A Winter's Tale, Part 7
Dec. 28th, 2007 12:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
anjouficTitle: A Winter's Tale 7/21
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: Thanks to all of you who have sent feedback. It really is a wonderful gift to me as a writer who has labored long on this tale. Sure I did it out of my love for Mulder and Scully, but who ever said love wasn't work?
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.
~*~
Mulder was dozing when she came out of the bathroom, but he stirred when she swung the door nearly closed, leaving enough light seeping out for Hannah to see where the bathroom was if she woke in the night. When her eyes had adjusted to the dimmer light, she could see Mulder's cat's eyes glittering from underneath long lashes via the reflected strobing of the TV. He was lying on the bed in seeming repose, eyes mostly closed, ankles crossed, sleeves rolled up. He'd look relaxed if not for the fact that he was atop the covers with his shoes and belt still on, not to mention the implied menace of the loaded SIG Sauer close to his right hand. As she went around the room, making sure the curtains were drawn and shutting off the light on the bureau, Scully could see the gun in his ankle holster where his pants had ridden up.
He turned his head toward her when crept up between the two beds to check on Hannah, her silk pajamas making a gentle noise as they rubbed together in the near silence. Mulder had muted the sound of the TV set and turned on the closed captioning so that he could listen for any outside disturbances. He was lying on the right side of the bed that had the clearest shot at the door; Hannah was on her side facing him, across the small space that separated their two beds. She smoothed the covers up under Hannah's chin, then froze when Hannah stirred, mumbling something before she returned to sleep.
When Hannah had completely stilled, she crept away from the bed and went back around to the empty side of Mulder's bed, and opened the bathroom door a bit more. Then she pulled her service weapon from the waistband of her pajamas and placed it on the bedside table, feeling Mulder jerk with surprise when she pulled the covers down to slide under them.
"Scully?" he asked.
"What?" she answered quietly, wondering what he would say. She knew that he'd expected her to sleep with Hannah.
He was quiet as she settled down, turning on her side so that she could see Hannah sleeping. Her stuffed tiger was clutched tightly to her chest, and if Scully squinted, she could see the REM movements behind her eyelids over the rapid rise and fall of Mulder's chest as he lay next to her, puzzled and wary. She raised her eyes to find him studying her.
"What?" she asked again.
"Are you all right?" he asked her. His concern was sincere, and she knew his question wasn't about her sudden decision to share a bed with him.
Her gaze returned to Hannah's face. Now that the child was asleep, she could look at her with abandon, analyzing how exactly it was that she resembled, or didn't resemble, Emily. Hannah's hair was darker and far more thick than Emily's had been, and unlike Emily's stick straight strawberry blonde hair, it was a mass of heavy waves. Emily's face might have been very much like the childhood version of Melissa's, but Hannah's hair, from its coloring to its texture, was very much Melissa's. Hannah's face was longer than Emily's had been, the line of her chin not as sharply defined in its oval shape. And her eyes, with their long dark lashes and deep blue color, were nothing like the typical Scully blue eyes. She watched Hannah over Mulder's chest, noting that his respiration had decreased as his surprise at her presence faded.
"I don't know, Mulder," she answered. "I don't know how to answer that question."
She shifted under the covers and Mulder's left hand came up off them to let her maneuver more easily. She stared at his ring for a moment, and then asked the question she wanted answered, rather than the one that he expected her to ask.
"Where did your ring come from, Mulder?"
"I had it in the box with the other ones," he answered her.
She looked up at him sharply, wondering if his inability to give her a straight answer was due to his hiding something or if it was just a habit. Were these his rings? She stared at her hand, wondering if the rings she was wearing had been meant for some other woman. The idea that she might be wearing a ring he'd bought for Diana Fowley made her feel distinctly ill.
"That's not what I meant, Mulder," she said shortly.
He looked at her for a moment, his head turned on the pillow. He held up his hand. "Technically, I guess the ring is mine," he finally said.
She raised an eyebrow at him, but said nothing, hoping that he would expand upon his answer.
"This is not a happy story, Scully," he warned her. "Do you really want to hear this now?"
"I wouldn't have asked if I didn't want to know the answer, Mulder," she challenged him.
He sighed, and turned his head away from her. The room fell to quiet, and Mulder's profile was lit by the blue fluorescence of the TV screen, as he stared at the ceiling.
