A Winter's Tale, Part 2
Dec. 23rd, 2007 10:51 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
anjouficTitle: A Winter's Tale 2/21
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
comice aka Anjou (Anjou@rocketmail.com)
Posting Date: December 2007/January 2008
Rating: R for language and sexuality; M for Mature readers
Classification: Mulder/Scully, UST/MSR, AU
Archive: No archival until the story is completed, please. I'll be submitting to Ephemeral and Gossamer myself.
Spoilers: Through Two Fathers/One Son (S6), then AU. In other words, no Arcadia and beyond. Mytharc-y.
Disclaimer: All X-Files personnel belong to 1013 and Fox. All other elements are mine.
Author's Note: Daily posts can be read on my fic journalanjoufic as well as Ephemeral and other XF fic sites. The whole tale will be archived at my website, No Other … (maintained by the generous dtg), when it is completed.
As always, thanks to my sister and editrix, Suzanne, for her support.
Summary: Cast your memory back to the dark days of Season 6, to the period immediately following the confrontation between Mulder and Scully in the Gunmen's Office. It is late winter, dark and cold, the landscape obscured and transformed by snow and ice. One must step carefully, for the very ground can be treacherous. This is a lesson Mulder and Scully have already learned when the pristine snow in Antartica yielded a long-buried secret. But the winter can hold many secrets, and could tell many tales, if it so chose. This is but one.
~*~
When the phone finally rang on Saturday morning, she shot out of bed to answer it after a couple of hours of thin and unsatisfying sleep. It was the service desk at her mechanic's calling to let her know that her car was ready. She just managed to thank them civilly before she hung up, still trembling from the adrenaline surge. On the way back from the mechanic's shop, she called the Gunmen but found that they had nothing new to tell her, although Frohike hastily assured her not to be discouraged. Instead, she steeled her resolve and drove to Alexandria, driving around the block a couple of times to find a parking space. Mulder's car was nowhere to be seen, but that wasn't unusual, or unexpected.
His apartment already had the undisturbed air of a rare books room at the library, although she had a fleeting moment of hope when her key still worked. It had to mean that something yet remained of the partnership that they'd once fought so hard for. The lone fish in the tank watched her balefully as she silently assessed Mulder's few rooms, looking for clues. The small kitchen, with its half a pot of ancient coffee in the cold carafe, empty mug in the sink and ruffled pages of Tuesday's Post on the table opened to the filled out crossword told her nothing, other than the fact that Mulder had finished the puzzle, in ink. She passed into the unexplored territory of Mulder's bedroom, but it was harder for her to tell if anything was missing from it. His closet door had been left flung open, but despite the seeming invitation, his neatly hung suits accused her of treachery as she patted them down, finding nothing. His drawers, both literal and figurative, also refused to yield any secrets.
Before she left, she wandered over to the fish tank and shook a few food flakes onto the surface.
"What do you know?" she demanded of the fish, and watched with grim amusement while its mouth worked soundlessly, as if it indeed had secrets to tell.
She sighed and turned to leave the too-quiet stillness of Mulder's apartment behind her, but found herself lingering on the threshold for one last look around. Her melancholy was deepening, and she tried to reason with herself to keep it at bay, but she was tired of only hearing her own voice in her head with its obnoxiously stifling pragmatism. Something was wrong, and she knew it without being told, without seeing proof. She straightened her shoulders and scanned the room one last time, eyes lingering on Mulder's couch, the site of so many of their late night conversations, trying to picture the both of them there, laughing and happy, only to feel the unwelcome sting of tears. She turned and walked out the door, and tried not to look back.
~*~
She was determined not to worry about what might possibly be occurring, and had convinced herself that she wasn't thinking about Mulder as she mechanically ate a small amount of Thai food taken out from a nearby restaurant. She watched the news, and something mindless and maudlin on Lifetime until she finally found an old noir film on the local PBS channel. Somehow, knowing that it would all end in bloodshed and sadness was soothing. She mused to herself idly as she flossed her teeth after the movie had ended that it was because the shape of the story was proscribed by its narrative form. That was an elegance that would not be accorded to her, still in the middle of her own formless tale. She smoothed lotion on her hands and feet and gave one last call to the Gunmen before she turned in for the night. As she expected, there was no news to be had, but the stifled hope lay thick in her chest. It didn't matter how rigidly guarded against such a possibility she held herself, because she felt it nonetheless.
