Mulder and Scully eat their pasta primavera and lemon chicken mostly in silence, except for minor conversation about the case. Her questions about when he had been first approached by the New Spartans, his next steps and what he knows about the members of the militia surely sound professional and would not mean anything else for someone who isn't fluent in Scully-speak; he knows the implication behind each word – When did you start lying to me? How long will you keep me out? Are you going to be safe?
"I think you noticed that our interactions have changed recently," he says at one point, almost finished with his plate, as he takes a sip of his soda with his head low and flicking his eyes up to look at her through his lashes.
"Do you mean earlier this month, when you started distancing yourself again like you used to be when we'd first started working together?" She mentions wittily. "Or…" she adds without thinking and then catches herself. She looks flustered as she realizes the words she barely kept from spilling out.
Or how we've grown more intimate in the past months.
His heart speeds up unwittingly inside his chest once he infers the possible meaning of what she didn't say. From the look on her face, he gathers she inadvertently referred to the ginormous pink elephant in the room, almost openly discussed this… this thing between them.
Are they ever going to properly acknowledge it?
Wanting to avoid making her even more uncomfortable now that they cannot really do anything about it, he speaks up, "I meant running away from you these past few weeks." Then he sees her exhale, seemingly in relief, and ends up stupidly summoning courage that he didn't even know he had to continue, "But, yeah… I guess the other too."
Once the words are out of his mouth, he takes the last bite of his food, adding to the silence that he anticipates will settle over the room.
She feels flushed and worries that her fair skin could be showing evidence of her emotions. Properly, she looks down to her own plate and plays with the remainder of her food a little bit, trying to organize her thoughts and calm her breathing down. Now is not the time to talk about them, she supposes. "Well, at least is comforting to know you're not a traitor… that your actions are justified," she comments skirting the other subject and keeping the focus on their work.
Yes, she meant to talk only about his professional stance, of course; and yet… apparently, they could unconsciously write a whole book, Tolstoy-long, on subtext.
"I would never do that to you," he whispers, surprising even himself that he would be so indirectly direct.
His eyes distinctly convey some of what he feels – decisiveness, fondness, devotion, fear; hers are a mask that only allow pride and loyalty to seep through. She smiles, though, and that smile lets him see how glad she is to hear his words. She can only nod in recognition of him, refocusing her attention to her last forkful of pasta and chewing slowly, taking her sweet time until she is certain the underlying subject will have died out.
Also trying to give them time to compose themselves, Mulder checks the clock on the wall above the dinner table and finds that it's ten past nine p.m.; he still has at a solid five hours ahead of him to rest before he needs to go to the Bureau. At that thought, he realizes he wants his partner to stay. He wants to tell her that she is the most important thing in his world now, that he can't even think of finding Samantha without her at his side; that he's afraid these terrorists will kill him before they get a chance to sort out their concerns and overcome this final barrier between them. He wants to kiss her, to make love to her, to at least hold her in his arms and be sure that this is a true possibility for them in the near future. But alas… it's all in the future; he can't overstep and ruin everything by doing a half-assed job of addressing it now. "You should go home, Scully," he says instead, getting up from the table and taking their dishes to the kitchen mechanically.
She bristles for a second before getting up as well and walking towards the kitchen doorway, coming out of her own reverie. She was thinking along the same lines as him, assessing that she should go back to her place and get a good night's sleep before giving all of herself tomorrow to finding out the truth about the toxin the New Spartans have been using and helping this case go away. Still, hearing him speak the words, she can't help but feel… rejected.
Upon noticing her reaction and before she gets a change to say anything, Mulder continues in what he hopes is a comforting voice, "I really appreciate the company and having my finger fixed, but it's still too dangerous for you to stay here, I can't risk your life with this case." He dumps the dishes in the sink and runs the water, then turns around to face her, resting his hips on the counter. "And I honestly need some quiet time before meeting Skinner and taking the next step with this case," he tries for a tired smirk.
"You do know it's my choice to have a risky job, right, Mulder?" Scully asks in a serious tone, now that she's finally allowed to speak. "We've covered this before," she comments, frustrated.
"Yes, you've said something in the past about this being your life," he comments back, more snarkily than he intended to before closing his eyes and turning toward the counter to brace himself, taking a deep, calming breath.
"I'm just worried about you," she says softly, coming up to him and placing a hand on his bicep. She wants to steer them away from pointless, redundant arguing.
