By Summer
summer@paranormal.com

 _The X-Files_: all characters copyright Chris Carter and Ten
Thirteen Productions. They shouldn't have made up something so cool if
they
didn't want us to write fan fiction about it. However, i don't really
wantto upset them, so no infringement upon their copyrights is intended.
Saint Susan, soon to be upgraded to goddess for her good deeds,
posts my stuff for me, bless her-- thank you Susan!

 3rd season spoilers: set right after
"Revelations". Comments to summer@camelot.bradley.edu,
please; but yes, i am aware that this is probably
the worst thing i've ever written-- i just had
to get a fight between the characters out of my head.
 

     Redeeming Qualities
      An X-Files Story
  by Summer
 

 Toast crumbs in the butter. Dana Scully
sighed deeply. There was simply nothing more
annoying to her at this moment than dipping a
clean butter knife into that little brown plastic
tub and bringing up a dab of rich yellow butter--
with gritty, ugly little toast crumbs stuck in it.
Somehow she'd managed to get so lax in keeping her
once-immaculate apartment clean that not only were
the newspapers from September still piled up in
her recycling bin, not only was the television
screen grimed with dust, but somehow she had
managed to get toast crumbs in the butter despite
the fact that she had eaten breakfast in her
apartment perhaps five times in as many months.

 Her life was upside-down, the world was a
foul, miserable place, and to top it all off,
there were toast crumbs in the butter. If only
that were really what was bothering her. Scully
knew exactly how the butter had been corrupted.
Her partner had dropped by for breakfast one
recent morning; actually, he'd come to pick her up
to go to the airport, and she had waved him inside
rather than rush through her morning coffee.
Special Agent Fox Mulder was undoubtedly the
culprit in the case of the sullied dairy products.
Yeah, it was his fault, all right. If she thought
about it long enough, she could probably blame the
stacks of old newspapers and the dusty TV screen
on Mulder as well.

 Scully frowned at herself and began scraping
the offensive crumbs out of the plastic tub,
wiping the bright yellow goop onto a paper towel.
There wasn't any point in blaming her partner for
the state of her affairs-- or lack thereof, she
thought ruefully. For one thing, Dana Scully was a
grownup, and she'd chosen her own way aware of the
possible consequences. For another, her partner
already blamed himself for everything that was
messed up in both their lives, and then some. She
occasionally wondered how far Fox Mulder's martyr
complex went. If she had a toast crumb for every
time he had apologized to her for the way their
work had swallowed up the rest of her life, the
butter container would overflow with them. God,
she was tired.

 This is what happens, she thought, to FBI
agents who burn out. They get tired and spend ten
minutes on a search-and-destroy mission for toast
crumbs in the butter. They get tired.

 Her head jerked up as a knock at the door
echoed through the apartment. Scully wondered if
it would be excessively paranoid to grab her gun
before answering the door. She might need the
weapon, regardless of who was on the other side.
These days it seemed there were fewer and fewer
friendly faces, or even neutral ones. Everyone was
hostile, their faces closed, their allegiance
unknown. Anyone could be an enemy, and maybe
everyone was.

 She had to go up on tip-toes to see into the
peephole; the fisheye lens warped the tall man
outside into a hunchbacked gnome and curved his
nose as though it had been broken. "Hey, Scully,"
he called through the door, "it's me."

 Of course. Never "It's Mulder", just "It's
me" as though no other man would be at her door on
a Sunday morning... she couldn't think about
that, it was just too depressing. Scully unhooked
the chain and turned the deadlock, flung the door
open and turned back to the kitchen. He could let
himself in. "It's me" indeed.

 Fox Mulder slunk quietly into the apartment
and paused as his partner glided back into her
minimal kitchen. "Uhm, should I lock this up
again?" he asked.

 She looked over her shoulder at him, one
eyebrow curving up in sardonic inquisition. "I
guess so," she replied, as though she didn't
expect him to stay long enough to make that
necessary.

 There were times, occasionally, when Mulder
resented his partner. Times like these when she
used her clear blue eyes like blades, times when
she used her considerable beauty as though it were
a tool, just another weapon in her arsenal. Once
or twice he'd seen Scully smear her makeup under
her eyes deliberately to make herself look tired
so that she could get out of meetings early; he
had found it amusing, reassuringly human. Now, as
she turned her cool blue gaze on him and waited
expectantly, he found himself irritated by the
memory of that manipulation.

 Mulder knew from his studies in psychology
that the average length of a totally committed
monogamous relationship was around two years, give
or take. After that period of time, the bond began
to deteriorate as the people involved took each
other for granted, got fed up with one another, or
got to know each other a little too well. Or all
of the above. Dana Scully and Fox Mulder had been
partners for two years, give or take. It was
starting to wear on them both.

 A hundred petty things about her bugged the
hell out of him. She seemed more than a little
disgusted with him, too. They were fed up with
each other's habits. The charming idiosyncrasies
had become boring peculiarities; her organization
and neatness warred with his scattered files and
sunflower seeds. Familiarity bred a dangerous
contempt in both of them.

 Neither of them could afford that. Their
work in the X-Files division of the FBI had led
them into perilous situations; their lives were
continually in danger. Together, they had
uncovered secrets never to be revealed. Both were
committed to seeing it through until the truth was
known. One way or the other.

