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: NC-17 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... TIMELINE: Though this takes place sometime after "all things", in this universe "Requiem" did NOT happen... "Water's Edge" by Elizabeth Rowandale Copyright (c) 2003 Chapter 17c She settled deeper into the couch cushions, tea glass in her hand and baby monitor on the narrow table behind the couch. Christopher had played joyfully with Maggie Scully's newest bottle of nail polish for nearly the whole car ride home before slipping into peaceful slumber a block from their apartment. Scully had carried his sleepy warmth up to the safe comfort of his crib; tucked in his Pooh Bear beside him. Sometimes it was hard to let go of him when he slept. "Are you sure that doesn't need sugar?" Mulder asked, eyeing her glass suspiciously as she drank. She nodded. "Thanks, I'm sure." Mulder shrugged. "Each to his own." He took another sip of his heavily sweetened tea, then set it carefully on the wooden coaster on the coffee table. They were trying for casual conversation, milling about like lost souls as they got their drinks, settled into comfortable places in the living room. How did you make small talk leading into the pivotal subject of your life? "So, how goes the teaching?" Mulder asked. "Are you enjoying it?" She nodded thoughtfully, lowered her glass to her thigh, then took another sip and returned it to the coffee table. "It has its moments. Some days you think you're talking to a brick wall. Like this morning. But other days you feel like you're making a difference." "I'm sure you are." She tried to smile, but it wouldn't hold. Smiles rarely did these days. "What about you, any prospects of a job?" He shrugged. "Here and there. It'll be easier to track people down on Monday. But I hit on a contact or two. Did the necessary amount of sucking up. I think I foresee more groveling in my future. We'll see." "I think it will work out for you. You're a good agent, and judging by the recruits we have coming through at the moment, I think the administration would be wise to hold onto the current talent for a while longer." He laughed softly, and her chest contracted. He gestured toward the piano. "Do you play?" She glanced over her shoulder, shook her head. "No. I did, a little. A long time ago. But haven't touched it in years. I should--" "I didn't want you to die." Her stomach dropped. His hand stroked the length of her hair. "What?" she whispered. Mulder shifted position, swiped one hand down his face, kept the other close to her shoulder. "Several months before I left, I became aware of a large group of individuals working underground. A kind of...covert rebel force, if you will. Much larger, in fact, than I had originally guessed." "A rebel force against what?" He gazed at her for a long moment, a shade of kindness in his eyes that made her want to shy away. Scully stiffened when he cupped his warm hand to the back of her neck, burrowing beneath her hair. "This," he said simply. She shook her head, effectively shaking him off, then mourned the loss. "I don't understand." Mulder pulled his hand back. If he felt the affront, he didn't show it. "This group was started by men who had lost people close to them. Women, mostly. Wives, girlfriends, mothers, sisters." "Abductees." Mulder nodded. "Yes." "And they died of...?" "Some of cancer." It was still hard for him to say the word. All these years, and she heard the threads of pain woven into his voice. "They had their chips removed?" "Yes." "And the others? How did they die?" "Different ways. Fire. Drowning. All of them had been...lead somewhere, by the chip. Or by...whoever was controlling the chip. The same way you were called to Ruskin Dam. Some of them had been called on more than one occasion before the destinations turned lethal. It may or may not have been the intent of those controlling the chips, but it was the end result all the same. They were caught in the middle of a war." Scully swallowed hard. She focused for a moment on Christopher's quiet breaths on the baby monitor by her shoulder. The two worlds didn't mesh. But that had been the problem all along, hadn't it? The reason she had almost left Daniel in this very room a year and a half ago. A vague memory of the alien pull washed over her. The irresistible sense of need, purpose. She had learned to turn the memory away. "So...we know all of this. What's new? This group you're talking about, what did they do?" "They started a kind of private research project. Some of them were scientists, others just hopeful amateurs. But they grew, gained resources, equipment." "Researching what, exactly?" "The nature of the chips. How they function, the influences they exert over those in whom they have been implanted." "Toward what end?" "What end for the abductees?" "For the researchers. I mean, I'm assuming we're not talking pure research here. They must have had a practical goal in mind when this project was begun." It was so much easier to keep talking when she could distance herself from the material. She was falling back into a long familiar rhythm. Exchanging factual information with Mulder. Working through motive, methodology, sequence of events. Extrapolating the story. Mulder nodded. "Very much so. They were