by Rae Lynn
claypotato_AT_netscape.net
 

RATING: PG

CLASSIFICATION: SA

SPOILERS: Through "Grotesque."

KEYWORDS: Post-episode for "Grotesque."

ARCHIVE: Please inquire within.

SUMMARY: Mulder and Scully and the aftermath of "Grotesque."  Scully's POV.

AUTHOR'S NOTES: Well, folks, I’ve fallen off the fanfic wagon once
again.  This story has already been written in the fanfic community --
many, many times -- but it's hard for anyone who eats MulderAngst for
breakfast to resist the siren song of trying their own hand at a
post-"Grotesque" fic.  Midway through the writing of this fic, I
attended a very weird production of "King Lear," hence the title and all
the quotes, which belong to Shakespeare.

DISCLAIMER: All the characters contained within are the property of
Chris Carter and Ten Thirteen Productions.  No profit will result from
this story and no copyright infringement is intended.
____________
"The weight of this sad time we must obey;
Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say.
The oldest hath borne most: we that are young
Shall never see so much, nor live so long."
--Shakespeare, King Lear (last lines)
____________

Nearly every argument Mulder and I have had about our partnership has
begun or ended the same way, as if something in me can't resist pointing
out to him what he once accepted without question but now stubbornly
refuses to acknowledge.  Why was I assigned to you in the first place,
Mulder?  To debunk your work.  To discredit your theories.  To piss you
off.  And I have done that, and somehow managed to validate you at the
same time.  My scientific inquiries have only intensified Mulder's
passion, his paranoia, his pursuit of the truth.  Like a Hydra.  Cut the
head off Mulder's unique investigative philosophy and more will grow in
its place.

In the three years Mulder and I have been partners, I have found myself
living two lives.  Mulder's and my own.  For three years I have been
holding the future of Mulder's work in my hands.

Mulder's life.

Partners are supposed to look out for each other.  I have pressed my
hands into Mulder's flesh and felt rivulets of blood flow through my
fingers.  I have shone penlights into Mulder's eyes and willed his
pupils to dilate.  I have burst numbly into emergency rooms only to
watch Mulder code on the table.  I do it because it's Mulder, because I
know he would walk barefoot over broken glass for me if I -- or anyone
else -- asked him to.  All the while I've tried not to think about the
absurdity of it, or the odds stacked against one woman up against a
formidable force.  Dana Scully, meet Darkness; and get comfortable with
it, because you two are going to be at each other's throats for a long,
long time.

I knew when I met Mulder that I would be expected to hold his life in my
hands.

But nothing in the Federal Bureau of Investigation's code of conduct
ever prepared me to safeguard his sanity.

Mulder's lifeless eyes and stumbling steps as I ordered him repeatedly
to get in the car.  Mulder's bloodless face, glazed with fever, his
shirt still incriminatingly spattered with his father's blood.

The rigid outline of Mulder's back, these last few days, the tenseness
that gripped his shoulders as I watched him walk away from me.

I hadn't answered when Skinner asked me if I was worried about him.
Even my silence felt like a betrayal to the man I once thought only of
in terms of superlatives: the most articulate, the most passionate, the
most intelligent, the most infuriating.  I felt that man slipping away
from me and this time there was no physiological source to explain it away.

I told Mulder I was scared.  It was simpler than telling him the truth:
that I was terrified.  For him, for all of us.  It was a shortcut to the
truth I could never admit to him: it is easier to watch Mulder die than
to watch him go mad.
It felt like a lifetime before I heard the comforting wail of ambulance
sirens arriving.  Still hunched over Patterson, I don't dare look up at
Mulder kneeling beside us, still clutching his cell phone, his head
bowed as if for a benediction.  A final prayer for peace.