She slid her feet between the cool sheets and picked up the copy of Possession that she'd been trying to read in fits and starts for years now. It was Mulder's, of course. A mystery set at Oxford, full of epic-length poetry –- how could it not be Mulder's? He'd been effusive in his praise of it for weeks, reading passages of it to her on planes as they traveled here and there. He'd even quoted bits and pieces of it from memory as they drove around those endless months of mind-numbing 'shit details' for Kersh, years later. He'd given her his copy long ago, and she'd always meant to read it. He wanted her to love it as he did, and had taken to tucking it into her suitcase when he'd come over to harass her while she was getting ready for their inevitable trips out of town. Fondling the worn spine of the large paperback now, she wasn't too surprised to feel her eyes filling up with tears. Mulder had been her friend, hadn't he -- the best friend she'd ever had.
The ringing phone startled her so much that she gasped and fumbled for it, already flipping the covers off and half-standing, sure that the Gunmen had found something after all. The sound of Mulder's monotone on the other end of the line pinned her to the ground and she stopped all forward motion, stunned into silence, as he said her name worriedly.
"You busy, Scully?" he asked again, but there was a tension in his tone that warned her, and she turned the words over in her mind, hearing them echo for a moment.
"Just getting ready for bed, Mulder," she answered automatically, and then went cold with sweat remembering weeks of coaching in various rental cars, as Mulder had worked out the rudiments of the codes with her. Her heart, which had stopped the instant that she heard his voice on the phone, began to pound wildly at the implications of his seemingly casual statement. She'd answered him by rote, but that question … this was as big as she had feared all along. "What're you doing?" She remembered to add after long seconds of mental flailing.
"Watching the Knicks game," he said casually, but that edge was still in his voice, "I've got some old tapes that are awesome, and sometimes I can't resist taking them out for a spin."
Oh God. Her mouth went spitless with panic as he said the words that she'd feared. She sat down hard on the edge of the bed from where she'd been hovering and tried to choke out her next phrase, but it got caught.
Mulder sounded alarmed as he said her name.
"Sorry, Mulder," she apologized, coughing and then taking drink of water, improvising. "I was taking my pill and I tried to talk at the same time."
Now it was Mulder who sounded a little choked, but he went back to the script and asked her what her plans were for Sunday. Behind his question, she could plainly hear the plea: would she come to him?
"I've got brunch with Mom after Mass tomorrow and then I'm planning to go to the mall and return some things." She answered him using the code, and imagined that she could feel some of the tension leeching from him at the other end of the line. "Don't tell me there's a flukeman that needs our attention on my day off," she joked lamely, trying to keep the conversation light.
He laughed, and Scully felt herself relaxing, even as her fingers were still gripping the phone. "Aw, Scully," he teased, "don't lie to me. 'Returning some things' is the same as buying new stuff and even poor ol' Flukie would be no competition for a really good sale, am I right?"
"I'm just returning things," she insisted, "that shoe sale at Nordstrom's has nothing to do with it, really."
Mulder chuckled, but she could still sense the edge behind the banter, and she fought to regulate her breathing as she waited for him to reply.
"Scully," he answered her, "I really worry about your credit card debt."
Her scalp began to sweat. Whatever he'd done, it was huge.
"I suppose that means you don't want to go see The Return of the Swamp Thing at the revival house, then?"
"Do I ever, Mulder?" she asked him, hoping that the tremble in her voice wasn't as evident to those who might be listening as it was to her.
"Oh, well, Scully," Mulder said, "Can't blame a guy for trying. Get some sleep, partner."
The phone went dead in her hands and she just sat there and stared at it, trembling. Sleep was out of the question, but she laid down under the covers and turned the TV back on, hoping that the noise would drown out the sound of her tears as she cried a short, sharp burst of relief and terror into her pillow, waiting for it to be tomorrow.
