By Jean Robinson
jeanrobinson@yahoo.com
 

Disclaimer: Characters from the X-Files are the
property of Ten Thirteen Productions and the Fox
Television Network. No infringement is intended.
Rating: R
Classification: S, A
Archive: Please ask permission.
Spoilers: Up through "Orison."
Summary: When the world is turned upside down, you
grab on to anything to maintain your equilibrium.
Feedback: Adored at jeanrobinson@yahoo.com
Author's notes at the end
*****************************

COUNTERBALANCE (1/5)
By Jean Robinson
 

If he'd been a minute later coming back to the office
after lunch, he would have missed it the first time it
happened. Or, rather, the first time he noticed
anything peculiar. But the rare trip outside the
confines of the Hoover Building to fetch a turkey club
that didn't taste like old plastic wrap and coffee
that didn't taste like lukewarm engine oil timed
itself perfectly, and Walter Skinner found himself six
paces behind Fox Mulder and Dana Scully, who, if the
grease-spotted white bags they clutched were any
indication, had just completed a similar errand.

The pair walked side by side, less than a foot apart;
the days when little Agent Scully had scuttled along
in "Spooky" Mulder's wake were so far in the past
Skinner could barely bring them to mind anymore.

Just before the turn for the basement stairs, Scully
stumbled.

At least, that's what Skinner thought at the time.
After all, the woman habitually wore three and a half
inch heels, ridiculous when one considered her
profession so often involved chasing people over rough
surfaces or standing still for hours on unforgiving
cement floors. The fine black leather pumps she wore
that day were no exception to the rule.

And he was sure that's what Scully and Mulder both
thought when she wobbled and pitched sideways
suddenly, falling against her partner. Mulder put out
a steadying arm, tipped her upright and waited for her
to regain her balance before resuming his pace again.

Skinner couldn't hear their conversation above the
dull roar of voices and foot traffic resounding
through the lunchtime-crowded lobby, but he could read
their body English well enough to imagine it.

Mulder: You okay, Scully?

Scully: I'm fine.

Mulder: I warned you about drinking on the job and
wearing those heels.

Scully: I'm warning you to quit while you're ahead.

Or words to that effect.

Only later, much later, when Skinner was reviewing the
incident again and again in his mind, like a videotape
on a continuous playback loop, would it jell that this
was indeed the starting point. The beginning of the
end, so to speak.

Scully had lost her balance, but she hadn't really
stumbled. He'd been directly behind her, staring at
her legs and marveling at her atrociously
inappropriate footwear, and she definitely hadn't
tripped. There was nothing on the polished marble
floor of the Bureau lobby to warrant a misstep, no
sticky wad of gum, no errant scrap of paper, no
chipped tile lurking to snag an unwary foot and wrench
an unsuspecting ankle.

She'd just. . . fallen.

But Skinner didn't think about it then. And he didn't
think about it two weeks later, when he sat with his
two wayward charges, six other agents and another
Assistant Director in a conference room at a meeting.

A long meeting.

A very long, drawn-out, excruciatingly dull meeting.
One that should have ended forty-five minutes earlier,
but looked as though it would drag on for another
hour. Skinner wasn't the only one succumbing to the
soporific atmosphere; Mulder was fighting a valiant
but losing battle with his eyelids and Scully had
discreetly yawned behind her cupped hand at least
three times in the last fifteen minutes alone.

And still Agent Parkins droned on and on and on about
his latest findings regarding. . . regarding. . .
Skinner suddenly realized he couldn't even remember
the original purpose behind the late-afternoon
gathering, let alone why Mulder and Scully were in
attendance.

Which meant it was long past time to put an end to
this farce.

"And your conclusion, Agent Parkins?" Skinner asked
harshly. Both Mulder and the agent next to him jumped
noticeably at the sound of a new voice.

Startled by the interruption, Parkins stammered to a
semi-incoherent halt. The instant he stopped speaking,
the table came alive; everyone began standing,
stretching, talking and generally making preparations
to get the hell out of Dodge.

Mulder was never good in lengthy meetings; the
inquisitive little boy inside him simply couldn't
stand to be contained for any length of time. Cool and
collected for hours on end when interrogating
suspects, but give him a roomful of colleagues and
Mulder exhibited more nervous tics than anyone Skinner
had ever met. Now the man fairly leaped to his feet
and bolted for the door, desperate to escape and
expend an afternoon's worth of bottled energy.

Scully remained seated, calmly gathering her notes,
unconcerned about Mulder's hasty retreat. She stood
up, reached for her folder. . . and sat back down
abruptly, an oddly blank expression settling over her
face like a thin veil.

"Agent Scully?" Skinner asked. Almost everyone else
had fled, although Parkins and his A.D. still lingered
in the doorway arguing about something.

Scully started to speak, then leaned forward, resting
her elbow on the table and her forehead against her
closed fist.

"Agent Scully, are you all right?"

She immediately sat up straight again, dropping her
hand. "Yes, sir. I'm fine."

"Are you sure?" Because she didn't look fine at all.
She looked like the "I'm Fine" Scully of her cancer
days, when Mulder wanted to strangle her every time
she uttered those defensive words with colorless lips,
an expression of extreme defiance in her haunted,
washed-out eyes and tiny smears of blood from her
latest nosebleed still painting a macabre decoration
on her upper lip.

Scully seemed to shake herself. "Yes, sir." She rose
to her feet again, and did indeed appear to be fine,
all traces of whatever malaise had momentarily gripped
her gone. "It was a long meeting."

"Yes, it was." He watched as she retrieved her file
and walked away, moving confidently and easily on
those damn heels.

Sure. Just a long meeting, the kind that made anyone's
head hurt or made them woozy from standing up too fast
after being seated for such an extended period of
time. Nothing more.

The third time brought it all home in a spectacular
fashion.

