Character: Dana Scully
Fandom: The X-Files
Rating: PG-13
Prompt: Ulysses Everett McGill: Deceitful, two-faced she-woman. Never trust a female Delmar, remember that one simple precept and your time with me will not have been ill spent. (O Brother, Where Art Thou) 15 on scifi_muses on LiveJournal
Setting: Season Six Episode: One Son
AN: The episode has Diana in Berlin in 91, but I moved it a few months ahead to mid-90.
"So tell me, Frohike, what do you got for me? What sort of dirt did you dig up?"
The short, little toad like man grinned, his broad lips reaching from ear to ear as he turned his monitor towards her. "Agent Scully, you know I love when you talk like that."
Scully smirked at him, looking towards the files he had pulled up on his screen. "You doing this just because I asked or because it's Diana Fowley?"
"Both," he admitted as he clicked on windows that popped up seemingly at random. "I won't ever deny my everlasting affection for you."
"Thank you," she smiled simply. Frohike had a crush on her pretty much from the day he had met her, and Scully had become indulgently understanding of it over the years. "And Diana Fowley?"
"Never have liked her much." He shrugged. "Not that I knew her, their thing was over almost by the time I'd met Mulder. But I saw that look in his eye, I knew he was hurting. He'd come here drunk but wouldn't talk about it."
Even when Scully had first met Mulder she had suspected some woman had broken his heart. That was the rumor perpetuated by Tom Colton anyway. "So the end of his marriage really broke him up?"
"Yes and no," Frohike drawled, half-paying attention to his computer. "I think it more shocked him that she did it. I think he honestly loved and cared for her and thought this would all blow over. And when she didn't, he wondered what all of it had been about."
And Diana could stand there early that night, dressed to the nines, cool as could be, and treat Scully as if she were an errant school child, after what she pulled. "So what do we have on her transfer?"
A few keystrokes on the part of Frohike and up came Fowley's service record. Scully tried not to gloat at the year of her birth. She was older than Mulder. And here he had given her grief for years about her penchant for dating older men.
"Says here that she put in a request for transfer to Berlin in mid-1990. The year after the Wall came down." His beady, black eyes whizzed across the information behind his impossibly thick lenses. "So far it all seems above board. She had already been in anti-terror for a while before this, the US was expanding the FBI presence Berlin, and she looked like a perfect candidate."
"Yeah, but she had just married Mulder weeks before. Newlyweds don't take off on one another just for job opportunities. Why would she just up and leave him like that?"
"Why do you dames do anything you do," Frohike muttered with the sort of weariness that perhaps spoke to a puzzled and broken heart carried by himself. Scully found herself empathizing with the strange, little man, and though she longed to ask him about it, she chose instead to move on.
"Does the name C.G.B. Spender pop up anywhere in her files?"
One of Frohike's bushy eyebrows rose at this suggestion. "You think he has something to do with any of this?"
"I don't know," she replied honestly. He dutifully typed in the name in his search feature, but nothing came up. Obviously it wouldn't. Diana was far too savvy for that.
"Okay, what sort of work did she do in Berlin? What was her case load like?"
He typed in the parameters she was searching for as the information scrolled up before their eyes. "Looks like mostly standard issue stuff, ex-Communist sympathizers, Muslim dissidents, people who are trying to take old, Russian nukes."
"Anything on aliens in there? Perhaps testing?" Scully wasn't sure what she was looking for.
"I don't think that's something they would put in her FBI file," Frohike pointed out. "Diana Fowley has only gotten where she is because she did the one thing Mulder didn't, play it straight. Her records read like a Catholic school girl's, not a toe out of line."
Then what was it she was up to? "Then why leave Berlin?"
"Perhaps someone tipped her off to something with Mulder back here?"
"She hadn't spoken to Mulder in years and didn't look as if she was planning to anytime soon. Then suddenly she appears on Jeffrey Spender's proverbial doorstep." What had she been up to?