"I had one really good friend at the Academy," he began. "Dean was just …" He sighed and stopped again. "He was just a good guy. Everyone liked him, but he was my friend." Mulder paused. "Even after the whole Monty Propps thing happened and Patterson – he never treated me any differently. He was curious about how I figured things out, but that was more because he was trying to understand my process."
He was quiet for a minute, looking at the ring. "You know, maybe it was because we weren't competitors," he said. "Dean was brilliant, but not interested in the BSU, much to Patterson's chagrin." He looked over at her. "He was interested in bank robberies, or maybe organized crime, you know?"
"Ah," Scully said, having met the type in her day. "The real G-Men."
"Yep," Mulder said, spinning the ring on his finger. "Yep. I went to BSU and he went to the BRTF. We played basketball, we swam. He had a girlfriend from college, a nice girlfriend," he felt compelled to point out, "that he asked to marry him when we were two years out of the Academy."
"What was her name?" Scully asked.
"Her name is Lindsay," Mulder answered. "She said yes. Dean asked me to be the best man."
Scully had foreseen the end of the story since Mulder had started talking. He'd never mentioned a friend named Dean, and she was sure that she would have met him at some point in the past six years. "The wedding was two weeks away when he was killed." He rubbed his brow as if he had a headache. "Bank robbery bust gone bad. The SAC fucked it up royally, and Dean got a bullet under his arm."
Scully could picture the injury, had seen what would happen when the bullet circumvented the protection of the vest.
"I'm sorry, Mulder," she said quietly.
"He'd already given me the rings," he said. "Lindsay told me to keep his. I don't think she could face having it, and not him." The stark statement broke her heart. He was quiet for a few moments, then said, "I was so angry after Dean died. Not only was it a bad bust, but the guys they did catch weren't the ones running the show. These guys were organized, intelligent – everything the perps they busted weren't."
She nodded, listening. "You found them."
"Oh yes, I did," Mulder said, and although his voice was light, there was an edge in it that was uncompromisingly hard. "I put on Dean's ring, and I put my head down and it didn't matter what Patterson threw at me, it didn't matter that it wasn't my case, I found them all."
"What do you mean?" Scully asked.
"It was a ring," Mulder said, "ironically enough. They'd been running bank robberies for years, getting more and more sophisticated. Money-laundering, funds trading, the whole nine yards. It was an international operation. When I ran out of Americans, I kept going and turned the case over to Interpol. It took me well over a year, between cases for Patterson, to do it all. I wore this ring that whole time."
"That must have gotten a few comments," Scully remarked.
"So I was told," Mulder said, "later. At the time, if I heard any cracks I just ignored them. None of those guys were worth a damn anyway, not compared to Dean. When I couldn't do anymore to break the ring, I focused on the SAC who fucked up the bust. Lindsay's father was more than happy to help."
"Lindsay's father?" She asked.
"Senator Matheson," Mulder answered shortly. "Of course, he knew my father too, so that helped."
Pieces of Mulder's history were reforming themselves in Scully's imagination. "How's Lindsay?" she asked.
Mulder shrugged. "Still single," he answered. "She adopted a baby girl from Guatemala last year. She seems happier."
Scully felt a twinge of something -- jealousy or identification -- or both.
"Do you see a lot of her?"
Mulder shook his head. "I haven't seen her in years," he said. "I get the occasional e-mail, a card at the holidays. We talk every year on the anniversary of Dean's death. She moved out to California about a year after I got the X-Files."
Scully couldn't help the next question. "So, she met Agent Fowley?"
"You could say that," Mulder answered grimly. He was silent for a minute, then turned his head to look at her again. "They didn't get along."
'Imagine that,' Scully thought, although all she said was, "Oh?"
Mulder was looking at her levelly. "I know that you don't like Diana, Scully," he said. "Lindsay didn't either." He thought for a minute. "Well, she didn't trust her. But Diana was my partner at a critical point in my life. I was pretty lost." He was watching her, gauging her reaction. "I was drinking a lot, too much for a man with my family history, and I was smoking constantly. I didn't sleep. I'd stopped exercising, and after cracking the bank robbery ring, I was adrift. I needed a focus. She got me to do all those things, and eventually, she convinced me that I needed to take off Dean's ring and move on, to focus on my career, to do something with my life."
'Oh, Mulder,' Scully thought sadly. 'You were so ripe for the picking.'
"Diana did a lot to help me pull myself back together, and yes, she set me on the path that I've been on for the past few years. And no matter what, Scully," he said, turning over on his side to face her, "no matter what, I'll never regret that path because it led me to you."