A week later he was seated at his desk, going over the
latest work of fiction,  otherwise known as Mulder's
version of an acceptable expense report. Scully and
Mulder sat across from him, awaiting the verdict.
Scully sat impassively, hands folded, while her
partner fidgeted sullenly, knowing the ax would soon
fall but not knowing how much damage the blade would
inflict this time.

"Agent Mulder, you are aware that you have a
departmental budget?"

Mulder squirmed. "Yes."

"And that you do not have carte blanche to exploit
this budget?"

"Everything on there is a legitimate expense," he
argued.

Skinner dropped the report and adopted an expression
of punctiliously polite disbelief. "Oh, really, Agent
Mulder? When, exactly, did fifty pounds of almond and
peanut M&M's become a legitimate expense?"

Mulder resumed wriggling, looking for all the world
like a kindergartner in dire need of a bathroom. "The
suspect claimed that the combination of the protein in
the nuts and the theobromine in chocolate enhanced her
psychic abilities. The purchase was required to test
the validity of her allegation."

"I see." Skinner made a note on the report. "And the
fact that your suspect was an extremely overweight
woman who had been hospitalized four times in the last
year for eating disorders did not cause you any
concern?"

Mulder's sulky look intensified while Scully sat
motionless, her expression serious yet unreadable. She
seemed to have ceased breathing.

"She'd had visions of murders," Mulder defended
himself almost petulantly. "Murders that had taken
place."

"Well-publicized murders. Ones for which the police
chief had already been chastised for leaking
information to the press." Skinner cut off Mulder's
next words with a raised hand. "I'm not going to
continue this discussion, Agent Mulder. The M&M's are
out. If you want to indulge your suspect's penchant
for junk food, you'll do it on your own dime. That's
all."

Both of them stood up. Mulder appeared ready to argue
further, but Scully arrested him with a slight touch
on his arm and an even slighter shake of her head.
Mulder contented himself with favoring his boss with
one final glare and stalked out, not bothering to wait
to see if Scully followed or not.

For a second, she didn't. Skinner wondered if she
would say anything, offer any defense or excuse for
Mulder's behavior, but she remained silent. Perhaps
she knew there was no excuse; her partner's
single-minded search for the truth had brought her
under Skinner's wrath before and it would undoubtedly
do so again in the future. It was clear from her
posture that all of the points he'd just imparted to
Mulder had already been addressed by the more
pragmatic half of the X-Files team prior to the
meeting, to no avail.

Not for the first time, he wondered when Dana Scully
would simply call it quits and leave Mulder, the
Bureau and the whole circus behind and start a normal
life, one that didn't revolve around conspiracies,
aliens, the living dead, and pathetically lonely fat
psychic housewives.

"Did you have something else to discuss with me, Agent
Scully?" he inquired, because she was still standing
there in front of his desk, staring pensively at the
door through which her partner had so hastily exited.

"No, sir." She turned and took three brisk steps
toward the same door, then halted for no reason he
could discern.

"Agent?"

Instead of answering, Scully put a hand to her temple
and closed her eyes, as if she'd suddenly developed a
colossal migraine.

Skinner stood up and came around his desk, alarmed.
"Scully? Are you all. . ."

He was still shaping his mouth around the final word
of the question when her knees buckled and she
collapsed into his arms in a dead faint.

Skinner caught her more by reflex than intent, so
surprised by her unexpected action that he nearly
dropped her. Scully sagged bonelessly against him and
he jigged back a step before he could maneuver an arm
under her legs and scoop her up. Tilting her body
toward him to allow her lolling head to rest against
his chest instead of dangling awkwardly over his arm,
he rapidly crossed the room and deposited her on his
couch.

At first glance, she seemed to be breathing normally,
which he took to be a marginally encouraging sign. She
was also frighteningly pale and showed no signs of
recovering, which negated any comfort caused by her
steady inhalations and exhalations. His mind
automatically brought up the first aid basics learned
in Vietnam; he tucked a pillow under her feet to
elevate them.

What else, what else. More kernels of knowledge came
floating back, pushing away the darker thoughts about
what this inexplicable development could mean. He
stripped off his jacket and draped it over her bare
legs to keep her warm; Scully had been wearing skirts
more frequently as of late. He was reaching for her
suit jacket buttons to loosen the garment to assure
unimpeded respiration when a voice behind him
exclaimed, "Scully!" in astonishment.

Mulder. Apparently he'd finally come in search of his
absent better half, retracing his steps until they led
him right back to the last place he'd seen her.

Skinner wasn't sure if it was the sight of his
motionless partner stretched out on the leather
cushions or that of his superior kneeling by her side
with his hands on her clothing that shocked Mulder
more. He fought back the brief surge of guilt, that
feeling that he was somehow taking advantage of Scully
as she lay vulnerable and defenseless, and covered his
discomfiture with a gruff, terse explanation.

"She passed out without warning about two minutes ago.
Has she been sick? Was she feeling all right this
morning?"

Mulder recovered admirably, his feet carrying him
across the room even before he'd processed the whole
scenario. He dropped to his knees as well, picking up
Scully's limp hand and rubbing it lightly. "Scully?"
he murmured.

"Mulder, has she been sick?" Skinner repeated
patiently.

The agent shook his head, all his attention focused on
his unconscious partner. "No, sir. She was fine." He
emphasized the past tense of the verb, and Skinner
pounced on it.

"Don't jump to conclusions, Agent Mulder. There could
be a dozen reasons for this."

"Scully doesn't faint, sir."

As if he needed reminding. No, Scully didn't normally
swoon like some eighteenth century maiden suffering
from "vapors." Female federal agents who made a habit
of passing out on a regular basis did not survive in
the field for seven years. Or even one year, for that
matter. The two times she had lost consciousness were
both harrowing instances with near fatal results. He'd
experienced one up close and personal, had heard about
the other from Mulder after the fact:

Scully, slumping into a chair as a tiny trickle of
blood dripped from her nose, a cruelly insignificant
indicator of the massive internal hemorrhage that
almost took her life before the ambulance could
arrive.