There had been a struggle.  But Mulder -- usually so impetuous, so
reckless in his pursuit -- had been precise.  He had not shot to kill.
Patterson, I decided as the EMTs approached, would live, at least long
enough to torture Mulder with his madness.  Just as I had tortured
Mulder with my pointed questions, with the unwelcome concern he must
have felt radiating off me in waves.  I was scared, Mulder.  I didn't
know where you were.  As if Mulder didn't already do a stunning job of
torturing himself.

This thing exists, Scully.  It's real.

And it had been.  As real as the bullet in Bill Patterson's chest.

The paramedics who arrive are efficient, separating my hand from
Patterson's breast and herding Mulder off to one side.

"Agent Mulder, we're going to need to take your statement," says a
police officer.  Mulder nods mutely and follows the officer to a dark
corner of the roof before I can even open my mouth in protest.

"Agent Scully, we'd like you to ride with us," says a paramedic, and I
watch helplessly as the distance between Mulder and I grows.  Mulder
would crawl to the ends of the earth for me, but tonight he can't even
bring himself to traverse the length of Mostow's roof.

_______________

At the hospital, I find myself supervising Patterson's transfer from
backboard to gurney and then, literally, washing my hands of him.  As I
emerge from the ladies' room I spot a familiar figure striding
purposefully down the hallway -- the only body language other than
Mulder's I would have no trouble picking out of a crowd.

Assistant Director Skinner must feel the same way, because he makes his
way over to me immediately.

"Agent Scully," he says.  "I received a call from local PD that there
was a shooting at Mostow's studio, but they weren't clear on the
details."  His eyes track grimly to my bloodstained sleeves and I know
what he must be thinking.  If there is blood on my hands, it must be
Mulder's.  After all, it always has been.

"It was Patterson, sir," I say quickly.  "They're working on him in the
ER."

Skinner considers this impassively for a moment before asking me where
Mulder is.

"He's still at the scene.  They're taking his statement," I say, and
suddenly I realize that I am desperate to see him -- and determined to
*see* him, this time, all of him, not the pale shadow who's been living
inside my partner for days.

Skinner looks at me closely.  "His statement?" he says.  "He hasn't been
taken into custody?"

My breath rushes out of me so explosively I can feel it pounding in my
ears.  "Taken into...?  No, sir."  Skinner and I stare at each other for
a moment, and I imagine our faces as twin masks of horror and confusion,
realization dawning on both of us.

"You thought it was Mulder," I say finally.  "When you received the
call, you thought Mulder was the..."

I can't bring myself to finish the sentence, but Skinner's eyes do it
for me.  I am not the only one who has betrayed my partner with my
silence.  "Believe me, I hoped otherwise, Agent Scully," he says in a
low voice.  "What the hell happened out there?"

The facts of the incident are, at least, indisputable and something I
can hang onto for dispassionate recitation.

"I received a message tonight from Agent Nemhauser.  It sounded urgent.
  When I called him back, Agent Mulder answered Nemhauser's phone.  He
seemed..."  My voice falters despite myself.  "He seemed disoriented.
He told me he was in Mostow's studio and I asked him to wait there for
me.  When I arrived, Mulder had his gun trained on Patterson.  I ordered
him to desist, but Patterson attacked me and fled.  Agent Mulder and I
pursued him to the roof."

Skinner, usually so guardedly reserved, seems vaguely stunned by my
explanation.  I watch as he removes his glasses and carefully rubs his
eyes.  "And you believe Patterson was the killer," he says flatly as he
replaces the frames.

"I think the facts speak for themselves, sir," I say evenly.

"Bill Patterson personally requested Mulder's involvement on this case,"
Skinner says, avoiding my eyes.

"Because he knew Mulder was the only person who could catch him," I reply.

Skinner's heavy sigh mirrors my own, and we are silent for a long
moment.  I struggle to imagine Bill Patterson -- the proud, arrogant man
who'd reduced my confident and articulate partner to a stuttering and
hesitant subordinate.  There is so much, I realize, that I don't know.

