Character: Dana Scully
Fandom: The X-Files
Rating: PG-13
Prompt: Jake Harris: My dreams often involve a warm beach and some Philippino women. –Deadliest Catch Vol 2 Week 36 on scifi_muses on LiveJournal
Setting: Season Four Episode: Unruhe
AN: Welcome to Seasons: Fourth. As with the previous Seasons: Third, I'm starting with Unruhe, as I covered Herrenvolk at the end of the last installment. As usual, I will try to keep up as best I can, but grad school does come first. Oye! There is no need to read Seasons: First-Third to keep up with this, but it does help, and I encourage it.. Again, I don't own any of this, but I do enjoy playing.
"Mulder, what do you think of a place with warm sunshine, cool drinks, beautiful beaches, and the only thing you need to wear all day is a bathing suit?" Dana Scully sighed longingly as she stared wistfully at her computer screen, a picture of just such a place slowly coalescing pixel by pixel. Swaying palms and white, powder beaches surrounded a cove of aquamarine that screamed for her to run from her dark, dreary, basement office, kick off her shoes and pantyhose, and book the first flight to…wherever this was, at the moment she didn't care.
Fox Mulder, for his part, seemed oblivious to everything except for the file sitting on the desk in front of him. Thus far his only response to her inquiry was a vague nod of the head, a gentle grunt, and a frown as his dark eyebrows met, quirking over his aquiline nose. This had been Mulder's position practically since she had stepped into their shared, basement office that morning, lost in thought with barely a glance up in Scully's direction. She had wondered for the first hour or so how long his tall, lean frame could stand being hunched over like that. She'd been sure the bathing suit comment might elicit some sort of reaction out of him, he rarely lost a chance to saying completely inappropriate things to her, a wicked gleam in his eye.
There was not even so much as a speculative eyebrow raise. For all the attention he was paying, she could have been prancing before him in her underwear and he would hardly have noticed. Not that it would have been the first time he had seen her in her underwear. Flushing at the memory, she cleared her throat expectantly, sharp in the dead silence of their office, eyes laser focused on her partner. It took several, long moments for her gaze to penetrate the fog of his own deep thoughts, but his hazel green eyes finally did tear themselves up to her, his expression startled. "What?"
"I can't believe you even missed my reference to bathing suits."
"Bathing suits?" He was mystified. He hadn't heard a single word she had said, and frankly she was suspecting that he hadn't been terribly sure she had even been sitting in the office with him.
"Yeah, I brought up beaches, mixed drinks…a place where the only think you had to wear all day was a bathing suits. What you thought of such places?"
"Like a vacation?" Mulder rolled the word around on his tongue as if it were Latin or Greek. "Depends…would you wear a one piece or two piece?"
And there was the expected comment, much too late for Scully's liking. "As if you would ever find out, I wasn't discussing a mutual vacation, only one in general. It's July, Mulder, most of DC is out of town trying to escape the tourists and heat and here we are, stuck in the basement." She frowned, pouting at the wall of gray metal that constituted the entirety of Mulder's life's work, the essence of what he had poured his heart and soul into…the X-files. It was everything he was, everything he lived for, and now, by extension, it had become what defined her as well. Scully's entire world had narrowed in the last three years to the cases locked within the battered, rusting drawers, monsters and paranormal sightings, strange, unexplained occurrences, UFO's, and of course the never ending, twisted mystery of Samantha Mulder's disappearance.
"How much vacation time do you have, Mulder?"
"Why," he had returned to whatever was holding his interest in front of him. At least he was trying to appear as if he were paying more attention now. "You looking to get rid of me?"
"I'm looking to get you out there to live your life." What was so enthralling he couldn't even bother to have a normal conversation with her? "Mulder, you've been through a lot in this last month…your mother….you need to take some time."
"I have taken some time."
"Time spent taking care of your ailing mother hardly counts." Teena stroke just mere weeks before had nearly crushed Mulder, breaking him in ways Scully had never seen him crumble before. "Take a weekend, go somewhere, away from work, away from…all of this." The wave of her hand encompassed their jumble of old furniture, hazy pictures, and stacks of unfinished files. "Do…something."
