Character: Dana Scully
Fandom: The X-files
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 2415
Prompt: Picture of the duck looking at the swan-wk 41
Setting: Second Season Episode: "Sleepless"
AN: Some borrowed dialogue
Scully didn't want to be impressed by Mulder's new partner. She wanted to dislike him intensely, to snub him as being too green, to raw, unable to handle the rigors of the work that Mulder would demand out of a partner. It didn't matter to her if it were Skinner's doing, or FBI protocol, she had been assigned to Mulder first, she had put her hard work and scientific skill into getting him this far. No wet-behind-the-ears, ladder climber had willingly gone with Mulder into the wilds of the Oregon forest, chasing after strange lights. They hadn't tried to keep his life's blood from draining on a warehouse floor in North Carolina, trying to hold him together long enough for paramedics to arrive. They hadn't stood by his side when a liver-eating mutant had tried to frame him for a crime he didn't commit, or flown down to Puerto Rico in what could have been a career-ending move just to bring him home before others could get to him and destroy him.
Scully had done those things. Why was it that she was forced to cut up bodies, while some snot-nosed child was hunting down clues for whoever had killed Saul Grissom? More precisely, she realized as she prodded Dr. Grissom's stomach in the shiny, hanging, brushed steel weight scale, how it was he looked as if he had died from burning on the inside, but not on the outside. She frowned at the grayish organ, covered in blood, trying to piece together some semblance of a hypothesis and finding herself at a total loss.
Perhaps this was why Skinner had sent this kid to work with Mulder, Scully couldn't see outside of the box enough. She sighed heavily, as behind her the doors to the lab opened in a rush of air and all-too-familiar leather-soled feet.
"Spleen or pancreas," she could hear Mulder's ever-present sunflower seeds cracking in his teeth as he approached her work table, mildly disgusted by seeing the late Dr. Grissom cut open, his organs carefully splayed open and labeled. Mulder never had a strong stomach for dissection, but he always tried to put a brave face on it, even if he did a poor job of hiding it.
"Stomach," Scully corrected him with a smile. "I was just about to start it." Her eyes fell on the other man with Mulder. His new partner, she realized, as she studied him warily.
"This is Alex Krycek," Mulder shrugged; look exceedingly uncomfortable, though for what reason, Scully couldn't tell yet. She wasn't sure if it was because he didn't trust the newbie, or because he didn't trust Scully with him. "We're, uh…working the case together."
Notice, Scully thought, that Mulder refused to say the word "partner". Something about that thawed her ever so slightly. She glanced the new recruit up and down. He certainly was everything the FBI came to expect from their agents, and to be honest he wasn't exactly hard to stare at if she admitted it. Shorter than Mulder by a hair, he was the athletic, swaggering, confident type, with the sort of all-American smile that some women seemed to want to fall over. Certainly he was attractive, from the top of his perfectly styled dark hair, to the tips of his neatly polished shoes. Even his tie matched his suit, something Mulder rarely, if ever managed. His handsome face lit up with a friendly smile as Mulder introduced him. Scully might have been instantly drawn to Alex Krycek, if he wasn't the one who was usurping his way into their work.
"Good to meet you," she offered numbly, as he cheerfully held his hand out.
"You too," he eagerly replied, as she walked right past his proffered fingers. It wasn't personal, she tried to reason, and she had just been up to her elbows in Doctor Grissom, literally. And she doubted the newbie would want a handful of someone else's blood and gastric juices by way of greeting.
Though, she had to admit it would be amusing to see his face if she had taken his hand.
She moved immediately to the body, laying on it's back on the table. When Dr. Grissom had arrived hours before, she had been shocked to see the man's body still stiffened in rigor mortis, until she had actually opened him up to see what was going on. "Notice the pugilistic attitude of the corpse?"
Behind her Krycek coughed loudly. Perhaps dead bodies made the kid squeamish, she wondered with slightly malicious amusement.
