Whiteout Series
(Book Three)

By: Paige Caldwell-Hunt
paigec38@yahoo.com


RATING:      PG-13
CATS/KEYS:   MSR, Post-Ep for "Tooms" and "Little Green Men"
SUMMARY:     "It's amazing how things change, isn't it?
SPOILERS:    Seasons One and Two
DISCLAIMER:  This is a not-for-profit undertaking
FEEDBACK:    If you enjoyed it, let me know!
WEBSITES:    http://www.iwtbxf.com/paige             



Book Three


"It's amazing how things change, isn't it?"

"The caterpillar?"

"No, a change for us. It's coming."

"How do you know?"

"A hunch."


I should have known that any "hunch" that Mulder had over
a bug would turn out to be an omen. At the time, however,
we had just accidentally squashed Eugene Tooms under an
escalator in a shopping mall.  The big change he referred
to could have meant anything, from a Bureau citation to a
one-day sale at the GAP.  I didn't pick up on the
invertebrate symbolism until it was too late.  

I was caught up in my own "hunch" that if I learned how
to juggle belief, skepticism and Skinner like a three-
ball cascade, I would regain my partner's trust.  It was
no surprise that I didn't.  Like the caterpillar, Mulder
had already decided that I lacked the necessary backbone.

At first, I went about by business, convinced that it was
all for the better. I was a scientist.  My belief in the
paranormal was limited to the unexplained phenomenon of my
students showing up on time for autopsy class. But, as
time passed, I noticed that I wasn't able to make a
single Y incision without lifting my scalpel to ponder
"life's greater mysteries".  At least, that's what I told
myself. The less flattering truth was that my partnership
with Mulder had been severed and I was a experiencing
phantom limb pain.

I knew today would be a turning point when I bumped into
Mulder in the FBI's bullpen. When he passed me by without
notice, I made a decision.  Either I could trail after
him, dragging my leg like Quasimodo or I would take a
stand. I flipped on the bat signal by turning Samantha's
picture face-down on Mulder's desk.  I was sick of her
little pigtails, anyway.

We met a few hours later in the parking garage of the
Watergate Hotel.  I chose the location as a joke on how
paranoid Mulder had become about meeting me in public. He
arrived complaining about the $4.00 per hour parking
rates and telling me that whatever I had to give him had
better be worth at least forty-five minutes. I was
tempted to tell him that all I wanted to do was say
hello, but that I'd throw in a blow-job if it made any
difference. But, I didn't.  I did what all spineless,
partner-struck women do. I tried to smile and cajole
myself back into his favor, appealing to his ego while
sacrificing my own.  

In return, Mulder shared a story about how a bunch of
elves convinced George Hale to build a telescope.  My
mind had to turn triple somersaults to work elves into a
bit of sage advice.  At the very least, I should have
earned a gold medal for competing in the Mulder Mind-Game
Olympics.  All I got was a blank stare.

As I turned to leave, I realized the truth about my
partner. Mulder's claim that it was too dangerous for us
to meet was really just his way of telling me to buzz
off. Outside of the X-files, he had no use for me.  All
of those life-threatening moments, night surveillances
and curbside deliveries of root beer meant nothing
because, let's face it, Mulder was an iced-tea man with a
strange penchant for bug analogies.  

And, I was fed up.

I marched over to his car and rapped my knuckles on the
driver's side window.

"What?" he asked, cracking it open an inch.

"You know what's amazing, Mulder?" My breath was so hot
that it clouded the glass. "How some things never
change."

"Um, what are you talking about?" he asked.

"Your crap about cocoons and caterpillars, not to mention
all those big changes you predicted."

Mulder seemed perplexed, especially when I whirled my
arms to demonstrate my concept of "big".  For a minute, I
thought he was going to lock the car door.  Instead, he
reached for the handle and got out of the sedan slowly.
"Is there a crazy pathologist somewhere in that mix?" he
asked, giving me a wary look.  

"You're not fooling me for a minute, Mulder." I began to
pace back and forth in front of him.  "This is about
trust, or your lack of trust in me. The minute you
stopped trusting me is when our work on the X-files
started going downhill."

"That's ridiculous, Scully," Mulder said as he leaned
back against his car and folded his arms. "You were
there, you know what happened."

"I know what I saw, most of which I can't explain," I
said, stopping and facing him.  "But, I can explain why
the order came down to reassign us."

"Because I didn't trust you," he concluded.

"Do you remember what Skinner said about our inability to
communicate?" I asked.   

"What I do remember is that you were assigned to spy on
me and debunk my work," he retorted.  "And, what I can't
forget is how you twisted around what actually happened
at the Icy Cape because your psyche couldn't handle the
truth."

