'Sup?
It is time for Ye Olde Author's Novella: Part 2 (I know. I know).
This chapter came about mostly because I got sick unto death of reading fics set after Never Again where Mulder is The World's Worst Person. Now, I freely admit I'm primarily a Mulder fan, but I'm not blind to his faults. The problem I have with those stories is they completely disregard his established **personality**. Now, to be fair, they did the same in canon, but since fic is a way to correct those discrepancies, or at least give them a plausible explanation, the constant Mulder bashing for that episode grates on my nerves. This is not helped by the fact that I despise Never Again, but not for the usual reasons.
I also have the head canon that Mulder really is as intelligent as he's portrayed in the first 2/3 years of the show, with all the skills and abilities and gifts of a profiler that made him The Best.
In other words, he would be more than able to read Scully and react accordingly. So, in my world, Mulder's motivations before, during, and after Never Again are vastly different from anything I've seen and read so far. And I needed someone who wasn't him to explain that to Scully, so: enter The Lone Gunmen, stage right.
The frustrating and/or confusing thing will be this: in the midst of this chapter, I have provided a working explanation of what's going on in Mulder's head. I did so for two reasons: first, because I feel the story flows better if people can see and understand not just why Scully believes what she does, but why it's wrong, and how that misunderstanding has helped create the issues and situation they're in post-Arcadia.
Second, I had no desire to rewrite Not Just a River.
So if that mini glimpse into Mulder's head is confusing, that's why and I apologize for the confusion.
This chapter was beta read by the wonderful TaleWeaver. Thanks again, girl; you're amazing and I cannot thank you enough.
Last, and possibly the most important thing: my episode order is a bit different from the aired order. So, in my world, the episodes go as follows: The Beginning, Drive, Dreamland 1&2, How the Ghosts Stole Christmas, Terms of Endearment, SR 819, The Rain King, Tithonus, Triangle, Two Fathers, One Son, and then as-aired after that. This is the ONLY way I could begin to make sense of the emotional context we got in one ep, only to be immediately ignored the next. I adore Chris Carter, but he could give Gumby whiplash. So please keep my personal headcanon of timing in mind when reading this; I promise it'll help.
So . . . I think that's it. I hope you enjoy this glimpse into my thoughts and wonderings and I can't wait to hear your response. I have to say, I'm nervous about posting this chapter, because it is so different from everything else I've read, but I'm proud of it, too, and I really hope you awesome readers enjoy the final chapter of 'Hints'.
Things No Longer Left Unsaid
Headquarters of the Lone Gunmen
February 25, 1998
4:27pm
After she'd driven around one of the more remote parts of DC for an hour or so, Dana Scully finally felt calm enough to talk to someone about her anger at Mulder's actions. Arrogant, high-handed, overbearing, patronizing man! How dare he presume to think that she didn't know her own body's cycle and needs and take it upon himself to keep an emergency stash for her?
So she didn't have any chocolate today. Or gloves last month. Or eye-drops two months before that. So what? That was no excuse!
The charade of being 'married' to Scully had evidently become too real for Mulder and he'd forgotten that they weren't really a romantic couple — not that she would tolerate his behavior even if they were. Her anger was flaring back up at the memory of his teasing and touching and just — just pushing her boundaries during that stupid, thrice-damned assignment, anger that was being fed by what she'd learned today about how he viewed her, and Scully idled at the stop sign, breathing deeply to stay calm and trying to decide who to talk to.
She couldn't go to her mother, for several reasons. Part of it stemmed from the knowledge that Maggie would inevitably turn the subject to the unsuitability of her career and wasn't it time for Dana to try something different, hadn't she gotten the FBI out of her system yet? The knowledge that Laura Petrie's life was exactly what Maggie and Bill Senior wanted for their daughter made it that much worse, especially now that Scully had a firsthand taste of exactly how . . . stultifying . . . such an existence would be for her.
But mostly, Scully didn't want to go because she knew, or at least strongly suspected, that Maggie would take Mulder's side.
And she just couldn't handle that right now. It sounded foolish on the outside, childish even, but Scully had never been able to get people to understand how belittling it was for men to assume that she (both as an individual and as a woman in general) needed them to help her with some of the joys of being a woman — which, now that she was really stewing over the thought, was odd. Most men, when asked to buy tampons or pads, would actually rather die first. Also in her defense, her father had never bought feminine hygiene products for her mother and as far as she knew, Bill didn't do it for his wife, so it wasn't something she was all that familiar with. And of course, she'd seen and experienced the condescension of men when 'that time of the month' hit. Whether or not it actually was that time of the month was inconsequential.
She'd actually kneed one boy in the balls in college, after he'd sneered 'PMS Lady' at a friend of hers for the third time in an hour.
Despite being both married and a doctor, Daniel had been either oblivious or indifferent, and Jack had simply expected her to handle it and not mention it to him, please, even if that was the reason she didn't want to have sex. "Just tell me you have a headache, and I'll never question it," he'd told her more than once. And then there was Ethan, who actually fainted just from the sight of blood, so . . . yeah.
Mulder, though . . . damn his eidetic memory. But he couldn't stop there. Oh, no. Not Mulder. Forget knowing her cycle and her preferred brand of pads and tampons, he knew her favorite chocolate and what eye-drops she liked, and that she had the embarrassing habit of misplacing both her glasses and her gloves. So what if her eyes got dry every day around four, even if she couldn't see across the room? What business was it of his that she never remembered to buy more drops until Thursday even when she ran out on Sunday? He had no right to buy things for her, much less keep it a secret. She was a grown woman and if she didn't handle the details of her life herself, then she deserved to be dry-eyed, half-blind, cold, sticky and uncomfortable, and bitchy.
And the cancer magazine . . . just the thought had a red haze forming behind her eyes.
(she refused to acknowledge, much less admit, that it was comprised more of shame than of anger)
There was nothing to say to that. He had no right. None. Her health was her business and if there was something he needed to know, she'd tell him.
However, her family didn't subscribe to that any better than her partner did. So she couldn't go to her mother, because despite her somewhat ambivalent feelings about Mulder, Scully knew that Maggie would probably take his side on this, since from most people's perspective, his actions were sweet and thoughtful. Or, if she did support her daughter, it would be an attempt to foster dissatisfaction with her job. Either way, her mom wouldn't be a refuge for her. Ellen might have been an option, but she and Ted were on their third honeymoon and her few other fri—well, they were acquaintances, really. But none of them possessed enough knowledge to understand Scully's outrage.
Realizing that her literal only options for someone to vent to about Mulder and his high-handed, presumptuous behavior were the Lone Gunmen was enough to make even Dana Scully laugh a little hysterically.
If nothing else, the irony was priceless.
But they'd been on her side when she'd started digging into Diana Fowley and all three of them had disapproved of Mulder's attitude when she'd confronted him with that knowledge later. So, with the only real available solution at hand, Scully headed to their remarkably well-concealed HQ, taking a few more minutes to marvel at the fact that these three strange, yet incredibly loyal, men had become her confidantes, too. Parking accomplished, she trotted up the stairs and down to the door, then waited patiently for the security check, followed by the opening of six — no, seven — distinct locks.
And remembered with more than a little fond wistfulness the naïve, innocent days when she'd thought their overdeveloped paranoia was extreme.
For whatever reason, those memories helped settle her further and by the time Langley swung the door open, Scully had regained her composure. She acknowledged three surprised looks when Mulder didn't follow her in, but none of them spoke for a minute, clearly waiting on her.
That threw her for a bit of a loop, because she'd been expecting to be asked 'what's he done now?', which would give her the perfect impetus to launch into her grievances. Instead, she was met with a curious, expectant silence, and she floundered for several seconds before clearing her throat. Frohike sprang to life at that and produced a cold bottle of water from . . . somewhere. She accepted it gratefully and took several sips, trying to figure out how to start, when Byers cocked his head and said, "What's wrong, Scully? Is Mulder okay?"
That innocent, perfectly reasonable question lit the firecracker. The composure Scully thought she'd regained cracked like an egg and she turned her head, giving Byers a glare that could have stripped paint. His eyebrows arched in surprise at her expression, but somewhat to her shock, he didn't apologize. He simply gazed steadily at her, waiting silently for an answer, and didn't waver under her increasingly irritated stare.
In the back of her mind, Scully knew he'd picked up this interrogation technique from either Mulder or herself, but damned if it didn't work, and the whole story spilled from her in a heated, angry rush. By some small miracle, she managed to keep her voice fairly even, all things told, but by no means could it be considered unemotional or dispassionate, and she was nearly panting by the time she ran out of words.
Being met with not one but three blank stares did not help matters and without her permission, both eyebrows arched in question as Scully found herself disquieted and rather nonplussed by their apparent failure to understand the magnitude of her anger and why Mulder's actions were so unacceptable. After two or three minutes of increasingly awkward silence, Byers finally realized she wasn't going to say anything else and took it upon himself to summarize things.
And he did so quite succinctly. She just never expected the direction said summarization would go.
