Dilemma
By Summer
summer@camelot.bradley.edu
Date: Sun, 17 Sep 1995 14:29:44 GMT
_The X-Files_: all characters copyright Chris Carter and Ten
Thirteen Productions. No infringement intended.
Mulder, Scully, Skinner, etc. all belong to those mentioned above
but i made up the rest of it. Non-X-Files characters and situations
are MINE MINE MINE!.
There IS **adult language** and subject matter in this story.
This one is a first draft and i'm not at all satisfied with it.
Constructive criticism would be welcome at summer@camelot.bradley.edu.
I hate to be cavalier about the details, but if i took the time to
verify all the facts, i'd never get the story done. However, if you
know that something in this story is mistaken, please do write me!
I'll fix it.
Since i produce a zine (DAZE, available from 818 N. Race St. /
Princeton, IN / 47670) i am _very_ supportive of all fanzine efforts;
if anyone wishes to reprint this story in a fanzine, go for it! (Just
leave my name on it, please.) That everything? Okay, here's the story.
***************************************************
Dilemma
An X-Files Story
by Summer
NOTES: I'll confess up front. This one was inspired and
heavily influenced by Amperage's "Catie" and Terri Monture's
"Fission". I also borrowed a name for Cancer Man from
Amperage's "The Letter Box" and cross-training seminars and
a lecture for Scully from S. Esty's "The Box"; basketball
games with the guys from Behavioral is the legacy of
Amperage's "Therapy". I hope these authors take the
borrowings from and similarities to their own works as the
homage it is meant to be. Also, the notion that Mulder and
Scully work with other investigators on cases outside the X-
Files comes from the novels by Charles L. Grant. Extensive
use of music in this one, with a great debt owed to Trent
Reznor, Jello Biafra and Virtual Jesus. CAUTION, adult
language and situations-- PG-13.
This is for Eric Pierce, who always knew that Mulder
loved Nine Inch Nails.
* * * * *
"Wish there was something REAL, wish there was
something TRUE--"
Special Agent Fox Mulder hesitated at the door to the
weight room in the FBI gym. Someone else was already in
there, playing music at combustible volume. He recognized
the song. He also recognized the sounds of a punching bag
getting the stuffing thrashed out of it.
This was the only workout room Mulder really liked in
the gym; the weight equipment took up half the space, while
the rest was devoted to punching bags and exercise mats. The
people who frequented the weight room tended to be gung-ho
Zen exercisers who had no interest in anything but pushing
the limits of their own bodies. Now and then agents with a
mad on would take out their troubles on the punching bags,
but such people were generally too pissed to notice anyone
else. Either way, the weight room offered Mulder a decent
workout while allowing him to evade the attention of his
colleagues.
Icy rain had curtailed Mulder's usual morning jog. He
probably wouldn't have noticed it much, but his partner Dana
Scully had called his cellular phone to say "If you're out
running, and I know you are, stop and go home, Mulder-- it's
freezing. You'll catch your death."
To which he had replied "Shouldn't that be, my death
will catch me?" But his teeth had been chattering when he
said it, and Mulder had to admit that jogging in the sleet
at seven a.m. on a cold Sunday morning wasn't the brightest
thing he'd ever done. After assuring his partner that he'd
take her sage advice, Mulder had packed it in for the gym.
The place was pretty quiet this early, but this being the
FBI, there was some activity in nearly every room. He'd
really, really been hoping that no one would be in the
weight room. But from the sound of it, someone had set up
camp in there with a stereo and a shitload of frustration to
work off.
Mulder knew the feeling. He and his partner had just
come off a particularly ugly case... kids in a small
Wisconsin town had apparently been the subject of
experiments involving the effects of alien DNA on human
beings. In the denouement of the investigation, Mulder had
tracked down the killer who had murdered his Deep Throat
contact-- only to end up locked in a meat freezer while the
local sheriff gunned down the assassin. If he hadn't gone
off half-cocked with no backup, if he'd pieced the evidence
together a little sooner, if, if, if-- four days later,
Mulder was still resolving the case report and struggling
with his bitter doubts.
The music was ratcheting to the song's conclusion, the
frenetic guitar nearly drowning a scream: "Wish there was
something REAL in this world full of you-- in this world
full of YOU--" Abruptly the sound cut off. He felt the
anticipation wind in his muscles for the one two three
seconds it took before the clangorous wall of guitar
distortion descended again for the next song.
Mulder looped the strap of his duffle bag around his
hand and slipped into the weight room before he had time to
consider the consequences. He really, really wanted to pound
on one of those punching bags, and he really, really wanted
to hear this song while he was doing it. If the stereo owner
had a problem with the presence of "Spooky" Mulder, the
stereo owner was welcome to go to hell.
"Gave UP trying to figure it OUT, my head got LOST
along the way..." Trent Reznor's panther snarl was
corroborated by an equally savage growl from the stereo
owner as she leveled a deadly series of uppercut thrusts at
the punching bag, her slender arms corded with tension. Her
teeth were bared, gritted together harshly as she hissed the
lyrics. "...Eve, come, COME come fill me UP come come come let me get
through to YOU! This isn't MEANT to LAST, this is FOR--
RIGHT-- NOW, this isn't MEANT to LAST, this is FOR-- RIGHT--
NOW--"
He should leave. He should definitely turn around and
take his own anger and work it off someplace else...
"I KNOW it's all getting AWAY and it comes to ME as no
surPRISE-- I KNOW what's COMING to ME is NEVER GOING TO
ARRIVE--" Her sudden intake of air sounded almost like a
choked sob. "Fresh BLOOD through tired SKIN-- new SWEAT to
DROWN ME IN-- dress up this ROTTEN CARcass JUST to make it
LOOK ALIVE..." she backed away from the swinging weight of
the punching bag, fists clenched at her sides, head tipped
back. Her lips formed the words silently. "Come, come, come
fix me up, come come come let me inside of you..." she
dropped to a crouch, coiling in preparation for some new
move. "Come, come, come fill me up come come come nothing
gets through to YOU!" In one swift move she propelled
herself from a squat to slam against the punching bag in a
full-bodied heave that sent it careening wildly and nearly
knocked the wind out of her. She continued to dodge and slam
into the bag, each successive move degenerating further into
chaotic violence as she snarled with the song, "I want you
to make me. I want you to take me. I want you to break me. I
want you to throw me away..." until finally she hurled
herself against it once more and emptied the dregs of that
fearful rage into the harsh, whispered scream of "THROW ME
AWAY!"
She dropped to her knees, every breath heaving her
entire body with effort. Her face was nearly scarlet; she
dripped sweat; she looked as though any moment, she would
collapse into tears.
And then she saw him.
The shocked, vulnerable expression that widened her
round brown eyes was completely at odds with the ferocity of
her workout. Mulder was equally surprised that he was still
transfixed, equally embarrassed to have intruded. They
looked at each other across the weight room for an
excruciating eternity of speechlessness while a low, ominous
instrumental thrummed in the air.
"I... uhm... didn't realize anyone was in here," she
managed finally, struggling to regain her composure and her
breath. She rose shakily and grabbed the towel beside her
stereo, wiping at her still-reddened face. The instrumental
segued suddenly-- "SLAVE SCREAMS! He thinks he knows what he
wants--" making them both jump. She quickly stopped the CD.
"I just walked in a minute ago," he replied rather
awkwardly. He summoned up a sheepish, apologetic smile.
"Sorry I barged in on your exorcism."
"Exorcism?" A hint of an answering smile played across
her lips. "I suppose that's apt." He tried to come up with a
decent response that would allow him to retreat with no
further humiliation, and blanked. Then, "You're-- Agent
Mulder, right?" she asked, puzzlement creasing her brow.
"Used to be with Violent Crimes?"
"Right," he answered, startled again.
She nodded, running her hands over her wet, stringy
hair. "I'm in Violent Crimes. Emily McGraw-- Emmy." She
started to offer her hand, then looked at her sweat-slicked
palm and gave him a disarmingly open look of bemused dismay.
Mulder felt an involuntary half-grin misshape his
mouth. He proffered his hand anyway. She smiled back, rubbed
the towel quickly between her palms, and shook his hand, her
touch light but firm.
"You must be new," he said, leaning back against the
wall.
"Four months," she agreed. "You don't work the office
much, I've noticed."
He didn't pretend not to know what she meant. "Not if
I can help it."
"I don't blame you. Sometimes it's as bad as high
school up there," she grimaced.
Mulder raised an eyebrow. "I always thought so, but
I'm biased. I got stuck with a reputation and it's soured me
on office politics."
"I know. I've heard a little about it despite myself."
Emmy added, "What I haven't heard is your first name, Agent
Mulder. Or is it classified?"
"It should be," he muttered. "Fox Mulder."
She acknowledged this with a slight shrug. "You shut
in by the weather too?"
He nodded. "My partner would never let me live it down
if I came in tomorrow with a head cold from running in the
rain..."
"You work with Dana Scully..." At his murmured
affirmation, Emmy continued, "I listened to her give a
lecture on preserving the integrity of a crime scene-- she's
fantastic. It was only a ninety minute talk, but she's one
of the best instructors I've encountered."
"I'm sure she'd love to hear that."
"She did," Emmy grinned. "I told her. Good teachers
are too rare to go unappreciated."
Mulder allowed his dangling duffle bag to rest on the
ground and let go of the strap. "So where did you acquire
such an appreciation for good teachers?"
"UVA," she replied with a shrug. "Criminology and
international law-- and then a run through CIA training."
"CIA?" Mulder's eyebrows shot up.
"Mm-hm."
His curiosity irrevocably piqued, Mulder asked, "How
did you end up with the Bureau?"
A wry smile graced her lips. "Actually, it was at the
cross-training conference where I heard Agent Scully speak.
All the acronyms accosted me, but in the end-- well, Walter
Skinner can be a very persuasive man."
"Persuasive is not exactly the word I would use," he
answered drily.
She studied him carefully. "I've heard there've been
problems with Skinner and your division..." Emmy flushed as
his eyes darted to search her face intently. "It's mostly a
lot of hot air from Agent Colton," she added hastily.
He shrugged and made himself let it go. "That's no
surprise. So enlighten me, who are `all the acronyms'?"
She rolled her eyes in exagerrated exasperation.
"Where to start? FBI, IRS, NSA, DEA..."
"National Security Agency?" Mulder fought to keep the
disbelief out of his tone.
Emmy spread her hands helplessly.
"UVA, law and criminology?" he challenged.
A sly smile formed. "So maybe I'm okay with
languages," she said diffidently.
"How many?"
Emmy slung the towel around her neck. "Spanish,
English, some Serbo-Croatian, Russian, German, French,
Japanese, Cantonese, Hunan... I don't really keep count."
Mulder whistled appreciatively. "That would explain
it... Oxford is beginning to sound like a charm school by
comparison."
Emmy laughed; the sound was far richer than Mulder
expected, and he found himself chuckling with her. She shook
her head. "From what I've heard, you're the best analyst
around, Mulder. You didn't get there from charm school."
He allowed himself to feel obscurely flattered before
changing tack. "From what I've heard," he replied, "you like
Nine Inch Nails."
"I love Nine Inch Nails," she answered, a slight blush
crossing her face again.
"Yeah... sometimes, I really need to hear _Broken_.
Even if I don't want to hear it, I need to now and then."
"Did you see the concert? They were here a while back
on the way to the Woodstock sequel."
"I was out of town on a case. Aaaaaaand... I dunno, I
think I'm a little old to show up at one of their concerts."
"Too old to rock'n'roll, too young to die? C'mon,
you're what, thirty?"
"Thirty-four."
"That's nothing! I'm twenty-eight, you're making me
feel like an old lady."
"After a workout like that? I doubt it."
She ducked her head. "I had a lot on my mind. You know
how it is."
