Somewhere, in a parallel universe, Mulder and Scully belong to
themselves, and maybe to each other. In our neighborhood,
however, they belong to Chris Carter, 1013 Productions, David
Duchovny and Gillian Anderson. Skinner, if he was real, would
belong to me. I would do anything I could to make it so. As it
stands, he belongs to Mr. Carter and Mitch Pileggi. You get
the drift with about how I don't own anything? Not makin' a
dime, either.

Title: "Sledgehammer"
Author: J.C. Roberts
E-Mail: SuperJame@aol.com
Rated: NC-17 (cursing, violence, sex, if you make it that far
into the story)
Keywords: UST, Angst, MSR, X-File
Spoilers: Up to Triangle
Summary: Is the cancer-fighting chip in Scully's neck worth
the price? Is CSM an overprotective daddy? And don't we all
think Fowley should just go ahead and die?
 
 
 
 

                                     "Sledgehammer"
 
 

It makes me nauseous, when I look back on it, how pleased I
was to piss him off. Strategically, it was nothing, not a blow
to shadow cabinet of self-serving bastards he works for, nor a
dangerous truth exposed.  That he would tap into his
professional resources to retaliate for something so personal ...
 
And I don't even know why he took it so personally. So I made
little Jeffy Spender tumble down the ladder of success a few
rungs. A lot of rungs. What was in it for Old Smokey?

Everything has always been personal to me: The X-Files, my
early years in the FBI as a profiler, my relationships, when I
actually had them.

Well, that isn't exactly true. I took it personally when they
were walking out the door.

But those whom I have sought to expose have always kept things
professional. If they hadn't, I'd be dead by now and I know
it.  I've always banked on their professionalism. When it
comes down to it, as bizarre as it seems for a cabal bent on
planetary domination in collaboration with vicious gray
aliens, they are all very conventional men. I, on the other
hand --

Hm, how many times have I used the term "I" in the last few
sentences?  An old girlfriend, trotting out the door, once
told me I thought I was the star of my own movie. Diana, I
believe it was.

So I have some entitlement problems. And I believed I was
entitled to the X-Files -- me and my partner, Dana Scully, who
was maybe more entitled by this time than I was.

No, really, it's me. I've just had a lot of time to consider
Scully's contribution -- and all she's lost to the X-Files --
during these last few days as she contemplates voluntarily
choosing a slow, painful death over a lifetime of ...

Please.

Some things are so profound it's nearly impossible to believe
they can happen in just a couple of days.
 

        SEVEN DAYS EARLIER:

 
"Oh, God, I'm glad that's over."  Scully clicked on the little
"save" icon and slid the cursor over to the little printer
button. "Mulder, I'm almost ready for you to start a little
trouble."

I considered an inspection to make sure Eddie Van Blundht
hadn't escaped from prison and was trying out life as a
female. Don't think she would have appreciated me checking her
for tail scars, though.

"Oh, Scully, it's 4:56 p.m. and now I'm not gonna be able to
stand up for 10 minutes."

She rolled her eyes, spun her chair in the direction of the
printer and went to retrieve our report. She was rifling
through her purse for her keys moments later, having tossed
the story of The Most Boring Case on Earth into a wire bin
full of similar documents.

"I'm outta here. See you tomorrow, Mulder."

She accepted my wave, smiled automatically and strode away,
oblivious to the fact that I actually could not get up at that
moment because she'd offered me the rare glimpse of "Naughty
Scully" and I now had a big, throbbing headache, but not the
head you'd usually associate with that ailment.

Don't let the lighthearted tone fool you. I was angry at
myself, and embarrassed. I could lose everything. If I let
myself go one time, if I let her see how she arouses me and if
she construes it to mean I don't see her as someone to take
seriously -- an equal, a professional -- she could leave. Or,
if she wants me back -- and sometimes I honestly think she
does -- I will fuck it up the way I have every other
relationship and my whole world will be lost. I will not lose
this.

Thank God she thought I was stoned on Demerol in that hospital
in Florida. I mean, I was. Or I wouldn't have told her. That I
loved her. I won't screw up like that again.

Anyway, it occurred to me, as I stood up, eventually, that I
should read the report, just for the hell of it, just in case
Scully misunderstood something about the high school football
coach who crossed the Maryland state line with his 15-year-old
cheerleader love muppet, thereby transforming a local case of
statutory rape into a federal crime.

But when I lifted her report from the top of the bin, the name
Jeffrey Spender whined out at me from the paper directly
beneath it.

What was a Spender report doing here? He was currently
impersonating an X-Files agent and reporting to AD Walter
Skinner. This bin contained reports from agents under Kersh's
prissy thumb.

It took me a minute to ascertain that the report had been
misplaced in the bin, probably by Kersh's secretary. Spender
had most likely handed it to her. It was a copy of a report
written for Skinner. And it was all screwed up.

Scully didn't share my glee, an hour later, as I waved the
report in her face. She was alarmed  I had filched it and
protested loudly at my plans for us to investigate the case
ourselves, to show up Spender for the arrogant idiot he is and
to illustrate who really belonged on the X-Files.

Her theory was that the report would reveal Spender as an
incompetent on its own face, and with an already floundering
solve rate, it would be clear the X-Files were in the wrong
hands.

I convinced her that our intervention was necessary to save
lives.

And we did get there in time to save the latest left-handed
child this lunatic was bent on killing because left-handers
were, he believed, the right hand men of the devil.  Spender
had attributed the murders to a freshly caught child-killer
whose motive was pedophelia and whose MO was opportunity. He
was written up for investigative negligence and a letter of
censure was placed in his permanent file.

An identical reprimand was placed in the folder of Diana
Fowley.