"And, I have been paying for that moment for months," I
asserted, dropping my gaze so he wouldn't see that I was
blinking back tears.  "Listen, I have put myself on the
line for you.  What else does it take to regain your
trust, Mulder?"

"What makes you think you ever had it in the first
place?"

Mulder's accusation felt like a slap across my face. I
staggered back a few steps and stared at him in
disbelief.  

"Scully..." He reached out towards me.  

I quickly turned around and brushed the tears away from
my eyes.  I glanced down at my fingers.  They were
streaked with black, watery trails from my lashes.  Next
time, I would check to see if Estee Lauder made partner-
proof mascara.  

"Scully..."

I walked away from Mulder without turning back.


************



Walking away from your partner is a whole lot easier than
staying away. The minute Skinner told me that Mulder was
missing, I was ready to emerge from my self-pitying
cocoon and take flight.  However, I didn't want to save
him. I wanted to track him down to prove that I could
outsmart any one of his hunches with my own educated
guess.  I might not ever gain his trust, but I'd settle
for his begrudging respect.  

My search began in his apartment, where I learned that I
was being followed and that Mulder's lunch date thought
he was a pig.  I filed both tidbits for future reference
and set out to find where the little swine went.  The
expression "when pigs fly" took on a whole new meaning as
I reviewed thousands of airline passenger manifests.  It
was worth the eyestrain. I discovered that George Hale
wasn't just my partner's swansong anecdote.  Mulder had
left me a clue.

At the airport, I discovered that compact had a dual
role. Not only did it give me a sun-kissed glow, it also
enabled me to see if I was being followed. When I spotted
that two agents were tailing me, I tricked them into
boarding a plane for the Caribbean.  What a shame it was
that Mulder wasn't around to learn the proper etiquette
of ditching our fellow agents.  While I got away
undetected, they got a free tropical vacation.

I ended up finding Mulder huddled on the floor of the
National Astronomy and Ionosphere Center in Puerto Rico.
All of my jungle-hopping, sweat-drenched anger evaporated
into a fine mist as I stared at his motionless face. I
thought he was dead. I realized then that my phantom limb
pain wasn't my imagination.  Like it or not, Mulder had
become a part of me, a part that I really missed.

Fortunately, there was nothing like a high-speed chase
through a jungle to set a girl straight. By the time we
escaped Puerto Rico and flew back to Miami, I was willing
to trade in all my frequent-flyer miles for a separate
plane back to D.C.  For hours, Mulder had not said a
single word to me.  He just stared straight-ahead,
clutching his precious "first contact" tape against his
dingy t-shirt.  It was as if human contact was no longer
necessary now that he'd struck alien gold.  

A thunderstorm cancelled our connecting flight.  Because
it was late, the airline offered to put the passengers up
in a nearby hotel.  "What do you think, George?" I tried
to tease Mulder into a response.  "We can always fly to
D.C. in the morning.  How does a hot shower and a nice
meal sound?"

When Mulder didn't answer me, I leaned over and peered
into his hazel eyes.  "Earth to Mulder..." I waved my
hand in front of his face. "If I bleep like R2D2, will
you answer me?"

He gazed at me with such Bambi-like trust that I knew
something was terribly wrong.   

I guided Mulder out of the terminal and flagged a taxi.
The airlines had already booked a room for Mr. and Mrs.
George Hale.  Considering Mulder's condition, I didn't
bother to correct the mistake.  It's not like I hadn't
shared a room with him before.  I had once spent two
weeks of quarantine with him.  It was like doing hard
time shackled next to Rodney Dangerfield. One night with
a muted Mulder was a piece of cake.

I later discovered that our room had only one king-size
bed and Mulder's sense of modesty had already checked
out. Within seconds of arriving, he was stripping off his
clothes en route to the shower.  I started picking up
after him, chiding myself as I draped his jeans over the
back of the chair.  I wasn't his mother.  I wasn't even
his partner, technically speaking.  What else was left?  
His friend?

That seemed to be asking too much, especially when
minutes later, he approached the bed with only a bath
towel draped around his waist.  I jumped up the second he
hit the sheets, turning away discreetly until I noticed
that he'd thrown the towel at my feet.  "So, this is what
you think I am?" I asked.  "Your maid?"

Mulder pulled the blanket up to his neck and murmured,
"Tired... so tired."

I felt a pang of regret.  Sighing, I turned off the lamp
and sat down beside him.  "Sleep then," I crooned,
reaching out to caress his wet, ruffled hair.  My touch
seemed to relax him.  A few minutes later, he was fast
asleep.  

I stood up and considered my sleeping arrangements.  
Crawling under the sheets with a naked Mulder was out of
the question.  Not that I didn't find him attractive.  I
did, in a dangerous, "have you lost all your marbles"
sort of way.  I already resented the fact that this man
had gotten under my skin.  There was no way I was going
to let him get into my pants.

