Title: This Is How The World Ends

Fandom: X-Files

Rating: M

Disclaimer: I do not own The X-Files or any of its characters, just a bit of real estate in my readers' heads.

Author's Notes: The usual apologies, along with a belated HAPPY NEW YEAR and HAPPY HOLIDAYS! Thank you for still being here – I know these unreasonable gaps and unpredictable silences aren't very respectful of you as a loyal audience and I am sorry for that. A summary of my very overloaded plate in the months since you last heard from me would be that I finished and edited my next book, edited and got another one to beta readers, got my study back on track(ish), and at work have been involved in an overhaul of course materials in preparation for this semester. I feel like I haven't really stopped to breathe in forever, but then this week a few projects finished at once and I took advantage of the brief window to get this chapter out. It's a very long one, I hope that's okay ;) I feel like you deserve a 13k chapter after that hiatus. This is the second half of XXXXVI – Scully, and I'm really glad now that I didn't wait to finish that scene before uploading the first half like I initially planned. I hope you enjoy this long-awaited chapter.

Thank you to each of you who left comments on the previous chapter, those who share my updates on Tumblr with so much enthusiasm, and to everyone who continues to read this snail-paced story. As always, I remain committed to finishing it, and I am so grateful to everyone who sticks with me.

/

Everyone likes to fancy themselves the smartest person in the room. Knowing something no one else knows, it's a power tool, a personal shield, something to throw around that gets things done when it's either true or at least believed, so no one likes realising they never had it in the first place.

The interview room door swung in crisply and Scully saw Wicking's face angle away, a carefully careless expression plastered on the half she could see. Long and unkempt hair hung over most of the scarring on the other side.

"Mr Wicking, I presume," she said, handing the door to Colt to close behind him. Locking Desmond and Macgregor and the rest of their office out, where they could seethe and gossip about her as much as they wanted. "Thank you for waiting."

"I'll have my lawyer now," their suspect replied coolly without looking their way. He said it with assurance Scully did not like. He'd come here on purpose, she reminded herself, and the profile she'd commissioned for him said he was middle intelligence, a by-the-book type. This was not his idea. He had allowed himself to be captured because someone had told him he should, someone whose word he trusted, and he thought he knew how this would go down.

No point proving him right. Scully had handled a thousand interrogations and he was an amateur here to play her game. He shouldn't have come.

"I don't think so." She grabbed one of the chairs and dragged it back noisily. Her apparent refusal to play by the rules and the sound had the desired effect of startling him out of his smug indifference, and he finally looked at her. She anticipated his snort of derision to see a tiny woman and a clean-shaven beanpole barely halfway through his twenties when she began her calm introduction. "I'm Agent Dana Scully and this is Agent–"

But the man cut off his own derisive snort and stood suddenly, knocking back his chair in alarm. Scully's hand automatically went for the sidearm she wasn't wearing, but Colt had already angled himself between them and she saw his hand was likewise protectively under his jacket. Wicking ignored him completely.

"I know you," he said accusingly, raising a finger to point at her. It was impossible not to notice the flecks of marbled scarring. Gloves must have protected his hands from the blast, though not completely. Scully could only imagine the force of the shrapnel that had torn through the heavy-duty material to leave those marks. His face, already marred by what happened in that Middle Eastern marketplace, twisted now into an expression reminiscent of what she'd just seen on Desmond's. Vicious dislike. Revulsion. "Dana Scully." He took a step back that he managed to convert into a swagger mid-step thanks to his limp, and in the extra distance he recovered some of his initial confidence. He sneered at her. "Never thought I'd have the honour. Agent."

He added her title with as much condescension as he could fit into two syllables, and Scully paused to regard him. That he knew her, specifically by reputation, was an unexpected development, and that he had reason to hate her for it was even more surprising. It was suggestive of a connection she hadn't anticipated in this case, and though that both thrilled and terrified her, sending her thoughts racing, she reined her conclusions in close where she could keep them in check. Stick to facts, dig up new ones where there weren't any.

"Well, you have the honour today," she responded lightly, sitting and gesturing for him to do the same. He didn't come any closer, watching her with dislike and wariness. Colt likewise stayed where he was, a supportive presence at her shoulder. She knew he was absorbing this like a sponge, and knew she needed to be careful. What he heard about her from Wicking, he would never unhear. What he saw from her conduct would inform his own future practice as a federal agent. "From where do you know me? Do we have mutual friends?"

"I don't think you get to call them friends after what you did," the bomb-builder said boldly, fingers curling compulsively around the overlong cuffs of his open jacket. He looked around the undetailed interrogation room more openly than before, none of this going down the way he had planned but presented with an opportunity to take his complaints about this legendary figure directly to the source. His eyes landed on her again, and she knew that in them, she was a disgrace. "You're a traitor. You betrayed your own cause."

Aha. Scully felt Colt's silent tension behind her. She had hoped this day would never come, where a former contact of Mulder's, however distant or obscure, would land in her interrogation room and basically tell her to get fucked. She'd lost favour with many in the truth-seeking network when it became known that she'd left Mulder in early 2013, and sunk her chances of winning back those connections when she'd immediately rejoined the FBI.

Still, no suspect was going to slap labels on her and expect them to stick. He didn't have the faintest clue. She frowned delicately.

"Weren't you dishonourably discharged?"

He flinched; he'd thought his life was private, but he must have forgotten that they'd both served the same government, and it never forgot a thing. It must have also slipped his mind that he was under investigation, and matters of record were likely to have cropped up. He recovered enough to self-consciously touch his hair, checking it covered most of his injury site.

"There's no dishonour in being betrayed by your own country," he snapped, struck where he was vulnerable. "Only in crawling back to the same oppressors like a worm. When Mul–"

"Let me remind you," Scully interrupted smoothly before he could finish that incriminating name that would sink them both, though she felt a quiet thrill to be in a room with someone else who revered it, "that anything, and anyone, you say during this interview will become a matter of record, and may be used against you in a court." She gestured at the camera in the corner. "We're live."

Freddie Wicking, former army engineer and now rebel bomb-builder, shut up briefly, apparently hearing what she was saying. He had to know Mulder's name was like flint, setting flames and controversies wherever it went. He just didn't know that she was susceptible to those same flames.

Finally he nodded and leaned forward on his good leg as though to look into the camera's lens.

"Put this on your record," he said to the camera, to the agents watching on the other side of his reflection. "Dana Scully is a traitor."

It wasn't the first time he'd said it but it seemed to land harder this time. Scully tried to ignore her frustrated wonderings of how her agents in the viewing room were processing this claim, and where it would go from here. Desmond, she imagined, was loving this. Behind her shoulder, she could feel Agent Colt brimming with the desire to set the suspect straight for his disrespect, but his ingrained restraint kept him from overstepping, except to instruct, very firmly, "Take a seat, Mr Wicking."

The bomb-builder from room 623 seemed to notice Colt for the first time. He must have recognised the posture and the stance, because he slightly corrected his, and even visibly calmed a little to find himself in somewhat familiar company. Bringing Colt in with her was a good move. Unlike most of the agents who'd been working his case, Wicking had never seen Colt before, and in this unwelcoming space where he'd already pegged Scully as an adversary, his brain was actively looking for signs of someone who might be on his side. All these months keeping Colt behind a screen while the rest of their team did the legwork might pay off.

"You should watch your back," Wicking advised him. "She sold out her last partner."

Scully knew her face gave away nothing, but inside, the comment stung, and it stung because she'd so often feared that this was true. Or feared that Mulder thought it was true. After their night together listening to Skinner's recording of William's interview, she knew she and Mulder were on perfectly solid ground, and she knew that he knew exactly where she stood. He was still wearing her cross necklace. He was still working their secret case, doing the underground work while she smiled for the cameras in her office and did what no one could question. They were onside. They were a team. Nothing, no invasion or lack thereof, no love affair or breakdown, no child or loss, no enemy, no conspiracy, nothing had ever broken that.