Now, I hadn't wanted that. The possibility hadn't even
occurred to me. To be honest, I had this whole picture in my
mind of Spender stealing my life's work. Diana was sort of a
bookmark, keeping my place until I could work my way back into
the story. I hardly thought of her at all unless she happened
to be in the same room with Scully and then my ego started
bouncing off the walls.

I'm not stupid. I noticed the mutual hate at first sight
thing. And I've used it, wielding Diana like a spoiled child
when I didn't want to hear what Scully was telling me. But
believe me, when it came to Diana, there was nothing. There
wasn't even the memory of loving her, though intellectually, I
think I once did.

I hadn't wanted her to burn along with Spender, even when I
found out later that she was the one who'd come to the wrong
conclusion about the killer. Spender had  just written the
report and scooped up most of the credit.

So I gained from my one-upmanship a humiliated, vengeful
Spender and a Fowley so livid she could not voice words. And
something unexpected.

Scully and I were walking though the parking garage, giggling
over the avalanche on Mt. Jeffrey, when they waylaid us. I
didn't see our attackers. I don't know if Scully did. She
doesn't remember.

Rats chewing at my wrists. Mm, no. No. Handcuffs. Holding me.
Instinctively, I knew they were my handcuffs. And I was being
held in a standing position, my weight bearing directly on the
edge of flesh-warmed metal.

They had dragged us to my apartment. There's an extra kick to
the fear you experience during an attack when it occurs in
your home. To be unsafe in the safest place you know -- it
sends the message that there will never be refuge anywhere.
And that was most definitely the theme of the evening.

Scully was sitting on the arm of my leather couch. She was the
first thing I saw, but she didn't seem to see me back. Or him.
Or the cigarette he was lighting.

That's when I realized I was hosting an impromptu party. One
of my guests I never saw. He was holding me up from behind.
Near the door was some primate who looked like a thug from the
old "Batman" sitcom.

Before I could start my usual rant, The Smoker let the barely
extinguished match drop on Scully's hand on its journey to my
floor. I flinched. She didn't.

"We're not getting the message here, are we Agent Mulder?" he
said, moving right into my face. I tried to stand, but the
grunt with a grip on my cuffs swept my legs out from under me.
For a frightening second, it felt like my hands were being
amputated by the force of my own weight. By the time I
recovered, a good 10 seconds later, I was angry as hell and
ready to vocalize this emotion.

The look on his face stopped me cold. Fury. Contained so
poorly it was leaking.

My eyes slid to Scully. She hadn't moved.

"The X-Files are off limits to you. You are not to go near
them. I know you understand that. It was made quite
explicit." He was practically spitting the words in my face.

"I think we need to share sexual histories before you continue
spraying me with that gunky brown saliva," I said.

His knuckles slammed into my cheek. A barely-cooled ash
plastered itself against my left eyeball and I clamped my lids
down hard.

He had never hit me before. Never. It seemed preposterously
out of character. Something was wrong. Really wrong.

Scully hadn't moved. She hadn't jumped to my defense. Her eyes
were open, but she wasn't looking anywhere. I've been scared
before, plenty of times, but this was a different brand of
fear than I was used to.  My eyes returned to the Smoker as he
spoke again.

"Agent Spender is an outstanding agent. Uncommonly good. You
had no right to second guess him."

My second guessing saved a kid's life, I thought. And that's
when, insanely, the joy spread through me.

"So Spender's your new boy," I said. "Your new, improved Alex
Krycek. Still got two arms, though."

I swear to God he was going to hit me again, but he visibly
managed to calm himself, remembering, I guess, that he had
infinitely better weapons at his disposal. He turned and fixed
on Scully. I managed to shift some weight to my feet without
my dancing partner -- or Ape Boy -- noticing.

"You're an ungrateful man, Agent Mulder.  With a short memory.
You've forgotten who pulls the strings here." He lit a new
cigarette to replace the one he used to paint my face and
stared thoughtfully at my immobile partner.

I'd heard his shit so many times I could almost mouth the
words along with him. "Scully."

He continued. "And your partner. More ungrateful, perhaps,
than you. It was her life, after all, that I snatched from the
precipice of death."

He'd been brushing up on his vocabulary. "Scully."

She was still as a retail-window model, the kind you think are
mannequins until you notice them breathing. And Scully was
giving me the willies the way they always do.

"But you've read the book 'Fail Safe,' haven't you, Agent
Mulder?"

Now I didn't know what the fuck he was talking about.

"Insurance, you see, to make sure the odds are even. Of
course, in your case, we're not talking Mutually Assured
Destruction, just a little pest control," he said, working his
hand out of his pocket. He rubbed a thumb absently over a
device that looked like something out of the classic Star Trek
show. "That little chip in Agent Scully's neck. It's quite a
bit more than a cure for cancer."

I knew that. That microchip had sent Scully shambling like a
zombie onto a bridge in Pennsylvania and it was an act of the
God I don't believe in that she wasn't incinerated along with
dozens of less fortunate abductees. But the Syndicate hadn't
been running that show.  If they had the capability.... Oh,
God.

He depressed a button on whatever the hell it was, then
returned it to his pocket.

"Stand up, Agent Scully."

She did. And I had a sudden, personal understanding of what it
meant to be struck dumb with fear.

"As little as you seem to care for anyone but yourself, Agent
Mulder, you do appear to have a warm spot for your partner.
How warm, I wonder? Exactly how close are you?"

Ordinarily, I would have understood what he was saying and
become self-righteously indignant. But I wasn't really hearing
him. I was watching him, his physical proximity to Scully.

Don't hurt her. Don't hurt her.

"Have you ever kissed her?"

"You fucking son of a bitch!" I started struggling, but
Henchman No. 1 put an end to that by jerking up hard on my
handcuffs. Then, the Man who would be Chim-Chim drilled his
fist into my solar plexus. My lungs felt as though they had
been filled with hot cement. My tears literally blinded me for
the long seconds it took for them to drain down my cheeks.