seeking to find a way of removing the chips. A way of freeing these people from alien control. A way of giving them their lives, their security back-- without giving them cancer." So there it was. The sweet spot. The seed of inspiration that had gone on to explode her life, rip her heart to shreds. "I see," she said softly, eyes no longer locked with his, but focusing through thick lashes on the cloth of the couch cushion between them. "Scully...I needed to know what these people were doing. What they had accomplished." She nodded, but didn't lift her gaze. Her pulse was thudding gently against her ear drums. "I tried. But their doors were locked down tight. Insiders only. And even then, even within their organization, everything operated on a need-to-know basis. Only the most trusted members are given any real intelligence on the project's approaches, their progress. These people live in terror, Scully. Terror of both the government and the aliens. They believe many of the world's governments struck a deal with the alien forces decades ago, that they are now an equal danger to anyone trying to buck the tide, anyone working against the ultimate colonization." "So, you decided...to go inside." Mulder leaned toward her, scooting inches closer on the couch. Scully pulled away. He spoke. "I found out just enough to know that they were making progress, Scully. Real progress. But they could have been stopped any day. By our government, or by others... And it all could have been lost. Lost to them, lost to us. I made a connection, Scully. A miracle happened, and a door of opportunity opened in front of me. I chose to take it. I didn't see I had much choice." Scully felt his words like a punch in the stomach. She could barely catch her breath to speak. Her cheeks flushed with heat. "You didn't see you had a choice," she parroted. Mulder's expression reflected such deep pain she should have been pulled into sympathy with him. But she felt only cold. She knew every part of her was hurting, but she knew it only with her mind. Her senses had iced over and wouldn't register the ache until the impending thaw. "Scully. I walked across a bridge filled with burned bodies. Some of them with red hair just like yours. I thought you were one of them. I thought you were *one* of them. And I had been right beside you just that very day, and I hadn't seen a thing. I hadn't been able to lift a finger to stop it. I thought you burned to death, Scully. And everyday for the next two years, I had a knot in my stomach every moment you were out of my sight. Because it was ever-present in the back of my mind. Which night, Scully? Which night would it be when they called you away again?" Scully folded her arms across her chest, pressing against the hard knot below her ribcage. "So, you did this...so you would feel better?" She was digging a knife into a wounded deer. But her reaction was gut instinct. It was all she had right now. "Scully...your life is dependent upon the functioning of that chip in your neck. You know that. I don't care what else you say you might believe about the sources of your miracle cure, I know, that somewhere inside you, you know the truth of that statement. But as long as that chip is in your body, you are not safe. And neither is your son," he said, gesturing toward the back bedroom. "Who the hell are you to question the safety of my son?" "Someone who knows you. Who knows your life." "You know far less than you think." Mulder took the hit, swallowed hard, and she felt her walls thickening. *Hit me, again, Mulder. Try to make me break.* "That may be, Scully. But this is all I knew how to do to help you. I saw my shot, and I took it." "And what did it get you? Did you learn anything?" He pulled back from her, ran his tongue over his generous lips, his fingers combed through his hair. "I did," he said softly, eyes narrowing. "I learned a lot. That's why I'm back here." Scully arched a cold eyebrow. "Well? Where's the magic potion, Mulder?" "I did bring something back with me, Scully. But I don't want to talk about that now. Let's just get through the first part of this before we dive into that." Scully cracked an utterly humorless smile, looked at the ceiling, sideways to the fireplace, anywhere but at Mulder. She shook her head incredulously. "Oh, that's beautiful. Yeah, it hasn't been long enough, Mulder. We should wait some more. Bury ourselves in more veils. Let the lies collect." "Scully..." "What in God's name were you thinking, Mulder?" "I was thinking I wanted to save your life." "I wasn't dying." "Not yet." "Any of us could die any day." "Not all of us have a slow metal killer sealed beneath our skin." "*My* skin." "I made a choice. A painstaking and horrible choice, but one I stand by." "It wasn't your choice to make." "How?" "Ho--" Scully breathed out hard, lost for words. She pushed up from the couch, paced in a circle, turned back, flicked open her suit coat to prop her fists on her hip bones. "How was it not your choice? You...you have got to be the single most selfish and egotistical bastard I have ever known in my life. Seven goddammned years, and never once did you look up from your self- centered little view of the fucking universe to see how your decisions might affect those around you." Mulder was caught