"Absolutely," he utilized his most gentle prompting
tone. "Anything bothering you in particular?"
She peered up at him from under her eyelashes. "You
wouldn't be trying to analyze ME, would you, Agent Mulder?"
"Maybe a little," he admitted. "I'm a compulsive
psychoanalyst-- but don't worry, I'm treating myself for
it."
Emmy grinned briefly, then folded her hands, clearly
indecisive. "I probably should get some advice," she said,
"but I hate to go to the counselors... I really don't know
how to handle this."
"Sounds pretty serious." He searched her face,
concerned. "Is it something you can talk about?"
She shifted, bit her lip, looked at him uncomfortably.
"You know Jim Knox?"
He nodded.
"He's my partner..." Emmy sneered a the floor. "I
can't work with him anymore."
"Why not?" Mulder asked quietly.
e shook her head. "Everything was fine..." her eyes
travelled restlessly across the walls and ceiling. "We were
working late Friday night and he, ah. He made a pass at me.
I thought Bureau policy was pretty clear on that kind of
thing, you know?" she demanded, her shoulders drawing up
defensively as she looked at Mulder. "I can't work with him
any more, but I don't want to start some kind of, of,
inquiry-- Jim's so damn proud and stubborn, he'll deny
everything--"
"What did you say at the time?"
"I didn't know what to say. I mean, I said no,
naturally, asked him what the hell he was thinking-- it just
came out of nowhere! This didn't have to happen. I'm not
here for long, just to get in some FBI field experience
before they assign me. This shouldn't have happened."
Mulder gauged her cautiously, moved closer and asked
as neutrally as possible, "Emmy. Was this a pass or was it
an assault?"
She glanced up at him. "Call it an aggressive
advance," she said shortly.
"And in legal terms, UVA?"
She stared blankly at the floor. "I said no," she
answered dully, "and he didn't stop. In legal terms you
might technically call it attempted rape." She looked up at
him again, angry and confused. "But it wasn't-- like that.
He wasn't trying to, I mean, it was just a situation that
got out of hand. Once I pushed him away, he backed off and
apologized. I don't want to hurt him, or his career. I just
can't work with him any more."
Mulder nodded slowly and then indicated the
weightlifting benches. "C'mon. Let's sit down over here.
We'll figure something out, okay?"
Emmy followed him to the benches, sitting cross-legged
on one while he took the next, facing her. She looked back
at his duffle bag, abandoned near the door. "What about your
workout? Oh, God. I'm sorry. This isn't your problem, I
shouldn't be bothering you--"
He held up a hand. "You're not bothering me. I asked
you what was wrong, and you told me. Are you sorry you told
me?"
"Well... no..." A smile flickered for a moment.
"You're probably the best person to talk to, really; I mean,
with you I know this won't be the subject of office gossip
tomorrow."
Mulder drew a plus over his t-shirt pocket. "Cross my
heart."
"I appreciate it," she said with a sigh. "What should
I do?"
"Probably the best thing would be to get Knox to
request a change of partner with you. If you both ask to be
split up, then neither of you will seem responsible. Under
the circumstances, I'm sure Knox will go along with it. You
can tell your supervisor that you've given it four months,
but basic personality differences prevent an effective
partnership."
"But we have been effective," she protested. "Our
efficiency ratings topped out the charts."
"You don't think they'll accept that excuse for a
transfer?"
"I don't know... I don't think so..."
"Can you think of any reason you could cite that they
would accept?"
Emmy considered carefully. "At the risk of sounding
capricious, I suppose I could say that I want to get as wide
a range of experience as I can before my first assignment--"
"Ah, what assignment is that?" Mulder interrupted,
nonplussed.
"I'm only here to get FBI field experience," she
explained, "to prepare for my real first assignment-- see,
Skinner wants me to work undercover."
"Undercover," he repeated slowly.
A quick nod. "So did the CIA." She smiled a little,
knotted her hands nervously. "I'm a spy in training. Colton
told me if you found out I was in Violent Crimes here, you'd
pitch a fit..."
"Why is that?"
She shrugged apologetically. "They think you're
paranoid."
Despite himself, Mulder asked, "What do you think?"
She met his gaze earnestly. "I don't know you,
Mulder."
Would you like to? he wondered, but pushed the thought
down unmercifully. "You're reserving judgement, mm?"
"I suppose so..."
"Then it's only fair that I return the favor."
Emmy's smile now was open and warm. "Thank you."
He returned the smile. "Okay. You tell your supervisor
you'd like to get some experience with other agents, in
order to better prepare for your undercover work. The first
person you request should be an agent with a very different
specialty or style than Agent Knox..."
She bit her lip. "You and Agent Scully work with other
partners sometimes, don't you?"
"Yes. We're assigned together on the X-Files, but I
consult for Behavioral, and Scully does forensics for other
sections." Mulder retained his impassive expression,
ignoring the disappointment sliding down his throat. <You
ought to be flattered,> he told himself sternly, <if she
thinks enough of you to want to work with you. Idiot.> After
all, what had he been hoping for?
"Would you mind if-- I'd talk to her about it first,
of course-- would you mind if I requested to work with Agent
Scully?" she asked uncertainly. "Skinner heard me rave about
her lecture, and she's definitely got a different approach
from Jim. He thinks the case is all about the people
involved."
Mulder covered his surprise imperfectly. Emmy hurried
on, "I know it's a lot to ask, I understand if--"
"No, that's fine with me. I could talk to Scully about
it this afternoon, if you like," he offered.
"You don't have to do that."
"We're going over some files. It's no trouble," Mulder
assured her. "The faster we can get you out of that
situation, the better it will be for everyone. I'll talk to
Scully and either she or I will give you a call tonight and
see how this will work... okay?"
"That's wonderful," Emmy replied with clear relief. "I
don't know how to thank you."
Mulder grinned. "You could tell me about that Nine
Inch Nails concert..."
An hour later, Emily McGraw got into her car and
placed a call on her cellular phone.
"Hello? Hi. It worked." She paused. "Yes. I think so."
She listened, fiddling with the portable stereo on her
lap.
"Right. I know. I will."
She clicked off the phone and put the stereo on the
passenger's seat. She replaced _Broken_ with Nine Inch
Nails' _The Downward Spiral_ and turned up the volume.
"Oh, my beautiful liar," Trent Reznor's voice keened.
"Oh, my precious whore. My disease, my infection. I am so
impure."
She smiled, turned the key in the ignition, and
started driving home.
"Devils speak of the ways in which she'll manifest.
Angels bleed from the tainted touch of my caress. Need to
contaminate, to alleviate this loneliness. I now know the
depths I reach are limitless. Oh, my beautiful liar..."
* * * * *
======================================
Here's part 2--please send all comments to Summer at
summer@camelot.bradley.edu....thanks :)
**************************************************
_The X-Files_: all characters copyright Chris Carter and Ten
Thirteen Productions. They shouldn't have made up something so cool if
they didn't want us to write fan fiction about it. However, i don't
really want to upset them, so no infringement upon their copyrights is
intended.
Mulder, Scully, Skinner, etc. all belong to those mentioned above
but i made up the rest of it and it's MINE!
There IS **adult language** and subject matter in this story.
If you're worried about length-- um, so am i. But i promise that
at least four parts will be posted daily as i edit them, and that the
end of the story WILL appear BEFORE the season premiere!!
Here's part two of "Dilemma"...
* * *
"Is that everything?" Mulder leaned forward on the
couch and rubbed one hand wearily over his mouth before
resting his crossed arms on his knees.
"It's done," his partner affirmed, pushing her red-
gold hair back. Dana Scully closed up her laptop and relaxed
back into the comfort of her favorite overstuffed chair.
Sometimes it still struck her: she was home. Not in the
hospital, or an anonymous hotel, but home, surrounded by
familiar furniture, comforted by the insulation of her
clothes and books and music. It seemed important to reaffirm
that this place was her home; she recognized that after her
bad time a few months ago, it would be easy to hole up in
the office, to regard it as her sanctuary. She wouldn't let
that happen to her. Let Mulder spend all his time pooring
over papers and piling his stuff in the basement room that
housed the X-Files; let him keep a change of clothes tucked
away in one of the cabinets for the occasions when he
actually fell asleep there. Dana Scully was dedicated, but
she had no intention of completely surrendering her life to
her occupation, as her partner had.
"Hey Scully," Mulder said suddenly, "what do you know
about Emily McGraw?"
Her expression was both exasperated and savvy as she
answered, "I was wondering when you'd ask about her." At his
inquisitive look, she continued, "Emily's been assigned to
Violent Crimes for the past four months or so, and before
she went through Quantico, she trained with the CIA. Skinner
recruited her at one of those cross-training conferences we
all love so dearly-- rumor has it that various agencies were
dying for the chance to groom her for undercover work. She's
just with us to get some field experience before the Bureau
puts her undercover. Why the interest? Think she bugged your
coffee cup?"
Mulder's lips flattened in mock annoyance. "Why not?
Frohike bugged yours," he returned. "Nah. I ran into her in
the gym this morning. She's having some troubles with her
partner."
"Jim Knox?" Scully tsked. "He's been a little erratic
since his wife left him last year. I don't know why they
were assigned together. Knox is a solid agent, but from what
I've heard, Emily's a firebrand... does he resent her?"
"Not at all," Mulder said, "he likes her very much. He
chose to express his admiration with an `aggressive
advance', to quote Emmy. She's putting in for a new partner
tomorrow morning."
Scully made a disgusted sound. "How aggressive? Is she
going to report him?"
"No. No, she doesn't want to hurt Knox, just get away
from him. We talked about it and she thought things might
work out best if she asked for a new partner. The excuse
will be that she wants the experience of working with a
variety of people, in preparation for undercover work."
"And she wants to work with you," Scully anticipated.
"No," Mulder grinned, "she wants to work with you."
"Me?" Scully blinked.
"Apparently, you impressed the hell out of her with
your lecture at that conference."
"Yeah, she spoke to me about it when she first got
assigned," Scully remembered. "What do you think?"
"It's your call, Scully. Whenever we aren't caught up
in the X-Files, you'd be out on routine cases with Emmy
instead of doing piecework forensics for the rest of the
department. Doesn't sound like it has much to do with me."
"You don't think it's all some elaborate plot?"
Scully's tone was polished with practiced cynicism.
"Spies generally don't go around telling people
they're spies. Emmy told me about her CIA training, and that
she's going into undercover investigations-- which ought to
make me suspect her, right? And if I suspect her, I'll be on
my guard around her. Which would make spying on me very
difficult. Q.E.D., she is not a spy."
"What if they thought of that," Scully said
reasonably, "and had her tell you she's a spy so that you'd
think she couldn't be spying on you because she told you she
was a spy?"
"Say that five times fast and I'll answer," he
retorted. "If you don't want to work with her, for whatever
reason, that's fine. But I don't think there's much danger
that she's spying on either of us."
Scully smiled. "I keep forgetting that you're
selectively paranoid." She leaned forward in her chair,
smile fading. "But justifiably paranoid. Mulder, if you said
you suspected her, I'd take that seriously. I'll do it; I'd
like to work with her."
"Great. She's going to go in first thing tomorrow and
get Knox to request the switch with her. I told her we'd let
her know tonight if she'd be working with you-- do you want
to call, or should I?"
"You can do it," Scully told him. "I have a date
tonight with my sister and a Mel Gibson movie."
"Yeah? Say hi to Mel for me."
"Which one?" she joked.
"Tell Melissa I said hi," Mulder enunciated clearly,
"and if you see him, you can tell Mel I thought _Forever
Young_ sucked."
Scully pretended shock. "Blasphemy. Hey, Mulder?"
"Yeah?"
"Did Frohike really bug my coffee cup?"
"Hello?"
"Hi, Emmy? Mulder."
"Hi! What's the verdict?"
"I talked to Scully. She'd like to work with you."
