Wed Jan 29 1997

Open Hearts
An X-Files Thing
By Vickie Moseley
In Tandem with Summer

Dana Scully's Personal Log

Part Ten

Saturday, November 20th

It's late.

I'm exhausted. Maybe not as tired as Mulder, who's sleeping on
the sofa again for the night. And probably most of tomorrow, if my
suspicions are correct. He was a little shocky coming home, pale,
shaking. He was sure I didn't notice, or else, he thought I didn't
care. Frankly, I was too upset/worried/tired to do much more than
throw a blanket and pillow at him and leave him alone.

I think that's what he wanted anyway.

Assistant Director His Highness Walter S. Skinner made it clear
that I'm to have Mulder in the office no later than 8:30 day after
tomorrow. I had to do a double take on that one. Even Skinner
realized Mulder would be no good to anyone for at least 36 hours.
Guess he figures it's not as much fun to skewer an unconscious
man. The first intelligent assessment our revered Assistant Director
has made in the last week, by my count.

Bastard. But that list is getting awfully long and I'm too tired to
even give it a glance right now. Soon, though. Very soon.

I would be sleeping, too, if it weren't for the images playing pong
in my brain. There were so many times today when I wished with
everything in me that I would wake up and find it all a dream. I
might be a little shaken, might have to turn on the light and read
awhile, but it would all be a fantasy, gone with the morning.

No such luck. Again.

It started when we got to the motel. I was holding my breath as we
pulled up to the door the manager had told was Mulder's. I was
tense, I had every reason to be tense, but scared shitless, that was
pretty irrational. All this talk of dreams coming true is starting to
affect me. I hate when Mulder does that. He sort of acid-trips his
way into my psyche and gives me his fears. I have enough of my
own to deal with, thank you very much! As we walked up to
that door, I was hoping that my dream had been just a normal,
sorting out the day kind of dream, and not--well, the kind Mulder
loves to tell me about. We knocked on the door and no one
answered. I never felt so cold as when Skinner was kicking in that
door.

But Mulder was okay. In a manner of speaking, anyway. As a matter
of fact, he was standing, with a table knocked over on its side in
front of him. In his own handcuffs.

Had it not been so terrifying, I would have laughed myself silly.

Roche was gone. He took off in the night, taking Mulder's gun,
badge and cell phone. My partner had fallen asleep. Roche
handcuffed Mulder before he left.

On the ride home, I had a nice, long, quiet time to reflect on that.
Here we have a man who thinks killing little girls and burying their
bodies in state parks is the way to make them happy. Here we have
my partner, not the most happy-go-lucky of personalities to begin
with. So what if he isn't a little blond haired girl. Roche had made
it clear on each of our visits that he 'likes' Mulder. He was always
friendly to him, in a serial killer sort of way. So it's not his MO
to kill grown men. Usually grown men are pretty powerful. Not
defenseless, like little girls. But what if he found an adult male
in a defenseless position--

Sleeping tonight is not going to be easy. I keep seeing these images
in my head. Roche coming over to Mulder, asleep at the table.
Touching his hip to get the gun out. He's still leaning over him; he
could have easily put a bullet in his brain. Just like in my dream.

Or maybe Roche didn't like all the blood; maybe that's why he
strangled those girls. One of Mulder's "I hate the world" ties would
do the job just as well as 8 gauge electrical cord. I can see Roche,
reaching for the tie, grabbing hold of the short end while holding
the knot in place. I imagine he would have handcuffed Mulder by
this time. Keep him defenseless. And very slowly, taking all the
time in the world because it would feel so goddamned good to him,
squeeze the life out of my partner while I was sitting in the front
passenger seat of another fucking bureau pool car when I should
have been on a plane.

Next time, I don't call Skinner. I bring my own cavalry.

When we busted in the room, Mulder was disoriented at first, but
came around rather quickly. Skinner demanded an explanation.
Mulder, of course, decided to lay on the altar and commit career
suicide. He had no explanation.

At least he didn't try to tell Skinner about another of those
goddamned dreams. And then in a flash, he was Mulder, the
Mulder I've relyed on, trusted, watched in awe. I could see the
little hamsters turning somersaults on the gears and wheels in his
mind. Sometimes, most times, he is a piece of work, my partner.

We had to find Roche, and God only knew where he had gone. Well,
God and Mulder. In seconds, Mulder was on the phone, calling the
airline he'd been on the night before. There had been a little girl
on the plane. Roche had talked to her for just a few seconds.
My blood went cold in my veins as he said the words. Roche had
targeted that little girl--in front of God, Mulder and the world.

By this time, the airlines rep was answering. Mulder's face went
white. Another FBI agent, also named Mulder, had just called 10
minutes before and asked the same questions. What was the last
name of the little girl named Caitlin, where did she live? I could see
Mulder take up the blanket of guilt and wrap it around him like a
shroud. But he pushed it aside, or rather, girded it about him so
that he could still move, and then we were in Skinner's car, chasing
Roche.

Roche took her from her daycare center. These images just won't
stop. I can see Roche walking up to the teacher, flashing the badge
(it impresses people so much, very few look closely at the picture)
and telling some lie about how Caitlin's mother had been injured.
He had to take Caitlin to her mother.

I felt so sorry for that teacher. She thought she was doing the right
thing. No matter how many times the story is told, you never think
it can happen to you, or someone you know. If I had gone to her
day care, and related the same story, she would have told me that
they have policies and procedures to avoid that kind of thing. I'm
sure they do. Procedures are easy to write when you don't have a
nicely dressed man with a badge and a gun right there, telling you
that he has to take a child to her injured mother.

Mulder could see how horrified the woman was and in his state, he
couldn't stand to have her shoulder his blame. That's one thing
about Mulder: he always hates to share. He's very jealous with his
guilt. It's his, and damn anyone who tries to take any of it from
him. He told her not to blame herself. He was to blame. Don't
touch that, lady, it's mine, all mine.

For a moment, I was afraid I was going to lose him right there and
then in the parking lot. He was struggling, losing confidence in
himself. The guilt was strangling him, almost as effectively as
Roche could have the night before. I had to bring him back to the
case, get him thinking.

My first thought was that Roche would follow his MO. He'd take
her out of state, kill her. I said it out loud, thinking with my
mouth. I was figuring logistics when Mulder snapped back. He was
positive Roche would never leave Boston. Once again, he was
thinking right in step with Roche. He knew where he was, where
he'd taken Caitlin.

Roche lived on Alice Street all the years before he'd been in prison.
I really really hate how some people play out obsessions. And
sociopaths are the worst. Once you find the puzzle piece with the
church steeple, the rest is easy. But it took some work to make this
piece fit, and we had run out of time.

The apartment on Alice Street was a long way from Wonderland. It
was a trash heap. As we walked in, I had a vivid flashback to the
apartment at 66 Exeter Street in Baltimore. Evil had once lived in
this Boston apartment, too. But from the dust, leaves, and decay
around us, it was obvious that Roche had not been here for a very
long time.

My heart was somewhere on the first floor. If he wasn't there,
Mulder was off the scent. Maybe I had just wanted too much for
him to be right, for him to be _all right_, that I was willing to
go along with this fantasy of a connection. I've never really
understood it, how Mulder could think like the killers he tracked.
I got a glimpse of it once, in a dirty RV with a delusional man
who spoke perfect German. I felt sorry for Jerry Schnauz. I
could even understand why Jerry would want to help people he thought
were hurting as much as he hurt. But to say I got into his mind?
God, I hope not. Not ever.

Mulder was staring out the window. Not hard; there was no glass
to stop the view. Across a field, there was a metal fence and an old
Mass Transit graveyard of old buses. The MTA, more than likely.

"Will he ever return? No, he'll never return . . ." I think sometimes
my mind throws things like that at me just to fuck me up. Charlie
and the MTA-- a Boston commuter who can't find his stop, the
song set to an old Irish drinking song. I've sung that song so many
times in Irish-American bars on St. Patrick's Day. It doesn't sound
so humorous now.

Mulder was gone like a shot and we were still searching the
apartment building. It was a few minutes before I caught sight of
him, climbing over the fence. He disappeared from view and I
hunted Skinner down and the two of us ran to find the entrance to
the bus lot.

I had no idea how we would find them. At that point, all I could
think was that soon we'd hear the gunshot. Mulder only had the
Berreta now, but he's good with it. Roche had Mulder's Glock. . .
well, I'm glad the prison educational system hasn't extended to
small arms training--yet. I figured, in an even fight, Mulder would
come out on top. But Roche had a hostage. And Mulder would give
his life for that little girl without batting an eye. The odds
were too close to call.

I have to give Skinner this much: he was probably a good agent
before he started flying a desk. He stopped dead at the end of each
row, watched the little metal antennae that connect with the electric
wires for the buses. After what seemed like hours, we heard a
small voice, counting loudly. One. . . two. . .