"So . . . you're mad that Mulder was trying to be a good friend and partner by keeping things you occasionally need at hand?" he said, sounding surprisingly neutral, and Scully blinked. She — she hadn't expected that, though she should have. The boys might hold her in high regard, but they were Mulder's friends first. They were also men, so they really had no way of understanding exactly why her partner's actions were so upsetting. From their point of view, he hadn't done anything wrong.
"It's not that simple," she replied quietly, meeting Byers' dark brown eyes and finding herself startled at how hard they were. His nostrils flared as he absorbed her response and then he turned away, shaking his head. Puzzled, Scully stared after him and jumped when a thin hand curled around her wrist. She twisted around and found Langley standing next to her, looking uncharacteristically serious, even as he gently but firmly urged her to her usual seat. The continued silence was unnerving her, though, and coupled with Byers' obvious unhappiness with something she'd said — not to mention the fact that Frohike had yet to hit on her — it was enough to bring Special Agent Scully to the surface. She gave the two men who would look at her a no-nonsense glare, backed by a silent demand for an explanation.
In a weird reversal of roles, Langley spoke next, and his words sent Dana Scully hurtling face-first down the rabbit hole.
"No, it is that simple," he stated so authoritatively that she blinked. That was very unlike Langley, who tended to hang back and let Byers do most of the talking, unless computers were involved. "But I don't think th—no, you really don't understand, do you?" he interrupted himself, almost wonderingly, his expression softening from the same hard anger that Byers was clearly feeling, and Scully blinked again.
What was going on here? What was she missing?
Frohike answered before she could verbalize that thought.
"We're gonna start from the beginning, Scully, and explain some things about Mulder that I think you've misinterpreted. Or just missed entirely," he told her, holding her eyes with a gaze so steady and so serious, it actually pinned her in place. From the moment she'd met him, Melvin Frohike had always had appreciation for her in his eyes, so the lack of it now was . . . jarring.
"The first thing you have to understand about Mulder is that he is a profiler. And yes, I know you know that," he stated, cutting off her instinctive protest. "But I don't think you've ever realized what that actually means. You were the ninth partner they paired him with in fourteen months. Did you really never wonder about that? Or about why he chose the tactics he did to test you?"
Caught completely off-guard by this, Scully could only blink. After several seconds, she also managed a slow shake of her head, which was apparently what Frohike was waiting for.
"Right. So, Mulder profiles people the way you read scientific journals, and he absorbs the data just as fast. You were the fifth woman they tried with him, you know — and while a lot of it was the fact that even then, you were a well-known skeptic with a solid scientific background, it also . . . well, HR figured out after the second man, who was the fourth partner, that Mulder is a freaking divining rod when it comes to exposing hidden personality traits and flaws."
He paused, clearly searching for his next words, and Scully bit her lip, forcing herself to wait for more information. She had no idea where this was leading, but despite their six-year partnership and their slowly-deepening personal relationship, there was a lot about Mulder she still didn't know (and the same would be said of her, she reluctantly admitted). Being given the opportunity to discover some of those missing links was well worth the segue this conversation was clearly going to take.
At least for now.
"When the second woman they sent to Mulder ran screaming from his office, wailing about crazy and lecherous, they took pity on her and sent her to Finance, which was her background," Langley began, taking over the conversation and pulling Scully's eyes to him. A smile warmed his eyes at her obvious confusion and he added, "They thought she might put a plug in Mulder's spending."
Despite herself, Scully's lips twitched, though not for the reason most people would think. Fox Mulder was actually very good at keeping a budget. But there was so much pressure to shut the X-Files down that he — they — were forced to account for literally every penny spent. And no matter the explanation or the proof they could provide, it was never good enough. So Mulder decided that if he was going to be punished anyway, he might as well earn it. But his indulgnces, as it were, did not run to nice hotels or restaurants, business or first-class plane trips, or even decent rental cars.
He wore Armani like it was Levis while gleefully slogging through every mud-hole, ditch, and rain puddle he could find, and was utterly unrepentant about making the Bureau cover his wardrobe costs (if Scully did the same at times, well . . . yes. Yes, she did). And he might have set a record about the number of cell phones he went through.
That was it, though; otherwise, the X-Files team spent relatively little money, all things told. But it still made no difference to the accountants, who demanded a monthly expenditure review from them — and only from them. Every other department suffered that headache twice a year, and a lot of those divisions spent money like water, with exactly zero repercussions.
Until that jackass Stanley Bore from Accounting had called a meeting of Skinner's entire division and tried to humiliate Mulder in front of everyone. Her partner's scathing rebuttal, complete with both an itemized list of names, places, and things, and actual evidence, detailing what certain other people and departments were doing with their money, had shut the man up so hard and so fast, Scully had worried for a few seconds that he was about to have a stroke from his impotent fury. Bore hadn't even ended the meeting; he'd just stormed out, red-faced and steaming, while a roomful of stunned, humbled agents looked at Mulder with a bit more respect.
(neither he nor Scully had gotten upgraded computers or any other office equipment after that little brouhaha, but Accounting had quit riding their ass. All in all, they both considered it a fair trade, and Skinner had been able to leverage Mulder's information for new computers at his next budget meeting, so in the end, it worked out)
But what did that have to do with an old partner of Mulder's?
"Obviously, that partnership failed miserably," Langley continued, nodding at his own words. "And HR made the recommendation for a reprimand because she sniveled that he sexually harassed her. She couldn't prove it, but the first woman said the same, so HR took her at her word. But then a funny thing happened: about a month later, right about the time the second man was running hellbent for leather, crying about how crazy Mulder was, HR got a slew of complaints from Accounting about the woman. Apparently, it was perfectly okay for her to come on to men, but it was harassment if they did it to her. Then, if they refused to sleep with her, she'd file a formal complaint."
He paused to take a few deep breaths while Scully mentally fumed. It was hard on so many levels, being a woman in the Good Old Boys' Club, but women who behaved like that were a thousand times worse than the chauvinistic assholes so prevalent in the Bureau, because they helped justify the behavior.
Unware of her train of thought, Langley kept going. "Well, that stirred up the hornet's nest, and then they found her complaint against Mulder — who hadn't had so much as a single 'ping' the entire time he'd been at the Bureau, which actually made someone suspicious. So they started digging a little deeper and found three more complaints made by this chick before they sent her to Mulder, and then somebody remembered the name of the first woman they paired him with after Diana left and looked her up and guess what? Lo and behold, she had a similar pattern. So they dug a little more and found out that Mulder's second male partner went to Violent Crimes and he cracked like an egg not even three months later. Couldn't handle pressure in the real world — which Mulder noted more than once. The first guy got himself killed two or three weeks after he was reassigned, so there wasn't a pattern there, but those next three partners they tried . . . yeah. And Patterson confirmed Mulder's abilities at reading people, their strengths and weaknesses. Not that he meant to," the blonde added scornfully, getting nods of agreement from the other two, before he continued.
"So they started sending people they weren't sure about to Mulder. It served two purposes: they got a low-risk and freakishly accurate assessment of that person's viability in their chosen or potential department, and with each failed partnership, Mulder became more and more insulated and developed a worse reputation as someone who couldn't be worked with, which gave them more justification to shut him down and force him back to full-time profiling. You were supposed to be the last straw."
Langley finally stopped, taking several swigs from a thermos, while Scully sat very still and absorbed what she'd been told. It — okay, yeah, that explained a lot. Including Mulder's surprise and cautious enjoyment of the fact that she wasn't bothered by his innuendos, even though she didn't return them — but she would banter back. She'd also kept up with him, she abruptly realized, finally seeing that test for what it was: could she handle a man who didn't care about her 'womanly sensibilities'? And if his complete disregard for her as a woman — no, not disregard, that wasn't Mulder's style, but . . . his ability. Yes, that was a good description. If his ability to simply treat her as a person, not a woman, didn't put her off, could she keep pace with him? She'd grasped very quickly that Mulder needed intellectual stimulation, but she hadn't understood until nearly a year into their partnership how difficult that was for him to find.
Though in retrospect, she had to wonder why: God knew she'd had a hard time finding people who could truly meet her on a mental level, and Mulder frequently out-edged her in pure intelligence. Common sense, not so much.
Well. This explained a great deal about his so-called 'lone wolf' tendencies. Given the choice between being alone and having to deal with people who couldn't meet him on equal footing, even if just for an hour, Mulder would willingly climb into a bunker and live off sunflower seeds, iced tea and coffee, and Omni rather than be forced to compensate for someone who could not mentally and intellectually stimulate him.
But that still didn't give him the right to treat her as being less capable than him.
"Man, Scully, you threw him for such a loop, it was awesome!" Frohike suddenly enthused, startling her back to the present. Unable to stop herself, she gave him the Spock Eyebrow and had to fight back a smile when all three of them swallowed, looking both nervous and appreciative. Byers recovered first.
