Fine Control

By Jean Robinson
jeanrobinson@yahoo.com


Disclaimer: Characters from the X-Files are the property
of Ten Thirteen Productions and the Fox Television
Network. All others are the property of the author. No
infringement is intended.
Rating: PG-13
Classification: S
Archive: Please ask permission.
Spoilers: Up through "Irresistible"
Summary: Emotions and tempers flare during the events
leading up to and following Mulder and Scully's
encounter with Donnie Pfaster.
Feedback: Make my millennium at
jeanrobinson@yahoo.com
Author's notes at the end
*****************************


FINE CONTROL (1/5)
By Jean Robinson


I've just learned that my partner is a control freak.

Oh, I know what most of you are thinking. Something
along the lines of, Gee, Agent Mulder, exactly how thick
are you? There's a reason they say hindsight is 20/20,
and for the first time I can fully comprehend the true
meaning of that phrase. Because I'm actually starting to
understand my partner for the first time. And part of that
understanding is realizing that it should have been
glaringly obvious from Day 1 that Special Agent Dana
Scully had this little thing about control.

But it wasn't obvious to me. For a very simple reason,
one that most of you are going to hate me for. Yet it's a
reason that some of you are probably familiar with and
can relate to, no matter how much you don't want to
admit it.

I didn't care enough to notice.

I didn't care about her, and I sure as hell didn't want her
around. When she first waltzed into my basement hovel,
my private hideaway, my personal sanctuary, I pulled out
all the stops. I insulted her intelligence, her education,
her integrity and her profession. I showed her every
discourtesy, expressed every male chauvinistic platitude
and employed every condescending tone in my extensive
repertoire with the full intent of making her blush,
stutter and eventually flee in humiliated tears back to
the safety of her Quantico lab, to live out her FBI career
slicing and dicing stiff, cold corpses while generations of
Academy geeks alternately threw up and took prim,
proper notes as she droned on about death.

Except that didn't happen.

Instead, she verbally slapped back with an audacity that
floored me. The little Einstein-bashing brat had the nerve
to tell me that I didn't know where to look for answers.
She had the gall to flaunt her pitiful faith in science – the
same field that brought us the Hubble Telescope and
Skylab as well as such helpful things as sticky notes – as
the ultimate tool for discovering the truth in any given
situation. Over my experience as a profiler. Over my
years of plowing through the X-Files. Over everything.
Science is the answer, no other wacky theories need
apply.

The expression on her face said she thought this
assignment would be a cinch. That she could name that
tune in three notes and give me a rational explanation for
anything in my file cabinets without even breathing hard.
I dare you, Agent Mulder, it said. I dare you to scare me.
Because I'm a scientist. I double-dare you, even.

I've never wanted to hit a woman so badly in my entire
life as I did in that moment.

But I knew why she'd been sent, even if she didn't. And
kicking her out of my office and out of the X-Files,
satisfying as it may have been, was out of the question. I
knew that even in a fit of pique. So I had to find a way to
deal with the short red-headed Madame Curie disciple
that would now dog my footsteps and impede my work
with all the zeal of a pit bull.

The first step was to pretend to like her.

That was the easiest, because she was definitely likable.
What was there not to like, at least by the standards of
the average male? She was pretty, intelligent, diligent,
and although I hated to admit it, more open to new ideas
and new ways of thinking than I had expected from such
a hard-core science grind. There were days I had to
remind myself she wasn't what she seemed; that no
matter what I thought I was feeling for her, I had to
remember she was reporting to others about me. About
my work. About my judgment. About my worth to the
Bureau. About my sanity, for all I knew.

I kept reminding myself she was nothing more than a
mole in a matching skirt and blazer. An attractive mole,
but a mole nonetheless.

Okay, so sometimes it was hard to keep that in mind.
Especially on the first case, when the mole in question
came flying into my motel room practically in hysterics
because she thought she was targeted for an alien
abduction that she didn't even believe in. When I got my
first good look at Dana Scully Unplugged, so to speak.
Unplugged, unnerved, and best of all, unclothed.

It was an opportunity too good to pass up, so I milked it
for all it was worth. On later reflection, it couldn't have
worked out better if I'd actually planned it. The storm,
the power loss, the strategically placed mosquito bites on
her back, just below the top edge of her panties. I
remember saying, "Thank you, Jesus!" in my head when
she dropped that robe, because I couldn't believe how
much fun this was going to be. The possibilities for
torturing her stretched out in front of me like an endless
highway, the only limitations being the length of the
power outage and my own imagination.

"What are they? Mulder, what are they?!"

Panic. There was definite panic in that voice, which only
forty-eight hours earlier had been so annoyingly
confident in her abilities and her science. I debated
asking her why she didn't have a rational explanation for
this, then decided to string her paranoia along a bit
more. You dared me, Scully, and now I'm picking up the
challenge. Ready or not, here it comes.

So I took my time. Stood there as if confused for a
minute, then closed in. While I hadn't yet cottoned on to
the control thing, I wasn't completely blind to all of her
personality quirks. In our short acquaintance, I'd already
noticed she had issues with the invasion of personal
space, and now I had a golden chance to make her
squirm horribly on so many different levels. It just
doesn't get any better than this, as the commercial goes.

I crouched down slowly behind her, enjoying the way the
candlelight flickered across her back, holding the tiny
flame close enough for her to feel it singe the sensitive
skin as I lowered my hand to get a better look at what
was upsetting her so. Drew out the agony, making her
wait for my next move and the ultimate verdict. Making
her dread them both. Very gently, very lightly, touched
her.

I'll give her credit; she held her ground. The flinch was
minimal. She was scared, but determined. When I finally
released her with my smile and the pronouncement of
harmless insect bites, the result was even better than I'd
dreamed.

She threw herself into my arms.

I was a little alarmed at the intensity of her relief,
wondering if I'd taken the charade a step too far and
really damaged her in some psychological way. "You're
shaking," I said, feigning concern. I didn't have to work
too hard at it; if she came home a mental wreck from our
very first case, there were going to be some very pointed
questions directed my way. I could have just done their
work for them and joked myself out of my own job.

But I'd underestimated what I then thought was her
ability to bounce and roll. What was really, now that I
look back, her first display of what I, in true Bureau
acronymic fashion, call SIC – Scully In Control. The
famed Dana Scully iron will. Within five minutes she was
okay, asking intelligent questions, listening to my sad life
history with interest and a touching amount of empathy.

I played on it shamelessly. It was hard to keep from
laughing out loud when she denied being part of any plot
to discredit me. I managed it only because I knew she
was sincere; she really didn't believe there was such a
plot or that she was part of it.

So I was a pig, a jerk, a slimeball. Pick your pejorative, I
won't argue too hard with you about it. I was all those
things and more. We came back from Oregon, and moved
on to other cases. You know about all of them. The
things I did to her. The ways I belittled her. Because
although I didn't hate her as much as I did that first day
in my lonely basement cubby, I still didn't want her
around. She was still a spy. She was still sending out
little coded missives on my crusade, couching my
intangible efforts in her scientific techno-babble, where it
inevitably came out sounding like a bad pulp fiction
novel. Simply put, she was still the enemy.

I delighted in finding new, creative ways to frustrate her.
Childish? Very. But nobody has ever accused me of
acting my age. Quite the contrary. Most people see me as
someone locked forever in the mind of a twelve-year-old,
staring catatonic at an empty bed, a vacant room, and
then at the stars above. Searching the constellations for
an answer that will never be revealed. Oh, yes, there are
many who are convinced my mental development ceased
the moment Samantha vanished, and that the only
reason I have attained the level of functionality I
currently enjoy is that I am so deranged I can fake even
an Oxford education.

After I scared Scully, I started to test her limits, to see
just how far I could push her before she'd complain
bitterly to the powers above or just walk out on her own.

My favorite trick, as you all must by now be aware, even
bears her own initials – the DS, otherwise known as the
Ditch Scully. It was simple, effective, and best of all, it
was so goddamned easy to do. Why she ever let me get
my hands on the rental car keys after the first few times
was always an X-File in itself, but she did. Time and time
again. Who was I to argue with fate? The memories of
seeing her angry, hurt face in my rearview mirror as I
roared off to nowhere were priceless. They had to be,
because there were also those wonderful times when my
ditching didn't work as planned and she had to come
running in with the cavalry to save my sorry butt. At
least it made her feel worthwhile, as if she was earning
her salary instead of just eating my road dust all the
time.

The odd thing was she never complained. Not to Blevins,
not to Skinner, not to me. If it had been me, I would have
said, "Screw it," and left my partner to whatever fate he
or she encountered after being abandoned. But no,
Scully was like those blow-up punching bag clowns,
always popping back up for more. Far from discouraging
her, it made her more determined to work the whole
situation out. She wanted to find the Truth even more
than I did at times.

Actually, she rarely complained about anything. They
could have stuck me with a real turkey of a partner, I
know. Instead, I got Wonder Woman. Well, maybe not
Wonder Woman, since Scully was the most nervous
airline passenger I'd ever come across. For a scientist,
especially one with a degree in physics, she seemed to
have remarkably little faith in the mechanics of flight. We
traveled enough that it was an increasingly difficult
problem for her. When the unfortunate Bear the Bush
Pilot flew us in that little winged buzz saw up to the
Arctic Circle, I thought she was going to lose it for sure.
But no, white-knuckled and tight-lipped, she remained
SIC. For a while I thought she tried to postpone our
departure just so she wouldn't have to get back in that
plane, alien worms or no alien worms.

