| Another Opportunity - Part One By Amanda Finch [email protected] *This is a psuedo-sequel -- from "The Totally Useless Surveillance Files", but not of them. Please read the four part installment of that, so you'll understand this!* RATING: PG-13, sometimes shifting to R. --------------------------------------------------------------- Theoretically, Dana Scully could've called in sick. It was a whim that crossed her mind with some regularity. But if she did take a few more days of her health leave, it would only prove to Mulder that the words he had said yesterday on the bench - a place she'd never sit again - had hit a nerve. Not that they hadn't. Actually, his words had found her main nerve, dry-humped it into catatonia, and left it for dead - which made it easier to maintain her stony "and you are?" expression. Her only consolation was the thought that her own words had kept him up last night and twisted in his belly like a glass of corrosive acid. Ever the super-psychologist, he would lie there on his beloved couch and overanalyze his over-analysis of the entire situation until he went screaming into the night like a man impaled on a hot poker. He wouldn't have LSD-flavored water to blame *this* time. She hadn't wanted to hurt him. Not really. But there he was, still in the casual clothes that made him look too open, too easy to overcome, about to tell her something that he should've told her three or four years ago, if at all. Everything was too right. His eyes were too soft, his voice too low, his smile too centered. And she felt the heat of the words before they ever teased the air. Because he didn't have to say them and she knew it. As he talked about wanting to be the one who brought the wine, had the happy smile, and listened, all she could do was let the tears pool into a lump in her throat and disassociate herself from the situation and how wholly disparate those words were from their source. She moved down the basement corridor towards their - his? - office, the sounds of her high-heeled shoes echoing further down the hall into places she hadn't been. When she'd first walked to this office years ago, she thought that sound marked her premiere as career woman. She had smelled like first-worn linen, really clean hair, and the perfume her mom had bought her for Christmas. She'd been so young and naive then. Was it possible she'd been smarter then, too? Or maybe just less on her guard? Whichever she'd been, she hadn't made her fondness, her devotion to him, any great secret. That first case with him, out there amongst the headstones and rain, with him laughing like a kid too big for his memories...*that* had turned the key. The rest had been excess. The rest had been beating a dead horse. If there were awards for Extremely Poor Timing, let Fox Mulder be their man of the year - the man who chose to give his partner that meaningful Look out on a park bench mere weeks after she'd told him her death was inevitable. The feel of having her, having her that way, would've given way swiftly to helping her stand up and live the remainder of her life. She could use a person like Mulder during those last dark days, couldn't she? She'd need him. And that's exactly why she wouldn't let him come close. Ironically, their proposed "60 bullshit-free minutes" had been, from her side anyway, the most thickly impermeable line of double talk she could've mastered. No, it wasn't right. But she was going to *make* it right. And she was going to do it as soon as she walked through the door of their office, or the "Kook Nook", as Mulder had taken to calling it. She fought a smile. And then fought down the irrational feeling that *something* was wrong. It wasn't so much the fact that Mulder wasn't there, even though there were mornings when she wouldn't have recognized the place had he not been in it. It was more the fact that the door was standing wide (Mr. Lock-It-Twice-and-Shove-a-Chair-Under-It? Impossible.) That, and the blank office door that faced her, adorned only with the two holes where the screws had been, holding his nameplate in. * Fox Mulder *had* called in sick. It was the closest thing in the FBI's voicemail message code directory that even came close to describing how he felt. Obviously, "calling in spurned" hadn't been available."Heart-Broken" hadn't been an option either. So, "sick" it was. So be it. The more he thought about it, the sicker he got. So much for being the emotionally-open sensitive type. So much for his bullshit-free tendencies. He should've gone with his instincts - most of which were kept in his pants. It wouldn't have mattered. Not to Scully. Maybe sticking to being a smart-mouthed jerk would've been more becoming. Unerringly, women bypassed those nice guys and settled in with the jerks. Of course, he hadn't thought Scully was of the ilk, but hey, what *did* he know about Scully? Absolutely nothing, according to her. It had been the flash of understanding on her face that had slammed her closed to him. Four years was a long time for two people to remain in close proximity, raking through all the shit life had to offer and getting an unfairly large amount of it. *Four years is a long time to wait, too.