~*~
The winter day was clear and bright. She found herself awake early, wandering around her apartment marking time until she could go to Mass. She knew that she was memorizing things, not just the mementos of her daily life for these past few years, but the way the light filled the space. Despite everything that had happened here, this apartment had been hers alone. She wondered if she would ever see it again. It was a strange and discomfiting thought, and one that she wasn't used to consciously contemplating, despite the fact that her job put her life on the line often enough. Hell, just a year before she'd been sure that she'd never return to these rooms from her hospital stay when the cancer was at its worst. Maybe she'd been too sick to feel nostalgic then, but she was now as she went from room to room looking at her possessions with a dispassionate eye. If she never came back, what would her apartment say about her to a stranger? Neat, clean, methodical, precise, feminine but not frilly – this had been the home she'd made for herself. Was she really going to leave it now?
Hand on the doorknob, she stood for a minute with head bowed and thought hard about what she was contemplating doing. Staring down at her feet, she thought about Melissa's blood, dried somewhere under the floorboards, of what was owed for what had been taken. She picked up the heavy Nordstrom's bag from the floor and slung her purse over her shoulder. Her overcoat was already on, the keys in her pocket. There was no choice.
The rest of the morning passed as if in a dream, complete with hyperreal colors and imagery. She wasn't sure that she had heard any of the Mass at all, as she was too consumed with praying for her family, for strength, for Mulder, for forgiveness for what she might yet do and for the fortitude to do what might be necessary. The candles seemed brighter, the songs more sweetly sung, all of it sharpened into significance as she got herself ready to do battle with evil.
At an early brunch with her mother, she compelled herself to stay in the present and to enjoy being there, and not to think about how it might be the last time they saw each other. It was hard to force more than a little food around the lump in her throat, but she thought of the long road ahead and tried to get something into her stomach. When she said goodbye to her mother, she made sure to hug her tightly, but not too tightly, and to tell her that she loved her. Her mother had been surprised by the sentiment, but not overly so. It was the kind of thing that Dana'd used to say more often, although she had probably been more likely to say it to her father than to her mother. Her mother told her that she loved her, kissed her with fondness and some exasperation, urged her to be careful at work, and then gotten into her car and driven away.
Scully numbly drove to the nearby mall as planned, not bothering to hide her route for anyone who might be following her. She parked in the structure at the opposite end of the mall from the Nordstrom's, entering the complex via The Gap. She bought a couple of utilitarian items – a ubiquitous white button down and a soft, long-sleeved t-shirt, and returned a sweatshirt from her bag of tricks. She took both bags with her into the bookstore and perused the new releases. On the rack set aside for the staff favorites someone named Rose had picked Possession as her choice and Scully smiled. Mulder's copy lay on the bottom of her Nordstrom's bag. She bought a couple of other books and went into Victoria's Secret for some new underwear, then browsed Williams Sonoma for a good long time, trying to bore any follower into utter submission. She bought nothing in the store but amused herself by trying to stock her perfect kitchen -- never mind that her perfect kitchen would come complete with chef to prepare the meals for her, or that she'd have to win the lottery to stock it with items from Williams Sonoma.
She wandered across the mall to the food court and bought a cup of tea and settled down at the table with a copy of the latest Vanity Fair from the bookstore. She opened it, but spent as much time people watching as she did pretending to read the magazine. If she was being tailed, she was having a hard time spotting it. She hoped that they were waiting for her where she'd parked her car.
Mulder had chosen this mall because security didn't actually tow the cars until at least a week after they'd been 'abandoned'. One test car that he or the Gunmen had ditched lingered almost two weeks before it was towed. She'd never bothered to ask where they got the cars from, as she was afraid that she wouldn't be pleased with the answer.
Nordstrom's beckoned from the other end of the mall and she made her way toward it, stopping in the Ann Taylor to return a sweater set that Tara had sent for her birthday. It was flowered and brightly colored beside, and although Scully loved Tara, she positively loathed it. On the way to register, she saw a simple sweater set in a warm blue that she was surprised to find herself drawn to. It was cashmere, and the amount it cost was staggering, but the exchange brought the price down to a manageable level. She didn't hesitate to buy it, wanting to indulge herself a bit.
