me, as I was informed by a six-foot ex-defensive-lineman-looking
man by the name of "Earl" - or at least that's what it said on his
nametag.

"Can't go there, Miss," he informed me laconically as he barred the
hallway with one beefy arm.

"I have to see Mulder," I insisted, a bit desperately.  My plea caught the
attention of a dark-haired older woman exiting a room further down the
hall.  She walked over to Earl and conversed quietly with him for a
moment, then turned to me with a kind, if tired smile.

"Are you a friend of Fox's?" she asked, leading me down the hall past
Earl.

<Fox's?> I thought as I nodded, all the while wondering if it had ever
been the truth.  "We...we jog together sometimes," I finally said.  "I,
uh, saw what happened on the news.  I'm Cassidy."

"Maggie," she murmured, darting a quick glance toward the crowd Earl held
at bay.  "None of them called him Mulder," she explained, seeing my
confused expression.  "Just Agent Mulder, or Mister Mulder, or Fox.  I
figured you must know him if you knew to call him that."  We shared a
companionable smile, acknowledging his quirks.  "I'm Dana's mother," she
added, as if that should mean something to me.  I smiled again, hiding my
ignorance.

The sound of angry voices caught her attention, and she grimaced, slightly
and glanced heavenward.  "That's Bill.  Excuse me."

She walked back toward the door she'd just exited, in time to greet two
people leaving the room.  I could only make out one of them, a large man
with a thunderous scowl who dwarfed the person behind him, of whom I could
just see an outstretched hand.  I could hear her voice, however.

"You shouldn't be in his room, Bill.  The last thing he needs is to be
upset.  In fact, I don't understand why you're here at all.  I told you I
was fine when I called you."

"And I'm not supposed to care that your goddamn partner almost got you
killed *again*!?!  My God, Dana, what's it gonna take for you to see him
for who he really is?  He drags you all over the world chasing after a
sister he believes was abducted by little green men, he gets Missy
*murdered*, he's responsible for your having cancer and damn near *dying*,
and now he's gotten you shot, for God's sake!"

"Mulder didn't *get* me shot, Bill," the hidden figure retorted, and I
thought <Bingo!  This must be the famous Scully.>  "For your information,
the case we were on had *nothing* to do with the X-Files, we were
*assigned* to help with the hostage crisis, and thanks to Mulder, fifteen
people who might have died are still alive.  *He* was the one who nearly
lost his life, not me.  And I just have a minor flesh wound, anyway."

"Just a minor flesh wound," he snapped bitterly.  "Tell me something,
Dana, how serious will a wound need to be before you'll see that Mulder is
*ruining* your life?  You have to get away from him and his damn files
before it kills you!"  He turned to glance down at the older woman.  "Help
me out here, Mom."

She glared up at him.  "I'm not helping you, because I don't agree with
you.  And a public hallway in a hospital is *not* the place for this.  Fox
needs his rest."  She turned to the hidden figure.  "Dana, honey, the
doctor said he'd be by to see you in a few minutes.  Don't you think you
should get back to your room?"

I ducked into the alcove of the doorway behind me, instinctively sensing
what was to come.  All I knew was that I *didn't* want that angry voice
aimed at me.  "I don't want to leave Mulder alone, Mom," came the somewhat
muffled reply.

"A friend came to visit him," her mother offered in a soothing voice.
"Cassidy...someone.  She said she jogs with Mulder.  She's right...well,
she *was* right down the hall.  I suppose she thought to give the two of
you some privacy for your little argument.  I guess *her* mother managed
to teach her some manners."  I stifled a slightly hysterical giggle at her
pointed remark.

"Cassidy?  I don't know any Cassidy," her daughter murmured distractedly.
"Oh, wait, I think Mulder might have mentioned her once..."  A resigned
sigh.  "All right.  But as soon as the doctor gives me the okay, I'm
coming back to sit with him.  And I don't want to hear a word about it,
Bill.  Not a word."