"Anything that indicates what her movements were while she was in Europe? Perhaps she went to places that were unusual, might seem out of the way for an FBI agent working overseas?"
"Let me check," his fingers clicked on keys as behind him a tired looking Langley shuffled from the back, clad in sweatpants and one of his never ending supply of black shirts.
"Scully, you're back?" He frowned sleepily behind his black-framed glasses. "Don't you sleep?"
"Diana Fowley's been at it again," Frohike muttered as he continued to type.
"What did that she-bitch want," Langley collapsed on his chair at his own computer station, tiredly scratching his head.
"It's what she wants that we are after," Scully replied, looking at the records on Frohike's computer. "Anything?"
"Nada," he replied, apologetically glancing sideways at her. "I don't know if there is anything, Scully. She's looking perfectly clean."
"She's not clean, she just hides her tracks well," Langley snorted, yawning as he flipped on his own computer. "Remember back in the day when Mulder was looking for her?"
Obviously Langley was still too out of it to notice Frohike's warning glare or Scully's stricken expression as he continued. "When she first took off to Europe, Mulder was frantic, wondering if there was another man or something. Anyway, we figured out pretty quickly that Diana had one airline preference that kept appearing in all of her FBI travel logs."
"Lufthansa," Frohike confirmed, the name appearing in the very record that appeared on his screen.
"Yep, that's the one," Langley yawned as he began typing on his own keyboard. "But she didn't always log every flight she took with the Bureau. Her private ones never make it in the FBI records, but we found them on her credit card statements."
"Mulder still had access to her financial accounts at the time," Frohike recalled, excitement coming to life in his eye.
"Yeah, we found out she was taking regular trips all over Europe on her own. I always assumed she had some boyfriend or something she was meeting all over the place, and Mulder let the matter drop after that."
Poor Mulder, Scully sighed. What must it have been like those first few months after Diana's betrayal. It went far to explain the state that she found him in years later. "So what does this have to do with what she was doing in Europe?"
"Easy," Langley was already pulling up windows on his screen. "You hack into the Lufthansa Airline files and track down every time Diana Fowley appears on one of the travel manifestoes."
"Then cross list that against her stated trips in her FBI file, and that will give you all the ones she took alone while she was in Europe." Frohike nodded in clear approval, something he hardly ever gave Langley in the entire time Scully had known them. Langley was usually the butt of Frohike's insults.
"So do you hack into airline information often," Scully wondered aloud, suddenly curious what these three men hadn't gotten into in the course of their adventures.
"No, but airlines have notoriously bad security on their network information systems, worse than the FBI." The blonde man hardly looked up from his screen. "Unless she was traveling under an alias we should find her."
Another shuffle from the back behind them brought out Byers, still dressed in his suit, with a book in hand. He hardly seemed surprised to see Scully there, only a bit put out that he hadn't been invited. "Having a party?"
"Looking for dirt in Fowley, wanna join," Frohike waived a hand at the records he was still perusing. "I'm checking out her actual office and field time. Something's not adding up?"
Byers leaned in over Frohike and Scully's shoulders, as all three of them tried to make sense of the information on the screen.
"Looks like there are dates she was out in the field but she didn't report them," Byers supplied.
"Yeah, and it wasn't personal time, her HR records don't show her using those dates for her vacation or sick pay." Frohike clicked to another screen that looked more like Fowley's payroll records. "In fact it looks like she hardly touched it."
"Then why didn't these trips appear in her FBI expense reports? Why aren't they in her travel records." She was up to something, Scully knew it, but what, and why?
"Got it," Langley called from his seat. "I found Diana in the Lufthansa system, and I bet if we run her travel manifestos we'll find where she went on the dates she was supposedly out in the field."
Scully scanned Frohike's monitor quickly, eyes searching for a date. "Try April 21, 1991."
Langley typed the date in, waiting for his computer to do the necessary calculations. "Looks as if she was on a flight to Paris, quick one, went there one day, came back the next."
"September 8, 1993," Frohike tossed at him.