"I worked a case with Mulder once, when he was still with the ISU,"
Skinner says suddenly, as if reading my thoughts.  I am struck by the
childish urge to put my hands over my ears and chant something to block
out the impending doom of Skinner's words.  But there is no stopping the
story he needs to tell me.

"It was a difficult case."  Skinner looks at me and I am unable to look
away.  "High profile.  Very bloody.  Guys with ten, twenty years'
experience couldn't keep it together.  And Mulder..."  His shoulders
rotate in what might be a shrug.  "Mulder was just a kid.  Or he seemed
that way to those of us who had been born before the Kennedy
administration.  But Patterson was insistent that Mulder be brought in."

Skinner spreads his hands, palm up.  "The Bureau devoted a lot of
manpower.  Agents combing the District, conducting a dozen interviews a
day, grunt work to get the job done.  But Mulder...Mulder just sat
there, in the same corner of the bullpen, looking at pictures of the
crime scenes.  It was..."

"Spooky?" I finish before I can stop myself, my voice little more than a
harsh whisper.  Suddenly I am seeing my partner through Skinner's eyes:
that dark figure in the rumpled suit, his lips moving soundlessly, his
eyes darting and tracking but never coming to rest.  Spooky.  Spooky
Mulder.  They had called him that for years, but I had never questioned
why or how.  Spooky Mulder, so fond of the paranormal.

I hadn't known.

Skinner doesn't bother to nod.  "He was adamant that there was something
in the photographs, something about the staging or the crime scenes that
we had missed."  He exhales deeply.  "Frankly, I thought he was wasting
our time.  His behavior was...erratic.  I thought the case was taking a
toll, I was afraid he would get sloppy.  I said as much to Agent Patterson."

"You wanted him off the case?" I ask neutrally.

"I wanted him to eat a decent meal and sleep for more than two hours at
a stretch," Skinner rejoins.  "Do you know what Patterson said to me?"

I shake my head mutely, but I am as afraid of the answer as I have been
afraid for Mulder these past few days.

"He said, 'Nothing gets between Mulder and the truth.'  He warned me not
to try."  He pauses for a moment.  "If Agent Mulder says Patterson is
his killer, then I believe him.  But I want to warn you, Agent Scully.
The Bill Patterson I knew understood Mulder better than any other agent
in the Bureau.  Maybe better than Mulder understood himself."  Skinner's
eyes are dark.  "It's not going to be easy for him."

"It never has been, sir," I respond quietly.  "If you'll excuse me..."
I make small weaving motions with my hands, not bothering to finish my
sentence.
Skinner and I both know where I'm going.  He nods his acquiescence and I
take off down the hallway, grabbing my cell phone as I speed toward the
hospital exit.

I know exactly how many times Mulder's phone will ring before it
transfers to his voicemail, and it isn't until the middle of the last
ring that Mulder picks up.  It's the first time he has answered a call
in three days and I can feel my hands shaking with relief.

"Mulder, it's me," I say; surely even his overworked mind will
comprehend that familiar refrain.  "Where are you?"

Of that, at least, he seems certain.  "I'm still at the crime scene," he
says without emotion.  "We're just finishing up."

Two sentences more coherent than anything he has said to me in days.
Just the first would have been enough, but the second -- that was a
freebie.  I close my eyes for a moment.  Maybe, I think, maybe Mulder is
not lost after all.

"Stay where you are," I tell him, not knowing or caring whether Mulder
will interpret it as an order or a plea.  "I'll be right there."

I hang up without saying goodbye, afraid of the silence I might find on
the other end of the line.

__________________
 

Mulder is still on the roof with half D.C.'s law enforcement when I
arrive.  I watch him from a distance first as he nods down at a
detective, a slow up and down motion of his head that seems to cost him
great effort.  He is beyond exhausted, the white bandage on his forehead
smudged with soot from the roof.  It aches to look at him.  I mentally
catalogue all the things I want for myself at the moment: a warm bath,
hot tea, a thick blanket, about forty hours of sleep.  I wish I could
provide my partner with all these things a hundred times over, but
Mulder's mind is always charged and rarely refuses to turn itself off.

