Title: Tonight I've Watched
Author: Emily Todd Carter
Genre: MSR/UST, Angst
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: It's not like anyone who matters will read this, much less sue me.
Spoilers: Sleepless, FTF
Summary: 7/? A bullet taken one chilly November evening leads to the merging of two separate paths, two separate people already walking side by side.
Chapter Seven...Reticence
His passion breeds from eternal isolation.
The emptiness.
He loathes the solitude, abhors the silence of his existence.
The rage.
Seething, seeping from his thoughts, incarnate in the very essence of his persona. But the realm of his seclusion is his own, forced upon him by society, past abuse, an aberration of mind or body...
Pale coloring, disheveled façade, possible speech impediment...
His victims are immaculate, flawless. The girls are reticent by nature, reserved.
I hesitated, the dulled tip of my pencil lingering above the legal pad. The pages quivered slightly as the wind lifted them from below.
He avoids social situations, his desire ironically exemplified in his evasion. Any efforts to establish binding relationships...
I paused again. Cracking the sunflower seed, now bland and almost limp, between my teeth, I turned my head to add the shell to the pile on the grass. The salt lingered slightly at the back of my throat. I grabbed another from the bag beside me and laid the pad and pencil down upon the bench.
Leaning back, I stretched my arms behind me and rested my hands on the back of my head.
I closed my eyes to the customary stillness of Hoover courtyard. The breeze was welcome, inviting. It seemed almost intrusive, though, an imposter to the artificial air of the place. The trees arranged uniformly beside shrubs of uniform height. Synthetic grass lining impeccably swept sidewalks. Grimaced men pacing at harmonized speed, wearing standardized attire.
The birds avoid this place, its synthetic ambiance and government-issue pretense.
Thus the stillness. My own escape.
"Sir?"
I sighed, opening my eyes reluctantly.
"Aren't you supposed to be fetching someone's coffee, Agent Sanders?"
The recently-promoted intern clenched his jaw. Irritably, he held forth the folded paper he had been sent to deliver.
"Just arrived from Quantico."
I unfolded the paper and scanned its contents. "Damn it..."
Refolding the sheet, I grabbed the sunflower seeds and legal pad and rose quickly from the bench. I paused for a moment, spitting a seed casually close to his polished Rockports. Stepping around Agent Sanders, I headed quietly along the sidewalk for the entrance.
With eyes closed, I could sense the place.
The elevator softly descended, slowing to a halt, and the chill had already begun to make itself known.
A rustling in the bushes. Footsteps at the doorway. A presence in the room.
The doors opened silently, and I left the empty elevator without a second glance.
Heads turned casually as I entered the hush of the dimly lit hallway. Their looks were hardened, though curious, but defensive as well. I was a solitary suit in a sea of paled blue scrubs, but the simple fact that I was alive posed the most obvious deviation from standard visitors to this place.
I lowered my gaze and continued, returning their detached demeanor. My footsteps echoed through the metallic hallway, and each doctor turned from his chart, each student's pencil paused on its clipboard. I stepped quickly around an oncoming cart of shiny utensils, their edges clashing faintly with each turn of the wheel, as if trembling, anxious to be wielded.
The steel doors of the autopsy bay were closed behind me, sweeping with them a rush of air. The room was dark, chillingly silent. Its whitewashed walls were spotless, ironic.
She stood motionless behind the steel table in the center of the room.
"Mulder."
I swallowed slowly. The bay's only light shed a subtle glow upon the crest of her hair, her forehead tilted slightly forward.
"Scully," I acknowledged, nodding. She crossed her arms and leaned against the counter behind her. I glanced quickly at the tray of scalpels, probes, and forceps she had already assembled.
The hanging scale cast a shadow on her face, but the dimness couldn't hide the purpose in her eyes. Her scrubs were bright-deep crimson, no doubt, a striking contrast to the wisp of hair fallen from her ponytail. I strained my eyes slightly, casually.
