DISCLAIMER JAZZ: "The X-Files" and its characters are the 
creations and property of the fabled Chris Carter, Ten Thirteen 
Productions and Fox Broadcasting. I am, of course, using them 
without permission. No copyright infringement is intended. All 
other concepts or ideas herein are mine.
RATING: Let's say NC-17 just to be safe...individual parts will 
be marked NC-17 if and when they arise...
SPOILERS: Through US season 7
ARCHIVE: ONLY ON THE AUTHOR'S OWN WEBSITE (http://rowan_d.tripod.com/elizabethr.html)
UNTIL STORY IS COMPLETED. This way I can mess with the early parts as later 
parts develop...

WATER'S EDGE
by
Elizabeth Rowandale (aka Elizabeth Boyd-Tran)
Copyright (c) 2000
 

CHAPTER 1
 

"Dammit, Frohike, open up NOW!"

His stomach tensed as his fumbling fingers worked the column of 
locks. Dana Scully was one of the few women in the world who 
could reduce his psyche to that of a twelve year old boy.

He had hardly turned the knob before she pushed through the door.

*"Where is he?!"*

The room suspended mid-breath as this bluster of coat tails and 
flaming hair splashed upon their grey landscape of file cabinets 
and electronics.

Her icy words shimmered in the air.

Scully swept the room with a glance, and Frohike felt they had 
all been X-rayed. He attempted a deep breath to free himself of 
the concave position he had used to avoid the door. Byers stood 
nearby with a pencil dangling from his fingers, and Langly poked 
his head out from beneath a desk, goggles tangled in his hair and 
a screwdriver pointed toward the ceiling.

Scully lifted her eyebrows. "I'm sorry, was I not speaking 
English?"

Time to take the plunge. Forcing a swallow, Frohike took the 
first brave step toward their friend. "Scully, just calm down, 
we--"

*"Where is he?!"*

The cold words were like a wall erected between them. *Touch me, 
and I'll blow your head off.*

Frohike stopped where he stood, raising his hands in a peace 
offering.

"Scully. We don't know what you're talking about. You're looking 
for Mulder?"

Her only acknowledgement was a slight exhale.

"He didn't show up at work today?" Byers, still dangling the 
pencil, was frowning slightly in Scully's direction.

Scully did not afford him the courtesy of eye contact, but said 
dryly. "No, he did not show up at work today. Nor does he answer 
his door, his home phone, or his cell phone. His leather jacket 
is not in his closet or his car, his duffel bag is gone from his 
trunk, his email is set to auto-response, and there was a single 
long-stemmed rose on my desk this morning. Now, tell me what the 
hell is going on!"

"Scully, hold on here. Believe me, we're as concerned for Mulder 
as you are, but what makes you think we know anything more than 
you do?" Frohike kept his voice even, working hard to speak to 
the friend beneath the bluster and not rise to her bait, to 
gather the facts without bias.

"Because Mulder can be stupid, but not *that* stupid. This was a 
deliberate departure, not a kidnapping. He would tell someone 
where he was going. And if it wasn't me, it had to be you."

"Scully, we haven't talked to Mulder since last week," Langly 
piped in from beneath the desk.

Scully reacted as if he had never spoken.

Frohike took another shot. "Scully, come on, come sit down, and 
we'll see if we can sort this out."

Her gaze had settled on a level somewhere around his knees. 
"Thank you, I'll stand." Her voice had grown quieter, but no 
warmer. In the back of his mind he sensed the slightest edge of 
fear. As though some part of her were truly listening to them. 
And the thought that placing Mulder would not be so simple as 
squeezing the information out of three geeks in a basement was 
not something she was ready to accept.

Byers took a step nearer. "Tell us what's going on. Were the two 
of you involved in a case? Something that might have caused 
Mulder to branch off without back-up?"

"Was something placing *you* in danger?" Frohike caught the 
slightest flinch from Scully at his words, but he did not read 
her well enough to catch its meaning. Mulder wouldn't have missed 
it.

She shook her head. "No. There was nothing. We're between cases, 
catching up on paperwork. Mulder was glad for the break from 
fieldwork." Then she gave a self-derisive laugh as the cogs 
clicked into place. "Right...."

"Don't jump to conclusions, Dana, we understand your concern, but 
you don't really know what's happened yet, and--" but it was 
immediately apparent that the personable kindness tack had been 
the wrong way to go.

Scully stepped away from him like so much useless newspaper, and 
placed herself mere inches from Byers face. "Look at me," she 
said evenly. Byers looked, finally lowering his pencil. Behind 
him, Langly rose from the floor.

"What--has Mulder--told you?"

Beneath the scrutiny, Byers eternal sense of the gentleman did 
not fail. "Dana, we haven't spoken to Mulder since last week, and 
that was about an email encryption program on his home computer. 
As far as we knew he was off to work this morning as always."

Scully held his gaze for what seemed like a full minute. Jaw 
tight, lids half-lowered. Studying him like a grade school 
teacher seeking out the boy who had pulled the blonde girl's 
hair.

At last she stepped back, with a breath like a half-laugh. But 
nothing was funny. "As always...." she repeated, giving her final 
"s" the slightly softened Sean Connery lilt that Frohike had 
always found so sexy in her, but right now engendered only 
protectiveness.