completely off guard, looking at her with the injured shock of a child turned on by his most trusted guardian. She had never spoken to him like this before, but maybe she should have. Maybe she should have. The flash of vulnerability passed in a second, and he was on the defensive, jaw hardening, eyes flashing. "Self-centered. I'm self-centered. I may be an asshole, Scully, but I'm having a little trouble taking the self- centered right now. I don't have a house. I don't have a job. I don't have my family photographs or my third grade baseball glove or my fish or a credit card. I lost all of it. Gave up my life, my past. For you. Now, how is that self-centered?" Scully breathed heavily for a moment, eyebrows lifted, gaze on the floor at her feet. "For me. Well...," she cocked her head sharply to the side, "thank you. Thank you so much." "Well, call me crazy, Scully, for ever thinking you might genuinely say that to me." She finally looked him in the eye and the fire between them prickled the fine hair on her skin. "You honestly think I should thank you?" He held his hands out, palms raised in mock surrender. "The thought did cross my mind." "You let me think you were dead. For *two years*." "I had to." "No, Mulder. You didn't." "I did." "You found something. You wanted to go undercover. I'm your partner. Why, in the name of God, couldn't you tell me? Let me work with you?" "Scully...you would never have let me go. You know that. Not like I did, not alone." She scoffed. "You're damn right. What you did was stupid, Mulder. You don't go in without back-up. It's a half-assed rookie mistake, and by all rights you should be dead now." "Their security was too good, Scully. I couldn't have any ties. I had to be someone else, had to go in through the back door and stay long enough to earn their trust from the ground up." "So, you had to vanish, do this yourself. Fine. You told me you were *dead*." "I had to." She just stared at him, unable to speak. "Scully... You're the best agent I've ever worked with." She looked away, "Fuck you," shut him out. "Scully listen to me. You wouldn't have stopped. You wouldn't have stopped looking until you found me. I know you. When you set your mind to something, you make it happen. You're a better agent than I am when it comes to this kind of thing. No matter how hard I tried to cover my trail, there was still a chance you'd track me down and blow my cover. I couldn't take that chance. Not if this was it, if this was our only chance. You could have blown the whole operation, the chances for all the other victims. So, I set everything in place to make it convincing. To make certain you believed I was gone, that it was pointless to keep searching." "So you cut the strings. You faked the Gunmen's connection. Sent word you had died." Mulder's brow furrowed. He looked sick. The feeling was mutual. "No, Scully. They were aware of the plan. When I knew for certain the information I'd gathered was legitimate, knew I had a real way in the door, I cut off surveillance communications. And I sent word to start the gears in motion for the long term option." Scully stared him down for a long moment, breath shallow, quivering. "They knew?" she whispered. His expression was all the answer she needed. "Scully..." "Shut up." The silence in the apartment pressed heavily upon her skin. "Scully, I had no way of knowing it would be so long. I left for home as soon as I could." "Mulder..." She was focused on the floor, painfully dizzy, deliberately evening out her breath. Her words were slow, precise and deliberate. "You broke--every--sacred--trust--we had." "To save your life." "To follow a long shot." There was a thickness in her voice, tears somewhere behind the surface, but that dam couldn't break yet. Mulder pushed to his feet, took a step toward her. Scully stepped back, and Tasha moved to sit by Scully's feet, leaned protectively against her leg. "Scully. I never wanted to have to hurt you. You were--" "Stop." Her voice was quiet. Definitive. She couldn't look at him, but her composure was intact. "I think..." She cleared her throat. "I think you need to find someplace else to stay tonight." She wanted to throw-up. Mulder stood frozen before her, long legs crammed in between the sofa and the coffee table, shoulders slumped beneath an invisible burden. At last he nodded. Mulder took his leather jacket from the coat tree. He unhooked Daniel's phone from his waistband and set it beside the baby monitor. He calmly turned back the chain and the deadbolt. He left the apartment and shut the door. Ten seconds of silence. Then Scully grasped the porcelain vase from the coffee table, and hurled it across the room. The vase smashed to bits on the fireplace in the echoes of her primitive cry. The rush of adrenaline left her panting for breath; Tasha paced worriedly at her feet. The gulps of air locked in her throat and the ache throughout her body awoke and spread like acid. She caught her breath on a knife-sharp sob. She lifted trembling fingers to shelter her eyes. A quiet breath and she melted to the carpet, burying her tears in the shelter of the couch cushions. Tasha lay down beside her, and Christopher quietly slept. ***** (End Chapter 17c. Continued in Chapter 18a...) Will Write For Feedback -- bstrbabs@earthlink.net