White Petals Chapter 1, a X-Files + UFO Crossover fanfic

This is a X Files UFO crossover story

This story is a sequel to my work White Roses s/5986737/1/White-Roses but they don't necessarily have to be read in order.

The concept of Straker's shoulder injury is the property of Deborah Rorabaugh of the SHADO Library.

All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. The original characters, concepts and plot are the property of the authors. The concept of SHADO Aegis Security Systems and SHADO Chrysalis Project also belong to the authors.

The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise. No copyright infringement is intended. Not to be used without authors' permission.

Dedicated to readers Barbarossa Rotbart and Regina Zdrojkowsa Calway who specifically requested I do a sequel. I do hope you like it. My readers mean a lot to me.

I've set SHADO and X Files in present day. I don't follow canon or a timeline strictly for dramatic license. These are my interpretations of the characters.

Previously in White Roses

Chapter One: The Fresh Faced Man

Annapolis, Maryland

Dr. Dana Scully's apartment no. 35

Dana Scully pulled on her fuzzy robe over her pajamas, then sleepily answered the door, more than a bit irritated at having her intention of not waking as early as she normally did ruined. Her Sunday plan was to go to afternoon Mass then to the family home that evening for a barbeque. If this was one of Mulder's interruptions he better have a good reason for it. Out of self preservation she slipped her Sig Sauer 228 semi automatic pistol into a pocket and had a quick look through her wide angle security viewer.

It was only a fresh faced young man carrying a clipboard and a rectangular shaped gold box. She unchained the door, opened it a fraction and looked at him expectantly.

"Dr. Dana Scully?" he asked. Mr. Ruin her beauty sleep had on a worn denim cap, grey hoodie, a rumpled gaudy polka dotted tee shirt, black scuffed trainers and worn brown jeans. His outfit looked like it had been ironed by a garbage truck rolling over it. He had on funky brown knit gloves to complete his unenviable ensemble, and he and his outfit appeared as tired as she felt.

What he didn't possess was any trace of a fashion sense. What he did possess were the largest eyes she had ever seen. They made him seem like an anime hero straight out of a cosplay convention.

"Yes, that's me."

"Package for you. Sign here, please."

Scully scribbled her name, and the delivery guy handed her the gold box.

"Have a nice day, Maam."

"You too."

Dana Scully closed the door, brought the box into her home office area. After the stray thought that she should have it examined by the FBI lab, she shook it cautiously. It was lightweight. Her partner Mulder would warn her that accepting a strange package wasn't the safest of practices. For once, her curiosity won over FBI training. Mulder wouldn't be thrilled about that either. To tell the truth neither was she.

She broke open the scotch tape that held it shut, opened it and looked under the green paper. The aroma had been immediate and unmistakable. A dozen long stemmed white roses lie in the box. There was no card. Not Mulder's style, she decided. Even though February fourteenth wasn't that far away.

Scully took one rose out, smelled it. She smiled. So she had some secret admirer. Then she sighed. Mulder would just say it was connected to a case they were working on, or had worked on. Just another X file.

The Man With Anime Eyes

Annapolis, Maryland

A block from Dr. Dana Scully's apartment

The stranger Dana Scully had considered a fresh faced young man with anime eyes reluctantly stepped away from her front door, and walked purposefully away toward a automobile he had hired especially for the occasion. He paused, stopped for a moment, and tossed the clipboard into a refuse bin he'd spotted. He folded the paper she had signed and placed it gently into his trouser pocket like the treasure he considered it to be.

There was another somewhat older man already waiting patiently in the car. This second man had skin which resembled a golf ball that had seen far too many holes in one. He gazed up at anime eyes man, looking irritated as he watched him slide into the driver's seat, toss the cheap gloves aside, retrieve a pair of brown leather driving gloves from a glove box, and slide them on after removing the dark contact lenses he'd been wearing. The anime eyes were now definitely blue. He accepted the keys from the older man and started up the engine.

" I can feel your disapproval of my masquerade as intensely as I feel the Maryland cold. I just wanted to see her again. I want her looked after, Alec. Will you arrange it for me?"

"You don't want SHADO intelligence to handle her-no of course not. Haven't I heard you say rank has its privileges?"

"Not in private affairs of the heart. I once used SHADO aircraft to intercede in a personal matter-"

"Your son was dying, exceptions could be made to your damn rule book, after all you built SHADO from the ground up and you wrote most of it. Your child Johnny had been fatally struck by a car. Which I had to find out from Miss Ealand. I could have killed you." Alec grumbled, looking out the window at the Annapolis streets which whizzed by.