I've never truly seen the color of her hair.
She looked away and sighed softly, shivering in the cold air.
Or perhaps the thought of the child soon to pass motionless through the steel doors behind me, with pallid skin as cold as the life it once enfolded, had breached those weathered walls of the woman I once knew.
The room was silent for a moment as we both debated over what to say, if even to speak at all. Two weeks, and we hadn't the words or the will to voice the gnawing guilt, fear, and anger of walking alone.
So I lifted my eyes from the floor, waiting patiently for her gaze to meet my own.
And the words were there, perched expectantly at the back of my throat, and I opened my mouth to breach the deafening silence of the room, but the steel doors whined noisily instead.
Voices muted by the heavy glass crescendoed sharply as I glanced at the bay entrance.
"From Houston? That's impossible."
"It doesn't fit the profile."
"Nothing seems to fit the profile anymore, Jackson."
Presently, I was pushed aside by an anxious technician and forced to retreat to a corner of the room as a deluge of suits and scrubs invaded the autopsy bay. The wheels of the gurney whined with each rotation as it traveled slowly to position beneath the hanging scale.
Her voice rose quickly before I saw her insinuate herself into the throng of agents. I lifted my eyebrows to hide the chuckle as she appeared beside the autopsy table.
"What the hell do you think you're doing?"
They paused mid-sentence and glanced down at her.
"This area's restricted."
No one spoke, and the younger agents turned to leave. The elder remained, glaring haughtily at the tiny red set of scrubs ordering them from the autopsy bay. Scully raised her eyebrows expectantly, advising them to follow.
One glanced at the body for a moment and seemed perched to reply. But I cleared my throat quietly, and his eyes shot across the room.
"So, what the hell is he doing here?"
Scully glanced quickly at me as I met his glare. Her eyes fell to the autopsy table, and I rose from the counter.
"I was just on my way out, Agent Perry," I said, stepping around the technicians preparing the camera for the external exam. Two trial flashes and my hand was on the steel door, holding it silently for the petulant agents to follow.
Her hands were steady, movements calculated and precise. She carefully lifted the sheet from the body, folding it back just below the shoulders and pausing for a moment. I stared through my reflection in the glass as she began to dictate into the recorder, her words echoing though the speaker in the observing room.
My mind was lost in the conviction of her voice, in the self-effacing ambiance of her demeanor, in the subtle glow of the lamp upon her shoulders.
November, 1994. I had sauntered into the autopsy bay, Krycek at my heels, and she had turned. And she had reflected my smile as I pulled her aside and spoke in our tacit "George Hale" patois.
A month later, she was gone.
It was three a.m., and she hadn't slept. She knew I was drunk, and she questioned my motives, but she quietly dressed and demanded the keys. She had stared, incredulous, at the fireman's body, as I nodded and turned to leave the morgue.
She hadn't seen me as I'd paused before closing the door, watching, desperate, her words lingering in my memory.
"Maybe you should ask yourself if your heart's still in it, too."
The door to the observation room opened softly behind me, and the hum of voices rose slightly to a murmur. The agents beside me turned.
I remained silent throughout the handshakes, listening, and sighing as the room slowly emptied.
His reflection appeared beside mine, the wire-rimmed glasses and spotless white lab coat. He was looking past me, watching Scully with an impassive demeanor and nodding slightly at the words of her dictation. He was confident-in her and in himself, with his shoulders back and the trace of a smile in his expression.
"Did you catch that, Agent Mulder?"
I turned my head to face him. He nodded his head in Scully's direction.
"Possible fracture of the hyoid."
I lifted my eyebrows, awaiting an explanation.
"She's not like the others."
I turned back and stared quietly through the glass.
"Hyoid fracture, scleral and conjunctival petechiae, facial cyanosis...This one wasn't smothered, Agent Mulder."