"It was entertaining," he agreed, shifting in his chair. "Mulder was so sure you'd break under his frat-boy act that he actually came here after your second case and asked what he was doing wrong. We just laughed at him and sat back to enjoy the show," he assured her when she silently asked the obvious question. "But after you two took down Eugene Tooms, you had a defender for life. He still thought you were a pain in the ass, of course. But you were his pain in the ass, and I'm sure you noticed that Mulder doesn't share well."
Understatement of the century, she conceded with a nod. And it helped explain his sudden, and very obvious, territorialism during that case. It also helped explain her unusual acceptance of it; she hadn't known what, precisely, had changed, but it was obvious something had, something that had solidified their partnership, and after Colton's obnoxious behavior — and the equally abhorrent attitude of his team — she'd actually welcomed the somewhat rare feeling of being . . . treasured. No, that wasn't right. Her parents had treasured her. But Mulder . . . Mulder valued her and he didn't give a damn who knew that.
And how had she forgotten just how territorial her partner was? Well, no, she hadn't forgotten; it was just one of the laws of physics now. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction; an object in motion will remain in motion unless acted on by an outside force; Fox Mulder is possessive to the extreme about the few people and things he cares about.
While she was reminiscing, Frohike took the opportunity to do some Readers' Digest summarizing and then jump three years ahead — and her mood, which had lightened a fair bit during the boys' exposition, turned nuclear at the utterance of one city's name.
"So as time passed and he really started to trust you, his . . . attitude, I guess you could say, started to change. He still threw jokes and whatnot around because that's just Mulder — why say it plainly when sarcasm will suffice, right? — but we watched him start to become more and more . . . ah . . . selective, I guess?" Frohike said hesitantly, looking at Byers for what Scully assumed was confirmation. A single nod of his friend's bearded face clearly reassured Frohike and he continued with his thought.
"He kept tossing out the innuendos, but he made a serious effort to pull them back so you'd see that he . . . God, only Mulder would think this way, I swear," he muttered to himself, pulling an involuntary smile to Scully's lips. "In the only way he can, he was trying to get you to realize how highly he thought of you and how much he valued you. Mulder doesn't open up even to people he trusts, you know."
Frohike's voice suddenly turned somber, surprising Scully, who blinked at him in confusion. The shortest Gunman nodded solemnly in reply.
"He just can't let himself do it. He's been hurt and abused by too many people. And it kills him sometimes, because he would give anything to tell you what he's thinking and feeling, but he actually chokes when he tries. We know, because he's tried it with us. It's one of the reasons he doesn't do long-term relationships anymore, romantic or otherwise. People always want him to open up and share, but then they either ridicule him or talk about how much worse they had it or tell him he needs to get over it. I don't think anyone has ever really just . . . accepted him," Frohike finished softly, his voice full of grief on his friend's behalf. "Except us, but we're hardly the best example of open and trusting. We've never used anything Mulder's told us against him, but there's a ton about us he doesn't know, even though he's asked a few times. Still, he respects our silence and we respect his, and it works for us. But for a man as sensitive and empathic as he is, that's just not enough."
Guilt stung Scully at that, because she'd committed the infraction of urging him to move past things more than once. They had been genuine attempts to help her partner, yes, because she knew that if he didn't start to work through some of those issues, they'd drown him. But he'd had no way to know that, not really, or any strong reason to trust her altruistic intentions, especially in the first months of their partnership. And given how much of herself she'd bottled up after not just Daniel and Jack, but also after facing her family's weighty, smothering disapproval, and her subsequent, firm, and immutable refusal to allow herself to open up to anyone, about anything, well . . . she could see why he would have been suspicious of her efforts.
And when she stopped to consider how often she threw his own attempts to help her back in his face . . .
Hello, Kettle. My name is Dana 'Pot' Scully.
God, she hated it when her own internal personality pointed out her flaws. Like Mulder, she could not open up to people because every time she did, it was wrong or never enough, and yet she got so frustrated with him because he would never say what he meant. After all, how many ways could a person take statements like, "Oooh, Scully, you know what I like."?
. . . about as many as they could interpret, "I'm fine".
Damn.
Now that Frohike had laid it out for her so plainly, she recognized Mulder's defense mechanism for what it was and guilt stung her again. She responded to hurt and pain by putting another brick in the wall and providing another hard, irrefutable fact, refusing to allow her emotions to be engaged at all. Mulder turned everything into an innuendo, or a joke — often with the deceptive appearance of being at his expense, but in reality, a subtle skewering of the jackass he was dealing with. But this concise explanation helped her finally see and understand the root of that particular issue, which was good, but it also forced her to acknowledge her own role in strengthening those defenses. Even in this, it seemed, they were excellent complements and foils for each other.
This was knowledge she really would rather have avoided, for a lot of reasons, and very few of them were obvious.
Lord, she hated being wrong. Mulder had let her in further than anyone had been in a long time, maybe since Samantha, but even that wasn't enough. For either of them, because he needed reciprocation and she wanted it, but neither of them was willing to risk it first. And then the realization hit her like a bolt of lightning, powered by six years of memories: Mulder wouldn't, he couldn't, say what he meant, or even ask for what he wanted, but he was a master at showing it.
Scully had just refused to see it.
Before she could wallow too much in the horror of that thought, even as justified as she had often been, Langley picked up the story. And ran them straight to fucking Philadelphia.
"Mulder told us about what happened when he went to Graceland two years ago," the blond said quietly, watching her carefully and nodding when she stiffened and gave him a hard look. She didn't think about it too often these days, but she'd never really forgiven her partner for what he'd said and done to her during that stupid, thrice-damned weekend.
"But he didn't tell you, did he?" Langley said rhetorically, meeting her glare with a hard look of his own. "He felt guilty, because there were so many misunderstandings, but he was so frustrated he could spit, because he thought you knew him better than that. So the misconceptions kept piling up and it . . . hell, Scully, it turned into a train wreck. And it still kills him, because apparently you never talked about it?"
This last was clearly a question. Against her will, Scully nodded. His refusal to apologize to her about that whole miserable experience still had the power to piss her off, though she would grudgingly admit — albeit only to herself — that she wouldn't have listened to him had he tried, and like hell was she going to say anything. She'd been too angry about his behavior and too stunned about the cancer diagnosis to have any kind of equanimity at the time, so they both did what they did best: ignored it, pretended it didn't matter, and threw an ugly rug over the stain.
"Right. Well, I'm gonna tell you some things, Scully, and I'll be honest: Mulder will probably kill me if he finds out, but everything he did during that case was to help you," Langley said, once more solemn and unnaturally serious.
That earned him another raised eyebrow, but this one, he ignored.
"To start with, did you know that he was given no notice about being forced to take vacation?" he asked her, and she blinked. She knew he hadn't been given a choice in taking leave time, but she'd thought he'd finished out the week, because he'd been at the office that Friday. "I'll take that as a 'no'," Langley said. "And he was already pissed about that, but then they let it slip that they were planning to reassign you while he was gone to someone named Hendricks? No, not that — maybe Hilton?"
"Hillock?" Scully demanded, staring in shock when the blonde nodded. Fred Hillock was one of the most odious, obnoxious, misogynistic bastards she'd ever met — and her bar was set high. The man was an octopus, sticky tentacles and all. The only reason she hadn't filed a formal complaint about him was because he'd had the brains to finally leave her alone after she told him, in front of four witnesses, that if he touched her again or spoke to her outside of professional surroundings and without a another person there, she would break all eleven of his fingers.
"Yeah, that's it," Langley confirmed. "Mulder saw the order to pair you with him for those two weeks and flipped. We dunno why, he's never said, but he called us to ask if we had something we could send him on that was reasonably close to Philly, because that was the only thing he could find for you that fast. We didn't, but Byers knew someone who could get him into Graceland for free and it was only a couple hours by plane. We know it was a jerkoff case he gave you," he told her frankly, eyes hidden behind the glare of his glasses, "and so did he. But by sending you on it, he was able to circumvent you being sent to partner whatshisname."
He stopped when he saw Scully's obvious shock at this, and the horrified realization that made a brutal mockery of her anger at his high-handedness. Why hadn't he told her?!
He couldn't. Because if he had, she'd have bristled like a porcupine and informed him in no uncertain terms that she was perfectly capable of looking after herself. And then she would have spent the next fourteen days fending off the roving hands and eyes of a lecherous octopus, while being relegated to doing the gruntwork that was reserved for rookies and janitors. Incompetent rookies and janitors, at that. And if she had gotten to assist on an autopsy, every conclusion she drew would have been questioned and probably dismissed just because she was a woman and he was a man.
She'd also both rejected and embarrassed Hillock in front of other morgue employees, male and female, so he despised her even more than he did women in general.
Mulder had saved her from that fate . . . and never once had it occurred to her that he'd had any reason to give her such a stupid case other than his desire to assert his authority. Shame bubbled up as another realization dawned on her: he'd never done that before. Yes, he'd taken cases she thought were foolish wastes of time, but he'd never ordered her on such a case by herself, or even asked her to go without him.