Still unrecovered, I heard him say, "It's about time, don't
you think? Kiss him, Agent Scully."

And then, as I hung from a pair of bloody cuffs, panting,
chest burning, face aching, I felt a warm press of flesh
against my lips. I opened my eyes and looked into the azure
eyes of Dana Scully. Except there was no Scully behind them.

Before I could even understand how I felt about this, I heard him say,
"Kiss me, Agent Scully." And I knew how I felt about that instantly.

"No, Scully, no, no." As I watched her walk toward him in that
living dead sort of way, I knew she could never bear the
humiliation of having to do that, to touch him with her mouth.
It wouldn't matter to her that no human being could have
resisted the microchip's hold. She expected herself to be
superhuman. And she would let this violation destroy her.

"Stop," he said softly, as she was about a foot away from him.

"Please." I was begging. I thought of nothing but saving
Scully at the time, but later I realized he had never seen me
grovel before. He had only had arrogance from me. It must have
been up there, satisfaction wise, with the best sex he'd ever
had.

He looked at me. "I could have her take down my pants and drop
to her knees," he said. "That would be quite a treat."

"Please." I was hysterical now. The man holding me had eased
his grip a bit and I was dropping to my knees. "Oh, God,
please don't. Please."

He eased the device out of his pocket again. "Or I could push
this button. This would turn off the chip. And Agent Scully."

He watched me impassively. I gibbered hysterically.
Pleaseleaveheralone.

Then he got a mouthful of canary and nodded toward his
flunkies. My face slammed into the hardwood and nothing -- not
adrenaline, not my desperation -- could help me lift it.

"You're finished, Agent Mulder. Stay away from the X-Files.
Stay away from Agent Spender. Or I will snuff the life from
your precious partner as easily as one of these." A lit
cigarette butt bounced against my cheek. And the door snapped
shut.

"Scully?" I whispered. No answer. I whimpered like a beaten
child.

"Mulder!" She charged across my floor. "What happened to you?"

She wanted to clean me up, but as soon as the cuffs opened, I
pulled her down onto the floor with me and buried my face
against her breasts. I'm sure she was shocked, but she
recovered quickly enough to sense my need. I felt her fingers
in my hair.

"What happened?" she whispered. I shook my head, eyes squeezed
tight, as I clutched her against me. It was a long time before
I let her go.

Two years ago, a day after Scully told me she had brain
cancer, I held a vial of ova between my forefinger and thumb.
Her ova. A small sample of the 400,000 potential babies that
had been ripped from her womb unborn. And I didn't have the
heart to tell her.

She paid for my misplaced protectiveness. We both did. This
time, when I finally calmed down, and she dressed my wounds, I
told her. Most of it. I skipped the kiss, the sexual things. I
was afraid of what I'd see in her eyes if I told her about
that. I was afraid she'd never look at me again. But she got
the idea: Cancerman could control her -- or kill her -- with
the flick of his thumb, and if we didn't follow his orders, he
would.

We didn't understand what had set him off: The case didn't
seem to have any connection to government conspiracy or alien
invasion. And we couldn't understand the big deal with
Spender. I  wavered between insatiable curiosity and not
giving a fuck, though.  The answer wasn't worth Scully's life.

So when she said something about looking into it tomorrow, I
told her to forget it. I honestly wanted us to pack up our
bags and get the hell away from here.

Her eyes widened.

"Mulder. You can't mean that. We can't let them control us."

"They control us, Scully."

She sat quietly, very still, while I shambled around in my
socks, straightening up an apartment I didn't realized had
been trashed. My hands were almost numb, and when I lifted
things and replaced them, it hurt like hell. Felt really good.
Let me know I was alive.

And I felt really tuned into Scully. I could feel her
thinking. I thought I knew what she was thinking. I was
astoundingly wrong. We didn't talk much as she drove us both
to her apartment. She set me up on her couch and I lay there,
listening as she took a shower. I thought I would try to talk
her into letting me sleep in her room, maybe on the floor.
Chickening out, I decided to sneak in there throughout the
night for periodic breathing checks. But just as she turned
off the shower I passed out from exhaustion and stress and
didn't awaken until Scully held a cup of coffee under my nose
the next morning.

At first I thought we were very late for work, but it turned
out to be Saturday and, as my partner has explained to me on
more than one occasion, most people don't work on Saturdays.
Usually, we're not most people. But in this case, the weekend
was convenient.

She had been up a while. Thinking.

"Mulder," she said, as we were halfway though our coffee. "I
want you to listen to me. I don't want you to get upset."

"Uh-oh," I said. She ignored me.

"I've been thinking about this a long time. Since Ruskin
Dam." She stroked the soft skin at the nape of her neck.
"Since I realized the potential for enslavement this chip has
always held for me."

There was no doubt in my mind I was going to hate this
conversation, but as to where it was going  -- I was
oblivious.

"Mulder, do you know what an AICD is?"

"No."

"It stands for Automatic Internal Cardiac Defibrillator. It's
a small electrical device, about this big" -- she held her
thumb and finger apart about four inches -- "that's surgically
implanted in the chests of patients suffering from ventricular
tachycardia. Um. Sudden Death Syndrome."

"It senses the rapid heartbeat and shocks them?"

"Shocks them back to normal rhythm. You've seen how an
external defibrillator jolts the body. Someone wearing an AICD
-- they could be in their garden, or playing golf when --
Wham! They're shocked out of their shoes." Scully's eyes
lingered on a hole in the knee of my jeans. She rubbed her
palms nervously over the tops of her thighs.

"It can go off anytime, anywhere, without warning. A lot of
people can't take it. They describe it like being followed
around for the rest of their lives by a man with a
sledgehammer. They never know when he'll strike. A lot of them
suffer from phantom shocks, especially in their sleep.
Hundreds of patients each year have them removed."