 We can't trust anyone else, he wanted to
say. We need each other. Even if you are sick of
my face. Even if I am sick of yours.

 Instead he fidgeted and locked the door
behind him, ducking away for a moment. "I... came
to apologize." Mulder straightened and looked at
her directly. "I was out of line."

 Scully swept him with another cool, faintly
disapproving look. He only got that treatment when
he'd really managed to hurt her. Nice going. She
turned back to whatever stupid kitchen task she
was distracting herself with, her back stiffening
a little. "About?"

 "You know what about, Scully. The kid, Kevin
Cryder, the stigmatics." Hey, that'd be a great
band name. The Stigmatics. Not to be confused with
Myopia and the Astigmatics. Different group.
Mulder shook the errant thoughts from his head and
went on, "You've followed me into stranger ideas
before. I should have been more willing to accept
that you were right..."

 "But?" Her face was still, her mouth firm.
He must have really dealt her a blow this time,
then. Ouch.

 "But... well, accepting that a serial killer
is in fact the product of a genetic mutation means
accepting that freak aberrations occur within the
evolution of the human race. It's not such a big
jump, you know? Accepting that the Christian God
exists and evidences himself through a few
bizarre, seemingly random and poorly documented
events..."

 "Miracles." Scully cast a sidewise look at
him as he drifted into the kitchen; Mulder could
see the thread of gold around her neck, the chain
of her small cross.

 "Miracles," he said. "Why Kevin? Why one
ten-year-old boy in Ohio? If God wanted to make a
miracle, why not a spontaneous cure for AIDS or
the earth reversing in its orbit or something
equally conspicuous?" Mulder stopped and forced
himself back to the point. "But, my personal
beliefs aside... we're partners. I should always
believe that you've seen exactly what you tell me
you've seen, and if you say you're being
objective-- I have no reason to think otherwise. I
shouldn't have assumed that you were swayed by
faith. Regardless of the fact that you asked me to
scratch-and-sniff a corpse," he added impulsively,
hoping to draw a laugh.

 She didn't react. He should have known. If
`You never draw _my_ bath' hadn't garnered so much
as a smile, nothing he said had a chance of
getting through until they resolved this. Scully
dusted her hands on her white terrycloth bathrobe
and stuck them in her wide pockets. How had he
managed not to notice she was still in her robe?
Maybe that's why she didn't expect him to stick
around. Maybe he was being a complete idiot about
the whole thing. That was always a likely answer
to any equation...

 Scully faced her partner slowly, ruminating.
She hadn't expected him to apologize so promptly;
she'd anticipated a marathon battle over the issue
on Monday, when they would ostensibly be handling
paperwork. The day after they finished a case was
always a bull session; sometimes the theories
piled up until neither of them could remember
exactly what the hypotheses had been formulated to
explain in the first place.

 Lately, the intellectual thrill of those
sessions had dwindled; she would give her
reasonable point of view, Mulder would hold up the
perspective from la-la land, they'd hammer out the
differences until the fantastic elements of
Mulder's concepts had been grounded in the
sensible forensic evidence of Scully's ideas. They
had argued so many times over whether or not
extraterrestrial intelligence visited Earth that
it was beginning to wear as thin as Abbott and
Costello's "Who's on First" routine. The problem
was that unlike the comedy sketch, their
disagreement wasn't borne of misunderstanding. It
was a fundamental difference in their perceptions.

 Science might someday stretch to accommodate
what was thrown into the X-Files as "the
paranormal" or "unexplained phenomenae"; Scully
could likewise be flexible enough to accept that
these things were possible. But the evidence of
extraterrestrial life evaporated every time they
got close to it, while the weight of other, more
sinister answers grew with every revelation.

 Humans were responsible for the atrocities that
were ascribed to alien abduction. Experiments, shocking in
in their cruelty, had led to the development of technology
which was so far in advance of civilian science that it
seemed extraterrestrial. These were Scully's conclusions.
Mulder still believed that aliens were at the heart of the
mystery; his tone-deaf insistence grated on her nerves every
time the issue came up. And it came up all the time.

 On the other hand, Mulder had been right
about unexplained events many times in the past,
and her resistance to his theories had gone beyond
ordinary skeptism. It shouldn't surprise her that
when it came to the things she had faith in,
Mulder didn't believe.

 "Earth to Scully," her partner said finally.

 "I know what I saw, Mulder," she said, with
more conviction than she felt. "No other
explanation makes sense."

 He scowled slightly. "Look, Scully, even if
Kevin really did have stigmata-- that doesn't make
him chosen by God. Stigmata can be a psychosomatic
reaction to religious fervor, like glossolia, you
know, speaking in tongues?"

 "I know," she answered shortly. "But you
don't even concede that much, do you? You think he
did it all to himself. The marks of the
crucifixion, the wound on his side..."

 "He would have every reason to suffer those
self-inflicted injuries in an attempt to get his
father back," Mulder answered.

 "The first time he evidenced stigmata, his
father was taken away to a mental institution. How
could the bleeding bring his father back?" Scully
inquired.

 "If he could prove that his father was
right..." Mulder halted.