Scully, crumpling to the floor in Mulder's apartment
hallway, gasping out a litany of her symptoms as the
alien virus wreaked havoc upon her body, paralyzing
her lungs and sending her into a coma.

When this redhead hit the canvas for the full count,
it was always bad news.

"Are they coming?"

Why Mulder chose times of crisis to speak in code
never ceased to amaze and irritate Skinner. "Mulder,
are =who= coming?"

"The paramedics. You called them, didn't you?"

"No. Give her a minute."

"She could be dying!"

Skinner stood up, his temper flaring. "And she could
have just forgotten to eat breakfast this morning,
Agent Mulder. She's breathing. Just give her another
minute before we do something rash."

Perhaps it was the reminder that Scully would most
certainly not appreciate it if he called in the
cavalry for a harmless spell of low blood sugar that
made Mulder back off. He'd been blistered often enough
by her searing anger at his overreactions in the past
to make him hesitant to push things now. Instead, he
cupped one hand around her cheek, brushing his thumb
lightly over the soft, thin skin under her eye.
"Scully? Come on, wake up," he encouraged her softly.

Until he learned differently, Skinner assumed that she
was responding to his touch when she stirred, turning
her head slightly and blinking to reveal eyes dark and
muddied with confusion. "Mulder?" she mumbled thickly.
 

He smiled, a gentle curving of his mouth forming an
expression meant to soothe her fears while hiding his
own relief. "Hi. How're you doing?"

"What happened?" She sounded more coherent, a bit
stronger, but Skinner noticed that she made no attempt
to sit up or otherwise move.

Definitely a bad sign from someone with her history of
injury and recovery. A passive, submissive Scully was
a seriously ill Scully.

"You fainted," Skinner informed her.

"I. . . what?"

So much for sounding more coherent. Skinner repeated
himself, trying to stamp down on his rising dismay at
her dazed tone; before he'd gained Kimberly as his
executive assistant, Skinner had suffered through a
personable but dense young lady who habitually asked,
"Should I answer that?" in exactly the same bewildered
manner every time his phone rang.

That Scully's limpid blue-eyed stare and puzzled
question were somehow reminding him of a loopy frosted
blonde named Cyndi who dotted the "i" in her name with
a tiny heart was more than a little terrifying.

Maybe he =should= have called an ambulance.

Mulder was crooning nonsense to her, telling her to
just relax and breathe, stroking her cheek all the
while. Scully fell silent, for once seeming content to
follow her partner's health advice and bask in the
apparent comfort of his touch.

Which was, of course, another bright scarlet flag
flapping a warning that all was not well. Scully was
the last person to take Mulder's recommendations about
her fitness and she generally rejected overly intimate
gestures from anyone. Allowing her partner to fondle
her in the presence of their boss was not part of her
professional conduct as far as Skinner knew. Could she
be drugged?

Convinced that Mulder was right and Scully was, if not
dying, then at least gravely ill, Skinner turned to go
to his phone to summon real medical help when all at
once, she recovered. He heard a rustle, and when he
turned back she was sitting up, sliding her legs out
from under his jacket to set her feet firmly on the
floor, and if Scully wasn't yet prepared to test her
newfound strength by standing up, she looked miles
improved from the befuddled agent who had been unable
to grasp the meaning behind a two-word sentence not
three minutes ago.

Remarkable.

Eerie.

Mulder remained on his knees in front of her like a
proposing suitor, persuading her to stay seated for
the time being. While Scully did continue to obey his
directives, Skinner sensed that she was doing so
because she privately concurred that attempting a
completely vertical stance would be unwise for another
few moments.

She ducked her head, clearly chagrined at all the fuss
she'd caused. "I apologize, sir."

"How do you feel now?"

"Better, thank you."

Skinner crossed to his door and leaned out to
Kimberly. "Please go down to the cafeteria and get
some juice for Agent Scully. She's feeling a bit
light-headed."

Kimberly stood up with alacrity. "Is she all right?"

"She's fine. Just a little dizzy."

Kimberly disappeared on her appointed errand, and
Skinner came back to his office to find Mulder, now
seated beside his partner on the couch, engaged in a
quiet but heated debate with her.

"I told you, it's. . ." Scully broke off at the sight
of her boss.

"Of course, you'll make an appointment to see your
doctor before you go out in the field again," Skinner
intoned dryly, guessing at the source of the argument.

She leaned back wearily against the couch, closing her
eyes. "Yes, sir. Although I'm sure nothing's wrong."

"Good." Skinner hoped Mulder had the presence of mind
to wipe that vindicated look off his face before
Scully opened her eyes again.

The silence that followed was broken by Kimberly, who
arrived bearing orange juice and a few cookies as
well. Gamely trying to ignore the three sets of eyes
fixed on her every move, Scully thanked her and
dutifully sipped the drink and nibbled the pastries.

When the bottle was empty and the cookies reduced to
crumbs on the white napkin in her hand, she looked at
the three of them wryly, that familiar expression
reassuring Skinner more than anything that she was
well on the road to recovery, even if she wasn't ready
for an immediate return to the passing lane.

"I'm all right, really." She moved to stand, and
Mulder was instantly on his feet, supporting her with
one arm firmly around her waist, the other grasping
her hand. "Mulder, let go. I'm not going to fall."

Mulder did not, as bidden, release her, but turned to
Skinner with questioning eyes.

"See that she gets home, Agent Mulder."

"Sir!" Scully protested, still trying to wrest away
from her partner's octopus-like embrace. "I'm
perfectly capable of driving myself."

"I'm sure you are, Agent Scully. But I'm also quite
certain Agent Mulder will either somehow confiscate
your car keys or follow you home anyway, so I suggest
you make it easy on all of us and just let him drive."