It was Caitlin. We both hit the door of the bus at the same time,
Skinner high, me low. Our guns were trained--but when we saw
the scene, I think we both knew that we'd never get off a shot.

Roche was sitting in the back of the bus, on one of the long benches
that hug the wall. Little Caitlin, blond hair, face out of a story
book, looking just a little bewildered and scared, was sitting in the
front-facing seat, right in front of Roche. I couldn't see Roche's
hand, but it didn't take a degree from MIT to figure out that he had
Mulder's Glock aimed at Caitlin and at that range, the bullet would
cut through the seat like a hot knife through butter. Mulder stood
over Roche, talking.

I couldn't make out what he was saying. Caitlin was doing a pretty
good job of counting. Loud. Clear. Like she was reciting for her
nursery school class. She had her eyes closed in concentration and
seemed almost unaware of the two men behind her. Playing poker
for her life.

As I said before, I knew that neither Skinner nor I would get off a
shot in this bizarre little game. Because there were only two ways
it would end. Either we would walk away, with Caitlin in our arms,
crying, probably, but safe. Or Roche would kill Caitlin, Mulder
would kill Roche, and then while the AD and I were fighting each
other to get up the steps of the bus, Mulder would put the gun to
his head and blow his own brains out. Simple as that. I might not
have been in Roche's mind, but I had no doubt that I was in perfect
tune with Mulder.

He was still talking to Roche. "Don't let this end badly, John."
Still with the 'John' bit. Still on a buddy level. It gave me
chills to hear him.

Caitlin was just passing 17, heading toward 18 and I sort of got the
feeling that at 20, all bets were off. I was staring right at the
three of them and it looked as if time had stopped. There was no
movement, save for Caitlin's little bow mouth, saying the numbers
she'd probably only learned a few months before.

Then, just as she hit 19, there was a shot fired. Roche slammed
back against the seat, I saw Mulder's hand jerk with the recoil from
his Berreta. Caitlin screamed and ran and I had her in my arms.
She was crying. But she was safe.

Suddenly I had an armful of terrified five-year-old and all I could
do was hold her and keep telling her I'd take her to her mom. I
looked over her shoulder and could see Mulder. He hadn't moved
a muscle, hadn't twitched since the gun went off. He just stood
there, staring more holes into John Roche's body.

Skinner was pushing past me and I wanted to grab his arm, make
sure he left Mulder alone, but my hands were busy with Caitlin,
wiping her eyes and nose. All I could do was give him a look and
hope he understood. He walked up to Mulder, took the gun out of
his hand and silently led him off the bus.

I sat down on the steps of the bus next to that one and rocked
Caitlin until the rest of the force arrived. Paramedics took her
out of my arms and I saw them taking her to a blond-haired woman
who was pretty close to hysterical. Caitlin's mom. Thankfully, she
stayed by the ambulance. I didn't think it would be a good idea for
her and Mulder to meet right then.

By this time, Mulder was leaning against the outside of the bus, his
eyes closed. I watched Skinner talk to the men from the coroner's
office and then start toward Mulder. I headed him off.

"I need to speak with Agent Mulder, Agent Scully," he said in that
'don't mess with me' voice of his.

"But I don't think he needs to speak with you, sir," I told him.
I knew better than to go over right then. The last thing on earth
Mulder needed was to be berated, yelled at or even spoken to. He
needed to be alone, to have a minute to figure out where the hell he
was, where the hell he's been for the past week. OK, maybe a
minute wouldn't do it, but it was damned certain he needed to be
left alone.

"Take him home," Skinner said, handing me his keys. "I want to
see him day after tomorrow. If he's not there by 8:30, you're both
suspended. Got that, Agent Scully?"

I wasn't in the mood to argue. I was in the mood to punch him in
the face, but not to argue. And he was giving us the car. I
swallowed every bit of my Irish heritage and said "Thank you, sir."

Mulder didn't open his eyes when I walked up. I tugged at his
sleeve and he still kept his eyes closed. "Is she OK?" he did
manage to ask.

"She's fine. A little scared. The paramedics are taking her to the
hospital, just to check her out. From all appearances, he didn't hurt
her at all."

"He didn't have a chance. Not that easy getting 8 gauge electrical
wire in the middle of the MTA bus lot," my partner replied, and the
words were like broken glass.

"You got here in time, Mulder," I reminded him.

"She wouldn't have been in danger if I hadn't been so gung-ho to
prove him wrong, Scully."

"Was he wrong, Mulder?" I was almost afraid of the answer; we
hadn't had a chance to talk about what had happened. "You went
to your house last night."

"No, Scully. I couldn't take him to that house. They sold it
a few years after she disappeared. When my parents divorced.
Dad moved to the house in West Tisbury and Mom and I went to
Greenwich. Then I left for Oxford. So I couldn't take him to the
house where she was abducted." By now his eyes were opened and
I could see the faint hint of triumph in them.

I must have shown my confusion because he smiled, just a flash.
"The wrong house, Scully. I took him to the wrong house. But he
didn't recognize it. He thought it was the house we'd always lived
in. He tried to point out specifics, but by that time, I knew he was
lying. The dreams, Scully. He was connecting to me, setting me up
in my dreams. I don't know how . . ."

He stopped and looked at me. "You don't believe it could be the
dreams."

I was too tired to have this conversation. "Mulder, did you get
good grades in your psych classes? Because the profs at U of M
would have kicked your ass out of school for some of the twisted
theories you purport."

He laughed at that. "I regurgitate really well when something like
grades are involved, Scully." He sighed so long I thought he would
die from lack of oxygen.

"Skinner wants my ass." Simply a statement of the facts as
presented.

"Not till day after tomorrow."

He laughed a little at that. "Patch the prisoner up so he can be
standing at the execution, huh?"

I recognized Mulder's gallows humor immediately. I was almost
relieved. If he hadn't come up with something that outrageous,
I would have been worried about him. "Something like that. And
we'll be there on time, Mulder. I can't afford any lengthy
suspensions. I got docked for the time I spent in lock-up
when I held Congress in contempt."

He smiled again at that. He has a lot of contempt for Congress
lately.

"Come on. I'm taking you home," I told him, and we made our way
to the car.

I know he wasn't sleeping in the car. He had his head against the
glass of the window, I think it was to ease the tension headache he
had. It would have done wonders on mine. Every muscle in my
body ached. All I wanted in the world was a nice hot tub of soapy
water to soak in, and then to wrap up in the way-too-expensive
down comforter that I finally bought myself. If you gotta sleep
alone, at least you can be warm.

I keep forgetting how long a ride it is. I drank about a gallon of
coffee at various rest stops. Mulder sat in the car, not moving. His
eyes were open, he was staring. Pale, like I said. Every once in a
while he'd get the shakes, but I tried not to notice. It's fairly
common to have a little residual shock after an ordeal like today.
He was warm enough in the car. When we arrived at my
apartment, he more or less collapsed on the sofa. He'll sleep
tonight and into tomorrow. Maybe wake up around noon,
complaining of a headache and being sore. Some aspirin and fluids
will set him straight. He'll be fine.

I hope.

If nothing else, at least he's now back where we started. It's not
the best place, but I still feel that there are a lot of possibilities
we haven't even considered. I don't like the idea that there's so much
information on my partner out there, available. He seems to think
Roche just hotwired into his dreams, and that there's no need to
worry.

I looked it up: worrying is part of my job description.

But right now, the best I can do for both of us is to get some sleep.
At least tonight, I know he'll stay put.

I locked his shoes and slacks in my cedar chest.

end of part ten.

From summer@interlabs.bradley.edu Wed Jan 29 12:04:57 1997

Open Hearts
An X-Files Thing
by Summer (summer@camelot.bradley.edu)
In Tandem with Vickie Moseley

Part Eleven

The Journals of Fox Mulder

Sunday 21 November

Where the hell are my clothes?

I'm in Scully's apartment. She's not here-- there
was a note tented on the table that said "I'll be right
back". And my shoes and slacks are nowhere in this entire
place. Found the shirt, the jacket, the tie-- no shoes,
no slacks-- no service--

So now I'm stuck on the couch with the afghan
tucked demurely around me, since there's a nice window
here and somehow I don't think it's a great idea for
Scully's neighbors to see her partner searching through
her apartment in a button-down shirt and boxers.

I wish I knew more about Zen Buddhism. Existing
only in the moment. I don't want to remember yesterday.
I don't want to think about tomorrow. Just think about
now. Just right now.

Right now I'm cold. Why do afghans always have
little airholes in them? Defeats the purpose of a blanket.
And Scully always keeps this place at about 10 degrees.
She must've gotten so used to the temperature at the morgue
that now she has to refrigerate her apartment...

