Mulder could remember a nagging feeling that it would be better if his partner found out about the woman. He couldn't bring himself to call her Samantha yet, not after the clones and uncertainty and the hand released in a diner after dark, not since then. He was scarred, burned too much, and when he approached the object of his undoing it was with caution, not naivete. But why else would he have brought one of his best and last secrets to a meeting with his very observant, FBI-trained partner? Certainly not because he wanted to insult her intelligece. Which was exactly how she was taking it.
"Did you think I wouldn't notice, Mulder?"
"I was hoping that my stunning charm and boyish good looks would distract you, Scully."
"I cannot believe you. I simply cannot believe that you would make a breach this great--"
"Without reason? Without cause? Even if she's not my sister, Scully, I do feel-- something toward her."
Scully made a soft displeased sound.
"You weren't there," he lashed out, and regretted it immediately.
"I saw you when she fell off the bridge, Mulder, I was there," Scully said, after waiting a beat. "I remember, even if you don't."
"I remember, all right." His father's face. The letter. The responsibility, the choked sobs and nights spent holding his own grief in his hands, staring at it with both a lack of and too much comprehension. Wanting to forget, and cursing his memory. Her desperate pleading. Watching Scully twice die before his very eyes, realizing that the hole Diana had left was now changed into a little Scully-shape and she fit so perfectly, even Diana wouldn't be enough to fill this emptiness. The screaming impotence of knowing that they could take so much from him, and he could not find the power within himself to fight them.
But he would fight for her.
He had even made the choice, that awful choice, to let his sister accept the danger his partner could handle all too well. The bridge, the sharpshooter, the splash, his life had ended save for the woman who sat in the passenger seat of his rental car. She who was not willing to believe, but would try for his sake. For his sanity.
He snorted. What of it there was.
Scully sighed. "Do you have her phone number?"
"No. --Now before you get defensive about how did I know it was her, and how did I contact her, I didn't. She just showed up sometimes. That was all."
Scully didn't say anything. She walked between the coffee table and black leather couch to the fish tank, stared at its three lone occupants. Her fingernail idly tapped the glass.
"Byers, Langly, and Frohike?" A ghost of a smile flirted with her lips.
"Not quite." Silence, save the hum of the water heater and Mulder's computer monitor, the aerator of the fish tank. Scully felt a total and utter lack of control. The only thing she could focus on was the fact that she needed to pick up the dry cleaning and call her brother Bill back. And fill out a requisition form about a new cellphone. Change the oil in her car. Concrete things. Not Mulder's theories and the sister who was sometimes there, sometimes not; not Skinner's directives regarding her rogue partner. The poster she'd sent off to the sheriff in Maine, and his thank-you letter. Somewhat befuddled, but thankful. The air moving in and out of her lungs. Solid. Comfort.
Agent Spender's partner, a man who'd asked her out not too long ago. She'd put it off. Should she let him? Would it really be the betrayal she kept thinking it would be? The animosity between their partners could be cut with a chainsaw. But he was solid. Solid as her fingernail still tapping against the glass, shivering, echoing, and she didn't know what she was doing anymore.
"Do you have any more of my tea bags?" she suddenly asked. Last night she had used the last of her own.
"Don't think so," he replied. His voice was muffled. His head was in his hands, which were steepled and tight. He looked up, met her eyes. Neither of them smiled.
"Okay. See you in the office," Scully said. Her arms were still tight around her trenchcoat, clenching the cloth against her waist. Both of them were doctors, but neither could help the other. Sometimes neither thought they could.
After Mulder had seen the taillights of Scully's car vanish into the dark, he walked into his kitchen and opened a drawer. Between two fingers he pulled up a tea bag. Sometimes it was the only thing that made him feel better. His sanity had been wrapped up in its smell as his partner had lay catatonic. His horror and anger had been the same emotion, spent on two different people.
He knew she would die one day. But not by the hands of Them, not if he could help it at all. Never at the hand of a man he had been trying to thwart since before he had met her. She would not be the tool They could use to break him. Never. The guilt would probably be more crushing than the loneliness. That was certainly the way it had been with his sister. He missed her, but the guilt and his father's disapproval had been by far the more terrifying.
He stared down at the tea bag, unsmilingly, and put it back in the drawer. Part of a Maggie Scully care package. He barely remembered what else she had sent. The tea bag was the only artifact that remained of the comfort of someone other than his partner. Without it, he'd have absolutely nothing to keep him from soaring spread-eagle over the edge the next time. He knew there would be a next time.
He did not remember his dreams the next morning.
--
"Did you know who she was?" AD Walter Skinner began.
Scully imagined Mulder down in the basement, pouring over the Son of Flukeman case. She couldn't even remember what she'd identified the newer parasite as. Not that it mattered at all, by the time she got down there he'd have a full description of symptoms and characteristics to catch her up. He had seen nothing strange about Skinner's summons and had given her no coaching in regard to her answers. Definitely not the same response he'd had during the debriefings in the Texas vampire case.
"I know who Agent Mulder believed her to be, sir," Scully phrased carefully. That was completely true.
"We both know who he thought she was, but who was she?"
"She's going by Megan Kearney," Dana recited from memory. "She has a husband and a child. She lives twenty miles away, and she says that a man we both know claimed to be her father."
Skinner's face tightened in memory. The man they both knew.
"Sir, she shows no signs of mental instability, nor has she escaped from any institution. Her background is perfectly legitimate or flawlessly forged." Scully finally met his eyes.
"More lies," Skinner growled under his breath. "All right," he spoke up. "Report to me if anything I should know about comes to your attentions."
"Sir," Scully nodded, leaving the office.
She found Mulder setting up the slide projector.
"Have you seen my cattle mutilation slides, Scully?" Mulder called over his shoulder. He was searching a file cabinet.
Scully mimicked scratching her head. "Hm, I distinctly remember filing them all under 'c' for cattle mutilations. That was also when I was cross-referencing 'hiding in plain sight.' Remember that?"
"I said I was sorry," Mulder whined. "Besides, you actually saw that."
"I'm not gonna argue with you." Scully walked over, jerked open a file cabinet, and started leafing through. The file she had just named was nowhere to be seen.
"What is this for again?" she asked, sneezing.
"UFO convention in Atlanta. Skinner gave us both permission to go. I think it's so he can check up on my 'sister.'" Mulder disgustedly slammed a file cabinet shut. "Find anything?"
Scully sighed. First a meeting with Skinner, then a Mulder-goose-hunt.
"Have you seen the Advil?" she asked him.