Again Langley's fingers raced and then stilled as he waited. "Barcelona, this time for three days, then she hopped on a plane to Tunisia, was there another five. Flew back straight from Tunis to Berlin."
Tunisia? "What about just last year, March 12, 1998."
Langley plugged in the date dutifully. "Amsterdam then London. She was there for a week and then back to Berlin."
"None of these are entered into her FBI log, all those dates are noted as her being 'out in the field'," Byers pointed out grimly.
"What was she doing in these places that she wasn't reporting?"
"Hard to say unless we know her movements there," Frohike replied. "She didn't exactly log what she was doing. She was careful."
"Maybe," Scully narrowed her eyes thoughtfully. "Langley, you said Mulder was able to track her down through her financials before."
"Yeah," Langley nodded slowly. "He was able to tell where she was and what she was doing by what sort of places her credit card tracked."
"No reason we can't do that again," Scully offered as all three men shrugged and nodded. "Think you can do that, Langley?"
"It might take a few minutes, and I might need your badge number to get into the system."
Her badge was currently with Kersh, taken from her when she was summarily kicked out of her position. But that didn't mean it wouldn't work anymore. Reaching for pen and paper on Frohike's desk she scribbled it down and passed it to the other man. "Use it for good."
"As if I would tell you if I wasn't," Langley muttered as he worked.
"So if you think she was up to something in Europe, what did she come back here for?" Frohike's question was one that had bothered Scully since Fowley's sudden appearance last spring.
"I don't know for sure," she admitted. "But she arrives suddenly and is placed on the case of a psychic boy. She hadn't worked cases like this in years, at least not since she was with Mulder. And then conveniently she comes back from her convalescence and is placed on the X-files. I have to wonder if all of this wasn't planned the entire time, if someone didn't want Diana Fowley back here to take over Mulder's work."
"Or maybe to join him on it," Byers offered, face darkening. "Even replace you."
That thought had occurred to her. "Maybe even to replace me. After all, she shares his ideas, she doesn't doubt his work, and she has a history in this sort of work that I don't."
"And she's his ex-wife," Frohike growled, glaring at Diana Fowley's picture on his screen. "Tender feelings and all that, lure Mulder back into her arms."
As much as that thought hurt to think about, Scully had to admit that this was a possible purpose of her presence as well. "Certainly he trusts her much more than he trusts anyone else. More than me."
"I don't think he trusts her more than you," Byers protested immediately. Scully smiled at his quick defensiveness. It never ceased to amaze her how devoted these strange friends of Mulder's were to her, even if she did think they were paranoid and weird.
"He certainly has a blind spot when it comes to Diana Fowley, then. It's strange, since I've met Mulder he's never, ever not questioned the motives of people he comes into contact with, even me. With her, he seems to just assume she's there to do the best, that she really does see his vision, share his fight."
"And you don't," Frohike barked, clearly not convinced. "You're the one who has gone through all this crap, Scully, she was running around eating crepes and espresso in Europe."
"Croissants," Langley supplied as his computer beeped loudly. "She's fond of those, when she's in Paris. In London she seems to be a pub sort of woman."
"Did you find it?" Scully slipped off her seat to move towards Langley's screen, curious as to just how Fowley spent her money while abroad."
"Yeah, got in. She seems to also be fond of high end clothing and expensive lingerie," Langley paused on one such purchase at a boutique in Milan, earning a cool glare from Scully beside him. "Moving along, I can track her financials for five years back at least. What were some of those dates again?"
"March 12 last year? She was in Amsterdam first, then London."
"March 12…March 12." Langley scrolled through the dates on his screen. March 15, in London, she checked into a Hilton. And then the next transaction we have is for a cabbie, and then for some sort of event at a convention center…Queen Elizabeth Conference Center."
"Conference center? What was going on there last year?" She spun to glance at the other two. Byers already had a laptop out and were typing in the information.
"Queen Elizabeth II Conference Center, last March…a conference on East Asian Business, a human resources fair, and…" He paused, eyes widening. "A MUFON convention."