She subsided, as he'd known she would, at the bare
truth in his statement. Mulder didn't appear to care
that he'd been cast yet again in the role of the
overbearing villain as long as he got his wish to
pamper her for another few minutes.

Skinner watched them leave. They walked slowly, with
Scully insisting that she could move more easily and
more rapidly without his assistance and Mulder
steadfastly refusing to relinquish his grip on her.

As a young soldier in Vietnam, Walter Skinner had
prayed. The only entreaty God had seen fit to answer
was the one that sent him home as a whole man, able to
function after the horrors of war.

Since then he'd put his faith in the mortal men of
power, not that such devotions had gained him anything
more helpful than his previous benedictions to an
otherworldly spirit being.

Maybe it was time to switch back and appeal to the
higher realm.

Please, God, don't let it be the cancer again. I don't
think Mulder could take it.

I know I couldn't.

Later, Skinner would remember why he'd stopped
speaking to God in the first place.

Because sometimes God answers your prayers.

~~~~~~~
 

Two days later Skinner unlocked his apartment door and
stepped inside the barren, sterile space in which he
kept his belongings and spent his nights but did not
call home.

It had been an uneasy day from the get-go, when his
morning messages from Kimberly included a note from
Scully, announcing she would be out of the office all
day to see her doctor.

Doctors, plural, was more like it, but trust Scully to
refrain from dramatics. To keep Mulder from pestering
her for hourly updates via cell phone, Skinner had
sent the man out of the office all day on a
meaningless ride-along with two newer agents. Mulder
voiced his objections, but it was a token gesture at
best. Skinner sensed he was secretly relieved to be
doing something other than fretting in the basement,
staring at the file cabinets holding the restored
remains of other times that Scully wasn't there.

Like the time she wasn't there for three months. Or
the times she wasn't there and everyone was quite
positive she'd never be back.

Scully seemed to possess enough lives to make a whole
cat colony envious, but really, how many times could
one come back from the dead?

Not that she was dead now, of course.

Much as he tried, Skinner couldn't stop himself from
adding, "Yet."

He sighed and shut the door, automatically flipping
the deadbolt and attaching the safety chain. A few
years overseeing the X-Files taught him more about the
need for security and defenses than his entire tour in
Vietnam.

"Welcome home, sir."

Not enough, apparently. Skinner froze still facing the
door at that soft, somehow congenial voice. "Krycek,"
he breathed.

"You're looking well."

Skinner snatched for his weapon and spun around,
aiming it directly at the younger man who stood with
studied nonchalance not more than five feet from him,
clad in jeans and a black leather jacket. "What the
hell are you doing here?" he snarled.

Krycek merely stared at the gun with contempt. "I can
understand why you're not happy to see me," he said,
"but you're going to want to listen to what I have to
say."

Skinner tightened his finger on the trigger. "I doubt
that."

"It concerns Agent Scully."

That off-kilter, apprehensive feeling that had held
him in sway since he'd first sat down at his desk that
morning exploded into real fear. Skinner felt his
heart shrivel and drop to the pit of his stomach. Here
is was. The crunch. Scully was dying, and Krycek had
decided to come and midwife the good news to him.
"What about her?" he growled, fighting to keep a
steady grip on the gun.

"I'm not here to hurt you again, so you can put that
down. In fact, it might be easier if we both sat
down."

The world was surely turning on end if Krycek was
actually expressing concern for him. Skinner could
deal with knowing his renegade agent was a murderer, a
traitor, and a lackey for the Consortium, but the
thought of Krycek having a conscience was abhorrent.

But if Krycek wasn't telling the truth, then by all
rights Skinner should have been writhing on the floor
by now, nanites multiplying in his bloodstream like a
New Age plague and clogging his arteries until his
heart blew out like an old, bald tire.

He didn't lower the gun, but motioned back into the
dimness of the apartment with it, gesturing for Krycek
to sit.

When they were settled, facing each other across an
expanse of beige carpet that was proving neutral in
more ways than simple color, he snapped, "Now what are
you talking about?"

Krycek relaxed, making himself comfortable on the
couch. "Agent Scully. She's been under the weather
recently, hasn't she?"

"So what if she has?"

Krycek reached for his pocket. Skinner's weapon came
up again in a flash. "Slowly," he instructed tightly.
"Whatever you're doing, do it very, very slowly."

His adversary complied, carefully drawing a familiar
object out of his jacket pocket and holding it toward
Skinner on an open palm.

The flat, black control device. That little
bastardized Palm Pilot that signaled the nanites to
commence their insidious destruction of his body.
Skinner went cold just looking at it.

"You know what it does to you," Krycek remarked
softly, "but I don't suppose you ever wondered how it
might affect =her=."

Skinner couldn't speak, couldn't tear his eyes from
that lethal little contraption balanced in Krycek's
hand.

His uninvited guest nodded as if satisfied, although
Skinner hadn't directly answered him one way or the
other. "Yes, the chip. The miracle chip in Agent
Scully's neck."

The microchip she'd discovered after her abduction.
The one whose removal had possibly caused or
contributed to her cancer. The one that had "called"
her to the site of a human bonfire, a conflagration
from which she'd escaped by nothing more than dumb
luck.

He'd wondered if it bothered her, knowing that her
life seemed to depend on a piece of science she could
neither explain nor comprehend. That her very
existence hung on a perversion of all that she held
holy outside the confines of her organized religion.
Knowing that she lived every day on the edge, that she
might be beckoned unwillingly to her death again, and
that if something happened to damage the chip, the
likelihood of Mulder being able to filch another handy
replacement from a covert government storage facility
was nil.

He suspected it did. And there were times that he
thought the cool, collected and poised Agent Scully
must be screaming inside, shrieking with fear and rage
that her life had spun so completely and totally out
of her control with the involuntary addition of this
tiny bit of metal. Truth be told, he considered her
outward composure on this one issue to be the single
greatest testament to her inner strength.

Thankfully, there had been no "chip incidents" since
that terrifying summons to Ruskin Dam. However fragile
it had proven to be in the lab, the minute scrap
seemed invincible as long as it stayed embedded under