"Alec, I've told you before. Why would I force the pain of my decision on you? I gambled, I lost. I wanted only to spare you grief, instead I live with the knowledge that I injured you. You were simply being loyal and doing your duty by diverting that transporter. Let me do mine."

"Ed, that Scully woman loved you. Really loved you. You could have a real future with her without abandoning your duty. We both know marrying Mary Rutland was a huge mistake, but you seemed so happy."

"No more unpleasant memories and no more arguments, Alec. My shoulder aches like hell, and I'm tired and I-"

"Look ridiculous in those cheap clothes you bought from the local Goodwill thrift store?" Alec suggested jokingly, not wanting to hurt his friend further.

Commander Edward Straker flashed a thin crescent of a smile.

"I would have thought you'd say I looked like a civilian. Like a lowly delivery boy, although I'm no boy anymore. I'm beginning to doubt I ever was one, especially in this cold." The Commander winced and rubbed his shoulder.

"Middle age is no death sentence, Commander. A lifetime of loneliness is." Alec said seriously.

"Alec, when have I ever settled for middle anything?"

"Ed, it isn't like the pair are a security threat, she's FBI."

"Is she? I hadn't noticed. "

"You? Not notice anything? Like I've heard you say, tell me another one. For heaven's sake take off that awful cap. Seeing you in those clothes gives me a bigger headache than you do. Why not simply come out and tell her you love her?"

" After the amnesia treatment we gave to both of them? Right. Complicate both our lives even more. Besides, you know perfectly well she and Mulder-"

"Are eternally suited for one another? Bah. I read Jackson's profile and our surveillance report on them same as you did. He takes her too much for granted." Alec insisted.

"I don't see any possibility of any man fortunate enough to work with that woman ever taking her for granted. If that's really the case then maybe-" Ed sounded wistful for a moment.

Alec took it as a positive sign.

"Then you will turn this car back and sweep her into your arms where she belongs?"

"Alec, you've been watching too many of the studio soap operas we put out. You know the ones. Where the gorgeous leading lady splits the atom, cures cancer, gets her millionaire, breaks horses, manages a multi-national company and brings about world peace. All without mussing up her pancake makeup."

"Ed Straker, stop joking and changing the subject!"

"Alec?"

"Let me guess. Shut up?

"Well, that too yes, yes. I was actually going to say you were absolutely right." Ed said thoughtfully. The commander clamped his lips together into a slash to smother his feelings. Alec had seen his closest friend do that far too many times before.

"Ed, then come on, be reasonable and forget what you consider to be your duty for once and turn the damn car-"

"Right about this cap, that is. Here. My present to you. It doesn't suit a man of my advanced age at all."

Ed took it off, and without taking his eyes off the road, he plopped it on Alec's head.

Alec muttered as many swear words as he could, and being an ex combat pilot, Ed mused with some amusement, Alec knew many of them. In various languages, too.

Alec thought my loneliness was a death sentence. Well, Dana, I can only hope death arrives to claim me swiftly, because strangely I find it difficult to continue to breathe without you. However unprofessional and uncharacteristic of me that may seem, I find it to be the truth.

Buried Beneath Blooms

Annapolis, Maryland

several months later

Dr. Dana Scully's apartment

Her doorbell rang.

Federal Agent Fox Mulder had been intently examining a document while his partner Dana Scully had been carefully going over some grainy photographs with an magnifying glass. She accomplished this with the same enthusiasm she showed for infomercials on television when sleep eluded her. Which lately was often. Too often, she thought.

"You expecting somebody, Scully?"

"In a manner of speaking, yes." Scully's confirmation hadn't been offered freely.

Mulder looked at her in bafflement as she leapt up to go and answer it. He'd seen dogs run for their master's thrown ball with the same speed and if Scully actually was a dog, she'd be wagging her tail. His partner had seemed to be in a rising state of anxiety about something for the past few weeks and disinterested in her job. She'd dropped the photographs in her urgency to get to her door and they fluttered to the floor.

He heard the door open then shut. He had gotten up to see what was going on, but she interrupted him by coming into the room.

"It's nothing, Mulder."

She said it in the same way she often said shut up Mulder, he thought. It won't be that easy, Scully.

"So it wasn't the Avon lady? Damn, and me completely out of eyeshadow. Nothing, huh? There's a gold box in your hand. Not that I'd even ask about it. I respect your privacy too much, Scully. So I'm asking now. Sue me. Roses?"

Dana Scully had been tearing the box open as if her life depended on it.

"How did you know?" she exclaimed.

He blinked.

"Maybe they didn't teach you these things at the University of Maryland but flowers generally have a scent. Roses?"

"Very funny, Mulder. Oh my God" Scully shut the box closed.

"What?"