Where is she?

My clothes are missing. Scully is missing. That's
an interesting mental image. Scully either carrying around
my shoes and slacks, or-- better yet. Wearing them. I don't
think those size thirteens would stay on her little feet
for more than a step or two. To say nothing of the slacks.

Yeah, definitely say nothing of the slacks.

Living in the moment. This isn't so bad. I can do
this. Scully will come back and I will say, "The past does
not exist. The future is undetermined. Now is the only thing
that matters."

Then she'll throw my clothes at me and tell me to
get the hell out of her apartment... no, I've lost it; I'm
thinking about the future. I'm out of "now". I'm out of
the moment.

And back to that moment... I thought I wanted him
dead so badly... that I was curbing violence the entire
time. But when it came down to it, I didn't-- I didn't want
to shoot. I didn't want to kill him.

But I did. I killed him.

The last cloth heart. It was still in my inside
jacket pocket. Scully didn't search through my clothes,
apparently... just ran off with some of them. Why on earth
would she take my pants and shoes? I can't exactly stroll
out without my--

Oh.

Okay. I guess I asked for this. The thing with the
pills, that was over the line. I didn't precisely plan that,
though looking back I suppose I knew that was the only real
reason to fill the prescription bottle with aspirin. So my
partner took off with half my clothes. Fair enough. But if
she's gone much longer, that's sadism. And if she comes back
and doesn't return my errant wardrobe, that's harassment.

I should tell her that one. Scully could probably
use a laugh.

But probably not from me.

Our partnership has survived worse than this. Scully
tells me that she's here to stay, and I believe her. This is
her fight too.

But that doesn't change the fact that I blew it this
time. I could have found another way to get Roche out of
prison and take him to the West Tisbury house and prove he
was lying. It wouldn't have been easy-- it would have taken
a lot of fighting and a lot of bowing and scraping in the
Bureau and a lot of time. But I could have done this some
other way.

And a little girl named Caitlin would never have
to know what it's like to be a victim.

Roche didn't touch her. He didn't have time. Not
that he touched any of them. Not directly. But he took her
from her school and made her come with him to that lot filled
with old streetcars. And though she never saw the danger she
was in, he pointed a gun at her back...

My gun.

I can't... there's no reparation for that.

Here I am, trapped in this moment. There's yesterday
and all the mistakes I've made. There's tomorrow, when I have
to face up to them.

What can I do today?

What the hell can I do now?

Monday 22 November

My head hurts. Fuck. I used to be able to take this
shit. I used to be able to go home and crank up the stereo,
put on some headphones and let Steve Vai's guitar chase
everything else out of my brain.

Skinner _gets_ to me. Of all the people I've ever
had to report to-- Reggie, Patterson, Blevins, to name just
a few-- no one could ever fucking tear me up one side and
down the other like that. Skinner crosses his arms and puts
on this "I'm only thinking about what's best for everybody"
routine and suddenly I'm not in the FBI anymore, I'm in the
principal's office, and if I tell the jerk what I _really_
think of his stupid regulations, he's going to call my
dad and send me home.

Well, the last half, anyway. I'm benched. For a
month. A _month_. The maximum time off with pay after an
agent fires his weapon in the line of duty. Of course,
it's not enough to deliver the sentence; he had to recite
the entire litany of my sins. And even I have to admit
that this time, I'd committed plenty of sins to recite.

Somehow, it's not as hard to take the browbeating
when I know it's justified.

I think I said "Yes sir" so many times the words
must be reflexive now-- I wonder if I can open my mouth
and say something _other_ than "Yes sir".

Well, what do you know. "Fuck you, sir," comes
just as naturally.

A month off. Not just out of the office. I have to
turn all the "work-related material" I have at home over to
my jailer-- Scully.

The A.D. dragged her up after a half-hour of ranting
at me, and proceeded to repeat most of his lecture. I almost
thought he'd just run out of things to say and brought her up
so he'd have an excuse to repeat himself. Wishful thinking.
After reeling off my punishment, he proceeded to sentence
Scully. She gets to collect all the files from my apartment.
She gets my keys to the basement office. Then she gets to
spend the month cooling her heels in the autopsy bay.

Somehow, the fucker figured out that I'd be able to
take whatever he felt like throwing at me. So he dragged my
partner in and starting laying shit on her for _my_ mistakes.
And I wanted to say something and I couldn't say anything--
I waived the right to protest when I got the release order
for John Lee Roche.

Finally, satisfied I'd been worked over enough, he
tossed me out and kept Scully in there for a while.

Almost forgot. In the course of his remarks, Skinner
put a lot of emphasis on the "mandatory counseling" we all
have to sit through after a violent incident. "I want you
to know that particularly in this case, I take the required
counseling sessions very seriously. I'll be checking up
on your attendance."

No problem. I'll attend. I love FBI psychologists.
The last few times I had to go in for stuff like this, I
talked to Larry Collins. I tell him a colorful story about
the incident of the month, he assumes I'm making most of
it up, chuckles, lobs a couple of softball questions: "Do
you think your reaction was appropriate to the situtation?
If you had to do it again, what would you change? Can you
still perform your duties as an agent of the FBI?" A few
smooth answers and a couple of jokes, and Larry signs me
off with a clean bill of health.

The price I have to pay is twenty minutes of Larry
prodding around, trying to find out if I'm sleeping with
Scully. I know he's supposed to keep an eye on male-female
partnerships, but he's so goddamned heavy-handed and usually
uses it as an excuse to drool over my partner for the entire
session. Actually, I got Scully to drop by his office before
the session was over sometimes-- funny how Larry's always
willing to let me leave early if it'll give him a chance to
talk to her.

So, thanks for the warning, Skinner. I won't try to
weasel out of sessions early this time around. Larry can catch
me up on basketball stats. I've been too busy lately to follow
the games.

Mom called. That was hard. She's worried. I haven't
talked to her since I went looking for the vacuum cleaner,
and she saw the news reports about Boston. They didn't give
any names, but she gets jumpy whenever the news talks about
the FBI. The PR guys must have put in some overtime to cover
for this one-- Mom told me the news stories reported that
John Lee Roche, convicted serial killer, agreed to lead
"federal officers" to the grave of one of his victims, then
"assaulted one officer" and escaped into Boston, where he
abducted a little girl; Roche was shot and killed by "FBI
agents" an hour later and the girl was returned to her family
unharmed. Public relations. Suddenly unspecified "federal officers"
who fucked up become "FBI agents" who saved the day.

Mom didn't quite ask if I'd been there, but it was in
her voice. I hate lying to her... I told her I was involved,
that I'd worked on that case before. She doesn't know I used
to profile. She doesn't know what I do now, except that I have
to travel a lot. I try to keep it that way. She knows I'm still
looking for Samantha. Sometimes she says she wishes I could let
it go. Sometimes she says she's proud of me for never giving up.
Mostly she just sighs and doesn't say anything at all.

I told her that I'm taking some time off. She got
nervous. "Are you all right? Are you sick, is something going
on?"

"No, Mom, I'm just tired and it's been a while since
I had a vacation." Scully came back in time to hear that, and
her smirk looked vaguely dangerous. Then Mom put me on hold
while she took the kettle off the stove, so I asked Scully
how she fared.

The smirk deepened. Not a good sign. "If you really
wanted to do something for your mother, we should go through
all the junk in that basement and clean the place out for her."

Which sounded good, even if she was avoiding talking
about Skinner, so when Mom came back to the phone I offered to
sort through everything in the basement. She said, "Is that
what that was all about, the other night?"

"Yeah, Mom. Would you like me to do that?"

And she said sure, but tonight she and her neighbor
were going Xmas shopping with friends. I told her that'd be
great, I'd have the basement straightened up for her by the
time she got back.

We said our goodbyes and then it was time to face my
partner.

But the backlash didn't come. She just gave me her
chilliest stare and said, "I need your keys."

Yes ma'am. I threaded them off my keyring and gave
them up reluctantly. Asked, "Do you want to go toss my apartment
and get all those files now? Or just tell me when and I'll
be there."

Scully looked at the keys to the office and pursed
her lips. "I'll make a deal with you," she said. "I won't go
through your apartment-- I'll just trust you to get all the
files together and hand them over to me. You do that, and I'll
help you clear up that basement tonight."

Sounded more like a plan to keep tabs on me than a
bargain, but it's a better deal than the ones I've made lately.
So I agreed.

So I'm supposed to pick her up and drive to Greenwich
in another hour. I've got most of the files stacked on the coffee
table. The pile's high enough to block the TV. The files are the
only things I'm giving up, though. Scully knows as well as I do
that if I really gave her all my "work-related material", I'd
spend the next month in an empty apartment.