But her traitorous mind still flashed back to an argument on an empty rural Virginian road after failing to save Austin Dunn. To an earlier snippy conversation over a payphone in Boston, two nights out from Christmas. To a playfully vicious game of words in a morgue lobby. He never quite said it, but it was there in between his words.

Quitter.

So she genuinely meant it when she asked, very lightly, "Did he tell you that? Personally?"

For a moment, that stumped Wicking. "Everyone knows," he shot back so he wouldn't have to admit he'd never met Mulder, which she could read straight from his face as he grasped again for his hold on the power in this conversation. He might as well let go. Because she had met Mulder, and his voice was the one she heard in her head when she regarded this man, taking in all the signs and signals her former partner would look for as he profiled a suspect. Mulder would notice the way Wicking's fingers curled again over the ends of those long sleeves, like he wasn't accustomed to wearing it, and he'd recall the footage Colt had accessed of the bomb-builder exiting his apartment, shrugging it on despite the very temperate day outside.

He heard the alarm go off, same as everyone else, and hung back almost a minute to collect this specific item of clothing, Mulder's voice coached, leaping from one conclusion to the other with the grace and confidence of a wildcat. He wasn't waiting and ready; someone else orchestrated the alarm. But he knew what to do when he heard it. The jacket wasn't hanging at the door – it's the wrong season for it. And we know from the banana set-up that he knows about the cameras, so he knew he'd be arrested for leaving, and he wanted to be arrested in this particular outfit, knowing he'd be brought here. Knowing you probably wouldn't hold him. Knowing, therefore, that he'd be brought through your security, and then released. Why would he want that?

Why might someone else want him to do that?

Led by a thought process she'd learned from the best, an obvious conclusion presented itself, one based entirely on supposition and likelihoods and strung tenuously between observations and someone else's profile and her own instincts. She had no evidence whatsoever to support it, but as her gaze travelled over Wicking's scarred nose, the self-righteous set of his mouth, his bulky, nondescript jacket, the shaggy hair grown to obscure the worst of his shame, she knew, fundamentally, that she was right.

She knew Mulder was right. She released the reins on her meticulously controlled mind.

"Everyone is a consistently unreliable source," Scully noted calmly. "The trick is to ignore everyone and find the handful of people worth listening to. For instance, everyone in your building knows you're a quiet neighbour, a war vet and a recluse. I know you're also a munitions expert who's been dealing in illegal arms, hired by a very wealthy and influential client to construct an explosive device. An all-new design. I know your target," she added when his eyelids shuttered rapidly in his attempt not to lift his eyebrows or share any other tells, "and I know you're here testing part of your design. You're almost finished, and this interview is proof of concept. I know your client is smart enough to take advantage of our cameras and I know you thought he was clever when he suggested this outing, since it was obvious we already had eyes on you. But you were wrong. I know you, Mr Wicking, and you don't know the first thing about me. I have done and continue to do more for this country and the cause than you will ever know, and the handful of people worth listening to will attest to that. By believing everyone, you're buying into the very narrative you oppose. Who benefits? Not you. Not the cause. So. Take. A. Seat."

He hesitated for a very long moment, but nothing in his reluctance indicated to her that she was wrong on any of her assumptions. Obviously the client was wealthy. Obviously he was male – bombers usually were. Obviously this arrest, if staged, was not Wicking's idea – he'd gone to immense lengths to avoid interacting with society, not even leaving his apartment for the past six months, and barely at all before that. To allow himself to be deliberately arrested was completely out of character and required momentous stakes. What were his pressure points? Hatred for the government that had let him down. Money, like everyone, she could see from his plain clothing, and pride in his work. A bomb had gone off in this man's face. He had something to prove, something bigger and better to showcase, and his client had used that shaky pride to manipulate him into putting the new product to a live test.

After all, why pay for an undetectable bomb unless it's proven undetectable? Whatever component Wicking had managed to design to elude their sensors, he had on his person right now. Maybe a trigger, maybe some new form of wiring, maybe the explosive matter itself. This wasn't Scully's area of expertise.

Playing God with the power of a room was, however. Small and female, tactics that worked for Mulder or Skinner or Colt didn't fit her toolkit. Instead she'd learned to leverage facts and knowledge in her favour, to subvert expectations and knock grandstands out from under the feet of those who would like to tower over her. Slowly, railroaded, Wicking took an unsteady step forward and lowered himself into the chair opposite her.

"I want my phone call," he said staunchly. "I have a right to representation."

"Oh, I don't think there's any point in that," Scully dismissed. She glanced at her partner, including him in the act and prompting him to finally join her at the table as he finished a quick text message. "Agent, about how long would legal aid take to get here?"

Colt was completely thrown by this whole thing, she could tell, but he rolled with it and answered easily, "Half hour, at best?" as he showed her his phone screen. He'd composed a request for a bomb squad, intuiting her direction. She took the phone.

"That's what I thought." She cast a quick smile at Wicking as she changed the request to a heat scan, and a review of scans and camera footage of his arrival. Subtle, she made sure to emphasise. No tip-offs. Anyone could be watching for their reaction. "You'll be out of here before then. This won't take long."

The man on the other side of the table had had the rug pulled out from under his feet, too, and frowned in confusion.

"What won't?"

"You're going to answer a few questions for us," Scully explained, handing her partner back his phone, "and then I'm going to let you walk out of here. No charges. No fuss."

"You're going to let me leave," Wicking repeated, clearly sideswiped, his recalculations evident in his face. He looked between the two attending agents, cautiously laying his hands on the table as if about to push himself back up. "So I can go right now."

Colt was an intuitive partner, and played along as she pretended to deliberate. "Not exactly."

"Mr Wicking, I understand the predicament your client has put you in by demanding a field test, especially one that's gone so spectacularly awry," Scully said. "It puts me in an awkward situation, too, so I must ask, and you must answer honestly: am I, or any of my agents, in danger as a result of your presence here? This conversation is about to change drastically if that's the case."

There it was again, the fist tightening around the overlong sleeve of the heavy jacket. Wicking licked his lips, nervous and buying time to think, but when he shook his head, it was with something akin to regret. If he was sorry, she thought, it was only because he hadn't been able to think up a way to use her first show of ignorance to his advantage. He'd held a card briefly, and had been forced to lay it down.

"Good, I didn't think so. Now to be clear, you don't have to answer any of my questions without a lawyer present – if you choose to, that's entirely up to you – and we don't have to let you go. You're being investigated by the Counterterrorism division. We can hold you indefinitely without charge on suspicion of domestic terror. Which I know you don't want," she added after a beat, letting that gentle threat sink in. "Neither do I."

"Then why did you bring me in?" he asked guardedly. Freddie Wicking himself was not an immediate threat, but for someone with his connections to learn that her team had acted without her knowledge, or had shown any sign of insubordination, could be extremely dangerous. Scully felt another wave of gratitude for the unwavering picture of solidarity represented by her partner.

"Because you let us, Mr Wicking. And I wanted to know why." She let her gaze slip very obviously to his shoulder. "That's a nice jacket." She left that comment hanging a moment and watched the stifled emotions chase each other across Wicking's face. Surprise, then restrained panic, then desperation, before settling with a startled approximation of calm. She smiled tightly. "About how much would something like that cost?"

The bomb-builder swallowed and said, with all the convincingness of a shut-in who hadn't left his apartment all year, "I don't know what you mean."

"I think you do, Mr Wicking, and either we talk in riddles where you don't admit to anything explicit on camera, or I ask you outright, and you get to put in a call to your client expressing how much of his purchase details have been leaked. I assume he'll blame the leak on you. So. How much?"

Wicking looked around, extremely uncomfortable.

"I can't talk to you about this."