She worked in wind, rain, sleet, snow, no sleep, no food,
anything I wanted. For that, I could put up with a little
aviophobia.

To survive, Scully developed her own little dig at my
expense. She had a routine opening for any conversation
with me. It was, "Are you suggesting that. . .?" and then
she'd fill in the blank with a recap of the theory I had
just imparted on her, only when she rephrased it back, it
came out sounding not only immature, but insane, even
to me.

It was mostly that patronizing tone, the crossed arms
and the raised eyebrow that accompanied it, but God, it
ticked me off, and she knew it. She was no psychology
expert, but she wasn't stupid, either. She knew how to
play the game, and her specialty was the subtle
approach, a defensive contrast to my outright, full-speed
ahead blind charge.

Now, before you all continue to vilify me, let me state that
I have changed. I did change. And you can probably
guess what triggered that, the same way you knew how
much I really enjoyed pushing her buttons.

Yeah, that little incident. The one where she disappeared
for three months and almost died.

We'd been separated because she wasn't really doing her
job. She wasn't being a good spy; she was being a good
influence instead. I was just beginning to get that
through my thick head, and I was just beginning to miss
her a little. So I would visit her at Quantico, talk to her
about my latest cases, and make fun of Krycek to make
her smile. I still didn't completely trust her, but I sure as
hell trusted her more than I did the grinning, preppy
pretty boy they gave me to replace her.

Then came the night I got home and heard her voice on
my answering machine. Or rather, the night I came home
and heard her screaming for me to help her as something
in the background crashed into her apartment and
dragged her away by force. Screaming. That's what really
got me. My ex-partner, SIC, did not scream like that.
Ever.

That's when I realized there are some things you
wouldn't wish on anyone, whether they are your worst
enemy or not. Scully was far from my worst enemy at
that point, although the niggling little voice in the back of
my head still insisted she wasn't really part of the team.

The days and nights became weeks, then months, and I
started wondering if she'd ever really been there at all. As
if the Flukeman, the fluorescent tree mites, the liver-
eating guy and even the whole Scully-in-her-underwear
scene had been part of a very detailed, very elaborate
dream that I was only now awakening from. But only for
a moment, until I got a call from her mother, who timidly
asked me to accompany her to pick up her daughter's
headstone.

I hit rock bottom then, that's for sure. For three months
I'd survived by convincing myself that she was
Somewhere Else. Just not here. Now her mother wanted
me to help her accept the fact that Somewhere Else was
a place Scully would not be returning from. That Duane
Barry had bought her a one-way non-refundable ticket
on the train to eternity.

I didn't know it then, but the worst was yet to come. As
bad as I felt standing next to her mother staring at a
marker for an empty grave, it was infinitely more
devastating standing next to her mother staring at
Special Agent Dana Scully wired up to a dozen or so
beeping, blinking machines, one of which was forcing air
into her lungs because they would not function on their
own. Knowing she didn't want to live like this. Knowing I
was the one who had agreed and it was my signature on
her will that would make her death legal in the District of
Columbia. Knowing I was the reason she would die in
more ways than one.

She was just supposed to snitch on me, not give up her
life because of me.

I firmly believe no one should have to go through what
she did. I don't care what you've done in your miserable
life, if that's what it was. No one deserves to be abducted
from their home, tortured and left to die like some kind
of raccoon roadkill. No one deserves that, and no one's
loved ones deserve to go through the agony of watching it
happen.

So I changed my attitude toward her. If she was going to
die, and it seemed both clear and inevitable at the time
that she would, I could at least repent some of my sins.
Not that I thought she would wake up and forgive me,
but maybe she'd know I didn't hate her, and I was truly
sorry this had happened to her, and that it had never
been my intention to have her come to this end. I'd
wanted to drive her away, but I'd never said I was looking
for a permanent solution to the problem of her presence.

But she did recover, and that's an X-File I believe may
never be solved. All I can think of is that SIC was a hell of
a lot more determined than I ever bargained for.

Although my attitude toward her had changed, I can't
say I gave up my old habits completely. That would be
too noble, and I'm far from a noble person. I'm a
stubborn, selfish, egotistical person; I'm the first to admit
it. When I want something, nothing gets in my way,
especially not a diminutive voice of reason with arched
eyebrows and skeptical blue eyes. And teasing her,
testing her, was something I enjoyed too much to
completely give up.

There was something else going on, too, something I
recognized from my childhood experience with
Samantha. I think the technical term is survivor's guilt.
Since Scully wasn't dead, it may not fit exactly, but it's
close enough. Basically, I was upset at what had
happened to her. Who wouldn't be? And it was kind of
galling that she refused to lay blame for it on me or
anywhere else.

I wanted someone to blame. I needed someone to blame.
I was already busy blaming myself, and it just wasn't
enough to satisfy me anymore. Not when my ultra calm,
ultra rational partner would look me squarely in the face
and declare, "Mulder, it wasn't your fault," in a very firm
voice whenever I broached the subject.

So I started to blame her. Scully, how could you let this
happen? You're a trained federal officer, for Pete's sake.
How could you let this idiot – an idiot who had just come
through surgery for a gunshot wound, mind you – just
overpower you like that? Didn't they teach you anything
in all those personal defense classes at Quantico? Did
you spend so much time in the lab that you forgot how to
punch someone hard enough to disable him? Barry was
just a guy, Scully, why didn't you kick him in the groin
and run for it? What's the matter with you?

Once I let my mind wander back down that track often
enough, the earlier doubts would come back. She was a
spy for the government; if they're the ones who took her
and experimented on her, it was nothing less than she
deserved.

Poor Scully. There I was ping-ponging between being the
solicitous partner and the raving lunatic, and she never
even knew it. But she was busy herself, trying to
reestablish her former SIC mode, which was noticeably
tarnished and tattered.

The Pfaster case, the one we just finished, brought
everything to a head.

I was still happily not noticing anything wrong with her.
You all know her two favorite words in the world: "I'm
fine." What could be better than that? A partner who is
always fine, no matter what's going on, no matter how
many worlds are crashing down around her. For the
most part, despite everything that had happened to her
and everything I personally had done to make her life a
living hell, she was fine. So who was I to realize that this
time was different? Even when she was broadcasting
signals powerful enough to be received by ham radio
operators in Australia?

I played football in high school, and my mother always
moaned it would be my downfall. She was thinking I'd
get hurt, and after Samantha I could understand her
point, although I disagreed with her. But ultimately,
Mom was right. Football was my downfall, except it
wasn't really mine. It was Scully's, and I was too blind to
see it coming. Let's just say I was blinded by two tickets
to the Redskins/Vikings game, prime seats for a royal
battle of testosterone and sweat.

I never noticed the not-so-subtle surges of estrogen and
adrenaline walking beside me. Never thought twice why
my partner, the forensic pathologist who had previously
dissected the most disgusting bits of decaying tissue at
my behest with nary a twitch, was suddenly and
inexplicably backing away. Had to leave the room after
viewing what were some relatively innocuous photos of
the victims, considering others we'd dealt with in the
past. Literally stood at the crime scene and told me, "I
need a minute," when we both knew time was of the
essence and she was the body expert, not me. Tiptoed
hesitantly into the autopsy bay as if she'd never seen
such a place before and was wondering what the hell to
do first.

Maybe if she had stood right in front of me and yelled,
"I'm not fine, Mulder, I'm having a breakdown, okay?" I
would have gotten the point sooner. Sometimes you need
to be blunt with me. But she didn't; it wasn't her way.
She was torn between trying to salvage what was left of
SIC, and knowing that it wasn't much and she really
needed to admit she needed help.

So you had the two of us, each pretending like crazy that
we were functioning as a normal unit, just like old times,
before she was snatched away and returned as damaged
goods.

I asked her if she was all right, and told her that she
didn't have to hide anything from me. She said she was
fine. I let it go. I let =her= go, back to Washington to
pursue what I privately thought was a flimsy chance at
getting more forensic evidence, but what the hell. If it
would get her out of my hair for a few hours, so much
the better. Her behavior and her expression were finally
starting to scare me a little. It was as if something had
sucked her personality away and left me with a walking,
talking mannequin that bore only a passing resemblance
to the bossy, eyebrow-raising, dryly sarcastic partner I
had grown accustomed to seeing in the passenger seat of
our rental cars or hogging the armrest on our flights.

To illustrate the depth of my insensitivity, I actually
attributed all of her sudden uncharacteristic mannerisms
to "that time of the month." Not that the inconvenience of
a female anatomy had ever, in our two years of
association, ever put her off her focus or dimmed her
enthusiasm. I can tell you with all honesty, beyond my
initial surface inquiries, it never occurred to me that
Pfaster's twisted psyche bothered her on such a deep,
visceral level. She said she was fine, she said she wanted
to try her luck with the lab in DC, and I sent her off with
the body and didn't give it a second thought.

End part 1/5
________________________

FINE CONTROL (2/5)
By Jean Robinson
Disclaimer, etc. in part 1


I was glad when she announced she was coming back;
Bocks was a nice enough guy, but all that midwestern
charm grates after a while. Scully was my buffer. I
listened to her on the phone, and she sounded different,
more alive. More normal. So I agreed that I needed her
back in the Land of Ten Thousand Lakes and made a
note of her flight time.