She'll probably let me work on the budget or plow through
some of the endless forms the paper-pushers toss at us to ensure
they'll always have jobs. We both know it's bullshit to make her
do all the paperwork because I flew off the handle. And by now
every agent in Washington knows what an amazing pathologist she
is, so everyone's going to try to get her to work on their cases.
She'll be too busy to deal with the paperwork.

I doubt I see much of her over this month. She'll log
in frequent phone calls, but neither of us wants her to be my
warden, as Skinner seems to be demanding.

...I always tell her that I know she's not going to
leave the X-files. We've been through too much together. What
else can we do? And if I have doubts-- she takes it as a vote
of no confidence in her. In her commitment. In her trust.

But I-- I trust her, utterly, yes. God, yes. But I've
always known how this was going to end. I've always known that
some day, some way, I'd push it too far.. And it'd be over. And
there'd be no one to blame but myself for that.

This was close.

I won't know how close until tonight.

end part eleven.

From summer@interlabs.bradley.edu Wed Jan 29 12:05:13 1997

Open Hearts
An X-Files Thing
By Vickie Moseley (vmoseley@fgi.net)
In Tandem with Summer

Dana Scully's Personal Log

Part Twelve

Sunday, November 21

Ugh!

Here I was, sniggering at Mulder's groans and creaks as he got off
the sofa this morning, and I have them in spades now myself. I
should never try to nap in the afternoon. Bad mistake, very very
bad.

But it seemed like such a great idea at the time.

Mulder woke up about noon today. I wasn't that much earlier; I
got up around ten and promptly realized there was no food in the
cupboard--I go shopping on Saturdays. Well, any Saturday when
I'm not chasing down aliens, mutants or escaped serial killers that
my partner has let out of prison. No wonder I eat out so much. I
ran down to the store to pick up juice and some lunchmeat and
bread. When I got back he was awake, wrapped in my afghan and
looking a bit flushed. I forgot I had his clothes locked up safe.
Well, forget isn't really the right word. I remembered, but wanted
to make sure he didn't sneak off before I got back. Not that I'd
ever admit that to him. I released the prisoner and his clothes--he
made a beeline for my bathroom (forgot to close the drapes last
night, too) and got dressed.

As I predicted, he moaned and groaned and I caught some muttered
complaint that my sofa was lumpier than a rock garden, but after I
plied him with three glasses of juice and two extra strength Tylenol,
he lapsed into 'Mulder Silent Running' mode. The submarine is
running deep and no sounds are to be made at any time. I did manage
to bully him into eating a sandwich and then I took him back to his
apartment. He wasn't going to talk to me today, and I've already
got a potted plant to stare at, so I took him where he wanted to
be--alone. He could have used some more sleep, but I didn't push.
I was being nice. I can do that, occasionally.

When I got back, I just could not face the television, I didn't want
to read--I just wanted to escape. The pillow and blankets were still
laying on the sofa, all a tangle, but looking awfully inviting. I
admit it, I'm a sucker for a good silk-edged blanket.

I woke up about a half hour ago and realized that I should have
either slept through the night or not slept at all. Now the only
recourse I have is a good soak in the tub.

It's a dirty job, but hey--

Maybe, if I sit in the tub long enough, I really will shrink to the size
of a pea like Missy used to threaten. And when I pull the plug, I'll
just float down the drain and off to sea.

Somehow, after this week, that's not such a bad thought at all.

Monday, November 22

I can not believe how much shit I've taken over this case.

I avoided being a bitch again this morning and didn't call him to
make sure he got in on time. I know Mulder--he might not want
the chewing out, but he's never late for it. I was right. He
was there when I got there at 8:20. He had on his 'gallows tie'--a
really intricate design that when you get it in the light the right way,
you see that it's all hangman's nooses. I have no idea where he got
it, but he's been sporting it on days he knows Skinner is going to
chew him out. So, at least I have my partner back, if only on the
surface. I even felt sorry for him as he headed up to take his
his beating like a man.

I was somewhat surprised when I got a call from Kimberly before
Mulder had even returned, telling me that my presence was
requested upstairs, too. Not exactly what I expected. Usually,
these little meetings are private. But I naively went upstairs. I
remember a brief flash in the elevator, thinking about lambs to the
slaughter.

Skinner was in rare form, having sharpened his claws on Mulder
already. He was waiting for me in the outer office when I arrived.
Ushered me into his office like Mother Mary St. George used to do
when we got caught with our skirts too short for regulation. I
almost got down on my knees to prove my skirt hit the back of my
legs. Now that would have been REALLY embarrassing.

Mulder was still there, looking more than slightly ruffled by this
point. I think he expected to be roughed up, but it's never pleasant,
and every once in a while I think he just wishes that he could say
something, anything, that would stem the tide of insults and threats.
Not today, however. And this time the threats sounded real.

Skinner got a great deal of pleasure reciting for me exactly what
punishment he had meted out to my partner. He's out for a month.
Procedure states that an agent can be suspended with or without
pay for a period of up to a month in any case involving the shooting
of another individual. I've never seen anyone get the full month.
In the case of Lucas Jackson Henry, I got the minimum--a week. I
ended up sitting in the office doing paperwork for that week, and
since Mulder was still on medical leave, it was almost like nothing
had happened. Of course, Lucas Henry didn't die of the wound I
inflicted, but it's indicative of how arbitrary the time really is. To
give Mulder the full month, knowing that the shooting was justified,
was like giving life imprisonment to a kid that stole some candy.
OK, if the kid broke the store window, jimmied the lock and
THEN only took some candy.

Silently, I was overjoyed. It was a little, hell, it was a LOT long
for a cooling-off period, but hopefully, he would take the time and
make good use of it. Or I could hold him at gunpoint and MAKE him
make good use of it. I shot Mulder my best 'Gosh, darn, ain't it a
shame' look and then started listening again. According to the AD,
I'm _supposed_ to play warden in this little imprisonment. Mulder
is supposed to hand over ALL of the cases he has at home, and I'm
to make a complete inventory of them. Then, while he's watching
The Price is Right and Rosie O'Donnell, I'm at the beck and call of
any department in the Bureau AND covering for people at the Academy
AND making sure that Mulder isn't off somewhere getting into
trouble again. Apparently, at least in my opinion, I got the
shittier end of the deal.

Mulder was dismissed so that the Assistant Director could 'talk'
to me. The little vein in his neck was sticking out real far this
morning. I'm fairly confident that if I have any little telltale
veins, they were out there pretty far, too.

"Do you realize how close you came to losing a partner?"

I think that was my favorite. No, Walt, just how close was I? How
many close calls were there this week? Which was the closest?
Couldn't have been when he started having dreams about cases that
have been closed for 5 years, and the dreams have laser sights in
them. Or maybe it was when he decided to play mind games and
basketball with a convicted serial killer. No, wait, I remember.
It was when I turned my back for TWO FUCKING SECONDS and
the ASSHOLE ran off on me, when he should have been floating on
some life raft with Bambi the Bug Lady in glorious Dreamland!

"It is _your_ responsiblity to keep Agent Mulder in line, Agent
Scully. If that responsiblity has gotten to be too much for you, I
suggest you tell me now, so we can avoid further incidents like this
one."

Well, FUCK YOU, Walter! Where the hell were you, Mr.
Supervisor, when Mulder should have been benched after he socked
Roche in the jaw? Where have you ever been when he's taken off?
Sure, you gave me some coordinates, once. Sure, you sat there
behind me in Congress. But you know what, Walt? I don't seem
to remember you in that ER at Eisenhower Field when Mulder
flatlined and I sure as hell don't remember you sharing a jail cell
with me when I wouldn't rat on his location to a bunch of self
righteous old fat white guys who would turn that information over
to liars, thieves and murderers.

"We almost had a real tragedy this time, Scully. I hold you at least
partly responsible for that."

Yeah, that's just ducky, Walt, because I hold you almost _totally_
responsible for it! I have a medical degree. I have a certificate that
says I am qualified to use all guns and firearms issued to a Special
Agent. Nowhere in my licenses, degrees and certificates is one
that says I am a qualified wet nurse for a 35-year-old insomniac
with suicidal tendencies! I don't lay this at Mulder's door, Walt, I
lay it at yours. You know him as well as I do. I at least try to keep
him out of trouble. You, you seem to be pushing him into to it. All
the time. So who's really at fault here? There's more than enough
blame to go around.

Of course, I didn't say any of this. I stood there like a good little
sailor and took it up the ass, as Mulder so affectionately calls it.
But I think my stance might have conveyed a little of my feelings
because he sort of ran out of steam. After I flashed him a
particularly hateful 'Yes sir' he cleared his throat and just stood
there for a minute.