Before he could speak she had turned on her heel and started for 
the door. Three voices came to life behind her. "Scully, wait--", 
"Scully, just tell us--" "Scully, we didn't--"

But the door was half open, and the blue eyes had turned to them 
for one final damning glance. "Go to hell." And as she turned her 
back, "all four of you."

The slam clipped their protests to silence.



*****



The wind whipped like cold tendrils against her skin as she 
stepped out the door. Good. It kept her numb, braced her anger.

Warm sun would have hurt.

Scully pulled on her black leather gloves and fished her keys 
from her trench coat pocket as she hurried down the walkway to 
her car. Somewhere in the pit of her stomach, a steady drizzle of 
guilt was eating at her and consuming what little remained of her 
appetite. The Gunmen were her friends, odd as that still seemed 
to her. They hadn't deserved that hard a jab. But another 
suppressed emotion was keeping her from altering her course of 
action.

Fear.

Scully had reached for her cell phone at least five times this 
past hour. It made her dizzy each time she realized it wouldn't 
work to reach Mulder. Scales tip when the balancing partner is 
out of its place.

Slamming her car door, she slipped the key in the ignition. She 
wanted the heater on, though it wouldn't warm the part of her 
that was truly cold. As for driving, her destination was a bit 
uncertain. Going back to work would be nothing but unproductive. 
When traffic patterns could barely hold her attention while she 
was driving, paperwork wouldn't stand a chance.

Damn them. How dare they treat her with such condescension? As 
though the four of them had not conspired to exclude her a dozen 
times before.

Scully shifted into drive and glanced over her shoulder before 
pulling back out onto the road. She held her wrist up to the air 
vent and shivered as the warmth crept across her skin.

How the hell had she missed this coming? Hadn't she been working 
with Mulder long enough to know when he was onto something on the 
side?

She turned left at the light, letting instinct lead her back 
toward the office. She might not be up for more paperwork, but 
she would have more resources at her disposal there than at home. 
And she wasn't through fishing.

She had to stay angry at Mulder.

The fucking rose made her want to punch his lights out.

And made her want to cry.

 

* * * * *

 

"Leave it to Mulder to reinvent the schedule without sharing."

"He's compromising his own mission by hitting us like this."

Langly's fingers flew across the keyboard, flashing through the 
multiple security coded screens to reach the pertinent files.

"Sometime in June, my ass," Frohike muttered as he popped open 
his soda can. "Third folder from the bottom," he said more 
clearly, gesturing toward the monitor.

"So much for tracing him from the start," Byers added.

"And the new night vision sunglasses we were supposed to have for 
him by the 19th," said Langly as he at last made it to the 
intended document. The screen turned from meaningless symbols to 
words before their eyes as their encryption program cascaded down 
the document.

Their instructions from Mulder on how to proceed lay before them.

Byers sat at the table beside the computer, earpiece to his ear, 
tapping away at his own keyboard, adjusting the equipment and 
hoping to bring in the sound feed from Mulder's wire.

Frohike was hoping Mulder had *worn* his wire.

"How does he expect us to cover his ass if he doesn't even give 
us a chance to prepare?" asked Frohike, still sounding angry, but 
beginning to show the edges of Scully's hidden fear. This was one 
of the stupidest things he had ever known Mulder to do. And that 
was saying something.

Langly was busy scanning Mulder's document, making cryptic notes 
to himself on a small scrap of paper. "Did you get all the ID 
materials to him already?" he asked with a glance over his 
shoulder.

Frohike nodded. "Yeah, he shouldn't have any clearance problems. 
I should have known once the keycard was in his hand..."

"I think I have something," Byers said abruptly, and both heads 
turned expectantly. He was deep in concentration, hand to his 
earpiece.

"Put him on speaker, dude," Langly said impatiently.

For nearly a minute the speaker brought them nothing but soft 
thuds that could have been footsteps, but could have been line 
noise. The tension in the room was so thick Frohike was almost 
afraid the hum of their nerves would drown out the input. Then at 
last the endless thuds were interrupted by a sharp cough, 
followed by the clearing of a throat--and even over the wire, 
both sounds were distinctly Mulder.

"Oh, thank God," Frohike said, setting down his soda can and 
flexing his half-gloved fingers. Everyone shifted position, shook 
off the tension. "Now if only our boy will keep a hold of his mic 
better than he keeps hold of his gun."

His attempt at humor lacked commitment and fell flat against a 
dry breath from Byers and a frown at the monitor from Langly.

There was work to do.

But not enough to shorten the wait.

 

*****

 

Scully never made it back to work. Her car had taken her to 
Mulder's apartment.

She had circled through each room at least twenty times, pacing 
the floor, searching the bookshelves, counting the suits in the 
closet. She had analyzed the meager contents of the fridge, 
filtered through letters, papers, bills. She had fed the fish. 
She had spent two hours at his computer--scanning email, looking 
for suspiciously titled documents--pretending she had not booted 
the system to find an opening screen that read simply "Hey, 
Scully".

As the sun was drifting toward the horizon, she pulled the living 
room shade. She picked up her own trench coat and pulled it 
around her shoulders. Then she picked up Mulder's Knicks T-shirt 
from the back of his couch. She locked the door on her way out. 
She drove home.

End Chapter 1


(To be continued in Chapter 2....)
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