She sucked in her breath in surprise, and felt her eyes well up with tears.
"I'm sorry for what it's cost you," he said, "I am. But I can't regret it."
She could feel her mouth trembling as it tried to smile and to cry at the same time.
He lifted his hand and tentatively traced her cheek softly with the first and second fingers of his right hand.
Her eyes dropped closed and she turned into his touch, as his fingers, feather light, skimmed over her jaw line. She felt his breath against her skin for long seconds before he placed a lingering, tender kiss against her forehead, and then another glancing one against the corner of her eye. "Please don't cry anymore, Scully," he said softly. "I can't take it."
Outside, voices were suddenly audible, then a car door slammed and an engine started up. Mulder leapt from the bed and stalked to the window, his weapon pressed against his leg as he flattened against the wall to check out what was going on. He pulled the curtains open carefully as another door slammed, followed by the sound of a second engine whining in the cold. It was quiet for a couple of minutes, save for the sound of the cars warming up, then headlights slid across the ceiling as, one after the other, the cars backed away. Scully was sitting up in bed, gun in hand, as Mulder moved to the other window scanning the parking lot to make sure that all was well.
"No Tell Motel?" She asked as he walked back to the bed.
He nodded, and stared down at her, clearly uncertain of whether or not he should assume his former position. She returned her gun to the nightstand and pulled Mulder's pillow out, laying it atop the bedspread on his side of the bed, before returning to her recumbent position. "You gonna stand there all night, Mulder?" she asked. "It'll be hard for me to sleep while I'm feeling bad for you."
Fox Mulder smiled at her, his vulpine grin showing even white teeth that she hadn't seen for weeks on end, just before he bounced down next to her. "You gonna crack jokes all night long, Scully, or are you actually going to get busy with the drooling?"
She ignored him, then bunched her pillow up so that she could see more of Hannah's sleeping form over Mulder's chest. They lay there in the silence for a few minutes, both of them breathing easier than they had in a while, until she spoke.
"Mulder?" she said.
He hummed inquisitively, turning his gaze from where it had been caught by David Letterman interviewing some starlet.
She sighed, wondering if she dared to break the fragile peace that lay between them, but knew that she couldn't live with unspoken words building more walls to separate them. She took a deep breath in, and laid her hand on his left bicep, feeling the warmth and strength of him. He stilled at her gesture. "I think Lindsay was right about Agent Fowley."
She looked at him, but his face was neutral. "I … there are things from my abduction," she said carefully, feeling him tense at this turn in the conversation. "I can never be sure, Mulder," she wanted to be very clear about that. "Well. I could never prove it to you." She paused. "But over the past few years, I've begun to remember things." She could see how startled he was by her revelation, and she hastened to explain. "All I remember are bits and pieces of what happened to me, but," she bit her lip and looked down again, then up at him. "Mulder, I remember Agent Fowley."
"Scully …" his voice was merely breath, the utterance one of shock, but she was gratified that he did not seem to be disregarding what she was saying.
"I'm reasonably certain that …" it was harder to say out loud than she had imagined it would be. "Mulder, I remember Agent Fowley being on the train car," she finished. "When they did what they did to me, she was working with them."
~*~
Part 8
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: Thanks to all of you who have sent feedback. It really is a wonderful gift to me as a writer who has labored long on this tale. Sure I did it out of my love for Mulder and Scully, but who ever said love wasn't work?
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.
~*~
Mulder was dozing when she came out of the bathroom, but he stirred when she swung the door nearly closed, leaving enough light seeping out for Hannah to see where the bathroom was if she woke in the night. When her eyes had adjusted to the dimmer light, she could see Mulder's cat's eyes glittering from underneath long lashes via the reflected strobing of the TV. He was lying on the bed in seeming repose, eyes mostly closed, ankles crossed, sleeves rolled up. He'd look relaxed if not for the fact that he was atop the covers with his shoes and belt still on, not to mention the implied menace of the loaded SIG Sauer close to his right hand. As she went around the room, making sure the curtains were drawn and shutting off the light on the bureau, Scully could see the gun in his ankle holster where his pants had ridden up.
He turned his head toward her when crept up between the two beds to check on Hannah, her silk pajamas making a gentle noise as they rubbed together in the near silence. Mulder had muted the sound of the TV set and turned on the closed captioning so that he could listen for any outside disturbances. He was lying on the right side of the bed that had the clearest shot at the door; Hannah was on her side facing him, across the small space that separated their two beds. She smoothed the covers up under Hannah's chin, then froze when Hannah stirred, mumbling something before she returned to sleep.