When it became obvious that she was not just late, but
that something had happened, my survivor's guilt kicked
in again. Scully, how could you let this guy, any guy, run
you off the road? I know you must have been tired, but
you're a better driver than that. I know you are. What's
the matter with you?

By the time we found her car, we'd pieced together
almost everything else. The print belonging to Pfaster.
The cell-to-cell conversation he'd had about Scully with
our first suspect; it was almost too unbelievable that
we'd stood barely five feet away from our perpetrator and
not known it.

We knew he had Scully, that her life was now in mortal
danger, and we were running out of time to find her.
Judging from the crumpled wreck of her rental car, it
might already be too late. The accident might have done
Pfaster's work for him; possibly the best we could hope
for was to retrieve her body before he mutilated it for
another set of grisly trophies.

I didn't want to think about that. I didn't want to think
that I might be headed back to DC to explain to Skinner
how I'd let my partner be killed, and I sure as hell didn't
want to face her mother and tell her that her daughter's
remains had been violated by a maniac with a penchant
for hair and fingernails.

But we did find her in time, thanks to the miracle of
today's computerized systems of records. Births, deaths,
wills, real estate transactions, car registrations,
addresses, phone numbers, we raced through them all
until we got the information to move.

I'll never forget the scene when we crashed into Pfaster's
boyhood home. Yeah, I know, I never forget anything, but
believe me when I tell you this was burned into my
memory in a way few images are. Pfaster, straddling my
partner's body, fists raised to strike her. Scully, flat on
her back on the floor, struggling with him, hands tied at
the wrists in front of her.

Hands tied in front of her.

In front of her.

As the cops yelled and pulled Pfaster off her, as Scully
frantically rolled away to her knees, all I could see was
her bound hands.

Scully, why couldn't you get away? The guy tied you with
your hands in front of you. You could use them. Your
legs aren't even tied. Why didn't you run? Why didn't you
unlock a door, break a window, smash him in the face
with your fists? Why do you keep ending up in situations
where you seem so incredibly helpless, when I know
you're not? You could have taken this guy. I know you
could. I've seen you take on others twice his size. What's
wrong with you?

All evening long I'd been running on adrenaline-fueled
panic, and now it gave way to anger. Again. Anger at her
because she became the most infuriating contradiction at
the most inconvenient times. Like now.

She was twisting her arms ineffectually, trying to free
herself. I knelt down next to her. "Let's get some
paramedics in here now!" I shouted. It came out a little
gruffer than I intended; it had been a long night.

"I'm okay," she panted breathlessly. I could hardly hear
her. "Just help me get my wrists untied."

I fumbled with the knotted black cord. Her wrists were
rubbed raw, but the wounds looked superficial. She got
her feet under her and stood up, swaying slightly. "How
did you find me?" Her voice quivered.

This, friends, was about the time the light began to dawn
inside my head. For it was now that I finally realized
something was seriously wrong in Scully's world. That
she was anything but fine. She was trembling, her arms
shaking so badly I could hardly undo her bindings while
I explained.

But the big kicker was her eyes. She wouldn't look at me.
Not at all. Instead, she kept cutting her gaze over to
where Bocks and the rest of the cops were dealing with
Pfaster. Cuffing him. Hauling him to his feet. Reading
him his rights. Frog-marching him out of the house. As
the little procession passed us, Scully shuddered
violently.

I kept my voice level and even found some of the
compassion that I hadn't really had the opportunity to
use since she'd come back to work. "Sure you don't want
to sit down, Scully, and have someone take a look at
you?" Her face, what I could see of it, was a mess.

She kept her head and her eyes down as she resolutely
insisted yet again, "I'm fine, Mulder," in an unfamiliar
wobbly singsong that utterly belied the surface meaning
of her words.

I saw Dana Scully Unplugged on our very first case. I
sensed suddenly that I was on the verge of seeing
something totally new: Dana Scully Unglued. Completely
unglued.

I put my hand under her jaw and carefully pushed her
chin up, forcing her to look at me. What I saw shocked
me – fear. I saw her terror at what had happened to her. I
didn't have the whole sick story of what Pfaster had or
hadn't done to her. I only knew that the experience had
rocked her to her very core, and despite her best efforts
she couldn't stop that fear from showing.

Oh, she was trying, all right. Those big blue eyes were
swimming with tears that she was holding back, and her
chin shook with the sobs that she strangled down. I just
looked down at her without saying anything, and
something she read in my expression knocked her
remaining defenses flat to the ground.

She buried her face in my shirtfront and burst into tears;
it was an eerie re-enactment of our time in Oregon.
Except then she hadn't cried, and I hadn't yet learned
that crying was something Dana Scully simply didn't do.
At least not in front of other people, she didn't. Now, of
course, I knew that; she hadn't shed a tear in my
presence to date. Not when Tooms had attacked her, not
when her father died, not during that horribly stressful
time in the Arctic, not even while she recovered from her
abduction.

Now she was weeping uncontrollably, one step from total
hysteria. Her arms slid around my back and she
clutched me like a drowning swimmer holds a life
preserver.

The paramedics were still hovering nearby; I signaled
them with my eyes to back off and hold position. My
arms went around her of their own accord, and I rested
my cheek on the top of her head, murmuring soothing
words of meaningless comfort while rocking her gently. It
was a gesture I dredged up from a long-dead memory,
some vague recollection of comforting Samantha in times
of childhood distress. Skinned knees. Broken dolls.
Unkind words on the playground. Our parents shouting
and slamming doors. An action almost thirty years
dormant, yet still instinctive given the proper stimulus.
And the sight of Scully, my stolid, stoical partner Scully,
crying her eyes out was definitely sufficient stimulus.

The tempest didn't last long, partly because she was just
too physically and emotionally drained to keep it up, and
partly because she refused to let herself show such
weakness for any length of time. I rocked her for a few
seconds after the last muffled sobs had ceased, and then
shifted my hands to the curve of her shoulders to push
her back slightly and see what was going down.

She released her hold on me immediately, but I got yet
another nasty surprise as I moved her away from my
chest.

She sucked in a sharp breath and her eyes started to roll
back in her head. Her knees buckled, and suddenly I was
supporting her entire weight and had to take a staggering
step back to compensate.

I desperately shifted my hands to get a better grip on her
arms and keep her from crashing to the floor, and she
gave a small, soft cry of pain. She wasn't quite out of it,
and somehow I'd hurt her, although I couldn't fathom
what I might have done.

The paramedics jumped forward as if they'd been
expecting this moment from the instant Scully had
broken down; I learned later that indeed they had. They
had a lot more experience with this kind of trauma than I
did, and they knew as soon as the initial shock wore off,
the pain moved in. I hadn't realized Scully was hurt.
They, on the other hand, correctly assumed she was from
the outset.

They took her from me while I was still babbling,
"Scully?" in a confused fashion.

"We've got her, Agent Mulder. We've got her now." They
then ignored me and began a medical dialogue between
themselves.

While I watched, numbly trying to process what had just
happened, one of them supported her while the other
removed her suit jacket. They lowered her carefully onto
the waiting gurney and their bodies blocked my view of
her as they started their exam.

Agent Bocks came over to finalize the details. Pfaster was
on his way to the station already, but Bocks needed to
clear up how the paperwork would read. How Scully
should be written up in all this. I talked with him,
distracted, half of me still occupied with my now
unconscious partner.

". . . tell them ETA in twelve minutes," I heard next to me,
and whirled around to find the paramedics raising the
gurney, preparing to roll it – and Scully – to the
ambulance.

"What the hell are you doing?" I practically shouted. In
my head, she'd just fainted. Passed out from exhaustion
and stress. Nothing that needed hospitalization.

Both paramedics froze. They exchanged a glance with
each other, and then with Bocks. Who is this lunatic?
that glance said. The older EMT cleared his throat. "We're
taking Agent Scully to the hospital, Agent Mulder. For
treatment of her injuries." His tone was careful,
respectful, with just a hint of an unspoken question – if
that's all right with you, sir? And if it's not all right, could
you explain why? Because we see someone who is badly
banged up, and we'd like to know what you see.

"Injuries?" I knew I sounded like the village idiot, but I
couldn't help it and I was beyond caring at this point.
"What injuries?"

Another glance flicked between them – they couldn't
believe I hadn't known my partner was a walking train
wreck. The man who had spoken began to catalog
Scully's woes to me. "She has a broken arm, a dislocated
shoulder, and at least two, possibly three, broken ribs,
Agent Mulder."

I could see now that they'd inflated a clear plastic balloon
splint around her right forearm, and a strap was holding
that same arm against her body. The paramedic wasn't
finished, however. "She's also probably got a
concussion."

"What?" The word jumped out of me before I could stop
it.

"Agent Mulder, is there a problem with transporting your
partner to the hospital?" the first paramedic asked,
impatience now leaking through his polite, professional
facade. "If not, we need to go. =Now=." He leaned on the
word for emphasis.

My brain was in overdrive. I simply couldn't comprehend
the notion that she was so severely hurt. That less than
ten minutes ago, she'd been standing upright, insisting
adamantly that she was fine, she was fine, she was fine.