I walked around to the other side of the bed.  Fully
clothed, I crawled on top of the bedspread, pulling the
bottom corner up so it would cover my legs.  I turned my
back to Mulder and began to mentally pick daisies to lull
me to sleep, "He trusts me, he trusts me not..."

I woke the next morning to the smell of coffee. I sat up,
surprised to find Mulder fully dressed and recovered
enough to have picked up a phone and called room service.  
I rubbed the sleep from my eyes and asked him, "Are you
feeling better?"

He carried a large tray over to the foot of the bed.  
"Yeah, I'm sorry about last night.  I just needed to
decompress after everything that happened back at the
observatory."

"I know what you mean," I agreed, although I couldn't
remember the last time that I walked around in a bath
towel while refusing to speak with my co-workers.
Scooting down to the tray, I pulled the metal covers off
the dishes.  Having not eaten in over twenty-four hours,
I was starving.  

"Playing search and rescue can be draining, huh?" he
asked, passing me a cup of coffee.  

I accepted it gratefully and took a sip. "Well, you did
leave me some clues."  

"You did better than I expected," Mulder admitted,
joining me on the bed with his own plate of food.

"If that's a compliment, I'll take it," I said, biting
into a piece of bacon.

"You know, Deep Throat once told me to trust no one,"
Mulder confided.

I kept chewing.  It was good to know that he followed
someone's advice.

"What happened at the observatory center..." Mulder's
voice began to sound shaky.  He stopped and cleared his
throat.  "I didn't think I would make it, so I started to
record my findings.  At first, I thought for posterity,
but then I realized that I was making the recording for
you."

I swallowed quickly. "Really?'

"It's hard, Scully... suspecting everyone, everything. It
wears you down."

"So does not being trusted," I added.  

"That's just it," Mulder clarified. "I do trust you,
Scully.  I didn't realize how much until they separated
us, until we were apart."

"We still are apart," I said, putting my plate and fork
down.  "You know, Mulder, there's probably going to be
hell to pay when we get back to D.C."

He got up from the bed and picked up the tape reel.  "Not
this time, Scully.  This time we have proof."

"Listen to me, Mulder," I cautioned him.  "Skinner's not
interested in what's on that tape. All he cares about is
that you abandoned your assignment to chase after little
green men."

"What I have here is unequivocal proof of alien contact,"
Mulder asserted.  "I don't care what he thinks.  There
are people higher up than Skinner who will be very
interested in what I've found."

"How do you know that those aren't the same people who
sent me to debunk your work," I asked.

Mulder looked both frustrated and annoyed with me "What
are you trying to say, Scully?"

"That proof means nothing if you lack credibility," I
explained. "At the very least, take the blame for leaving
your assignment.  Tell Skinner that you're willing to
accept whatever disciplinary measures are necessary."

"Why does this matter so much to you?"

"Are you kidding?" I scoffed, trying to make light of his
question.  "You finally trust me.  I don't want months of
hard work to be in vain."

 

**********

A few days after we returned to D.C., Mulder called me
and asked me to meet him at the Longstreet Hotel.  
Skinner had given him a "get out of jail free" card,
which mystified us both.  I arrived at the hotel room to
find Mulder on another wiretap assignment, which I
imagined was punishment enough.

"It should be right here," he said.

Mulder played and rewound the reel several times.  There
was nothing on it.  I didn't know what to say.  "I told
you so" came to mind, but there was no sense in firing
the first shot while we were under a truce.   

"The entire tape is blank," Mulder said in a shocked
voice.    

"You know, an electrical surge in the outlet the storm
may have degaussed everything, erasing the entire tape,"
I offered.

Mulder put the tape down.  His forlorn expression told me
that he didn't want to hear my theories.  He just wanted
a little sympathy.  Under the terms of our new
partnership agreement, I tried to muster a little
compassion and understanding.  I opened my mouth,
reconsidered my words and then settled on what I hoped
was a kindly observation.

"You still have nothing."

It came out a lot worse than I intended.  I'm lucky that
Mulder didn't take that tape and strangle me with it.  
Instead, he reached for a blank reel and fastened it to
the player.  

"I may not have the X-Files, Scully, but I still have my
work."

I watched him stand and adjust the player.  

"And I've still got you," he said.  "And, I still have
myself."

I left him with an encouraging pat on his hand, but once
outside the room I couldn't help but do a little happy
dance.  I didn't need a caterpillar or a cocoon to
recognize that this change was the beginning of something
better. Even though we were still stuck in mundane
assignments, we had survived the worst test of our
partnership.

From my perspective, there was nothing on earth that
could separate us now.  


End of Book 3