"You *can't* expect me not to say anything when..." came his strident
answer as their voices receded down the hallway.  I exhaled slowly in
relief.  <So that was Scully,> I thought ruefully.  <No, that was *Dana*.
Which makes the older woman his partner's mother who makes the
casseroles.>  I leaned back against the unyielding wood of the door as
Dana Scully's words ran through my mind.  <"I think Mulder might have
mentioned her once," she'd said.>  I winced.  <Ouch.>

I took a deep breath, pushed away from the door, and headed down the
hallway, pulling to a halt outside the door to Mulder's room, nervous and
unsure.  <What am I going to say to him?  The last memory he has of me is
an infantile tantrum in the park.  Will he even *want* to see me?>  But it
seemed the height of foolishness for me to let pride get in my way when
I'd managed to come this far without it.  I reached for the doorknob and
slowly opened the door.

The room was shadowed with evening light, the monitors' beeping the only
sound in the room.  Mulder was asleep, his face calm in repose with the
kind of peace that seemed to elude him in life.  The covers were drawn to
his chin, a relief to me, since I really didn't want to *see* the extent
of his injuries, though I felt an insatiable need to *know*.

I stared down at him for a moment before reaching for the chart that hung
at the foot of the bed.  Unfortunately, I, not being possessed of the
universal translator that allows television characters to immediately
understand medical jargon no matter what their purported profession, was
unable to make heads nor tails of it.  My gaze traveled from unfathomable
abbreviations in crabbed handwriting to the only legible part of the form,
the patient information typed at the top.  Name, address - <So *that's*
where he lives...> - and next of kin - <Dr. Dana Scully>...  I closed my
eyes, finally conceding defeat in the silent, one-sided battle I hadn't
realized I'd still been waging.

I turned away from the bed and maneuvered my way toward the door, eyes
still shut, unwilling to look at him even one more time.  My dignified
exit hit a snag when I tripped and knocked into the bathroom door.  I
stumbled inside the tiny room and collapsed on the lid of the toilet seat,
the adrenaline from my headlong rush to the hospital finally wearing off.
<What am I doing here?> I asked myself blearily, my shoulders slumping.
<Like it wasn't obvious enough before how unimportant I am to him...>

The *snick* of the outer door opening caught my attention, and I froze, my
mind unable to formulate a good explanation for my presence in Mulder's
room, hiding in the dark in the bathroom.  A vision of Earl tossing me out
of the hospital on my ear swam through my brain.  I squinted through the
crack in the door, trying to catch a glimpse of beefy biceps, but the only
thing I saw was a fleeting flash of red hair as a figure most definitely
too small to be Earl's entered the room.  The chair next to the bed
squeaked softly, so I assumed she'd seated herself at his bedside.

"Hey, Mulder," she said in a voice so soft it was almost a whisper.  There
was a comfortable timbre to it, as if sitting vigil at his bedside was a
long-accustomed ritual.  I suddenly felt like the worst kind of voyeur,
but wild horses couldn't have dragged me out to meet my unknowing nemesis.
That would have been the final straw, meeting someone who was probably
drop-dead gorgeous in addition to being a genius - both a doctor *and* an
FBI agent.

She continued her monologue uninterrupted.  "You can wake up now,
Mulder...Bill's gone.  Mom kicked him out of the hospital, so you know he
won't dare come back."  A rueful chuckle.  "He doesn't know you,
Mulder...and he worries about me.  He takes it out on you because he's
been yelling at *me* for years and he hasn't ever been able to change the
choices I've made - choices about the FBI...and about the X-files."  A
small silence.  "I'm sorry that he said what he did about Samantha,
Mulder.  He had no right to say that."

<Samantha...> I frowned as the pieces of the puzzle fell into place.  <The
sister abducted by little green men?>  Bill's litany of Mulder's sins had
taken a while to sink in, and I'm ashamed to say that my first
consideration was rather selfish.  <He never told *me* he had a sister,
let alone that she'd been kidnapped!>  He'd never informed me of his
partner's cancer, either, and I hadn't the slightest idea who Missy was or
what had happened to her.  To my eternal mortification, I felt tears
threaten as I was again faced with my lowly position in Mulder's life.
<He didn't tell me anything.>

And she knew everything.

The silence stretched for long minutes, until I finally emerged from my
self-pitying reverie to entertain more practical considerations.  <How the
hell am I going to get out of here without her seeing me?>

There was a muffled coughing from the room.  "Mulder?" she murmured.

"Hey, Scully," he replied in a low, pained voice.