She looked into my eyes. "I'm going to take it out, Mulder."

I'd been rendered speechless a lot in the past 24 hours.

"You can't, Scully."

"Yes, I can, Mulder. It's the only thing I can choose to do."

"The cancer...."

It wasn't until she stood beside me and reached for my hand
that I realized I'd leapt up. My coffee cup was on the floor.
I guess I dropped it on my foot. My right sock was wet and
brown.

I pulled my hand away.

"I will probably get cancer," she said. "I will probably die
from it. But I could have months, years before that happens.
And I will be living them on my own terms.

"Don't you understand, Mulder? Unless I take control, it's
like the men we oppose are taking shifts with that
sledgehammer. Deciding if I live or die. If I walk onto a
burning bridge -- or if I pick up a gun and kill someone. I'm
theirs. They own me."

Most of the rest of that conversation is a blur. I know I did
a lot of arguing, and then some shouting. It was spooky, how
calm she remained. She did assure me she wouldn't be doing it
that day: She wanted to tell her mother first. She wanted it
done under sterile conditions in a doctor's office. This much
she did get across, or I wouldn't have left her alone.

Because I did leave. I ran like a sonofabitch for blocks
despite my injuries until I was completely frigging lost. Then
I caught a cab.

Skinner didn't want to let me in. My visits to his upscale
high-rise had never turned out well, and, on top of that, he
was forbidden to talk to me or to Scully. Spender had turned
him in for helping us on a case a few months prior. Since then
his prospects for promotion were almost laughable.

But I had the secret password.

"It's about Scully." I pushed past him. He let me.
 

"Jesus Christ."

Skinner pushed his glasses to the top of his head and rubbed
his palms over his face. He stood up and looked out the plate
glass doors of his balcony.

"What are we going to do." Coming from Skinner, it didn't
sound like a question. It sounded like, "We are going to do
something, I just haven't figured out what yet."

I wasn't surprised. He loves her. Takes one to know one.

My apartment gave me the creeps, so I sulked around the gunman
for a while, until they got on my nerves with their concerned
prying and I pissed them off by being nonresponsive. I didn't
even question driving to Scully's afterwards. I knew I was
going to end up there. I'd already called her twice to make
sure she was still alive. Fortunately, her mother was in
Atlantic City for some Navy wives weekend, so their little
talk was going to have to wait. That bought me a little
time.

"You could have brought a pizza," she remarked as I dragged my
emergency overnight bag through the door. I had used my key.
This wasn't a big manners day for me.

Scully was standing by a bookcase, shoving a book into it .
The New Testament. I bit down my panic and anger and
whispered, "You can keep reading it." She blushed. "You don't
have to hide it from me, Scully."

She bit her lip, then focused on a topic she could handle with
complete confidence: "Let me check those bandages."
 
Riiing! I fell off the couch, blankets and all. Christ, it's
just a little electronic bell, but it blasted right through
the darkness, through my restless sleep. Sitting on the floor,
in the dark, I had no idea where to find the phone.

Scully shuffled into the living room, her bulky white cordless
pressed to her ear. She didn't bother to flick on a light.

"Here he is," she murmured sleepily, settling down next to me
on the floor. She handed me the phone and leaned her head
against a couch cushion.

Skinner didn't question my presence in Scully's apartment.
I've known for a while that he thinks we're lovers. Not that
he's said anything. It's just the way he talks to me about
Scully, sometimes. Deferentially. As though her business were
mine.  And I haven't set him straight, interpreting his
silence as acceptance. Hoping that acceptance might someday be
for something real.

Skinner knows some shit. He knows some people. I'm not sure I
want to know how he gets his information. Well, sure I do. But
if I had any sense, I wouldn't.

Working for hours on a phone that's probably tapped, in an
apartment most likely bugged, Skinner came up with an address.
He didn't tell me to go to address but it was obvious he
expected me to. And that he'd completely misunderstood me.

I didn't want his help in nailing those guys. I just wanted
his support in convincing Scully to keep the chip. We were not
going guerrilla here. No more funky poaching. Skinner didn't
like hearing this and I'm sure he misinterpreted it as a lack
of gratitude. How far that is from the truth.

By the time I hung up the phone, my eyes had adjusted to the
dark. I looked at Scully. And smiled.

"What?"

My eyes flicked toward her pajamas. "Elmo boxers. Who woulda
guessed it, Scully?"

She grinned back and we moved into one of those moments I have
learned to dodge quite skillfully over the years. A flood of
warmth spread between us, a tangible weight to the air between
us that made it almost solid. That night the warning twinge,
the one that always makes me pull back, didn't materialize. I
felt the muscles in my left hand and forearm contract
slightly, readying themselves to reach out for her. I flexed
my fingers.

She broke the contact. "Night." She rose. I'm not the only one
practiced in this ritual of evasion. Some truth-seekers we
are, Scully. The most obvious truth between us threatens to
reveal itself and we run screaming, eyes covered, into that
thick forest of denial and fear.

Lying on the couch a few minutes later, settling under the
covers, I felt despair  pool inside me. It would probably
never happen, then. Her abduction, her cancer, Eugene Roche,
Emily, those immortal moments in my hallway, just before she
was stung.... None of those events had propelled us into
becoming lovers. Would anything?

At that very moment, as she lay under that thick quilt her mother gave
her for Christmas two years ago, Cancerman could be flicking a switch,
extinguishing her like one of his Morleys. Maybe his girlfriend
wouldn't do him tomorrow and his cat would scratch him and they'd
refuse his credit card at the country club and he'll get pissed off
and....

Or she'll have it removed, and in a month from now I'll be
holding her hand in Georgetown Medical as her ECG flattens out
and she slips away.