"Then don't talk. Write it down," Scully suggested, and like the perfect partner he was, Colt produced a pen and an open pocket notepad and slid both across the table to their interviewee. The former engineer stared down at the pen with dismay, not having had the foresight to imagine he might end up in this situation. He thought he'd demand a lawyer, be left alone, and a lawyer would turn up and walk him out. Scully pressed her advantage, leaning across the table and lowering her voice. "This isn't a trap, Mr Wicking. You write a number on there for me and you answer just a few more questions, and you're free to go. You said you know me. Then you know I mean what I say."

He shot a bitter glare up at her through this stringy hair. "I know you work for the FBI."

"Then I'm in the right building." Scully smiled again. "There's a little give and take required here. I need to investigate threats posed by your client, you need to preserve your client's trust. The fact is there's no path forward from here that allows you to do that. Even if you stay quiet – I know too much not to do my duty, I'd have to keep you and he'll assume something went wrong. But I'm sure there's a middle ground where you can help me do my job without compromising your professional integrity."

Freddie Wicking stared at the notebook for a very long time, considering his options. His simple plan of arrest, lawyer, release had been derailed and she could read in his silence that she'd hit the nail on the head regarding the client's assumptions. An overnight stay could only mean one of two things – the investigating team knew more than anticipated and had enough to charge or threaten a charge, and therefore that Wicking had spilled or had a leak, or that the trial had failed to make it through the security checks and therefore that his design was faulty. It wasn't a great position to find himself in.

"The total price," he said finally, a confirmatory query as he reluctantly took up Colt's pen.

"To the nearest dollar is fine," Scully agreed. "Thank you."

And he wrote it. Well, he wrote a large sum of money, and when he offered the pad back and Colt pointedly reminded him, "You understand this is federal evidence, and attempts to mislead our investigation with false information will incur charges of obstruction," he hastily scribbled it out and wrote a new number. He shoved the notepad across the table.

"There. Now can I go?"

"Now you can tell me your timeline," Scully corrected as Colt turned the notepad to read the amount. Wicking scoffed and looked away, incensed. She was reaching the end of his tolerance for this. He needed another reason to cooperate. Quickly she reviewed what she knew of him – recently radicalised, emerging political views, but as yet they were still someone else's views, someone she could position him against. "Knowing when to expect his attack," his, not your, alleviating responsibility, "helps me minimise innocent collateral damage."

"If you know his target, you know they're hardly innocent," Wicking snapped back at her, pointing angrily at his scarred face. "They set me up. Used me as a scapegoat."

She didn't know the target – that was a bluff, naturally, though the use of the Hoover Building as a trial space was telling – but this outburst provided a solid motive for Wicking's involvement. A military or military-adjacent target, one associated with whatever went wrong in that marketplace where he almost lost his face. According to the buried report Colt had brought her, people died in that explosion. Civilians. To her team's knowledge – and they'd followed Wicking's new career closely since he turned up on their radar – none of his projects since his discharge had resulted in deaths. Scully saw her way in.

"And you're confident that the target victims are the source of the agenda?" she countered. She weathered his fuming glare and continued. "That's the problem with fighting shadows, I've found. The shadows within reach are only ever shades of something bigger, something worse. You can strike a thousand of them down and never find the root, and one day realise it's had you running in circles chasing your own shadow, pinning blame you can never resolve on all the small players who never held the power to hurt you the way they did. They who can take everything, leave you scrambling, set the rest of us at each other's throats while they slip away with the spoils of everything we worked for." She paused, and in his tense gaze she saw that he was calming down, and the picture she was painting was one he'd lived. People like them, they could always find a common thread to pull, and she knew when she found it. "I want to believe we're on the same side in that regard."

The motto on Mulder's stupid poster was a long shot, especially given Freddie Wicking had never met her former partner and had never visited the basement office where it once hung. But over the years she'd heard him use the phrase with enough close contacts that it had caught on in the most obscure and deepest rings of the truth-seeking network, and more than once had seen it shared as a coded message of optimism and comradery while reading transcripts or anonymous internet communications for other cases. It was innocuous enough that it flew under the radar for almost everybody. Even Wicking nearly missed it. His head tilted slightly as he caught on, unsure if she'd intended what he thought.

"You want to believe that?" he repeated for clarification.

"Pay attention, Mr Wicking." Scully kept her voice very flat and firm, but loaded with meaning for anyone listening properly. His gaze narrowed, thinking differently now.

"I am paying attention," he insisted. "To you. You came back here when you had other options."

And knowing they'd burned her and Mulder, that looked suspicious to the truth-seeking community of paranoids and tin hats. She understood that.

"'Here' is where I'm most effective at fighting shadows," she contested. "This is where I can make the most impact. The cause doesn't change." She let that settle for a long moment, let him decide to entertain the notion of a Dana Scully still loyal to the same noble movement he admired, subverting enemy structures from the inside. She leaned forward for the kill. "Your client has sent you here unprepared, like a lamb to the slaughter, just like the people who sent you into that market. Whatever his intentions, however pure his politics, somewhere along the way it's devolved into exactly what we're all fighting against – a shadow that would leave you spare and empty to fulfil its own agenda. We have you tied to him and his doings now, and he's going to slip away at the end of this and let us take you down for it instead. All the lives he takes, all the scars he puts on the survivors, he's going to leave them on your conscience, too. This," she leaned even further, fingertip on the tabletop but looking pointedly at the jacket he wore, "is not your cause. Don't hang for it."

Freddie Wicking fidgeted with his sleeves for so long that Scully began to fear she'd lost him. He wanted to talk himself out of listening to her – he'd had his mind made up about her before she walked in – but she'd spoken to worries and uncertainties he'd been carrying around for months as the voices of his client and his own growing paranoia slowly influenced him to push, push, push the boundaries of his morality. She watched him sway, watched him battle with himself, and stayed utterly silent. Colt, beside her, kept perfectly still, undoubtedly making his own quiet judgements about her conduct. Manipulative? Yes. Leading? A little, yes. Orthodox? No. Her interviewing technique had become some combination of Mulder's indirectness and her own straightforwardness, sensitive to the interviewee and what they secretly wanted to be allowed to tell. What they desperately wanted someone to know about them and see.

Wicking had been living in virtual isolation for years. The appeal of being seen, and of seeing someone else, must be intense. To buy himself more time to decide, he looked to Colt.

"What about you?" he asked, a little sulkily. "What's your story?"

And Colt, because he was too perfect for words, said all the right things.

"Not too different from yours. Afghanistan." He rolled up his sleeve and let Wicking see his tattoo, one that didn't mean much to Scully as a navy brat but which their suspect visibly recognised. "They didn't do to me what they did to you, of course, but it's all redacted now so nobody's the wiser." He smoothed his sleeve down and Scully schooled her features to ensure she didn't react. She didn't know much about her partner's time serving, just enough to know it was sensitive and he'd bring it up if he wanted to discuss it. "They can censor the mission reports but it doesn't erase the memories of what we did."

The bomb-builder nodded with eyes that were bright and focused, hearing his own experience in someone else's mouth, and automatically tugged the oversized sleeve of his heavy jacket up to show off more of his disfigured forearm. An aged tattoo that might have once been similar to Colt's was marred with pinkish streaks of scar tissue. Scully concentrated instead on the sleeve itself – on the plasticky hem where normally it would just be stitchwork. Double layered, at least; too warm for the weather outside today.

"They never get anything quite right," he said, gazing down at his ruined tattoo. "Not even erasure. Sometimes I wish it had been blasted clean off. But you still work for them," Wicking pointed out to Colt, faintly mocking. Mostly curious, but that was buried deeper, somewhere vulnerable. He hid his arm again. "Different name, same agenda. FBI."

"It's not the same–"

"You work for the same government," he interrupted flatly. Colt regrouped with his usual dignity.

"I work for Agent Scully," he corrected. "That's not the same."

