Character: Dana Scully
Fandom: The X-files
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 1149
Prompt: Janine Melnitz: I've quit better jobs than this. Wk 41 (From scifi_muses on LiveJournal)
Setting: Second Season Episode: "The Host"
AN: Some borrowed dialogue.
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When she heard about the blow up, she feared the worst.
Rumors had a tendency of flying at the speed of light in the FBI, and she happened to be in the Hoover Building, delivering a forensic report, when she'd heard about Mulder's blow up in Skinner's office. It perhaps would have never left the four walls of the Assistant Director's office, had it not been witnessed by one of Skinner's investigative teams who had wasted no time in sharing the latest exploits of the unhinged Agent Mulder. As people chuckled and shook their heads, Scully had wisely kept her mouth shut, and decided to hunt down her erstwhile, former partner to see just how badly his ego was bruised by the experience.
It wasn't hard to find him. Mulder in snits liked to run or walk, and as he was not in his running clothes; she surmised he was walking somewhere. The National Mall was a favorite spot of his, wide open, relatively quiet at night, and a place where he could sit and brood in peace with relatively few interruptions. She found him beneath the lights of the Washington Monument, staring up at the tall obelisk of white marble; it's red lights blinking at the top, like pulsating eyes watching over the District of Columbia. She wondered briefly, fancifully, what it saw up there, what sort of secrets and lies fell under its shadow everyday?
Mulder's back was too her as she walked up, he was so lost in thought he didn't even hear her steps behind him. "Is this seat taken," she asked, catching his attention, and pointing towards the empty half of the park bench beside where he sat.
"No," he drawled, his green eyes dark and inscrutable as he lazily shrugged. "But I should warn you, I'm experiencing violent impulses."
"Well, I'm armed," she patted the side where her firearm rested. "So I'll take my chances." She settled easily beside him, wrapping her trench coat around her slight frame to ward off the thick onset of dew in the early-summer evening. "I hear you really endeared yourself to Assistant Director Skinner today." She gently tried to pry open the touchy subject, glancing ruefully sideways at Mulder who grimaced painfully.
"You know, sometimes, it just gets really hard to smile through it when they ask you to bend down and grab your ankles, you know?" He glared moodily at the Washington Monument, as it stood tall and pale against the black, night sky.
"It's not exactly as if you've ever tried to fit into the program," she pointed out. Mulder had relished his role of the misunderstood outsider, the cellar dweller who was always fighting against the system that was the FBI. From the moment she had met him he had tried to cultivate the image of the rebel, being above the rules, beyond them. Now when he was being forced to live with them, he yelled as if the FBI were the ones who had pushed him to it from the start. In his current mood, she reasoned, he probably wasn't willing to hear that sort of criticism.
"No," Mulder murmured thoughtfully, "No, I've been think a lot about that lately. I've been thinking about leaving."
"The Bureau?" Not this again, she sighed mentally. Hadn't she already just convinced him not to do this? Her head ached at having this repeated argument with him.
"What would you do," she tried to reason with him.
"Pursue my work in the paranormal somehow," he replied mulishly.
With what resources, she wanted to retort. "You could request a transfer to Quantico. Come back to the Behavioral Science Unit." At least they would be closer, she thought, they could join forces behind the scenes again, work much more easily together than they did now, separated on opposite sides of the city.
Mulder stood up in agitation, sighing in aggravation as he turned on her. "They don't want us working together, Scully." He chewed his lip fretfully, "And right now, that's the only reason I can think of to stay."
At least he appreciated the efforts she went for him, she thought, trying to find some silver lining in all of this to drag him out of the black hole he was determined to dig for himself. "What about this case you're working on?" At least, she reasoned, it was a real field case, rather than being stuck behind a desk listening to endless hours of tape.
"It's a zero," he sighed in frustration. "They transferred it to our forensics lab. Look," his green eyes met hers pointedly. "Scully, I know what you're trying to do?"
"Maybe I can request to do the autopsy," she ignored him.
"It's an exercise," Mulder insisted. "Skinner is just rubbing my nose in this one. There's nothing to it."
Mulder was in full on sulk, she realized. He so badly wanted to pout, he was missing the obvious, "There's a dead body, isn't there?"
"Yeah, so," he began, but she held up her hands to stop his protests.
"You are an investigator, Mulder, not an over-glorified eavesdropper. There is a dead body, Sherlock Holmes, and you are ignoring it for your own, personal, egotistical snit."