And I decided that it didn't really matter if our bodies never
collided in pleasure or I embarrassed myself or was crushed by
unrequited feelings. She needed to know I loved her. I needed
to tell her. I couldn't let it go unsaid for eternity. Even if
it meant her smiling gently and telling me that she was
flattered in a tone so patronizing I'd want to shoot myself.

I sit and swing my legs to the floor, ready, determined. Not
really that nervous. And then my cell phone rang. Great.
When's the last time I charged it, even?

"Bastard." A woman's voice.

"Hello?"

"Son of a bitch." Slurred.

"Diana?" Not the first time she's called me either one of
those names. But it's been seven years.

"I'm trying to help you! And what do you do to me?"

I should've apologized for her getting the reprimand. I
shouldn't have waited for her to contact me. Avoidance issues,
entitlement issues. I have a lot of issues.

"Where are you?"

"You fucker."

Goddamn it.

"Are you at Casey's?" She was. I slid my sneakers on. Might as
well get it over with. I'll be done with her, then. Her and
Spender and the X-Files.

It was 2:20 a.m. when I got there, and the bartender was
wearing a jacket, shouldering her pocketbook, as I pushed
through the heavy oak door.

"Couldn't let her drive," she said, nodding at Diana, who was
half-asleep on a barstool. "Don't need to get sued."

"Thanks," I said, stifling an instinctive apology. This isn't
my fault, my intellect announced. Sure it is, replied the rest
of me.

I led Diana to the car. She wasn't done cursing at me.

Settled and snapped into our seatbelts, finally, I gripped the
steering wheel and looked at her.

"Diana. I'm sorry. I wasn't trying to hurt you. I know you've
done so much for me, keeping the work alive. But Spender wrote
the report as though it was his work alone. I wasn't even
thinking about you." Why haven't men learned that there is no
stupider thing they can say to a woman under any
circumstances?

"Did you ever, Fox? Did you ever think of me? Wasn't it that
the problem?"

I did not want to go there. I selected Option B: Silence, over
Option A: Say Anything at All and Regret it Forever.

Unfortunately, I didn't know where she lived and in her
current state, neither did she. We drove around for twenty
minutes in the general vicinity of where she thought she
lived. Which was surprisingly close to my apartment.

I was getting edgy. I hadn't told Scully I was leaving and I
knew her lips would go flat and white if I told her I'd been
driving around with a drunk Diana. And then she'd talk to me
in a cold, clipped voice for days....

Finally, I asked for her wallet and read the address off her
driver's license. She lived less than a mile from me.

She insisted I walk her to the door, which was wise,
considering she was too tanked to get her key in the lock.

Inside, she shut the door with one hand and grabbed me by the
collar of my leather jacket with the other. She smelled like
smoke and brandy.

"I -- gotta go."

"Fox." She wanted me to kiss her. She wanted me to fuck her.
She enjoyed sex most when she was drunk, I remembered. Most of
the other times, she was kinda stiff. Or somewhere else.

Anyone else would have sensed the manipulation here. I'd just
delivered a major blow to her career without giving her so
much as a thought and she was offering me this pleasure? But
anyone who really knows me -- that would be Scully -- would
tell you I make it a habit of trusting the wrong people.

For a tenth of a second, I considered throwing her on the
floor and pretending she was Scully, but I did that once
before, four years ago in Los Angeles, and it was one of the
most depressing experiences of my life. Then I felt sorry for
Diana for having had the thought.
 
But I felt absolutely nothing for her and I didn't want to use
this woman who had done so much to help me. She had been the
one to suggest regression hypnotherapy to unlock the mystery
of Samantha's disappearance. She had assisted, in her off-
hours, in reopening the X-Files, though she'd never been
officially assigned there, never been my partner. She took a
bullet in the head from Cancerman because the Gibson Praise
case involved me. I wasn't going to do anything to mislead
her. Or fall further into her debt.

"Di, I gotta go," I whispered, removing her hand. She stared
at me in drunken surprise. I was gone before her indignation
was fully formed.

As incredibly tired and straightforward as the case Kersh
assigned us last week had been, he managed to find fault with
our report. Bitch, bitch: I hardly heard him. Scully was going
to talk to her mother that night. I felt like the guy in the
movie with less than 24 hours to live. And apparently, I was
going to spend them tailing an accountant who was rerouting
some of his clients' income tax money into a Swiss bank
account.

"Is this even an FBI job?" I asked Scully. "Isn't this a
Treasury job? Doesn't the IRS have its own people to take care
it?"

"One of his clients disappeared last week," Scully reminded
me. "This might be a murder." Oh. I hadn't been listening long
enough to hear Kersh mention that.

We slogged through the day, going through the motions of
investigating Stanton Boyd, Evil CPA. The touching and
"accidental" collision of hands and hips and shoulders that is
part of our denial routine was ratcheted up tenfold. It was
mutual. Scully was initiating the contact as often as I was. I
could tell there was something she wanted to say to me.

She probably would have. I was plotting for a way to get her
to have dinner with me before she drove to her mom's, and I
was going to tell her how I felt and maybe kidnap her or
something, so she wouldn't take herself away from me. But then
something pivotal happened that I didn't actually see, because
it happened in the Ladies Room and, of course, it happened
with Diana.

All I know is about 3: 05 p.m., I took a random glance out the
window and Scully was flying across the street, into the
parking tower.

I crashed into Diana, who was just leaving Kersh's office.

Had she told Scully about Saturday night? I hadn't. Had she
told her and maybe embellished a bit? I don't know why I even
made the connection, but it was there. One of my intuitive
leaps.

"Where did Scully go?"

She looked at me with a mix of annoyance and disgust.

"How do I know, Fox? Get your hands off me!"

I stood there in dumb confusion and she added, "I just saw her
in the ladies room."