 "He would have done it earlier," Scully
finished. "His father was put away a year ago,
Mulder. And he wouldn't have continued to hurt
himself while we were running from Simon Gates.
Besides, I saw paramedics examine him-- and half
an hour later, he had that cut along his ribcage.
I hadn't taken my eyes off him long enough for him
to hurt himself. He had the stigmata, Mulder, and
he didn't cause it himself."

 "You know better than I do that Roman
crucifixions were nailed through the wrists, not
the palms," he replied. "Even the Shroud of Turin,
however dubious it might otherwise be, is accurate
in that regard. If God had touched Kevin, wouldn't
he at least have touched his wrists, not his
hands?"

 "How do you propose that he got those
wounds, then?"

 "I told you," Mulder said obdurately, "a
psychological reaction to the stress he was under.
Maybe he caused it indirectly, unconciously, but
Kevin was responsible for his cuts, not God."

 "So we're back to the idea that he evidenced
the stigmata in psychosomatic reaction to his
father's obsessive religious beliefs," Scully
said. "How? How could his mind make holes appear
in his hands, or a cut on his torso?"

 "I don't know," Mulder admitted. "Mind and
body are related in strange ways; some people seem
to be able to affect physical reactions simply by
thinking about it. There's tons of documentation
regarding the triumph of the mind over the body,
the same principal that allows people to walk
barefoot over hot coals or lie on a bed of nails."

 "More comfortable than a futon," she shot
back despite herself. He laughed mildly. Scully
shook her head. "So you can believe that in some
unexplained way, Kevin experienced a physical
manifestation of his faith-- but not that God was
responsible for that manifestation. If all genuine
stigmatics are in fact experiencing a biological
reaction to their beliefs... the fact that it only
happens to some people could indicate that they're
touched or chosen in a way, couldn't it?"

 Mulder heaved another weary breath and gave
up. "We could go round on this all day and never
get anywhere... look, Scully, if you think that
Kevin was touched by God, so be it. If it was
divine inspiration that let you save his life,
okay. Your faith is your business. But don't ask
me to embrace your entire religion on the strength
of your observations. I can't do it."

 "But you'll swear 'til doomsday that aliens
visit the earth despite all the evidence to the
contrary--" she snapped.

 His jaw tensed visibly. "I wasn't going to
bring it up," he gritted out, "but okay. What
about aliens? The presence of extraterrestrials
has been proven to you over and over again. E.T.
could land on your lawn and you'd still claim it
was impossible, but I'm supposed to find God
because a ten-year-old had a cut you can't
explain?"

 "I have never seen anything conclusive--"

 "You see what you want to see!" Mulder
turned away, pacing across the linoleum. "You're
predisposed to believe in Christian imagery, so
when you run up against a religious happening you
can't explain, then you can accept an extreme
possibility despite a total lack of scientific
evidence."

 "I believe in God," she stated plainly.
"Whether or not He had anything to do with what we
witnessed in Ohio is unrelated to my personal
beliefs."

 "Of course it's related to your personal
beliefs. If you hadn't been indoctrinated with
Catholicism all your life do you really think
you'd assign any significance at all to the
paranormal aspects of this case?" Mulder chopped
at the air divisively. "You're biased, Scully.
Objectivity just isn't possible when you deal with
the things we deal with, but you have to admit
that and get past it. I know I'm predisposed to
see the fantastic in every possibility, I'm aware
of my biases. I'm asking you to admit to yours."

 "I never claimed to be objective regarding
this case," she replied hotly, "and I qualified
every statement I made about the significance of
what I saw. I said I wasn't sure, that I'm still
not sure. And I never asked you to convert, for
God's sake-- just to consider that it might
possibly be true--"

 Mulder brushed her words away with a fevered
sweep of his hands. "A book of stories and
parables, most of them recycled from Egyptian and
Greek myths, gets handed down for two thousand
years and it's okay to believe in virgin birth,
resurrection, transubstantiation. But psychic
abilities? Genetic mutations? Extraterrestrials?
The possibilities I'm willing to accept aren't any
wilder than the things people venerate in church
every Sunday, but they're pious, and me, I'm just
a nutcase."

 "It sounds like you're the one who's having
trouble being objective," Scully flared. "If you
resent the fact that I'm Catholic why don't you
just say so?"

 "I don't resent the fact that you're
Catholic, I resent the fact that you can believe
in one set of impossibilities and still be
completely closed off to another. I resent that I
wore that cross for two months in remembrance of
you and now I can hardly stand the sight of it--"
Mulder cut himself off, not quite believing how
far he had gone in unreasoning anger.

 "That sounds a lot like resenting that I'm
Catholic," she returned, her hand rising to hover
over her golden cross; her slim fingers twined in
the chain as she frowned at him, puzzled. "You
wore..."

 "Forget it." Mulder turned to seize his
jacket, floundered for a moment, realized he had
never taken it off. "Forget it, I'll see you
Monday, I'll have a written apology and a signed
note from my mother. In triplicate. I'll file it
with OPC. Mea culpa, et cetera, ad nauseum..."

 "Mulder, stop. Wait." Scully trotted after
him as he stalked with long strides across the
room. "Mulder," she repeated insistently; he
stopped, obstinance welding his features shut as
he yanked open the door.

 "Could you just accept my apology and let me
leave with the illusion that I'm not a total
asshole?" he asked in pained, impatient tones.