"That's fantastic. I really appreciate this, Mulder."
"Tell that to Scully. It was her decision."
"I mean, for everything. For listening, and advising
me... I don't know, for not running away screaming after I
massacred that punching bag."
"If pressed, I would have to admit that I was just too
scared to move."
"You should have seen the mosh pit at the concert. I'm
telling you, the music is even more intense when you see
them live."
"I'll take your word for it. What's that you're
playing now?"
"Deep Forest. This is my trance music for aikido."
"Your what for what?"
"Ah, trance music. Sort of ambient, kind of techno,
not really dance music. It helps me find my center and
concentrate. Aikido is, you know, martial arts."
"I suppose you're a martial arts master, too."
"Well... I've studied aikido and jujitsu since I was a
kid."
"Languages, law, martial arts... Emmy, is there
anything you're not good at?"
"Actually, there are a lot of things about myself I'd
like to improve."
"Striving for perfection?"
"Always."
"Why?"
"Why do anything?"
"Ooh, every dilemma of religion, philosophy,
metaphysics, and psychology, neatly summed up in one
question."
"But can you answer it...?"
"Not to your satisfaction. Or to mine. How did we
become mired in existentialist debate?"
"That's my fault. I ask everyone I meet what they
think is the meaning of life."
"Why's that?"
"Just in case I ever meet someone who knows the
answer."
"Okay... if I ever find out what the meaning of life
is, I promise I'll give you a call."
"You can give me a call even if you don't know the
meaning of life. See you Monday."
"...See you."
Mulder greeted his partner Monday morning with a grim
"Look what I've got."
Scully, barely inside the office door, glared at him
for a moment and stalked over to her desk to shed her coat
and satchel. "We have a case?"
"If only." He waved a slip of paper tweezered between
two fingers as though he could barely stand to touch the
page. "Skinner sent down a note from on high requesting the
pleasure of our company at eight-thirty sharp."
"Maybe he has something for us," Scully said
optimistically as she came over to pluck the memo from her
partner's hand.
Mulder merely scowled in mute disagreement. Scully
surveyed the terse lines with lifted eyebrows and shrugged.
"Whatever it is, we have half an hour. That's just enough
time to get caffeinated. C'mon, we'll grab some coffee
upstairs--"
He held up a thermos. "Have some if you want it; I'll
pass. Normally I'd take your prescription, Scully, but I
don't think I want to be fully concious for this
rendezvous."
She retrieved her mug from her desk drawer and
selected a cup from Mulder's randomly scattered collection;
this one had 'Don't question authority. It doesn't know
either.' printed across the side. Mulder slumped further in
his chair until his chin rested on his hands, his fingers
splayed flat across the blotter. Scully filled both cups and
placed her partner's mug a few inches in front of his nose;
he shot her an unreadable look and pushed it away.
She suppressed a sigh and leaned against his desk,
crossing her ankles as she sipped her coffee. "What makes
you think it'll be that bad?"
"Oh, nothing. I just went off without backup and got
locked in a meat freezer while Andy Griffith gunned down our
suspect. Little things like that do tend to set the big man
off."
Scully concentrated on the heat of her drink. He was
right; their last investigation had been inconclusive, and a
nameless man without a past was dead. Skinner was likely to
tear into them, and the brunt of his ire would probably rest
with Mulder. On the other hand... "If Skinner was going to
reprimand us for that, don't you think he would have called
us in before now?"
He glanced up at her from his brooding slump. "Maybe,"
he conceded cautiously. "Or maybe he's just been waiting to
pounce when we least expect it." Mulder rose and hooked his
suit jacket from the peg, tossed it across his desk and
unrolled his sleeves. "How's the coffee?"
"S'good."
"Better than that swill upstairs, anyway..." He picked
up his mug and took a long swallow. "He could have a case
for us," he said more hopefully. "It's a possibility. An
extreme possibility."
"Mulder, all our possibilities are extreme." She took
his cup and replaced it with his suit jacket. "But just in
case, let's go up early. He doesn't yell as much if we show
up on time."
Assistant Director Skinner briskly gestured them into
chairs as he paged through sheets on his desk. "Agent
Scully, are you aware that Agent McGraw has requested
assignment as your partner?"
"Yes, sir," Scully replied, equally curt. Mulder
relaxed; Skinner had better things to do than scold them, it
seemed, and Scully was always good at dealing with the
assistant director when he was in ultra-professional mode.
Skinner glanced incisively at the collected female
agent. "Normally I wouldn't approve such a request, in
deference to your special circumstances working with the X-
Files. However, a case has come to my attention that would
be handled best by the two of you." His slight gesture
excluded Mulder from this statement. "A former CIA employee
has been found dead in Carlton, Virginia; it appears that
the body was moved by local law enforcement. Do you have any
objections on teaming up with Agent McGraw and heading to
Carlton?"
"No, sir. I'd be happy to work with her on this case."
"Agent Mulder, if you have any objections to this
arrangement, let's hear it now."
Mulder squared his shoulders. "I have no problems with
that, sir."
"Behavioral Science will be sending their latest
research data down to you in the meantime. I trust you'll
give them your full cooperation." Skinner ignored the
younger man's vigorous nod. "If you find it necessary to
initiate an X-File investigation, Agent Mulder, you are to
notify me before doing so."
"Yes, sir," Mulder replied.
"Dismissed," Skinner clipped. The two agents exchanged
relieved looks and stood. "Oh, and Agent Mulder?"
"Yes, sir?"
"Try not to get locked into any industrial appliances
while Agent Scully is gone."
Mulder set his jaw and moved for the door. "Yes, sir."
Scully accompanied Mulder back to the basement office
on the pretext of getting her coat and satchel, in a vain
attempt to cheer him up. His flimsy veneer of indifference
would hardly have fooled a stranger, let alone his partner
and closest friend; Scully tried to cajole him out of his
bad mood, but Mulder seemed determined to remain in a snit.
She was about to give up when another approach
occurred to her. "Mulder, did we ever find out where Odin
got the money to set up the Church of the Red Museum?"
"He bought the old slaughterhouse with a grant from a
Wisconsin preserve organization," he replied hollowly. "The
rest was set up with money from the congregation."
Scully folded her coat neatly over her arm. "It's
possible that the Church was funded by whoever was
experimenting on those kids," she suggested. "The preserve
organization could be a blind. If you trace the money
back..."
"--It could lead to Purity Control." Mulder met her
gaze, a pinpoint of interest brightening his eyes, then
plunged into the detritus on his desk for the files on their
last case. Scully smiled to herself and turned to go.
"See you later, Mulder," she said as she opened the
door.
He looked up with a canny expression. "See you. And
Scully-- thanks."
Her smile broke loose. "Any time."
Dana Scully had barely closed the X-Files office door
when she heard the distinctive clacking of heels on the
stairs. "Agent Scully?" a smooth alto inquired.
Scully went to the foot of the stairs; Emily McGraw
quickly descended to meet her. "I heard the door closing
down here," she said offhandedly. "They really packed you
two off in Purgatory, didn't they?"
"FBI's most unwanted," Scully replied with a hint of a
smile. Her new partner smiled back, running a self-concious
hand over her dark blond chignon. She was considerably
taller than Scully, but after looking up at Mulder month
after month, Scully took the height difference easily in
stride.
"I've got some maps laid out in one of the research
rooms upstairs, if that's okay."
"That's great. Let's get started." Scully started up
the stairs. "So, Agent McGraw--"
"Let's go with Emmy. Agent McGraw is too many
consonants to get around."
"Well, Agent Scully is too many syllables. How about
Dana?"
Emmy grinned as they turned to start up the next
flight of stairs. "Great."
"Is that a tape recorder?" Scully asked, indicating
the black box hooked to the belt of Emmy's sensible olive-
green pantsuit.
"Yeah. I should probably warn you up front, I play
music almost all the time. It's all instrumental and I try
to keep it turned down so that no one can hear it but me..."
"Why?" Scully asked curiously.
"Ah, it's a concentration thing," Emmy shrugged. "If
it bothers you, let me know, and I'll shut it off."
"I doubt it will be a problem," Scully assured her as
they passed through the stairwell doors towards the research
room.
Emmy indicated the appropriate room, pausing as they
settled in and shut the door. "I want you to know how much I
appreciate your taking the time to work with me, Dana. I
know you're busy, and I'd like to volunteer to handle our
paperwork."
"You know, this could work out really well for me,"
Scully grinned. "I can have you do all our paperwork, then I
can guilt Mulder into doing all the X-Files paperwork..."
"I won't tell if you won't," Emmy laughed. "So what'll
you do with the spare time?"
Scully sighed dramatically. "My taxes."
Harpsichord music rippled delicately from the small
speaker of Emmy's tape player as she and Scully considered
their case. The first half of the day had been devoted to
exploring each other's knowledge and abilities; lunch had
provided an opportunity to exchange pleasant small talk;
they had established a division of labor and set upon the
case file. There wasn't much to go on, and by three that
afternoon the file was exhausted and the assessments began.
"Our flight doesn't leave until tomorrow morning. Til
then, we've just got these maps and testimony... where was
the body really found?" Scully shook her head at the maps
spread across their desks. "The deputies had it bagged in
their trunk... the coroner thinks it wasn't there long.
Twenty to forty minutes. At their top speed that radius
still encompasses the entire town."
Emmy looked at Scully's diagrammed extrapolations
penned on the main map. "Why did they move the body?" she
asked. "If we knew that, we'd have a lot better shot at
tracing where it was to begin with."
"But we don't know why," Scully reminded her gently.
"Neither of them is talking; the sheriff himself arraigned
them. Sheriff Walker claims he's worked with these men for
ten years and found them to be exemplary law officers."
"Ten years with the same boss, but they won't tell him
why they moved the corpse," Emmy contemplated. "Do we know
where Sheriff Walker lives?"
Scully nodded and indicated a starred home on the east
side of town.
"Any pay phones near where they claimed to find the
body?"
"Yes; phone logs indicate that they called the sheriff
at his home from a pay phone two blocks away from the site."
Scully watched the younger woman intently.
"They called him at home..." Emmy framed the sheriff's
house on the map with her long hands. "What if the body was
found near the sheriff's house? That could be why they moved
it."
"Why?" Scully asked in turn.
"Maybe the sheriff has something to hide-- hell, maybe
he killed the guy--" her dark eyes darted to meet Scully's.
"You're giving the facts to me a bite at a time. How much of
this is for my benefit, Dana?" she inquired with a twinge of
wry humor.
"I'm just trying to give you room," Scully shrugged.
"These are the kind of questions you need to ask in the
course of your investigations."
A light knock interceded; "What's the password?" Emmy
demanded.
Mulder poked his head around the door. "Open sesame?
Can I barge in?"
"You're not coming to steal her back, are you?" Emmy
asked plaintively.
"Nah," he answered reassuringly, "I just need to
borrow her for a minute. Actually," he said to Scully, "I
wanted to let you know that I dead-ended on tracing Odin's
funding. You were right, the preserve organization doesn't
really exist... here's the paper trail as far as I could
track it." Mulder waved a fistful of pages; Scully
intercepted and flipped through them.
"The money was laundered through a meat packing
company?" she asked incredulously.
"That's all I could get." He opened his hands
helplessly. "It was a great idea, Scully, trying to catch
these people by finding the moneylenders who set up the
Church. But it looks like they anticipated it."
"I suppose it was worth a try," she sighed. "I'd hoped
for better news, but I'm not that surprised."
"I'm still tracing the doctor's records, but I doubt
it turns up anything either. So how's your investigation
going here?" Mulder asked.
"Slow," Emmy said.
"Slow," Scully agreed. "We leave tomorrow morning. Til
then it's guesswork, preparation, and atlases."
"None of them shrugging, damn the luck," Emmy added
gloomily.