He left that hanging, not knowing at all what reputation Scully had leveraged in this interview but intuitive enough to build on its power. Wicking sat back, doubts clear in his conflicted expression as he took them both in and examined his scarred hands for much too long. It took more than a painstaking minute, but he finally cracked when she took a gamble and asked, "Would you still like that lawyer?"

"My final handover is meant to be in another two weeks," he said unwillingly, eyes lowered like in shame or discomfort, "but I don't know when he intends to use it. I'm only building the… the outfit. There's a secondary component that his specialist will be adding to the design."

The outfit – confirmation of what she'd already guessed, that the jacket he was wearing somehow was an explosive device, or at least contained parts of one that he'd designed to be able to make it past high-level security checks like theirs – but the mention of a specialist, adding another component… That insinuated that there was an aspect to this bomb that superseded Wicking's skillset.

The man's a military engineer turned rebel bomb builder, Mulder's voice coached patiently. You've seen the clients he attracts, big names in antiauthoritarian troublemaking. You know he must be good. What falls outside his range of skills?

"Chemical?" Scully asked, a little surprised. Her team had been operating under the assumption that it would be a shrapnel bomb or some other physical explosive, since those were Wicking's specialties. Maybe it still was, but this 'secondary component' suggested an ulterior threat. The bomb-builder hesitated and slowly shook his head. "Biological?" His eyes fell away. She kept her reaction to herself, uneasy thoughts touching on the briefcase with Mulder's birthday for its lock combination and Harlow's virus samples hidden in the basement refrigerator. "And your outfit… is a delivery system."

She didn't need the confirmation of his pained twitch. A device their scanners had not picked up had to be made of something very unique, perhaps a bioplastic or some other hybrid material. Piping, she figured, threaded between the layers of puffy fabric to replace a more conspicuous containment vessel, and a kind of trigger. That was all it would require, and with the right material and a 3D printer… The scholar in Scully wished Wicking weren't a terror suspect so she could earnestly ask him to dissect his creation right in front of her and show her how he'd done it, but there were more pressing matters.

"Your outfit. Is it clean?"

More pointedly, she was asking whether he had a bioweapon on his person, and she felt more relieved than she'd expected to when he nodded quickly. Her case with Colt had enough bioweapon horror to be carrying on with, thank you.

"I haven't seen the stuff, only been given stats I need to know to build it. Density, required volume, acidity…" The scarred bomb-builder swayed a little in his spot, glancing at the camera, knowing he'd said too much, starting to sweat. "… of the, uh, detergent. I really can't tell you anything else."

"No, I understand." Thoughts still turning the new information over, Scully deliberately backed down, sitting back in her seat as a show of it to help him relax. Colt's phone buzzed with an incoming message and he showed it to her. Nothing unusual. Security had been quick to act on her request for a scan of the heat signatures in this room. Avoiding looking toward the glass, behind which the scanner would just now be getting packed away, she went into her jacket pockets and retrieved one of her cards. "True to my word, Mr Wicking, you're free to go now. You've been extraordinarily helpful and it won't be forgotten at our end." She placed the card in the centre of the table for him and smiled wryly. "I'm glad we had the honour."

Very slowly, Wicking took the card in his hand and turned it to read her details. He looked like he had things to say, she could see it in the strain around his eyes that he wasn't sure if he'd let someone down or followed the right path, but ultimately he closed his fist over the card and stood. As one, Scully and Colt rose, too.

Leaving took longer than arrival. In the anteroom, Scully had to bark at security agents who tried to cuff Wicking and wrest his jacket off. She'd said he was free to go – she meant it. Any evidence bullied out of him like the unwilling removal of his clothing, bomb components or otherwise, was unusable in a court case. As she'd told Agent Desmond before, that was still their end goal: a prosecution. All this dancing in between, even letting him walk out uncuffed and trusting him with an undetectable bomb design, was simply the cost of doing things the right way.

After that there were discharge procedures to follow, and Scully accompanied the silent bomb-builder back through the same security checks as before, followed by some of her equally quiet agents. When Wicking was thoroughly patted down, including extensively under his thick jacket, she stayed close where she could observe the lack of visible device or dangerous vials. When he went through the x-ray she made sure to stand where she could see the results, and felt his gaze on her, looking for indications that the device or components had been detected. She had to hand it to him; there was nothing out of the ordinary on this screen. Maybe once she had time to analyse the images more closely, but now wasn't the time. She quirked an eyebrow that turned his attention away, uncomfortable with how this had transpired.

On the other side, ignoring Desmond's sullen glare, Scully nominated Agent Macgregor to ensure Wicking got home safely, and the bomb-builder spoke up finally, insisting he'd take a taxi.

"I'll still walk you out," Macgregor said, then turned carefully to Scully. "If you're sure, ma'am?"

No way was he going to overstep her authority after Desmond's dressing-down, but his professional duty still demanded he question the wisdom of releasing a man they suspected was wearing parts of an explosive device into the streets of DC. Scully appreciated the conflict, and felt it too. It was the risk Desmond had been hoping to quash by bringing Wicking into custody in the first place. It was also a hypothetical risk – Wicking had not confirmed anything about this device explicitly, no component of concern had been detected in any of their sophisticated checks, and no threat to the public had been articulated.

Innocent until proven guilty, which this man was yet to be.

"I'm sure," she responded, maintaining the appearance of complete control over the situation for Wicking's benefit. What he saw of her interactions with her team mattered; what he told his client and anyone else he was connected with mattered. In his enthusiasm to prevent future crimes, Desmond had given their suspects an unanticipated peek at their hand of cards. Who they were. Who was calling the shots. Best to control how that came across. "There's no law against designing and wearing one's own clothing." Which was all he'd admitted to. "I'm sure we'll see each other again soon," she added as Wicking went to follow Macgregor to the doors.

The bomb-builder she was releasing without charge – for better or worse – paused, again battling with himself over whether to say more. He looked back at her, undecided on whether to trust this person he'd built such a complex image of before meeting her today. A glance around the foyer at the dozens of witnesses, dozens of cameras, and he swallowed whatever else he wanted to say.

"I have your card," he muttered, turning away, and the last she saw of him was his back under that heavy jacket as he stepped outside.

The temptation to exhale loudly in exhausted relief and let her forehead fall against Colt's arm was stronger than she would like to admit, and she held it together with effort, turning in readiness when she sensed Agent Desmond's livid approach.

"Dana Scully is a traitor," he echoed slowly, voice low enough to be kept from the rest of the foyer but not from Colt, who tensed on cue and took a defensive step forward into line with his partner.

"You watch it."

"That's what the bomber she just released called her," Desmond responded tightly, "up until she turned everything around in there with, what was that, some coded message?"

A code too obscure to be deciphered by the mainstream, but not enough to go undetected. Scully swept her analytical gaze quickly over her difficult agent, applying what she would have once called Mulder's profiler toolkit to what she observed. His posture, the tension in his jaw. He was still angry. Some of the swagger she'd knocked out of him before the interview was back, reinforced, unfortunately, by what he'd heard and seen. He felt vindicated, suspicious that there was more afoot here than he'd been let in on, and the combination of his gung-ho approach to his work, his natural arrogance and his present resentful state had him sinking his teeth into ideas that would normally seem preposterous.

It would seem preposterous again once he cooled off, she was confident.

"He's an engineer, not a bomber," Colt corrected heatedly. "Nothing in his profile suggests he's prone to blowing things up."

"Oh, you don't count the scars, then?" Desmond countered in condescension. Colt's hands, in lieu of balling into annoyed fists, went to his hips. The briefcase still swung from one, safe in his loyal grip.

"He was setting that one when it went off by accident. He's never pulled the trigger, and we all saw him fold in that interview room. He doesn't fit the profile for a suicide bomber, or any other kind – he doesn't have the stomach."

"And you'd know something about that, would you–"

"That's enough," Scully cut the other agent's antagonistic retort off very sharply. "This isn't the place to discuss this, and Agent Colt's right. We've always known we were dealing with a builder. That's the case we've spent all this time putting together, and next time we bring him in, we'll be ready to place charges. It'll be rock-solid. In the meantime, there's now someone worse we need to investigate. This client of his whose idea it was to walk him into your waiting hands."