"Scully, I know this is hard. And I'm also aware that you did
attempt to do what was required of you. But this has got to stop.
Mulder wasn't just out of line this time, he put others in jeapordy
and I can't have that. Now, I have a choice and I think you know
what that choice is. There's enough hard evidence on this one to
go straight for dismissal without hope of reinstatement."

It's really hard to keep still when your blood just turned to ice and
all you want to do is shiver--but I managed.

"You don't want that, and frankly, neither do I."

Well, at least I got the bastard to admit that.

"But Scully, I don't care how you do it, just make sure he gets
some help and make doubly sure this never, never happens again.
Are we straight on this?"

What could I say? I knew he was right. I was mad as hell that he
wasn't accepting any of the responsibility, but there was no way to
fault the logic. If little Caitlin had died--no, I'm better off not
walking through that minefield. But if she had died and we
managed to get to Mulder before he did what he wanted to
do--then there would have been no choice involved. Psych disability,
involuntary committal . . . It really had been that close. One way
or another, it would have been over.

So now, my goal in life, besides keeping a really low profile so that
the guys in bank fraud don't figure out a way to have me autopsy
safety deposit boxes, is to make Mulder get some help. Any help.
Anything that will work.

When I stopped by to see if Mulder was gathering up all the files--I
think he was contemplating the enormity of that task, and it scared
him to death-- I suggested that if he did that, I'd go with him later
this afternoon and help him clean out his mom's basement. Maybe
I can get him talking, thinking, realizing . . .

It's a long shot.

It's been a shitty two days and I'm ready to go find some 8 guage
electrical cord of my own, but if I can use all this guilt Mulder's
carrying around to get him some help, it might be worth it.

end of part twelve

From summer@interlabs.bradley.edu Wed Jan 29 12:06:29 1997

Open Hearts
An X-Files Thing
by Summer (summer@camelot.bradley.edu)
In Tandem with Vickie Moseley

Part Thirteen

The Journals of Fox Mulder

Tuesday 23 November

Technically it's Tuesday. 12:18 Tuesday morning.
I don't want to write this. I don't want to write about
this. But it looks like I'm going to have to get it down
and get it out of my head or I'll never be able to wind
down and get some rest.

And I _have_ to sleep tonight. May have to embark
on a complete crash self-improvement course over the next
month. Scully made it clear that she's going to be keeping
track of me, and she won't be inclined to cast a forgiving
eye my way. I knew I'd come close to the edge this time. Now
I know how close.

Too close.

I don't remember the last time we had a real knock-down
drag-out fight. We've had a few-- we could hardly work this
closely together for three years without the occasional blowout.
But only a few. Disagreements, constantly; debates, all the time;
arguments, sure, every now and then.

This was a fight. Voices raised, fists waved, threats made.
And that was just Scully. She knew she had the advantage and she
leapt for it, all engines go. I'm tempted to check the back of my
head. I still feel like I've been bludgeoned.

Stormclouds were definitely on the horizon for the entire
drive to Greenwich. I came down with an armful of papers and
vouchers to meet her when she picked me up, and when silence
reigned, plunged into the fray. I offered to take on all the
paperwork that needs catching up. Nothing. No response. I began
sorting through the stuff that I _can't_ do myself, like her
personal expense report.

Which I still have. No wonder she's mad at me; I ruined
that white silk blouse she loved when we were at the construction
site in Philadelphia. I thought blood came out of silk with cold
water-- maybe that's wool and chewing gum. Suede and vomit?
Leather and... yeah, that was it. --But it's not like I bled
on her on purpose. I was paralyzed. I wasn't doing _anything_
on purpose at that point. Besides, I can't figure out how she
managed to get my blood on her blouse; I didn't find any
bloodstains on _my_ clothes...

I managed to mark up my trusty Redskins jersey tonight.
I won't be surprised if I find a few bloodstains on it, after
what we went through.

Scully dressed sensibly enough in sweats and flannels,
looking for all the world like a freshman getting ready to move
into the dorms for the first time. Except for the expression
on her face. Set and locked and "a whiter shade of pale", like
the Procul Harem song. That particular shade of white that makes
her freckles visible at a hundred yards. By now I should have
learned that when she gets that look about her, it's time to
run for cover. I never learn.

Mom was in full "You kids have fun" denial mode tonight,
and for once I was grateful for her ability to be totally oblivious.
Scully tried to be pleasant, but she sounded like she was talking
around a brick. Soon enough Mrs. Bascombe from next door came to
pick up Mom, and we began our decent into Dante's _Inferno_...
and never mind whether the guy was a pedophile or not.

Down the stairs and into the basement, the stalagmites
of junk rising up like spires of memory. The tennis racket that
Dad never got around to restringing. Great-Aunt Maddy's dresser,
which never seems to fit anywhere. A science fair trophy from
eighth grade. Actually, just about everything from 1973 onward
was archived down there. Mom wasn't really present for a lot of
those years. I always thought she must be saving everything so
that she could catch up on it later, when she finally stepped back
into herself. When she did wake up, the summer before I left for
Oxford, she only looked at these things long enough to box them
up and take them with her when she moved out and served Dad with
the divorce papers.

We started excavating, and Scully still maintained
a stony (make that alabaster) silence, so I tried to reassure
her that this little detention isn't going to change anything.

As it turned out, that was just what she was afraid of.

She wants me to "talk to somebody". A therapist. A shrink.
Whatever. Actually, she INSISTS that I talk to somebody. "I'm not
backing down on this, Mulder," as though she could just drive me
into it... which eventually I suppose she did.

I agreed to talk to someone. It might even have sounded
sincere. Well, I meant it at the _time_...

She was shouting at me, fists clenched, her entire body bowed
like a parenthesis-- she was standing on her toes, just aiming all
that hurt at me. Right then I would have done just about anything...
frontal lobotomy? Sure! Here, Scully, have a screwdriver, you can
perform the procedure yourself.

At one point I did say something a lot like that. "What am I
supposed to do? Go to a psychologist with my hat in my hand and say,
`Gee, mister, I think my sister may have been abducted by aliens;
could you cure me, please?' I won't have to worry about being suspended
for a month-- I'll be in an institution for the next year or two. You
can prescribe the Thorazine! Is that what you want?"

And then she really tore into me. "I want my partner back! I
want to know that when you tell me you're going to go home to sleep,
you'll do that! I want to know that when you take two white tablets
that're supposed to be sleeping pills, that you haven't switched them
with aspirin and then waited until I leave to run out the door and
release a dangerous criminal from federal custody and put an entire
city, not to mention one very little girl, in danger! THAT'S what I
want! That's what I want, Mulder. I want to know that you're leveling
with me. And right now, I just don't think that's happening."

If there's a good way to answer to that, I haven't thought
of it yet.

I know I screwed up. I know I acted without thinking things
through. I know that I was in the wrong. I know that my mistakes put
innocent people in jeopardy. I know that if Roche had pulled the
trigger, I would have been just as guilty of Caitlin's murder as
him.

I was wrong. But...

Rewind to four days ago, knowing what I know now, and
I don't know if I could change any of it. The idea of waiting
through interminable _procedures_ to find out if Roche was
lying-- even now, just the thought of that makes me feel out
of balance, thrown off. Out of control. Because if he was
mainlining my dreams, maybe he'd sense the trap coming before
it could be set. Because if I went through official channels,
I'd have to keep explaining why this was so important over and
over again until every bureaucrat in Washington was familiar
with my sister's abduction. Because if I told anyone what I
was planning... and it turned out Roche was telling the truth...

If Roche had taken one look around the house in West
Tisbury, clucked at me and said, "That wasn't very nice. You're
trying to trick me. This isn't the right place...."

If he'd taken me to the house in Chilmark, and told me
how he took her-- if he'd led me to her shallow grave...

I suppose it was always in the back of my mind. If it
was him. If it was him, I'll kill him.

Dismissal without hope of reinstatement, criminal neglect
of duty, criminal misconduct and murder one.

Bring it on.

Just before he died, Roche pulled the last cloth heart
out of his pocket. "One left," he said, breath coming fast.
"How sure are you it's not your sister?"

I'm not...

But then his finger tensed on the trigger and-- so
did mine. I can't understand it; why? Why shoot Caitlin?
Shooting her wouldn't have satisfied his compulsions; he
needed to strangle them for his release. Unless he'd really
gotten the taste for sadism... my god, that must be it. I
said it before: prison's only refined his taste for pain.
He knew he'd never get a chance to go through his ritual with
Caitlin. So he used her to strike at me. I let him down the
night before. He thought he'd take me back to the abduction
site and convince me that he'd killed Sam. He thought he'd get
to watch me suffer. I let him down, so John decided to get
his fix another way. One dead little girl was much the same
as any other, as far as he was concerned.

Until now I wasn't sure. I wasn't convinced that he
would have shot her. I killed him because I couldn't take
the chance. But I didn't think he'd do it.