And I'd believed her.

I'd believed her words because it was easier and less
messy to do so than to search for a deeper truth in her
actions and the situation in general. I wanted her to be
fine, so we could close this case, go home and move on.

I couldn't believe how close I'd come to letting her walk
away with potentially life-threatening injuries.

Could I possibly be that callous?

Seems I was. And that realization was an ugly shock in
itself.

The paramedics were shifting from foot to foot, and I
shook myself out of my self-recrimination and back to
the here and now. "Can I ride with her?"

At first I thought they'd refuse, but they didn't. Maybe
there were special rules for government personnel, or
maybe they thought it would be less trouble to bend a
policy than to deal with another outburst from me. "Sure.
Come on."

The trip, although it took less than fifteen minutes, felt
endless. Scully seemed to be having trouble breathing
and I watched as the paramedic slid an oxygen mask
over her face. She looked so small. She looked so young.
Despite the businesslike shell top and slacks, she looked
more like a teenager who had been hit by a car while
riding her bike than an FBI agent who could beat my
best score on the firing range with her worst one.

"She was holding onto me," I said. For some unknown
reason I felt compelled to exonerate myself and my
actions to these total strangers. "She was using both
arms, she was talking and she was standing by herself.
How could she do that?"

The paramedic shrugged. "She probably didn't even feel
it. We had a guy last week who broke his leg in two
places in a car wreck and walked half a mile to a phone
to get help, because his wife was still stuck in the car.
Never knew it until later."

Scully came around when he inserted an IV into the back
of her left hand to run in the fluids necessary to combat
shock and dehydration. Her eyes opened and focused on
the ceiling of the vehicle, her gaze sliding slowly around
until she found me. She tried to say something, but it
was obliterated by the mask.

I took her hand, mindful of the IV line. "Shh. It's all right.
Just relax."

I might as well have been telling the wind not to blow.
She tried again to speak, and I finally pulled the mask
down to allow her to say her piece once and for all.

"Mulder. . ." It was a faint whisper, nothing more. I
leaned in closer to hear her.

"What, Scully?"

". . . sorry. Should have seen him."

"It doesn't matter. It's okay. Just relax," I repeated
stupidly, because I couldn't think of anything else to say
to her. My partner the spy, lying in an ambulance with
multiple fractures and assorted other injuries, was
apologizing to me, the person who put her in the path of
her attacker in the first place. Apologizing as if she'd
actually done something wrong. As if Pfaster's sadistic,
perverted inclinations were somehow her fault.

If she wasn't so seriously hurt already, I would have
slapped her myself for even suggesting it.

The paramedic replaced the oxygen mask; Scully had
begun to wheeze for air. He was afraid one of her broken
ribs would puncture a lung. He told her not to talk. He
told me not to question her. For once, I did as I was told.
For once, she did, too. She squeezed my hand and closed
her eyes again.

They rushed her into surgery; apparently too much time
had elapsed since the original injury and they couldn't
just reduce the dislocation by mechanical means. In a
way I was glad to know she was under general
anesthesia. Scully had already shown me in a million
different ways that she was more than equal to the task
when it came to suppressing and withstanding huge
amounts of pain. Whoever said women were the weaker
sex has clearly never met my partner. I knew by now,
though, that there was no way =I= could have dealt with
the knowledge that someone was yanking her arm back
into alignment while she was conscious.

Five hours later, I was sitting by her bed in a private
room, waiting for her to wake up. My partner didn't have
much color on a good day; now she looked whiter than
the cast that ran from her fingers up to her right elbow.

Moe Bocks had been busy while I wore a hole in the
hospital linoleum during Scully's surgery. He came to me
with a theory that was only slightly comforting. Their
preliminary examination of Scully's rental car indicated
that her seatbelt had malfunctioned. If that was indeed
the case, it was quite possible that all of her injuries
could have been sustained in the car crash.

I hoped with all my heart that it was true. It meant
maybe Pfaster hadn't hurt her after all – at least not her
body. We wouldn't know until she woke up just what
he'd done to her head.

I ended up having to wait until morning to hear the full
story. Scully regained consciousness about an hour into
my bedside vigil, but the remnants of anesthesia perking
through her system precluded any coherent conversation
on her part.

When I woke up the next day, my neck aching and my
back cramping from a night on a molded chair meant for
sitting and not sleeping, she was awake and watching
me.

She looked better. Not great, but better. I probably looked
like hell, and for a moment I couldn't remember who was
supposed to be the patient. Then my vision cleared and
settled on the bandages and bruises on her face, the cast
on her arm, and the immobilizing slings and straps that
held her arm in a fixed position against her body, and
the entire wretched night came back to me.

"Morning," I greeted her inanely. "Sleep well?"

"Not really." Her voice was hoarse and rough, not much
more than a croak at best. I didn't want to know how
much of that vocal damage had been caused by the
respirator during the operation, and how much she'd
done herself screaming in terror at the abusive hands of
her captor.

"Want something to drink?"

She nodded mutely.

I poured some water from the bedside pitcher and held
the paper cup and straw to her mouth. She couldn't
move her right arm at all, and her left was hampered by
a multicolored tubular snarl of IV lines and system
monitors. She took a couple of small sips and lay back
against the pillows, as if the minute activity of sucking
and swallowing had exhausted her.

"What happened?" she asked.

"What do you remember?" I countered. To be honest, I
didn't know where to start.

I got lucky; turns out she was primarily interested in her
current medical status. She wanted to see her chart. I
lifted it off the edge of her bed and helped her hold it. She
squinted slightly, trying to decipher the doctor's
handwriting, and I remembered that her reading glasses,
if the lenses weren't smashed to bits, were somewhere in
the jumble of belongings we'd retrieved from the rental
car trunk. All of that was presumably down at the police
station, meaning we'd have to sweet-talk the local law
enforcement folks out of holding it as evidence.

And Skinner wonders why our travel expense accounts
are so high and read like a holiday shopping spree for a
destitute family of twelve. I can't recall a case where
Scully or I, and sometimes both of us, haven't had to
replace two or three sets of clothing from the skin out. I
guess it's something about chasing down things that go
bump in the night that so often involves running through
muck and mire over hill and dale. Neither one of us
formed personal attachments to our outfits anymore;
we'd realized a long time ago that if we professed to "like"
a particular ensemble, we'd be destined to ruin it beyond
any hope of salvation within a week. My dry cleaning
bills are astronomical. I can't imagine what hers are like.

Scully's eyes grew wider as she scanned the lengthy
outline describing why she was swathed in enough gauze
to entomb most of the Egyptian dynasty. Moderate
concussion. Dislocated shoulder, right side. Broken ulna
and radius, right arm. Two fractured ribs, right side.
Assorted lacerations and contusions. Mild dehydration.
Shock.

"Seen enough?" I had.

She let go of the metal clipboard. "Yes. When are they
letting me out of here?"

Letting you out? Letting you OUT? Scully, are you crazy?
You're not going anywhere!

I tamped down on the thoughts before they could escape
into words I'd regret. For once. "I haven't seen your
doctor yet this morning. You were pretty out of it last
night after the surgery on your arm. How do you feel?"

Don't say it. Don't say it. Please don't say it, Scully.

"I'm fine."

End part 2/5
________________________

FINE CONTROL (3/5)
By Jean Robinson
Disclaimer, etc. in part 1


Hell. Now I knew I couldn't hold my temper in check. I
didn't want to blow up at her, I really didn't. It was very
poor form to stand over her bedside berating her when
she couldn't muster the physical or mental strength to
defend herself properly. I know that. But neither could I
let this little charade of hers go on any longer.

"You're fine," I repeated through clenched teeth.

"Yes." She looked at me, confused, catching a faint
mental whiff of what was about to come. That eyebrow
started its familiar upward path as she tried to continue.
"Mulder, what. . ."

"YOU ARE NOT FINE!!" I yelled in her face, and she
recoiled back against the bedding in sudden shock.
"DAMMIT, YOU ARE NOT FINE, SCULLY, YOU WERE
ALMOST KILLED LAST NIGHT!!"

Silence.

I leaned over her, hovering, pressing home the
psychological height advantage, the in-your-face
intrusion of her bubble of personal space. She had
nowhere to retreat; for once she was going to have to stay
and listen to me rant and rave.

God, did I rant and rave.

"You are lying here with broken bones and a face full of
bruises because our psycho suspect tried to make you
his next victim and almost succeeded so =don't= tell me
you're fine, Scully, because you're a rotten liar and I'm
not buying that line of yours anymore! Just stop it,
okay?!!"

I didn't think it was possible, but she turned a shade
paler in the face of my unexpected and uncharacteristic
wrath. For all the disagreements we'd ever had, for all the
times we'd ever argued over everything from paranormal
theories to dinner entrees, I'd never yelled at her in that
tone of voice before. Not even when we were pointing our
weapons at each other and shouting our heads off in the
Arctic over alien creepy-crawlies.

She breathed rapidly and shallowly through her mouth.
Only three things distinguished her from the sheets and
the pillow: that red hair, the ugly abrasions across her
face, and her huge blue eyes.

The blue eyes that had been hazy and unfocused just a
few minutes ago in the aftermath of her awakening were
suddenly blazing with an inner fire.