"Right, about that," Desmond said, unable to let this go. "How could you have known it was someone else's idea? How did you know exactly what his client had said to him or whatever? He didn't disagree with one claim you made about his intentions or his relationship with his client."

A sticking point, yes, but not one the agent was in a position to question her on as her subordinate. He knew better and she knew what he was alluding to.

"Call me a traitor again, Agent," she dared him quietly, and he shut up. She took a breath through her nose, reminding herself she was in control. She was. She had this. "Wicking was lashing out, trying to sow dissent where he could, and it worked. There was no coded message. I've dealt with his kind before and I recognised some of the vernacular typical to certain circles. That's all." Her clipped tone didn't invite argument or further discussion. "It helped establish a rapport. I've been around the block more than once, Agent. Is there anything else you'd like to accuse me of before I write you up for misconduct?"

She left the ball in his court, threat clear. He deliberated, recognising the thin ice onto which he'd skated. She was surprised, and annoyed, when he went for one more unwise push.

"He knew you," he pointed out, tilting his head toward the door Wicking just exited. "He knew your name, maybe knew more about you than we do. Are you going to tell us how?"

Scully let her slow blink dominate the stretch of silence that followed; gave him time to consider how far out of line he'd strolled, while she considered how far out of hand this had gotten.

"No." She regarded him as he nodded tightly, knowingly, because he'd have to be realising that she'd had no impetus to answer him, and that he was completely out of cards to play. "That'll be all, Agent."

It was a cold and certain dismissal, and ignoring it would be to cross a line he was yet to find, though he was getting dangerously close. He held her gaze for too long not to be interpreted as challenging, taking care to include a look to Colt that communicated a similar degree of scorn. Agent Colt held his tongue and his firm position at Scully's side, and she couldn't remember being as grateful for him as she was right now, though there had been hundreds of instances.

"Understood," Desmond said finally, taking a step back, "but I'll be speaking with Assistant Director Tan about this."

"Good," Scully responded with no small degree of venom, "and don't leave out the part where you went over your superior agent's head and made an unwarranted arrest that compromises six months of work on taxpayer-funded time. Agent Colt?"

She didn't need to gesture or issue instructions; her partner shot a last tense glare at Desmond and turned in sync with her, and kept perfect pace as they crossed the foyer back to the staff security entry. She could feel Desmond's eyes on her back and she felt a growing uneasy certainty that this was less over than it should be.

Colt let loose, as much as her well-mannered young partner ever did, as soon as they were alone in the elevator.

"What a…" He clenched and unclenched his hand, frustrated and furious. His lips pressed together until the compulsion to speak unprofessionally about a colleague passed, and he substituted with smacking the elevator wall behind him. "My nana would slap me if I finished that sentence."

"I'm sure it closely echoes the sentences I'm not saying," Scully assured him. She had never experienced this level of insubordination from her team, and though there had been warning signs – in character, in overconfident and territorial behaviour – this sudden spike in Desmond's attitude toward her felt personal and targeted. Maybe that was just her emotions talking. Maybe there was less to this than she feared. All the same, it left her unsettled and exhausted. She took a second to let her eyes fall closed and her head touch the cool wall behind her. What she wouldn't do for a sleep right now. The anxiety preceding the interview, the arguments with Desmond, the tension of carefulness in the interview, especially with Colt watching on and the revelation that the suspect knew her not as Scully, senior counterterrorism agent, but as Scully, the bitch who turned her back on Mulder and his cause… all of it she'd suppressed in the moment, but she was feeling its weight now.

Her hand slipped into her pocket, wanting pills she'd flushed, and she was glad in a reluctant sort of way. Glad to be feeling, like Mulder had wanted, and glad to find herself still standing. Coping.

Coping wasn't a one-woman show. She opened her eyes as the lift began its way up.

"Thank you, Warren," she said with as much sincerity as she could convey in just three words. He looked up at her in surprise, perhaps because she so rarely used his first name. The workplace they inhabited encouraged a less personal manner of connection, and even with Mulder and later partners she'd remained on a last-name basis out of habit, but this was a first-name situation, she felt. "You always have my back, even when I don't give you reason to, and I appreciate that."

He shrugged a little. "Of course." Because he couldn't imagine not being the way he was. "That interview–"

"I know, I should have given you more to go off before we walked in," she apologised. The doors opened and they stepped out onto their floor. "I was off my game, mad with Agent Desmond and the circumstances surrounding the arrest, and I didn't make time to brief you. I was thinking on my feet and responding to things as they came up, not as prepared as I should have been. Not to mention, I put you in an unethical situation more than once when I manipulated the suspect–"

"I was going to say you were amazing," Colt said frankly. It was her turn to glance sidelong at him, covering her surprise. She could see in his open gaze that he was honestly impressed with her in this moment. "I don't have the faintest clue how you managed that but you got so much out of him without letting him incriminate himself. You singlehandedly salvaged our case. You didn't strongarm him, you didn't need to knock him around or throw him in a cell for a week to think about his choices, even though you could have. Somehow I think he walked out of here with more personhood than he had this morning. You treated him like he mattered, and you simultaneously got our derailed case back online and got us heaps of new material to work with. I've never seen an interrogation go down like that," he concluded, lengthening his stride to get the office door for her. "You possess powers of persuasion I can only aspire to one day absorb."

Scully allowed herself to smile tiredly at him and his sweet authenticity. The agents who'd returned to the office after the interview were back at their desks, pretending not to notice she'd arrived.

"You were perfect," she said, moved to absolute honesty by his ease with it. "He saw a united front. It doesn't matter who he tells that to. It would only matter if he'd seen something else."

In his pocket, Colt's phone buzzed, and he laid the briefcase on his desk as he fished it out to check the screen. He decided to ignore it and looked back to her. He proceeded with caution.

"Desmond was way out of line, ma'am, but Wicking did call you a traitor," he pointed out in a low voice. Scully felt her pulse falter. It shouldn't mean so much to her ego, but threats to Colt's shiny image of her hit hard. In moments like this one, she was embarrassed to find within herself a fear that his admiration was forever only one X-file away from crumbling to disillusioned pieces, and she knew that was petty and small of her. "Half our office was watching and it was on camera. Desmond was weirdly stuck on it. It's not going to, I don't know, prompt an investigation or anything, is it?"

"It's not the worst thing I've been called in an interview," Scully replied lightly, relieved. He wasn't worried it was true. He was worried others might think so. "And no. I'll be fine."

She hoped she would, anyway. All of this had sat wrong with her since she first took Desmond's call, and the seed of discomfort still held space in the pit of her stomach. She'd worked out the layers of wrongness behind Wicking and his arrest, but what about the defiance? Was that just part of the same issue, or something more?

"Listen," she redirected, laying a trusting hand on the briefcase in front of him, "I need to speak with someone. Can you get hold of the scans and footage of Wicking entering and exiting this building, and check in with Marzollo whether we know yet who set off the fire alarm? When I get back, we'll write up the interview."

Unquestioningly, Colt was already logging into the surveillance footage of Wicking's apartment building and dialling security downstairs by the time she was walking out the office door. That seed of doubt in everyone but him rattled inside her, unsure whether to bloom into full Mulder paranoia – her eyes wanted to roll at just the prospect – or wither into the dust of debunked delusions. She couldn't decide which was the least wise path, and the steady voice in her head said something poetically deep and ridiculous about the least wise path being to dismiss either one out of hand, but she still followed it to the lifts and along hallways until she arrived at the door she wanted.

"Is he in?" she asked the receptionist, and one short phone call later Walter Skinner himself was opening his office door to admit her. She brushed in quickly and let him close the door behind her before opening her mouth, eyes sweeping around the empty room. "Can I ask you something? Quickly?"