her skin. If her jaunt to Antarctica hadn't destroyed
it, nothing would. From what he'd pieced together from
Mulder's reports and Scully's hazy memories of that
little excursion, the microchip could give the Timex
"takes a licking and keeps on ticking" advertising
slogan to a whole new meaning.

They'd been lulled, all three of them, by the relative
silence over the last two years. Because here was
Krycek, claiming to hold the key to Scully's life
between the fingers of his one real hand.

"She's seen too much," Krycek told him now.

"She doesn't believe it."

It was a half-hearted lie at best, and Krycek saw
through it immediately. "She's not so sure of herself
anymore, and that's what makes her all the more
dangerous. Since she saw the ship in Africa, she just
doesn't know what to think."

Skinner raised the gun again. "I will kill you before
I let you hurt her."

Throwing his head back, Krycek laughed out loud. The
sound bounced off the empty walls and reverberated
hollowly around the apartment. "I'm not here to hurt
her. Or you. I told you that. Don't think I don't
know. . . and HE doesn't know. . . what Scully's death
would do to Mulder. The man can't function without
her. He'd become a bigger pain in the ass than ever
before."

"So what the hell =is= all this about?"

Rolling the control box in his grip, Krycek considered
him. "Take her off the X-Files. Reassign her. HE
doesn't care where. She can do what she wants; she and
Mulder can screw each other until they're blue in the
face." He paused, taking in Skinner's stunned
expression. "What, you didn't know they were sleeping
together? Well, they are. Trust me on that. But they
can't stay paired on the X-Files."

"I can't just reassign her without a reason."

Krycek waggled the device again. "I thought I just
gave you one."

"I don't. . ."

"Listen to me. I can kill her right now if I touch the
right button, not that it would do any of us any good.
I can also incapacitate her at any time. Suppose what
happened in your office the other day were to happen
in the field. While she was engaged in a firefight
with a suspect. Suppose she were to simply faint at a
critical moment." He let his words sink in. "You might
lose her. Or Mulder. Or any number of other agents.
I've given you a preview of what could happen if you
don't take her off the X-Files and reassign her
somewhere out of the field and out of the way."

"Scully's a better agent than you give her credit
for."

Krycek gave a wintry smile and Skinner felt a
corresponding icy chill seep all the way through to
his bones. There was something very, very wrong with
that smile; he was quite sure he didn't want to hear
Krycek's next words.

"There are other ways to convince you than just having
her pass out," the man opposite informed him gently.
"You may not realize it, but you've already seen a
very graphic demonstration of what else that chip can
make her do."

It was suddenly physically painful to breathe, as if
the very air had turned to ground glass and he was
inhaling tiny, jagged shards into his lungs instead of
oxygen molecules. His whole body felt heavy and numb;
the hand holding his weapon thumped gracelessly down
to his thigh. For a horrifying second he was
absolutely certain he was going to black out.
"Pfaster?" he whispered incredulously.

Krycek nodded, his expression turning gentle, somehow
loving.

"She. . . I saw the apartment. I saw her injuries. She
was in shock, she didn't know Mulder was even there,
let alone whether he had subdued. . . "

"Yes," Krycek agreed affably. "All of those things
were contributing factors. But the fact remains, she
shot an unarmed suspect at point blank range. Has she
=ever= done that before?"

Wordlessly, Skinner shook his head, his mind drifting
back over Dana Scully's checkerboard career, an
employment history unlike any other agent he'd ever
supervised, including that of her partner. She'd come
close to killing her sister's murderer in a fit of
passion fueled by grief and fury, but had backed off
at the crucial last instant, turning Luis Cardinale
over to the legal system rather than squeezing the
trigger to slake her own personal thirst for
retribution.

After she'd removed the chip, prior to becoming ill.

"Mulder. . ."

"Told you what you wanted to hear," Krycek finished
smugly. "She was threatened. Pfaster was going for her
again. He didn't have the suspect securely in custody.
And you believed him. Because you didn't want to think
that she'd actually shoot someone down in cold blood.
Well, you can keep your high moral opinion of her,
because technically, you're right. Scully didn't kill
that slimy piece of shit. We made her do it. Mulder
was right about one thing ­ she had no idea what she
was doing. He saw that when he looked in her eyes
after she fired the shot. He just veered off into
psychobabble to explain why she did it, rather than
looking for the scientific reason."

"Scully. . ."

"No, she doesn't know. Yet. She'll figure it out
eventually. HE knows that sooner or later it's going
to occur to her. Why she remembers everything so
clearly up to the very instant she pulls the trigger,
and then it's a blank until Mulder grabs the gun away
from her and calls for backup." Krycek tucked the
small control gadget back into his pocket. "With any
luck, it won't occur to her for a while yet."

"Why? Why now?" Skinner demanded. . . or tried to. It
came out more like a plaintive whine than an
unequivocal order for details justifying this heinous
experiment.

"It was a test, to see if the chip still functioned as
designed after all this time. Pfaster was convenient.
He was in the right place in her life at the wrong
time. HE knew no one would ever convict her of murder,
not after they got a good look at the evidence against
that sick slob. Not when Mulder would hedge the truth
into a solid case for self-defense. HE knew there
might never be an opportunity to see if this
particular aspect of the chip's mechanism really
worked. Could a person be made to commit an act that
went completely against their basic nature as well as
their professional training? And the answer was yes."

There was a heartbeat of silence. Skinner could hear
the blood pounding in his ears, rushing through his
head.

"But of course, Skinner, you see the bind this puts
you in. I =could= just make her lose consciousness the
next time she's running around with Mulder." He paused
for dramatic effect. "Or I could make her shoot him.
Or you. Hell, I could make her take out the whole
fourth floor of the Hoover Building and be the next
poster child vigilante of the month on all the talk
shows."

Standing slowly, he pinned Skinner to his chair with a
look. "Or you just remove her from the X-Files and
send her back to Quantico to teach, and everybody
lives a long, happy life. Understand? No, don't show
me out. I know the way."

And he was gone. Just like that, leaving Walter
Skinner sitting stiffly on his overstuffed armchair
until the cooing pigeons out on the balcony announced
the arrival of a pale, pink new morning.
 
 