"This condition generally occurs several hours after death. It's caused by a coagulation of muscle proteins when the body is exposed to extremely high temperatures." She knew Mulder would like that answer. As she expected, he pounced on this information immediately.
"Like fire," he asked, frowning as he studied the upturned arms of Grissom, still trying to shield his face, even hours after death.
"This degree of limb flexion is observed exclusively in burn-related victims."
"But there was no fire," Krycek finally offered, frowning between herself and Mulder as if he was the only one who understood that obvious fact.
Look who is finally catching on Scully mentally snorted. She ignored him as she continued. "And no epidermal burns to indicate as much but when I opened up the skull, I found external hemorrhages, which can only be caused by intense heat. Some how, this man suffered all of the secondary, but none of the primary physiological signs of being in a fire."
Mulder nodded, mentally noting her words, his thoughts beginning that all-too familiar dizzying dance of his as it spun around the facts and tried to build the most likely hypothesis. "Any theories?"
There, she admitted, he had her stumped. "I couldn't even begin to explain what could have caused this. It's almost as if…" She paused, glancing sideways at the eager Krycek who stood watching her with puzzled disbelief.
"What," Mulder prodded, though she suspected he knew what her answer before she said it.
"It's almost as if his body believed that it was burning," she finally admitted hesitantly, shrugging as she leaned against the examination table. "I can't tell you how or why. But for whatever reason, Grissom's body believed that there was a fire in there."
"Grissom insisted on it during his 911 call," Mulder stared thoughtfully at the victim's body.
"Perhaps, for whatever reason, Grissom was able to believe it, despite all of the physical evidence." She racked her mind for possibilities to explain such a phenomenon.
"Could it be something like post-hypnotic suggestion," Krycek offered in the momentary silence, clearly wanting to offer something to the conversation. Scully frowned. It was certainly a Mulder sort of solution, and she could see him consider it as he weighed his options.
"I think we can perhaps find something a bit more scientific than hypnosis and the Manchurian Candidate," Scully replied perhaps a bit more coldly than was absolutely necessary. "Dr. Grissom was a sleep doctor, a neurologist, correct?"
"Yeah, he specialized in sleep disorders," Mulder nodded pensively.
"Perhaps his work was getting the better of him," Scully offered. "It's not unheard of sometimes for doctors who work closely with patients to start suffering some of the very same symptoms that they are treating on a daily basis. Perhaps he himself had been suffering form sleep disorders, insomnia, any one of those conditions can lead to a certain level of increased mental disturbance. Hallucinations, paranoia, night terrors, perhaps he was so caught up in his own dream world his brain didn't even realize that it wasn't real."
"Dr. Scully, you are going with the Freddy Kruger murder theory here, I like it," Mulder teased playfully. Beside him Krycek chuckled at the quip, until Scully's glare and Mulder's confused frown quieted him. Immediately her hackles slammed up.
"It's just one theory, Mulder, I'm sure you have others. Perhaps Agent Krycek might have some useful insight I might have missed." She raised cool eyebrows at the other man who suddenly reddened and looked mildly abashed for laughing at her.
"Errr…well," he swallowed nervously, stammering as he stared at the body. "Maybe he was a drug overdose of some kind? He was a doctor after all."
Scully shook her head hard in the negative, slipping off one blood covered, rubber glove and reaching behind her for the chart she had been recording information on. "His blood work came back negative for most sorts of drugs save for acetemetaphin and traces of alcohol in his blood stream. Given that a glass of fine, single-malt whiskey was found in his room, and he fact that he suffered from a mild case of arthritis in his knees, he probably was using both to dull the pain."
Krycek looked properly chastened. His face fell as he nodded and turned, and suddenly became very engrossed in the jars of chemicals and cleaning supplies on the counter behind him. She watched him wander off, feeling a tad triumphant in her set down, but her victory diminished slightly as Mulder eyed her with surprised curiosity.