When Hannah had completely stilled, she crept away from the bed and went back around to the empty side of Mulder's bed, and opened the bathroom door a bit more. Then she pulled her service weapon from the waistband of her pajamas and placed it on the bedside table, feeling Mulder jerk with surprise when she pulled the covers down to slide under them.
"Scully?" he asked.
"What?" she answered quietly, wondering what he would say. She knew that he'd expected her to sleep with Hannah.
He was quiet as she settled down, turning on her side so that she could see Hannah sleeping. Her stuffed tiger was clutched tightly to her chest, and if Scully squinted, she could see the REM movements behind her eyelids over the rapid rise and fall of Mulder's chest as he lay next to her, puzzled and wary. She raised her eyes to find him studying her.
"What?" she asked again.
"Are you all right?" he asked her. His concern was sincere, and she knew his question wasn't about her sudden decision to share a bed with him.
Her gaze returned to Hannah's face. Now that the child was asleep, she could look at her with abandon, analyzing how exactly it was that she resembled, or didn't resemble, Emily. Hannah's hair was darker and far more thick than Emily's had been, and unlike Emily's stick straight strawberry blonde hair, it was a mass of heavy waves. Emily's face might have been very much like the childhood version of Melissa's, but Hannah's hair, from its coloring to its texture, was very much Melissa's. Hannah's face was longer than Emily's had been, the line of her chin not as sharply defined in its oval shape. And her eyes, with their long dark lashes and deep blue color, were nothing like the typical Scully blue eyes. She watched Hannah over Mulder's chest, noting that his respiration had decreased as his surprise at her presence faded.
"I don't know, Mulder," she answered. "I don't know how to answer that question."
She shifted under the covers and Mulder's left hand came up off them to let her maneuver more easily. She stared at his ring for a moment, and then asked the question she wanted answered, rather than the one that he expected her to ask.
"Where did your ring come from, Mulder?"
"I had it in the box with the other ones," he answered her.
She looked up at him sharply, wondering if his inability to give her a straight answer was due to his hiding something or if it was just a habit. Were these his rings? She stared at her hand, wondering if the rings she was wearing had been meant for some other woman. The idea that she might be wearing a ring he'd bought for Diana Fowley made her feel distinctly ill.
"That's not what I meant, Mulder," she said shortly.
He looked at her for a moment, his head turned on the pillow. He held up his hand. "Technically, I guess the ring is mine," he finally said.
She raised an eyebrow at him, but said nothing, hoping that he would expand upon his answer.
"This is not a happy story, Scully," he warned her. "Do you really want to hear this now?"
"I wouldn't have asked if I didn't want to know the answer, Mulder," she challenged him.
He sighed, and turned his head away from her. The room fell to quiet, and Mulder's profile was lit by the blue fluorescence of the TV screen, as he stared at the ceiling.
"I had one really good friend at the Academy," he began. "Dean was just …" He sighed and stopped again. "He was just a good guy. Everyone liked him, but he was my friend." Mulder paused. "Even after the whole Monty Propps thing happened and Patterson – he never treated me any differently. He was curious about how I figured things out, but that was more because he was trying to understand my process."
He was quiet for a minute, looking at the ring. "You know, maybe it was because we weren't competitors," he said. "Dean was brilliant, but not interested in the BSU, much to Patterson's chagrin." He looked over at her. "He was interested in bank robberies, or maybe organized crime, you know?"
"Ah," Scully said, having met the type in her day. "The real G-Men."
"Yep," Mulder said, spinning the ring on his finger. "Yep. I went to BSU and he went to the BRTF. We played basketball, we swam. He had a girlfriend from college, a nice girlfriend," he felt compelled to point out, "that he asked to marry him when we were two years out of the Academy."
"What was her name?" Scully asked.
"Her name is Lindsay," Mulder answered. "She said yes. Dean asked me to be the best man."
Scully had foreseen the end of the story since Mulder had started talking. He'd never mentioned a friend named Dean, and she was sure that she would have met him at some point in the past six years. "The wedding was two weeks away when he was killed." He rubbed his brow as if he had a headache. "Bank robbery bust gone bad. The SAC fucked it up royally, and Dean got a bullet under his arm."