I made no response, but nodded silently. Scully had turned, scalpel poised, somehow aware of his arrival. Her eyes shifted from me to him, and she reached to pull the surgical mask from her face, tucking the stray wisp of hair behind her ear.
He flipped a switch on the wall beside the glass and spoke.
"Erythematous marks?"
"Mostly anterior contusions."
"Confluent across the midline?"
She paused. Leaning forward, she brushed away the child's hair and glanced at the base of her neck. Standing, she turned to face the glass. "Yeah," she murmured, and turned back to the body.
"She was strangled, Randall."
He nodded, crossing his arms upon his chest and raising his eyebrows at me. I clenched my jaw and watched as Scully began the y-incision. The internal exam passed in silence, the subdued monotone of her dictation the only sound in the observing room.
She laid her scalpel and forceps on the table and reached for the Stryker. Miller casually flipped off the internal microphone.
"She's a fine doctor," he murmured.
I stared fixedly through the glass. "She's had experience."
He nodded. "I can tell."
The buzz of the Stryker filled the room, and he turned off the speaker. Silence, again, and then he spoke.
"She speaks highly of you, Agent Mulder. When she speaks at all."
I made no response.
"How long have you been together?"
I started, glancing quickly at him.
"As partners, I mean," he said, looking back at her.
My eyes didn't leave his. Perhaps I was paranoid, unconsciously aware, but he seemed to be prying. "Almost six years." He shifted uncomfortably under my glare.
She'd called him Randall.
"But she hasn't always been this distant.
Has she?"
I stared at him for a moment longer, resolving that I very much, in fact, disliked the man. Unfolding my arms, I turned for the door. As my hand rested upon the handle, he spoke again.
"What happened, Agent Mulder?"
He still faced the glass, but our eyes met in the reflection.
I started to reply, but he stopped me, tilting his forehead towards the glass.
She had stopped to watch me leave, but my eyes met hers and she looked away.
"I only wish I knew," I whispered.
I slipped through the door and into the hallway, leaving him staring silently through the window.
END Ch. 7
starbuck23_ds@hotmail.com
Author: Emily Todd Carter
Genre: MSR/UST, Angst
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: It's not like anyone who matters will read this, much less sue me.
Spoilers: Sleepless, FTF
Summary: 7/? A bullet taken one chilly November evening leads to the merging of two separate paths, two separate people already walking side by side.
Chapter Seven...Reticence
His passion breeds from eternal isolation.
The emptiness.
He loathes the solitude, abhors the silence of his existence.
The rage.
Seething, seeping from his thoughts, incarnate in the very essence of his persona. But the realm of his seclusion is his own, forced upon him by society, past abuse, an aberration of mind or body...
Pale coloring, disheveled façade, possible speech impediment...
His victims are immaculate, flawless. The girls are reticent by nature, reserved.
I hesitated, the dulled tip of my pencil lingering above the legal pad. The pages quivered slightly as the wind lifted them from below.
He avoids social situations, his desire ironically exemplified in his evasion. Any efforts to establish binding relationships...
I paused again. Cracking the sunflower seed, now bland and almost limp, between my teeth, I turned my head to add the shell to the pile on the grass. The salt lingered slightly at the back of my throat. I grabbed another from the bag beside me and laid the pad and pencil down upon the bench.
Leaning back, I stretched my arms behind me and rested my hands on the back of my head.
I closed my eyes to the customary stillness of Hoover courtyard. The breeze was welcome, inviting. It seemed almost intrusive, though, an imposter to the artificial air of the place. The trees arranged uniformly beside shrubs of uniform height. Synthetic grass lining impeccably swept sidewalks. Grimaced men pacing at harmonized speed, wearing standardized attire.
The birds avoid this place, its synthetic ambiance and government-issue pretense.
Thus the stillness. My own escape.
"Sir?"
I sighed, opening my eyes reluctantly.
"Aren't you supposed to be fetching someone's coffee, Agent Sanders?"
The recently-promoted intern clenched his jaw. Irritably, he held forth the folded paper he had been sent to deliver.