In a similar vein, she bought herself two pairs of shoes at Nordstrom's. One was a practical work pump, chunky yet chic. The other was more of a utility boot, low-heeled and sturdy. The boots looked warm, and fearing that she might need them in the near future, she snapped them up. She idled at the perfume and jewelry counters, watching out of the corner of her eye for any observer before she proceeded up to the next floor. The evening clothes at Nordstrom's were always beautiful, and she spent some time going through the racks before going to the more practical side of the floor where the upscale work clothes were. She tried on a couple of suits, and put one on hold, thoughtfully fingering the handsome jacket while the saleswoman wrote up her information. When the transaction was concluded, she thanked the saleswoman, walked toward the elevator bank and slipped into the nearby women's lounge.
Less than ten minutes later, a bespectacled blonde woman with a ponytail came out of the bathroom wearing a long sweater coat and carrying an oversized handbag and a large Crate & Barrel bag. She walked briskly through the casual clothes, stopping to look through two racks, then went to the up escalator. She exited the store into the parking structure on the third floor and walked confidently to a Nissan Altima parked in the middle of a row, not too far from the store entrance. She bent down to adjust her knee-high boots near the driver's side wheel well, and then clicked the trunk open when she straightened up, depositing her shopping bag before getting into the car and driving out of the mall. While the clerk was toting up her unusually high parking fee, she casually put lipstick on, using the driver's side visor mirror to block a full view of her face as she did so. When her change was handed to her, she nodded to the cashier and simply drove out of the garage, heading west away from the mall. She made a series of looping right hand turns for a few miles before she got on the highway and headed south, back toward DC. A few miles outside of the city, she got off the highway and dropped a small padded envelope into a mailbox, then headed back to her car and drove west for several miles. When she was convinced that she wasn't being followed, she finally turned onto the northbound highway and began her journey.
~*~
Part 3
Author:
comice aka Anjou (Anjou@rocketmail.com)Posting Date: December 2007/January 2008
Rating: R for language and sexuality; M for Mature readers
Classification: Mulder/Scully, UST/MSR, AU
Archive: No archival until the story is completed, please. I'll be submitting to Ephemeral and Gossamer myself.
Spoilers: Through Two Fathers/One Son (S6), then AU. In other words, no Arcadia and beyond. Mytharc-y.
Disclaimer: All X-Files personnel belong to 1013 and Fox. All other elements are mine.
Author's Note: Daily posts can be read on my fic journal
anjoufic as well as Ephemeral and other XF fic sites. The whole tale will be archived at my website, No Other … (maintained by the generous dtg), when it is completed.As always, thanks to my sister and editrix, Suzanne, for her support.
Summary: Cast your memory back to the dark days of Season 6, to the period immediately following the confrontation between Mulder and Scully in the Gunmen's Office. It is late winter, dark and cold, the landscape obscured and transformed by snow and ice. One must step carefully, for the very ground can be treacherous. This is a lesson Mulder and Scully have already learned when the pristine snow in Antartica yielded a long-buried secret. But the winter can hold many secrets, and could tell many tales, if it so chose. This is but one.
~*~
When the phone finally rang on Saturday morning, she shot out of bed to answer it after a couple of hours of thin and unsatisfying sleep. It was the service desk at her mechanic's calling to let her know that her car was ready. She just managed to thank them civilly before she hung up, still trembling from the adrenaline surge. On the way back from the mechanic's shop, she called the Gunmen but found that they had nothing new to tell her, although Frohike hastily assured her not to be discouraged. Instead, she steeled her resolve and drove to Alexandria, driving around the block a couple of times to find a parking space. Mulder's car was nowhere to be seen, but that wasn't unusual, or unexpected.
His apartment already had the undisturbed air of a rare books room at the library, although she had a fleeting moment of hope when her key still worked. It had to mean that something yet remained of the partnership that they'd once fought so hard for. The lone fish in the tank watched her balefully as she silently assessed Mulder's few rooms, looking for clues. The small kitchen, with its half a pot of ancient coffee in the cold carafe, empty mug in the sink and ruffled pages of Tuesday's Post on the table opened to the filled out crossword told her nothing, other than the fact that Mulder had finished the puzzle, in ink. She passed into the unexplored territory of Mulder's bedroom, but it was harder for her to tell if anything was missing from it. His closet door had been left flung open, but despite the seeming invitation, his neatly hung suits accused her of treachery as she patted them down, finding nothing. His drawers, both literal and figurative, also refused to yield any secrets.