Fire, nothing. Inferno was more the word, because SIC
was back. I don't know how she did it, but she found the
words to wound and the strength to wield them like a
sword, and she went for the mortal blow.

"As if you'd even =notice= if I =was= killed," she hissed.

I actually felt that statement in my gut, as surely as if
she'd embedded a knife in my stomach and twisted it
counterclockwise a couple of turns. It was an interesting
sensation. For a second I literally couldn't breathe, and it
was déjà vu back to wondering just who was the victim
here.

"What?" It was all I could manage.

She turned her face away. "You heard me."

My fury evaporated as quickly as it had come, taking
with it my remaining shreds of energy. I dropped back
into the chair in a graceless sprawl as my knees sagged,
still stunned at her pronouncement.

Last night I'd discovered for the first time that I was a
callous bastard.

Apparently it had been obvious to my partner for a long
time. Something she'd had the opportunity to consider,
ruminate over and ponder, probably late at night after all
those times I'd ditched her, denigrated her, or otherwise
brushed her off.

"Scully, I. . ." I what? I'm sorry? I'm stupid? I'm
insensitive?

She looked back at me. Her expression was unreadable
but her eyes were glacial. "Get out, Mulder. Just get out."

I went.

Moe Bocks was waiting down in the lobby. I'd forgotten
all about him. He was here to get Scully's official
statement, to add whatever assault charges were
necessary to Pfaster's already extensive list of misery.
Even without Scully, this sociopath was going away for a
long time. He might never see the light of day again if the
case included the attempted murder of a federal agent.

Bocks had expected me to take Scully's statement; he'd
really only come to collect the notes from me and pay his
respects to the injured. I don't know what he thought
when he saw me stumbling toward him, but he sensed
immediately that something hadn't happened according
to the previous night's game plan.

"How is she?" he asked.

It was a question I truly didn't know how to answer
anymore, not even on the simplest, most literal level.

"She's awake." Not the most informative utterance, but it
was the best I could do under the circumstances.

Bocks considered it, and me, and came to his own
decision. Maybe he was thinking Scully was still
physically unable to undergo the stress of recounting the
events that had landed her here. Or that what Pfaster
had done to her was too painful and personal for her to
divulge to someone close to her. That it might be easier
for her to recount the details to a neutral third party. I
don't think he realized that Scully and I could no longer
be called "close," but he could clearly see my hands were
empty.

"Is she up for more visitors?"

Of course, Agent Bocks. She'd love to see anyone, as long
as it isn't me. I reined in the urge to laugh out loud at my
own foolish wit and said, "Yes, I'm sure she'd be happy to
talk to you."

Bocks caught my drift but played it safe, to be sure I
meant what he thought I did. "Shall I see if she wants to
give me a statement about last night?"

"That would be fine. I'll wait for you down here."
Permission granted, Agent Bocks.

He nodded, looking a trifle uncertain, and went by me. A
thousand questions were probably raging through his
head, but he refrained from asking any of them. Nice
guy. Had good instincts.

I waited. And waited. And waited. I counted the blue and
white floor tiles, the acoustic ceiling tiles, the number of
screws in the waiting area chairs, first the dead and then
the live leaves on all the potted plants, and averaged out
the number of times the phone at the nearby admitting
desk rang before someone answered it – eight rings .
While I waited, I tried with a notable lack of success to
ignore the arguing voices in my head.

She actually thinks you wouldn't care if he'd killed her.

I would care. How could I not? She's my partner.

Partners don't run off and leave each other without a
word.

I'm trying to keep her from getting hurt.

Yeah? Well, you did a great job last night. Besides, that's
bullshit. You still don't trust her, that's why you keep
picking on her. You keep hoping she'll just go away one
of these days.

That's not true.

Now who's the liar, buddy-boy?

She was sent to spy on me.

That was over a year ago. You really think she would let
them abduct her and experiment on her just to keep her
cover intact? You think that time she spent in a coma
was some kind of incredible hoax to throw you off the
scent? Her family took her off life support! They call it life
support for a reason, namely that without it, you die!

She should have said something.

You spent all that time studying psychology and you
can't figure this out? Scully doesn't SAY things. Since
when has she EVER said something? The one time she
tried, you brushed her off in your usual pigheaded
fashion and chastised her for using your given name. Of
course she's going to tell you she's fine. She's not about
to give you any more ammunition to fire at her. If you'd
taken five seconds to pay attention to her instead of
those stupid football tickets, maybe this wouldn't have
happened!

I. . .

"Agent Mulder?" It was Bocks, back from his little
interview. Thank God. The voices backed down for a
moment. "I have Agent Scully's statement. Looks good.
We've got a lot more to add to his sheet. It's gonna be a
good bust. The prosecution shouldn't have any problem
with this."

At least someone was going home happy. I didn't want to
read it, but I had to know. "May I see it?" I held out my
hand.

Bocks gave me a sideways glance as he handed it over.
"It's just a rough draft," he cautioned. "It'll have to get
typed up and signed later today."

"I know." I sat down in one of the waiting area chairs,
and forced myself to concentrate on Bocks' scrawling
penmanship and somewhat clumsy prose.

By the time I was halfway through, I thought I would be
sick. By the time I'd finished the three-page document, I
was sure of it.

My only redemption was that I hadn't voiced my
survivor's guilt issues during my earlier tirade. Scully
had been gagged and trussed like a calf in a rodeo roping
contest. When Pfaster cut her legs free she had tried to
fight back, to find an escape route, to incapacitate him
somehow. The car crash injuries had been aggravated
further by a headfirst tumble down a full flight of stairs
during her struggle with him. She managed this level of
resistance despite a concussion severe enough to cause
hallucinations; she reported seeing Pfaster's nondescript
face blur and change as her vision and her
consciousness faded in and out during her captivity.

I wanted to kill Pfaster for doing this to her.

I wanted to kill myself for helping him.

"Agent Mulder?" Bocks' voice brought me back from the
land of violent thoughts to reality. I was clutching his
pages in one scrunched fist, wishing mightily that the
yellow sheaf of paper was Pfaster's throat instead. "Agent
Mulder, I need that back."

I slowly relaxed my hand and gave him the crumpled wad
describing the agony my partner had endured. "You'll
bring it back for her to sign later?" I had no idea when
Scully would be discharged, but I was sure she was
spending at least one more day here, no matter what she
might think.

"Yeah. You can tell her I'll be back this afternoon." Bocks
tucked the precious notes into his pocket and nodded his
dismissal.

I fought down the churning nausea in my gut. As much
as I wanted to, this was not the time to go running for
the bathroom to waste half an hour dry heaving bile and
spittle.

This was time to face the music, which in this case would
be the 1812 Overture, complete with cannon fire. It had
to be now, because Bocks would know if I hadn't made
my peace with her by the time he came back with her
statement. And then he wouldn't just let me off the hook
so easily. It was way too obvious that something had
gone terribly wrong between us apres Pfaster, and it
surely couldn't be the fault of the tiny feminine redhead
currently in residence two floors above. When you were
the one lying in state, nothing was your fault.

The hell of it was, this time it was actually true. This
wasn't Scully's fault. Not even when you took into
account her own leanings toward silent self-martyrdom.
She could have said the case was getting to her, yes. She
certainly should have.

But I should have noticed the problem long before we got
to this point.

Maybe it wouldn't have mattered. Pfaster had spotted her
and probably would have stalked her anyway. But if she
hadn't felt the need to conceal her discomfort and stress
from me, maybe she would have seen him sooner when
he followed her from the airport. Maybe she could have
avoided crashing.

We sure as hell wouldn't be where we were now, with me
attacking her full force and her slashing back, both of us
swinging verbal rapiers with the intent to wound and
cripple.

So I went back upstairs to settle things if not for good,
then for now.

End part 3/5
________________________

FINE CONTROL (4/5)
By Jean Robinson
Disclaimer, etc. in part 1


I walked in on an argument between my partner and her
doctor. Scully was losing.

This would not put her in a good mood for reconciliation
with me. I could absolve myself fairly quickly in her eyes
by coming to her defense and siding with her, but the
gist of the quarrel centered around the length of her
hospital stay. The doctor wanted her there two more
days, citing the extent of her injuries, the need to allow
the bones to set and her shoulder muscles to rest.

Scully wanted out now. Immediately. This afternoon at
the very latest. She didn't seem bothered by the fact that
earlier this morning she had been too weak to manage
hefting a Dixie cup without assistance.

Before I could warn him, the doctor, a kid who looked
like he'd been out of med school for all of about thirty
minutes, brought up the issue of pain management. He
stated in blissful ignorance that in his humble opinion,
the minute she tried to move out of bed Scully was going
to experience agony of a previously unknown scale and
then she'd be sorry.

Oh, buster, you don't know what kind of mistake you
just made.

Scully stared at him with the blistering glare that had in
the past been reserved exclusively for my benefit. I'd seen
her use a much milder version of it on uncooperative
suspects, snide co-workers and patronizing law
enforcement officers both male and female, but never the
full-blown, Mulder-You-Are-So-Full-Of-It blast she
unleashed on this alleged colleague. She opened her
mouth and God only knows what she might have said to
him when I leaped in to ward off World War III.

"How about if you release her tomorrow morning,
Doctor?" It seemed safer to address this to him, not to
Scully.