 "I knew you kept this for me," she said
indirectly, indicating the cross necklace. "I
didn't know--"

 "Forget it," he dismissed again. "It was a
stupid thing to say. It has nothing to do with
miracles. I came to apologize, and ended up
starting another argument, so I'm sorry on both
counts, period."

 "I... I'm sorry too." Her low voice
surprised him; quiet and soft. "You know, I
thought I believed, like you said at the hotel,
that the Bible was allegory. A metaphor for the
truth, not the truth itself. But... when my faith
was tested, it was stronger than I realized."

 "That's nothing you should have to apologize
for," he said after a moment.

 She glanced up at him pensively. "I know
what I saw, Mulder. But... maybe I saw what I
needed to see, to help Kevin. I won't insist it
was an act of God. But it could still have been a
miracle."

 "Maybe so," he said, his voice dropping so
low that she almost didn't hear him. "Look, uhm...
forgiven?"

 "Forgotten," she acquiesed. A hint of a
smile appeared. "How about me, do I get
absolution?"

 "Take two Hail Marys and call me in the
morning," he improvised. She laughed. Mulder felt
relief wafting over him like a shroud. "I'll see
you." He slipped around the door.

 "See you." Scully watched him go, and shut
the door lightly behind him.
 
 

 Dana Scully dusted her hands on her terrycloth-
covered hips with a satisfied sigh. Her apartment
was restored to its former glory, every surface
sparkling with lab-worthy cleanliness. The newspapers
had been bundled off to the recycling center, the
television gleamed, her sofa was lintless and newly
vacuumed, and the entire place reeked of lemony
freshness.
 

 She flopped onto her plumped beige sofa and
kicked her feet up. "There," she murmured into the
empty room, "my good deed for the year. Santa Claus,
take note." Scully chuckled at her own flat witticism
and swung her arms above her head in a slow, lazy
stretch. She considered going next door for her
Pomeranian and decided against it. Her neighbor, a
credulous elderly woman, took in Scully's little dog
whenever Scully was out on a case, which was often.
The older woman seemed to enjoy the dog's company so
much that Scully sometimes didn't bother to retrieve
her pet even when she was home.

 She was in no mood to care for the demanding
little animal anyway. The fight earlier that day with
her partner continued to disturb her. Scully was
alarmed at her own exasperation with Fox Mulder. She
shouldn't find her partner to be such a nuisance after
only two years of constant, draining, incredibly
shocking and unprecedented investigations. So what if
their caseload was unheard of, their success rate
unlikely, their work unaccepted?

 She had a million justifications for her
deteriorating attitude towards her work and her
partner. She had lost her sister recently, when an
attempt on her life claimed that of Melissa Scully by
mistake. Mulder, too, had been in the same house when
his father was assassinated, had held the man in his
arms when he died, had been framed for the murder.
Mulder himself had nearly died because of their work.

 Scully found it difficult to believe that now,
only a few months after her partner's near-death and
return, she could be so tired of him. When he'd come
back seemingly from the grave, she could barely take
her eyes off him, the sight was so miraculous and
unutterably precious.

 It seemed heretical to admit that Mulder, alive
and well, had ceased to be a cause for celebration and
had somehow become a bit of a thorn in her side.
At some point, the slightly crooked front teeth that
gave his sly smile character, the dry-ice wit, the
wide hazel eyes and unassuming good looks had lost
their appeal and Scully found herself concentrating
more on the crick in her neck from looking up at him
and the effort it took to keep up with the lurching
strides afforded him by his six-foot frame. She got
annoyed with him every time he shed his suit jacket
and rolled up his sleeves, rolled the sleeves back
down to question a witness, rolled them up again to
examine the evidence, down again long enough for
dinner, slipped into the jacket until they were back
at the hotel where he'd go back to rolled-up
shirtsleeves until he finally went to bed at some
insanely late hour, only to wake at dawn and jog while
she felt rather slothful, savoring her coffee and
stretching out overtaxed muscles. Meanwhile, Mulder
would have already run three miles, showered and
dressed and solved the damn case before she was barely
awake.

 Scully twisted, adjusting her position on the
cushions, and swung her legs over the arm of the sofa.
Her tennis shoes were getting dingy, and one lace had
come untied. She contemplated it, wondering if it was
worth the trouble of re-tying it. She kicked both
shoes off instead and eyed the television. Maybe she
could veg out and watch a movie, like normal, ordinary
people did on lazy Sunday evenings like this one.

 No chance. The phone rang. "I knew it," she
grumbled, fumbling for the cordless on the side table.
"Hello...?"

 "Hey, it's me." Dammit. Mulder.

 "It can't be me. I'm right here," Scully pointed
out. Her grade-school-aged godson had recently
discovered the fun of pronouns, and she was just irked
enough with her partner's "It's me" habit to use the
routine on him.

 "Well, this is the me you work with every day,
not the me you see in the mirror," he said easily.

 "Mimi?" she joked.

 "Try again," Mulder challenged.

 "Uhm... me Tarzan?"

 "No, you Dana."

 "Me... me..." she blanked. "Meschach..."

 "Meschach, Rorschach and Abednigo?"

 "Meet the Press."

 "Mi amigo?" Mulder's voice betrayed a hint of
nervousness along with his usual quirky humor.

 "Si, senor." Scully shifted again, propping her
sock feet on the back of the sofa. "Did you call to
play Hooked on Phonics?"