Before she left, she wandered over to the fish tank and shook a few food flakes onto the surface.
"What do you know?" she demanded of the fish, and watched with grim amusement while its mouth worked soundlessly, as if it indeed had secrets to tell.
She sighed and turned to leave the too-quiet stillness of Mulder's apartment behind her, but found herself lingering on the threshold for one last look around. Her melancholy was deepening, and she tried to reason with herself to keep it at bay, but she was tired of only hearing her own voice in her head with its obnoxiously stifling pragmatism. Something was wrong, and she knew it without being told, without seeing proof. She straightened her shoulders and scanned the room one last time, eyes lingering on Mulder's couch, the site of so many of their late night conversations, trying to picture the both of them there, laughing and happy, only to feel the unwelcome sting of tears. She turned and walked out the door, and tried not to look back.
~*~
She was determined not to worry about what might possibly be occurring, and had convinced herself that she wasn't thinking about Mulder as she mechanically ate a small amount of Thai food taken out from a nearby restaurant. She watched the news, and something mindless and maudlin on Lifetime until she finally found an old noir film on the local PBS channel. Somehow, knowing that it would all end in bloodshed and sadness was soothing. She mused to herself idly as she flossed her teeth after the movie had ended that it was because the shape of the story was proscribed by its narrative form. That was an elegance that would not be accorded to her, still in the middle of her own formless tale. She smoothed lotion on her hands and feet and gave one last call to the Gunmen before she turned in for the night. As she expected, there was no news to be had, but the stifled hope lay thick in her chest. It didn't matter how rigidly guarded against such a possibility she held herself, because she felt it nonetheless.
She slid her feet between the cool sheets and picked up the copy of Possession that she'd been trying to read in fits and starts for years now. It was Mulder's, of course. A mystery set at Oxford, full of epic-length poetry –- how could it not be Mulder's? He'd been effusive in his praise of it for weeks, reading passages of it to her on planes as they traveled here and there. He'd even quoted bits and pieces of it from memory as they drove around those endless months of mind-numbing 'shit details' for Kersh, years later. He'd given her his copy long ago, and she'd always meant to read it. He wanted her to love it as he did, and had taken to tucking it into her suitcase when he'd come over to harass her while she was getting ready for their inevitable trips out of town. Fondling the worn spine of the large paperback now, she wasn't too surprised to feel her eyes filling up with tears. Mulder had been her friend, hadn't he -- the best friend she'd ever had.
The ringing phone startled her so much that she gasped and fumbled for it, already flipping the covers off and half-standing, sure that the Gunmen had found something after all. The sound of Mulder's monotone on the other end of the line pinned her to the ground and she stopped all forward motion, stunned into silence, as he said her name worriedly.
"You busy, Scully?" he asked again, but there was a tension in his tone that warned her, and she turned the words over in her mind, hearing them echo for a moment.
"Just getting ready for bed, Mulder," she answered automatically, and then went cold with sweat remembering weeks of coaching in various rental cars, as Mulder had worked out the rudiments of the codes with her. Her heart, which had stopped the instant that she heard his voice on the phone, began to pound wildly at the implications of his seemingly casual statement. She'd answered him by rote, but that question … this was as big as she had feared all along. "What're you doing?" She remembered to add after long seconds of mental flailing.
"Watching the Knicks game," he said casually, but that edge was still in his voice, "I've got some old tapes that are awesome, and sometimes I can't resist taking them out for a spin."
Oh God. Her mouth went spitless with panic as he said the words that she'd feared. She sat down hard on the edge of the bed from where she'd been hovering and tried to choke out her next phrase, but it got caught.
Mulder sounded alarmed as he said her name.
"Sorry, Mulder," she apologized, coughing and then taking drink of water, improvising. "I was taking my pill and I tried to talk at the same time."
Now it was Mulder who sounded a little choked, but he went back to the script and asked her what her plans were for Sunday. Behind his question, she could plainly hear the plea: would she come to him?