"Good morning to you, too, Agent Scully," he replied a little dryly, checking his wrist to confirm the time. It had to be creeping close to midday. It had already been an unreasonably long day, and the worst, she knew, was still to come. "Yes, of course. Is everything alright?"

She hesitated, feeling foolish, but that voice reminded her there was no one safer to ask, and no harm at all in being sure. "I'm… Yes, I think so. I might be getting ahead of myself and channelling our mutual friend here, but I need to confirm it. Have you heard anything about me?"

Behind his glasses, Skinner's eyes narrowed. "About you? Like what?"

"I don't know. Anything new. Plans to edge me out, plans to undermine or shake me – I don't know, anything."

"No, nothing." The assistant director folded his arms across the front of his suit. "Where's this coming from? Have you heard something?"

Scully shook her head slowly, exhaling deliberately. Skinner had his ear the ground on this front and if he said he hadn't heard anything, then chances were that no new moves had been made. The first time an agent made an arrest without asking for her permission as lead should not push her to assume that she was under attack. An agent's vulnerable hurt at being made to feel small and incompetent in front of everyone in their office, right in what he'd thought was his moment of sunshine, was not so far out of the realm of reactions she should be able to empathise with. She was being the worst kind of Mulder. Jumping, reaching. Missing the mark completely. His magic, which she'd channelled to good effect in Wicking's interview, had worn off.

Colt's odd intensity earlier this morning had gotten to her, perhaps. The basement had gotten to her. Last week's encounter with Mulder and near-encounter with William had gotten to her. This stupid and impending date with Hugh Kelley had gotten to her. She was tired and overwhelmed and hurting and now annoyed by today's events. She was just… unsettled. That was normal.

"I'm overreacting," she assured her former boss. "Just a couple of agents forgetting chain of command. Maybe. It might be all in my head."

"If they're not toeing it to your satisfaction, pull them into line," Skinner reminded her. She nodded quickly. Feeling stupid for even coming here with this.

"You'd tell me if you thought one of my agents was…" So stupid, but Mulder's voice in her head didn't drop it. "If you thought they were compromised or poorly connected?"

"I'd ensure you knew," he answered carefully, because no, he probably wouldn't tell her outright. "Who are we talking about here?"

"Agents Desmond and Macgregor. Macgregor less so."

Skinner thought seriously, trying to place the names, then shook his head. "Not even sure I've heard of them. Do you want me to–"

"No." Too sharp. Scully pulled herself up, forcibly softened. This was her friend. "I mean, no thank you. I don't want to raise any flags and there's nothing really there to warrant it, anyway. I'm just on edge. My agents botched a six-month operation and I had the momentary audacity to imagine they'd done it purely to spite me and make me look bad. You were right," she added reluctantly as he circled his desk to sit behind it. "I'm becoming more and more like someone else we know."

"I don't know that becoming is still the right tense for that admission," Skinner said, and she shook her head in an attempt to hide her wry smile. He looked at her more seriously. "It's not like you to get spooked like this. Are you okay? Really?"

Her response was automatic and not entirely true. "I'm fine." She reconsidered. She was always quick to dismiss herself, and others' care for her, like this. "I'm becoming fine. Present continuous tense. Maybe next week I'll be more fine."

She hoped that was true, and hoped even harder as the day wore on and dread for this evening set in. She tried to talk herself out of the negativity as she went through the motions with Colt. Writing up the interview and ignoring Agent Desmond's cloud of resentment on the other side of the room. Maybe Kelley would forget her offer. Watching the surveillance screens for Wicking's arrival home at roughly the projected time, indicating he hadn't stopped off anywhere or made any detours. Maybe something would come up and allow her to postpone dinner again. Analysing the scans from security and turning up nothing more than the lines of what she was confident was a thick piping running through the stitching of the sleeve to the side pocket, but which could really have easily been a normal part of the jacket's design. Maybe Kelley just wasn't that interested and wouldn't show, or would call ahead and cancel.

"You know you don't have to go if you don't want to," Colt mentioned quietly as he caught her looking up at the clock creeping closer and closer to five, "and we both know you don't want to."

Scully suppressed a sigh. She hadn't told him about the stupid dinner date she'd made with AD Kelley on the weekend, but she wasn't at all surprised that he knew about it. His phone had been buzzing intermittently throughout the day, and half the times he frowned – family problems, she assumed – but the other half he perked up and instantly replied. A stolen glance at the screen confirmed the contact was Agent Harlow. The two had hit it off beautifully in a short space of time, the spark of a partnership that challenged and engaged and motivated and inspired them both, the kind Scully hoped got its chance to last their lifetimes and benefit them in all the ways they each deserved. Harlow's runaway mouth, and therefore presumably her texting fingers, had had plenty of opportunity in the elapsed week to share Scully's ill-made plans.

"You don't have to protect us," Colt added, eyes on his screen, playing down the significance of what he was trying to convey. He'd loaded her profile and was reading it idly. "Not like this."

He was wrong. Protecting him, and Harlow, and Mulder, and their investigation and everyone whose lives depended on it, that was exactly what she had to do. At the cost of any petty inconvenience to herself.

That petty convenience chose this moment to step through the office door, dazzling white smile as cliché as ever and perfectly slicked dark hair without a strand out of place even at five to five on a Friday evidencing his unharried airconditioned existence. The dread settled in a knot of reluctant acceptance of yet another game of words in this already very long day, and she shot a smile at Kelley that she hoped was welcoming and wide. His expression suggested she succeeded. She stood and touched Colt's shoulder as Kelley approached.

"Before you leave today can you chase up the fire department about that evacuation today? They haven't responded to my request for a call back and we need to know which apartment triggered the alarm. No new movement from Wicking?"

"On it, and nothing." Colt clicked across to the live stream for her benefit. "Shot a nasty look at our cameras before locking himself back inside, and no changes since. Good afternoon, Assistant Director."

Kelley had reached their desk. His smile tightened a little at Colt greeting him instead of an acknowledgement from Scully, but he seemed to make more of an effort, and replied more graciously than she expected.

"Agent Colt. It's good to see you again. Agent Scully," he redirected as soon as he could, doing a decent job of not making it obvious to the whole office that he was here to take her out in a non-professional sense, "I was hoping I'd run into you. I've got a case I'd like your opinion on, if you've got a few minutes."

Scully played along. "Of course. I'm just finishing up here, you can tell me about it on the way out. Are you done for today?"

She made small talk as she shut everything off and tidied her desk around Colt, at least for the benefit of the other agents still in the room, like Desmond, who'd glanced up to subtly watch her. Kelley kept a smooth rhythm to it, answering questions about his day in a light-hearted way without giving any real details. He was charismatic and charming, she thought as she pushed her chair in, the perfect catch.

Perfectly dangerous. She had no idea what precisely he wanted from her, only that it wasn't anything she wanted to give.

Her gaze caught on the briefcase as she was gathering her coat, and Colt glanced up at her, recognising her indecision. She didn't like it to leave her presence longer than it needed to, and after her episode today suspecting everybody and everything that moved, she wanted it around more than ever, but she also didn't like the image her mind conjured of it in Kelley's car. On the backseat, in the trunk, slipped from her grasp and spirited away somewhere…

Colt's motion to take it from the desktop and slide it to the floor beside his feet, protectively close, was unspoken and as natural as when he asked, "Will I see you Monday, ma'am?"

Worth his weight in gold, she reflected long after she'd walked out with the assistant director. It wasn't the first and wouldn't be the last time she thought it.

"Do you have anywhere in mind?" Hugh Kelley asked when she was alone with him in the elevator. He kept to the other side of the carriage, leaving her personal space free, the perfect gentleman. Ugh. "I confess I wasn't sure of the tone intended for this evening, so if you want to go home first to change, or…?"

And stretch this out even further? No, thanks. Scully smiled warmly.