"...and you should change that bandage, the wound looks like it might be
infected," I can hear the cop advise Mulder as I approach.  Mulder
acknowledges the officer's departure with a tight nod, then tilts
himself backward and slides his back deliberately down the wall in one
unhurried movement until he is sitting on the ground.  He still hasn't
seen me.  From a few feet away I find myself studying his hands,
watching closely for signs of trembling, but I should know better than
to expect any wasted movement or outward bodily betrayal on the part of
Fox Mulder.  Part of me wishes the tightly wound tethers holding Mulder
together would abruptly snap, that Mulder would scream or hit something,
that we could get him in restraints or have him sedated -- anything a
hospital or medication might cure.  But Mulder is too complicated for
that.  Mulder, I realize, has been keeping himself sane for a long time.

Instead he just sits there.  It takes longer than usual for his finely
calibrated Scully honing device to kick in, but just as I'm beginning to
worry I watch his head lift up and swivel towards me.

"Mulder," I say, and cross the last few feet between us to stand beside
him.  Mulder closes his eyes and leans his head back against the wall.

"How's Bill?" he says, his voice surprisingly soft.  The hoarseness has
gone from it, along with the desperation, the pleading that asked me to
believe him against all logic.   Now he just sounds tired.

"He's in surgery," I tell him.  "They're relatively confident he'll
survive."

In the ensuing silence I finish my unspoken thought: The question is,
will you?
But I don't dare speak it aloud.  Instead I offer him my hand, to help
him up, but Mulder stares at it uncomprehendingly as it dangles in front
of him as if he's not sure what to make of it.

"Come on, Mulder," I say quietly.  "Let's go home."

Mulder swallows convulsively as he rises, shaking his head, and too late
I remember the state of his apartment, the hundreds of gargoyles he has
plastered to his walls.  Your new wallpaper, I had called it, a delicate
blend of caution and sarcasm, willing Mulder to respond with a trademark
crack or even any spark of life at all.  Any clue that he understood.

"No," he says, some of the determination seeping back into his voice.
"I..."

For the first time, his eyes meet mine, and with a shock I realize it's
been so long since we've looked at each other like this that I've nearly
forgotten what Mulder's eyes look like.  For three years his eyes have
startled me out of a hundred reveries, alternately furious and wild, at
times pleading and gentle.  Once again I am startled now -- at the
strength there, the conviction.

No, Mulder is not lost.

"Not yet," Mulder says, breaking away from my gaze.  I nod and reach for
his arm, grateful when he doesn't flinch from my touch.

"Then let's go for coffee," I suggest as evenly as I dare.  I can tell
Mulder doesn't want to come home to my apartment, either, where the
clear walls and tidy couch will only remind him of what he has given up
in the last few days to Bill Patterson.  "There's a diner just around
the corner."  Where it's brightly lit and you can't escape inspection, I
want to add.  Mulder has been only half-listening to what I'm saying,
but he nods anyway, taking a small step forward as if to test his balance.

Mulder seems somehow more familiar to me as we head down from the roof
of the building; it's almost as if whatever has plagued him during this
case -- Patterson, Mostow, the demon, evil itself -- has left him, as if
his insistence that the reality of the "thing" killing the victims had
been true.  The thought makes me shudder visibly as we settle into a
booth at the diner, and Mulder glances up at me.

"Someone walking over your grave?" he asks, almost conversationally.

You, Mulder, I want to tell him, it's always you walking over my grave.
  But instead I shake my head and glance out the window.

"No," I say, "just a chill.  It feels like rain."

"Sympathetic fallacy," Mulder murmurs into his coffee.

"What?"

"The literary device by which an author uses the weather in his story to
reflect his character's mood," Mulder says without looking up.  "'Thou,
all-shaking thunder, smite flat the thick rotundity of the world.'"