"And I'm worried about you, Scully," he declares turning his face to look at her sideways, such tenderness in his eyes and tone of voice that her stomach flutters. "You're not assigned to this undercover assignment. Your job doesn't require you to make house calls and keep an eye on your partner off hours, either; I'll be fine. I'll do my thing and you do your thing and we'll see each other on the other side of this case," he finishes, gently taking her hand in his in reassurance.
"If that's what you want," she relents, slipping her hand off his grip, though not unkindly.
"It's more of a matter of what I need to get through it, actually," he confesses stoically.
On an impulse, Scully places both of her hands on each of his cheeks and opens her mouth but immediately hesitates. What is she doing, she thinks. She can't be sure of what she was about to say. "Good night," she settles on, caressing his face with her thumbs before letting go of him and walking out of the apartment all at once.
It takes Mulder almost forty minutes after she's gone to let go of trying to guess what she would have said and done before she stopped herself and finally take a nap on the couch.
April 26, 1998
Angola, DE
Sunday seems to be a business day for all the agents working on the New Spartans case.
After arriving in the middle of the night at the Bureau to meet Skinner and the CIA operative liaising with them to discuss the updates on the case and then spending most of the morning there to collect the information he needed, Mulder drives again all the way to Angola, Delaware, to meet with Haley and his sidekick at the Aaron Burr Motor Court, expecting to just deliver all the material that had been requested of him and then go back to his regular life. Instead, he ends up being once again thrown into a car wearing a hood over his face and then taken to the same undisclosed location three hours away that he had gone to the day before – the difference this time being that the warehouse is swarming with other men, including the elusive August Bremer, all busy with working out the plans for a secret bank heist. It's ironic that Mulder is happy to see he had correctly assumed the crime; he hadn't been counting on actually taking part in it, but apparently now he is supposed to. He doesn't really know how he feels about it but figures that after everything he's already gone through, it's a little too late to backtrack. So, he hovers around the group for a while, trying to keep out of the way and at the same time wanting to learn as much as possible about their plans. He is already too deep into this anyway.
By early evening, it becomes evident that no one is going back to their regular lives for the night, so Mulder declares to the room – aiming his words mostly at Jacob Haley – that he needs to contact his assistant director at the FBI with an excuse as to why he will be away from the office tomorrow morning. "I need a reason to be away lest he and my partner get even more suspicious," he adds for good measure to keep his cover. Actually, what he really needs is to touch base with his boss and let him know he's at least still alive.
"Maybe you should quit your job and joins us full time, Mr. Mulder," Bremer tells him, still sounding wary for a reason the agent can't really pinpoint.
"Let's see how this goes before I give up on my 401(k)," Mulder deadpans. "Besides, how would we get any government information without someone on the inside?"
"Not to sound unappreciative of your assistance and interest in the cause, but we can do just fine without a government pawn," Bremmer states emotionlessly.
Mulder's ostensibly innocuous question was meant to afford him an opportunity to pay close attention to Bremer's reactions, and the militia leader's message seemed clear enough to him – the federal agent is clearly expendable to him.
Jacob Haley, on the other hand, doesn't appear to like his associate's manners, throwing the other criminal a dirty look before directing Mulder to use a room at an opposite far corner to call his boss. Thankful, Mulder goes to call Skinner about this latest update, briefly informing the A.D. only that something has come up and that he will be chasing down a lead out of office the next day, no further explanation conveyed for fear that someone might be listening in.
For his part, Skinner understands well-enough to pick up on the fact that Mulder is probably joining the New Spartans for their next terrorist attack, one that he doesn't really have any detail on, except that it possibly involves a bank or armored car robbery anywhere in any of the twenty-six states that comprise the eastern region of the United States… At a loss, he informs Scully of the situation and requests her help to try and find out more about her partner's whereabouts, hoping that their eerie connection actually works in his favor this time. She had already warned him earlier today that there is a chance the toxin used by the New Spartans might have come from the U.S. bioweapons program (which seems to have continued in secret after the 1960's) and that Mulder might be on a suicide mission; he is not willing to gamble with his agent's life.