She couldn't ever hide anything from him; she had long known that about Mulder. As a criminal profiler he was as perceptive as they came, and having worked so closely with the man for the last year he could almost read her mind without her saying a word. And she knew what he could read there right then, and she wasn't exactly proud of it.
"Hey, Krycek, can I have a moment with Scully, please?" He asked his younger partner not in an unkind way. Krycek shrugged and nodded, looking relieved to be away from Scully and Grissom's dead body.
"Sure, I'll be just outside," he nervously pointed in the direction of the hallway, as he turned quickly in his perfectly tailored suit and nearly stumbled out of the door. Scully would have laughed as he did it, if Mulder wasn't giving her that damned, reprimanding look.
When did the table's get turned in this one, she thought irritably, as Mulder crossed his arms and leaned against the far counter, looking for all the world how she imagined she did when she was reprimanding Mulder.
"What," she tried to murmur nonchalantly, nervously tugging at the other glove on her hand, still covered in bodily fluids.
"You have such lovely green eyes, Scully," his mouth twitched in mild amusement.
She knew where he was going with this, and she didn't find it funny. "Mulder, you know my eyes are blue." She turned from him as she moved towards the sink in the corner, anything to keep her occupied and not having to face him and the fact that he probably was right…she was showing a flash of green today.
"Funny, Scully, for a moment there you could have fooled me. Why are you giving the kid such a hard time."
She snorted. "Kid, Mulder, he looks like he just stepped out of a GQ photo shoot and found himself accidentally with a gun and a badge. What do you know about this Krycek anyway?"
"What did I know about you when you were assigned to work with me?"
"A lot more than you do about him, or should I point out you quoted by own senior thesis to me the moment I walked into your office."
"Touché," Mulder agreed, as he pushed himself off the counter and slowly sauntered to the sink where she was scrubbing her hands hard with anti-bacterial soap. "I told you Krycek assigned himself on this case. And frankly I'm no happier about it than you are. Hell, I tried to lose him here while I went up to New York. Son-of-a-bitch found me at Grissom's sleep clinic. Kid must be part hound or something."
"How did he track you down," Scully frowned up at him in surprise.
"God knows. Maybe he's a better investigator than either you or I are giving him credit for." Mulder glanced back towards the doors where Krycek had stumbled out. "The thing is, Scully, I could use the help. And the kid's eager, and he doesn't run for the hills once I start spouting off one of my more elaborate theories. That's a rare commodity amongst new recruits."
"True," Scully admitted sullenly. "I didn't run for the hills."
"But you did say I was crazy," Mulder pointed out with a grin.
Standing in the rain of Bellefleur, she remembered. "Yes, I did say you were crazy."
"Anyway, we'll see how this goes. And face it, Scully, we could use all of the help we can get. Right now I'm persona non grata in the Bureau. And they only let you near my cases and me because your work is useful and productive. I need someone who isn't as much in the doghouse as I am to get any leverage around here. And Krycek might just be that person."
"All right," she sighed. "So you want me to play nice with him?"
"Well, at least don't beat him up too bad. Though I have to admit the blood work was a really nice smack down." His eyes lit up, laughing at her. "Remind me never to get on your bad side."
"Who says you haven't been there already," she snorted, rinsing her hands finally. Mulder pulled out several paper towels from a dispenser by the sink and offered them to her, as she patted her arms dry.
"I've got to get back out to the boy-wonder outside," Mulder sighed regretfully, and for a moment he looked disheartened by the idea, as if he too missed this familiar banter, this comfortable companionship between the two of them as they worked on cases like this together. "I'll keep you posted on what we find, OK?"
"Right," she nodded, glancing at Grissom. "I'll try to have a report to you on the doctor tomorrow."
"Thanks," he smiled gratefully, reaching across to squeeze her shoulder under her thin, medical scrubs. She watched him go wistfully, as he turned from her towards the door, and out to where Krycek no doubt waited nervously.
"Always out having all of the fun, Mulder," she sighed longingly, looking back at the mess that was Grissom's corpse. "While I'm left here putting together all of the pieces."