"That's from King Lear."  Mulder nods and looks out the window, his
hands absently shredding a spent sugar packet.  "You've studied English
literature," I observe.  'Studied' is a mild word for it; no doubt he
has the collected work of Shakespeare memorized, stored in his arsenal
of disheartening quotations to dredge up at moments like this.

"We two alone will sing like birds in a cage, Scully," he says hollowly,
his voice muffled as it bounces against the windowpane.

"I'd say that makes you a man more sinned against than sinning," I
return gently.  Mulder chokes on something in his throat -- half a sob,
maybe, more likely a bitter laugh.

"Why did you join the FBI, Mulder?" I ask, suddenly curious.  Mulder
looks up at me, startled; ordinarily I tiptoe around the pieces of his
past as if his memory is a minefield that might explode if probed the
wrong way.  He tips his head back against the seat, his hands gripping
the coffee cup as if he would prefer them to be scalded than shaking
from the cold.

"It was Patterson," he admits, swallowing difficultly.  "My second year
at Oxford, he gave a lecture in a behavioral psychology course of mine
on his work with the Investigative Support Unit, profiling serial
killers.  I was fascinated.  I stayed after to talk to him."  Mulder's
eyes are hard with the memory.  "They say Patterson always did have a
sixth sense for talent," he says bitterly.

I am surprised at his story.  I think of Mulder the way he looked in
shadow on our first case, the fierceness in his voice as he told me
nothing else mattered to him save for the truth about his sister.

"It had nothing to do with Samantha," I say aloud, somehow unwilling to
let the matter drop.  It is Mulder's turn to look surprised.

"No," he says.  "No, that came later.  After I discovered the X-Files."
Suddenly I find myself busily revising my personal evaluation of
Mulder's history in my head.  The man I knew had always been on a
singular trajectory, had always been preoccupied with his missing sister
and his somewhat unusual theory regarding her disappearance.  I knew
that Mulder was brilliant, that his success in the ISU had afforded him
the opportunity to pursue his own interests with the X-Files, but I had
always pictured Mulder the way I knew him: a maverick agent nicknamed
"Spooky" for his investment in the paranormal, biding his time until he
could clear his own path.  I had never considered that perhaps it had
gone the other way around: Mulder, just a kid to Assistant Director
Skinner, whose uncanny abilities had earned him a peculiar nickname and
a vested interest in cases outside the ISU mainstream -- ones that might
cost him his life, but never his beautiful mind.

"Whatever talents you have, Mulder, Patterson didn't create them," I say
firmly.

Mulder's face relaxes for an instant and then tightens again.  "No," he
says distantly, "no, you're right about that," and I realize that it was
entirely the wrong thing to say.  To assure Mulder that Patterson had no
hand in his creation is tantamount to insinuating that his ability to
tap into the minds of monsters is inborn -- to imply that it takes one
to know one.

"I scared you," Mulder says suddenly, his voice trying for accusatory
but not quite making it.

"Yes," I nod; there is no use denying it.  Part of me is relieved to
hear that Mulder even remembers that conversation; he certainly hadn't
seemed to be listening to me at the time.

"Scully," Mulder says in a low voice, "you have to know that I would
never..."

The silence stretches between us, so palpable I can hear its buzzing in
my ears.  What I would never admit to Mulder -- what he would die before
he would let himself hear -- -was that I didn't know.  Two Mulders
warred within my memory: There was Mulder, gently comforting a victim
with his words, his empathy propelling him with such grace toward a
conclusion.  And then there was Mulder, his voice harsh and angry, his
limbs lashing out, his eyes wild.  If Mulder's greatest desire was the
truth, then my greatest fear was finding out what he was capable of in
pursuit of it.  And while my heart and my gut -- all the parts of me
that connected with Mulder in ways that overruled common logic -- said
Mulder could never commit even a single atrocity against another human
being, my head was in constant opposition, filling me with doubt,
insisting that I look at the facts rationally, from a scientist's
perspective.