* She understood where he was coming from. If she didn't, then he truly was alone. She felt every pang and flutter that he did, and she buried them just as deeply when they surfaced. How could he have told her exactly how her small-boned hand felt in his, or how her warmth felt against him without losing a little bit of himself? He couldn't. Those were the kinds of things that couldn't be put through his usual filter of sarcasm and bleached until they had no emotional resonance whatsoever. They were the kinds of things that bounced off Scully's logic shields. He could've struck a match on her yesterday. And then, for a split second, she started to soften to his words and bend to his will. And then she'd buried it right in the face of what he was trying to unearth at that very moment. It had seared across his mind like a blinding light. If she'd seen a similar flash of recognition in *his* eyes, it had been the realization that Scully couldn't stop being Scully long enough to hear him out. *And when those feelings do come out, she's going to have to find another tattoed pretty boy to lure her away* he thought bitterly. *Or an alcohol buzz and a man with my face.* Let her. He hoped she was sorry. He hoped she came crying to his door just so he could scream in her face again, for the last time this time. And then when the news came through that she'd gone to the great Inevitable, he wouldn't give a damn. *Who am I kidding?* The woman who claimed that he didn't even know her after four years, that he didn't care after four years, would eat her words. He'd be there to feed them to her. * "Agent Dana Scully?" She looked up myopically, thinking for a moment that whoever had called her had been doing so for quite some time, and had been standing there waiting. It was paranoia. That's what this grungy little office did to her reason - turned it inside out and upside down all at once. She splayed her fingers across the paperwork to block it from her mind and looked up. There was a young man at the door, with close-cropped dark hair and an earnest, chiselled face, and a fabricated lump in his throat. Shades of Alex Krycek...she narrowed her eyes in spite of herself and forced a smile. "Can I help you?" "No," the young man said pleasantly. "Unless you know where Mulder is." Her smile froze. "Nope. Not a clue. I'm guessing he's at home. Would you like his home number?" "S'alright," the young man said, shrugging. "I just started at the Bureau today. You can tell, huh?" *You don't have that trampled underfoot look, now that you mention it*, she thought, silently and undiplomatically. He didn't wait for her answer. "Anyway, I'm sort of on extended gopher status and they told me to bring this down to his office, but it's addressed to both of you, so..." He handed her a fat little manila envelope. "I've heard so many cool stories about him that I just wanted to meet him in the flesh, you know? To see if he was really what people at the academy say he is - the ones who like him, anyway." "What do the ones that don't like him say?" Scully asked, wincing inwardly at the sharp, angry edge of her own voice. "Well, uh," the boy alternated between clearing his throat and shifting his weight from one foot to the other. "Nothing I'd repeat, you know? Usually people who didn't understand where he was coming from. Sorry to bother you, Agent Scully. Maybe I'll luck into meeting him some other day...goodbye." She didn't return his departing word, but studied the package in her hand. *Make sure it's not ticking* Mulder would say, if he were here. She tossed the package onto his desk. Maybe it was a bomb. Then neither of them would have a desk. Justice. Poor, poor Mulder, sitting at home, basting in self-pity, nursing his wounds. That or he was just zoned out watching his videos. (She suspected that Mulder knew of no ailment that couldn't be cured by a couple of wet, naked lesbians.) She knew what it meant when she knocked on his door and, after a moment - during which the sound of the TV disappeared - he came to the door, rumpled in a startled way, tired down to his marrow. The warmth of his couch would attest to his having been there, and the TV would sport a black screen or a blue one. A tape would be protruding from the player like a tongue. She'd done it often enough, and received a voyeuristic little thrill from knowing what he'd been doing only moments before. Something that her sudden presence hadn't allowed him to finish. Was he suffering during those moments, wishing desperately for her to go away? *It works both ways, you know.