 "This isn't 1-900-ABCDEFG?"

 "It's an 800 number," she asserted.

 "Not the one I call," he informed her. "And
believe me, you never knew vowel sounds could be so
much fun."

 "Mulder," she reverted to her normal brisk
tones, "seriously, did you have some reason for
calling?"

 "Just checking in... seeing how you're doing..."

 She rolled her eyes. "In the seven hours since
you left here, I've contracted consumption and I'm
wasting away."

 "This is a medical joke, right? I get it."

 "Spit it out, Mulder."

 "I think there's some fight left in this issue
we need to resolve," he collapsed back into
officespeak, "and it doesn't have to happen at work in
a marathon shouting match. I think we could get it out
and out of the way now, calmly, personally, write our
respective reports, and put it behind us."

 "I thought we patched things up."

 "You've said everything you wanted to say?"

 Scully frowned. "Haven't you?"

 "Look, if you have other plans..."

 "No, I'm just--" she sighed. "Whatever."

 "Well, that's decisive." He hesitated.

 She saved him the trouble of composing his next
volley. "Look, Mulder, if you show up over here, the
door is open and I'll listen to whatever's on your
mind. Beyond that, you're on your own." She regretted
that remark the moment it passed her lips. Leaving
Mulder on his own not long ago had been the worst
choice she had ever made in her life. A choice that
for good or ill she didn't intend to repeat.

 "Okay, I'll drop by a little later," he said
quickly. "Have you had dinner, should I bring a peace
offering?"

 "I'm not hungry, thanks."

 "Fine, I'm gonna stop someplace on the way then.
See you."

 "Bye." Scully placed the phone on her coffee
table and heaved to her feet. Time to dirty up a few
dishes; she started coffee brewing and set out cups
and saucers. "What the hell, I'm not having a tea
party," she muttered to herself, and put the china
away. She clamped her hands around a pair of thick
white coffee mugs and thumped them unceremoniously on
the dining table. Then it was strategy time; the
kitchen or the living room? Couch or chairs? Which
would be a better place to hold a discussion that
could easily become an argument, or a reconciliation,
or both?

 Scully hummed absently to herself, walking from
one room to the other, inhaling the rich scent of the
piping coffee and thinking it over. She was actually
beginning to get ticked off at Mulder for giving her
so much time to plan it out. Of course, if he'd shown
up sooner, she would have been upset that he hadn't
given her _enough_ time to plan it out.

 Scully stopped in the middle of her clean,
efficient, lovely apartment and simmered, frustrated.
She was tired of being tired of Mulder. No matter how
many times she had to pick seed shells out of the
files from his briefcase, he was her partner. He was
all she had in the mess that their work had become.
Even if he seemed to be fed up with her. Even if she
was sick of his insistent irrationality.

 There had to be some way to regain the
excitement of those first days together, when he'd
seemed like such a mystery to her. The brilliant,
enigmatic FBI agent who insisted on ruining his
reputation and his career for the sake of a bunch of
dusty old files containing unsolved, unsolvable
cases... he had captivated her more than she could
admit. She had taken on the challenge of convincing
him that she was serious, not some agency flunky sent
to debunk his work. And then, of course, there had
been the thrill of the X-Files themselves; occurences
so far out of the norm that no one bothered to look
for a rational answer, dismissing the events as
unexplained and unexplainable.

 She hadn't dismissed them and she hadn't backed
down. The decision to stay had been motivated by so
many influences, from her own stubborn streak to the
wonder of finding answers to questions no one else
dared to ask. Her puzzle box partner had certainly
been the determining factor. A man with a mission, he
made everyone else she knew seem pale and purposeless
by comparison. She couldn't walk away from Fox
Mulder's quest for the truth. A chance to be part of
something with all the grandeur of epic... never mind
the fact that she would be called upon to undermine
his search more often than she could rightfully
support it.

 She was still humming. What the hell was that
song? It had been rattling around in her head all day.
Scully half-sang aloud, "Dada da da, da da dada; even
the..." she lost the tune, concentrated, brought it
back. "Da da da da dum, da da... da... you... dum dum
dum, even the days are brighter... Oh my God, that's
an Air Supply song."

 Now that she had identified the tune, it plagued
her unmercifully, following as she sorted through junk
mail and caught up on other mundane household tasks.
She finally threw up her hands and got into the
closet, racked through boxes crammed with her old
cassette tapes until she found Air Supply's Greatest
Hits. Speaking of absolution... she probably deserved
to go to hell just for owning this album...

 Scully made a face. The song would stay in her
head until she listened to it; better to get it out of
the way now than to have it out with Mulder while lame
early 80s soft rock echoed in her brain. She stuck the
cassette into her stereo and stabbed the Play button.

 "--so lost without you, I know you were right,
believing for so long; I'm all out of love, what am I
without you? It can't be too late to say that I was so
wrong." Air Supply's music, released from the
elevators that had rightfully imprisoned it for a
decade, filled her apartment with syrupy arrangements
of drippy pop.

 She scowled again. Even worse than she
remembered. Had she really paid money for this once?
Scully fast-forwarded a bit, stopping when the
ratcheting noise of the tape became a bit too frantic.
"I wish I could carry your smile in my heart, for
times when my life seems so low..." Ugh. She nudged it
forward further, hit play. "I'm reaching for you, are
you feeling it too, does the feeling seem oh so
right?..." Finally the song dwindled away and yielded
another saccharine confection.