"_Atlas Shrugged_ never did much for me... you're an
Objectivist?" Mulder asked.
"No, but a girl takes her shrugging Atlases where she
can get them these days."
"You have to look for the Charles Atlas seal of
approval," Scully put in, smiling.
Emmy looked askance at her. "In just seven days--"
"And seven nights," Scully chimed in, and they said
together, "I can make you a man-- just like your dad..."
Mulder looked from one to the other, vaguely alarmed.
Emmy laughed, "Don't tell me you've never seen--"
"The Rocky Horror Picture Show?" Mulder cut in.
"Actually, I have, courtesy of Scully. Ask her about it
sometime."
Emmy turned to Scully. "I'm asking."
"Long story. Suffice it to say that I was in the stage
show in college."
"Really? That looks like so much fun. I've gone to see
it every Halloween for years. Do you know where it plays
around here?"
"The Madison," Scully said. "It's this old theater
over on--"
"You're kidding. The Madison? I went there for the
rave last month. It was so great," Emmy enthused.
"You went to a rave?" Mulder's eyebrows went up.
"Sure. You haven't danced until you've danced with a
roomful of teenagers high on smart drinks and Ecstacy," Emmy
informed him. "Actually, I knew the DJ, and he asked me to
come and act as an unofficial bouncer in case anyone got
rowdy. But nothing untoward happened, and I ended up having
a fantastic time."
"I tried to go to a rave once in England, back before
they were really called raves... you know how they give out
the location at the last minute to keep the law from
catching on? We were given the wrong location," Mulder said.
"Turned out to be a good thing though, because the law did
catch on and the whole thing became a massive riot."
"Anarchy in the U.K.!" Emmy cheered.
Mulder laughed. "Something like that."
"You're pretty lucky to have spent so much time there.
See, I have this theory about what's going to happen to
England."
"What's that? Scully asked.
Emmy leaned forward slightly, one corner of her wide
mouth drawing up in a mischeivous smirk. "One day some
bright young capitalist is going to convince an investor
like Bill Gates to damn well buy the United Kingdom. They're
going to pick up that whole island and dump it out in Nevada
and charge admission. After all, British culture is already
being turned into a theme park for the benefit of tourists.
Might as well make it official, and bring the fun over here
to encourage more customers to visit."
"That's ridiculous," Scully dismissed.
"It's perfectly reasonable," Emmy replied. "The United
Kingdom would make a great amusement park; just think of
Disney's Magic Kingdom, Las Vegas style."
"Big Ben will be outlined in neon and a casino built
up around it," Mulder proposed, catching the spark.
"Imagine what they'd do to Buckingham Palace," Emmy
returned.
"Prince Charles would become an Elvis impersonator,"
he chuckled. "How about turning the Tower of London into a
big haunted funhouse ride, with the holographic ghost of
Anne Boleyn as the main attraction?"
"Absolutely! And just think of the commercial
possibilities once we get Stonehenge."
Scully looked from one to the other and sighed,
resigned. "I'm going for coffee."
When the red-haired agent returned, her temporary
partner and her usual partner were discussing the
comparative linguistic quirks of American and British
speech, interspersing their observations with extended
quotations from Monty Python's Flying Circus. Scully
assessed her half-empty mug with regret. One cup of coffee
was not going to be enough caffeine to keep up with this.
==============================================
Part 3....all comments to Summer at summer@camelot.bradley.edu
*****************************************************
Part three...
"Mulder."
"Hi, it's me. How're things on the home front?"
"Dull. How's Mayberry, Virginia?"
"Small and sordid. And the only strange thing about
this case is how any criminal could be so stupid."
"So, Scully-- what's it like to work with a sane
partner for a change?"
"You know, I had some vague notion that working with
Emmy would be a little less frenetic than our investigations
tend to be. Since she's supposed to be learning how the
procedures work at ground level, I thought we'd take things
slow."
"And?"
"Since we got here yesterday afternoon, we've
interviewed eight people involved in this case, surveyed two
possible crime scenes, and chased down and apprehended a
suspect. Once we caught the suspect, Emmy talked to him for
about two minutes and decided that she'd solved the case."
"Oh? And had she?"
"We started checking for evidence to support her
theory. It fits. According to Emmy, the sheriff grows and
deals marijuana-- and we do have evidence that some land he
owns was used for marijuana cultivation. The victim had
connections in Cuba from his work with the CIA. Emmy thinks
the sheriff was trying to make a deal with the victim to
deal drugs smuggled in from Cuba, but something went wrong
and the sheriff killed him."
"Charming. Well, you told me before you left that you
thought it was the sheriff."
"Yeah. And we're actually working together very well.
The drive down here was fun; we know all the same songs."
"I missed out on the Dana Scully Sing-a-Long?"
"If you want in on those, you've got to learn more
showtunes."
"I can just see you two trilling songs from _West Side
Story_... no wonder the local law enforcement is running
scared."
"Not just showtunes. Arias, eighties pop music, sea
chantys..."
"SEA chantys?"
"My dad taught them to me."
"Oh. How does Emmy know them? She's a Navy brat too?"
"No-- this should interest you. Have you ever heard of
phonographic memory?"
"Scully. I HAVE a photographic memory."
"Not photo, phono. Audio."
"There's phonetic memory, the retention of sounds, and
semantic memory, the retention of words... but I don't
recall ever reading about phonographic memory."
"Emmy has a phonographic memory. It's amazing. I sing
something once and she has it down-- all the lyrics, all the
notes. After working with you all this time, and now being
paired with her... I'm beginning to think I'm the only agent
in the Bureau who DOESN'T have some form of total recall."
"Scully, I did a lot of reading on this in grad
school, everything I could get my hands on about eidetic
memory. I've never come across anything about an audio
equivalent. Are you sure she doesn't just have a strong
short-term memory?"
"She can recite every conversation we've had since I
met her, Mulder."
"Maybe she's eidetic and visualizing the words,
semantic memory--"
"That wouldn't account for the way she remembers voice
inflection or musical intonation. Emmy said that's how she
can speak so many languages; she told me it only takes her
about four months of drilling to learn a new one, because
she remembers all the words so well."
"That's amazing. I'd like to talk to her about it when
you get back. When do you think you'll be through down
there?"
"We'll probably wrap it up within the week."
"Great. Y'know, the office just isn't the same without
you, Scully."
"I keep looking over the case file just in case there
was something inexplicable I missed..."
"I actually started to clean off my desk."
"I went walking tonight before I called you, and ended
up stargazing."
"I talked to my fish."
"You win. I'll call you tomorrow."
"Talk to you then."
Mulder started awake and scowled as two voices faded
in, chorusing in time with footsteps on the stairs. "Down
the steep and very narrow stairway, to the voice like a
metronome; down a steep and very narrow stairway; it wasn't
paradise--"
"--it wasn't paradise--" one sang.
"--it wasn't paradise--" the other continued.
"--but it was home," both voices echoed in the
stairwell.
"This office practically IS home," Scully grumbled;
Mulder could hear her keys clinking as she and Emmy made
their way down the hall.
Emmy's gospel alto began, "There's a light..."
"Over at the Epcot Center," Scully chimed in lightly
as she unlocked the office door and flipped on the light.
She was barely surprised to see her partner stretching
wearily in his desk chair. "Mulder, what are you doing
sitting here in the dark?"
"It seems to me," he yawned, "that the question
provides its own answer. What am I doing? I'm sitting here
in the dark."
"Darkness has flowed down the river of night's
dreaming," Emmy poked her head in to sing. "Flow Morpheus
slow, let the sun and light come streaming into my li-iiife,
into my li-i-ife..." She inched around the door, hefting
Scully's laptop. "Where do I put this?"
"Anywhere is fine." Scully examined the top layer of
papers on his desk. "Profiles? Sorry, Mulder. I know you
don't like doing these."
"I think I've lost the knack," he muttered, pushing
the pages into a rumpled heap. "I'm not getting anywhere.
How'd it go in Virginia?"
Scully shrugged; Emmy answered, "Cake. The sheriff's
lawyers were talking plea-bargaining when we left."
"You haven't lost anything," Scully chided him.
"You're just overworking, as usual."
"Do you bellhop for all your partners?" Mulder
inquired of Emmy as she rested the laptop on Scully's desk.
"Only the redheads," Emmy replied. "And only if they
can take top harmony on Tim Finn songs." She and Scully
exchanged grins.
Mulder grimaced at them. "Did you two... bond or
something?"
"We're FBI. We don't bond. We form fortuitous
alliances," Emmy replied.
"Next time someone declares war on me, I know who to
call," Scully sighed.
"I'll just call for Tiger Lily-- and I'll call for
Peter Pan-- we'll be coming willy-nilly, Lilly-- you've got
a friend," Emmy laughed. "I have to apologize to you two.
Long car trips make me hyper, and it's so great to work WITH
somebody instead of just working alongside somebody."
Scully smiled at her. "Bounce around all you like."
Mulder leaned forward to rest his head on his desk.
"Wake me when it's tomorrow."
The redhead shoved at his chair, exasperated. "Mulder!
Go home and get some sleep."
"I thought you said something about this office
practically being home..." His voice was muffled by his
folded arms and the papers lumped on the blotter.
Emmy drifted over to suggest to Scully, "Between us I
think we could probably haul him out of the office, though
we might have some trouble dragging him upstairs without
bopping his head on the steps."
"As thick-skulled as he's being, I don't think that's
an issue. Right and left or wrists and ankles?"
Mulder cracked open one eye to glare balefully at
them. "You two divvying me up or something?"
"Is there a lake anywhere around we could throw him
in?" Emmy asked hopefully. "Right and left, I'll take
right."
"I'm awake, I'm awake," he protested, standing up.
"You two are brutal. Emmy, you're a bad influence on my
partner. She never plotted to toss me around before."
"That's what you think," Scully chuckled.
"Your office basketball could use some work," Emmy
noted, kicking at the crumpled paper balls ringing the trash
can by Scully's desk. "You need to practice your three-
pointers."
"You follow basketball?" Mulder asked, stretching.
"I don't follow anything," Emmy informed him. "I
played in high school-- I was on a basketball scholarship
the first year I went to college, before I transferred to
UVA."
"Uh oh," Scully laughed as a predatory gleam
brightened her partner's eyes.
"What?" he said innocently. "I was just going to tell
her about the pick-up games the Behavioral Science guys play
on Saturdays..."
"Watch out, Emmy," Scully warned. "Those guys are
nuts. They try to distract each other by quoting autopsy
reports during the game."
"Sounds like fun," Emmy grinned.
"Free tomorrow afternoon?" Mulder asked.
"That an invitation?"
"If you're up to it..."
"Ooh, that psychology background. You're subtle,
Mulder. Where is it?"
"I could pick you up."
"You wouldn't deprive me of a chance to show off my
car, would you?"
Mulder acquiesed, rattling off the directions. "Got
that?"
Emmy repeated his instructions back to him, verbatim.
Mulder's brows went up. "Ever undergone psychiatric
testing?"
"No. Why, am I displaying symptoms of insanity?"
"Not at all. I was thinking more along the lines of IQ
tests, memory tests--"
"Oh, that," Emmy nodded. "One of my professors had me
do a lot of tests and things, but then he had some kind of
breakdown and quit teaching to join a commune in Oregon."
Mulder and Scully traded dubious glances; Emmy protested,
"Seriously! It happened."
"So the professor--"
"Taylor Hardin."
"Professor Hardin assessed your tests and determined
that you had a phonographic memory?"
"That's what he said."
"I hate to break it to you, but I'm not sure there is
such a thing," Mulder said.
Emmy shrugged. "It doesn't bother me. I remember just
about everything I hear. Sometimes it comes in handy;
sometimes it's a pain in the neck. I don't have to put a
label on it. That's just the way it is."
"Mulder's done a lot of reading on eidetic memory,"
Scully said blandly.