So why had she been so eager to believe the worst? That behavior had been out-of-character for him and she hadn't noticed. Nor, in the intervening years, had she ever once considered the possibility. And of course, he hadn't told her because . . . well, he rarely simply said what he meant, even to her, but honesty compelled her to admit that it was also because she'd made it clear she wasn't interested in anything he had to say about that time.
Looking back up, she was met with three gazes that were somehow both sympathetic and a little judgmental. A stab of indignation went through her, but it was a tiny stab. She sniffed hard, refusing to let tears form, and only spoke when she was sure her voice wouldn't break.
"Go on," she said, sounding deceptively steady. Byers' face told her wasn't fooled, but he didn't push it and picked up the story.
"So Mulder knew the case was worthless, and he knew you'd figure that out pretty quick. He was expecting you to ask him to come to Philly — well, after you chewed him out first, which I think he was looking forward to; Mulder's weird sometimes — so he could help you with whatever he told you he was looking for and then you could find something to investigate, some kind of case, at least for a few more days, long enough to make reassigning you impractical. Then you'd both head home and he'd finish out his 'vacation' in DC, while you'd be able to spend the rest of the time doing what you wanted. It would keep you in the X-Files office and him out of trouble."
That — oh, God, that idea was so perfectly and completely Mulder that Scully almost burst out laughing. She could see, clear as day, him concocting that plan and scheming to execute it without her being any the wiser. And if she hadn't been reeling from Leonard Betts and the pending results from her biopsy, it probably would have gone down exactly like that. But she'd been off-balance and worried and in denial and that always made her angry, so she took everything Mulder said (well, actually, everyone she talked to, if she were being honest) in the worst possible way.
"But you didn't ask him to come. And then you showed him that you had completely missed the point of everything he'd done to help you, which . . . well, to be honest, when he called to ask us for advice, I honestly don't know if he was more hurt or confused. He really thought you knew that he had a good reason for asking — okay, telling — you to go, and you didn't. Then, every time he talked to you, it just snowballed," Byers explained, bringing another lump to her throat. Hindsight was a wonderful thing sometimes. And then there were times it was the most horrible gift anyone could receive.
This managed to be both.
Well, of course it did. Neither she nor Mulder did anything by halves, so why would an epic misunderstanding be any different?
"And there we all were: you clueless about his motives, him puzzled because you didn't understand, and us not able to do anything other than watch a truly epic train wreck. But when you told him you had a date . . . God, Scully, I really thought he was going to break down," Frohike told her, his voice as deadly serious as his eyes. "He honestly almost lost his mind, but not because he was going caveman or anything like that. It was because that was so completely out of character for you in literally every way and even though he knew something was going on, that something was seriously wrong, he hadn't worked it out yet. And he was terrified that you were going to get hurt because you were — well, acting like him, doing something dangerous and reckless without any backup. There were no flights because of all those storms and it's an eight-hour drive in good weather, so he couldn't get to you. And you know how protective he is on a good day."
Frohike paused again and fixed her with a dark, intent look.
"When the cops called to tell him you were in the hospital, he went apeshit," he said quietly. He didn't even blink and Scully swallowed another surge of guilt, though it was riddled with long-ago anger. But that anger was much faded now, tamed and softened by time as well as this new information, and she took a deep breath, trying to let herself release the last of it. She and Mulder really did need to talk about this, and now she finally had both the impetus to start that conversation and enough information to make it worth the effort.
"Now, we don't know what happened when he got there, or even when you came home," Langley interjected, earning a surprised look from her. Given how much they knew, she'd assumed Mulder had kept them apprised. A warm feeling washed through her on realizing that he'd protected her privacy, at least in that regard, and her angry hurt eased a little more. "But he did come here after your confrontation in the office, and he looked . . . God, he looked as bad as he did when you first came back after being taken. And I'll be honest, Scully, we were furious when he told us what happened in your office a few days later. We know now that you were worried about that probable cancer diagnosis, but still . . . how could you treat him so badly?" the blonde man asked, sounding both plaintive and angry, and it made her hackles rise.
"How could I treat him so badly?" she repeated, her voice icy, and it got worse when all three Gunmen gave her the same 'duh' look. "What about me? He'd just spent three days treating me like a rookie and a stupid one at that — and yes, I know better now, but I didn't have a clue then — and I'd been in that office with him for four years and didn't have a desk, or even a nameplate!" she exclaimed, unable to believe she actually had to explain this to them.
And then Byers blindsided her again.
"Wow," he said softly, astonishment scrawled across his face. "I know Mulder isn't big on sharing, but I thought . . . well, he can be an idiot sometimes. But then, you never said anything before that day, so how could he know what you wanted?" Byers asked her with genuine curiosity, and Scully blinked. The answer was so blindingly obvious that she actually couldn't find a better way to put it into words. Byers clearly saw her thoughts, but did not address them, and proceeded to deal her the third stunning blow of the day.
"You see, Scully, Mulder never got you a desk because he thought that you liked having your own office, away from him and the basement. Not because he felt unworthy or anything like that, but because sometimes people just need their own space and you are a very private individual."
Wait. Wait a minute. That was—
What?!
"And he knew that people would be a lot more likely to talk to you and treat you better if they could interact with you away from the basement office. Profiler, remember?" Byers said, reading her shock and once more stating the obvious. "And since you never asked him for a desk, or even alluded to it, he just assumed you didn't want one," he continued, watching her steadily. "The same reasoning applies to the nameplate. He was trying to give you the space he thought you wanted. Also, and I know it sounds stupid, but remember: this was years ago. At first, he really was trying not to presume. If he was right and you didn't want to officially share office space, he didn't want to put you in an awkward position. And if you did, he figured you'd tell him. Or tell somebody, at least."
Byers stopped to take a drink of coffee and silently watched Scully, who knew she was gaping at him but could not stop herself. Mulder had — but she — and he, but then —
That's why he'd been so puzzled about the desk, why he'd been so bewildered by her anger. And so hurt. He hadn't been making it about himself at all; he really hadn't understood (which also explained why he didn't mention her birthday those first three years; because naturally, Mulder's good intentions would cause so many stupid misunderstandings). And she, in her righteous anger and terrible fear, had taken his shocked confusion in the exact opposite way and then . . . oh, God. How much pain and trouble had they caused each other by refusing to talk, to ask? How much could have been averted or lessened if they'd just behaved like the grown fucking adults they were supposed to be?
Because God does have a sense of humor, it was that stupid desk she still didn't have that served as the catalyst — she knew full well that if he'd gotten her one immediately after that confrontation, she'd have lost her m—well, no, she wouldn't have gone off on him. That wasn't her style. She would have taken it as him placating her, coddling her, and she would have withdrawn so completely, her own mother would have to look twice to recognize her. No matter what Mulder said or did in the immediate aftermath of Philly, he was screwed. And he'd known that, so he'd erred on the side of 'familiar', unless and until she told him otherwise.
It also explained why he hadn't gotten her a desk or even a nameplate now: he honestly didn't know how she would take the gesture if it came from him, and she couldn't even blame him for that. They'd both done a superb job of ignoring the aftermath of Philly and Ed Jerse, but that didn't mean they weren't affected by it. His quiet reorganization of the room one weekend a year or so after Jerse had been his silent olive branch, one that she had just as wordlessly accepted, and they had settled easily into a shared space. No muss, no fuss, no extraneous emotions . . . the perfect partnership.
Scully actually felt like she was going to be sick as her worldview upended itself and she was finally forced to see the truth as it really was. And her own culpability.
But so had Mulder, she realized with something resembling hysteria, though he'd beaten her by two years. She'd always wondered why he'd been so gentle and so . . . not-shocked . . . when she'd told him about the cancer diagnosis. He'd been devastated, to be sure, but he'd been much too calm on hearing the news, meaning he'd either guessed, possibly during that damned kidnapping case they'd had forced on them less than a week after Philly and Jerse, or he had been as thoroughly chastened as she was by the three men sitting in front of her, explaining that Life As She Knew It was not the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help her God.
Looking again at the severe, implacable faces of the trio watching her with remarkable patience, Scully figured it was a combination of both, which made sense. She knew that they'd helped Mulder raid the medical facility where he'd discovered the information that Scanlon was part of the Consortium — and where he'd found her ova. And when he couldn't come to her himself, he'd sent Byers, trusted his friend to keep her safe, while he kept looking for anything that could help her and their other two friends provided support.
Another ugly realization made itself known to her, and Scully had to swallow down bile at this one. She had just been forced to see how many times she ascribed to Mulder intentions that were less than honorable when it came to her. And now that she had been confronted with how often she was wrong to do so, she had to wonder why she'd developed that habit. Her partner was hardly a saint and he would be the first to admit it, but he would destroy the world to help her or protect her, or find her. He'd been that way since . . . since their first encounter with Tooms, and it had only intensified after her father's death. So why was she always so ready to think the worst of his motives?
Well, duh. It was because she knew he did it because he didn't truly think she was capable.