 "Close your eyes, I want to ride the skies in my
sweet dreams. Close your eyes, I want to see you
tonight in my sweet dreams." Scully left the tape
playing; this song, odious as it was, had a nice
harmony, and she couldn't really remember the tune of
the song she had been trying to chase away in the
first place. She bustled off to check the coffee,
which was burbling nicely.

 Someone knocked. "Hey Scully," came Mulder's
voice through the door. "d'you realize your next door
neighbor just went out to walk your dog? How do you
get her to do that?"

 She unlocked the door for him and let him in as
he continued, "I have to bribe my neighbor to check on
my fish when I'm gone. Ten years old and he demands a
fee of five dollars per trip to my apartment, the
little mercenary."

 "For a safari into your apartment, I don't blame
him. Mulder, you couldn't pay me to venture in there
without a guide and a hacksaw." She caught his coat as
he shrugged it off and hooked it on the pegs near the
door. "New species are created in your refrigerator on
a daily basis, I'm sure."

 "It is NOT that bad in my apartment," he
declared. "Though I'll admit it suffers in comparison
to your place... Scully, what did you do in here?
We've been in quarantine holds that weren't this
clean."

 "I dedicate myself to a standard of neatness
somewhat above that of a toxic waste dump, that's
all."

 Mulder frowned. "It's very nice, yes, but...
something's wrong here..." he stepped into the living
room, his hands spread out as though receiving vibes.
"There's a terrible... presence... I'm sensing
something horrible in the very air."

 Scully put up with his performance steadfastly.
"Well?"

 "I always knew you had a dirty little secret,
Scully," he said in shocked tones, "but I never
dreamed-- Air Supply?"

 She had tuned out the music, but it was still
playing; the singer was crooning something about how
he could make you every promise that had ever been
made or he could make all your demons begone. Scully
hustled to shut it off, wincing, "I had one of their
songs, you know, it was bothering me-- shut up. Just
shut up," she said as Mulder broke into a broad grin.

 "I think they have support groups to help you
get over your '80s soft rock addiction," he said
helpfully. "Guaranteed to permanently remove Chicago,
Air Supply and REO Speedwagon from your cerebrum with
only a modicum of neurological surgery."

 "What's in the bag?" she deflected.

 He looked down as though surprised to see the
plastic sack still in his hand. "Oh, uhm... I rented a
couple of movies... I dunno, I thought I'd bring them
in with me in case they were anything you wanted to
see."

 Scully dipped into the bag and drew out two
videos. "_Die Hard With a Vengeance_ and _Monty Python
and the Search for the Holy Grail_?"

 "Have you ever noticed that there isn't a single
non-blasphemous Monty Python movie in existence?" he
asked. "I know. I looked."

 She raised an eyebrow at him and placed the sack
on the kitchen table. "Maybe later," she said,
scooping up the coffee cups and filling them both.
Mulder tentatively settled into a chair; silence
weighed between them, unusual in that they were both
uncomfortably aware of it.
 
 

 Scully took a breath and put both brimming mugs
on the table, then tugged loose the belt of her white
robe and shouldered out of the terrycloth. Mulder
glanced up, started, and sloshed hot coffee on his
hand. "Dammit!" he cursed, and shook his hand out,
muttering further obscenities under his breath.

 "What?" she asked, more amused than concerned.
Scully folded her robe over the back of the chair and
took the seat opposite him at the table.

 He'd stuck the burned spot along the side of his
thumb into his mouth with a sullen expression; she'd
never known anyone else with Fox Mulder's capacity for
childishness. "It's nothing, it's fine," came his
muffled answer.

 She glanced down at her T-shirt and jeans and
smiled malevolently. "You thought I wasn't dressed..."
His expression confirmed it. "Mulder, it's six
o'clock."

 "I didn't think about it," he defended lamely,
avoiding her eyes by sneering over his injury.

 "Here," she rose and got an ice cube from her
freezer, "put that on it."

 "Thanks." Mulder accepted it sourly and put it
on his hand for all of ten seconds before dropping it
on a coaster, which was no more than she had expected.
"Uhm... you know, this morning... that's the first
time we've really blown out over anything in a while."

 "First time we've had a chance in a while," she
returned with a shrug. "So, we were overdue for an
argument? Maybe we should allow for more fights in our
schedule."

 "Well, we have the ritual debate every time we
close a case," he reconsidered, "and we clashed over
the Amy Jenkins kidnapping... I'm trying to
rationalize this, Scully, help me out here."

 "What are you trying to rationalize?" she asked.
"We've fought before, we'll fight again. It's not that
big a deal, Mulder. Unless you have something else in
mind."

 He gave her a canny expression. "We've been
partners almost two years now, isn't it..."

 "You think, what, we're stagnating? Need a
change of pace?" she suggested too quickly.

 "I didn't say that," Mulder frowned.

 "I know what you're trying to say." Scully
gulped a scalding swallow of coffee. "And I
understand, I mean, it makes sense, and to some degree
I feel the same way, but we both know it's just not
feasible."