A scientist would have suspected Mulder of murder.

But it hadn't been science that had captured Bill Patterson.  It had, in
the end, been Mulder.

Without thinking I reach across the table and separate Mulder's hands
from his coffee cup so I can hold them in my own.  They are warm,
finally, and I can feel the soft, slow beats of his pulse in his thumb.

"I was scared, Mulder," I admit softly.  Hearing it again from my lips,
he flinches.  "I didn't understand what you were doing, where you were
going, why you wouldn't return my calls.  You seemed so..."

"Spooky?" he suggests bitterly.

"I was going to say isolated," I return mildly.  "From everything and
everyone around you."

"From you," he says, relaxing his hands so they are splayed palm up on
the tabletop.

"Mulder..."  I hesitate, unsure if telling him this story is truly the
right thing to do.  "I spoke to A.D. Skinner at the hospital.  He told
me he had worked with you once before, when you were still with the ISU."

Mulder grows still at the memory, and then he nods without speaking.

"Is that what it was like, Mulder?" I ask quietly.  Mulder's hands
clutch at another sugar packet and then fall still.

"It was like..."  He looks away, stumbling over the words as they tumble
rapidly from his lips.  "It was like dreaming.  Like a cycle of
nightmares without mercy, without conscience, without end."  His voice
is soft.  "It was like being buried alive."

I consider this for a moment and find his words difficult to bear.  I
think of my partner as I know him now-his insomnia, his nightmares, his
sense of humor, his intuition -- and try to imagine the agent he must
have been.  Just a kid, A.D. Skinner had said.  Just Mulder.

"Why didn't you tell me before?" I ask.  Mulder looks at me for a long
moment, a street lamp from outside the window casting murky shadows over
his eyes.

"I couldn't tell you," he says.  His voice is almost a whisper.  "There
was no reason for...Scully, I wouldn't have wanted you to know."

Mulder and I have gotten good at keeping each other's secrets; hardly a
day goes by when we are not reminded that we can trust no one but each
other with our lives and our work.  But, I think, Mulder and I have
gotten good at keeping secrets from each other as well.  I could lecture
Mulder about honesty, about the integrity of our partnership and how we
must be open with each other to stay alive.  But that, I know, would be
hypocritical of me, and the last thing Mulder needs right now.  Instead
I feel myself let out a small sigh.  Our partnership may need repairing,
I think, but we won't accomplish that tonight.

"Mulder," I say.  His eyes look lost, somewhere far away, so I repeat
his name again.  "Mulder."  He looks up at me, unsure of what he'll see
in my eyes.
You're my partner," I tell him gently.  "I wasn't scared you were
becoming a murderer, Mulder.  I was scared I would lose you."

"Howl, howl, howl, howl; o, you are men of stones," Mulder says wearily,
staring out the window.

"Mulder."  I say his name forcefully this time, and he looks at me, his
eyes suddenly clear.

"You won't lose me, Scully," he says, his voice so steady it sends
chills down my spine.  "Not as long as you're my partner."

I would find you, Mulder, I think; I will always find you.

"Ready to go?" I ask to break the long silence, reaching for my wallet.
  But Mulder's long fingers grab my wrist, his grip firm but impossibly
gentle.

"Not yet," he says, in a voice I recognize as one struggling to keep out
his anguish.  "Let's just sit here a little while longer."

I slip my wrist out from his fingers and turn his hands over to stroke
his palms.  "Okay, Mulder," I agree softly.  "Let's sit here a while."

Mulder doesn't answer, but I can read the gratitude in his eyes.  In
them, for the first time since this case began, I can see my partner --
the one who speaks to me without words, who consumes the hurt of others
as if it is his own -- and I realize that, against all logic, I am
grateful for this too.

<As long as you are my partner,> I think, and outside, Mulder's rain
begins to fall.
__________
END.
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