He spun around fast. I'm not sure he even realized I was
standing there; his attention had been entirely focused
on his recalcitrant patient. "I'm sorry. You are?"

He'd been introduced to me last night, but I let it pass.
I'd learned that Scully was the exception in her
profession, probably due to the nature of her work as a
pathologist and an investigator. Most of the plain old
doctors that I met rarely remembered faces, names and
ailments of their patients, let alone the patients' extended
support system of family and co-workers. "Fox Mulder.
Agent Scully's partner."

"Oh. Yes. What were you saying?"

I risked a glance at Scully and decided to proceed. "I was
suggesting that you release her tomorrow. As you know,
Agent Scully is a doctor herself. I'm sure she's capable of
continuing any treatment protocols on an out-patient
basis."

That was a bald lie, but only Scully would recognize it as
such. Doctor or not, the past few days had proven exactly
how willing the Empress of "I'm Fine" was to disclose a
mental or physical failing. Her eyes narrowed as she
delicately sifted through all the nuances in my words to
extract the hidden sarcasm, but she still held her tongue.

"Are you planning to fly back to DC soon?" the doctor
inquired.

Scully started to say something and I overrode her.
"When the investigation is concluded," I responded
smoothly, a deliberately vague statement meant to cover
a lot of ground. "I can't comment on it any further, you
understand, as it's still an open case."

Technically true, realistically another lie. Our role in
Donnie Pfaster's little three-act play was over; we didn't
have to stay for the curtain call and we'd never planned
to do so. But I could tell this guy was getting ready to
forbid Scully to board a plane in her condition, and it
was a safe enough bluff for now. The possibility of
prohibiting her from flying was his last-ditch effort to
hang on to her, and I'd just shattered his illusions. At
this point, he was more than ready to wash his hands of
both of us.

The doctor sighed and made a note on the chart he held
like a shield in front of him. "All right. Tomorrow
morning. I'll make sure you have a prescription for some
painkillers before you leave. You're going to need them."

Scully favored him with a saccharine smile. "Thank you."

He left the room, and Scully and I were alone. I
disregarded the chair this time and simply sat on the
edge of her bed, even with her hip. She was sitting up
now; we were more or less at eye level with each other.

Equals.

I let her have one more victory by providing the opening
gambit. In Japanese business dealings, the person who
makes the first move has already lost face and is at a
disadvantage. I figured I owed her one. I probably owed
her about ten, but who's counting?

Especially since the question I was going to ask was
something I knew she would not want to answer. My
opening bid might be the end of the auction.

"Why, Scully?"

She hesitated, those blue eyes searching mine for a
meaning she didn't want to find. She elected to
deliberately misunderstand me. "There's nothing they
can do for me here, Mulder. I've got a broken arm and a
sore shoulder and a bump on the head. You don't stay in
the hospital for three days with those kinds of injuries."

You forgot the ribs, Scully. You forgot that you could
barely breathe when they brought you in here. And how
about the fact that your face looks like you've gone a few
rounds with the latest WBA heavyweight champ? You're
good at ignoring the inconvenient details, aren't you?

This time I didn't say precisely what came to mind; I was
trying not to derail the conversation before we even got
close the heart of the matter. "That's not what I meant," I
argued, trying to drag her back to the original track.
"Why go through this at all? Why didn't you just say this
was bothering you?"

"It wasn't bothering me." She was working her anger
back up to its former level. "You think I just let him
kidnap me and tie me up and threaten to kill me and
throw me down a flight of stairs just to prove I can take
it? Is that what you think?"

Alarm bells were blaring inside my head, but I pushed on
anyway. "No. That's not what I think, Scully. But you
obviously don't think I care about your welfare. And
because of that, you're putting yourself at risk in the
field. And me."

"What?!" She shoved herself fully upright with her good
hand, wincing as the sudden movement jarred every
abused muscle and bone in her battered body. "I'm
putting you at risk? What the hell are you talking
about?"

I decided to take this one issue at a time, starting with
the less lethal one. "Scully, when you are hurt, you'd
better tell me. You're the doctor, here, and I respect that.
You stood in Pfaster's house last night insisting you were
fine, and it was extremely clear you were anything but.
You refused medical treatment. If I'd pulled something
like that, you would have decked me. You can recognize
shock, even in yourself. The next time someone beats you
up on the job, you damn well better not say you're fine."

She gave me a smoking blue glare. "I don't intend to get
beaten up as a regular course of my job." Venom dripped
from her tone.

"That's good, because I expect more from you. But I won't
ignore the possibility that it may happen. You're only so
strong, Scully. Someday we're going to run into another
suspect who can take you down. And if that happens, I
don't want to find you lying in a puddle of blood telling
me to cancel the ambulance because you're fine.
'Physician, heal thyself' does not apply to you.
Understand?"

She didn't answer; I think she was simply too furious at
my brusque approach. No one, it seemed, had dared to
speak to her in such a fashion for a long, long time.
Maybe her father had, during the emotional upheavals of
adolescence. Considering that she'd apparently gone
against his wishes when she joined the FBI, she was
adept at rejecting authority when it went against her own
instincts. So far, she'd mostly toed the line with Skinner
and the Bureau hierarchy; I briefly wondered what she
might do if provoked enough by the powers above.

"You don't trust me."

Ouch. I'd been hoping to approach the second theme of
today's dialogue with a little more finesse. Scully had
other plans. Before I could even think of anything to
defuse this potential landmine to our partnership, SIC
was plowing forward, fire in her eyes and two years of
bottled fury in her voice.

"You don't trust me. You never have. You =never= wanted
me here, you've made it perfectly clear how you feel
about having me around. Nothing. . . nothing I ever did
was good enough for you. Not even when they took me
away. You said it didn't matter that I didn't remember
anything. But you were lying, Mulder. It did matter to
you. I was your best shot at finally proving a  conspiracy
between the government and the military to hide the
existence of alien life, only I couldn't come through for
you." She paused to draw a breath, and I realized with
some shock that SIC was, for the second time in two
days, poised on the edge of tears.

Only this time I was the cause, not insignificant Donnie
Pfaster and his warped death fantasies. Her partner. The
person she was supposed to trust with her life.

Instead I seemed intent on ruining it.

Today she refused to give in, blinking back the
waterworks and rechanneling them into renewed rage.
"I'm sorry, Mulder," she mocked sarcastically. "I'm so
sorry I disappointed you and spoiled your big validation
party. The next time the aliens haul me off for three
months of torture, I'll try to do a better job at staying
conscious so I can report back like a dutiful subordinate.
Is that good enough for you? Is that loyal enough for
you? Is it?"

"Scully, don't."

"Why? That's what you want, isn't it? Proof of your
theories at any cost?"

"Scully, STOP IT!"

She flinched back and it was only then that I realized
that not only was I shouting, I'd also raised one hand as
if I was finally going to make good on all my previous
impulses to slap her.

Jesus. How did we get here, again?

My hands were trembling, especially the traitorous right
one I'd just yanked down out of the air. I fought to keep
my voice from shaking, too. "I do trust you, Scully. I
know I didn't when they put us together. I know I've been
horrible to you at times, and thoughtless, and more than
a little stupid. But I never said I was perfect."

She ran her tongue over her dry lips, eyeing me with the
same kind of caution she used in approaching a
potentially contaminated corpse, but didn't say anything.

Taking this as a marginally encouraging sign, I plunged
on. "But I do trust you. And I'm only angry at myself that
it took all this," I waved a hand to indicate the hospital
room, her injuries and the situation in general, "to make
me understand how you felt. If I could take back every
bad thing that's happened since you walked into my
office and every cruel thing I've done to you, I would. But
don't ever think that I don't need you or don't want you,
because I do. I know now that I do."

She pulled her lower lip between her teeth and
maintained her silence. I hoped she wasn't just paying
out the line until she had enough slack to hang me with
it.

"But I also need you to help me. I may believe in psychic
abilities, but I'm not a mind-reader."

Her forehead creased; she could see where this was
leading and she wasn't going to allow me to open a
debate about how much of this might be her own fault.
"You're a profiler," she said bluntly. "It's almost the same
thing."

"Maybe, but I've never profiled =you=, Scully. I would
never. . . invade your privacy like that. If you're bothered
about something, I need to know. Even if I can't help you
at all, I just need to know so I'm at least aware there's a
problem."

She looked away. "You don't have to protect me." It
sounded rote, like something she'd said frequently to
someone else not too long ago. It also sounded shaky;
SIC was reaching the end of her currently limited
endurance. Normally she would have been perfectly
capable of arguing with me for hours on end, but she'd
been through the wringer in the last day. Between the
showdown with Pfaster, the surgery, the interview with
Bocks and the confrontation with her doctor, Scully was
scraping the bottom of the barrel for her last reserves of
strength to deal with me.

"I know I don't." I swallowed hard and came out with my
own personally painful confession. "And I can't. I wish I
could. But my track record is less than stellar in that
department, and I don't see it getting any better in the
future. I think we both know the people we deal with are
very skilled at getting what they want from us no matter
how hard we try to prevent it."

She turned back, looking at me steadily with those
amazing blue eyes. "They didn't do this, Mulder."

"I know."

I figured that was the end; I had run out of things to say
to her and Scully seemed worn out. Any second now I
expected a nurse to arrive and intervene with
admonishments and scoldings about tiring the patient.