~~~~~~~~~~
 

He spent the next three days wandering through his
office and home routines in a kind of shell-shocked
daze. Krycek hadn't given him any definite deadline,
but Skinner had no doubt the man would make good on
his threat to Scully's well-being should he delay too
long about removing her from the X-Files.

Scully returned to work. When the medical report from
her doctor arrived on his desk, Skinner knew he'd run
out of time.

Everything was negative. According to the hospital
that had run the tests, there was nothing wrong with
her blood, her heart, her head or any other organ or
tissue or system in her body. The cancer was still
sitting dormant, a quiet time bomb that might go off
at any moment or might never go off at all. Perplexed
at Scully's conflicting symptoms, the consulting
physician had scrawled some vaguely non-committal
conclusions about getting more sleep and the benefits
of regular exercise and proper nutrition, with orders
to follow up immediately if another incident occurred.

While Skinner couldn't argue with the sleep factor, he
scoffed at the doctor's banal findings, which
attempted to blame what could not be accounted for
with a microscope and a centrifuge on the patient's
personal habits. Anyone with half an eye could see
that Scully ate sensibly and performed an aerobic
routine on her own if she couldn't get to a gym for a
more strenuous full-body workout.

Keeping up with her hyperactive partner demanded a
level of physical fitness far more rigorous than any
Bureau standard for field agents.

Whereas barely a week ago Skinner had been appealing
to God to spare Scully the agony of a relapse, since
his visit from Krycek he'd actually dared to hope she
was suffering from a physical ailment.

One that could be, if not treated and cured, at least
identified and understood.

When he leafed through the pages of medical
double-speak that described in excruciating detail the
procedures that had been performed to ascertain the
underlying cause for her condition, Skinner felt his
spirits sinking.

Krycek hadn't lied. Scully wasn't fainting because she
was sick; she was doing so at his behest. Or, more
accurately, the Smoking Man's behest.

And would continue to do so. . . or worse. . . until
Skinner transferred her out of the field, away from
the X-Files, and back to a position of relative
harmlessness to the very people who had sent her down
to spy on Mulder in the first place.

After last year, he wouldn't have thought enough of
them survived to even care, but apparently CGB Spender
had ascended to the throne and was making his presence
felt.

To the average person, Dana Scully rarely appeared
happy. On the job she was calm and rigidly controlled;
she expressed all the right emotions in all the right
places: sympathy for victims, acerbity for suspects
and firm confidence for  colleagues. Part of that was
a smokescreen; Scully carried a double burden in being
not only a female in a male-dominated field, but an
undersized female at that. To show anything less than
complete competence at all times would have spelled
her professional doom. In the past seven years, much
of the agonies and indignities that had been thrust in
her path had come as a direct result of her
involvement with the X-Files.

Tossing out all issues with the career suicide that
could result from being viewed as a bouncy,
irrepressibly cheerful woman, Scully didn't have a lot
to be giddy about.

With that in mind, one would think that the prospect
of leaving the X-Files would fill her with more than
some small modicum of pleasure, and that the bearer of
such glad tidings would be bowled over by an
outpouring of rapture and thankfulness.

Unfortunately, Skinner knew all too well how Scully
would take the news of an alleged "promotion" out of
the basement and on to more stable and prestigious
rungs on the ladder of success, government-style.

She'd refuse. =After= she'd demanded an explanation.
And once she heard his reasons behind the maneuver, he
wouldn't lay odds on escaping before she took a swing
at him, breach of protocol or not.

The X-Files were her investment now. The X-Files and
Mulder. Learning the truth about what had been done to
her, to him, to both of them. And why.

Anything less simply wasn't acceptable anymore. The
fresh-faced green agent Section Chief Blevins had sent
tripping merrily down the stairs to ride herd on the
Bureau's most unwanted had vanished a long time ago,
replaced by a woman determined to see her assignment
through in ways her superiors had never imagined.

But the choice before him was her integrity or her
life. . . or Mulder's, or a unending list of unnamed,
as-yet-unknown hostages.

