Redemption Day

By: afg
siggy.63@btinternet.com


Website: www.ofnoconsequence.com
Rating: PG13 - Wash my mouth out with soap.
Category: Angst
Disclaimer: Not mine and no money is being made.
Summary: Long time no see.
Thanks: To audu2, for the priceless gift of punctuation, etc.
Feedback: Lovely, to siggy.63@btinternet.com
Note: Set post 'Truth' and written for Fandomonium's Voyeur
Challenge Part II

Johnson County Hospital
Tecumseh, Nebraska
11:00am

He looked at his partner lying drugged up to the gills on the
hospital bed. A farmer's dog had taken a dislike to them while
they had been on shit detail. Or rather 'Domestic Terrorism' as
the FBI liked to call it. The dog had been foaming at the mouth
and as there had been an outbreak of rabies in the local small
animal population, it was thought prudent to administer a full
course of anti-rabies vaccine. His partner had a badly bitten
forearm and calf and now had to suffer through numerous jabs
with a very big needle.

Tom Colton was almost grinning. He had no love for his partner
of the last two years. He was a humourless, sanctimonious little
shit. The idea of the odious twit being prodded with pointy
objects almost made Colton's day until he realized that he'd have
to stay and help round up the damn dog, and then stick around to
fill in what appeared to be bordering on novel length public
health paper work. All he wanted to do was to get back to the
Omaha field office and pick up trying to interest the SAC's
secretary in a little off-hours recreation.

The heat in the hospital room was stifling. He decided to go on a
hunt for the cafeteria and buy a Coke. The corridors of the
hospital were quiet and his footsteps sounded loud on the well-
buffed linoleum. The cafeteria was nearly empty as he dropped
coins into the vending machine. He thought he'd take his drink
outside and get some air before he got back to the paperwork. As
he approached the large glass doors of the entrance, he passed by
a woman mopping the floor. She was one of many cleaning staff
he'd seen about the place, all wearing little pinafores with some
sort of garish floral print on them. He went outside and sat on
one of the low walls near the entrance. He pulled the tab on his
Coke and downed the contents in one long swig, then burped
loudly. His manners had slipped somewhat without anyone to
impress. His career was at a standstill and he'd found to his
disappointment that the current SAC did not take well to fuck up
agents trying to brown nose their way back into the mainstream

He looked back towards the entrance and watched the cleaner as
she rhythmically swished her mop from side to side. Her head
was bowed to her task and he could see strands of dishwater
blonde hair sticking out from under her bandana. There was
something nagging at him, something about this woman that held
his attention and he didn't know what it was. She certainly
wasn't much to look at. Her legs were thin and clad in worn
jeans. Equally worn tennis shoes were on her feet. The hands that
held the mop were bony and the knuckles red. She looked like
white trash. She probably lived in a trailer park somewhere with
a fat bully of a husband and a half a dozen snot nosed kids. Poor
cow.

As he watched she turned her back to him and walked over to the
bucket that she'd left a few feet behind her and out of the way of
passing foot traffic and there it was. Colton felt as though iced
water had been poured on him. It was the walk, no one walked
like her. He remembered way back, when they were in the
academy together, asking her out on the merits of her strut alone.
She'd turned him down of course. Later he'd found out that
she'd been fucking one of the instructors. Well, now she was the
one who was fucked. This day was getting better by the minute.
Dana Scully, right here under his nose. He didn't have the inside
track on what she and her nut of a partner had done to deserve
the wrath of The Powers That Be but he could see something
good coming out of this for him. This could be his ticket back to
Washington. Christ, it was about damn time.

Colton fished in his jacket pocket for his cell phone. He flipped it
open and paused for a moment. Who to call? Not his SAC that's
for sure. No he needed someone in the Hoover building. Skinner
maybe...no, not him, he'd always been too damn close with
those two.  Kersh? Yes, AD Kersh, ball breaker extraordinaire,
he was just the man. His thumb tracked its way over the familiar
numbers. He put the phone to his ear and looked back towards
Scully, who was back to swishing her mop.

"Good morning, FBI headquarters, how may I help you?"

A ridiculously perky voiced operator asked in his ear. He
suspected she must be new.

"This is Special Agent Colton." He reeled off his badge number.
"Put me through to Assistant Director Kersh. It's urgent."

She gave him a cheery "Please hold." and he was stuck listening
to Vivaldi's 'Four Seasons' played by what sounded like a tone-
deaf organist on speed. He watched the mop sway back and forth
like a metronome.

"Assistant Director Kersh's office, June speaking."