 Mulder began to feel like the proverbial deer in
headlights-- what the hell was this big, bright,
mysterious _thing_ coming at him? He reacted the same
as the deer: he froze completely, managing to stutter
a baffled "What?"

 She rested her elbows on the table, cupped her
chin in her hands, and regarded him with such pained,
earnest seriousness that Mulder's stomach squirmed
anxiously. "I mean," Scully pronounced carefully, "we
can't change the way things are-- and we both know
that-- so much as you might want it to be otherwise,
we just have to keep going and try not to let it
affect our work."

 "Much as _I_ might want it to be--" he repeated
with confusion. It dawned on him that maybe the
irritation she'd been displaying lately wasn't because
she was upset; maybe all this turmoil had a completely
different source. He thought he'd conquered the
specter of romantic involvement between them in his
own mind, but maybe she saw things differently, and
maybe, just maybe, she was right.

 On the other hand, it wouldn't do him any good
to jump to conclusions. "Scully," he picked each word
with caution, "what exactly is it that you think I'm
looking for, here?"

 The earnest expression became even more pained
and a trifle bitter. "I realize that if circumstances
permitted... you'd probably request another partner,"
she finally answered.

 He stared blankly, trying to ignore the
disappointment sinking down his throat. "You're
kidding."

 She pushed out of her chair and moved to lean
against the kitchen counter restlessly. "Isn't that
what you wanted to confess tonight? Well, there it is.
We're fed up with each other, fine, and you'd find
someone else to work with if you could. Okay. I can
accept that. But we both know that I'm in this too
deep now. And you can trust a prospective new partner
even less than you can trust me." Scully breathed
deeply, her arms folded tightly against her, eyes
fixed on the wall. "So we've just got to make the best
of it, Mulder. I'm willing to try if you are."

 He clenched the coffee mug tightly with both
hands, swimming through her diatribe with growing
desolation. Essentially, she was saying that she'd
leave him if it were at all possible, a far cry from
his tentative speculations. "I-- guess I didn't
realize you'd thought it out like that--" Mulder
pressed his mouth shut, willing away the insults he
wanted to hurl at her: cold, calculating, heartless,
bloodless, frigid... he knew better. He knew Dana
Scully was the finest human being he'd been lucky
enough to blunder into in his life. But when she could
so calmly tell him to go to hell, it was difficult to
remember all they'd been through together.

 Of course, she must have forgotten all that as
well, to make the speech she'd just made. It just
didn't make sense, not logically, not emotionally...
Mulder pulled himself together long enough to take a
look at his partner, striving to see what was really
there instead of what he expected or what he feared.

 Scully's troubled face was lowered, her eyes
sweeping over the floor; her crossed arms hugged hard
against her chest. She didn't look as though she had
just coolly brushed off two years of harrowing
partnership; she looked miserable and even a little
ashamed.

 He thought over what she had actually said, as
opposed to what he had interpreted through a veil of
dread and doubt. "Scully," he said finally, "I'll
admit that we're wearing on each other a little, but I
wouldn't want another partner under any circumstances.
At all. Ever."

 She glanced at him unhappily; he caught her gaze
with his own, honest and open. Scully pursed her lips
thoughtfully and sighed, "It's okay, you know. I'd
understand if you did."

 "Why would you think I'd want to do something
like that?" He leaned back in the chair, facing her
fully. "What was that you said, that I can't trust
you? Scully, you're the _only_ one I trust, you _know_
that."

 "Not completely," she said. "I let you down, I
know. You can't put your complete trust in me now. I
have to live with that."

 "How did you let me down?" he probed.

 She replied sharply, "In New Mexico, Mulder...
I let you go into that quarry on your own. I put our
jobs ahead of the truth. And it nearly killed you."

 "What nearly killed me was smoke inhalation and
exposure, Scully. The men who tried to kill me for the
digital tape, they're the ones who're to blame for
that, not _you_, for god's sake. You were just trying
to make sure we'd have lives to go back to. I
understood it then, I understand it now."

 "That doesn't mean you accept it," she said
tightly. "Or that you don't resent it. You have every
reason to resent it; we're partners and I should have
been there for you."

 "You'd already carted me across the country and
risked your job and your life for me, Scully." He
cracked  a smile. "You even shot me to protect me.
What more could I ask for?"

 Scully shook her head. "Things changed after
that. Maybe you don't even realize it, but you haven't
really trusted me completely since you came back."

 He considered this thoughtfully, sipping at his
coffee. "What have I done to make you think I don't
trust you completely?" he asked at last.

 She spanned her fingers across her brow briefly,
her shoulders rising defensively. "It's not really
what you've done," she struggled to express herself,
"it's... how you act, it's in your voice every time we
talk. I fouled up and you paid for it, and I've tried
to be tougher and I've tried to back you up one
hundred percent and always be there for you, to make
sure it doesn't happen ever again... I've tried,
Mulder." Scully pressed her lips together tightly,
willing herself not to say more.

 "Hey," he pushed the cup aside and rose to stand
beside her, leaning against the stark white oblong of
the refrigerator. "Scully, you didn't foul up. You did
exactly what you've always tried to do, you kept us
within the sane limits of the law-- and if you hadn't,
we'd probably both be out of a job by now. What
happened to me-- no, listen," he said as she looked
away. "What happened to me in New Mexico had nothing
to do with the choices that either of us made."