But as I stood up to leave, muttering something about
Bocks coming back with the statement for her to review
and sign, she dropped her eyes to the white cotton
blanket, the fingers of her good hand tugging restlessly
on a loose thread, and murmured something I didn't
quite catch.

"What?"

She didn't raise her voice very much, but I could hear
her this time.

"I saw myself."

I sat back down on the bed. "You saw yourself?" I
repeated softly. "Where, Scully?"

"The crime scene pictures. The first ones we looked at in
Agent Bocks' office. I was looking through them and. . . I
saw myself in them."

I remembered that. I'd been talking with Bocks, most of
my mind still occupied with my useless tickets, when
Scully brushed past me. I found her sitting on a bench in
the outer hallway a few moments later, staring
sightlessly at the far wall.

Was it then that she'd started behaving strangely?
Probably. I just wasn't sure; I'd been too annoyed that
the inefficiency of the Minneapolis office staff was
causing me to miss one of the best football games of the
season to focus on anything else.

While my partner had been suffering distressing
flashbacks, I'd been moping about a sports event like
some grade schooler who'd been benched for the big
game.

Somehow the description of "callous bastard" no longer
seemed even remotely adequate.

"Scully. . ."

She refused to look up from her ferociously intense
contemplation of the hospital linens covering her. The
rest of the story came out in bits and pieces, interspersed
with long silences when I simply sat and waited,
pretending not to notice the occasional tear that slid
down her face and dropped to the blanket, making a
random pattern of tiny dark polka dots on the light
fabric.

By the time she finished, her lunch tray had arrived and
been removed, mostly untouched, and Bocks was back
with her formal statement. Scully glanced up for the first
time in about three hours and hastily grabbed a tissue
from the box next to her bed.

Bocks stood in the doorway, waiting hesitantly with a file
folder tucked under one arm and a small bouquet of
yellow roses in the other. I got up and went over to him,
beckoning him away from her room. "Give her a minute,"
I said.

"Is she okay?"

"Yeah. It's just been a rough day."

We chatted about inconsequential things for about ten
minutes, allowing Scully time to compose herself and put
a brave face on the world for Bocks. Bad enough that
she'd wept again in my presence. To show such emotion
in front of another agent would be unthinkable.

Bocks didn't stay long; he might not be the sharpest tool
in the shed but it would have taken someone with all the
sensitivity of a hedge trimmer only a second to see Scully
was fading. He left, and when visiting hours were over a
short while later, I did, too. Scully didn't notice my
departure; the doctor came in not long after Bocks' visit
and she spent the rest of the afternoon in a sedated
slumber.

Hospitals rank second behind the federal government in
terms of generating reams of senseless paperwork. Never
mind protesting nuclear power plants or whaling vessels.
The green activists should be lining up outside
institutions like this one to wave placards and shout
slogans about killing trees for idiotic reasons. By the time
I was done signing and dating the forms necessary to
extricate Scully the following morning, I'd probably given
the hospital the rights to my bank account, my left
kidney and my first born male heir, assuming I ever had
one. I suspected the doctor had slipped a few more forms
in just to spite us because Scully was leaving against his
advice.

She couldn't sign for herself; my partner's left hand
might be poetry in motion acting in concert with her right
to perform an autopsy, but put a pen in those fingers
and it reverted to useless status. She had to content
herself with scrawling a wavering X next to each of my
scribbled John Hancocks.

How fitting, right?

The afternoon talk shows were almost over when the
hospital finally released Scully from its clutches. I took
her back to the motel dressed in oversized green scrubs
under her coat, and fetched us a fast-food dinner from a
nearby diner. Vegetable soup for her, a burger and fries
for me. Under her direction I packed most of her
belongings so they'd be ready for our departure in the
morning.

Scully was either too tired or too modern to be
uncomfortable with me handling her intimate apparel; I
couldn't decide which. I merely congratulated myself that
I could stand there in her presence tucking and folding
lacy bits of feminine satin and silk without making an
ass out of myself by spouting a running commentary of
lewd innuendoes. Progress.

End part 4/5
________________________

FINE CONTROL (5/5)
By Jean Robinson
Disclaimer, etc. in part 1


I woke up the next morning to the sound of my room
phone. "Hello?" I mumbled, wondering in my muddled
state why I was getting a wake up call when I hadn't left
instructions for one.

But the voice on the other end of the line wasn't a
disinterested motel employee, or even the impersonal
computer-generated tones of the automated calls you get
in some of the more upscale places. It was Scully.

"Mulder. . ." she began hesitantly, and stopped.

Amazing how I could go from the sandman stage to full
alert mode in less than a heartbeat with nothing more
than that softly spoken, tentative word. "I'm here. What's
the matter?"

"Nothing."

There was a pause long enough to raise my anxiety level
significantly. "Scully?" I asked, keeping my tone neutral,
non-threatening. No pressure, partner. None at all. But
would you please let me know why we're on the phone
breathing in each other's ears at six in the morning if
everything is just peachy?

"I need. . . Mulder, do you have a spare undershirt?"

If someone had asked me to predict what Scully had
been going to say at that moment, this particular
sentence would have ranked somewhere around number
12,497. Immediately after "I believe in alien life" and
immediately before "Mulder, you're right!" My brain
sputtered and fizzed trying to translate her bizarre query
into something remotely sensible, and then it hit me.

The cast. The black short-sleeved blouse she'd been
wearing when Pfaster grabbed her was ruined, and she
probably didn't have anything else that would fit over her
arm now that its diameter had been significantly
increased with plaster of Paris. Not unless she wanted to
travel home in her pajamas.

That was certainly an entertaining thought.

"Mulder?"

Now I was the one holding up the conversation. "Sorry.
Yeah, I do. Let me get dressed and I'll bring it right over."

"Thank you."

I hung up, and the thought of clothing suddenly brought
up a whole host of other potential problems that she
hadn't hinted at during our brief talk. Such as how was
my oh-so-independent partner going to fasten her bra or
put on her pantyhose without the use of her dominant
hand? For that matter, how'd she get herself undressed
the night before?

Digging out my last clean white Hanes, I manfully tried
to block out images of Scully wearing it without a bra. If
it had been a v-neck instead of the traditional crew, I
don't think I could have succeeded in banishing the
tantalizing visions of cleavage.

She answered the door immediately to my knock,
wrapped in her white terrycloth robe. Items from the
suitcase I had so neatly packed scant hours ago were
strewn over her bed and the chairs, indicating the fierce
battle SIC had waged to make do from her own wardrobe
before admitting it was a lost cause and calling for help.
"Thank you," she said softly, taking my underwear with
her good hand and addressing the courtesy to the third
button on my dress shirt. "I'll be ready to leave in about
an hour." She started to close the door, but I stopped
her.

Two days had made a very large difference in her
appearance, and not for the better. The bruises on her
face were brighter than a Hawaiian sunrise and twice as
colorful. Underneath all that congealing blood she was
ghostly white, and she didn't look well enough to walk,
let alone take a plane ride.

"Did you eat already?" It wasn't exactly, "Are you all
right?" and she let me get away with it.

"Yes." She gestured behind her, and I saw covered dishes
on a room service tray sitting on the table. "I've been up a
while. It was hard to sleep."

"Scully, that's why they gave you the painkillers when
you were discharged."

"I know. I took them this morning."

"Oh." She might be lying about the whole thing; for all I
knew there was a bowl of cold coagulating oatmeal under
that silver cover or nothing more substantial than a cup
of black coffee. But this time I sensed she was telling the
truth, at least about the medication.

There was no other reason for me to stay; Scully
obviously had some wily chick trick up her sleeve for how
to dress herself, because she wasn't following up her
request for clothing with one for assistance to don said
clothing. So I nodded okay, and went back to my room to
pack.

Sixty minutes later I knocked again, and there was
Scully, fully dressed in her beige pantsuit, jacket
buttoned over my undershirt, ready to go. The roomier,
lined suit jacket sleeve made it over the cast, and she
had even managed to strap herself back into that
contraption that supported her mending shoulder by
pinning her broken right arm to her waist.

If I'd known our flight was delayed I wouldn't have
checked us out so soon, but we didn't learn about it until
we reached the gate area.

After fifteen minutes of waiting, I couldn't stand it. The
flight was overbooked and every seat around us was
taken. We were surrounded by irritated, bored
passengers with nothing to do but stare.

Scully simply sat with her head slightly bowed, a crimson
curtain of hair swinging forward against either cheek to
hide her face. But it was an imperfect shield at best.
Everything – the swelling contusions marring her
features, the rigid posture from the broken ribs, the arm
brace that even her overcoat couldn't completely hide –
made her look exactly like what she wasn't, a victim of
some kind of serious domestic abuse. Not a soldier
worthy of a Purple Heart, but a battered wife who was
probably traveling with the very man who beat her to a
pulp.

I didn't really care what our fellow travelers thought
about me, but I decided Scully didn't need to sit on
display like some kind of rare zoo exhibit while Northwest
Airlines dithered about their mechanical problems.

For the first time ever in my career as a government
employee, I pulled rank for personal gain.

"I'll be right back," I said to Scully. She nodded slightly
without looking up. I went up to the gate agent at the
ticket counter and flashed my ID. "I need to speak to
your supervisor, Kim," I announced quietly, reading her
name tag. "Right now."