"I've got brunch with Mom after Mass tomorrow and then I'm planning to go to the mall and return some things." She answered him using the code, and imagined that she could feel some of the tension leeching from him at the other end of the line. "Don't tell me there's a flukeman that needs our attention on my day off," she joked lamely, trying to keep the conversation light.
He laughed, and Scully felt herself relaxing, even as her fingers were still gripping the phone. "Aw, Scully," he teased, "don't lie to me. 'Returning some things' is the same as buying new stuff and even poor ol' Flukie would be no competition for a really good sale, am I right?"
"I'm just returning things," she insisted, "that shoe sale at Nordstrom's has nothing to do with it, really."
Mulder chuckled, but she could still sense the edge behind the banter, and she fought to regulate her breathing as she waited for him to reply.
"Scully," he answered her, "I really worry about your credit card debt."
Her scalp began to sweat. Whatever he'd done, it was huge.
"I suppose that means you don't want to go see The Return of the Swamp Thing at the revival house, then?"
"Do I ever, Mulder?" she asked him, hoping that the tremble in her voice wasn't as evident to those who might be listening as it was to her.
"Oh, well, Scully," Mulder said, "Can't blame a guy for trying. Get some sleep, partner."
The phone went dead in her hands and she just sat there and stared at it, trembling. Sleep was out of the question, but she laid down under the covers and turned the TV back on, hoping that the noise would drown out the sound of her tears as she cried a short, sharp burst of relief and terror into her pillow, waiting for it to be tomorrow.
~*~
The winter day was clear and bright. She found herself awake early, wandering around her apartment marking time until she could go to Mass. She knew that she was memorizing things, not just the mementos of her daily life for these past few years, but the way the light filled the space. Despite everything that had happened here, this apartment had been hers alone. She wondered if she would ever see it again. It was a strange and discomfiting thought, and one that she wasn't used to consciously contemplating, despite the fact that her job put her life on the line often enough. Hell, just a year before she'd been sure that she'd never return to these rooms from her hospital stay when the cancer was at its worst. Maybe she'd been too sick to feel nostalgic then, but she was now as she went from room to room looking at her possessions with a dispassionate eye. If she never came back, what would her apartment say about her to a stranger? Neat, clean, methodical, precise, feminine but not frilly – this had been the home she'd made for herself. Was she really going to leave it now?
Hand on the doorknob, she stood for a minute with head bowed and thought hard about what she was contemplating doing. Staring down at her feet, she thought about Melissa's blood, dried somewhere under the floorboards, of what was owed for what had been taken. She picked up the heavy Nordstrom's bag from the floor and slung her purse over her shoulder. Her overcoat was already on, the keys in her pocket. There was no choice.
The rest of the morning passed as if in a dream, complete with hyperreal colors and imagery. She wasn't sure that she had heard any of the Mass at all, as she was too consumed with praying for her family, for strength, for Mulder, for forgiveness for what she might yet do and for the fortitude to do what might be necessary. The candles seemed brighter, the songs more sweetly sung, all of it sharpened into significance as she got herself ready to do battle with evil.
At an early brunch with her mother, she compelled herself to stay in the present and to enjoy being there, and not to think about how it might be the last time they saw each other. It was hard to force more than a little food around the lump in her throat, but she thought of the long road ahead and tried to get something into her stomach. When she said goodbye to her mother, she made sure to hug her tightly, but not too tightly, and to tell her that she loved her. Her mother had been surprised by the sentiment, but not overly so. It was the kind of thing that Dana'd used to say more often, although she had probably been more likely to say it to her father than to her mother. Her mother told her that she loved her, kissed her with fondness and some exasperation, urged her to be careful at work, and then gotten into her car and driven away.
Scully numbly drove to the nearby mall as planned, not bothering to hide her route for anyone who might be following her. She parked in the structure at the opposite end of the mall from the Nordstrom's, entering the complex via The Gap. She bought a couple of utilitarian items – a ubiquitous white button down and a soft, long-sleeved t-shirt, and returned a sweatshirt from her bag of tricks. She took both bags with her into the bookstore and perused the new releases. On the rack set aside for the staff favorites someone named Rose had picked Possession as her choice and Scully smiled. Mulder's copy lay on the bottom of her Nordstrom's bag. She bought a couple of other books and went into Victoria's Secret for some new underwear, then browsed Williams Sonoma for a good long time, trying to bore any follower into utter submission. She bought nothing in the store but amused herself by trying to stock her perfect kitchen -- never mind that her perfect kitchen would come complete with chef to prepare the meals for her, or that she'd have to win the lottery to stock it with items from Williams Sonoma.