Or did she just want to think that because it gave her justification? In rejecting his attempts to assist or aid her by viewing them through the lens of her 'competency', she could use the excuse that he saw her as weak and thus prove to him (herself) that she was perfectly capable and didn't need or want his unsolicited help. She'd been that way her whole life, her natural reticent personality traits exacerbated by having a career Navy, disapproving man as a father, a mother who had no aspirations outside the home (that Scully knew of) and so didn't understand but still disapproved of her daughter's choices, an overbearing bully like Bill for an older brother, and two other siblings with frustratingly weak personalities. And that combination had proved both deadly and effective for the third Scully child, spurring her to prove to the world that yes, one person could be an island and thrive by doing everything herself.
People could and did say plenty about Dana Scully, but 'incompetent' had never been one of them.
Only . . . Mulder had never treated her as less than him, nor had he ever expressed doubts about her ability to do something she said she could do. Hell, he rarely questioned her capabilities when it came to something she hadn't done before.
But her defenses were so strong and so well-ingrained that she refused to give even her partner, the man who had gone to the literal end of the world to save her, the benefit of the doubt, especially when it suited her to do so. That way, she could protect the reputation she'd built as being the perfect island, both mental and physical, and also preserve the illusion that she was, in fact, Wonder Woman (or the Bionic Woman, depending on the circumstances). And if it hurt him, confused him, well, that's what he got for thinking that she needed or wanted his help.
The bitter irony was that when she did want him to listen to her, when she was willing to talk, he was the most wonderful listener she could have asked for. He would always let her talk, never saying a word until she had been silent for at least a full minute. Sometimes he asked clarifying questions; other times, he simply agreed that what she was feeling was completely valid. And on the once-in-a-blue-moon occasions she actually wanted his opinion, he would give it to her with no judgement and remarkably little personal bias.
And afterward, he never brought it up again. She knew full well that he never forgot anything she told him, but he never, ever tried to revisit anything she said. That would violate her long-established rule of never showing vulnerability, and he refused to risk it. For years, this had been a source of pride for her, pride and strength.
Now?
With this new knowledge, she was forced to see those actions from Mulder's perspective . . . and she wanted to cry.
He loved her so much, so deeply, and so well that he was willing to accept the scraps of affection and trust that she was willing to give him when it suited her, without ever pressuring her for more. He badly wanted more, desperately yearned to be her true confidante, but had willingly chosen to wait until she finally saw that herself.
No, that wasn't right. She'd seen that long ago. But she wasn't yet able or ready to accept it, much less act on it.
Part of the problem was that Mulder was good at the little things: acknowledging her diet by bringing her a Danish every other Tuesday, knowing that she preferred flavored water after her Wednesday workout, things like that (for a reason she didn't acknowledge at all, these things didn't affront her pride). But he was an absolute master of the grand gesture, and that was what terrified Scully. Forget following her to the Antarctic or breaking into the Department of Defense to find some way to help her with the bell tolling the start of the 11th hour. He had come within three minutes of accepting a deal with devil's favorite servant to save her life. He'd traded someone he'd thought was his sister for her, and he'd done it more than once.
That kind of devotion was something she simply did not know how to handle, or what to do with. Because she valued his commitment to her. She honestly did. Just . . . not in the way she knew he wanted. Not yet. And maybe not ever. But she did feel so much for him, and maybe one day, she could trust them both enough to let it happen. But unless and until that day came, she would occasionally play with the idea of taking a tentative first step in that direction, both to test the waters, as it were, and also give them both some pleasurable fun they'd been missing for far too long in their lives.
That hadn't changed even after what he'd done for her in his desperate attempt to find something, anything, to keep her alive. Of course, it had made her more aware of the depth of his feelings, but that hadn't been enough to crack the shell around her own emotions. It had, however, given her the impetus to step over the physical line she'd begun seriously pondering shortly before the diagnosis was confirmed.
So after her cancer had disappeared, she'd thought to reward him and his steadfast loyalty to her by way of sex. She hadn't been looking for a relationship that night in his hotel room (contrary to popular belief, Scully would much prefer to indulge in that sort of thing away from home), but he had wanted some measure of comfort, of reassurance, so badly and she . . . well, she was rejoicing in being alive. She also wasn't a nun and he was a very attractive man on top of being her best friend. So she had gone to him with the expectation of them achieving the perfect compromise.
And been so completely and utterly misunderstood that even fifteen months later, the memory still made her choke a little.
(she had no clue whatsoever that neither she nor her intentions had been misunderstood)
Then there was the startling, unexpected, almost-but-not-quite-unwelcome series of events that led to them not just growing closer (but not close enough, even when they got too close), but also confusing the entire world, themselves included, about the true state of their personal relationship. The case with Daryl Mootz and the impressively crazy weather was probably the worst, especially given Scully's completely unexpected — in every respect — admission that solid friendships made the best romances. Three months later, she still didn't know what had sparked that, much less made her say it out loud to another person, and she certainly didn't know what to do with or about it (it was probably a good thing she wasn't aware of her partner's conversation with Holman, while Mulder, in his desperation to change the subject, had completely missed the entire room turning to gawk at him in patent disbelief when he told the other man that he didn't "gaze" at Scully).
Her resultant confusion and following . . . well, panic . . . about the shocking revelation of her own feelings meant that despite everything, she was completely unprepared for his confession after the Bermuda Triangle, which she had slapped down because she flat-out could not handle it. It had taken more effort than she wanted to acknowledge to convince herself that his words were nothing but a drug-induced bid for her forgiveness, but she'd managed. And, amazingly enough, that had been it; he was still the perfect partner and as a subtle a protector as he could be, but he hadn't made another try at deepening their relationship.
Scully was thrilled.
No pressure, no worry, no vulnerability, and thus no reason to put another lock or seven on her heart. She could admire him and lust after him all she wanted with the assurance that he would never call her on it, never ask her to act on it. And if she got lonely some (most) nights, well . . . that was okay. Loneliness was an old, old friend of hers, so old they were on a first-name basis. But make no mistake: Fox Mulder was hers. So after the insanity that was the town of Comity, when another woman showed anything more than basic admiration, she was warned off quickly and firmly, with Mulder none-the-wiser (she didn't realize that he was aware, and was also flattered. Confused, and increasingly frustrated as time passed, but flattered).
Until Diana Fowley.
(From the first moment Diana had made a very obvious play for Mulder's attention by using their past and her open-mindedness, Scully had assumed — was still assuming, in fact — that Mulder hadn't realized what the other woman was really after. Then again, she was completely unaware of his need for deep, solid commitment. It had also never occurred to her that he was still reeling not just from the success of his desperate Hail Mary attempt to save her life from the cancer, but also from the shock of realizing that he'd gone and fallen in love with her — because despite the majority of outside opinion, he hadn't had a clue until he knew she would live, something would have shocked literally everyone who knew (or knew about) him and Scully. But once he did realize . . . well.
Well.
Because of that, he would officially become a monk, stupid robe and all, before he ever let them settle for anything less than total commitment. He'd had a nothing-but-sex relationship before, with Phoebe Greene, though he hadn't realized that until the end. But he hadrealized it, and the resultant mental and emotional trauma he suffered as a result of her cruelty and her callous attitude about sex, not to mention the power games, had made him realize just how unhealthy casual sex really was. Especially when one person didn't know that's what was happening.
Scully also didn't know that Mulder had dated a few times after ending things with Phoebe, but he hadn't slept with any of them, because none of those women had ended up wanting something long-term or permanent with him and he refused to put himself through that nightmare again.
But he did get unbearably lonely at times, and when he met Diana Fowley, he was feeling more vulnerable than usual because it was the anniversary of the week of Samantha's disappearance. He'd been depressed, she'd provided comfort, and he'd assumed that was that. Only, it seemed that Diana had seen something in him that she liked. Not enough for a commitment, but she'd been upfront about that and offered an unambiguous 'friends with benefits' situation. Mulder had been hesitant at first, but she'd laid out a series of rules and circumstances that left little room for confusion or misunderstanding, and he had been so starved for touch and affection, even as shallow as this was, that he'd finally accepted. Things had even remained at that easy, undemanding level when they became partners on the X-Files.
And some seven or eight months later, when she'd taken the overseas assignment and ended things, he had been neither hurt nor heartbroken.
But he had been left feeling empty again, and he knew that he simply wasn't made for something so casual. He needed and wanted permanence. And since none of the women he'd tried to find it with were interested in that, particularly since he wasn't able or willing to put them first in his priorities without being first in theirs, he came to the conclusion that it was unlikely to happen, especially while he searched for his sister. After all, it wasn't fair to ask them for a full commitment when he couldn't guarantee the same, even on the off-chance they were willing to do it. He was trapped in the perfect Catch-22.
And then Fate, who hated him with a passion for reasons nobody understood — while simultaneously admiring and envying his ability to adapt — decided to up the ante. She dropped Dana Scully in his lap and sat back to enjoy the fireworks.
Only . . . there weren't any. Attraction sparked at their first meeting, but neither of them bothered to acknowledge it. And then, to the shock of literally everyone, they proceeded to build an honest-to-God relationship. First as wary partners, then cautious friends, then friends, then partners.
But never lovers.