He would have done it. Like he said: "I can't wait
to see the look on your face."

I don't think I'm going to get any sleep tonight.

Normally, if my thoughts veered in this direction, I'd
turn on the television and let the white noise distract me just
enough to pry my brain out of the danger zone and on to other
things. Watch the Sci-Fi Channel. Try to find the chinks in
Scully's latest scientific explanation. Speculate on the case
du jour. Try to construct a theory Scully wouldn't be able to
poke holes in. Sometimes I just think about her. Imagine sitting
in the office and hearing her type. Driving some dark highway
knowing she's in the passenger seat. I think about the sound
her heels make on the marble floor of the Hoover building, or
that incredulous sidelong look she gives me when she realizes
the unbelievable theories that we're working on might just be
right after all. Normally, that's enough to move my thoughts
out of any vicious circle.

This fight, tonight... I know she was right. I made
mistakes, and I'll continue to make the same mistakes. I
told her I'd try to find a therapist.

"After all, Mulder," she said as we were ordering
pizza, once things settled down, "I can always talk to you
about work, and I can talk to my mother or some friends
about everything else. You've cut yourself off from anyone
you could talk to."

"I talk to you."

"Sometimes."

"When do I not talk to you?" I tried not to sound
accusing. There've been plenty of times that Scully has
refused to talk to _me_.

"Sometimes you don't. Like this time." She was paying
an awful lot of attention to washing her hands and scrubbing
her fingernails. "Besides, you can't talk to me about me."

"Are you encouraging me to talk about you behind your
back?" I was trying to bait her, but I couldn't get the tone
right.

"You can always see Larry Collins for that," she shot
back, with a knowing look. So she's on to me. Shit.

No, I don't talk to her about her. Things would go
downhill pretty fast if I did. "You know, Scully, you seem
to still have a lot of Catholic-imposed repression that
you're not working through. Don't you think it's about time
you quit sublimating and tried to connect your inner state
of mind to your environment, rather than submerging yourself
constantly in your work?" If Scully ever went into therapy,
I'd probably be out of a partner in two sessions. Any shrink
worth his diploma would convince her that it's unhealthy to
derive _all_ your satisfaction in life from your occupation.
Then he'd convince her to vacation with him in the Bahamas,
and I'd be left with a letter of resignation while my brilliant
partner started her new life as Mrs. Dr. Larry Collins.

Now I'm just venting frustration. I had to stop myself
from fighting back tonight. It wasn't as tough as it might have
been. Scully was in the right, for one thing. And we were in
the midst of that basement full of my past... it wasn't hard
to remember other fights like this one. Where I am at fault
and without defense and nothing I say will make any difference.

I told her I would try to find a therapist. I _will_
try to find a therapist. I don't intend to try very hard.
If I find a therapist, I may book a session. Or not. I know
Scully's right. But I also know some things that she doesn't.
"God forbid you should ever be normal," she told me sarcastically.
But I don't view that sarcastically at all. I know there's
such a thing as being too normal. I know that normal consists
of plunking down to watch _Friends_ and _ER_ every week. Normal
means having "interests and acquaintances outside the workplace".
It means trusting people until they give you reason to do
otherwise, and believing what you read in the newspaper.
Normal means presenting a cheerful facade that looks like
a family from the outside.

Any shrink worth his diploma would look at the PTSD
delayed-onset diagnosis that Verber gave me and prepare a
few prescriptions and book me for once a week sessions until
I got over this crazy fixation on a trauma that occurred
over twenty years ago.

They'd cure me of myself.

Any living creature fights against the prospect
of its own destruction.

It's late and I'm tired and my thoughts are turning
toward dark avenues; I could be reacting on old instincts,
running on emotion and compulsion. I may change my mind....

A month is a decent length of time. I could try to
change things myself. Try to recognize when actions borne
of compulsion are helpful-- "trusting my instincts"-- and
when they're likely to get someone hurt.

The trouble is that damn it, I can rationalize
anything when I have to. Just like I'm doing now.

I could run this vicious circle forever.

Scully had me bring the prescription bottle with
me tonight. On the way back from Mom's she stopped at a
pharmacy and got it refilled. I promised her that I'd take
one of those temazepam pills every night for the next
week, to get my circadian patterns straightened out.
I wasn't going to start tonight, but... maybe half of
one. I need to sleep tonight. There's a pill cutter around
here somewhere. Half a pill. All right, that's one choice
made. I'll take the temazepam tonight.

Decisions. All right. Step one. I will look for a
therapist who won't have me committed the first time I
step through the door. And then I'll decide what to do
next.

In the meantime, I need to use this month to
practice pretending to be normal. Both Scully and the
A.D. are going to be watching when I get back. With
some work and a little luck... but I'm not likely to
get any luck, am I? No. So with a LOT of work, maybe
I can find a way to change. I've managed to change
some things. Eventually I got it into my head that
Scully worries more when I split up and don't call
her. I call her now. Usually. Maybe not always, but
usually. I can work on that this month. Catch up on
some reading, do some journal-writing, work a few
things out.

Constructive goals and realistic expectations.
The patient is getting better already.

Tuesday 23 November

Now it's really Tuesday. 8 pm Tuesday evening.
Things seem a lot clearer and a whole lot brighter now
than they did this morning.

Scully called me this morning and offered to
let me back into the office today to return the files
I had here, and to collect whatever I want to bring
home from my desk. She told me to bring the last cloth
heart, and we'd have Forensics check it out.

So I made the morning commute a little late,
gave Scully the heart and a lame joke ("Too bad it's
not Valentine's Day"). She left the keys with me in
the basement and went to work.

She let me stay all day. I put all my files
from home into the cabinets, made out a rudimentary
key to my filing style (which, as Scully is always
pointing out, makes no sense to anyone but me), and
collected a lot of stuff that probably shouldn't have
been in the office in the first place and put it in
my briefcase. I forgot I _had_ a copy of _Fritz the
Cat_. A classic. The first full-length X-rated cartoon.
Scully really has no idea of the depths of my depravity.

I took Roche's file back to the office with the
others. Looked it over one last time and put it away. I
also took my copy of _Alice In Wonderland and Through the
Looking Glass_. Not the Annotated version-- the old cloth-
bound book I had when I was a kid. I used to read from that
book to Sam sometimes, when Dad was out of town.

So I read the Alice books today. I kicked back
at my desk and opened the cover of a version that has
no footnotes, no foreword explaining the identity of
the author, no appendices dissecting the "fictional
construction" of his "sublimated neuroses". I just read
the books, turning the pages too quickly to scrutinize
them for indicators or clues.

"Curiouser and curiouser! ... I've often seen a
cat without a grin, but never a grin without a cat...
It was a treacle-well.... Off with his head! ... We
called him tortoise because he taught us... Will you,
won't you, will you, won't you, won't you join the
dance? ... Twas brillig, and the slithy toves did gyre
and gimble in the wabe... Are you animal, vegetable,
or mineral? ... What does it matter where my body happens
to be? My mind goes on working all the same... Life, what
is it but a dream?"

Soon enough I could take my time, look at the
John Tenniel pictures, and relax into the story without
thinking of anything else at all. I took Alice back from
John Lee Roche.

Scully came in after five with the heart. "They
were able to tell that the fabric dye was manufactured
between 1968 and 1974, but beyond that, they couldn't
get anything." She came around the desk and gave me the
evidence bag. "It isn't her, Mulder. And whoever that
little girl is... we'll find her."

I was so tired by then. So tired, and the case
seemed so far away. "How?"

"I don't know," she admitted. "But I know you."

She does. And we will.

"Why don't you go home and get some sleep?"

Suddenly the absurdity of the past week and a
half hit me full force. I've been chasing red lights
that appear to me in dreams. Scully has trouble with
that? And I'm surprised? Even I have to admit that the
entire enterprise has been a shaky proposition from
the start.

Did Roche somehow tune into my dreams? I have
no proof. Only a strong conviction that we haven't even
begun to understand the way the human mind works. It's
a highly subjective, elusive interpretation of the events
of the past few days. Did John Lee Roche get into my head?

I don't know. But whatever the answer may be, it's
over now.

The other question... the doubt that's still
prodding me weakly in the ribs... Did Roche take my sister?

I believe the answer is No. That has to be enough.
It's over.

There is one thing about this entire ordeal that
I've kept to myself. One moment I couldn't put on the
report. Someday, when all this is far behind us, I'll
tell Scully.

After I'd taken him to the house in West Tisbury
and proved he was lying, I took Roche to the hotel, cuffed
him to the bed, took a seat and waited. I fell asleep.

And I heard her voice. Samantha. She was calling
my name. Over and over. I looked around the hotel room
and realized that this time, I could move. This time I
could change it. This time I could save her.