Mulder stared at her, open-mouthed. "It's not a snit," he replied defensively.
"It is one. You are pissed because Skinner dared to put you on a murder case because you believe it's below your intelligence and your skill," she shrugged placidly.
"Scully, it's a John Doe in a sewer drain in Newark," Mulder fairly yelled, causing several nighttime passers by to pause and stare at them quizzically. "It's not even an FBI matter, Newark PD just have their heads up their asses and don't know what to do with it."
"Think about it, Mulder…its Newark, New Jersey, hardly Mayberry, USA. And their police department, who perhaps deal with hundreds of John Does in the sewer every year, call the FBI in particular to look at the case because they are confused by it."
Mulder's only reaction was to scowl darkly at her.
"So, if they don't know what to do with it…perhaps we should start looking into the dead body to see why it is they are so confused, don't you think?"
Mulder chewed his tongue silently at her speculative stare.
"Mulder, I know it isn't a straight up, stranger-than-hell X-file, with all of the bells and whistles that you like. There are no alien abductions, no ghostly phenomenon, and it looks about as boring as watching paint dry. But it is still a puzzle, one that someone can't explain. Like it or not, part of what drew us both to the FBI is the fact that we are drawn to puzzles. And this is one I think my talents as a scientist can be effective on." She cocked her head, smiling sweetly at him, despite his dour expression. "Let me have the body. I'll poke at it, and I'll see if there is anything to it. And if it turns out to be nothing more than a homeless man who died of some sort of horrible disease that stewed in the cesspool of Newark's sewer system, I will acquiesce to the fact that you were right."
Mulder didn't look in the least bit swayed. "And if I'm right, then what?"
"Then," she threw her hands up in the air. Then what, indeed? "Then I'll accept the fact that the FBI is indeed jerking you around, and perhaps its best you quit before you do bodily harm to Skinner and have your ass tossed in jail for it."
"You wouldn't fight me leaving?" She couldn't tell if he sounded hurt by that or not.
"Not if it was what you wanted," she replied. It would bother her like hell, she realized, especially given that she would no longer be asked or relied upon as much for the work he did. She'd become nothing more than Mulder's vague contact in the FBI, in touch with him from time to time whenever he had a body to investigate or a random bit of scientific minutia he needed more information on. She'd become a walking, talking medical reference library, nothing more.
"And what if you do find something?" There was the tiniest, vague hint of a glimmer in Mulder's eyes, one that didn't quite reach his still pouting expression.
"Then you'll have to admit that there is more to what Skinner is up to than you and your pompous profiling skills have come up with, and that you have a real murder case on your hands."
"What if it's an X-file," he murmured softly, as if afraid that the passers by might hear.
"Maybe that's why he gave it to you in the first place," Scully replied simply. "But we won't know till I get a chance to look at that body."
"All right," Mulder nodded, acquiescing quietly. "I think it's crap, Scully, but if you think you'll find something."
"I don't know if I'll find anything, Mulder. But there is a dead man who has as much right of having his murder solved as anyone. And even if it isn't an X-file, at least you and I have done something good for someone else. And really, in the end, isn't that the important part?"
Mulder look visibly stung for the briefest of moments. "Yeah, I suppose it is."
"Good," she rose from the bench, wandering over to where he stood, looping and arm around one of his. "Seriously, Mulder, can't you control your temper just a little?"
He at least looked a bit discomforted. "I seem to excel at making an ass of myself where authority is concerned."
"Perhaps you should seeking counseling for that," she tugged at his arm gently as she led him off the Mall. He followed, tucking his hands in his pockets, and pinning Scully's arm to his side.
"I would, but I tend to run into authority issues with my own therapist. Makes it a hell of a lot more difficult."
"Why can't you just be a normal basket case, Mulder, you know, the sort they give medication to and send on their merry way."
"You see, then you get to that all important word, 'normal'. What does it mean to be 'normal'?"
"Perhaps you should have majored in philosophy instead of psychology," she teased.
"Can't study psychology if you don't have anything wrong with your head, Scully, first rule of psychologists."
"It takes one to know one?"
"We nut cases can spot each other a mile away. It's our talent." He finally grinned cheekily beside her.
"Mulder, what in the hell am I going to do with you?"
"I don't know, Scully. But in my professional opinion, you're as big of a whack job sticking it out and helping me as I am chasing little green men with a gun and a flashlight."
"Maybe I am, Mulder…maybe I am."