To be sure, they both had the more-than-occasional passing thought, but that was all . . . until Mulder had to watch Scully die by inches, until she came within a whisper of succumbing.
And he was struck with the truly shocking revelation that he was falling in love with his partner — and it was going to be a very short trip.
So being offered the use of her body without being allowed near her heart? Yeah, no. He wasn't remotely interested in that, but how could he explain that to her? Scully despised — well, maybe "distrusted" was a better word — her own emotions, so how could he reasonably expect her to handle his?
The answer was that he couldn't, and didn't, but that put them in a bit of a quandary for a while, though they did make their way past it to establish a tolerable holding pattern. And all was more-or-less well . . . until Diana came back. And the mistake Mulder made there wasn't keeping quiet about their former . . . agreement. His mistake was failing to understand not just how Scully truly felt about him (though, given she refused to allow herself that knowledge, one could forgive him for that), but also failing to comprehend how women think, and how territorialism worked for them. Scully thought of Mulder as 'hers', a belief that was fed by his adherence to this silent understanding. He stayed loyally by her side and never once looked seriously to another woman. Anyone who attempted to push the issue was always quickly and firmly corrected, with no room at all left for misinterpretation: Fox Mulder belonged to Dana Scully. Those women obediently, if reluctantly (and a little resentfully, it must be said), acknowledged her clearly-staked claim and sought excitement elsewhere.
Diana did not. She knew that he was an all-or-nothing man when he formed a genuine attachment to a woman, and it was clear (well, to her; the rest of the universe wondered just what kind of x-ray glasses she possessed to know this truth) that he and Scully were nothing, at least romantically speaking, so she not-unreasonably assumed he would be amenable to resuming their prior arrangement. His refusal had been a genuine surprise, and the reason she'd inadvertently revealed certain truths that Scully saw and recognized on a primal female level, things Mulder thought nothing of, because he knew the truth from his perspective.
Only, see, Scully and Mulder had this teeny, tiny, problem — hardly worth mentioning, really.
They didn't talk. Not about anything personal. And that was the other reason he'd never told Scully about Diana; she had made it abundantly clear that she had no desire for either of them to divulge unnecessary personal information and he respected that. He chafed against it, sure, but he didn't push the issue, and since Diana was mostly personal for him, he assumed his partner didn't want to know, so he said nothing. Then the X-Files burned, leaving both of them twisting in the wind in every way and completely unable to regain their equilibrium — until Dallas happened, and the resultant bullshit was enough to get them back on the same page professionally.
Or so he thought.
When she told him she was leaving the Bureau, he was furious. The same woman who had told Congress to suck her metaphorical dick was letting some piddly-faced OPR board decide her fate?
This left him with the conclusion that any kind of permanence with Dana Scully wasn't in his future, so fuck it. He had nothing to lose, so he decided to tell her the truth he'd hidden so well, and he showed her while he was at it, because why the hell not?
Discovering that she fully intended to return his kiss?
Yeah. Bee, virus, bullet to the head, secrets, lies, a vaccine that people would literally kill for, snow, more snow, then some snow, a twenty-mile thick sheet of ice, alien spacecraft, actual alien, snow . . . all of it fell before his determination to find the woman who had claimed his heart and his soul.
And she denied it all. Everything he had risked and fought for her, and she cast it aside like an old shoe.
But she also stayed.
Still, he couldn't help but pull away from her a bit, because knowing what was going to happen didn't lessen the impact. Or the emotions, be they good or bad. And since her actions had hurt him, it should have come as no surprise that he retreated from Scully and her stubborn, defiant, blind skepticism in favor of the woman who, from all outward appearances, supported him. Diana had always been skilled at reading Mulder's moods and telling him what he wanted to hear, which — well, no, that wasn't quite true. Diana was good at validating his feelings, which was something Scully (or anyone else in his life) rarely did, and it was something that he did need at times, just like everyone else.
After all, it did get very tiring to be constantly 'put in his place', and God forbid someone actually acknowledge that he was right. Can't let Fox Mulder know that his 'crazy' theory was actually correct, and thus, not crazy. Why, he might actually develop a little self-esteem!
But his anger, his hurt, and his frustration with his partner had an unintentional side effect for Mulder: it sharpened his senses to a startling degree, and forced him to actually accept the fact that Dana Scully would eat barbed wire before she would admit vulnerability to herself, much less him. And she might let the world end before admitting she'd been wrong about something, though that wasn't a trait she reserved solely for him, small comfort though that was.
On top of that, he began to suspect that Diana wasn't being completely truthful with him. Something about her presence was off, though he couldn't say why. Just . . . there was a faint tinge of wrong that was a constant hum in his mind, but it was subtle enough to be relegated to background noise. Still, the combination was more than enough to keep his mind from functioning at its usual heightened sense of paranoia, which left everyone floundering just a bit when his established patterns of behavior shifted. Despite that, though, and despite his and Scully's frustration with each other, they were still partners, still friends.
And she was still the woman he loved, though he was wondering if it might be time to relegate that particular truth to the attic.
Basement?
Nah, attic. The basement would be too cliché, even for him.
But then, because the universe loved to screw with his head, it saw his intentions and decided to have some fun. So there was that weird, even for them, trip to Nevada . . . and then she'd been paired with that stupid dickweed Ritter and — and shot, God, she'd nearly died again — and then everything that followed: the serial impregnator who might or might not have been a demon, that truly creepy haunted house, Skinner's little tangle with Alex fucking Krycek, Holman Hardt and his bleeding (raining?) heart . . . with each successive moment, something changed in Scully.
It . . . well, it seemed like she was starting to let him in.
Given this evidence and being the crack profiler that he was, Mulder could only conclude that she might, maybe, possibly, finally be opening up to some of her deeper feelings about him. So despite the infuriating mix of tense, unhappy moments that kept counteracting so many of the fun, playful, happy times they'd shared, when she pulled him out of the Bermuda Triangle, alternately cursing him and crying on him, he'd allowed himself to wonder. When Frohike told him everything he knew about what she'd done and risked to find him, he'd cautiously let himself hope. Buoyed by that hope and riding the wave of courage provided by the Demoral and the memory of her doppelgänger's kiss, he'd finally told her his last secret.
And she'd mocked it. She mocked it, she mocked him, and she just . . . walked away.
That left Mulder heartbroken, confused, and more than a little angry. He hadn't expected Scully to be ready to reciprocate, he wasn't that naïve, but nothing on earth could have prepared him for such a brutal rejection. He had expected her to roll her eyes at him (mentally and physically), but he'd also thought that she'd at least acknowledge his words — his feelings — and that they would lodge in the back of her mind and slowly permeate her thoughts until she was finally ready to hear him, and believe him. So her cold dismissal was . . . he literally did not know what do with that, how to respond to it, and he sure as hell couldn't handle it with any kind of equanimity. But he wasn't foolish enough to actually say anything to his partner, because that would do the exact opposite of good. Instead, he stewed in silence, his hurt and his pain further eroding the fragile state of his heart.
Was it any wonder he finally accepted what he thought was the branch of friendship that Diana was offering him?
And while Scully knew her partner was in love with her, she didn't grasp just how deep his feelings were, nor did she truly understand that she felt the same, while he had no idea that she herself didn't completely understand why she so strongly disliked Diana — and that was utterly separate from her suspect motives. Scully saw his refusal to listen to her opinion of Diana as a lack of trust on his part, and Mulder saw Scully's jealous, irrational distrust of his former partner as yet another sign of her lack of personal and professional respect for him.
In his defense, he also didn't know that Diana had gone to a fair bit of effort to make Scully believe certain things about her relationship with Mulder. In her defense, since Mulder treated Diana like the old friend he thought she was, Scully naturally assumed the woman was telling the truth. And for all the words they threw at each other, neither of them actually stopped to listen to what wasn't being said, so things continued to spiral in all the wrong directions.
But, thanks to that tiny, insignificant lack of actual verbal communication, Scully wasn't aware of any of this. And the Gunmen didn't know enough. They had also made some assumptions based on incomplete facts, leading to their agreement of Scully's request to look deeper into Diana Fowley, and why they had initially been on her side when she'd confronted Mulder with the information they'd found — which was the reason she had gotten their friends involved. Mulder clearly wouldn't listen to her, but he might believe them.
And look how spectacularly well that had gone.)
Unaware of Scully's mental wanderings, Frohike picked up their explanation/story/earth-shattering details at the Triangle, with a quick summation of the intervening year just to make sure no one got lost.
"Then there was your cancer and Mulder being spied on, and that chip he found and the mole he exposed, never mind the lies . . . he was overwhelmed for months, Scully," Frohike told her with surprising gentleness, getting matching nods from the other two. "He didn't know what to do, or say, or even how to react, so he looked to you. And apparently, he got the impression that you just wanted things to go back to normal, so he did his best. And . . . well, I guess it worked until we sent him to look for the Queen Anne."
A chill ran down Scully's spine; she still had the occasional flashback to that nightmare rescue, and she couldn't talk to anyone about it, because only Mulder and the Gunmen knew the full truth, and all four of them were out as confidantes for the obvious reasons.