"I'd willingly take suggests, Scully," he muttered, though not very convincingly. "I don't know, I've never exactly been the 'weekend warrior' sort of guy, out in the woods with a backpack, me against nature, spearing fish for my sustenance."
"Except when there is a downed UFO involved, in which case I get a phone call from the military telling me to come pick you up."
"Touché," he managed a small smile.
He was avoiding her point, and skillfully too. "I have a feeling I'm losing this argument with you, aren't I?"
"I have too much to do to take a vacation now."
"Have you looked at yourself, Mulder?" Scully had. In the weeks since Jeremiah Smith had entered into their lives she had seen her brilliant, energetic partner shut down, emotionally as well as physically. His mother's illness, the truths that had come out of it, had shattered something very deep within her partner, hurting him like nothing Scully had ever seen had. Mulder's relentless drive was still there, propelling him despite the obvious physical and mental exhaustion. But the energy, the spark that made Mulder who he was, that drew her along after him from one crazy scheme to another, that was missing. In its place was preoccupation, a Mulder that was only a shadow of what he normally was.
"I'm fine, Scully." It was her well-used phrase, and she no more believed it out of him than he did out of her. Perhaps he defined "fine" as functional, but she did not. She rose, slowly rounding her table to his chair, leaning over his shoulder; curious as to what it was that so captivated his so much he couldn't even have a serious conversation with her.
Almost immediately the file folder snap shut, closing off access to whatever it was he was reading, cool, green eyes turning up to her in mild-irritation. "Can I help you?"
Since when had he kept secrets from her? "I was just curious." She glanced at the non-descript file, then back to him. "The only thing I can think of you'd want to hide that holds your attention for that long is your latest porn delivery."
"It's nothing, Scully." He reached to shove the folder under a pile of other such folders, trying to neatly move it out of eyesight, forgotten in the morass of stacks on his desk. But what Mulder might have in height, Scully more than made up in speed, and she nimbly plucked file away from obscurity, scuttling away from the long reach of Mulder's arm with an impish giggle. She ignored the curse he spat out as she flipped open the file, a grin splitting her face at her triumph.
"Damn it, Scully…." He was up and around the desk in an instant, prepared to snag the purloined item from her, but stopped as the smile she had worn melted almost instantly off her face, replaced by puzzlement. She slowly pulled out the black and white photo lying on top, of a nameless field where two children worked. The tow-headed boy was a mystery to her, but the dark haired girl beside her was not. Even she could recognize the now indelible image of Samantha Mulder, head bright in the sunshine.
"Mulder, where did you get this?"
"Scully," he made another grab for the folder, but she held it away, staring up at him.
"This is what you saw in Canada, isn't it? What Jeremiah Smith was trying to show you?" Mulder had shared little of his experiences in Canada, only what he saw and that Jeremiah Smith had escaped, his whereabouts still unknown. "This is the field….the crops you were talking about."
"It's gone, Scully. The crops are gone, and so are the clones of my sister. I've had them look, and there is nothing there, no evidence."
"But this picture, Mulder it's some proof…"
"Of what?" Anger flashed to life, snapping across the distance between them, frustration animating him more than Scully had seen him in weeks. "I have proof that there is someone running around with my sister's face? The girl isn't even alive anymore, Scully, I heard her screaming. Believe me, that's not a sound I'm likely to forget, considering it's the same one I've heard every night, in every nightmare for the last twenty-three years." Agitation fueled his fingers as they raked through his dark hair before he turned, pacing away from her. "I heard that thing…that hunter kill her."
"I know," Scully breathed softly, her heart sinking as she recalled the condition her partner arrived in at his mother's bedside, so shocked and disoriented she had considered sedating him just to force him to rest. "But if this photograph exists, Mulder, that means there was something out there."
It was little mollification for him. His long legs chewed up the small amount of space in front of the cabinets, his hands at his waist. "The person who gave it to me told me that 'not everything dies.'" He paused, turning to Scully. "I don't even know what she meant by that."
She? Scully was vaguely surprised; so far most of the people she and Mulder had dealt with in terms of secretive informants were men. "Is this the person you went to see in New York?"