"Just arrived from Quantico."
I unfolded the paper and scanned its contents. "Damn it..."
Refolding the sheet, I grabbed the sunflower seeds and legal pad and rose quickly from the bench. I paused for a moment, spitting a seed casually close to his polished Rockports. Stepping around Agent Sanders, I headed quietly along the sidewalk for the entrance.
With eyes closed, I could sense the place.
The elevator softly descended, slowing to a halt, and the chill had already begun to make itself known.
A rustling in the bushes. Footsteps at the doorway. A presence in the room.
The doors opened silently, and I left the empty elevator without a second glance.
Heads turned casually as I entered the hush of the dimly lit hallway. Their looks were hardened, though curious, but defensive as well. I was a solitary suit in a sea of paled blue scrubs, but the simple fact that I was alive posed the most obvious deviation from standard visitors to this place.
I lowered my gaze and continued, returning their detached demeanor. My footsteps echoed through the metallic hallway, and each doctor turned from his chart, each student's pencil paused on its clipboard. I stepped quickly around an oncoming cart of shiny utensils, their edges clashing faintly with each turn of the wheel, as if trembling, anxious to be wielded.
The steel doors of the autopsy bay were closed behind me, sweeping with them a rush of air. The room was dark, chillingly silent. Its whitewashed walls were spotless, ironic.
She stood motionless behind the steel table in the center of the room.
"Mulder."
I swallowed slowly. The bay's only light shed a subtle glow upon the crest of her hair, her forehead tilted slightly forward.
"Scully," I acknowledged, nodding. She crossed her arms and leaned against the counter behind her. I glanced quickly at the tray of scalpels, probes, and forceps she had already assembled.
The hanging scale cast a shadow on her face, but the dimness couldn't hide the purpose in her eyes. Her scrubs were bright-deep crimson, no doubt, a striking contrast to the wisp of hair fallen from her ponytail. I strained my eyes slightly, casually.
I've never truly seen the color of her hair.
She looked away and sighed softly, shivering in the cold air.
Or perhaps the thought of the child soon to pass motionless through the steel doors behind me, with pallid skin as cold as the life it once enfolded, had breached those weathered walls of the woman I once knew.
The room was silent for a moment as we both debated over what to say, if even to speak at all. Two weeks, and we hadn't the words or the will to voice the gnawing guilt, fear, and anger of walking alone.
So I lifted my eyes from the floor, waiting patiently for her gaze to meet my own.
And the words were there, perched expectantly at the back of my throat, and I opened my mouth to breach the deafening silence of the room, but the steel doors whined noisily instead.
Voices muted by the heavy glass crescendoed sharply as I glanced at the bay entrance.
"From Houston? That's impossible."
"It doesn't fit the profile."
"Nothing seems to fit the profile anymore, Jackson."
Presently, I was pushed aside by an anxious technician and forced to retreat to a corner of the room as a deluge of suits and scrubs invaded the autopsy bay. The wheels of the gurney whined with each rotation as it traveled slowly to position beneath the hanging scale.
Her voice rose quickly before I saw her insinuate herself into the throng of agents. I lifted my eyebrows to hide the chuckle as she appeared beside the autopsy table.
"What the hell do you think you're doing?"
They paused mid-sentence and glanced down at her.
"This area's restricted."
No one spoke, and the younger agents turned to leave. The elder remained, glaring haughtily at the tiny red set of scrubs ordering them from the autopsy bay. Scully raised her eyebrows expectantly, advising them to follow.
One glanced at the body for a moment and seemed perched to reply. But I cleared my throat quietly, and his eyes shot across the room.
"So, what the hell is he doing here?"
Scully glanced quickly at me as I met his glare. Her eyes fell to the autopsy table, and I rose from the counter.
"I was just on my way out, Agent Perry," I said, stepping around the technicians preparing the camera for the external exam. Two trial flashes and my hand was on the steel door, holding it silently for the petulant agents to follow.