"And I have to be honest, Dana, that the only reason we didn't leave you stranded in that hospital afterwards is because of a serious error on our part," the small, bespeckled man told her with an intensity that was unnerving in its softness. "Hearing you slap Mulder down that way . . . do you even know how badly you hurt him?"
Scully blinked, completely caught off-guard by this, and spluttered, "Frohike, he was drugged and beyond confused. I'm surprised he didn't tell me he was from Mars, which meant I really was from Venus."
A hard, disbelieving silence fell, complete with three stunned expressions, and lasted for nearly four minutes before Byers cleared his throat and straightened his already impeccable posture. "Do you really believe that?" he asked quietly, looking almost afraid of her answer, and Scully frowned, confused by the unexpected intensity of his question.
"Of course," she said slowly. "He'd almost drowned and had some serious hallucinations, and he was on Demoral. He'd have said that to anyone he saw until it wore off."
Another long, stunned silence fell. But this one made Scully nervous, because she had the uncomfortable feeling that she was missing something important.
Langley finally broke the awkward atmosphere with a cough before shaking his head and letting out a laugh that had no humor at all. "Scully, he talked to us for, like, fifteen minutes before you walked in, and two really hot nurses came in and out while we were there — and he didn't say a word about love to any of us. He didn't even flirt with them, which was odd; he just insisted he was fine and his head didn't hurt, the standard Mulder lie, and he told us the gist of what had happened to him on the ship."
The blonde stopped there and gave Scully a look that clearly demanded some kind of recognition of his words, which she gave in the form of a small shrug and a quiet, "I don't understand."
Frohike pinched his nose between two fingers and groaned, shaking his head. Langley patted him consolingly on the arm, and Byers just closed his eyes.
"What?!" Scully demanded, abruptly out of patience with their dramatics.
"Scully . . . we were waiting for you in the hall, and we heard what he told you about being on the QA, and we heard you doing your doctor thing and telling him to get some rest. And then we heard him call you back. You specifically, Scully. He said your name," Byers told her in an unnervingly even voice. "He knew exactly what he was saying, and he knew exactly who he was saying it to."
"No, h—" she started to protest, only to be shockingly steamrolled over by the man she thought might be the most polite person she'd ever met.
"Yes. He knew . . . and so did you," Byers said so firmly and with such brutal conviction that she dropped her eyes, unable to hold his gaze. "The problem isn't that you didn't or weren't ready to reciprocate, Scully. We all would have understood that — including Mulder. But why did you have to be so cruel?"
Shocked at the direction this was going, and more than a little shamed for the same reason, she could only shake her head in a silent non-answer. When her soft-spoken, bearded friend accepted her silence, she honestly wasn't sure if that made things better or worse.
"All you had to do was say 'thank you' and leave it alone until he brought up it again. Or, since it's Mulder, until you felt like talking about it. But you — that — God, Scully, you were so cold, so cruel, to him that day. Are you really surprised he pulled back, pulled away, from you, and reached instead for the woman who was open about her intentions and what we all thought at the time was genuine affection?" Byers asked, his voice unexpectedly gentle, and it took every ounce of control Scully possessed to keep the tears from falling.
Until the last four or so minutes, she'd never once thought about that day from Mulder's perspective. Truthfully, she hadn't wanted to, especially at the time, but she knew her partner's hospital foibles better than anyone on earth and had witnessed firsthand his ability to charm the female nurses into . . . just about anything, really. So of course he was only trying to flatter her into letting him leave early, and possibly forgive him for doing something so unfathomably stupid while he was at it.
He hadn't said anything of the sort, of course, which was unusual given his vocal hatred of hospitals and being forced to stay in them, but what else could it have been?
"And I'll be honest, Scully: we were pissed at you for a long time. It took weeks for him to be able to act normally around you, and that's a huge reason I think he considered taking Diana up on her offer a few times, once it was clear she was back permanently."
Acid seared her throat at Frohike's words and Scully fought down bile, hating that thought with every fiber of her being. And even though she was discovering she didn't have any real reason to feel this way, she hated her partner a little, too, for thinking about betraying her with that woman.
"He didn't, of course, and from what he said — or, well, what he didn't say — he doesn't want that kind of relationship, not from her or anyone else. But he was missing you so much and didn't know how to say it, to tell you, because he knew you didn't want to hear it, and he's so bad at saying things straight up anyway, so he . . . he felt torn, Scully," Byers said heavily, sighing as he wiped his forehead. "He trusted Diana because he didn't think he had a reason not to, but he couldn't understand your reaction to her. He knew it couldn't be professional because you had no real way of knowing their history, and you had shut him down personally, so he was beyond confused. And Diana was there, someone he could talk to, someone who would listen to him, without . . . it sounds selfish, I know, but she was someone who wouldn't take your feelings into account. And he hasn't told us a lot, and what he did say was . . . sparse . . . but I really think he needed that, at least for a little while. And since Diana knows — or at least knew — that about him, she gave him what he very rarely gets: a completely sympathetic ear."
Scully was unable to contain her scowl at this. She had never hated anyone before, but she found herself teetering on the brink of that emotion with Diana fucking Fowley. Which pissed Scully off, because she despised being that kind of person, especially over a man — but Mulder was hers, dammit, and as his partner and his best friend, it was her job to watch his back and protect him, whether he wanted it or not, or even thought it was necessary.
(yes, both the irony and the hypocrisy escaped her, but then, she was only human)
"And here's where things get sticky, because we . . . well, we aren't always the best at reading people, but all of us have a pretty good instinct for dirty dealings, so when you came to us for information you should have had, we knew something was wrong somewhere. And Mulder — he is so unbelievably naïve about people sometimes, it's scary. Of course, a lot of it was that he didn't want to think Diana had gone to the other side. The entire world knows that. But you don't have his overdeveloped sense of paranoia, so we figured you had to be on to something and it wouldn't hurt to take a look."
This was Frohike and Scully gave him a sideways glance, not quite sure how to take that. But she didn't get the chance to ask.
"And that . . . well, that's where we fucked up," Langley said candidly, shoving his glasses back up his nose. "You see, we saw a lot more of Mulder after Diana became his partner, but we didn't meet her for . . . wow. Until about a month before she left, actually. And he didn't talk much about her. So we assumed that things between them were serious, and he was aiming for a double-header, you know?"
Against her will, Scully nodded. It was the same assumption she'd made, after all, and one of the reasons she'd gone to the trio to begin with after being shut out so firmly by her partner.
"What we didn't realize until after the Syndicate burned is how wrong we were, and why." Byers picked up the tale, shifting in his chair and talking a sip of coffee, only to grimace and set it aside before fixing her with a dark, intent look. "Because after Diana left, we immediately saw a lot less of Mulder, and didn't talk to him as much either, and he only mentioned her occasionally. Since they were sleeping together, we thought he was grieving and needed space. It honestly never occurred to us that he was suddenly doing the work of two people and just flat didn't have the time. And he never said anything at all about their personal relationship, so we assumed the worst. Of course, when they started foisting various 'partners' on him, all that just fell to the wayside. We were his place to come and bitch when he couldn't stand it anymore. But then you were assigned and it wasn't a year before you were . . . Scully, you were his partner. It was amazing, because he finally had someone stable, someone who wasn't us, who believed in him and championed him, and watching you two get closer was so wonderful to see."
Byers stopped there and gave her a look that she didn't quite grasp the significance of, but kept going before she could work up the nerve to ask. "It was obvious something was wrong when we realized you didn't know about Diana. But we just thought it was Mulder being Mulder; he tends to forget that 'important' doesn't always mean the same thing to him as it does to other people, and to him, their relationship wasn't important. We just . . . well, we didn't know that when you asked. That's why we told you about her and why we agreed to look deeper, if only because we were curious. And when we finally understood that you didn't know anything about Diana, we were upset for you. But then, we were operating under several false assumptions. That's why, when you called him here that day to show him the information about Diana, and explain why you'd brought us into it, we were angry at him for being mad at you. Of course, since he didn't know any of that, it just made him mad at us, too."
Frohike snorted at that, pulling everyone's eyes to him, and said, "Oh, please. He was livid. I still can't believe he didn't break his hand."
Langley nodded to this and Byers shrugged, tacitly conceding the point, while Scully looked wildly between them, trying desperately to work through what she'd just heard. Byers' soft voice interrupted her train of thought and she looked back at him, mentally floundering at the information she was being bombarded with.
And the implications.
"He came to see us after he knew you were okay, so furious he was swallowing swords and spitting nails, and demanded to know just what exactly we'd said to you. So we told him, because we were still upset on your behalf. We explained what we knew — thought we knew — and why we'd agreed to help you based off that knowledge, and how angry we were about his insensitive attitude and shitty behavior toward you, and he — Scully, he lost it. He actually put his fist through that wall before telling us the truth in words of two syllables. And I wish I was joking, but I'm not. He literally did not use a single word longer than two syllables to explain what had happened when he started working with Diana and why things changed when she left. And why he never told you."