That red will-o-the-wisp light appeared on the wall
and I followed, listening to my sister's voice. She seemed
so close.

In the parking lot was Roche's white El Camino. Sam
was inside. She saw me; she pounded on the window and called
for help. "Fox, help me! Fox, unlock me, let me out, Fox--"

And I did. I fumbled my keys out and found the
right one and unlocked the door and Samantha spilled out,
alive and well and whole, into my arms. And I lifted her
up and carried her away from there. She was safe. Everything
was all right. I held her up and looked into her face and
she smiled at me and everything was all right. Samantha
was right there in my arms and everything was all right.

Then I saw the red light spell a word on the pavement.

"BYE"

And then I woke up.

But whether he knew it or not, John Lee Roche gave
me one moment when I truly believed that I had my sister
back. That one moment in my dream was more vivid, more
important... more _real_ to me than scores of normal days
that have come and gone. One moment of joy.

In dreams, in reality, in my own mind-- the only
arena that matters, in the end-- I took Samantha back from
John Lee Roche.

Someday, I'll find her again and it won't be a trick,
a plot, a clone, a mistake. Someday I'll find my sister and
it won't be a dream.

I'll find her. Someday.

end part 13

From summer@interlabs.bradley.edu Wed Jan 29 12:06:51 1997

Open Hearts
An X-Files Thing
By Vickie Moseley
In Tandem with Summer

Dana Scully's Personal Log

Part Fourteen

Monday, November 22

I HATE SPIDERS!

It's one of those little quirks that never wanted to let Mulder know.
I mean, I can see him, in one of his shithead moods, searching
through the files for some case of ghostly spiders or spiders with
psychic abilities or--whatever, and then gleefully staring holes
through me during the entire case, waiting for me to break into a
screaming fit. I did not want him to be equipped with that piece of
information.

Too late now. I don't think he bought that story about the spiders
in my high school. I mean, he didn't use it against me immediately,
but I know he will. It's just a matter of time.

But for now, I have this really itchy feeling on the back of my neck
that I am sure comes from being in contact with spider silk and it
will NOT GO AWAY.

Just like the sort of left over tired/angry/frustrated feeling that I
have after the fight we just tore through.

But it's settled. At least for tonight. I should be happy. I won, on
all counts. Not exactly a knock out. More like a technical, because
I had the poor guy on the ropes and he couldn't get any punches at
me. Just a lot of defensive moves. Nothing that touched me. But,
hey, I'm never above kicking a guy when I have him on the ropes,
now am I?

Shit.

It was for his own damned good. I know that, he knows that, hell,
Kiss My Ass Skinner knows that.

It's for his own good.

So why do I feel like I just hurt my best friend's feelings and I
really need to apologize to him?

We got to his mom's after that long drive which alternated between
talk of paperwork (him) and total silence (me), and I was still so
wound up from my little session with the Assistant Director that I
really didn't mind having something constructive to do. Building a
house, roofing a garage, brain surgery, anything to keep my mind
off the events of the last week. I figured we'd dig in, get a good
portion of it out of the way and then we'd take a break and I'd be
ready to talk rationally to Mulder about getting the help he needs to
get over this one.

No such luck. I NEVER have that kind of luck. I have to quit
looking for it; it ain't gonna happen..

Right off the bat, the door hadn't even closed behind his mother's
back, and he starts in on me. Well, not really me, on cases. What
cases he intends to dig into the minute he can get back in the office.

This is not the musing of someone who is seeking to get better. This
is the ranting of an addict. And at that moment, I was not in my
most compassionate frame of mind.

It was almost funny, really. We were schlepping paint cans and
swinging dust mops and brooms and ducking spiders and screaming
at the tops of our lungs. Would have made a great sitcom. My
life as a horror movie/sitcom. Yeah, I love it.

I made it clear that there would be no discussion of future work,
that we were going to talk about the here and now. What he was
going to do NOW.

"I'm gonna stack these boxes over in that corner." Ooooh, I
KNEW I was in for it then. He knew exactly what I meant and he
wasn't going to play nicely. He wanted to fight about it and he
was pushing all the right buttons.

Why is it when someone knows you well enough to just glance at
you and know that you're hurting, they also have the ability to rip
your heart out with one simple flippant quip? Maybe that's the real
crux of friendship--the power to destroy that we keep under
control.

Not that Mulder was going to destroy me tonight. No, tonight I
had the upper hand all the way. I was the destroyer tonight. Dana
the Terminator.

I told him that I didn't want him to just go to the Bureau shrink on
this one. I know what he does. He and Larry Collins sit there and
bullshit each other for a half an hour, probably with Mulder telling
Larry all kinds of neat things like the color of my blouses and that
I prefer to wear no stockings on hot days--he thinks I don't know
these things, but I do and one day I will seek my revenge. So after
the time has drawn out long enough to CURE Ted Bundy, I drop
by to see if he's ever coming back down to the basement to actually
WORK for a while and it's over, because Larry is falling all over
himself drooling at me and lets Mulder off with 'I'm glad we had
this chance to talk, let me know if you need to talk again'. Yeah,
right, when hell freezes over.

"I've fired in the line of duty before, I can handle it." You betcha,
if that was all that was entailed here, I would be the first to agree.
But this wasn't about shooting Roche. That was a minor footnote
to this whole ordeal. Hardly worth mentioning.

This wasn't about Roche. He just got to play center stage in this
little tragedy. Sort of like the three witches who always steal the
show in productions of MacBeth. No, the real story was
elsewhere. The real drama was Mulder and his reactions to these
cases.

It's usually not this bad. Most times, we get these cases, he
comes up with some totally outlandish theory that is only faintly
connected with a solid fact, I go in, rip that one to shreds, come up
with some of my own that he finds totally unacceptable, we tug at it
like two puppies and a piece of old bath towel between us and after
some brilliant insights from my partner and a lot of hard work from
both of us, we come up with the solution. Ta Da. It was there all
along, right in front of our noses, but if we didn't go through the
process, we would have never seen it.

It's exhausting, often depressing--an occupational hazard when
working with violent crimes as a rule. In the end, we're a little
battered, but not really the worse for wear. We kick back on the
weekend, rent some movies, drink some exotic beer that Mulder
always seems to find that gives me a tremendous headache in the
morning, and all's right with the world.

He doesn't run off on me. He doesn't switch pills on me. He
doesn't NEED pills to begin with. And he doesn't put himself and
others at great physical danger for the sole purpose of proving
something he should have known all along.

He doesn't risk everything over some damned dream. No matter
how scary the cases are, no matter how horrifying the crimes,
Mulder is a cautious person. He takes risks, true, but never
with other people. Never with me--and that pisses the hell out
of me sometimes, because that's an occupational hazard too--but
never never never with others and never never never with a little
girl.

He didn't mean to do that. I know that. But even if he had known
how it would have ended, I can't say with certainty that it would
have stopped him from doing everything exactly the same way.

Oh, he might be able to kid himself with hindsight. If I'd done this
differently, if I'd done that differently. Yeah, been there, done that,
flunked the test and moved on. But that requires rational thought
processes, and that was the one element that my partner was sorely
lacking in the past couple of days. He was running on pure instinct
and emotion. He was so high on the two combined that it's no
wonder his body refused to sleep.

The fight wasn't over by a long shot. I still had all my ammunition
and he was shooting blanks.

I started rattling off the obvious: his lack of sleep, his inability to
deal with his emotions in any reasonable manner, the fact that all of
this seemed to be going back to his sister.

I didn't really want to do this. I didn't really want to have a fight
over this. I wanted to sit down over a pizza and some drinks, and
simply point out that I think he needs some help here. That this is
just too much for one person, however strong and able to deal with
problems, to handle. That it doesn't mean I think less of him or
that I feel he's lost it forever and will never be fit to return to the
field--far from it. But I didn't get that chance. He wouldn't let me
have that chance. He threw up his damned defense mechanisms,
the ones that he's learned so well and perfected against the likes of
Skinner and Patterson and Blevins and Bill Mulder. And he used
them against me. That hurt.

He threw back in my face the fact that I never went to get help
when I've had problems. What the bastard didn't know, and what I
sure wasn't going to tell him, was that I *have* gotten help. And
maybe I should have told him right then, but damn it, I still don't
want him to know. He would never use it against me, I know that.
But he would hesitate sometimes, he would push me back behind
him sometimes, he would decide not to take a case because of how
it might affect me--I couldn't stand for that. That's everything
I despise and more. I'd end up hating him for that, and I never
want to do that. I never want to lose what we have that
way--because he can't trust me to be there when he needs me.