That's why Scully rides again all the way to Angola, Delaware, close to eleven o'clock this fine cool evening – she came to check if her partner drove back to the same motel to which she had followed him last Friday. Reaching the lodge's parking lot, she allows worry to take over her once she spots her partner's car abandoned (okay, parked) at the outdoor lot. She has no concrete reason to fear for Mulder's safety – no incoming threats that she's aware of, no evidence that his cover has been blown, nothing; all she has is a bad feeling in her gut.
That's not very scientific of her, she automatically berates herself at first. Then she reminds herself that she has indeed been making an effort to rely more on her intuition than she's permitted herself in the past, so she accepts her instincts and acts accordingly – she parks her own car next to her partner's and then on a hunch goes to the motel's front desk to check if her "boyfriend" – Mr. Kaplan – has already checked in, giving the night manager (who she's glad to see is a friendly older lady and not the same person as last time) a weak excuse about being unable to reach him on his mobile phone.
"Room 130, ma'am," the night manager tells her cordially after checking the ledger.
"Thank you," she replies with an amiable smile, grateful in fact that she remembered the alias that had been used to rent a room two nights ago.
Going back to her car, she spots the door to room 130 across the parking lot and makes herself comfortable in the driver's seat; she's ready to stakeout the place for the whole night, if that's what it takes to make sure he's going to be okay.
April 27, 1998
Angola, DE
When Scully comes to her senses at the sound of a car horn, she notices that she's still in her car, daylight almost blinding her eyes, and finds that she must have dozed off at some point during her overnight stakeout. 6:04a.m., she spots on the car's radio display. Honestly, Dana…
She usually loves that she can manage to rest anywhere at any time, but it's moments like this that make her hate her inability to stay awake for long hours when she's not actively on the move.
Movement ahead of her catches her attention and she looks at the door she had been watching all night only to see motel housekeeping leaving the room. "Oh, damn," she mutters to herself, realizing that this means the room is vacant and Mulder is nowhere to be found. Despite the fact that she constantly harasses him about his sleeping habits, right now she's ironically envious of the man's chronic insomnia; if things were the other way around, he wouldn't have fallen asleep and lost the only potential lead to finding his own partner.
She feels like she failed him, and that tears a hole inside her, would actually bring her to tears if she gave herself more time to wallow in self-blame. However, she refuses to let even another second go by without pragmatically considering an alternative to finding her partner. This mistake will not possibly cost him his life; that is just not something up for debate.
Suddenly, a light bulb goes off in her head – the money. If they were planning to simply rob bank or an armored car, they would have no need for releasing a biotoxin in a movie theater in a small town in Ohio. If she is reading this situation correctly, the New Spartans are most likely aiming at contaminating the money to maximize casualties and create chaos all over the country, weakening the population's faith in the government's ability to protect them and making them vulnerable to further attacks, until they can ultimately stage a coup. She could be wrong, of course, but right now this is the theory that makes the most sense to her, so she once again makes an executive decision to trust her instincts, already turning her car around to drive back to D.C. as fast as she can. She reaches for her cellphone to call Skinner and tell him of her suspicions, but the battery is discharged.
She needs to drive faster.
Unfortunately, due to morning rush hour and a six-car pileup in Chesapeake Bay Bridge, it takes her almost four hours to reach the FBI Headquarters, and she dreads to think that with each tick of the clock Mulder's life might be closer to danger. She keeps chanting to herself that they will find her partner and that he will be fine, over and over, nonstop, like a mantra. Once Scully finally walks in the conference room set up as command center for the FBI/CIA joint taskforce and spots her boss, she starts immediately spurting her theory about the money being contaminated and Mulder's life being in danger, and not even the information that there have been twenty-seven bank robberies in seven eastern states just this morning is enough to deter her. She is on a mission to find him, and she goes around the room looking at all the different monitors playing surveillance tapes trying to find her partner. Determined, she directs all the team's efforts into going over the tapes involving large bank heists in the major cities. "Hitting smaller banks or minor cities would not be symbolic nor threatening enough to fabricate the kind of havoc they in all probability desire," she assures both the A.D. and the CIA agent whose name she still has no idea is.
Eventually, she comes across a panoramic image of the heist in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and her heart starts pounding. "Freeze there!" she commands to the tech, her adrenaline high.
"Agent Scully?" Skinner's question is implicit as he comes to her side, CIA man in tow.
She points at the tall man in an all-black ensemble, holding what looks like an MP9 semi-automatic pistol and wearing a Dracula mask over his face and a splint on his pinkie finger. "That's Mulder. I set his finger last night with that splint," she informs them intently. "We need to go immediately to Harrisburg."