"Why the interest?" Emmy asked.
"Ah, I have a photographic memory," Mulder shrugged,
collecting his stuff to go home.
"Neat," she said, equally nonchalant.
Scully sighed at both Mulder and Emmy's blase attitude
toward their gifts. She picked up her medical bag and
brightened somewhat. After all, Mulder and Emmy might have
amazing memories, but neither of them could dissect a spleen
to save their lives. "Emmy, are you sure you don't want me
to take some of the paperwork?"
"I've got it. I'll see you Monday." Emmy breezed out
of the office and up the stairs, humming all the way.
Scully put all her weekend stuff on her desktop:
portable computer, satchel, medical bag. Three handles, two
hands. At least she and Emmy had already transferred her
suitcase from the rental car to her trunk.
Mulder wandered over, slipping on his trenchcoat.
"Carry your books?" he offered.
She handed him the laptop. "Thanks."
"I was thinking about what you said... I went ahead
and asked Danny to double-check on Emmy's background."
Scully merely responded with a long-suffering "And?"
"Squeaky. Looks like she was barely starting with the
CIA when she ditched them. Supposedly it was an amiable
parting, but Danny says she's received some nasty mail and
phone calls."
"She told me a little about that," Scully admitted
reluctantly. "A lot of the people she worked with before
think she sold them out to come here."
"And a lot of the people here think she's still
working for the CIA," Mulder replied. "As spies go, she's
not exactly off to a rousing start."
"You can try to figure it out if you want to," Scully
said, grabbing her bags, "but I suggest you get out of this
office before you grow roots."
Mulder followed her out, toting the laptop and
mumbling, "Too late for that."
===========================================
Part four of "Dilemma", yes it is X-Files, yes it's by Summer.
*
* *
*
"Jesus, Dana wasn't kidding. Those guys are monsters!"
Emmy beckoned for Mulder to toss her the basketball. He
feinted, dodged past her; she ducked and swiped the ball in
mid-bounce, hopping back as he skidded on the gym floor.
"Them? You're worse than they ever dreamed of being.
That story you told about the pin mike, the hooker, and the
three-a-night senator-- was that true?"
She evaded him, got off a shot. It spun across the rim
and swirled into the basket. "It's a story. If you believe
it, it's true. If you don't, well, it's still true. It's a
story."
He scooped up the ball, frowned at her. "You know what
I mean."
"Yeah. I do." Emmy grabbed her tote bag from the
bleachers. "So where're the showers around here? I don't
feel like driving through D.C. like this."
"Just past the swimming pool, on the right."
"Great. So while you're giving me directions-- know
any good Chinese places around here? I'm famished."
Mulder bounced the ball ruminatively. "Well, not far
from here, there's a classy place with decent food. Or
there's this other place that's tacky as hell with fantastic
food. It all depends on your tolerance for fake jade and
dragon tapestries."
"Hey, the more red silk tassels, the better. You want
to join me? We could regroup, drive over together."
"I _am_ curious about that car you wanted to show
off..."
"Great. Meet you back here in a few."
Mulder watched her swing off the court as he got his
duffle bag and headed off to the showers on the left of the
swimming pool. Emmy had been throwing him off-balance since
her arrival at the gym two hours before, playing one-on-one
against him until, just as he'd anticipated, the Behavioral
Science guys had grouped together for a pick-up game and
asked them to join in. He'd been working with Scully for so
long, been so isolated from the rest of the Bureau, that he
hadn't even considered that his acquaintances from
Behavioral would react the way they did. They assumed at
once that he was sleeping with Emmy, and that he was
humoring her by playing basketball with her.
She'd disproved the latter assumption pretty quickly,
all those years of aikido expressed in a lightning-fast
pivot, an odd graceful passing style, an unexpected ease
with unfamiliar opponents. On the former conclusion,
however, she made no comment. And Mulder doubted she'd
missed the significant looks and murmured comments that
passed during every pause in the game under the classic rock
music blaring from Emmy's portable stereo.
The showers were crowded; he had to wait a few minutes
before a stall opened up. Mulder stripped out of his sweats
and doused his cynicism under scalding water. Wasn't it
possible, just barely possible, that maybe she was attracted
to him, with no ulterior motives?
"Not fucking likely," he muttered into the steam.
Fine. Lunch. He'd be as surly as he could muster, and
if she kept playing sweetness-and-light, he'd know Emmy was
here to spy on him after all.
And if she got pissed off, he was tossing out any
chance of... anything. There had to be a better way.
What would Emmy gain by trying to spy on him anyway?
She was in the Bureau, and if she requested it with the
proper forms, she could be granted full access to the X-
Files. All the evidence was contained in those files. Mulder
didn't personally have any information that could possibly
be valuable to her, no matter who she was working for, IF
she even WAS spying on him.
Mulder shut off the water, toweled off, and dressed,
the plaid cotton shirt clinging a little to his still-damp
skin. He made a token attempt to comb through his short hair
with his fingers, and sighed.
At least he'd find out what kind of car she was
driving.
"1970 Superbird," Emmy grinned.
Mulder stared. Long, low, red, impossibly aerodynamic.
The car hung over the asphalt, streamlined so severely that
it looked like it was topping the odometer just sitting
there. Its tilted planes and curving lines played head games
with geometry. "Goddamn," he uttered reverently, passing a
hand over the angular fins. Mulder wasn't normally impressed
with cars, but this thing was a work of industrial art.
"Where'd you find this thing?"
"Okay, so technically it's not precisely mine," Emmy
conceded, gesturing him into the passenger seat. "I was in
Guatemala with the Agency, and I met this journalist, got to
be pretty good friends. Then he stumbled on some non-kosher
information and he wasn't going to be allowed back in the
US. I arranged for him to come home. The car's actually his.
But it's mine whenever I want it."
"Where's your journalist buddy now?" he asked,
wondering if he'd totally misjudged things; maybe she was
already involved.
"Prague, doing a scene report on Czechoslavakia," she
answered, getting into the car. "Where am I going?"
Mulder gave her the directions, still indecisive. <To
piss off or not to piss off, that is the question...> In the
meantime, "How did you end up in the CIA, anyway? Did you
just wake up one morning, watch a James Bond movie, and
decide that was what you wanted to do with your life?"
"Not exactly," she answered as the Superbird thrilled
to life at the turn of a key. "I've always wanted to be a
spy. For a long time it was just a daydream to keep me from
going nuts when I was a kid in Tennessee--"
"You're from Tennessee? You don't have an accent."
She chuckled, shaking back her honey-blond hair. "The
first foreign language I learned was proper English. Anyway,
my Uncle Wilke was in the army, in Korea. He was always
telling me about intelligence, working for the government. I
was watching one of those spy flicks when it sort of clicked
for me, that real people actually did that stuff, somewhere
in the world. And that I wanted to do that too." Mulder
watched her as she talked; her expression was relaxed and
open. Sunlight lit her hair and complexion to an even gold;
he had only ever seen her indoors before, bleached by the
fluorescent lights. For the first time he saw the hint of
ethnicity in her skin tone, the Latin flare of her features,
and the curved cheekbones that scooped shadows from her face
in the afternoon sun. "So what about you, Mulder?" she
asked. "Why're you in the Bureau?"
"I did my dissertation on Satanic ritual
murders," he replied. "The FBI recruited me. I'd been
following a star with my coursework up to then, taking
whatever interested me. I figured I'd end up doing research,
clinical psychology, forensic psychology maybe. But once the
Bureau approached me... it really seemed right."
She nodded, looked his way as she made a right turn.
"Not a whole lot of psychology in what you do now. Too bad
Oxford doesn't offer a degree in Detective Science."
"I get by." Mulder had the first glimmerings of an
idea on how to handle himself in this situation. "What kind
of stuff did your military uncle tell you about?"
"Oh, he told me a lot of stories about World War II,
how if Hitler had listened to his spies the Axis would have
won, that sort of thing. I always got the feeling that Uncle
Wilkes would much rather have fought in World War II than in
Korea; he seemed to think Korea was kind of a seedy little
war compared to the big one." Emmy wheeled the Superbird
into the parking lot past a large sign reading "The Royal
Dragon".
"Yeah, for sheer heroism you just can't beat
Hiroshima," Mulder commented sardonically. "Of course,
nearly every international war has been merely for the
purpose of distraction anyway."
Emmy parked the car, slid out of the driver's seat.
"Really? Do tell."
He followed suit and fell into step beside her, his
game plan established. "It all goes back to the Great
Pyramids of Egypt..." With that Mulder turned on his Spooky
act full force, all systems go. Only if Emmy were spying on
him would she be able to listen to his explanation of the
Illumnati conspiracy without storming out halfway through
the Kennedy assassination.
"Can I get your drinks...?"
"--which is why every president but one has been a
Mason." Mulder paused in his diatribe to tell the waiter,
"I'd like iced tea please."
"Same for me," Emmy said. "So which president wasn't a
Mason?"
"JFK."
Emmy held up a hand. "Stop right there."
Mulder raised his eyebrows; his scheme was working. He
had deliberated donned a slightly manic look at the start of
this harangue, and had been getting disgusted looks from the
people at the next table. His companion hadn't stormed out
yet, but it sounded like she'd reached the limit of her
endurance. "What is it?"
"I like a good conspiracy theory as much as the next
secret agent," she said, "but I do NOT want to hear your
opinion on JFK right now, Mulder, and I'm dreading that if I
let you get to the seventies you'll start talking about
Elvis Presley."
He contrived a wounded expression. "You don't believe
me."
"No, I don't. I'm sure you've heard all the arguments
against conspiracy theory, I mean, Dana recited a few to me
when I played `Elvis Is Everywhere' on my stereo. C'mon, no
one organized some grand design to take over the world."
"Then how do you explain the way things are?" Mulder
asked. "I mean, you have to know by now what a mess the
government has become, how covert the power structure is."
Emmy regarded him seriously. "Mulder, people didn't
need a conspiracy for things to end up like this. All it
took was human nature."
The waiter stepped forward with their drinks. "Can I
take your orders?"
"Thanks... I'd like today's lunch special, I think."
"Make that two," Emmy said. "Thanks." She gazed up at
the ornamented light shade above them, batting idly at the
red tassels, nodding with the tune of the exotic music
draining from a speaker nearby.
"Human nature," Mulder repeated once the waiter had
gone.
Emmy shrugged. "The more I learn about the way things
are, the more I think that society is just a maze that
people run around to keep themselves from getting bored
during their threescore-and-ten. When you really step
outside it all-- none of it really seems all that important,
you know?"
"Why can't we all just get along?" said Mulder, his
tone verging on mockery.
"Human nature," Emmy said again, a dark smile tugging
at her lips. "So this conspiracy thing, was this your way of
answering my question about the meaning of life?"
"Something like that." Mulder began to feel an uneasy
elation; elation, because he was convinced that Emmy wasn't
spying on him-- uneasy, because he wasn't sure he could
convince her now that he wasn't completely insane.
"You really believe it?" She was asking doubtfully.
"Secret rites, Adam Weisshaupt, the whole bit?"
He struggled, but his smile surfaced despite himself.
"That's what I thought," she smirked. "You're a holy
terror, Agent Mulder. Does everyone get initiated into the
basketball games this way?"
"Ah, no, those are come-one-come-all things," he
dismissed, then paused awkwardly. "Look, I'm sorry about all
the talking the Behavorial guys were doing, I know that must
have been uncomfortable."
"Oh, I'm used to it," she shrugged. "I mean, everyone
in the Bureau looks sideways at me, and I can't really blame
them. It wouldn't be that unthinkable for the Agency to
train someone then send them to the FBI for a little in-
house espionage. So there's suspicion, and gossip. It
passes."
He shifted, startled at her misapprehension, but it
seemed pointless to correct her. "Well-- here's to passing."
She raised her glass and clinked it against his.