She wandered across the mall to the food court and bought a cup of tea and settled down at the table with a copy of the latest Vanity Fair from the bookstore. She opened it, but spent as much time people watching as she did pretending to read the magazine. If she was being tailed, she was having a hard time spotting it. She hoped that they were waiting for her where she'd parked her car.
Mulder had chosen this mall because security didn't actually tow the cars until at least a week after they'd been 'abandoned'. One test car that he or the Gunmen had ditched lingered almost two weeks before it was towed. She'd never bothered to ask where they got the cars from, as she was afraid that she wouldn't be pleased with the answer.
Nordstrom's beckoned from the other end of the mall and she made her way toward it, stopping in the Ann Taylor to return a sweater set that Tara had sent for her birthday. It was flowered and brightly colored beside, and although Scully loved Tara, she positively loathed it. On the way to register, she saw a simple sweater set in a warm blue that she was surprised to find herself drawn to. It was cashmere, and the amount it cost was staggering, but the exchange brought the price down to a manageable level. She didn't hesitate to buy it, wanting to indulge herself a bit.
In a similar vein, she bought herself two pairs of shoes at Nordstrom's. One was a practical work pump, chunky yet chic. The other was more of a utility boot, low-heeled and sturdy. The boots looked warm, and fearing that she might need them in the near future, she snapped them up. She idled at the perfume and jewelry counters, watching out of the corner of her eye for any observer before she proceeded up to the next floor. The evening clothes at Nordstrom's were always beautiful, and she spent some time going through the racks before going to the more practical side of the floor where the upscale work clothes were. She tried on a couple of suits, and put one on hold, thoughtfully fingering the handsome jacket while the saleswoman wrote up her information. When the transaction was concluded, she thanked the saleswoman, walked toward the elevator bank and slipped into the nearby women's lounge.
Less than ten minutes later, a bespectacled blonde woman with a ponytail came out of the bathroom wearing a long sweater coat and carrying an oversized handbag and a large Crate & Barrel bag. She walked briskly through the casual clothes, stopping to look through two racks, then went to the up escalator. She exited the store into the parking structure on the third floor and walked confidently to a Nissan Altima parked in the middle of a row, not too far from the store entrance. She bent down to adjust her knee-high boots near the driver's side wheel well, and then clicked the trunk open when she straightened up, depositing her shopping bag before getting into the car and driving out of the mall. While the clerk was toting up her unusually high parking fee, she casually put lipstick on, using the driver's side visor mirror to block a full view of her face as she did so. When her change was handed to her, she nodded to the cashier and simply drove out of the garage, heading west away from the mall. She made a series of looping right hand turns for a few miles before she got on the highway and headed south, back toward DC. A few miles outside of the city, she got off the highway and dropped a small padded envelope into a mailbox, then headed back to her car and drove west for several miles. When she was convinced that she wasn't being followed, she finally turned onto the northbound highway and began her journey.
~*~
Part 3
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2007-12-23 07:20 pm (UTC)And if your goal was to drive readers wild with curiosity... it's working.
no subject
Date: 2007-12-24 06:56 pm (UTC)Maravilhoso 2
Date: 2007-12-23 11:10 pm (UTC)Minhas unhas que o digam: já não tenho mais nenhuma - acabei com todas!
A parte da conversa em código deles foi demais, muito bem bolada, criativa.
Agora estou doida pra saber o que vai acontecer quando eles se encontrarem e o Mulder disser para Scully o que ele fez. Noossaaa!!!!
PS: Já coloquei seu diário como minha página inicial: assim não perco
nada ;-)
Edna - Rio de Janeiro - Brazil
Re: Maravilhoso 2
Date: 2007-12-24 06:59 pm (UTC)Sorry for making you anxious, but it sounds like you're enjoying yourself. I hope your fingernails are OK.
Thanks for your enthusiastic feedback!
Christmas Alegre!
Anjou