* Those would've been her moments to shine, had she chosen to approach Mulder, to proposition him. Would he accept it? Or would he just pat her on the head, chuckling, and send her on her way? His integrity was probably only knee-high. She was thinking all of these things as she picked up the phone and, reflexively, dialed his number. She let it ring again and again. The computerized voice came on the line and told her that the party she had dialed couldn't be reached...she hung up the phone, angry at herself for caring that, once again, he'd vanished without tellling her where he meant to be. Barring the unavailability of his right hand, she couldn't think of one thing that would keep him from answering the phone that didn't scare the life out of her. Damn, she wasn't his mother. She wasn't anything to him now, she figured. Slowly, she went down in her chair, sad. The emptiness of the office gnawed at her for the first time all day. * "Aren't you going to answer the phone, dude?" The quiet in Mulder's mind made a sound tantamount to that of an aircraft leaving one barrier for the next. "What?" "Man," Langly laughed. It was the husky laugh of someone who spent the majority of his time upsetting the peaceful tranquility of bongwater. "The inside of your jacket has been singing like a bird and you're not even among us, man." "Maybe he was meditating," Byers suggested helpfully. "With that constipated look on his face?' Frohike prodded, taking a picture of the expression before Mulder could change it. "I doubt it." Mulder blinked from the flash, reminded of a bumper sticker he'd seen the day before. It said: "With friends like these, who needs enemas?" Funny, he hadn't really gotten the joke at the time... "Hey," Frohike snapped sternly. "What if that was Scully?" "Tied-up in a cellar?" Langly added. "Ropes can't hold that woman," Mulder joked weakly and removed the offending phone from his inside pocket. He put it down on a piece of mysterious equipment (*don't ask*, he told himself) and walked away. "If it rings, one of you can get it." Langly made an unambiguous catcall. "I guess this means the wedding plans are off." Mulder groaned and sunk down into the dilapidated couch in their backroom. (*They call it the "breakroom"...as if they work or something*.) There were five different televisions, all showing a different picture. The first was of a motel room, being cleaned by a maid. The second showed a lavish business suite, with suggestive noises coming out of a hot tub in the center of the floor. The third showed an empty boardroom with expensive paneling and a long, polished mahogany table. The fourth showed the empty backseat of a luxury car. The fifth showed...Scully? "FROHIKE!" He was already standing in the door. "Calm down, Chief," he said, turning up the sound on that television and down on the other four. The sound of his office, as Mulder suspected, was silence, even with Scully sitting there diligently working on forms and profiles, occasionally stopping to pull her hair away from her face or to pace the length of the office and stretch. "We watch the people who watch you. Any chance Scully ever undresses in the office?" Mulder shook his head. Not at the question, but at the intensity of her focus on the trivial aspects of the work. Why did she bother? Why did they bother? It was usually a question he asked himself before he had his coffee in the mornings. "Is this coming in as you receive it?" "We have it down to a 10 second delay," Frohike said proudly and walked over to what appeared to be 5 VCRs duct-taped and wired together. On closer inspection, that's exactly what it was. "I want you to see something." Frohike pushed the rewind button on one of the machines and leaned against the contraption for a second before hitting play. On the screen, Scully was at his desk, the strange glow of his lamp making the angles of her face glow with a sort of phosphorescence. "Here he is," Frohike announced. "You ever seen this guy?" Mulder leaned forward, resting one elbow tiredly on his knee, scrutinizing the man, who was really just a boy. "No," Mulder replied. "I've never seen him. He's probably a cadet. He brought her a package. That's the first shitwork they give you - the currier duty. They say it familiarizes you with the layout of the building." "You sure you haven't seen him?" Frohike asked. "Look," Mulder mumbled wearily. "Spare me the pause for dramatic effect. Who is it?" "I don't know who he is, and I'm not gonna even try to find out," Frohike rummaged in a drawer, and hefted out several large envelopes. "The last time I got into the FBI database to check out the personnel file, the sysop almost traced the hack back here, but..." He filed through the envelopes like cards, and came to a thin one. He unwrapped the string and handed Mulder three photographs. "These are some goodies from our renegade security cameras." Bored, Mulder leaned forward and took the pictures. All three of the them displayed different dates and had been taken in different areas. All three had the same kid who brought Scully the package. All three showed an older man who was only halfway obscured behind a cloud of cigarette smoke, speaking to the boy. He launched forward. "How long ago was