"Here's to passing," she smiled.
=============================================
Dilemma
5/20 (might be shorter)
An X-Files Story
by Summer
Special Agent Fox Mulder had faced some difficult
situations during his career with the FBI, but the obstacle
course ahead of him was far more daunting than any mere
murder inveestigation. Somehow Mulder had to get from the
sixth floor of the building to his basement office while
carrying a double-armful of files and avoiding every
sentient creature in his path.
He took the stairs.
Mulder was somewhere between four and three,
juggling folders and binders, when he heard a pleasant
alto call, "Hey, Mulder."
He turned, smiled. "Hi, Emmy. What's up?"
She descended the steps. "I'm in trouble."
"What is it?"
"Ummm, you know how to use the computers here,
right?"
"Sure." Not particularly well, he added to himself,
but she hadn't asked him that.
"Could you tell me how to attach a file to an
email?"
He stopped. "Emmy, how have you managed to function
around here for four months without knowing how to send
files through email?"
"Jim did it. He wouldn't tell me how he did it. I
have trouble understanding computer manuals."
"Well, everyone has trouble with computer manuals,"
he comforted. "You just keep going over them 'til they
make sense."
"My eyes fill up with sand every time I look at
those manuals. They give me hives." Emmy sighed. "And no
one around here has time to tell me how to do it, but
that's how I learn things."
"By hearing them," Mulder interpolated. "So if I
explain it to you, you'll remember the instructions and
know how to do it."
"Right."
"What if I demonstrated for you?"
"If you said what you were doing aloud while you did
it, I'd remember. Otherwise... I'm in trouble."
Mulder shuffled the files he was holding, folding
them into a stack and shifting them all to one arm. "Those
tests your absentee professor conducted. Did they also
determine the scope of your visual memory?"
"Yeah... it's pretty lousy, below average. I guess
it's a fair trade-off."
"I've tried to dig up some information on
phonographic memory, but I'm not having much luck so far.
With the reading I've done on eidetic memory, it's strange
that I've found so little about it." He shifted the files
again. "I've got to get these downstairs; if you want to
come down I can explain on the way."
"Great." She beamed at him.
"It's not that difficult," he started, and quickly
outlined the computer procedure. Emmy bobbed her head at
every pause and recited it all back to him as they started
down the last flight of stairs.
"That's all there is to it."
"Thanks, Mulder." Emmy paused. "You know, I'm
really lucky we ran into each other at the gym. I was
stuck in an uncomfortable partnership, wondering what made
me want to work for the government in the first place--
but after working with Dana, I really feel like I'm in
the right place."
"Scully has that effect on people," he replied.
That's great, I'm glad I could help." Mulder clomped down
the steps, barely rescuing one of his file folders before it
tumbled out of the stack.
"You want me to carry some of those?" Emmy offered.
"I've got it," he began, but she was already taking
half the pile; Mulder handed them over. "Thanks."
"What is all this?"
"A psychic offered to help the New Hampshire police
with a kidnapping case they're struggling with, and they've
asked us for any information on her. Renee Carpenter of
Haubstadt, Indiana. I pulled the X-File I had on her, but I
thought I'd poke around and try to dig up something more..."
Emmy flipped through the thin X-File. "Says here she
may have provided accurate information in a kidnapping case in
Ohio... what does that mean, 'may have'? If she told them
something that later turned out to be correct, she provided
accurate information, and if she didn't-- she didn't. Not a
lot of middle ground there."
"You wouldn't think so," Mulder replied, "but Scully
researched that particular file, and you'll be hard pressed
to find a definitive statement supporting the paranormal in
her reports."
"Well, Miss Carpenter gave the police a correct
description of the home in which the child was eventually
found. I wonder why psychics never seem to come up with
addresses... just descriptions..."
Mulder peered at Emmy uncertainly. "In most cases,
psychics receive impressions of what a place looks like, but
there have been documented instances when a psychic came up
with street names or house numbers that were correct. There
isn't exactly a lot of research being done about how this
sort of thing works."
"Hm. In the transcript here, her description is pretty
specific and matches the pictures of the house. This lady's
either psychic or a suspect." Emmy turned to the final
sheet. "Ah, but they caught the kidnappers and recovered the
child. The ransom was never paid, Carpenter got nothing out
of it. And she requested no press involvement." She put the
file back on top of the cabinet. "Sounds like the genuine
article."
Hesitantly, Mulder asked, "...You believe?"
Emmy studied him for a moment. "When I was
younger, I had precognitive dreams. Little flashes that I
wouldn't recognize until they actually happened, days,
weeks, months later. It started as deja vu, but it became...
stronger, more definite. I found a friend's lost ring-- I
knew where to look because I had dreamed of finding it the
week before. That sort of thing."
"And now?"
She looked away. "It faded when I was sixteen. I
have no proof, no explanation for it. I'm content to allow
it to remain a mystery."
"Why?" his voice was gentle, but insistent. "Why
wouldn't you want to know..?"
Emmy looked back at him, and for a fleeting moment
he thought he saw something there-- a loss, a sadness that
matched his own. Then there was only the slow curve of a
melancholy smile. "Some things are mysteries because the
truth is hidden. But... some things are mysteries because
because there IS no truth."
Mulder shook his head, gathered his words against
this bleak prognosis, the one view he could not accept. Emmy,
however, checked her watch and grimaced. "Christ, I'm sorry,
I've got a meeting-- talk to you later."
"Yeah," he said, "I'll talk to you tomorrow."
The flashbulb afterimage of their conversation stayed
with him all that afternoon.
"Look what I've got!" Mulder told his partner.
Scully, barely inside the door, glared at him. "Not
again," she groused, putting her coat and bag away. "What?"
Mulder kicked at several disintegrating cardboard
boxes on the floor. A whiff of dust puffed up. "Declassified
files. We get to copy anything that we think looks relevant
to the X-Files."
"Who sent this down?"
"Skinner." Mulder contemplated the yellowed papers
he'd already hauled out of the boxes.
Scully stepped to his side, looking the brittle
pages over with him. "You think there's something here?"
Mulder shrugged. "Only one way to find out. Pick
a box, any box."
"Welcome back, hm?"
"Hey, this is Skinner's welcome-back, not mine. I
thought I'd treat you to lunch today. Your pick."
"Mulder, can I get a rain check? I'm meeting Karen
for lunch today, and I already cancelled on her twice."
"Sure, absolutely." Mulder carried two of the
tattered boxes to Scully's desk. "So what happened to your
junior detective, who's she working with now?"
"Greg Rybolt. His partner just transferred to
Colorado." Scully tugged the lid off one of the cases,
coughing at the cloud. "Ugh. Silverfish."
"I know, they're all over these things. I stopped
by graphology, they sprayed some gunk inside that ought to
kill 'em." Mulder leafed through a few more papers. "You
know, I bet these files were deliberately infested with
bookworms so the bugs would eat everything in the X-Files!
Yet another sinister government plot foiled by quick thinking
and bug spray."
Scully shook her head at him. "Yep. I'm back."
"I will sail my vessel, 'til the river runs dry;
like a bird upon the wing, these water are my sky. I'll
never reach my destination if I never try. I will sail
my vessel, 'til the river runs dry... Get off, twenty-
three positions in a one night stand--"
"Oh, for Christ's sake, go ahead and play it!"
"Thanks, Greg." Emmy snatched up her suit jacket
and gave her new partner a bright, false smile. "I promise,
you'll never even hear my tape player. I'm going to lunch."
"Take your time!" Agent Rybolt called after her.
Emmy turned and stuck out her tongue at his back.
"Watch out, your face might freeze that way," a
salty voice told her. Mulder nodded to her, grinning at her
abashed expression. "What was that all about?"
"Hi to you too, Agent Mulder." Emmy rolled her eyes
as he started walking with her to the elevator. "Greg doesn't
like the idea of me playing music all the time. Problem is,
if I don't have my tape player going, I sing without realizing
it..."
"How did you get through college?"
"The profs all thought I was taping their lectures.
What're you doing this side of Limbo?"
"Shamelessly trying to bum a ride. Care to join me
for lunch?"
"Love to. You know I'd never bring the Superbird
to work, don't you? I drive my Tempo here."
"Anything's better than a D.C. bus."
"...I saw her again about a year ago. She dragged
us in on a really nasty case-- it turned out she was having
an affair with the official she was supposed to be protecting."
Mulder shook his head. "I guess some things never change."
"Sounds pretty wrenching."
"I get the impression you know the feeling."
Emmy nodded. "Two years, in UVA. We never really talked
about what would happen after graduation. He was actually
surprised when I signed on with the CIA. He thought I was just
kidding all that time."
"Ouch."
"I got one of those phone calls, you know, the long
sobbing rant-- you're worthless, you ruined my life you
heartless bitch, but if you're ever free on a Saturday night
give me a call..." Emmy shrugged. "Probably for the best it
didn't work out. What would I do now if I were attached, you
know? Things are crazy enough as it is..." She smirked. "I
get the impression you know the feeling."
Mulder laughed softly. "Yeah, I definitely know that
feeling." He clinked the ice in his empty glass.
"I also get the impression you're wondering what the
situation is with me and the FBI. You ran a background check
on me."
His head snapped up fast enough to make his teeth clack.
"You knew about that?"
"Of course. You know, you could just ask me."
Mulder surveyed her for a doubtful moment. "Okay, what
IS the situation with you and the FBI?"
"Thank you. That's more like it. You'll need to get out
your scorecard," she warned. "Okay. The CIA recruited me out of
college. I wanted to be a spy, so I was there. But you know,
the Cold War is over, and the more they taught me, the more
the CIA seemed like a big bully who was going around poking
into other countries' business. I said as much to my
superior. He suggested that I look into another line of work
if I didn't like what I saw, because that's just the way
things are in the CIA. Okay, so I look into another line of
work. CIA figures if I won't spy for them, maybe I'll police
for them. They approach me with this proposal that I become
an interdepartmental investigator. You know, the Warren
Commission set a precedent for using agents from one
department to monitor another."
"You're still with the CIA?" Mulder gaped.
"No! I didn't like the idea, I turned it down. So my
superior decided he'd try to convince me I should take this
watchdog job-- he wanted me to spy on the NSA. So he took me
to that cross-training seminar. But someone had let it out
that I wasn't happy with the CIA and there were a lot of
people from different organizations vying for my attentions.
It's not that I'm so remarkable-- it's that all the
different agencies wanted to trump the CIA by taking me away
from them. Before I knew it I was in the thick of a hundred
favors, grudges, old scores, new scores, rivalries and
blackmail... all I knew was that I didn't want to work for
the Agency." Emmy sighed. "And then Walter Skinner called me
and cut right through all the bullshit. He didn't try to get
a handle on me or feel out my loyalties or figure out where
I stood. He just told me that he thought I'd be suitable for
a position in the FBI. And once he explained the job to me,
it made perfect sense."
"What made perfect sense?"
"What's the best thing an ex-almost-spy can do for the
FBI?"
Mulder thought about it briefly, then nodded,
"Counter-espionage?"
"Counter-espionage," she affirmed. "Most of the FBI
thinks I must still be with the CIA, investigating-- who
knows what they think I'm investigating. The CIA, on the
other hand, thinks I was with the Bureau all along and I
only joined the Agency to steal information, although I
didn't really have access to anything remarkable, and it
would have been much more effective if I'd continued to work
for the CIA and leaked information to the FBI. I've been
told that some people swear up and down that I work for the
Secret Service and I'm gathering data on the Justice
Department for the President."
"Why are you telling me all this?" Mulder asked.
"You asked."
"That's not a great policy for a spy. You're supposed
to keep secrets."
"None of that's any secret."
"It was to me."