Langley's reedy voice imparted this information, and Scully bit her lip before looking at him. "I've never felt so stupid in all my life," he whispered, shame painted across his face. "I mean, it was so obvious and made perfect sense, but we just . . . we all just assumed and for that I'm sorry. We caused a lot of trouble between you two that shouldn't have happened, and we . . . I . . ."
"It's okay, Langley," Scully murmured gently, stopping the man's tortured flow of words. "I appreciate that, and knowing does help, but I don't think it would have changed anything. There was a lot more going on than just Diana."
"Maybe," Frohike agreed, leaning forward and staring intently at her. "But we made it worse and we owe you the same apology we gave him."
Her emotions finally became too much and Scully sniffed, forcing the tears down. Yes, the boys had screwed up, but it had been with the best of intentions, and it wasn't like she and Mulder were any better. At least the Gunmen had never hurt either of them deliberately in an attempt to get some kind of reaction.
Or shut their partner out to punish them because they didn't read the other one's mind and know exactly what to say and do and be.
With that sudden, horrifying understanding of both her defense mechanism and Mulder's, and the massive amount of damage they had caused — on so many levels — Dana Scully ran. She could not bear to be surrounded by the four walls and three people who knew the truth of her folly, her hubris, and had finally gotten the courage to tell her, because she had stubbornly, defiantly, refused to see it on her own.
For. Six. Years.
She didn't even notice the complete lack of shock from the Gunmen as she grabbed her purse and bolted for the door. But in the middle of her near-frantic scramble to get down the stairs without killing herself, Mulder's bizarre behavior from three or so weeks prior suddenly made a hell of a lot a sense. He'd disappeared one Friday night, muttering something about Earth 2 and scientific inaccuracies as they parted in the parking garage, and the following Monday, he'd been . . . well, skittish. He hadn't looked her in the eye longer than three seconds, hadn't touched her at all, and had only offered a token objection when Agent Malone wanted her to assist for a few days on a rather gruesome set of autopsies. And now it had come together: he'd finally found out what she thought she knew and why, and why she'd acted the way she had, and he hadn't known how to broach the subject. Or even if he should.
Well, at least there wouldn't be any surprise when one of them finally drank enough tequila to find the courage to actually allude to The Minefield That Was Their Unspoken Feelings.
And it was at that moment, two steps from her car, that Scully came to an actual, honest-to-God, screeching halt, complete with gravel spitting from under her shoes.
What the hell was wrong with her?!
She loved Fox Mulder, and she wanted him. He loved her, and wanted her. They were both grown fucking adults, though they'd had some serious trouble actually acting like at times. Only, in her case, she knew why. Her whole life, Bill Jr had mocked her for her hatred of confrontation, even as her parents encouraged it. And her whole life, she'd proved him right, partly because she didn't want to deal with the hassle of stapling his mouth shut — but mostly because she hated the out-of-control feeling that always threatened to swamp her when she allowed herself to get angry or hurt or genuinely upset.
But as she looked back over the tumultuous events of the day, revisiting everything she'd seen, heard, and learned, she started to understand just how much damage she'd done to herself and her ability to connect with others because of her refusal to stand up and tell people . . . well, to be blunt, to tell them to fuck off. She'd always subsumed her personal wishes to theirs and let them manipulate her because it was easier than fighting them, which guaranteed the eventual demise of every relationship. The only reason she'd finally chosen for herself the first time, when she'd decided on Pathology, was because if she hadn't, if she'd given in to someone else's wishes one more time, she'd known that she would never be able to look herself in the eye in a mirror again. So she had closed her eyes and thrown herself off a cliff without a fourth thought once the initial decision to change her specialty had been made . . . and it had caused a familial estrangement that still hadn't healed, and probably never would.
And she had taken too much of that out on Mulder, because he let her. He had never once asked her to be anything other than what she was, though she hadn't recognized that until now. But because he was so utterly accepting of her, she'd dumped onto him all her anger and pain and resentment and even hatred of Daniel and Jack and her family and Ethan and Phil Romney and Diana Fowley and Mabel Buttram and everyone who'd ever told her that she didn't need to do what she wanted with her life, she needed to do what was 'best' for her — only, somehow, it always ended up being beneficial for them.
Except, being Mulder's partner was the most fulfilling thing she'd ever done. And it was the most fulfilled she'd ever felt.
But something was missing and had been for years.
Because she refused to reach out and take it.
Take him.
Well, no more. It wouldn't happen overnight — and if the unintentional pun made her snort with near-hysterical laughter, she figured she could be forgiven that — but Mulder . . . all he wanted was her, and he would take any olive branch she offered, as long as she truly meant it. But he also shown today that he wasn't a pushover, and he wouldn't allow her to run roughshod over him any longer, and she found herself lightheaded from the relief of knowing that. He drove her crazy sometimes with his refusal to adhere to the laws of physics and reality in general, but she couldn't be with a man she didn't respect, and she could never respect someone who didn't respect himself.
Ah, hell. She was going to owe the boys a pizza or seven for this, wasn't she?
Well, so be it. It wasn't like she was going to owe Bill a favor.
But she needed to make the first step and do it now, because she could feel her nerves rising up hard and fast, and if she didn't act immediately, they would quickly and brutally overwhelm her good intentions. And she needed no help at all in self-sabotage. So with fingers that were shaking more than a little, she fumbled for her cell phone and thumbed to the call screen, staring at it pensively until the display started to go black. She had waited too long and done the very thing she was afraid of, but her finger pressed against the 'two' button as she started to slip the phone back in her pocket and the faint sound of ringing made her pause. Wide-eyed, she watched the screen and held her breath, unsure of what she wanted to happen, and the ringing stopped.
silence
Silence
SILENCE
When she realized he wasn't going to speak, Scully swallowed hard and inadvertently sniffed, feeling tears well up yet again. And for whatever reason, that flipped the switch.
"Scully?" her partner asked softly, hesitantly, and she choked back a sob, bringing the phone to her ear as she slumped against her car door.
"Mulder," she breathed, hearing the mingled relief and sorrow and fear in her voice and just for a minute, not giving a damn at showing so much vulnerability. "Mulder, I — I'm sorry. Can we talk?"
. . . silence
. . . Silence
. . . SILENCE
"What about?" he finally asked, his voice so even and so emotionless that it made her swallow an unexpected surge of nerves.
"About . . . God, Mulder," she sighed, resting her forehead against her palm for a few seconds. "We need to talk about so much a—"
"Not that," he interrupted her, his voice still as smooth and empty as glass. "Why are you apologizing?"
. . . oh.
Yes, that was a fair question. It was one she didn't want to answer, but the time she could get away with that had long come and gone.
But even knowing the necessity, it took three tries before she could force the words out.
"A lot of things, Mulder, and I want, I need, to tell you in person. But I want to start with my behavior today. I was completely out of line, and I am so very, very sorry I took it out on you."
Yet another silence filled the air, this one lasting a good two minutes, before her partner blew out a deep breath and then sniffed.
"I — Scully, I appreciate that, but I . . . I can't—"
Terrified at what he was about to say, to deny her, Scully hastily interrupted. The first step toward fixing things had to come from her, but he had to let her lay the foundation. She couldn't do it on her own.
(This time, the irony brushed her cheek as it barreled past and she turned to look at it for a fleeting moment)
"I'm not asking for total forgiveness, Mulder," she cut him off. Despite her best efforts, she wasn't able to be as gentle as he had just been, but she was too aware of how thin and fragile the balance between them was and she couldn't risk letting his hurt and anger with her snap that connection, even though the whole world knew he was fully justified in his feelings. "I just . . . I was wrong today and I want you to know that I know that. And I would really like to talk about it, because I don't want to do it again."
She stopped there, unable to say more without some kind of positive response from him, and waited for what seemed like an actual, literal eternity before he sniffed hard and sighed again. This one sounded . . . well, not to be melodramatic, but it sounded woebegone, and Scully's heart clenched. Even though the Gunmen had explained so much to her and made so many things clear, it was this second sigh that finally clued her in to how much damage she had caused. In the normal course of events, Mulder denied her nothing when she actually broke down and asked him for it.
But it looked like he was serious about denying her this. And if he was, then she honestly didn't have a clue what would happen to them, professionally or personally.
The thought of losing Mulder, the sobering, terrifying realization that her own actions had made it entirely possible, actually made her feel lightheaded and she swayed on her feet a little before sagging against her car door, clutching the phone like it was the only thing anchoring her to the earth and employing every trick she knew to keep from hyperventilating.
"Scully . . ." he began, his voice hoarse with what she suspected were tears, and her own eyes brimmed, though she refused to let them fall.
Not yet. Not until she knew why she was crying.
"Okay," he suddenly said, sounding shockingly resolute, and Scully blinked.
Had — had he just said 'okay'?
Reading her mind as he occasionally did, he repeated himself, and a blinding smile broke out on Scully's face even as tears of joyful relief streamed down her cheeks.
"Let's talk, Scully. Let's talk."
~~~
fin