I was halfway to Scully's house before I thought of calling
her, but I had left my cell phone in my suit jacket, and that
was currently hanging on my chair at work. I hadn't had time
to grab it. I hadn't had time to wonder why Diana was using
the bathroom on the third floor when she worked in the fucking
basement. I don't know how I got to Georgetown without getting
stopped. I was pushing 90 on a near-empty tank of gas. Scully
must have been going just as fast, because I didn't see her
car anywhere.

Ordinarily, I wouldn't have panicked like this. I would have
waited until she got home and called her from the office. Or
stopped by later, after she'd had time to cool off from
whatever. But the past few days -- well, they hadn't been what
you'd call routine, even for us.

I wondered what had happened to make her go off like that. My
male ego supported the idea that Diana had told Scully I'd
slept with her, although in retrospect, that's a laugh. Even
if Scully believed her, and even if it had upset her, she
wouldn't have fled in tears, like some teen-aged bimbo. She
would have worked through rest of the day, in a cloud of
sorrow, perhaps, and left without speaking to me.

But that isn't what Diana said. Her agenda had been much more
ambitious than one-upping Scully over a man.

Scully's car was parked across two spaces and over the
concrete bumpers of both. The driver's door was ajar, where
she'd flung it open. My heart was pumping right through my
eardrums. She'd managed to lock the door, though, top and
bottom. My hands were shaking. It took me a full minute to get
in.

She wasn't in her living room. I started to call her name,
when I turned into the hallway and saw her through the open
bathroom door.

She was looking sightlessly into the mirror, her hair pushed
up with her left hand. The index finger of that hand was
making a straight line, a guide, across the nape of her neck.
Her right hand clutched a scalpel and she was just bringing it
down to cut...

"No!" I smacked the knife out of her hand. I didn't hear it
land. There was blood on her neck. I wrapped my arms around
her waist from behind and pulled her against me.

"No, no."

"I can't --" There was heartbreak and defeat in her voice. And
tears in her eyes.

I turned her around and took her face in my hands and fell to
my knees on the bathroom floor, taking her with me. I know I
started the kiss, but I can't remember the exact details, just
that she was kissing me back, moaning into my mouth, as our
tongues caressed. My body was on automatic pilot, pushing her
under me, half on the cold tile floor, half on the carpeted
hallway. My fingers trailed light paths over her breasts
though her clothes and she pushed up against my hands, causing
them to close over her firm softness. She moaned and reached
down and touched me though my pants.

Whether it was the physical pleasure of her palm stroking my
swollen cock or the understanding that Dana Scully had come up
with this idea all on her own, that she was actually eager to
touch me there, the gesture emptied the last few droplets of
rational thought from my already rampant mind. I tore at my
trousers. And her stockings and panties. She wrapped her legs
around my waist and I could feel her heels pressing against my
lower back through my shirttail. I pressed against her
slickness, desperate for entry. Her head thrashed from side to
side, hair lashing her cheeks, eyes closed.

"Mulder."

Ohhh. I was there. Oh, yeah. I leaned over to brush her lips.
I could use a lot of adjectives, but it wouldn't do the
feeling of being inside Scully any justice. It's hot and wet
and tight inside most women. Those words were inadequate to
describe the physical sensation of making love to her, let
alone the emotional. And, just for the record, I believe I now
can "quantify the spiritual."

She came as soon as I started moving, which is fortunate,
because so did I. Jesus. So much for first impressions. After
a few gasps for breath against the warmth of her collarbone, I
withdrew from her. She started to protest, then realized where
I was headed.

I slid down between her legs and pushed against the insides of
her knees, opening her. I could smell her and myself and a
felt a twinge in my cock that would have made any man pushing
40 proud. My eyes flickered toward her. She was lying there,
breath ragged, lids half closed over glazed eyes. Her face and
chest were flushed from coming.

She was waiting for me continue.
 
My semen was trickling out of her, dripping over her ass and
thighs. I used my thumb to rub some of it over her clit and
she cried out. I leaned in to taste her, stroking the little
hood of flesh with my tongue. In my fantasies, at this point,
she would always run her hands through my hair and pull me
head closer, but Scully's flailing fingers grabbed at the
first thing they could reach. Which happened to be my ears. It
should have hurt, but in this instance inflamed me senseless.
I slid two fingers inside her and licked and sucked and probed
until she convulsed inside and out. She screamed my name
repeatedly. I held her bucking hips down and kept going,
making her come again a few moments later. Even then I was not
willing to stop until she planted the soles of her feet on my
shoulders and pushed hard.

I sat up on my knees, panting, and we stared at each other,
astounded.

"Um. Did something happen at the office?" I asked.

I did not have a lot of post-coital fantasies about Scully. I
am a man, after all. I came and I fell asleep. But I probably
would have avoided any such thoughts, because I  would have
assumed we would lie there and analyze this new development,
maybe to death. We'd find something inarguably bad in it: If
we remained lovers, we would be blackmailed or separated or
end up hating each other.  Or that I really did suck in bed,
which was the impression Diana left me with seven years ago as
she reclaimed every remnant of her belongings from my
apartment and headed for Paris.

Wrong, wonderfully so. We both accepted the transition from
friends to lovers instantly, naturally. Without question.

We slipped under her thick quilt. The feel of the big, clean
bed against my naked skin was unfamiliar and delightful.
Almost decadent. I wrapped an arm around Scully's waist,
spooning her to me and noticed the blood on her neck. The cut
didn't look too bad.

The dignified agent Dr. Scully has Bactine in her medicine
cabinet. Ouchless.

After I'd cleaned up her neck, she pressed her forehead
against mine and related, in a raw voice, what had happened in
the ladies' room.

She had been washing her hands, zoning into the mirror, when
Diana stepped out from a stall.

"Agent Scully? Did you hear me?"