"Fine. Run another background check on me," she
suggested. "I'm sure you noticed there are inconsistencies
between what I've said and what's in my dossier. A lot of
the CIA files on me are misinformation. My own personal rule
of thumb is that if I'm not alerted about the check, then
you're getting the accurate stuff; if I hear about it,
you're getting the planted semi-truths. Have your Lone
Gunman buddies do it. You could even make it fun for them.
Pose the challenge: can they get the goods on me without
alerting the CIA?"
"They can," Mulder asserted.
"We'll see," Emmy replied. "In the meantime, we'd
better head back to J. Edgar; the Tempo just doesn't gun it
like the Superbird does."
"So will you be at the basketball game again Saturday?"
"Wouldn't miss it for the world..."
*
* *
*
========================================
Dilemma
An X-Files Story
by Summer
part 6/20 (it may be shorter)
"The best was going to the big national meeting
of college Libertarians and proposing a tax on IQ."
"No way..."
"It was a thing of beauty. You should've been there. I
stood up and rolled out a little speech... the Constitution
guarantees that all men are created equal, but some people
are born with the unfair advantage of a high IQ! Their
higher intelligence makes these people more likely to
succeed in high-paying fields. Therefore, in order to
render the playing field more level, a policy should be
established, knocking a person up a tax bracket for every
twenty IQ points they have over the average..."
"My god!" Mulder choked with laughter as they turned a
corner. "Did they take it seriously?"
"Not at first, but I hung in there. Pretty soon it was
a massive topic of debate. Actually, some really cogent
discussions evolved out of it. But mostly it was just a
bunch of pretentious college kids stumbling over themselves
and screaming accusations of fascism." Emmy smiled, kicking
at pebbles as they walked. "But the utter silence after I
gave that speech... that was one of the most beautiful
sounds I've heard in my life."
"As political practical jokes go, I think that tops
anything I've seen. Although the guys at the Gunman have
really pulled some elegant stunts..."
"I haven't received any word about that background
check, did they get anything? It's been, what, a week?"
Mulder nodded, glancing across the street. Between the
buildings he could see the sun barely kissing the horizon.
"Week and a half. I called them Wednesday before last. They got
more than you might imagine. So the CIA recruited you when
you were what, twenty?"
"Twenty-one. I said right out of college, didn't I?"
"You did," he conceded. "And this incident with your
journalist friend in Guatemala..."
"I had an interesting spring break that year."
"Must have made exams a little drab by comparison,"
Mulder observed.
"The Agency wasn't all that exciting, really. Hell, my
first job was debugging an old safe house. You can't imagine
how boring that is. You just sit around saying, `Um... the
light fixtures? We checked there already. Um... the carpet
tacks?' Twenty days I spent ripping that place to bits. And
now I live there."
"You LIVE there--"
"Its location had been compromised, the Agency
couldn't use it anymore. One of my associates bought it once
it was clean. Not all of them hate me for leaving. I'm
leasing it from him while I'm in Washington. It's not far
from here, actually."
"Are you cold?"
Emmy tilted her head, a bit surprised. "No, I'm fine.
It's really pretty nice, the weather's been great lately.
Why, are you?"
"No, it's just you have your arms crossed."
"Oh." She shrugged. "I'm fine. This jacket's enough."
They walked slowly along, accompanied by Emmy's music
and by a stillness born of heightened self-conciousness.
"Something on your mind?" Mulder asked finally.
"Something, yeah... Something you said a couple of
weeks ago, that first time we did this basketball thing.
You're the expert on human foibles, Mulder-- why ARE things
the way they are?"
"Could you be a little more specific?"
"Why is minimum wage $4.15 an hour while people call
phone psychics for $5 a minute? Why are alcohol and
pornography legal while marijuana and prostitution are
illegal? Why do the American people choose between two
inoffensive white men with nearly identical opinions and
call their country a democracy?" Emmy asked, her hands open
as though to receive the answers as manna from the open air.
"Maybe you'd better let me go back to that easy
question, the one about the meaning of life."
She cracked a smile. "Okay, I know. I'm difficult."
"You're challenging." He got a stunning sidewise grin
for that one. Emmy crossed her arms again, the rustling
windbreaker folding around her long frame. She was almost as
tall as Mulder; her hair and eyelashes were gilded by the
setting sun...
"So what about you, what's on your mind?" she asked
him.
He had to scramble for an acceptable answer. "I gotta
admit, I still wonder what would compel you to pick the
profession you're in. I mean, what does your family think?"
"My family doesn't enter into it. They, um..."
Mulder waited, watching a few cars roll past on the
little side street they were travelling.
"They're religious," she picked up again. "Don't
laugh. They're Jehovah's Witnesses. Actually, go ahead and
laugh. I guess it is kind of funny."
He didn't laugh. "What happened?"
"I'm agnostic. I don't know how much you know about
the faith, but if a Jehovah's Witness leaves the flock..."
"They're excommunicated," he finished for her.
"Yeah."
"...They never talk to you now?"
She shook her head. "They never talked to me before."
Emmy looked at him carefully. "Sometimes I think I picked
this job just to be interesting. I always thought I must be
such a boring person, if even my own parents didn't care."
"Emmy, I promise you. You are anything but boring."
"Same to you, Mulder," she said, with a wistful smile.
"Hey, this is my street. I only live a couple of blocks from
here. I didn't realize we'd come this far. You think the
car'll be okay at the restaurant?"
"No one's going to steal that Tempo," Mulder pointed
out. "You've battered that poor car completely. I doubt a
thief would take it if you gift-wrapped it."
She laughed. "It was dented up so bad when I got it
that I just didn't try to keep it nice. It runs, that's the
important thing. Book by its cover, et cetera. You're right,
though. I think I'll leave the car and go out for it in the
morning..."
Mulder racked his prodigious memory for some
appropriate way to ask her out to dinner the next evening;
some easy phrase that would signal a shift in emphasis, an
expression of serious interest. But as they neared her home,
Mulder knew that even if he could decide what to say, he'd
never be able to say it.
Emmy half-turned at the two steps up to her front
walk. "Come inside?" she offered.
"Coffee?"
One corner of her mouth quirked up like a drawn
bowstring, cocked and ready with an egregious smirk.
"Okay... if you need an excuse, coffee's as good as any."
Mulder stared after her for one long moment; she
turned the key in the lock and looked back at him.
He caught up with her just inside the door. "No
excuses."
She smiled.
Mulder leaned over the sink, scrutinizing his
reflection as he began the precarious process of shaving
with an unfamiliar razor and some kind of weird gel instead
of messy, reliable shaving cream. Emmy tapped at the door
just before he set the blade against his skin, calling in,
"Are you big on privacy?"
"Not particularly," he answered.
"Then I'm gonna take my shower as soon as I get my
clothes together. No sense hanging around..."
By the time she collected all the necessary garments,
Mulder had dispatched of his stubble and was rinsing
everything up. Emmy stepped in swathed in a long bath towel,
strategically tucked.
Mulder was putting away the razor when the towel
around his waist was whisked away and he received a healthy
locker-room snap.
He whirled, half-laughing and half-indignant. Emmy was
whistling innocently, selecting shampoos and conditioners
from the shelf. He very deliberately retrieved the towel and
turned his back again, searching for adequate means of
revenge.
Mulder turned the faucet and wrung out the washcloth
on the sink, letting the water run until it was extremely
cold. He soaked the cloth in the icy water and tossed it
neatly backhanded; Emmy let out a gratifying squeak when it
contacted her bare skin with a damp smacking sound. She
quickly shook off the cold washcloth-- and lost her towel in
the process. In the mirror he could see her narrowed eyes
and the wicked grin that formed as she kicked it aside and
stepped into the now-temperate shower. "Oh, Mul-der," she
sang.
Mulder grinned and peered around the textured glass of
the shower door... and a spray of freezing water flooded his
face and left him spluttering.
He wiped his eyes and groped for the bottle of the gel
he'd used in lieu of shaving cream. It was still nice and
cold; he filled his cupped hand with the goo and ventured
back to the shower, leaning in to find Emmy poised with the
sprayer in one hand and a bottle of conditioner primed in
the other. They stared at each other for a moment before
they both began to laugh.
Emmy put down the bottle and offered her hand. "Get in
here, you," she chuckled.
He laced his gel-covered fingers with hers. "Are we
even?"
"Who's keeping score?"
Mulder regarded the whirlwind chaos of Emmy's house
with dread. "I think my clothes have all been transported
to another dimension."
"Nah. Just sucked into the vortex that is my home
sweet home." Emmy made a show of looking him up and down.
"I think you look just fine without them."
"I'm not going to the National Zoo wearing boxer
shorts and a watch, Emmy, and no comments about blending
in with the animals."
"Damn. In that case, I think your jeans are in the
bedroom and I'm pretty sure we ditched your shirt on the
sofa..."
He foraged through the tumult in the bedroom, found
his jeans, and pulled into them, glaring down at his bare
feet. "Any idea where my socks ended up?"
"No. Good luck finding them. I really ought to
straighten this place up someday, but I'm not going to."
Mulder sighed at her chipper tone. Emmy was a morning
person. He was sure that morning people could only be the
result of genetic tampering. This theory was reinforced by
her appearance in the bedroom doorway, fully dressed and
smiling brightly.
"What do you think?" Emmy asked. Mulder paused in
his search for his socks to glance at her. Emmy's black t-
shirt sported the words: "The slave thinks she is released
from bondage", the letters formed as though by a rope. She
grinned and pivoted so he could read the metallic letters
on the back: "only to find a stronger set of chains".
"Chic," he said, grinning despite himself.
"And of course, no outfit is complete without
accessories..." Emmy pulled open a dresser drawer, nudged
around in it, and came up with a pair of handcuffs.
Mulder's eyebrows went up as she linked the cuffs around
her left wrist, forming a double bracelet. "Too much?"
"Much too much," he opined, prowling over to slip
close to her and twirl his fingers into the chain linking
the cuffs. "Wear 'em anyway."
She leaned against him for a long moment, radiating
contentment. Of course, it didn't last. "Something's
missing... my tape player!" Mulder quickly untangled his
hands and stepped back as Emmy spun to search for it. "Did
you see it?"
"Nope." Mulder went back to his quest, finally
unearthing his socks from under a discarded comforter.
Emmy tore through the living room, dropping to check
under the overstuffed sofa. Mulder trailed after, besocked
but shirtless, frowning as she thumped supine on the
carpet. "There?"
"No," she answered regretfully. "Nothing here but
some dust bunnies that'll probably mutate any day now and
wreak carnivorous havoc on the neighborhood, providing you
with a particularly puzzling X-File."
"Maybe they've already mutated," Mulder suggested.
"Maybe the dust bunnies ate your tape player."
Emmy peeked under the sofa again. "They do look
hungry."
He leaned over her and snagged his shirt from the
back of the sofa. "Malevolent sentient dust bunnies," he
mused as he put it on-- then grimaced, sighed, took the
shirt off and turned it right-side-out. "That's a case I'd
love to explain to Skinner."
"Explain to me how a brilliant psychologist and FBI
agent manages to reach his thirties without mastering the
fine art of dressing himself," Emmy teased.
He ignored the jibe. "I think your dust bunnies ate
a button off my shirt, too."
Emmy, still on the floor, poked at his sock feet. "I
bet Dr. Seuss was the bane of your existence when you were
a kid, Mulder."
He peered down at her, surprised, then knelt to
offer her a hand. "Fox," he corrected.
She took his hand and rose. "Sure?"
Mulder nodded.
"Okay," she smiled sunnily. "It's a good name. Oh,"
she opened her hand in his, "there's your button. It was
on the floor."
Mulder made a face at the errant button and tucked
it in his pocket. "If the bunnies spared my button, they
may not have consumed your tape player after all. Could it
be in the car?"
"Yeah, right. You ever leave your cell phone in the
car?"