"When?" Perhaps this was the huge clue they had been looking for.
"March 15-18, last year, it was a wider gathering of MUFON groups from across Great Britain, and had speakers from as far away as Southern California."
"Do we have any other purchases from around that area at that time, Langley?"
"Yeah, she went all four days. And her return ticket to Berlin was dated the eighteenth."
Scully turned to Frohike. "We have any other more recent dates?"
"January of last year."
Langley prodded windows on his screen. "She was in Geneva according to her flight records, and according to her credit card statements she spent a lot of time on the Rue du Rhône."
"Let me check the MUFON network," Frohike was already stabbing at his computer keys. "There's a group in Geneva. Could be their meeting place is somewhere near that area."
It wasn't much of a pattern, but it was the start of something. "Can we compare the rest of the dates you have, Frohike, with the travel logs and financials Langley has. I want to see if there are other MUFON groups in these other cities. She could be monitoring them or making contact with them."
"It will take us a while, a few hours." Not that Frohike sounded perturbed to be up out of bed working on this. Scully nodded gratefully.
"Byers if you can see if there is anything in the MUFON network chatter that indicates that Diana Fowley has been making extensive contact with them?"
"Sure," he nodded, frowning up at her. "But what do you think it will prove?"
"I'm not sure yet. But it does beg the question what was she doing investigating these people, the very sort of people who had suffered through the same sort of testing that Cassandra Spender and I went through. What does she know about them, why was she investigating it…and why hasn't she shared any of it with Mulder and I?"
"You think that she knew about the testing," Frohike asked softly, looking as troubled as the other three did.
"She might have even been a part of the testing, gathering research on the results." Gathering information on men and women like Scully, who had their lives turned upside down, who faced missing memories and cancer, infertility, and broken lives. Scully's gut burned at the idea that Fowley could have even remotely known about it and not said anything to anyone.
They were all silent for several, long moments.
"If we find evidence of that, Scully, what do we tell Mulder?" That wasn't Byers real question thought. Scully knew he more questioned whether or not Mulder would believe it.
"We'll tell Mulder the truth," Scully replied simply. "Whether he accepts it or not is up to him. But I know that one things for certain. If he won't listen to me regarding the truth, than I'm done with this and with him."
She hadn't realized that it had come to that till the moment the words left her lips. It left her slightly stunned even as she said it, let alone the three men who all stared at her.
"Scully, you'd walk away from all this now?" Frohike couldn't believe it any more than she could.
"What choice will I have, Frohike," she muttered sadly. "I'm only effective to Mulder when he trusts me, when he listens to my conclusions. And if he is willing to believe in Diana blindly, to ignore the proof that I present to him because it doesn't fit his presuppositions, if he wants to ignore the truth that she may be playing a role in all of this, than I'm no good to him. And I'm not doing justice to myself. I came back to the FBI, to him, because I believed in him and his work, because I thought through that I would find the truth. I have the truth right in my hands in the former of Cassandra, and she's being kept from us. We are being lied to about her by Diana Fowley. If I can't make him understand that she is a part of the lies, that she knows something, then what is the purpose of me remaining? All I have is the possibility of finding out the truth of what was done to me. If I don't have that…I have no reason for staying."
"You know he trusts you, Scully, he went to the ends of the earth to find you," Frohike insisted gently. Perhaps for this strange little man it seemed unthinkable that anyone would not trust her. It warmed her heart he thought so much of her.
"Yeah, Frohike, but I'm not Diana Fowley. And I think in the end that is what it comes down to. No matter how many years I've stood by his side…I'm not the woman who got away." And that was the simple and sad truth.
"He's a dumbass," Frohike growled as they all three returned to their computers. Scully chuckled softly and nodded. Frohike was right in that assessment at least, Mulder was being a dumbass. But for now there was little she could do about it besides find a comfortable spot that wasn't cluttered with Cheetos and back issues of The Lone Gunmen and wait while they did the work.