Her hands were steady, movements calculated and precise. She carefully lifted the sheet from the body, folding it back just below the shoulders and pausing for a moment. I stared through my reflection in the glass as she began to dictate into the recorder, her words echoing though the speaker in the observing room.
My mind was lost in the conviction of her voice, in the self-effacing ambiance of her demeanor, in the subtle glow of the lamp upon her shoulders.
November, 1994. I had sauntered into the autopsy bay, Krycek at my heels, and she had turned. And she had reflected my smile as I pulled her aside and spoke in our tacit "George Hale" patois.
A month later, she was gone.
It was three a.m., and she hadn't slept. She knew I was drunk, and she questioned my motives, but she quietly dressed and demanded the keys. She had stared, incredulous, at the fireman's body, as I nodded and turned to leave the morgue.
She hadn't seen me as I'd paused before closing the door, watching, desperate, her words lingering in my memory.
"Maybe you should ask yourself if your heart's still in it, too."
The door to the observation room opened softly behind me, and the hum of voices rose slightly to a murmur. The agents beside me turned.
I remained silent throughout the handshakes, listening, and sighing as the room slowly emptied.
His reflection appeared beside mine, the wire-rimmed glasses and spotless white lab coat. He was looking past me, watching Scully with an impassive demeanor and nodding slightly at the words of her dictation. He was confident-in her and in himself, with his shoulders back and the trace of a smile in his expression.
"Did you catch that, Agent Mulder?"
I turned my head to face him. He nodded his head in Scully's direction.
"Possible fracture of the hyoid."
I lifted my eyebrows, awaiting an explanation.
"She's not like the others."
I turned back and stared quietly through the glass.
"Hyoid fracture, scleral and conjunctival petechiae, facial cyanosis...This one wasn't smothered, Agent Mulder."
I made no response, but nodded silently. Scully had turned, scalpel poised, somehow aware of his arrival. Her eyes shifted from me to him, and she reached to pull the surgical mask from her face, tucking the stray wisp of hair behind her ear.
He flipped a switch on the wall beside the glass and spoke.
"Erythematous marks?"
"Mostly anterior contusions."
"Confluent across the midline?"
She paused. Leaning forward, she brushed away the child's hair and glanced at the base of her neck. Standing, she turned to face the glass. "Yeah," she murmured, and turned back to the body.
"She was strangled, Randall."
He nodded, crossing his arms upon his chest and raising his eyebrows at me. I clenched my jaw and watched as Scully began the y-incision. The internal exam passed in silence, the subdued monotone of her dictation the only sound in the observing room.
She laid her scalpel and forceps on the table and reached for the Stryker. Miller casually flipped off the internal microphone.
"She's a fine doctor," he murmured.
I stared fixedly through the glass. "She's had experience."
He nodded. "I can tell."
The buzz of the Stryker filled the room, and he turned off the speaker. Silence, again, and then he spoke.
"She speaks highly of you, Agent Mulder. When she speaks at all."
I made no response.
"How long have you been together?"
I started, glancing quickly at him.
"As partners, I mean," he said, looking back at her.
My eyes didn't leave his. Perhaps I was paranoid, unconsciously aware, but he seemed to be prying. "Almost six years." He shifted uncomfortably under my glare.
She'd called him Randall.
"But she hasn't always been this distant.
Has she?"
I stared at him for a moment longer, resolving that I very much, in fact, disliked the man. Unfolding my arms, I turned for the door. As my hand rested upon the handle, he spoke again.
"What happened, Agent Mulder?"
He still faced the glass, but our eyes met in the reflection.
I started to reply, but he stopped me, tilting his forehead towards the glass.
She had stopped to watch me leave, but my eyes met hers and she looked away.
"I only wish I knew," I whispered.
I slipped through the door and into the hallway, leaving him staring silently through the window.
END Ch. 7
starbuck23_ds@hotmail.com
