Character: Dana Scully
Fandom: The X-files
Rating: PG
Word Count: 1414
Prompt: Save some face, you know you've only got one....Smile Like You Mean It-Wk 26 (From scifi_muses on LiveJournal)
Setting: Season One Episode: "Fallen Angel"
AN: I don't own them.
She had never had to deal with Section Chief McGrath before, and was a bit surprised by his abrupt call to her first thing that morning, with the direct orders to come straight to his office. Scully glanced across to the still empty desk of Fox Mulder, and had a sad, sinking feeling she knew what this was about.
McGrath's office was very little different than Section Chief Blevins, save in the amount and type of things in it…and the man himself, of course. Unlike the querulous Blevins, McGrath struck her as taciturn, a military man in his bearing, harsh, direct, and used to having his orders followed…implicitly. This was going to be ugly, she quickly realized, especially when he shot her the sort of murderous glare that most likely sent lesser agents fleeing for the hills.
"Agent Scully, sit," he barked, gesturing to one of the no-nonsense desk chairs in front of him. As she settled down at delicately as possible, her eyes flew to his desk nameplate, "Victor McGrath, Anti-terrorism."
What had Mulder gotten into, she quietly wondered, keeping her composure cool and non-descript in the face of McGrath's irritation. He worked his jaw silently at her for several moments, leaning back in his chair, watching with calculation, as if trying to glean whatever information he desire from her bearing. She didn't flinch.
"Have you seen, heard, or spoken to Agent Mulder at all in the past forty-eight hours?" He fired the question off like an order, demanding her reply.
"No sir," she replied simply. "I left Agent Mulder here in the office on Friday evening, and have not spoken to him once since then." Which was mostly true, she reasoned. He had called late on Friday with a request to feed his goldfish as something had come up for him. She hadn't returned the call, and had assumed he was going out of town for personal business.
"So you have no knowledge of his activities since you last spoke to him then?" McGrath's voice dripped with doubt. Scully felt the urge to shoot off a question about how often he spoke to co-workers on the weekends, but felt that indulging herself in one of Mulder's childish tactics was perhaps not the best course of action. Especially since she wasn't sure just what a Section Chief other than her own wanted to call his ass on the carpet for.
""No sir, I assumed that when he didn't appear for work this morning he was out for personal reasons."
"And you wouldn't know those reasons as all, Agent Scully?"
"Being by their nature personal, sir, I can't say that Agent Mulder would necessarily confide them in me." She was annoyed by his skepticism, but refused to give up the high ground. "May I ask, sir, what is this about?"
McGrath's jaw worked in irritation again in his rock-hard face, a vein bulging off and on from his jaw to his closely clipped, silver gray hair. He tapped one finger on the side of a beak-like nose, bird-bright eyes peering into her for the briefest of seconds, before he suddenly pounced on a file at the edge of his desk, and fairly flung it her direction.
"Your partner has compromised a recovery mission of a terrorist aircraft shot down over Wisconsin two days ago." Scully opened the file to see the smoking, twisted mess of metal and trees, with white-hooded hazmat crews crawling all over it. "It was a Libyan made fighter, armed with a nuclear warhead."
"Over US airspace," Scully's eyes flew to his, stunned. "Do you know its target?"
"That, Agent Scully, is classified," he snapped; jaw turning rock hard, vein nearly bursting through his temple. "I'll be damned if I know how Mulder even found out about it. You two are assigned to the X-files, what in the hell is he sticking his nose around a classified mission for?" McGrath was fairly bellowing by now, and Scully had to admit to herself that there was only one reason possible she could think of.
But she wasn't about to admit to McGrath that it was most likely Mulder's suspicion that it had anything to do with extra-terrestrials.
"I know that Agent Mulder has…unique ideas," McGrath spat out, low and angry. "I know that he wants to chase ghosts and gray men, and thinks it's funny to flout protocol and regulation. Section Chief Blevins told me he assigned you to the X-files to rein him in, to remind him that the FBI is not here for him to pursue his personal crusades, but as the law enforcement wing of the Federal Government. As such there is procedure to follow and places where he is not supposed to be fucking with."
"Yes sir," Scully murmured quietly, the full weight of McGrath's statement falling guiltily upon her shoulders. She knew what her job was, explicitly. Despite the things she had seen in her short time, the things Mulder kept trying to make her see, she knew why she was there, and she knew that no matter how much she tried to play this game as even-handedly as possible, the blame for Mulder's behavior would fall just as squarely at her feet as his.
She was the one not keeping him in line. Thus she was at fault.
"Agent Scully," McGrath's voice softened several notches, but his intensity did not. "Everything I've heard about you from every corner is that you are a good agent. You have a lot of promise, as long as you don't get drug through Agent Mulder's mud. The X-files might be under Blevins purview, but I won't let that stop me from shutting Mulder down if he so much as steps a toe out of line and into my group, do I make myself clear?"
Scully could only nod mutely.
"Right," McGrath's jaw loosened, the vein in his temple relaxed. "I've asked Blevins to send you to Wisconsin to fetch your erstwhile partner where he is being detained. You get him, you bring him home, and you have him face the disciplinary committee I'm pulling together tomorrow."
"Disciplinary committee," Scully's eye's widened in surprise. "Sir, is that necessary?"
"Agent Scully, remember what I told you," McGrath's voice hardened again. "Mulder knew what he was doing when he stuck his nose into this. He has to face the consequences like any other agent. Just because he once was some golden boy around here doesn't mean he gets to walk all over the rules to do what he wants. His time here is finished. And I'm not the only one who won't be sad to see him go. I hope you remember that yourself." His tone was ominous, as was his glare. "You're booked on a flight leaving in an hour out of Dulles. Make sure your partner is here tomorrow…for both of your sakes."
His dismissal was as curt as his manner. Scully rose without a word, silently moving towards McGrath's office door with as much grace and calm as she could muster. It wasn't till she closed the door behind her that she felt her demeanor fall, her grace crumble, as she leaned against the door, breathing deeply, her mind racing.
Nothing…nothing Mulder had mentioned in the previous week or in his voice message had indicated to her he was up to anything potentially this stupid. She had assumed he had gone to Connecticut to see his mother, or perhaps on a vacation. She realized now how irrational those thoughts seemed. Mulder never took vacations if he could help it. Everything he did was something related to his quest, his search for his truth.
God damn it, but now his truth was threatening not just him, but her as well.
Swearing loudly, she stalked down the hallway and to the elevators, cracking the button plate hard with the heel of her palm as one bank of doors opened immediately. She stormed in, punching the button for the basement, and glaring at it, as if it had Mulder's face embossed on its front.
"Flaunting the rules, ignoring the protocol, Jesus, Mulder, I can't save your ass out of this." And that, above all, was what worried her the most, the fact that she could not save him from his own, single-minded, bullheaded determination. Sooner or later it would catch up to him, and she couldn't always guarantee that he would have someone like her understanding enough to help him.