For Skinner, distasteful as it was, it was really no
choice at all. He'd been living under one death
sentence or another since the Smoking Man first
appeared in his office, tapping ashes on the carpet
and issuing lofty orders about the disposition of the
X-Files agents. But this was different. It went beyond
Scully, Mulder and himself, and it had to stop before
the situation went too far for any of them to be
saved.
 

~~~~~~~~~~
 
 

Skinner waited another two days before approaching
her, spending the time shuffling the paperwork and
calling in the favors that would assure her a smooth
transition back to the best available teaching
position at the Academy with all the amenities he
could scrounge on short notice. A secretary. A corner
office with a view. A salary upgrade. A schedule that
didn't require prowler's hours to fulfill, with time
specifically allotted for personal research and
publications.

He told himself that he was not being a coward, that
he was merely waiting until the requests were signed
and processed and Mulder was out of the office at a
speaking engagement at Georgetown University.

The lie comforted him and steeled him for what he had
to do.

It did not inure him to what he found when he trudged
down to the basement, after deciding to deal with
Scully on her own turf rather than summoning her to
his office for a formal showdown. She deserved more,
but it was all he could give her without arousing
suspicion. As it was, Kimberly looked at him strangely
when he announced his destination upon leaving his
office. Assistant Directors simply didn't make
personal visits to agents under their supervision.

The scuffed wooden door ­ the one that still bore only
Mulder's name despite the office's other occupant ­
was slightly ajar. Skinner rapped on it with his
knuckles. "Agent Scully?"

She didn't answer. The door swung in a bit more with
the pressure from his knock, and Skinner stuck his
head through the gap. "Scully?"

For a second, he thought the place was empty, that
she'd just gone out to the ladies room or to refill
her coffee cup. Then he looked down.

Krycek had grown tired of waiting, it seemed.

Scully lay face down on the cold concrete floor, an
open file folder next to one outstretched hand, its
contents scattered around her head like a white paper
halo.

Oh, shit. He knelt beside her and pressed two fingers
against her neck, relieved to find a pulse and to feel
her breath blowing lightly against his other hand,
cupped close to her mouth.

God only knew how long she'd been lying here.

Despite its subterranean location, the X-Files office
more closely resembled the attic of an old Virginia
manor house occupied by eccentric residents than it
did a dank basement. Battered, mismatched office
furniture sat cheek and jowl with lovely antique
mahogany file cabinets. Objects from the arcane to the
mundane littered all available space on shelves. An
antique microscope nestled next to a slide projector,
further illustrating the incongruity of the place.
Books on witchcraft, myths, legends, and the occult
were interspersed with more conventional tomes
involving Bureau procedure, law and medicine. Colored
thumbtacks adorned the walls, holding up newspaper
articles with bold headlines and blurry photographs of
potential flying objects. Mulder's "I Want To Believe"
poster, or rather, its recent replacement, presided
over the whole organized mess like a stern sentry.

In light of all the chaos it was almost impossible to
believe the place had been completely gutted by fire
less than two years ago.

Somewhere along the line Mulder had acquired a
standard Army cot. It stood along the far wall under a
pile of dusty cardboard boxes, one of which was
labeled "Human Remains" in bold black marker. Skinner
didn't even want to hazard a guess at what might be in
the rest of them.

Agents could come and go to the Hoover Building as
they pleased; the time clocks of criminals rarely
followed a convenient nine-to-five schedule. Working
through the night in the building was part of the
drill.

=Sleeping= in the building, however, was frowned upon.
Agents had homes. They were expected to use them.

Yet Skinner suspected Mulder's cot had seen more than
its fair share of use over the past seven years.

Especially during one three-month period back in 1994.

He picked his way over to it and began shifting boxes,
thankful to find that most of them, including the
"Human Remains" box, were empty and even more
pleasantly surprised to discover that the bed
underneath was neatly made up with clean sheets, a
navy wool blanket and a pillow. He turned back the
covers and padded back for Scully.

If anyone had told him that he'd be pressed intimately
against Dana Scully's warm, pliant body not once, but
twice within a fortnight, he'd have told them they
were crazy.

In a way "they" were indeed crazy. Unresisting though
she was, Scully was far from warm. In fact, she was
distinctly chilled; he could feel tiny tremors running
through her as her body succumbed to its natural
instinct to shiver in response to a loss of heat.

Skinner laid her carefully on the cot, pulling off her
shoes and sliding her under the covers. An ugly bruise
was forming along her left temple, an indicator of
just how hard she'd hit the floor when she'd gone down
this time.

It had been so sudden she hadn't had time to put out
her hands to break her fall.

Mulder took it for granted that the office was not
only bugged for sound, but also under video
surveillance. Assuming that was true, Krycek probably
knew he was here now and wouldn't prolong the charade
much longer. Any minute now Scully would open her eyes
and jump at the sight of her boss looming over her
while she lay in bed in her office.

The bump on her head might have changed the game plan;
he debated whether to call security and request an
ambulance. The unwelcome vision of Krycek tapping a
few keys and Scully quietly expiring during the ride
to the hospital changed his mind.

Krycek had said the Smoking Man didn't want her dead.
That didn't mean he wouldn't just order her death
anyway if things got too complicated. If a whole
platoon of dedicated doctors got their hands on Scully
for the sole purpose of learning why a perfectly
healthy woman in the prime of her life couldn't stay
conscious, one of them was bound to insist on further
examination of the chip, dreaming of instant research
possibilities, publication glories, endless grants and
finally, Nobel prize potential.

Scully wouldn't last a day. Neither would the unlucky
doctor whose diligence revealed the chip's attendant
secrets.

So instead of reaching for the telephone, Skinner went
back down the hall to run his handkerchief under the
spray from the water fountain. Folding the soggy cloth
into a rough square, he sat down next to Scully on the
cot and gently applied it to the swelling contusion on
the side of her face.

For several long, worrying minutes, nothing happened.
Skinner had just resigned himself to making that phone
call when Scully moved, rolling her head away from the
uncomfortable wetness he was holding against her. A
minute frown of displeasure turned the corners of her
mouth down and furrowed her brow.

"Agent Scully?"

She blinked, her hands moving restlessly under the
blanket.

"Scully, can you hear me?"

Skinner had been prepared for more confusion, more
agitation, a scenario similar to what had occurred
when she'd awoken to Mulder's caress in his office the
previous week. While he wasn't expecting Scully to
break down hysterically, sobbing and screaming and
generally behaving in a thoroughly uncharacteristic
fashion, he was surprised to see her turn
extraordinarily calm eyes in his direction in response
to his question.

Krycek said she'd figure it out eventually.
"Eventually" had just come a little sooner than
Skinner wanted it to.

"Sir." She spoke volumes into that one word, not
questioning how she'd come to be swaddled under the
covers with him sitting by her like a fond parent
indulging a much-loved and fevered child with a cold
compress and a bedtime story.

Oh, I've got a bedtime story for you, all right,
Scully. Unfortunately it reads like one of the
original versions of Grimm's Fairy Tales, not those
sanitized Disney cartoons where the princess gets
kissed by the prince and the wicked witch is banished
forever. No, this one is the horror story those
brothers intended their anecdotes to be when they
first set them down on paper.

"Are you all right?"

Scully reached up and plucked the handkerchief off her
face, wincing. She cautiously levered herself into a
sitting position and gingerly touched the side of her
head, exploring the damage to assure herself that it
was indeed minimal, although undoubtedly painful.
"Yes, sir."

He was about to voice another meaningless inquiry
about her health, delaying the inevitable, but Scully
beat him to it.

She dropped her hand, stared him straight in the eye,
and flatly demanded, "Tell me."

Up until that point, Skinner had managed to maintain a
small pocket of hope, nurturing the fantasy as one
would a tiny garden plot. Now the weeds sprang up and
choked the life out of the tentatively budding flowers
in one violent growth spurt.

She knew. She knew something was terribly wrong, and
that he had the answers to all her questions, and
lying to her or dancing around the truth with nebulous
and cryptic statements was not going to satisfy her
this time.

Of course, such machinations had never satisfied
Scully in the past, either, but this time she wouldn't
allow him the luxury of retreating.

So he told her everything.
 