"Not in years," he conceded; Emmy nodded and charged
back into the bedroom. Mulder scouted around and
discovered one of his tennis shoes next to a pile of vinyl
albums on the floor. He flipped through the stack, amused
by the eclectic and esoteric assortment.
A series of chimes sounded. "Was that the doorbell?"
Mulder asked.
"Mm-hm. My next-door neighbor always puts the Sunday
paper in my mailbox when she's done with it; she usually
rings the bell around noon." Emmy emerged and surveyed the
premises with thinly veiled frustration. "You'd think that
between your PHOTOgraphic memory and my PHONOgraphic
memory, one of us would reMEMber where the damn thing
ended up."
Mulder knew better than to suggest they leave
without it. "I'll get the paper in," he offered.
"Would you? Thanks, Fox," she said absently, hunting
through desk drawers.
He wandered back through the house, scanning for his
other shoe. Mulder twisted the doorknob and called back,
"One of my shoes has gone astray, too. Do you see it?"
"No," came the slightly muffled reply. "Add it to
the list of casualties."
Mulder laughed and hooked the door open, pushing the
screen door out prepatory to grabbing the paper out of the
mailbox. His action was halted by the presence of the petite,
pretty red-haired woman poised to ring the doorbell again.
Scully and Mulder stared at each other in utter
shock, both caught completely offguard.
"Ah-HAH!" Both started guiltily at the triumphant
exclamation. "I forgot I was wearing my jacket, and
naturally that was the first thing to go, so--" Emmy
appeared, seizing her battered windbreaker from a
haphazard pile of books on a small table. "Eureka!" She
produced the tape player from a coat pocket and swiveled
to see Mulder and Scully both looking back at her with
panicky expressions.
Emmy came to the door, smiled. "Hi, Dana. What's up?"
"I was just on my way to lunch and I thought I'd
return these CDs..." Scully held out a stack of music;
Emmy received them cheerfully.
"Hey, thanks. Like 'em?"
Scully swallowed her surprise and made a show of
equanimity. "Absolutely. Especially Siouxie Sioux. The
Rapture is definitely on my Christmas list."
Emmy tapped Mulder's elbow with the CDs. "Hear
that?"
"Every word," he replied, eyes skimming warily from
one to the other.
"Thanks for loaning them to me. I, uhm, I'd better
get going... see you tomorrow." Scully hastily left.
"Bye, Dana." Emmy withdrew back into the house;
Mulder shut the door, chewing on his lip.
"Oh, man," he muttered, leaning against the door.
"Well, you were going to tell her anyway, right?"
Emmy asked reasonably. "I mean, if you want to be off-
hours only we can keep it out of the FBI, but there's no
way to keep something like that from your partner. Dana'd
figure it out in about three seconds."
"I was hoping I could just sort of..."
"Ignore it and it'd go away?"
"Uhm, ease her into it."
"It's a relationship, Fox, not a hot bath." Emmy
deposited the CDs Scully had returned atop the stack of
books on the little table. "Believe me, I know how
important your work is, how close you and Dana are. I'll
keep out of that. It'll work out fine."
Mulder shook his head, bemused. "This is what it's
like, isn't it."
"What what's like?"
"A normal, sane relationship."
Emmy laughed with delight. "For a normal, sane
relationship, you need two normal, sane participants.
Neither of us fits those specs. Refer to me as normal
again and I'll kick your shins, Fox Mulder." She kissed
him. "C'mon," she said. "Your other shoe's in the kitchen.
Let's go."
*
* *
*
end of part 6
*********************************************
Dilemma
An X-Files Story
by Summer
part 7/20 (it may be shorter)
"Petting zoos always have such dull animals," Emmy
said, scritching a Shetland pony's ears. "No offense," she
added seriously, blinking contritely at the pony.
"I don't know how long it's been since I've been
to a zoo..." Mulder looked around.
"Not an animal person?"
"Not particularly. I have fish, I like my fish."
"Neat, what kind of fish?"
"Lots of neon tetras, zebra fish, and a Siamese fighter."
"Just one?"
"They kill each other if there's more than one. That's why
they're called Siamese fighting fish."
"Learn something new every day." Emmy waited as a couple
of kids bought goat-food in ice cream cones, then stepped up to the
monitor's counter at a square kiosk in the petting zoo's center.
The monitor was a grandmotherly woman, wearing a small pin
that read `Volunteer'; her hair was in a permanent wave, her mouth
in a permanent frown. "Can I help you, miss?"
"I have a question. See, wherever you go, it's the same
animals in the petting zoos, even here at the National Zoo. Just
once I'd like to see a mink, or an ocelot... why not have more
variety? I'm sure people would love to pet a tiger."
The volunteer gave a tight, indulgent smile. "Tigers are
carnivorous predators, dear," she explained. "They'd hurt anyone
who tried to pet them."
Emmy didn't seem to mind that the volunteer thought she
was touched. "You could have an `At Your Own Risk' petting zoo,"
she proposed. "Anyone who wants to try their luck could sign a
waiver stating that the zoo is in no way responsible for any
damages incurred."
The older woman chuckled politely. "That's very interesting,"
she lied, looking to Mulder; she seemed to think he was Emmy's keeper
and signaled for him to get hold of his charge.
Mulder leaned against the counter, nodding. "You could set
up an arena," he continued. "Watching someone try their luck at
petting the tigers would be added entertainment for anyone else at
the Zoo. Imagine the free publicity every time someone gave it a
shot."
"Movie deals," Emmy said.
"Better yet, television rights," Mulder replied. "A reality
show, like _Cops_. The survivors would be almost guaranteed
celebrities--"
"And then you get into product endorsements, merchandising..."
The volunteer made a disgusted sound and turned to mind the
other side of the kiosk. Emmy frowned at the woman's retreating back
and said to Mulder innocently, "It was just a suggestion."
"Would you do it?" he asked as they walked away.
"Pet a tiger? In a heartbeat."
Mulder shook his head. "You'd risk your life just to be
extraordinary."
"Yep. Hey, that's what I do for a living."
They stopped at a tall fence surrounded by a railing. Far
below, a pride of lions reposed on a hill, their tails switching
lazily. Mulder smiled as Emmy leaned up against the fence, staring
down in undisguised fascination as one of the cats yawned, exposing
its ferocious teeth. Sunlight gave Emmy the same tawny coloring as
the lions below. Her amber hair waved down to her shoulders, a fringe
of bangs curling to frame her face. Mulder shifted his gaze to the
animals sprawling on the hill, remembering when Scully wore her hair
in that same schoolgirlish style.
"What's wrong?" Emmy asked presently.
Mulder sighed. "Just thinking about what I'm going to tell
my partner."
"Why do you have to tell her anything? She knows."
"It's not that simple." Mulder turned, sitting back against
the railing. "You know what we do for the X-Files goes above and
beyond the risks most agents face... Scully didn't volunteer for that,
she was assigned to me. She's chosen to stay, and I have more respect
for that than I know how to say. But essentially she gave up on having
any kind of life outside the X-Files."
Emmy nodded thoughtfully, "She mentioned that. In retrospect,
Dana's been warning me all along what a workaholic you are."
He shrugged. "I told her from the start-- I have to know what
they're hiding. Nothing else matters to me." He stuck his hands into
his jeans pockets pensively. "I guess sometimes I worry that Scully
gave up on a career, a personal life, because she felt sorry for me...
because I've always been alone."
"Hey," Emmy protested softly. "You and Dana work together better
than any other team I've ever heard of. You go launching off into one
of
those intuitive leaps and she's right there laying down the
foundation,
building the case with the evidence to meet up with your solutions. If
I could ever have a professional relationship like that-- I'd give up
a
lot for that too."
"Yeah," he said, sounding miserable.
Emmy cocked her head to one side. "You know, you don't have to
spare my feelings. We can say `Fun while it lasted' and go back to the
way things were before."
"That's not what I want to do."
"Now, think about it before you nobly decline. I mean, at some
point we WILL have to say `Fun while it lasted'. I'll get my first
assignment in just a few months."
"I know, but--" Mulder grimaced and shook his head. "Look,
this may be the first time in years I've actually felt comfortable in
a quote-unquote `relationship'. I'd really like to be able to say `See
you tomorrow night' or even `Same time next week' but in honesty, I
can't. Because I don't know where the next case is going to take me, I
don't know what's going to happen next."
"Neither do I! Fox, work comes first for both of us."
"It goes beyond that..." He took a breath, searching for the
right words. "It's not just my job or my career, Emmy. It's who I am."
"Of course it is." She crossed her arms. "Once I start my job
in earnest, I'll be changing everything-- my name, background,
language,
maybe even my face-- for every case. And you think I won't understand
that your work is your identity?"
He looked at her appraisingly. "And that doesn't bother you."
"I wouldn't have it any other way." She let him chew on that
for a bit. "So what are you going to tell her?"
"I don't know." Suddenly he grinned. "Maybe I'll just tell her
that I got really, really lucky." Emmy opened her mouth in mock-
indignation. "Okay, how about I was very fortunate?"
"Euphemism! It means the same thing."
"Yeah." He rested his hands on her shoulders. "It means I was
really, really lucky to run into you that day... and I want to make
this
work for as long as we have before you have to go."
She stepped against him and answered against his ear, "I'd like
that." Just as quickly, she stepped away. "C'mon. We still haven't
seen
the tigers."
* * *
"We're still sorting through some old declassified files Skinner
sent down," Mulder said as they entered the gift shop, "but I have two
cases on his desk, waiting for his approval. We may go out of town
this
Thursday, to look into some illegal dumping in Maine. The company
involved
was accused of testing experimental chemicals on their employees
without
the workers' knowledge back in the late seventies. Scully thinks they
might be at it again."
"What'll you do if you find something?"
"I'm going to keep the evidence between my teeth if I have to.
If there's something there, we're going to prove this one."
"What about the media, ever think of leaking information to the
press?"
Mulder made a face. "We'd only be compromising ourselves. Anonymously,
our word wouldn't do enough good to justify the havoc it would wreak
on our
standing in the Bureau. And if we actually went public... we'd both be
persona non grata within a week. I don't think I could do that on my
own,
let alone drag Scully down with me."
"A good reporter can do a lot more from an anonymous tip than you
might realize," Emmy argued. "You might just encourage somebody else
to
start digging."
"So that they can be in constant danger just like we are? I'm sure
every journalist in America would line up for that."
"Hey, what's all the danger for? To keep this stuff from getting
out. So if it gets out, there's no longer any point in trying to
silence
people. Isn't that what you're trying to do? Expose what they're
hiding?"
"Right. Even though that might just put you out of a job..."
"I'll survive." Emmy toyed with a little felt tiger. "Hey, look
at that. I haven't seen one of those things in ages..."
Mulder looked up from the interlocked nail puzzle he'd been fiddling
with. "What, the photo booth? They're all over the place on the
Vineyard.
Used to be really popular with the vacationers on the beaches."
"Four photos for a dollar..." Emmy dug into her jacket pockets and
came up with a handful of change. "Let's get pictures."
"I hate pictures."
"Well, that's because you don't need pictures. But if you go out
of town on a case for a whole week, I might just forget what you look
like."
She laughed at the pitiful pout he gave her. "C'mon, pleeease?"
He growled and grumbled, but Mulder let her pull him along. He
halted abruptly; Emmy was about to beseech again when he lifted a hand
to
still her for a moment.
"Excuse me," he said politely to a young woman who watched two
freckled boys, obviously her sons, playing with rubber dinosaurs on
the
floor. "Could I borrow your camera for a minute?"
The mother started to respond with a closed, politely neutral
refusal, but when she saw Emmy beside him and their linked hands, she
smiled,
"Sure, go ahead," and handed it over.
Emmy giggled as they packed into the photo booth and Mulder held up
the camera, pretending to take a picture of the booth's lens as it
clicked
at them. She tried to get it away from his face-- and they wound up
wrestling
for it,