I reminded him that Roche could have found out anything he
wanted to know about him, or even us for that matter, the same
way Max Fenig did--through the Internet. I could see right then
that I was starting to draw blood by the way he rattled off all the
ways he had to ensure that wasn't the case. He even went so far as
to invoke the Lone Gunmen--I had really cut deeply for him to dig
that far down in the barrel.. That's what he does on cases when he's
desparate to convince me: he starts hammering me with all sorts of
real and imagined 'evidence' and 'data' to support his claims. Little
Band-Aids of his own construction to stop the flow of blood. But
you know what? I learned very early in medical school that
sometimes the only way to help someone is to draw blood. You
can't perform surgery (at least not yet) without making that first
incision. So, even though I knew he was bleeding, I didn't stop.
I couldn't. I had to get to the tumor, get it out and close up
the wound. Then and only then could I back off.

We yelled back and forth. Somewhere in there I backed into a
spider's web and almost let slip that I have an unnatural dread of
the little beasties, but I covered, marginally. When he started
handing me cleaning equipment and giving me grief, I lost it.

I remember so clearly when Charlie used to do that. We'd all be
doing a job, cleaning the garage or the backyard after the dog got
into the garbage cans or something. Charlie would be goofing off,
not really working, just 'supervising' and I'd get mad and call him
on it. And he'd start handing me stuff--the shovel, the trash bags,
the rakes, anything handy, just piling the shit on me to get me to
cry. Didn't work then, didn't work tonight, either.

I snapped. I told him I wanted my partner back. I told him I
wanted my partner who I could rely on, who I could trust to leave
alone, who didn't put innocent lives, himself, little Caitlin, in
danger.

Scalpel slipped a little there, I could tell. That cut was a little
too deep. I almost had a bleeder I couldn't handle.

He deflated. Like a balloon that has a slow leak. It hurt a lot
to watch. I didn't want to do that to him. But he left me no
choice.

He's afraid. He's afraid that if he goes to someone, someone who
doesn't, couldn't understand. . . they would see problems much
deeper than what actually exists. He would be trapped into
revealing some of the things that we both know are real, but seem
so very very unreal and imagined to the rest of the world. And that
nice, caring psychologist, whoever they might be, would calmly
pick up the phone and have my partner led away and drugged. He
even suggested, in a voice that could cut glass, that *I* could
prescribe the Thorazine. My mind slipped back to Kevin Kryder's
father. The second time we went to see him, when we, *I* really
needed to talk to him and find out everything he knew. But it was
too late. They had come and gone. They had taken that man's
mind, and there was nothing either of us, Mulder or I, could do to
give it back to him. That was what Mulder fears the most. That
someday, they'll steal his mind.

I was hurting so damned bad by this point, both from what he was
saying and from the images my mind wouldn't quit supplying, but I
had to fix things. I assured him that I didn't want that, I would
never accept that. I just want him to get some help with this.
Overall, as much as I worry, Mulder is a pretty tough cookie. He
gets banged and bumped and he'd definitely be in the 'scratch and
dent' aisle of the appliance store, but he still gets by. He manages
to get by better than I do, I think. He's had more practice. I just
want him to get a little help right now. Just a tune-up, maybe.
Change the spark plugs, rotate the tires. I'm not ready to trade him
in on a new model.

It finally came to a consensus of sorts. He wasn't happy. As a
matter of fact, I think, given any other circumstances, things would
have gotten completely out of control. But he held back. It took
tremendous effort of his part, but I think he finally realized that
there might be a grain of truth in what I was saying. He agreed to
look for a therapist. He respects me enough to at least make the
effort, if not for himself, then because I asked it of him.

Sometimes. . . sometimes I think he needs me, not for who I am,
but for what I represent--this icon he's made, St. Scully,
who will always be there no matter what, who will catch him
whenever he falls-- or when he jumps.

But it's not true. I think Mulder may be the only person
in my life who _does_ need me for who I am, and for no
other reason.

To my family, all my life, I've always been "Dana, honey",
the honor student, the bright baby girl. To my friends
I was "DAYna", DAYna, what are you still doing at the lab,
DAYna, you're too short to wear your hair like that, DAYna,
that guy was cute, why didn't you ask him out? Teachers
and instructors were an endless succession of "Miss Scully";
Scully, is that Irish? Ah, I thought so. Well, this is a
very impressive track record, Miss Scully, I'm sure you'll
have no trouble with our curriculum. Then I started acquiring
titles, and I wore each label with pride. Doctor. Trainee.
Agent.

None of that mattered when I walked into that basement
office. At first I thought he called me "Scully" to avoid
according me any kind of credit, even by acknowledging that
I'm of Agent status, same as him. But it went beyond that.
He never asked me all the bland getting-to-know-you questions:
where're you from, brothers and sisters, colleges, why'd
you join the Bureau. Only weeks later, when it came up
in conversation on a stakeout, did we talk about something
as basic as our home towns.

He never spoke the words, but he might as well have said
it to me that first day: "I don't care who you are, or who
you think you are. Tell me what you really think-- or get
out of my way."

So I told him what I really thought. I worked harder
than I'd ever worked before in my life. And found that for
the first time, I was being... judged... not by my titles,
my name, my education, my choice of shoes-- but by thought
and action alone. My identity, to him, began and ended with
the work I did.

Where I had always strived for confidence, suddenly
I _was_ confident. Where I had always hoped to be strong,
now I _was_ strong. Because I behaved with strength and
confidence, it became part of who I am. This new identity
has nothing to do with my background, my family, my
schooling-- only with who those experiences have made
me. Scully.

In a way, I suppose I'm glad he rarely calls me by my first
name. The one thing Mulder has always demanded from me is
honesty. The name-- my last name-- asks for honesty within
the bounds of work. The few times he's called me Dana, there
was just as much of that need for truth, and it didn't end
at the office. And I'm not sure I can be that honest. Not
yet. Maybe someday. But not now.

Sometimes I think he needs me so much that I could
never walk away. But it's not true. Because if I were as
honest with myself as he expects me to be with him, I'd
admit that I need him, too. I need to be Scully. He's the
only one who ever saw that in me. If I walked away, I'd
have to leave them both behind: Mulder and Scully. And I'd
go back to "Dana, honey", "DAYna", Miss Scully, Dr. Scully,
Agent Scully... and I'd never be myself again. I'll never
leave. I'll never leave him. I don't want to. I can't.

. . .Right now, I want him to get some sleep. If just so I can.

He agreed to that. He'll get the temazepam refilled tomorrow. He
promised to take them this week, just to get his sleep cycle back in
order. And he'll seek some help. If it gets too close, if it starts
looking like it's not working out, I'll be there to back him up when
he quits going. I trust him enough to know when he's being helped
and when's it's just not working.

But more than anything, I think he needs the time. Time to heal.
Time to put it all in perspective. Time to put a little cloth
heart to rest.

I hope. . . I hope that someday, we can bring that little heart home.
That we can find that little girl and let a family start to grieve
their loss and put an end to their suffering.

Someday, I hope Mulder's hurt will end, too. Sometimes, it's all I
hope for.

Tuesday, November 23

I let the Prisoner of Zelda in the office today. If it pisses Skinner
off, so what? I'll tell him Mulder needed the names of some shrinks
that he might talk to. Once in the basement, I left him alone. He
needs time there, sometimes. It's a little sanctuary for him. My
partner is a very religious man--he just hasn't figured out the
religion, yet.

Later, I came back to the office to let him know that Forensics
couldn't come up with anything useful on the analysis of the fabric
of the last cloth heart. He was sitting there, in the almost dark,
when I brought it back to him, still in its evidence bag.

He smiled at me. It was a 'God, Scully this hurts so much, but I'll
get by, I know it' smile. Even so, it was good to see. Another
dent--this one a little deeper than some before, but everything
still works. Mom would take one look at him and say 'You can't
keep a good man down'. Yeah, I've noticed.

And then I got a little bonus for all the hell I've been put through
with him over this. I told him he should go home and get some
sleep. Pretty ironic, considering all the trouble he thinks sleep has
caused us. Plus the fact that he slept until 11 this morning, thanks
to an all-night drug store we found when we finally got back to
town.

He tilted back his head and laughed. It was good to hear. I don't
hear it nearly often enough to suit me. But when it comes, it's like
a cool shower on a hot summer day.

Then he reached over and gave me a hug. He's not mad at me. He
knows I'm only looking out for his back, like I'm supposed to do.
I'm glad he sees this for what it really is.

I left him alone, to put the heart away, gather up his stuff--no files,
of course, just some of the non-existent videos from the drawer that
has nothing in it.

I wasn't surprised to see that he didn't put the heart into the
cabinet with the case file. This one came too close for that.
He put it into his desk drawer. I told him that I knew we would
find that last little girl. And I do. I know we'll find her.
I know my partner. We'll find her.

One day, we'll put that little heart away for good.

The End.