"Excuse me?" Scully turned toward her, immediately on guard.

"I said, are you all right?" Scully stared at her. She hadn't
heard her ask any such thing. "You were just standing there,
watching the water run over your hands. You wouldn't answer
me."

Now Scully was staring at her in horror.

"It's almost as though you were a statue ---"

Ordinarily, Scully would have taken time to analyze the
situation and outline a dozen possible tests that could help
determine if whatever happened in the bathroom was related to
the chip in her neck. And if she had, she would eventually
have realized that Diana was fucking lying. But even as we lay
in her bed together, me stroking her back as she told the
story, that did not occur to us.

Her absolute acceptance of Diana's statements and her
terrified and resolute response was a reaction to the weekend
and its terrible revelations. Cancerman was going to toy with
her like a lab rat. She was not going to allow that.

"But you can't take the chip out, Scully." I was whining, just
a little. "You can't take it out, now."

I don't know why I thought sudden access to my cock would
imbue her with a will to live under even in the most
compromising and humiliating circumstances. And I give her
politeness credits for the way she worded her reply.

"I don't want to die, Mulder." She tickled a line just below
my belly button with the tip of her nail. "Especially now."
But her sudden smile disappeared as she lifted her eyes to
mine. "But I can't be the person either one of us needs me to
be if I am living under the thumb of these men who threaten
us. And neither can you. We can't be happy this way. And you
know it."

I nodded. I did know it. We were silent for a while.

Then she said, "The address Skinner gave you...."
 

People can have such twisted senses of humor. How else can you
explain a consortium of evil ferreting their nefarious secrets
in a disposable diaper factory?

At first we thought the address Skinner had given us was a
joke, that he had been misled. But we were dressed for a party
-- basic black -- and ready to dance. So we broke into the
dilapidated building just outside Baltimore. There was a
basement. And, we learned, after a little poking, a sub-
basement.

My flashlight batteries died, so we were stumbling around
under the dull light of Scully's little hand-held. She almost
smacked her face on a tall filing cabinet She focused her
light on the label on the top drawer.
 
"Rug Rats," she muttered at the sticker. I was about to
suggest we leave. Then she read from a business card stuck in
the frame of the second drawer:

"Strughold Mining Co."

The address on the card was the same one Scully and I had
visited years ago. We had discovered a cavern full of
documentation on everyone who'd had a smallpox vaccination,
including my sister and Scully.

Glory hallelujah.

The fuckers had upgraded from paper and manila to five-inch
floppy disks. Morons. How they could embrace technology and
avoid it, I have no idea. But like I said, they were a bunch
of conservative old men. We stuffed our knapsacks full of
floppies, and, for good measure, I carried the archaic old 386
out to the car. If we were spotted, they didn't alert us. I
guess if we had been, it would have been enough for Cancerman
to flip that switch, to end Scully's life right there.

It is these moments of inexplicable providence, Scully
explained to me later, that helps her believe in God.

We woke up the Gunman. Frohike answered the door in freakin'
kevlar, but the guys were in gear pretty fast. They didn't
actually own a five-inch drive themselves anymore, so it was
good that I'd lifted the old computer.

While they worked, Scully and I slumped together on their
grungy couch. I kept drifting in and out, enough to hear some
of what they were saying, but not most of it.

"These guys are gonna take over the world? With this shit?"

"... encoded...."

"Piece of cake"

"Hey, what's up with them?"

"Shhh."

Then I heard the printer. It didn't stop humming for hours.

As soon as I heard Byers' victory shout, I opened my eyes.
Scully was standing next to him, scanning the monitor. I
shifted against the scratchy, ragged weave of the loveseat.
Scully turned to smile at me. Then she said the words I'd been
aching to hear since she'd walked through my door six years
ago.

"You were right all along. About everything."

I bolted to the computer. Well, not about everything. But I'd
always had the general idea.

Sometime after the Reds crossed into Nazi Germany during the
final days of the European theater, extraterrestrials landed
in North Africa, on sort of a survey mission. They'd left our
planet under adverse conditions centuries before: The same
comet that had killed all the dinosaurs had made this world
inhospitable to a species that craved heat and light. But they
had returned a la Douglas McArthur, and now they wanted their
playground back.

They stumbled into the hiding place of an embittered Nazi
named Conrad Strughold and an unholy alliance was formed.

I was right. It was all here. Documentation. Fuzzy but clear
low DPI photos. Proof, Scully, proof.

We frolicked in these documents for hours before coming across
the one thing -- other than proof -- that had eluded us. The
one thing we really needed to save Scully. Langley handed us a
piece of paper. He had tears in his eyes.

We had their fucking names.

At that point the Gunman and Scully and I locked eyes and
without a word Byers did something that would keep the truth
alive even if those bastards crashed through the doors and
confiscated everything we had. He uploaded every piece of
information online. It took a while, but within hours, every
hacker, every newspaper, every politician in the world would
have it. Everything but the actual identities of these men.
Those we withheld to ensure our own personal agenda.

There was one other thing we didn't share with the world.
Byers soberly stuffed two files in my hands and suggested
Scully and I read them privately. One of the folders bore my
name, written in Langly's scratchy hand. Frohike, of course,
had lableled Scully's folder, writing her name in big,
flourishing cursive letters.

I sat with Scully on the edge of Frohike's bunk-bed and a cold
nausea crept through me as I started to read. I felt her jerk
erect and knew that she hadn't been presented pleasure reading
either.

It was no accident that I had been recruited into the Bureau.
It had all been part of the plan. Smoker's plan. They put my
unique profiling talents to use in a way that would balloon my
ego. They placed me in a position to meet Arthur Dales, who
introduced me to the X-Files.

And they made damn sure I would run into an agent named Diana
Fowley.