Scully could picture the injury, had seen what would happen when the bullet circumvented the protection of the vest.
"I'm sorry, Mulder," she said quietly.
"He'd already given me the rings," he said. "Lindsay told me to keep his. I don't think she could face having it, and not him." The stark statement broke her heart. He was quiet for a few moments, then said, "I was so angry after Dean died. Not only was it a bad bust, but the guys they did catch weren't the ones running the show. These guys were organized, intelligent – everything the perps they busted weren't."
She nodded, listening. "You found them."
"Oh yes, I did," Mulder said, and although his voice was light, there was an edge in it that was uncompromisingly hard. "I put on Dean's ring, and I put my head down and it didn't matter what Patterson threw at me, it didn't matter that it wasn't my case, I found them all."
"What do you mean?" Scully asked.
"It was a ring," Mulder said, "ironically enough. They'd been running bank robberies for years, getting more and more sophisticated. Money-laundering, funds trading, the whole nine yards. It was an international operation. When I ran out of Americans, I kept going and turned the case over to Interpol. It took me well over a year, between cases for Patterson, to do it all. I wore this ring that whole time."
"That must have gotten a few comments," Scully remarked.
"So I was told," Mulder said, "later. At the time, if I heard any cracks I just ignored them. None of those guys were worth a damn anyway, not compared to Dean. When I couldn't do anymore to break the ring, I focused on the SAC who fucked up the bust. Lindsay's father was more than happy to help."
"Lindsay's father?" She asked.
"Senator Matheson," Mulder answered shortly. "Of course, he knew my father too, so that helped."
Pieces of Mulder's history were reforming themselves in Scully's imagination. "How's Lindsay?" she asked.
Mulder shrugged. "Still single," he answered. "She adopted a baby girl from Guatemala last year. She seems happier."
Scully felt a twinge of something -- jealousy or identification -- or both.
"Do you see a lot of her?"
Mulder shook his head. "I haven't seen her in years," he said. "I get the occasional e-mail, a card at the holidays. We talk every year on the anniversary of Dean's death. She moved out to California about a year after I got the X-Files."
Scully couldn't help the next question. "So, she met Agent Fowley?"
"You could say that," Mulder answered grimly. He was silent for a minute, then turned his head to look at her again. "They didn't get along."
'Imagine that,' Scully thought, although all she said was, "Oh?"
Mulder was looking at her levelly. "I know that you don't like Diana, Scully," he said. "Lindsay didn't either." He thought for a minute. "Well, she didn't trust her. But Diana was my partner at a critical point in my life. I was pretty lost." He was watching her, gauging her reaction. "I was drinking a lot, too much for a man with my family history, and I was smoking constantly. I didn't sleep. I'd stopped exercising, and after cracking the bank robbery ring, I was adrift. I needed a focus. She got me to do all those things, and eventually, she convinced me that I needed to take off Dean's ring and move on, to focus on my career, to do something with my life."
'Oh, Mulder,' Scully thought sadly. 'You were so ripe for the picking.'
"Diana did a lot to help me pull myself back together, and yes, she set me on the path that I've been on for the past few years. And no matter what, Scully," he said, turning over on his side to face her, "no matter what, I'll never regret that path because it led me to you."
She sucked in her breath in surprise, and felt her eyes well up with tears.
"I'm sorry for what it's cost you," he said, "I am. But I can't regret it."
She could feel her mouth trembling as it tried to smile and to cry at the same time.
He lifted his hand and tentatively traced her cheek softly with the first and second fingers of his right hand.
Her eyes dropped closed and she turned into his touch, as his fingers, feather light, skimmed over her jaw line. She felt his breath against her skin for long seconds before he placed a lingering, tender kiss against her forehead, and then another glancing one against the corner of her eye. "Please don't cry anymore, Scully," he said softly. "I can't take it."
Outside, voices were suddenly audible, then a car door slammed and an engine started up. Mulder leapt from the bed and stalked to the window, his weapon pressed against his leg as he flattened against the wall to check out what was going on. He pulled the curtains open carefully as another door slammed, followed by the sound of a second engine whining in the cold. It was quiet for a couple of minutes, save for the sound of the cars warming up, then headlights slid across the ceiling as, one after the other, the cars backed away. Scully was sitting up in bed, gun in hand, as Mulder moved to the other window scanning the parking lot to make sure that all was well.
"No Tell Motel?" She asked as he walked back to the bed.