"I'm happy to go as we are," she said. For all her dislike of him, she actually appreciated the forthrightness of his question, allowing her to set the expectations going forward. She opted for frankness herself. "It's been a long day and I think if I set foot in my house I won't have the energy to leave. As for the tone, mostly I wanted the chance to spend time with you outside of this place and get a better idea of who you are when you're not the assistant director."

True enough. Kelley's smile widened, pleased.

"I was really glad you asked," he admitted, and it sounded genuine. "Surprised, to be honest, but glad."

"Good. I'm a surprising person," Scully informed him silkily as the elevator pinged and she stepped out ahead of him. "And no, I don't have anywhere in mind. Do you?"

He fell back into step with her, hands in his pockets completing the boyish pretence he had down.

"Do you like Chinese?" he asked. "There's this place I know downtown, and it's going to sound ridiculous, but sometimes I think I could live the rest of my life just on their spring rolls and plum sauce."

"But it's just an entrée?" Scully clarified, and he nodded, comically ashamed.

"An eight-page menu and I fill up on a single entrée. They make them themselves, if that makes it any less sad," he added hopefully. "It's just the best thing I've ever eaten."

"Maybe they'll make you a main-sized platter," Scully suggested. He pretended to moan at the very thought, and she smiled, a little less falsely this time. "Okay, you've convinced me. And surely across an eight-page menu I can find something real to eat as well. Where is this place?"

He described the location and gave brief directions. By her estimation, it was at least fifteen minutes away. He seemed to see her envisioning the directions in her mind.

"I can drive you, or you can follow?" he offered, which again was respectful, and she opted for the latter. When they parted ways and went to their separate cars, she had to admit to herself, not for the first time, that Hugh Kelley was perfectly likeable. Pity he was an untrustworthy link in a chain she had spent half her life fighting to break.

In Friday afternoon traffic, it took even longer to arrive than she had estimated, which suited her fine because it was time spent alone in her car following the taillights of Kelley's huge sporty four-wheel drive. The exact kind of vehicle a single man in the big city working behind a desk needed for his daily commute. In her sleek little car she found a parking spot almost right outside the venue; she was standing outside the doors for almost another ten minutes before Kelley, looking just a little less polished, jogged up to her, complaining he'd had to scope several blocks over before he'd found a park.

"Not a problem," she said, pocketing her phone and gesturing to the doors. "Perhaps I should have gone in ahead and requested their maximum order of spring rolls."

He grinned and followed her into the restaurant. Inside, it was just as busy as the street outside, but the man behind the front counter recognised Kelley on sight and delightedly ushered them toward the back. The assistant director shared another abashed smile with Scully as they wove between crowded tables.

"They, uh, might see a bit of me."

The staff magicked a tiny table out of nowhere and arranged it in a non-space in the corner near the noisy kitchen, which she thought was a sweet gesture of accommodation for a valued regular. She also appreciated that it wasn't a cosy quiet spot intended to simulate a romantic setting, though she and Kelley were both dressed for the office and probably didn't present as a date. Kelley surprised her by briefly sustaining a conversation with the waiter in Mandarin, and she cocked her head at him as they both settled into their seats and their waiter disappeared for menus.

"I'm clearly not the only surprising person at this table," she pointed out. He smiled humbly, smoothing his jacket before unbuttoning it at the front. "Bilingual?"

"I wish. What you heard is about all I know, but I'm glad it did the intended job of impressing you. You're a very intimidating person to be around, you know, with all your talents and accomplishments."

"Ah, my aim in life," she replied as if this comforted her, and in actual fact, it did. She perused the menu that appeared in her hands and pretended not to notice that when Kelley responded to the waiter and joked with him briefly, he spoke with speed and fluency. He might not consider himself bilingual, but he was certainly more knowledgeable in the language than he had implied. That shouldn't surprise her; he was an assistant director in Counterintelligence. "What's their barbeque pork like?"

The starter drinks and entrées – of which the spring rolls were indeed nice, if not quite as world-shattering as Kelley believed – were comfortable enough, maintained by light and entertaining conversation. About the restaurant. About their busy weeks. Nothing sensitive, nothing personal, nothing at all until Kelley had to go there.

"I really didn't expect to see you working with Agent Harlow on the weekend," he dropped into conversation, and she felt the evening's deceptive ease beginning to slide away. Not that she'd dropped her guard. She hadn't shared anything she hadn't intended to. It was just the fall of the other foot, which she'd known was coming, and had hoped to prolong.

"I noticed," she replied with cool ease, keeping things light until she could feel out what he wanted from this conversation. He'd made no secret that he liked her, and had gently but actively pursued a chance at this dinner, but bringing up work – specifically, the aspects of their jobs they differed on – had been a deliberate choice. He had to know this wasn't the way into her bed. Either he knew that and wanted something else from her more, or he knew that but couldn't help himself from proactively defending a vulnerability. "As I told you, she's on secondment to my division, and I'm supervising the case she's working."

"Right." He dipped another of his beloved crunchy spring rolls into the plum sauce, likewise trying to maintain the comfortable air between them. "I looked into that case. I didn't realise it centres on the Engel deaths."

His friend's case. That's what this was about.

"It doesn't," Scully said. "That's just a precedent, and maybe in resolving these newer cases we can give that family the closure they've been seeking."

"That family are crazy," Kelley insisted, waving the spring roll to illustrate his point. "They almost derailed Pierce's life, and that newbie they've given you on secondment made so many mistakes. Now it's like she's got it in for–"

"I really don't think Agent Harlow is out to get revenge on Agent Pierce, if that's what he's concerned about," Scully interrupted smoothly, giving Kelley a moment to chew his food. "She's been very professional and she's very tightly supervised. By me. If mistakes were made in the original investigation, I'll find them, and we can address them with evidence." She paused, touching her fork and considering her next move. "It was lucky I had Agent Colt download the file over Christmas. It seems the original case file has since been suppressed."

He chewed and swallowed, allowing himself a moment to think. He seemed to realise there was no point denying he knew that, considering the timing.

"I believe it was a temporary measure, a gesture to a long-serving agent in crisis," he dismissed finally. "Surely you of all people understand that not all information needs to be in the public eye, where it can be manipulated and used against people."

Her of all people. How wrong he had her pegged.

"Surely you of all people know that censorship of public knowledge creates more trouble than it's worth," she responded. She'd had enough of this line of conversation, and sought to redirect it to see whether he let it go or held on. "Like this restaurant. An undiscovered little downtown secret, and how many DC lives are worse off for their ignorance?"

It took him a moment before he cracked a smile, pleasantly surprised by her playfulness. He went for the next spring roll.

"So many," he agreed, dipping in the sauce, "but in fairness, I'm not altogether troubled by that. The fewer who know, the more of these for me." He held up his umpteenth spring roll and grinned. Scully smiled back, very evenly, seeing exactly who sat before her.

Secrets are good when they're convenient, said the sound of his ridiculously white teeth crunching into the deep-fried rice paper. Lies are okay when they benefit me and mine.

They talked a little more about local restaurants and small unknown businesses they could recommend and which few people knew of, and their mains arrived, and Scully was maybe a quarter into hers when Kelley went for his kill. Granted, she walked into it, not so differently from the way she'd shepherded Wicking only hours ago.

"I know that one," she agreed when he described a favoured steakhouse. "It reminds me of a place I ate at years and years ago, on a case. All you can eat ribs."

Maybe it was the memory those ribs conjured of Mulder reaching across the table to wipe stray sauce from her lip that Kelley interpreted.

"Was that when you were still working with Fox?" he asked casually, too casually, and Scully took a leaf from his book and a bite of her meal to buy herself an extra few seconds before answering.

"He doesn't like that name," she said eventually, leaving the silence long enough to remind Kelley that he'd wandered into unwelcome territory. Alarm bells were going off in her head, and then Mulder's voice, clear and calm. Stick to the facts. "And yes. One of our earlier cases. A vegetarian cult."