"I said it was nothing!"

Scully was shaking. As a matter of fact, since they'd gone to England to investigate a case which had ended without any firm evidence, she'd been as jumpy as bubbles in boiling water.

"I'm not letting this one go, Scully. Let me help you. Are you in some kind of trouble?"

She sighed.

Yes, Mulder and I don't understand why.

"No."she lied expertly. The problem was he was the expert. On her.

"Now tell me the truth. Remember me, your partner, the truth is out there guy?"

"Mulder, every month since our trip to England, I've been receiving this same gold box, with these same long stemmed white roses in it. There's never a card, no address, no indication whatsoever of where the flowers come from. Then they stopped. They just stopped. No explanation at all. I confess I had been looking forward to them coming. Three months went by and nothing."

"Scully, I don't have to lecture you about the psychological profile of a person doing something like this, do I? Some nut case develops an obsession with you and you decided not to confide in me?"

"Mulder, is it so difficult to believe that I could simply have a secret admirer? Besides, I did take the box, wrapping and roses to the labs at Quantico. The technicians said everything was completely clean. They said that was unheard of. It was like the sender or senders had taken the finest pains to make sure that I never discovered their identity. The roses were roses. The box was a box. There was nothing to harm me. So the only obsessive person here is me. Mulder, I found out that white roses have different meanings. They're often used at weddings to signify fidelity and promise. They can mean a secret promise between the giver and the recipient. They mean purity, innocence and humility. A chaste love from the soul, not the body."

"Scully, let me cut through all the romantic crap florists say at this time of year to push sales and remind you if this chaste subject of yours managed to hide everything so well, it means they more than likely are professional and familiar with the art of concealment, and concealment begins with con and that spells trouble."

"Mulder, does everything in the world need to be a X file?"

"Will you listen to me, Scully? If this nutcase okay, unknown person felt so passionately and purely about you, why not come out and tell you? Why conceal their identity so elaborately?"

"Maybe it's somebody that genuinely needs to conceal who they are, Mulder. We've worked with a lot of intelligence organizations, heads of state, law enforcement agencies-maybe even someone we put in prison-"

"Oh come on, Scully. That kind of extreme cover-up of their origin isn't possible in prison, and you know that perfectly well. It's like you want to come up with a perfectly sane excuse for this lunatic. Maybe it's just some clever guy with an itch for you he can't scratch because he has a wife and seven kids and a reputation to protect. Some creepy politician. Your average demented stalker, and romance has nothing to do with it."

"Mulder, maybe he is simply shy."

"So why does this innocent shy admirer of yours suddenly stop what he's been doing? That doesn't make any sense. Cupid ran out of arrows? How do you explain that?"

"I don't know."

"Look, give everything to me. I'll bet my pals the Lone Gunmen can find out what even our FBI labs couldn't."

"Yes, Mulder, I know, their Kung-Fu is the best and Quantico's trace evidence technicians are raw imbeciles in your esteemed opinion but this is my case now. I'll handle it."

"Scully, you're not seeing the danger in this clearly enough and you've been jumpy for months now. I'm worried about you, that's all."

" Mulder, are you suggesting I don't know what I'm doing? Take your documents and photographs and go work on your precious monster sighting case. I'm working this one alone."

"Scully, I depend on you to be my sieve and find the bling in the bullshit when I get too worked up, but you're acting irrationally over this. You're too emotionally involved. I almost expect you to break out in a couple of lyrics of 'You don't bring me flowers anymore."

"Mulder, I presume you know what a door is? Use it."

"Something startled you a few minutes ago. You exclaimed 'Oh my God."

"Mulder, I carry a pistol and I'm a expert shot plus I run faster than you do. Even in high heels."

"Right. Have it your way, wonder woman. You know I'm here for you if you run into trouble." He gathered up the photographs and police report and put them back in their file folder.

"Oh and Mulder, I'm warning you, don't even think about following me."

She slammed the door shut. She took a deep breath, got a pair of latex gloves from a desk drawer, snapped them on and opened the box again, searching desperately for what was inside.

She had seen something all right. The first real clue she'd gotten. She lifted it up.

A blank index card had been buried beneath the white blooms. With four words scrawled in an angular handwriting. Now that she could see them clearly, they appeared to have been put there in black ink with a fountain pen.

I NEED YOU DANA

"Oh my God." Scully whispered. "Oh my God." she repeated.

Some inner instinct, hunch, training, feminine intuition, call it what you will, told her the index card would be as pristine as the roses, not marred by fingerprints.

Why do I feel as if I know exactly who you are and you're slipping away from me? Why?

She clung compulsively to the card as if it was a dying lover's hand.

Story will be continued