Kim gaped, as if being accosted by FBI agents was
something that only happened in Mel Gibson movies. She
swallowed and asked nervously, "Is anything wrong?"

"No, Kim. Nothing at all. I just need to see your
supervisor." I smiled reassuringly. No, honey. There are
no terrorists in the boarding area carrying bombs and
plans to hijack your faulty 727 for an unscheduled trip
to some country made up of desert and not much else.

Kim picked up a phone and spoke briefly into it. "She'll
be right here," she informed me.

"Thank you." I moved to the side of the desk to wait for
the next round of bureaucracy, which arrived in short
order.

"Sir? You asked to see me?" The woman in the official
airlines blazer was older than Kim, older than me. Under
her sensibly short sandy blond hair she wore that calm
expression that only comes after years of dealing with an
unreasonable and sometimes volatile public. If there was
a terrorist in the boarding area, I was willing to bet she'd
be more capable of handling it than I would.

I showed her my badge. "Thank you for coming, Ms.
Wyant." I moved behind the ticket kiosk for a bit more
privacy, and she moved with me.

"How can I help you, Agent Mulder?"

I pointed at Scully, who was still sitting with her head
lowered. An elderly man had taken my seat beside her
but was leaning away from her, as if he thought she
might be contagious. "Do you see that woman with the
red hair?"

Ms. Wyant followed my finger. "Yes."

"That is Agent Scully. She's my partner. We've just
finished an extremely difficult case here in Minneapolis."

Ms. Wyant fulfilled my high expectations of her
intelligence by putting the pieces together immediately.
There hadn't been much press coverage about Pfaster's
escapades because Bocks hadn't wanted to scare the
city, but this particular lady had had no trouble reading
between the lines of his carefully worded press releases.
"The person who was desecrating the corpses," she stated
without hesitation.

"Yes. Agent Scully apprehended him."

"I see." The inflection of those two words spoke volumes.

"I need two things from you, Ms. Wyant. First, you must
have some kind of VIP lounge nearby, where Agent Scully
and I can wait in private until the flight is ready. Second,
I need two seats together in first class, on the right side
of the plane. Agent Scully sustained a number of serious
injuries during this case and she would not be
comfortable in the coach section. I am prepared to pay
full fare for those seats, of course."

I don't think she expected that; she was thinking her
employers were about to get stiffed by the big bad
government regulators. I saw her mull over my request in
her head, then she simply replied, "Please wait here. I'll
be right back," and vanished down the hallway back
toward the main terminal.

Scully hadn't moved. I wondered if she'd possibly dozed
off from the painkillers.

Ms. Wyant was back in less than ten minutes, with a
sheaf of paperwork in one hand. "If you'll follow me, I'll
take you and Agent Scully to our Executive Lounge." She
handed me the paperwork. "These are your new tickets."
Then she issued what I considered to be a major public
relations coup, one I was certain had been her idea and
the reason she'd had to check with her superiors rather
than just giving us a different seat assignment. "There
will be no additional charge. Northwest Airlines is
pleased to assist our country's law enforcement officers
in any way we can."

We wended our way over to where my partner still sat.
"Scully, come on." I put my hand under her elbow and
helped her up.

"What is it, Mulder?" Her eyes were glassy; she sounded
exhausted and more than a little confused.

"We're going to another waiting area." I steered her
through the milling crowds of passengers, following Ms.
Wyant to a blank, unassuming door marked "Executive
Lounge" in small gold script. She unlocked the door and
ushered us in.

"Please make yourselves comfortable. One of our gate
agents will be along when it's time to board. If there's
anything you need, please let one of the attendants
know."

I helped Scully sit in one of the plush, padded maroon
armchairs and walked our hostess back to the door.
"Thank you."

Ms. Wyant nodded crisply. "I'll see that you board last,
Agent Mulder. No need for her to be on the aircraft longer
than necessary."

"I appreciate it."

I went back to where Scully was reclining, her eyes
closed. The room was empty aside from us and a tall
black man tending bar along the far wall. The place was
cushy and well-equipped; each little grouping of sofas
and chairs had two or three telephones, fax machines
and computer hook-ups on little tables nearby. Copies of
the local paper, as well as several national and big city
rags, were close at hand, along with the big-time
magazines such as Forbes, Fortune, Time and
Newsweek.

Scully's pallor and sudden frailty were too pronounced to
be the product of the medication alone. Maybe she really
hadn't eaten breakfast. I hoped it was just low blood
sugar and not another onset of shock. Maybe I shouldn't
have let them discharge her so soon.

Although I was sure if I snapped my fingers and spoke
the words aloud I could have summoned anything from
cornflakes to Eggs Benedict, leading the horse to water
and making it drink were two different things.
Concluding that liquid refreshment was my best option
for getting a few calories into her, I got up and went over
to the bartender.

He presided over a display of alcohol that most big city
bars couldn't have matched. I suppose they had to be
prepared on the off chance that Tom Cruise and Nicole
Kidman might pass through on their way back from
some exotic filming location and demand a sloe gin fizz at
five in the morning.

It was heading toward eleven now, which was almost a
respectable time to start downing cocktails, but alcohol
was the last thing either of us needed.

"May I help you, sir?" the bartender asked.

"Two orange juices, please."

He paused, one hand on the glasses, the other hovering
over a champagne bottle. "Mimosas?" he questioned.

I smiled at the thought. "No. Just plain OJ."

The bartender returned my smile. "Of course, sir." He
poured generous tumblers of a bright orange, pulpy
liquid that looked freshly squeezed. My mouth started to
water. "Anything else?"

"Nope. What do I owe you?" I reached for my wallet.

The bartender looked vastly amused. "There's no charge
in here, sir."

Well, of course, stupid. What was the point of being a VIP
if you had to pay for your privileges in places like this? I
stuffed a couple singles in the glass on top of the bar and
mumbled, "Thanks," as I picked up our beverages.

Sitting back down next to Scully, I nudged her gently
with my elbow. "Hey."

She turned toward me and I cringed a little at the
expression on her face. It =had= been a mistake to let her
leave the hospital. Codeine tablets or not, she was
suffering and it showed. Feeling more than a little
helpless, I gave her the drink.

"Thanks." She managed a weak smile and sipped it
slowly.

By the time Kim poked her head in to fetch us, Scully
had finished the juice and nibbled a few pretzels. Some
color had come back into her face. She looked a little
steadier on her feet; I kept one hand on her arm to
prevent her from being jostled by people rushing by us,
but I no longer felt as if she'd fall down if I released her.

Our seats were in the first row of first class, right side, as
promised. I put Scully by the window so her arm would
be out of the way of any overzealous flight crew, top-
heavy service carts or roaming passengers. She sank
down onto the leather seat and allowed me to fasten her
seatbelt.

I sensed the fine hand of Ms. Wyant in the reverent way
the first class flight attendant treated us. He instantly
handed me two pillows and two blankets, took our coats
and asked if we needed anything else. I thanked him and
told him no.

Scully made no comment as I tossed a blanket across her
legs. Tucking one pillow against my right shoulder, I
suggested, "Lean on me and try to get some sleep,
Scully."

I honestly didn't think she would actually do it. I kept
expecting SIC to make a firm reappearance, shaking her
head and making an excuse about needing to keep her
body straight to support her ribs, or just outright
denying any fatigue. Instead, Scully let out a small sigh
and slowly relaxed against my arm, closing her eyes. By
the time we were airborne, she was asleep.

The nightmare started about halfway through the flight.
The signs were obvious; her respiration jacked up, her
eyes twitched rapidly under her closed lids, her left hand
curled into a fist and she uttered one or two soft moans
that were probably blood-curdling shrieks in whatever
horrific scene she was re-enacting in her dream.

But I didn't wake her up. She had already been forced to
surrender too much control to me in the last forty-eight
hours. The very least I could do was allow her to fight
this enemy on her own terms. As much as I wanted to
rouse her gently and rescue her from the dark places in
her mind where evil people like Pfaster and Duane Barry
chased her down endless black corridors of terror, I knew
she wouldn't thank me for the gesture. Not Scully.
Definitely not SIC.

She jerked against me and woke herself up, her breath
hitching in her throat and her left hand involuntarily
clutching my thigh as she tried to focus her eyes and
reorient herself. "Wha. . ." she gasped.

I covered her hand with mine and stroked it soothingly.
"It's okay, Scully."

She jumped again when I spoke, glancing around a little
frantically until she pinpointed the source of the sound.

"It's okay," I repeated. "You're fine, Scully. You're fine
now."

Completely awake at last, she locked gazes with me. Her
breathing smoothed out to a more normal rhythm and
she loosened her grip on my leg.

"You're fine," I told her one last time.

She nodded, then curled her fingers around mine and
settled back against me for the rest of the flight.

For once I was right. SIC was fine.

End


Author's notes: This story started as a result of one of
those times your mind suddenly says, "What if. . ." and
then goes on a mental field trip without a permission
slip. Hope you enjoyed the journey; don't forget to stop at
the souvenir shop before you board the bus for home. ;-)
Thanks to Jill for stalking. . . er, I mean asking me to
finish it.

Feedback: Is cheaper and more long-lasting than the
trinkets at the souvenir shop, and can be sent to
jeanrobinson@yahoo.com.