I could almost *hear* her smile.  "Welcome back, partner.  Sorry the gift
shop didn't have any cheesy football videos, but I did get you some ice
chips.  Are you thirsty?"

"Mmm"  A crunching noise, and then Mulder's voice again, stronger this
time.  "S'okay, Scully.  I own all the Superstars of the Superbowls
series, anyway.  But I really think I could use a new flavor in this IV,
here.  Maybe something with a bit of kahlua."

She laughed.  "I'll be sure to mention that to the staff."

A beat of silence, then Mulder asked, "Are *you* okay, Scully?"

"I'm fine, Mulder.  He only winged me.  You're the one he tried to turn
into a piece of Swiss cheese, with considerable success, I might add.
How's the pain?  Do you need anything?"

"I'm fine," he parroted, a note of laughter in his voice, though I didn't
understand the joke.  "So...What did Skinner say?"

"Well, he muttered something under his breath about approaching some sort
of record with regard to insurance premiums, and then he gave us the week
off."

Another laugh.  "What, no gold star?  We aren't the poster boy and girl
for the Bureau now?  Aw, damn, Scully, I thought for sure all the other
agents would wanna come out and play with us now."

She chuckled.  "Oh, sure, Mulder.  In fact, Colton mentioned maybe
commissioning a statue in our honor for the lobby."

"I'm sure."  Another cough.  "So have they said anything at all about when
I might be getting out of this prison?"

"Well, if the nurses took a vote right now I'm sure they'd be arguing for
indefinite incarceration, but after a few days of you awake and lively,
I'm sure they'll be booting you out the front door.  I'd say they'll be
releasing you on Friday."

A groan.  "Goody.  My goldfish should definitely be dead by that point."

"Tell you what," she laughed.  "I'll feed your goldfish.  I'll even clean
out your refrigerator in preparation for all of Mom's casseroles...*if*
you let me borrow your cable on Saturday.  I'll even make popcorn."

"Hmmm...I give, what's Saturday?"

"There's an Ed Wood marathon on that old movie channel that your cable
dealer gets and mine doesn't.  What do you say?  If you're nice to me,
I'll even change your bandages."

"What about giving me a sponge bath?" he asked with a definite leer in his
tone.

"In your dreams, Mulder.  You don't have plans on Saturday, do you?"

"No," he replied.  "But you don't have to babysit me, Scully.  I promise
not to pull out my stitches by getting up too soon.  I know you've always
preferred to keep Saturday for your 'normal' life whenever possible."

She chuckled.  "Mulder, life with you is anything but normal.  And I think
I can sacrifice a Saturday if I get to see you recite all the dialogue to
Plan 9 From Outer Space.  What do you say?"

He laughed.  "I say...It's a date.  In fact, I can't think of anything I'd
rather do that spend Saturday with you, my goldfish, and Ed Wood."

Not long after that the nurse came to retrieve Scully for her checkup, and
Mulder drifted off to sleep again.  After a decent interval I snuck out of
his room without awakening him.  I finally knew all the answers I hadn't
realized I'd come to the hospital to learn, and I was conceding defeat
with all the graciousness of a losing political candidate.  Which is to
say, I was smiling on the outside, and inside...I wasn't.  But at least I
had the full picture, grim though it was.  Maybe they weren't
lovers...maybe they never had been...but whatever they were, it didn't
leave room for anyone else.  It didn't leave room for me.

So that's it, really.  I know, I know, a pretty tame ending.  It isn't
Thelma and Louise sailing off into the Grand Canyon in all their feminist
who-gives-a-good-goddamn-about-men glory, but, then, Thelma and Louise
didn't survive to write their story, did they?  (Not to mention screwing
the hell out of any chance for Thelma and Louis II, something that
probably pissed off many a studio executive.)

I, on the other hand, am here, alive, reasonably sane and semi-coherent.
My heart's a little the worse for wear, my pride's more than a bit
bruised, and my ego's a tad deflated.

Carly says it gives me character.

I tell her to stuff it.

And like all good daughters, I called Mom and thanked her for the sage
advice.  "No cops for me, Mom," I swore with more vehemence than she
probably thought my statement warranted.

Because I learned my lesson.

And now I'm passing it on.

End