She went back to her barbeque pork, inner tension rising slowly, trying not to recount the number of errors in judgement she'd made to arrive here. Just like Wicking had strolled into her playground to pick a fight he couldn't win in allowing himself to be arrested, she'd missed every opportunity to choose this battleground. This was Kelley's favourite restaurant. They were here to play his game.

She'd been stupid.

Kelley smiled, still thinking things were light and fine between them.

"Clearly they didn't recruit you."

She smiled briefly and waved a portion of meat on the end of her fork. "Clearly."

"Someone mentioned to me that a few agents had been frequenting the basement where you and Agent Mulder used to work," Kelley mentioned idly just as she placed that bite on her tongue. She was committed to chewing it while he said, "I figured that had to be you. I would have thought that dark little hovel would bring back too many bad memories."

She chewed carefully. To deny that would suggest she'd lied in the past when she told him she wanted to distance herself from that time period in her career. He was looking for indications of continuing loyalty and emotional connection to Mulder. Why? She still didn't know who he was reporting to, but she did know that he'd been paying more attention to her movements at work than she'd anticipated. Or than she appreciated.

Squash this and redirect.

"If I wasn't stronger than my bad memories, Hugh, I wouldn't be doing this job," she said flatly when she swallowed. "The basement is a wasted space if I don't utilise it. Surely you haven't been in your private office long enough to have forgotten the frustration of working in a shared one?"

All the eyes. All the motion, agents coming and going. Watching, noticing, reporting to assistant directors in other divisions who had no business knowing what Scully and Colt were up to. Someone in her office had taken note of her extended absences and her unusual activity, and shared it with Kelley, or with someone in the middle who'd told him. Scully's suspicions immediately went to Desmond, but she knew that was her recent annoyance talking. It could just as easily be any of the others. They didn't have to be mad with her to notice she was in and out a lot over the past week, nor to be buddies with Kelley.

"The noise," he agreed empathetically. "Everyone on their calls. You must miss having that whole space to yourselves, just the two of you, even if it was just a photocopy room. Is that…" He trailed off as the low rumble of a vibrating phone worked its way under the sound of his voice. "Is that me or you? Speaking of calls."

They both checked their pockets and Scully discovered it was her phone ringing. She frowned to see the caller ID.

"It's my mom, hold on," she said, overwhelmingly grateful for the interlude. She didn't wait for Kelley to nod and gesture for her to go ahead, though he did, even as she hit 'accept' and brought the device to her ear. "Mom? Hi."

"Dana?" It was her mother's voice, but she sounded wrong. "Where are you?"

"I'm at dinner with someone from work." Scully had no intention of admitting who, not after Maggie's reaction to meeting the overly charming assistant director. "Why? Are you–?"

"Dana, I need you to come over. Right now." Maggie was insistent, voice tense, and Scully felt herself tense up in response. "Something isn't right. I don't feel… It's my chest," she blurted, and her breath suddenly quickened. Scully felt her frown deepen, worry stirring inside her.

"What about your chest? Is it asthma?"

"It's tight and I feel… Dana, I need you to come here, now."

She was being vague and a little frantic, very unlike her usual self. Based on the details, Scully's medical mind flew through the possibilities. Panic attack? Anxiety? Heart attack? None of it was good, especially in a woman of advancing age who had never experienced any of these symptoms before.

"Have you called 911?" Scully asked sensibly, which got her another snappy earful.

"Don't you bother them. I'm calling my daughter who is a doctor, and I need you here right now."

"Okay, okay." Scully scooped up her handbag, shooting an apologetic look at Kelley. He was watching her face intently. "I'm on your side of town but I'll still be at least ten minutes out."

"That's fine. Just hurry."

"If anything changes or you start to feel worse," she made sure to impress, "you don't wait for me. You call the ambulance straightaway; do you understand?"

"Fine," Maggie Scully dismissed. "Hurry."

She ended the call at her end and Scully stared at her phone screen for a beat. The noise of the restaurant had faded to nothing and she could hear the blood in her ears for a moment.

"Is she alright?" Kelley asked, and the world came back into focus. Scully stood and he stood in unison. "You look like you've seen a ghost."

"I… don't know," Scully confessed, putting the phone back into her pocket. "I need to go check on my mom. I'm sorry to have to do this–"

"No, don't be." Kelley waved over a waiter and gave a quick explanation. The waiter vanished into the kitchen. "Aging parents, right? It's a whole barrel of unfair."

Scully nodded. It was perhaps the truest thing he'd said all evening.

The waiter returned with a takeaway container and efficiently packaged their meals while Scully tried to insist on paying. Kelley wouldn't hear of it and pressed the barbeque pork's warm container into her hands.

"If you promise to text me when you know she's okay," he said, placing the foil paper bag of remaining spring rolls on top, "I'll even let you have these."

Scully forced a smile she hoped looked genuine, though her thoughts were with her mother.

"Four of the best spring rolls in the city," she noted. "I am spoiled."

She thanked him and added a quick squeeze of his wrist that seemed to mean the world to him, and which hopefully conveyed some sense that this evening had gone positively if not well enough to warrant a second attempt. If he thought she liked him, maybe he wouldn't feel compelled to dig further into her incursions into the basement office. Maybe he wouldn't give in the urge to undermine Harlow at every turn. Maybe her case would stand a chance.

The drive to her mother's from the Chinese restaurant was almost precisely nine minutes, but was the longest nine minutes she could remember, filled with terrified self-talk that overrode the more reasonable voices, shaky hands, deliberate breathing exercises and a few choice swears whenever a light changed to red or someone ahead of her braked too quickly. She just did not have the room in her day for something to happen to her mom right now. At Maggie's she took anxious note of the light on out front and the lack of ambulance in the drive, and upon grabbing the Chinese food from the seat beside her, practically bolted to the door and knocked breathlessly.

Silence. Silence except for her thudding heart.

"Mom?"

She knocked again. After a moment that was too long, the door swung open, and Maggie Scully was standing there. Her daughter's breath released in a whoosh to see her alive at least. Maggie looked straight past her daughter and checked the landing.

"You're alone?"

"What? Of course I'm alone. Mom, are you–"

"Thank goodness. I was worried he'd try to drive you here." Her mother turned away from the door and strode back into her place, Scully trailing uncertainly behind her. She closed the door softly, watching her mother's retreating back. Comfortable posture, no visible tension, even gait. "I was just putting on some tea."

"You shouldn't have any caffeine," Scully said, intending it as a scold, but it came out vague, bewildered. She followed Maggie into the dining room, trying to make sense of things through her heightened stress levels. One aspect of this situation, at least, seemed very clear. "You're alright."

"Of course. How was my timing? I was your wingwoman." Maggie beamed over her shoulder, then must have noticed her daughter's expression. Hers fell. "Oh, honey. I didn't mean it to worry you. I didn't know what else to say that would be a good enough excuse for you to leave."

Slowly, slowly, pieces started to fall together. "Colt."

Maggie's smile returned. "Have I mentioned I like that young man?"

The texts with Harlow. Scully's profile on his screen his afternoon, finding her emergency contact details. He'd known she didn't want to be out on that date but also knew that a rescue call from him would not endear him to AD Kelley, undermining her reason for going in the first place. With an exhausted sigh, feeling bemusedly grateful for all the people in her life who had her back, Scully dropped the takeout on the dining table and let herself melt into one of the chairs.

Relaxing at long last, after a stupidly long day.

"Actually, you have," Scully confirmed, kicking off her shoes, shouldering off her jacket and sinking deeper into the chair. Finally, no more pretence, no more verbal dancing, no more trying to work someone out. Just… this. Her mother smiled at her from the edge of the kitchen. "Worth his weight in gold, though I might have a talk with him about his briefing skills. You two had me worried sick." She unravelled the paper bag. "Are you hungry? Allegedly these are the best spring rolls in the city."