 "I shouldn't have given up on you," she said,
her voice almost inaudible. "I looked into that pit
where they said they'd left you, and everything was
all burned away... I should have looked further, done
something. I shouldn't have given up on you, Mulder.
You never gave up on me."

 It was his turn to look away. "Scully..."

 "When I disappeared last year, you kept looking
after everyone else had given up," she said, barely
concious of her own quiet words.

 "Because it was my fault you'd been taken in the
first place!" he exploded, pacing across the kitchen.
"Scully, I knew all along exactly what I was getting
into, but when you were assigned as my partner I never
bothered to mention to you that the dangers of my work
went beyond the rank-and-file of the Bureau..."

 "I sort of figured it out after the first few
times we were bugged and chased around and shot at,"
she told him with a hint of acerbic humor.

 Mulder stopped at the doorway and faced her
again, digging his heels into the floor as though
unsure of where he stood. "Nevertheless," he
continued, "I should have said something. `Oh, by the
way, if I'm right about this paranormal stuff then
we'll probably both be hunted down by our own
government, still want the assignment?' I should have
told you. In fact, I know the exact moment when I
should have told you."

 "When was that?" she asked, wondering if there
was any discreet way she could get a tissue without
letting on that she'd been on the verge of tears.

 "In the car, when we were staking out Tooms'
apartment," Mulder replied. "You said--"

 "I said I wouldn't put myself on the line for
anyone but you, Mulder," she remembered.

 He stared at his shoes. "I should have told you
then exactly what kind of line you were putting
yourself on."

 Silence fell again as each of them remembered
the regrets of a long and arduous partnership that had
seen them both risk their lives for what they believed
in, and for each other.

 Finally, Scully looked up. "I always knew the
risks, Mulder; I knew from the beginning, when every
time you'd get paranoid, you'd turn out to be right.
What happened to me... that wasn't your fault."

 "I never lost faith in you," Mulder said. "I
know you were doing your best to protect us both. I
didn't realize when I came back why suddenly you were
defending my work, standing up for me even when you
didn't know what I was doing..."

 "No more than what I should have done all
along," she murmured.

 "I don't know about that," he said, with the
merest hint of a smile. "These past couple of months I
felt like I had a hurricane on my side, and while it
was great to watch you blow away everyone who
questioned my judgement, I was always worried the wind
was going to shift."

 She smiled minimally in acknowledgement.

 "But you don't have to be my personal DS-21,
Scully. You don't have anything to prove to me."

 "How did we get so confused?" she wondered
aloud. "I was so sure you wanted out..."

 "The real question is, how did we manage to
stick together so long without getting confused,"
Mulder said. "It's not like we lead simple lives, you
know. But it makes a twisted kind of sense... ever
since New Mexico, you've been trying to prove that
you're on my side, at least to the world at large. I
didn't know what brought on this sudden staunch
support, and I guess I started to hope that you were
beginning to believe. Then we'd talk privately, and..."

 "And you'd be disappointed," Scully realized,
"and I'd think it was because I'd let you down..."

 "And we'd start all over again," Mulder
concluded with an aggrieved sigh. "Vicious circle."
Scully looked at him strangely; he caught the glance
and said, "What? What is it?" She shook her head, but
he knew better. "You thought of something just now,
what was it?"

 "Full circle to find the truth," she admitted
reluctantly.

 It should have bothered him, but Mulder found
himself smiling. "The truth is," he said, "we're
partners. I don't want anything to change that,
Scully." It meant giving up on a lot of things he
might rather have had a chance to explore; it meant
putting up with one another when things got stale,
being there for each other when things got bad.

 And he wouldn't want it any other way.

 Scully smiled back with all the grace of a
sunset and agreed, "Me either." She took a deep,
cleansing breath and laughed. "So..."

 "So," he said. "So how long has it been since we
really talked like this, huh?"

 "Like this? Like how?"

 "Like friends," he replied. "Isn't that why
we've been such good partners for so long, even after
everything that's happened-- because we're friends?"

 "And we haven't talked about anything but work
since New Mexico," Scully mused.

 "Maybe we need to get reacquainted," Mulder
suggested insouciantly.

 She chuckled. "After two years of spending
almost every waking moment together, we need to get to
know each other again?"

 He looked at her expectantly.

 Scully's expression became mischievous. "And let
those movies go to waste?"

 Mulder laughed. "Is that an invitation?"

 She grinned. "I'll fire up some popcorn. The
coffee's cold by now, I'm sure..."

 "Sub-zero," he verified, wrinkling his nose over
his cup.

 "Pour it out, if you would-- I've got some tea
in the fridge. That okay?"

 "That's great," Mulder said, letting the coffee
drain away in the sink while his partner coordinated
the popcorn and drinks. He put the mugs in the sink
and paused to roll up the sleeves of his plaid shirt.

 "What?" he said after a moment, realizing Scully
was giving him an odd look.

 She shook her head and suddenly smiled again.
"Nothing," she shrugged, and laughed. "It's nothing."

 He picked up the tea glasses as she tumbled the
popcorn into a bowl and picked up the movies he'd
brought. "Tea, popcorn, videos," he checked. "What
more do you need in life, huh?"

 Someone to share it with, they both thought at
the same time, and exchanged glances.

 Neither of them said it out loud.
 
 

 * the  * end *