Throwing Words Away

By alanna
alanna@alanna.net


Mar 3 2001, 7:14 pm
DISCLAIMER:  The characters herein are the property of Fox
Broadcasting and 1013 Productions.
CATEGORIES:  V, A, Doggett and Reyes
RATING:  PG
ARCHIVAL:  My site only, please.  Feel free to link to it
at http://alanna.net/fanfic/words.html
SPOILERS:  This Is Not Happening

SUMMARY:  Some children never know their fathers.  Some
fathers lose their children.

Feedback would be wonderful -- alanna@alanna.net

THROWING WORDS AWAY
by alanna

+++++

"I still haven't gotten used to it."

"Used to what?"

"Cults.  The investigative process."  Monica winces as she
takes a sip of her amaretto sour.  "I mean, I'm good at it.
The other agents down in N.O.," she says it like 'no', in
her self-consciously quirky shorthand, "think I'm a bit of
a flake, but they respect me.  That's something, isn't it?"

He wouldn't know.  He has always been respected by his
peers, at least until this year.  "Yeah," he replies, his
voice noncommittal.

"Yeah."  Monica has always been a talker, always rambling
on about whatever crosses her mind.  'Bless her heart', he
hears his mother's voice adding.  Irene Doggett blesses
everyone's heart; her son wishes he had more of her natural
empathy.  Instead, John sits back in his chair and awaits
whatever tangent Monica will go off on now.

"I've worked so many of these cult cases over the past four
years, John.  You'd think I'd be dulled to the specifics by
now, that they'd all run together.  But each one hits me
right here."  She knocks her chest with her fist.  "I need
to be more jaded, more inured to the process."

He glances at her over the rim of his pint of Guinness.  He
doesn't know what possessed him to order it -- he's never
liked it before -- but he'd asked the bartender for a pint
before he realized what he'd said.  So he sips at it
slowly, trying to find a way to wipe the foam off his lips
without embarrassing himself.

He wonders what kind of reply she wants.  Choosing the
smooth path, he says, "Maybe that makes you a better agent.
Empathy and passion are highly valued in the Bureau."

She looks over at the scattering of other people in the
bar.  "Yeah, I guess so."

Monica Reyes at a loss for words is a rare occurrence
indeed.

"I'm going to get another drink.  You want anything?"

He shakes his head.

"Are you sure?  You haven't touched that beer."

"I'm okay," he says, finality in his voice.

She gives him a long look, then walks over to the bar.

He watches her back, noticing the expensive suit and the
outline of a pack of cigarettes in the pocket of her
blazer.  She hasn't smoked one yet, but he knows she will.
She's in town to testify at the Bureau hearings on Agent
Mulder's death.  It's a stressful time.  He hope she has
enough left in that pack to last her the rest of the trip.

He helped start her addiction.

Waco, Texas.  Eight years ago.  She was working on her PhD
in criminal justice down at the University of Texas.  He'd
been in the second of a four-month stint at the Dallas
field office, his first assignment out of the Academy.
Carolyn and Luke were back up in New York; teachers
couldn't just relocate during the school year.  Monica was
effusive and he was lonely.  He needed someone to talk to,
someone to keep him company.

Oh, they didn't sleep together, didn't even begin the hint
of a romance.  She approached him at an IHOP off I-35 after
midnight on his third day down in Waco, where he was
helping with paperwork and damage control after that
Davidian fiasco.  Said she was fascinated by cult activity
and was considering doing a case study for part of her
dissertation, and could she talk to him about it?  No
privileged information needed, of course, but she'd
appreciate having an insider's view.  He appreciated
someone actually wanting to talk to him, instead of using
him, with his own PhD to match hers, as a lackey.

She'd looked all of eighteen, despite the dark circles
under her eyes and the I.D. she'd flashed that gave her age
as 27.  They finished two carafes of orange juice and split
an order of pancakes that night.  They would've laced the
juice with vodka to take the sting away if either had
thought to bring it.

Her hands trembled as he described the children's burned
bodies, and he offered her one of his Marlboro Reds.  She
told him she'd never smoked before, and he looked away when
she coughed up her first drag.

They met at the IHOP the next night, and the night after in
his motel room.  They spent most nights together for the
next two weeks, as friends, drinking vodka or whiskey or
longnecks of bock beer.  She took up informal residence in
the other bed in the room, and one of them would fall
asleep while the other searched the case notes for
something, anything to force this damned clusterfuck make
sense.

He had two brothers back home in Georgia.  He began to
think of her as a little sister.

They kept in touch sporadically as he rose through the
Bureau ranks.  She told him he was the reason she applied
to and was accepted by Quantico a month after finishing her
doctorate.

She put in a request to consult on the case when they found
Luke's body in the basement of a lower east side apartment
building.  She held his hand and let Carolyn cry on her
shoulder during the cultists' arraignment.