He nodded, and stared down at her, clearly uncertain of whether or not he should assume his former position. She returned her gun to the nightstand and pulled Mulder's pillow out, laying it atop the bedspread on his side of the bed, before returning to her recumbent position. "You gonna stand there all night, Mulder?" she asked. "It'll be hard for me to sleep while I'm feeling bad for you."
Fox Mulder smiled at her, his vulpine grin showing even white teeth that she hadn't seen for weeks on end, just before he bounced down next to her. "You gonna crack jokes all night long, Scully, or are you actually going to get busy with the drooling?"
She ignored him, then bunched her pillow up so that she could see more of Hannah's sleeping form over Mulder's chest. They lay there in the silence for a few minutes, both of them breathing easier than they had in a while, until she spoke.
"Mulder?" she said.
He hummed inquisitively, turning his gaze from where it had been caught by David Letterman interviewing some starlet.
She sighed, wondering if she dared to break the fragile peace that lay between them, but knew that she couldn't live with unspoken words building more walls to separate them. She took a deep breath in, and laid her hand on his left bicep, feeling the warmth and strength of him. He stilled at her gesture. "I think Lindsay was right about Agent Fowley."
She looked at him, but his face was neutral. "I … there are things from my abduction," she said carefully, feeling him tense at this turn in the conversation. "I can never be sure, Mulder," she wanted to be very clear about that. "Well. I could never prove it to you." She paused. "But over the past few years, I've begun to remember things." She could see how startled he was by her revelation, and she hastened to explain. "All I remember are bits and pieces of what happened to me, but," she bit her lip and looked down again, then up at him. "Mulder, I remember Agent Fowley."
"Scully …" his voice was merely breath, the utterance one of shock, but she was gratified that he did not seem to be disregarding what she was saying.
"I'm reasonably certain that …" it was harder to say out loud than she had imagined it would be. "Mulder, I remember Agent Fowley being on the train car," she finished. "When they did what they did to me, she was working with them."
~*~
Part 8
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2007-12-28 09:08 pm (UTC)Aleluia!!!!
Date: 2007-12-28 09:13 pm (UTC)Um grande abraço
Edna - Rio de Janeiro - Brazil
no subject
Date: 2007-12-28 10:06 pm (UTC)beyond that - i like your ring-story much better than most of the others i've read. i couldn't ever really buy the 'Mulder married Diana' plot device. also, is it a coincidence that Lindsay's ring fit Scully perfectly? or did he have it sized?
and the tiny bit of banter at the end there, a little ray of light in the dark? that made me happy.
you layer and texture so well. *sigh*
no subject
Date: 2007-12-29 02:29 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-12-29 07:02 pm (UTC)Patience,
Thanks for your kind words.
Re: Aleluia!!!!
Date: 2007-12-29 07:03 pm (UTC)I'm really starting to think that you dislike Agent Fowley -- am I right? ;)
I'm glad that you're enjoying this, despite the wait!
no subject
Date: 2007-12-29 07:05 pm (UTC)Oh, and actually, Scully asked Mulder where his ring came from.
no subject
Date: 2007-12-29 07:07 pm (UTC)I like continuity. There are lots of ways that the story could go, based on clues we were given in the show. This is the second completely different explanation for Mulder's ring I've given. In neither case did I have him marry Diana.
:: shrugs ::
It's not that I don't think they were lovers, or that his marriage to her wasn't a possibility, but I prefer alternative explanations.
no subject
Date: 2007-12-29 07:10 pm (UTC)Sorry!
I happen to love four-year-olds. Well, kids, actually. They're pretty awesome in general. Of course, I'm just the auntie, so I get to give and receive the unconditional love. But I do love Hannah, imaginary as she is.
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Date: 2007-12-29 10:11 pm (UTC)it took me several minutes of thinking 'huh?' and reading your response to
*shuffles off, chastened*
Re: Aleluia!!!!
Date: 2007-12-30 04:39 pm (UTC)eu realmente odeio Diana Fowley - acho essa personagem a coisa mais vil e cruel já criada por alguém (Chris Cartesr) em toda a história da televisão. Além dela ser feia de doer ;-)
Re: Aleluia!!!!
Date: 2007-12-30 07:35 pm (UTC);)
no subject
Date: 2007-12-30 07:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-12-31 01:24 am (UTC)I loved this sorely needed talk between them.
Thank you.
Date: 2007-12-31 01:35 am (UTC)I'm gonna go post my grade on the fridge!