this?" he asked frantically. "How long?" "About 15 minutes ago. I walked away from the footage to let you in," Frohike explained, curious. "Shit!" Mulder threw the pictures down and raced out the room into the main work space. "Why didn't you tell me, damn you?" Langly and Byers looked at Frohike, who shrugged in confusion and replied. "Mulder, I have *six* pictures of *you* standing with the motherfucker. I was just showing you who to look out for." "Thanks," Mulder gasped sardonically, grabbing his cell phone as he left. Scully, alone in the office, with a package their cigarette-sucking friend had probably had sent up. It would've been the perfect time to send one of them up in a bang, with their little paean to dysfunctional partnership currently the in-joke among their respective peers. Maybe he was over-reacting. Maybe it was jack shit in that box. Or maybe not. * After awhile, it really became a mindless mess. If she signed, "Dana Scully, Acting Supervisor" to one more piece of unnecessary paperwork, she was going to get on the roof with her weapon and a spare clip. She hadn't been aware of how much of this drivel Mulder put up with on a daily basis. He had to vouch for every move he made, every word he spoke. And, surprisingly, he had to sign off on the same set of red tape for her, too. She'd never realized. And then he'd have to sign off on a different set of paperwork tomorrow to vouch that she had been the Acting Supervisor the day before. No treehuggers here. The silence of the office was beginning to overwhelm her. Until now, she had not registered what it was like to not have him here. There were long, quiet stretches between them when they were both here, sure, but they were usually broken by either Mulder's maddening whistling or a wad of paper sailing through the air and bouncing off the back of her head. He really could be childish when it came to those silences, and he fidgeted like a boy wearing his Sunday clothes most days, flipping files, clicking his ballpoints, crunching sunflower seeds (brushing them off in the floor), tapping his foot, programming Monty Python soundbites to erupt from his computer at odd moments. (Twice today it had screamed, "Help! I'm being oppressed!" and made her jump out of her skin.) One day, she'd flipped on the overhead projector to display a drawing of Orko from the He-Man cartoons. Her little jump back had amused him so much that he had laughed about it sporadically for the two days that followed, occasionally impersonating it when he opened a file cabinet or got a book off the shelf. Buffoon. Her phone rang. She picked it up without haste, but stared at the "talk" button, uncertain. Was she ready to talk to him? It was probably her mother, and knowing her, she'd spill the whole mess to her in five minutes. Her mother would tell Mulder about it, and the two (she envied the odd comaraderie the two had) would silently come to a decision that she was hopelessly neurotic. She was mad at him all over again. Absence had deceived her heart into growing fonder. She kept having to summon that image of his face...contorted with anger like the Bounty Hunter's - only Mulder's countenance hadn't changed. * "Pick up, Scully!" He yelled at the cell phone in his car. Ring. Ring. Nothing. Damn her. The phone made an impressive thud as it ricocheted off the back glass where he threw it. He wanted something to break. He wanted something to break NOW. He squealed into the parking lot and and put the car in a red-lined space, meaning he'd have a $25 parking ticket when he came out again. Strange how the good parking spots for the Assistant Directors and Supervisors were always so conspicuously *empty*. Taking the stairs, vaulting down two at a time, he pushed past anyone in his way, and even a few who weren't, to get to her. And as he veered into the office, he ran smack into her, knocking her down. Simultaneously lifting her up and lunging at the desk, he picked up the package and flung it out onto the floor. "Mulder?" She was dazed. She hadn't shaken free of his grasp, as loose as it was. He tightened it on her then. "Are you okay?" She nodded foggily. When she had wished for a break in the monotony, that wasn't quite what she had in mind. Releasing his grip on her, making sure she was steady on her feet, he prowled towards the package. It wasn't labelled with anything. It didn't even have their names on it. Scully thought of her innocent "is it ticking?" thought and shuddered. He was still wearing his clothes from the night before, and hadn't shaved either. Holding the package gingerly in his hands, he indicated that he wanted her to leave the room. "I'm not going," she said firmly. Mulder looked at her for an instant, plaintively and insistently, and realized it was really of no use. He worked his finger under the flap on the envelope and worked it free with the steadiest hands she'd ever seen, under the circumstances. Peering down into the open package, he saw a black box encased in bubble wrap