June had obviously been at this for some years, because she
managed to convey by tone of voice alone that the caller was a
worthless sack of crap and was being allowed to inhabit the same
planet as the exalted Assistant Director only because he was
feeling particularly magnanimous today but don't count on that
lasting.

"This is Special Agent Colton. I have urgent news for AD
Kersh."

There was a pause while June thought about this, then a terse.
"Please hold." Vivaldi was being tortured again.

Colton passed the time straightening his tie and watching the
ticking mop. The shining halls of the Hoover building hung like
a hallowed vision in his minds eye.

"Kersh."

The deep and unforgiving voice of the Assistant Director pulled
him from his reverie.

"Ah, yes sir. Hello, this is Special Agent Tom Colton from the
Omaha field office. I have something that might interest you."
He paused for a little dramatic effect.

"Agent, what interests me right now is brevity. Get to the point."

He was about to answer when he noticed the mop had stopped its
swishing. He looked to the woman holding it. She was so
changed he hardly recognised her. A pale, thin face with
prominent cheekbones that any prospective super model would
kill for, arched over sunken cheeks. She was devoid of makeup
but then it seemed that she was devoid of a great many things.

The road had not been kind to Special Agent Dana Scully. Bereft
of the trappings of career she seemed diminished, a mere shade
of the woman she once was. All but for her eyes, they held his
with a burning intensity of feeling that he could never claim to
have experienced. The only flame that burned within Tom
Colton was ambition. He was basically a shallow man. He read
enough to appear knowledgeable but not enough to be wise. He
ate in the right restaurants and drank the appropriate wine but it
was all about the facade. Real pleasures were denied him and joy
was never known because his whole life had been lived to
impress others.

"Agent Colton, I'm waiting."

He could hear Kersh's impatient rumble as if in a void. Scully's
ghost grey eyes held him mute and immobile. They seemed to
see through to the parts of him that he had avoided examining at
all costs. Frightening places full of shadows and reflections of
himself, like a ghoulish hall of mirrors. She was showing him a
life full of urgent longings that had given him nothing but ashes.
Her body might have been sapped of its former vibrancy but her
eyes held a garden of emotion so verdant that he flinched to look
at them.

"Agent Colton, what is going on?"

They had been friends once. They'd gone out for dinner and
talked and laughed and dished the dirt on their instructors. Back
then all he'd seen had been her ambition, which had seemed to
mirror his own. He'd been so wrong. Now he was going to
betray her to ingratiate himself with those who might get him
back on the fast track and she knew it.

He watched her tilt her head a touch to one side, as though she
was asking a question. Then she gave him the saddest little smile
he had ever seen. She stood there leaning on her fucking mop,
waiting for him to say the words that would have a small army of
law enforcement officers descend upon her and she was smiling
at him. He couldn't look at her anymore it was too hard, it hurt
him someplace so deep he hadn't imagined it even existed before
this moment. He turned away from her. He couldn't do this with
those goddamned eyes on him, he couldn't do...

"Colton!"

Kersh's voice cut through the static in his head.

"Yes sir?"

"I want an explanation, Agent. What is the purpose of this call?"

Colton felt something shift someplace inside him. Something
fundamental slowly made itself known and it was a revelation.
He felt as though he was on the edge of a precipice about to step
off into the unknown. He closed his eyes and jumped.

 "I'm sorry, sir. I made a mistake." He gasped as he said the
words then hastily disconnected the call before he could get the
benefit of AD Kersh's reply.

So, this it what being noble felt like, terrifying and liberating all
at the same time. He looked back to Scully with a new light in
his eyes. The mop and bucket were still there but she had
vanished. She'd gone before he could show her this new side to
himself. She had gone thinking him a Judas. He knew she'd be
packing up her few belongings and would disappear once more,
maybe with Mulder. He hoped so. He didn't like the thought of
her being out there alone.

Colton stood up and tossed his empty can into a trash bin. The air
felt fresher now. In the back of his mind he wondered about what
his SAC was going to do to him when he got back to Omaha. No
doubt Kersh would be informing him of their little chat.
Somehow it didn't seem to matter as much anymore.

When he got back to his partner's room he found the man awake.

"Where have you been?"

"I went to get some air...I met an old friend from the academy."
Colton sat back down on the uncomfortable plastic chair and
picked up the thick sheaf of forms.

"Jesus, more FBI agents, just for a rabid dog?"

"She's not with the bureau anymore." Colton smiled and took his
pen from his pocket, "She's moved on to better things." He
looked at the page in front of him. "How do you spell
'ferocious'?"


The End