~~~~~~~~~~
 

In his years with the Bureau, Skinner had seen agents
broken. He'd watched as some of the strongest men and
women he'd ever known fell to their knees and bawled
when the atrocities, the viciousness, the utter
brutality of the crimes they were investigating became
too much to bear. His own conscience was heavy with
the abominations he'd witnessed. . . and some that
he'd even participated in, however noble his cause had
seemed at the moment.

Scully's stolid demeanor during his recital put them
all to shame.

She said nothing as he quietly poured out the sordid
tale of Krycek's visit and his bequest, but she grew
paler and paler until the bruise stood out like a
brand on her face, a colorful new tattoo to mark yet
another crushing moment in her life.

His original plan had been to judiciously edit out any
details of what role the microchip had played in
Pfaster's death.

Now, mesmerized by Scully's unblinking aquamarine
stare and unnerved by her continuing silence, he found
himself recounting even that ghastly tidbit.

She closed her eyes and pressed her lips together in a
thin line, swaying slightly.

Fearing she might black out again, this time without
any prompting from Krycek's depraved toy, he gripped
her arm to steady her. "Scully?"

She flinched a little at the contact, but her eyes
remained closed, her dark lashes resting on her ashen
cheeks like tiny ladies' fans. "It's okay," she said
softly, her voice catching just a bit. She took a deep
breath and exhaled slowly. "Please go on, sir."

There wasn't much more to the narrative other than the
ultimatum. Leave the X-Files and live, or stay and run
the risk of dying or being the cause of uncountable
deaths.

When Scully opened her eyes again and regarded him
with icy resolve, Skinner realized she'd already
elected to follow a different path.

A chillingly final third option he'd neglected to
consider when he'd made his well-intentioned decision
about her future.

Aghast, he released her. "No. Scully, you can't."

"I have to."

She sounded perfectly calm, perfectly rational, as if
this was the only reasonable choice to make.

"I've arranged for you to go to Quantico. You'll be
safe there. Mulder will be safe."

Scully laughed, a short, derisive bark. "You of all
people should know that HE deals in lies. What's to
stop the him from deciding next month that I should
leave the Bureau altogether? Or that he needs to do
more 'research' on this. . . this =thing=?" Her voice
cracked, betraying for the first and only time all the
self-doubt and mental castigation she'd inflicted upon
herself since she'd ended Donnie Pfaster's miserable
life. "I =murdered= a man, sir, because of it and
because of HIS whims. There's only one way I'll ever
be 'safe' from what you've told me."

"You'll die."

She shook her head vigorously. "It was never clearly
and definitively determined what was the deciding
factor in my remission." She paused, then reached out
and touched his arm. "Even if it were true, I can't
live like this," she continued softly. "You know that,
sir."

Eyes focused on the small, cold hand resting on the
sleeve of his white shirt, Skinner nodded. He did
know, and he did understand.

She lifted her hand and nodded back. "Thank you, sir."

"Scully. . ." Skinner was finally able to meet her
gaze again, but his attention drifted sideways when
she brushed back a strand of hair that had fallen
forward into her eyes.

After years of seeing her with a shoulder-length bob,
it was still somewhat jarring to adjust to her latest
fashion statement, a brutally short clip that left her
neck exposed and barely skimmed her jawline.

"What, sir?" She cocked her head slightly, fingers
playing with the blanket that puddled around her hips.

Skinner had been about to plow through a bumbling
speech of admiration and support; it seemed to be his
style that he could only say such things to Scully
when they were faced with dire circumstances and one
or both of them were poised on the brink of death. But
all thoughts of such a profound and heartfelt oratory
were driven from his mind by the sight of her shorn
locks, and he covered it by mouthing some platitude
about expediting the reversal of her transfer.

Scully nodded again, accepting his remark and
apparently not noticing anything amiss. "I appreciate
it, sir."

He stood up to leave and she got to her feet as well,
looking shorter and more fragile than ever without her
heels to give her that extra dimension of size.

Scully retrieved her footwear and her fallen paperwork
and returned to her desk. Skinner plodded back up the
stairs to the lobby, anxious to avoid the elevator and
savor a few more minutes of precious solitude.

With her current hairstyle, there would be no way for
her to conceal her actions from Mulder when she
removed the chip for good.

Until that time, however, he would keep to himself all
the details about the potential danger she posed to
herself, her partner and others as an armed agent
whose behavior could be controlled by an outside
influence.

Scully was good at hiding things.

So was he.

End
 

Author's notes: Wonders never cease, I wrote a Season
7 piece during Season 7. <g> After pondering all the
ramifications of "Orison" long and hard, I decided
this was the answer that would allow me to sleep at
night. My eternal thanks to my patient and
long-suffering betas, Jill Selby and Dasha K, who give
me titles, remind me to match my pronouns with my
verbs, and do not permit me to embarrass myself. :-)

Feedback is adored at jeanrobinson@yahoo.com
 
 

=====
Jean Robinson's fanfic is at http://members.xoom.com/JeanR64/index.html