and nearly dropped it. (Thinking it might be a bomb was one thing; seeing that it looked like a bomb was quite another.) He heard nothing, saw no blinking lights. Cursing his zero time logged with the FBI Bomb Diffusion Team, he brought the device slowly out of the bubble wrap until it was in the palm of his hand with his fingers building a cage around it. His exhalation of relief very nearly emptied his lungs, and he gave a short, mirthless chortle that made Scully's heart go back to its normal rythym. "It's just an audio surveillance device!" He said in a relieved hoarse whisper. He laughed again. He laughed at his concern. Breathing out again, he said. "Frohike has a bug in our office. I was watching you on one of the monitors. He showed me this guy bringing you a package. And then showed me three pictures of the guy with the cancer man." Scully's eyes widened. She was almost as taken aback by the fact that one of *them* had been in the room with her as she was by the fact - the beguiling one - that Mulder had, in his way, also been there with her. He smiled at her, as if he knew what she was thinking. Maybe he did, after all this time. He pushed the play button on the device with a certain measure of dread. What if it were a bomb and he had just started the clock? But all that started, in the empty silence of the room, was Scully's voice as he startled her on the park bench the day before, and his own jostling voice...sounded so strange outside of his own head. "Mulder, " she told him tearfully, hands doing a crazed pantomine around the box. "Stop it. Make it stop. I don't want to go through this again. I can't." He hesitated, but agreed. "Me neither, Scully. I never want to talk about that night again until you're ready." He pushed "stop." Nothing happened. "What in the hell - ?" He pushed stop again. Nothing. Fast Forward. Nothing. Pause. Nothing. He threw it at the door. Nothing. The door. "Mulder, did you close the door?" Scully asked, voice still and scared. "No. It was open when I came in. Did you?" She shook her head. Approaching it stealthfully, she turned the knob. In Mulder's hand, his own voice was teasing her about her cowardly taste in sandwiches. The knob wouldn't turn. "We're locked in," she announced flatly. Mulder put the box down on the desk where it went on, at an unnecessarily high volume, re-running their conversation. He twisted the knob on the door. They were. They were locked inside. "Scully - " He cut himself off. "What?" His smile turned into a laugh, and his laugh turned almost maniacal as he said, " I almost told you to check the windows. Then I remembered we were in the basement." She grinned with him. He twisted the knob a third time. The third time must've been the charm for someone. Someone's plan was working out for the best. But not theirs. When Mulder had twisted the knob the third time, their office was cast in total darkness. And there was no crack of light under the door. The power was out in the entire basement. In the blackness, Mulder frisked himself, knowing good and well that he didn't have his gun on him, not even his back-up gun. "Scully?" He swept his arm through the dark and accidentally decked her. "Ow!" "Sorry...sorry...come towards my voice. Stay close." He reached out and found her shoulder and her hair brushed his fingers. "Hand me your gun. I'll blow the lock out and we can get out of here." "Mulder..." "What? You don't have your gun either?" "I have it but - " She was interrupted by 12 different blasts that sounded like sulphur springs letting off steam. Like a vacuum seal popping open, one right after the other. It smelled about as well, too. "What in the hell *is* that?" Mulder hissed. "It's...I was leaving as you came in, Mulder. They said everyone needed to evacuate the lower three floors..." On the tape that wouldn't stop, Scully was discussing the finer points of Eddie's seduction procedure. Mulder looked with chagrin at where Scully's face would've been had there been light to guide him. "No." He said finally. "This isn't happening." "Bug bombs, Mulder," she replied, so calmly that he wanted to shake her. "Chemical bombs? That's this weekend?" Scully nodded until she realized that there was no way Mulder could see it in the dark. She had her fingers wrapped around one of his belt loops. He leaned into her a little and she put one arm around his stomach and ducked her head under his arm so that she was in front of him. "If I shoot..." He didn't finish the sentence. Firing a bullet into a room hallway full of toxic gases and lethal chemicals was the best way to insure that it exploded. Behind them, Mulder heard his own voice. He heard himself say that the bottom had fallen out of his world. It felt now, hearing himself speak in a sort of suspended animation, that it was falling through all over again. Scully slipped her other arm around his back, as if to catch him. End1/2 ------------------------------------------- One / Two ------------------------------------------- |