"It's a two-hour drive," CIA man states unnecessarily.
"I'll call in the HAZMAT team to start the sweep in the bank," Skinner tells Scully, ignoring his co-leader. "Let's go."
Mulder has been feeling sick to his stomach ever since leaving the warehouse at seven-thirty this morning. Actually, if he's being honest, he's been particularly tense ever since leaving the makeshift criminal headquarters late last night and going with the group to a secluded estate somewhere eastbound about twenty minutes away – as he had correctly assumed, it had been impossible to have a good night's sleep; thoughts of being made as a double agent by someone in the militia, of the terrorists being successful in their endeavor, of Scully getting caught, of either of them getting killed had permeated his mind and resulted in him having only managed to snooze for short periods of time, which had barely amounted to an hour of rest for the whole night.
At nine a.m. sharp, the bank's manager and accompanying security guard had been surprised to open the armored van door and find the New Spartans and Mulder hiding behind masks piling out of the car, waving guns at them, yelling to unlock the loading dock gate and then storming into the bank and threatening to shoot the employees and clients if they didn't follow their instructions. Most of the terrorists stayed behind in the main room to hold the bystanders at gunpoint, whereas Bremer took the manager as hostage and went inside the vault with a couple of the group's members to steal the money. It fell onto Mulder the responsibility of pointing his own gun at a young teller, an honest, unsuspecting, stupid male teller who thought he should take advantage of the undercover federal agent's apparent uncertainty and try to trigger a silent alarm to call the cops. Mulder might have hesitated, but the lackey responsible for breaking his finger certainly didn't; he fired his own gun and hit the teller right on his left side, very close to his lung. Whilst the man had miraculously remained alive, he couldn't really claim it to be his lucky day – Haley wanted Mulder to execute the innocent man, and the FBI agent was at a loss, couldn't really murder a civilian but at the same time couldn't think of anything to say that would sound plausible to avoid shooting the man; he just froze, standing there for about ten seconds that felt like two centuries getting howled at by Haley until Bremer stepped in and ordered Mulder to go away because his weapon was traceable, shooting at the man himself.
They piled back onto the armored van they arrived in and left with all the money they could take, going back to the New Spartans headquarter about an hour and a half away.
Now, standing outside around a makeshift bonfire where Bremer is burning all evidence that could link them to the heist, Mulder is disgusted with himself. He cost a civilian's life. He may not have pulled the trigger himself, but his actions, or lack thereof, actually caused a guiltless man to be killed.
He hates himself.
As Bremer adds the stolen money to the bonfire, Mulder is desperately confused. Shouting at the man to ask what he's doing, he's told that the bills could also be traced and puts two and two together – it was never about a robbery; the heist was a decoy to contaminate the money they left behind.
Dear Lord, these people are lunatics.
Coming face to face with the barrel of Bremer's gun, Mulder is stunned out of his stupor. Haley immediately steps up and stands in front of him, arguing with Bremer about his allegiance, accusing the man of leaking information to the feds, and then Bremer is playing a recording of Mulder talking with Scully two nights ago about being tested and afraid of dying and about Haley trusting August Bremer even less than he does him for them all to hear.
"What the hell is this?" Haley asks Mulder, astonished.
Mulder can't say anything in his defense at first. They're gonna kill me, he thinks. They're gonna kill me and I haven't found my sister, I haven't really lived, I haven't told Scully how I feel… oh my God, they're gonna kill Scully too. I've failed everyone I've ever loved in my life.
"It's time you pay for your betrayal, Mulder," Bremer announces interrupting his musings, still pointing at the agent. "And you for your stupidity and misguided ambition," he adds, turning his aim at Haley. "Both of you, start walking," he pushes them backwards by nudging the gun barrel at their chests, and the two men turn around and march away, Bremer and his thugs in tow, until the New Spartans mastermind tells them to stop by the side of the road. "Kneel on the ground," he orders both men and they comply.
"My partner found out about my involvement with you," Mulder speaks up while staring ahead, an idea in his mind. "We're personally close, and she tailed me to Delaware once she thought I was acting too detached and weird. She confronted me in my apartment after she saw me leaving with the gimp there and I had to tell her some of what was going on to get her to trust me, to get her on my side. I was trying to get her to believe the cause," his voice turns insistent as he tries to convince the men with the guns and the one kneeling beside him. "I am certain I can get her to join us in this!" he raises his voice, turning his head to the side, in a half attempt to look at Bremer behind him.