He didn't answer, but then he didn't have to. Scully knew without him saying it that it was. Mulder had always been jealously guarded about the people who dabbled out information. It was only by happenstance, usually Mulder finding himself in trouble, that Scully had ever meet or come in contact with any of them. She never totally understood why, after all this time, he insisted on keeping them so secret from her, whether it was for her protection or theirs. If it was theirs, obviously he was doing something wrong, so far he now had gone through two. Scully wondered if this new woman was aware of the fates of her predecessors.
"Mulder, these children…this girl, she isn't your sister."
"I know that," he snapped, returning to his restless movements. "But those girls, they exist…that woman who went to my parents…the real Samantha could still be out thee, somewhere."
"She could be," Scully acknowledged reluctantly. "Mulder, anything is possible."
"Smith said they were drones, working those fields…for what?" He waved an impatient hand at the folder in her fingers. "Ginseng plants, bee colonies, what are they doing with them?"
Scully had considered that as well since Mulder's return. Jeremiah Smith had insisted this was the key to everything, this information he had shown Mulder, but at the moment everything seemed a mystery still, a puzzle, and the Smiths, even the cloned ones, were all now gone, vanished in to thin air. And all that Mulder had to prove any of his story was a photograph with a girl looking like his long-vanished sister.
"I can't be sure, Mulder, not till I have something to study. We know that Smith was gathering information on smallpox vaccinations. But I don't know what that has to do with bees, or ginseng plants, or….any of this." With each new door that opened, more questions than answers came their way. They deepened the mystery but by no means giving them closure or answers.
"We're here again, Scully, so close." His palm shot out, slamming hard against the bank of cabinets, the rattling shaking through Scully and banging through the hall. "Every time we find ourselves back here with what?" He glared at the offending object still in her hand, eyes darkening on the photograph. "I'm certainly no closer to knowing why my sister was taken, though I've managed to find out everything else about my family was a lie."
"You don't know that." Scully closed the file, her tone gentle, her thoughts turning towards Teena. "Have you asked your mother about why she was in the old vacation house yet?"
"No," Mulder mumbled darkly, throwing himself back into his office chair, arms and legs splaying as he tilted his face to the ceiling. "She's still so fragile…I'm afraid if I push her…" He trailed off, helpless. At what price was Mulder's truth coming for him? Each new revelation brought with it a new wealth of emotional pain, a new piece to the puzzle that was his troubled life. How many more truths could he face before he buckled under their weight, taking Scully with him.
Was Mulder's life her own? Could she stand there much longer along side of him and take that weight on as well? When would she break alongside of him?
"Mulder," she sighed, looking for some words of comfort. "The answers are there…you've always believed that." She always depended on him believing that. It was his faith that carried her through all of this so many times; it was why she stood there by him even with all of her doubts. It made all of this worthwhile, or so told herself. "The truth is out there….that's what you've always told me."
His snort was dry and humorless, his gravelly monotone pulling from deep inside of himself. "It's getting harder and harder to believe when life take particular joy in kicking you in the teeth."
Mulder in a normal funk was nearly impossible to shake out of it. Scully had never seen him this far gone, this lost. She couldn't allow this to go on, not for her sanity at least, and not for his health. Snapping the file against her palm, she crossed to where he slumped in his chair, grabbing one of his dangling arms.
"Up, Mulder." Her command was much more forceful than her tug. The man was tall and large, and though she wasn't a weakling, he hardly budged.
"Why?" So far Mulder didn't seem inclined to assist her much in her efforts, frowning at her meager attempts to raise him with dubious amusement.
"Because you are so depressing it's pissing me off." She glared at him as he finally laughed outright, giving in and peeling himself out of the chair.
"And what does the good doctor say I should do about pissing her off?"
"Go outside," she replied, reaching for his suit coat and passing it over. "Go outside, be in the sunshine, walk around the Mall."
"It's nearly the 4th of July, the crowds will suck."
"Good, you'll have to behave yourself." Ignoring his dubious look, she grabbed his elbow and propelled him to the door. "We will get ice cream, we will enjoy the light of day for a few hours, and you will stop brooding for five minutes."
"Just five minutes? If I make it ten do I get a prize?"
"Mulder if you made it a whole afternoon I might give you anything you want."
"You in a two-piece bathing suit?"
"I wouldn't go that far." Her exacerbated smirk finally elicited something of a grin out of him. At least it was a first step.
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