Luke's death and her investigative expertise made her name
within the Bureau.  She had her choice of assignments after
that.  He tries his damnedest not to begrudge her that.

John watches her walk back over to their table, another
amaretto sour in her hand.  She doesn't look all of
eighteen anymore.  She looks older, wiser, but still with a
mouth made to ramble on and on about whatever is on her
mind.

He has kissed that mouth before.

She was up in New York about a month after Keith Jarrett's
trial, helping him to finish up some paperwork on his son's
murder.  Carolyn had sequestered herself at her parents'
house in Jersey, and he was lonely.  He forgot that Monica
had been his surrogate little sister.

That night was a mistake.  It is the one thing that is
never spoken of by her rambling lips.

John watches her take a seat, the ice cubes shivering and
sloshing against the glass.  She sits down, glances at him,
then immediately stands and reaches in her pockets for a
cigarette.

"I could say this is the last one, but I know it's not."
Her voice is older, resigned as she sits back down.

After a pause, she continues, "I saw Agent Scully today for
the first time since Montana."

He flinches, then takes a cigarette out of her pack.
Monica widens her eyes, but hands him her lighter.  He
hasn't smoked in years, but maybe this will calm him down.
The Guinness sure as hell isn't working.

"I didn't know she was pregnant.  She's starting to show
now."  Monica takes a long drag, holding it in her mouth
before exhaling.  Her brow creases.  "God, that poor baby."

A sudden defensive streak hits John.  "She doesn't need
your sympathy."

Monica stares back at him, surprised.  "She needs all the
sympathy and support she can get right now."

"Did she tell you that?  Did you try to press her for
information, Monica?  Back off, okay?"

His defensiveness is mirrored in her voice.  "John, don't
worry.  I barely even spoke to her.  I could just--"  She
pauses, then gives a hollow, self-deprecating chuckle.  "I
could just sense it."

They are both silent for a moment as they sip their drinks
and smoke their cigarettes.

"My heart goes out to that poor kid," she repeats.  "He or
she is never going to know their father."

Smoke and Guinness rush down his windpipe, and his lungs
rebel with a hacking cough.  "Excuse me," he chokes, and
hustles off to the men's room.

He doesn't need to take a piss, so he washes his hands.

Never know his or her father.

Dana had said the same thing to him in a rare moment of
candor during the low hours after they found Mulder's body.

She'd glanced up at him in the early morning light, twenty-
odd yards away from where the forensics team was taking
scene photos.

"My child is never going to know her daddy."

It was the first time she'd looked him straight in the eye
since they found Mulder.  It was the last time she did so
for days.

He knew the familiar flood of empathy all too well.  Some
children never know their fathers.  Some fathers lose their
children.

Dana and Mulder's baby will never know him.  John had known
Luke for eleven years.  He wished he had more photographs
and home videos.  He was starting to forget his son's
voice, his laugh, his half-swagger as he ran the bases at
Little League.

John hoped like hell that Dana had videos and photos of
Mulder to show that baby.  He'd only met Mulder twice --
barely even a meeting.  Just shared space at a couple of
Bureau VCS seminars back in '90 and '91, when he was a cop
interested in perhaps applying to Quantico someday.

Despite only exchanging a few words with the other man,
John still remembered Mulder.  He was the kind of man who
slipped into the back of your mind and took up residence.
He was special, as trite as that sounds to John.  But he
was.

John looks at himself in the mirror.  He can see Luke in
his eyebrows and mouth, in the ears that still stick out a
bit too far.  Luke will always be in his memory that way,
long after the photographs fade.

He wonders what features Mulder's son or daughter will
share with its father.

He rinses his hands again, then dries them with an abrasive
paper towel.  When he emerges from the bathroom, Monica's
head is turned around, watching him as he approaches.  She
never met Luke while he was alive, and now John wishes she
had.  He hates that this woman who was once like a little
sister to him -- who could have been Luke's surrogate aunt
-- will only know Luke through old photographs and autopsy
reports.

"Are you okay, John?"

"Yeah."

He has been so busy being okay that he has neglected the
pain, storing it so deep within him that its existence was
a given, an afterthought.

Fathers should always know their children, and vice-versa.
Scully's daughter or son will never have that luxury.

John must never forget that even if the world didn't know
Luke, he did.

He pulls Luke's dog-eared photo out of his wallet.  Sliding
it across the table, he says, "Monica, let me tell you
about my son."

+++++

"But they are dead; those two are dead!
Their spirits are in heaven!"
'Twas throwing words away; for still
The little Maid would have her will,
And said, "Nay, we are seven!"
-- William Wordsworth, "We Are Seven"

END (1/1)

alanna@alanna.net

My deepest thanks to Diana for beta-reading and support.