They had sent her to make sure I would gravitate toward the X-
Files, their red herring, the diversion from the horror of
their real activities. I was loud and emotional and gullible
enough to provide a substantial distraction.

Diana had suggested the regression hypnotherapy on their
orders. She had slept with me on their orders, which I guess
explains her sexual indifference.

I'm the star of my own movie, Diana? Looks like you were one
of the writers.

After a couple years, the report read, Agent Fowley was
getting antsy in her assignment. I was getting on her nerves.
And she wanted that payoff she'd been promised: career
advancement.

Thus, the LEGATT assignment.

Afterward, they didn't know what to do with me. Without Diana,
who had subtly been sabotaging a lot of my work, I actually
started to make progress. And they couldn't have that.

At first they considered sending a woman partner to distract
me sexually. She would divert my obsessive focus into the
bedroom and I would become more scattered at work. Eventually,
I would actually be tossed from the X-Files and maybe the FBI
for breaking the rules on fraternization.

But instead they sent Dana Scully. The idea there was either I
would fuck her right away and end up destroying any hopes of a
serious partnership, or more likely, she would follow orders,
however subtly phrased, to debunk my work. They didn't care
which route it went, although, Cancerman noted, it there were
more possibilities in the latter scenario.

But Scully disappointed them. I think what I read about her
then make everything else in the report palatable. She had
never been one of them. I had always been right to trust her.
Although I found the suggestion that her motives came from an
"infatuation with Agent Mulder" infuriating. I kinda hoped it
was true.

At any rate, five years into our partnership, they'd had
enough. They sent Fowley back. She was supposed to comfort me
when my partner....

Oh my God.

It was Scully Cancerman had been shooting at that day in
Gibson's motel room. He didn't realize Diana had relieved her
because he had sent orders for Fowley not to relieve her.
Through Alex Krycek, who never delivered the message.

I think I owe Krycek one.

So either it was the shadows or Smokey's own old eyes. But he
shot the wrong woman.

That God you believe in, Scully? Maybe....

Absorbed in the untold story of Fox Mulder, I had forgotten
about the woman sitting next to me. I felt her presence
suddenly, studied her angry, teary face. Wordlessly, she
handed me her file. I reciprocated.

They had checked out Scully as thoroughly as me, but from a
different perspective. I was the cat. She was supposed to be
the catnip, or a squeak-toy filled with dynamite.

Ethan, the guy she'd been dating when she was assigned to work
with me, was a consortium whore.  He catalogued her sexual
preferences and it was decided we were a good match that way,
if that was the route I decided to take. He described her
compulsive search for reason and her almost oppressive
honesty.  He was supposed to hang around in case Scully wanted
to talk about her work, but she wasn't about to do that, not
with him or anyone else. So they didn't make a big deal when
she dropped him.

The rest of it I knew, but reading it must have tormented
Scully: Melissa, the abduction, the cancer, Emily....

There was no mystery about the abduction. They weren't sure if
they should kill her outright, but they wanted to get her away
from me. And why waste a couple hundred thousand genetically
superior ova?

Near the end of the report, it was noted that Scully had
become more trouble than she was worth. There were protocols
for killing her.

The files hadn't been updated to include Diana's comments to
Scully in the restroom, but we assumed it was an attempt to
remind Scully to behave.

After we finished reading, we held each other for a long time.
Eventually, we heard the gunman clearing things up. It was
time to finish what we'd started.

"I love you," Scully whispered.

"It wasn't just the Demerol." I replied.
 

We didn't bother with the Hoover building. We arranged to meet
Skinner and Sen. Matheson in Janet Reno's office. Once Scully
and I had the documents safely in the hands of the Attorney
General, I excused myself. Scully and Skinner could handle the
rest of the meeting.

Myself, I had a date with Diana Fowley.

It was 7 a.m. She was getting dressed for work. She opened the
door with an "I knew you wanted it" look and let me in.

"You tell him I know," I told her. She noticed the rage on my
face and reevalutated her assumption of my great sexual need
for her.

I said his name. She gaped.

"You tell him if something happens to Scully or to me, ever,
he and all his buddies will find their names lit up near the
Coke display on Times Square. He better send out fuckin'
bodyguards for us. He better hope we wear our seatbelts.
Because if either one of us gets a scratch, he is Time
Magazine's Man of the Year. Do you get that?"

"I don't know what you're talking about," she said. But she
did and we both knew it. She would be a good messenger girl.

"You suck in bed, by the way," I told her. And left her
forever.
 

It can't be a surprise to anyone that Spender and Fowley
skipped work for the rest of their lives. That left an office
in the basement vacant, but Skinner's taking measures to
resolve that, and with his new political pull I believe he
will be assigned the agents of his choice. I'm getting a new
poster to replace Spender's kiss-up pictures of the president.
I don't want it to say, "I Want to Believe." I want it to say,
"I Told You So."

I'm down there now, waiting for Scully, eyeing the spot on the
door where our nameplates will go. I'm gonna put hers on top.
I like it when she's on top.

She tilts her head against the door frame and smiles. She's
come for a folder I brought down here by mistake. She has to
rush it to the photo lab.

"Mahogany."

"Huh?" I smile.

"My new desk, Mulder. Mahogany. Rolltop."

"A rolltop desk can't hold a computer."

She shrugs.

"Scully?"

An orange eyebrow ascends. I take a breath and ask the scary
question.

"The chip?"

She walks over to me and takes my hand. This time, I let her.

"For now, it can stay where it is. I'm not in a hurry to die.
Of late I've had a little more to live for."

"You know it's not little, Scully."

She laughs. "Get over yourself, Mulder."

She sticks the file under her arm. Without looking up, she
brings my fingertips to her lips, then heads for the lab.
 

        -30-

Hope it wasn't too bad. I'm a fanfic virgin.
Thanksgiving Weekend, 1998