Character: Dana Scully
Fandom: The X-files
Rating: PG
Word Count: 1527
Prompt: I have a bad feeling about this-wk 2 (From scifi_muses on LiveJournal)
Setting: Season One Episode: "Ghost in the Machine"
AN: I don't own them. And some of the dialogue is not mine, but you can figure out which parts aren't, (borrowing from the scene).
The moment she heard about Jerry Lamana, she prepared for the worst.
Mulder, as she was learning, was an interesting study in human emotions. He was a man who easily walled himself off from the rest of the world with scathing humor and indifferent intellect. His flippant treatment of everyone from superiors to suspects had caused no end of grief for those within the FBI concerned with internal affairs, and she often wondered if he deliberately fostered his asshole, spooky persona to just deter those he would rather not have to deal with…or who he felt would not understand or appreciate his work.
But when one wasn't looking too closely, Mulder was very surprising. She had only known him hours, really, when he'd poured his heart out to her about perhaps the most painful subject in his life. Over their months of working together she had learned that Mulder was more than the angry malcontent, hidden in the basement to keep him from the more respectable areas of government. He was brilliantly insightful, obsessed with the truth, but above all he valued those who showed they valued him. Those people were few in Mulder's life.
And he had just lost one of them.
Even if Jerry had simply called Mulder onto the case because he desperately needed a win, was begging to be rescued from the embarrassment of Atlanta, Mulder had thought highly enough of him to not call him out for it. Scully had thought, and still did, that Mulder had gone easy on Jerry's lifting of his profile, and perhaps that stemmed from Mulder's desire to please, his fear of losing one of those few people he had let into his life.
Now Mulder's profile had taken that person away from him forever. And she had a feeling the weight of that on someone who already seemed to have a rather large guilt complex might lead him to doing something stupid.
Within the office she could hear the scrambling of video in reverse, as her slim fingers edged around the knob, and she let herself in. Unsurprisingly, Mulder hunched over a video, watching an elevator plunging down, down, and Jerry Lamana on it, riding to his death.
She wondered how many times so far he had watched that footage.
"I heard about Jerry." Her voice sounded startling against the silence in the room, broken only by the whirring of the VCR. "I'm sorry."
"I don't think Wilczek did it," Mulder didn't turn to look at her, but she could sense that fevered pitch, the tension created as Mulder's mind spun and danced in its own free-for-all.
"What," she managed stupidly, glancing from the video to Mulder, wondering if he had seen something on the video that others had missed.
"It doesn't make sense. Why would he go back to Euresko?"
The explanation seemed obvious to her. "To destroy evidence, to cover his tracks."
"If you were going to destroy evidence, would you pose for the cameras?" He made it sound so logical. Perhaps in his mind it was.
He rewound the tape, but she stopped it, turning off the television, and kneeling beside him. His eyes avoided hers, but she could still see the anger and the hurt. Despite the calm façade he threw up to her now, she knew he was in pain. And Mulder's solution for the loss of those he was close to was to find explanations for why it happened, and to bring the truth of the matter to the light.
It was what he was doing for Samantha. And she had a feeling that's what he was doing for Jerry as well.
"Mulder," her fingers moved to rest on his arm. He didn't move it from under her fingertips. "You've been through a lot. More than I think you realize."
Or perhaps he did. He was the psychologist after all. He set his jaw stubbornly, his mouth pulling in petulant lines.
"I think Wilczek is smarter than this." He turned the tape back on again, focusing again on Jerry Lamana helplessly clinging to the bars of the elevator.
He was convinced of his certainty. It left a cold feeling in her stomach, not just because of what he might do, but because she would have to be the one to make him see reason. She inhaled slowly, wondering how to even put it. "He signed a confession an hour ago," she murmured softly. "How much proof do you need?"
"Wilczek didn't do it, Scully." He paused the tape. "He's hiding something, covering up for someone."
"For who," she blinked up at him. "Mulder, there was no one else there to do it, and the security guard noticed how agitated Wilczek was when he came in."
"I think Wilczek might have created something he can't stop. Something that he tried to stop, but Jerry was at the wrong place at the wrong time," he paused the tape as he leaped out of his chair, pacing around his desk to the door, and back. Scully watched him as she raised herself, feeling suddenly very frightened by the turn of Mulder's mood.
"Listen to yourself," she urged, following him as he roamed, caged in his own circle of thoughts. "Mulder, Wilczek has admitted to murdering Jerry, what reason does he possible have for making something like that up?"
"I don't know for certain, but I bet if I get a warrant to search his house I can come up with it," he grabbed for the phone, and had the receiver nearly up to his ear, as Scully shot across the desk, pressing down the receiver button, cutting the line off.
"Mulder," she didn't back down from his mutinous glare. "Listen to yourself. You are making up fantasy stories to explain a horrible accident. It won't bring Jerry back."
"I'm well aware Jerry isn't coming back, Scully, but I'm not going to let an innocent man frame himself for Jerry's death without knowing who or what he's protecting."
He was determined; he had the sort of look that said he would do this with or without her help. "Mulder, don't you see? You are doing the same thing with Jerry's death that you did with Samantha's disappearance."
The mere mention of his sister's name caused Mulder to react, rolling his eyes and turning from her, both hands and phone receiver to his hips as he swung back on her. "This has nothing to do with my sister. My sister isn't dead."
"No." She admitted that. No one knew what had happened to Samantha Mulder. "She isn't dead…that we know of." The scientist in her was always careful to quantify this." "But you feel just as guilty about her disappearance as you do about Jerry's death."
If she had been trying to hit him, she didn't think he could look more stunned, or more hurt.
"Mulder, Jerry came to you, but it was his case. He had no way of knowing what would happen, neither did you."
"This isn't what this is about," he mumbled in agitation.
"Yes it is, Mulder," she insisted.
"No, it's not," he shouted, blazing, before catching himself as she stared back at him, stunned finally into a hesitant silence. As if realizing what he had just done, he pulled away, physically backing away from her and the desk, and gesturing with his free hand to his office door.
"Look, if you aren't with me on this case, then I'm sure there are other things you could be doing. I'd like to place a phone call now." He shut down, closed himself off. His entire manner became distant and cold.
It cut her worse than if he had personally insulted her, not just a physical tightening as her stomach pulled in on itself, her heart rate increasing with her emotional state. Never before had she been summarily dismissed for disagreeing with him. Even at his most stubborn, Mulder had at least given her enough respect to disagree with dignity. But never had he ever completely cut her off, thrown her out.
"Yeah...I have some paperwork to complete." In response, she felt herself shut down, her expression become stony, her shoulder pushed back, and the stiff upper lip of a good, naval officer's daughter. Don't ever let them see you hurt.
He must have realized just how much his words had wounded her. His stormy expression softened somewhat as she moved past him. "Scully, I..."
She stopped in front of him, as he towered over her. He was still infuriated, but was he sure what or who he was angry with? "It's all right. Tell me what you find, OK."
She moved on out of the office, and was into the elevator before she let the facade drop, and allowed herself a moment for her hurt to leak through the armor. Her eyes misted, her nose tingled, but she quickly sniffed against both, taking a deep breath as the elevator doors sprang open.
"Leave Mulder to his demons, Dana," she whispered to herself. God knows they were probably best left to him anyway.