"It's too late for your lies, Mulder," Bremer says cooly.
"I'm not lying! I just didn't want to say anything before I could actually tell Haley we had another believer on our side," he replies frantically. "I guess being wrongly sentenced to death here made me see I had to move up the schedule a little bit," he adds in sarcasm.
"Just shut up and stay still," Bremer tells him. "We'll discuss what to do about you two."
With that, Bremer turns to the terrorists by his side and they start speaking in hushed tones.
"You guys could really use a chill pill," Mulder says in a low tone to Haley, trying to joke his way out of certain death.
"I vouched for you," Haley retorts, anger seeping through his lips.
"I'm on your side," Mulder whispers harshly, hoping to convince Haley and get himself out of this situation.
Bremer's voice announcing that they've made some decisions interrupts their conversation. He addresses Haley first, placing a leather pouch with a set of car keys on top of his head and ordering him to take the car ahead of them and leave. After the man drives away, the militia leader tells Mulder to stand up and directs him to a deactivated greenhouse nearby.
This is it, Mulder thinks. This is the end of the line for me.
"Stop there," Bremer tells Mulder once they get to the middle of the area, plastic sheets hanging all around them.
The agent turns around to look at the man, in a last attempt to save himself. He notices the criminal's eyes are downcast, head hanging low, as he orders Mulder to get down to his knees and put his hands behind his back. Not following through at first, Mulder keeps watching the older man in silence. Something feels off here. His brain starts racing – what is going on?
Without lifting his head, Bremer looks up through his lashes and Mulder's mind keeps reeling, trying to make sense of the expression on the other man's face. Is there a message in there? Is that a warning? Regret…?
Once the staring contest gets to be too much, Mulder resigns himself to his fate. He turns back ahead and gets down on his knees.
I'm sorry, Scully.
Author's Notes:
Okay, first off, I apologize for having to split this chapter once again and not finalizing PBV here, but this is such a gold mine for MSR that the more I reviewed and tried to take out of the story, the more I ended up adding to address where I want our couple to be in the next chapters (or rather where they're taking me within the bounderies of canon...)!
Now onto a few notes about the case in itself: PBV is a great episode, but I feel there are minor holes in the plotline that I needed to deal with to make this all the more smooth. Less importantly, for my own piece of mind, we know Mulder is away a lot and it doesn't strike me as plausible for a suspicious militia group to take it in stride that he is just playing hooky during work hours, so I wanted to make reference to that in their conversation; also, Mulder and Scully are unaware that Bremer had been listening in on them, so you can see that I (cleverly) hid this information in this story as we're dealing with our agents' POV until Mulder is confronted with it. Now, to the bigger stuff - for some reason we never get to see on the show, Scully is just waking up in her car out somewhere that looks like the motel to where she had first tailed Mulder in Delaware. Did the episode ever explain this? No! So, I did, trying to sew an explanation with what we had available. Also, the timeline doesn't really make much sense (I know there's a lot going on in the show and it's not 24 where you get to see what they're doing each second of the day, but still it kinda bugs me that it's the middle of the night and Mulder is at the FBI, then it's like late afternoon and he's wearing the same clothes in a different state, etc.), so I tried to make it more logical for us.
Oh, and I don't remember ever disclosing this, but I'm not American - I'm actually from Brazil - and I haven't been to D.C. and surrounding area either, so I don't really know any specifics about time to get around or places to visit (nor do I know anything about american bureaucracies and everyday stuff); all I write is what I've learned from intense exposure to American movies, TV shows and literature and from extensive unnecessary research online (which I then turn into an even more extensive research about how it would have been in 1998...). Yeah... I get really picky and go into hyperfocus at times, which is why it takes me longer than expected to review something I had already written, sorry. LOL. But I digress... I just wanted to say that if there's anything that doesn't seem to make sense to anyone who is American or lives in the places mentioned in this story, there's a reason for it! haha You can always message me to tell me what I'm doing wrong and I'll happily address it.
Anyway, let me know what you think in the comments section! Next chapter we'll finally get to the M/S big "oh my God you're alive!" interaction post-PBV and make our way closer to the S5 finale. You're all my one in five billion, sweeties *wink, wink*