A Different Sort of Life 4/4.
Title: A Different Sort of Life (4/4)
Author: Wendy.
Email: starrycynic@aim.com
Disclaimer: I am not Chris Carter and never will be. It's all his.
Summary: Mulder leads Scully off to investigate crop circles in Kansas and inadvertently the dynamics of their complex interaction. Set in early Season 6 of The X Files, just after "Triangle".
Rating: Low on the blush-o-meter.
A Different Sort of Life 4/4
The whir and bustle of the laptop’s modem disturbs the peace of the motel room. Scully looks up from reading at the desk, and adjusts her glasses as they shuffle down from their perch on the bridge of her nose. There is an innocence in the gesture that spins him back in time, to when her hair was longer, her suits were looser and there was no chip in the back of her neck. He blinks and a shorter haired Scully frowns up at him.
“What?”
He raises his head from his prone position on the bed, an eyebrow shrug quickly dismissing her question. There is no responding challenge, no pressing for an answer and she is back to her reading. An odd sense of disappointment settles over him, but he lets it go, allowing it to slip through the empty spaces and hollow parts of him until it sinks away and out of sight. The laptop’s screen flares brightly as words and images fill its void. Over the slow, crawling connection the modem has afforded, the webpage has finally loaded.
He scans it quickly. Crop circles, crop circles, crop circles, all electromagnetic energy and light anomalies. Nothing out of the ordinary for this field. He wonders what he is hoping to find. Some reference to unmarked helicopters and manure perhaps? How about a big flashing sign saying “Here’s all your answers, Mulder! The truth! The aliens! What happened to your sister, to Scully… and a bonus year’s supply of Turtlewax!” He rubs his eyes and turns away from the screen.
“Anything interesting?” The suddenness of her question startles him and he looks at her confused. She pushes her papers onto the desk and stands up. “No earth-shattering theories on crop circle formations and its links to a higher power?”
He shakes his head and points to an artist’s impression of an UFO shooting a beam of light onto a field. “Not unless you count Beam Me Up Scottie’s rendition here.”
She shoos him away from the bed, taking his place in front of the laptop. He crouches behind her, peering over her shoulder. “Well.” She takes a deep breath. “That’s certainly an impressive beam.”
He chokes down a smirk. “Nothing like my flashlight.”
She pushes the laptop away from her, colours and words becoming dimmer in their shift from the overhead light. “I was just reviewing the paperwork we need to file to Kersh. It would appear that Mr Colwyn checks out. Thoroughly.”
He waits.
“Mulder, I’m saying that we have no legitimate reason to stay.”
“Since when has that stopped us?” She clears her throat, looking sideways at him. “Okay, me,” he corrects.
“After all the warnings we’ve received, the rope we have around our necks…” He watches her hands trace the pale skin around her throat, winding and constricting. “Is this worth jeopardising our careers for, jeopardising getting the X Files back? I need to be sure.”
“What happened to your big theory? To trusting your instincts?” His words come out in a push of irritation, little breathless bombs that fall upon their target with deadly accuracy. She stands and steps away. He feels instantly guilty, angry with himself that he has allowed himself to selfishly plough headlong into the well of her pain. He softens and releases the guilt. It will not serve him now. “Listen,” he says. “This morning you were so certain that Colwyn is hiding something that you were hellbent on finding any inconsistency you could to pin on him. What’s changed?”
She looks at her feet. No amount of his stare makes her look up. “I can’t let personal issues prejudice my judgement on this.”
He joins her in standing. Her eyes stay on a downward course as he moves closer, sliding honey-like into the tight whorls of her personal space. “So don’t make it personal. This is about the work.”
“Since when-” and she stops, eyes arced up sharply, directly into his gaze. “This can only be about the work.”
A pause. Breath caught for a spinning moment as he focuses on the crystal ball held upon her face, hoping to catch a glimpse of what the future will be. He reads the indeterminable in her eyes and is no closer to understanding what she wants or where he fits in. He goes on the only thing he knows. “So we stay?”
A step back and she is freestanding again. “We stay.”
The trill of his cell phone interrupts. He answers it.
“Fox Mulder,” crackles a male voice. “Hello again.”
Eyes quirk up, stalemate forgotten. He is possibly about to encounter something very, very interesting. Scully approaches and hovers beside him. “Again? Do we know each other?”
“Yes,” the man responds quickly. “I suggest we meet. There’s something I have to share that may prove enlightening.”
Something about the forced precision of the language pulls at a memory. Formal, clipped, yet strangely tentative. He has never heard this voice, but he recognises its rhythms from the many emails he has exchanged with its owner. “Is that Hurst?” he asks. There is no immediate answer. Target sighted. He puffs a loud impatient breath. “Okay, Hurst. Enlighten me.”
“Meet me in two hours at the pre-arranged meeting place.”
“Wha-” The line clicks dead before Mulder can speak. He drops his cell phone onto the bed and sinks down after it. “Looks like interesting just got less so,” his dry mumble lost to the scramble of hands on face. Another wild goose chase is all he needs.
Scully’s voice cuts through. “Who’s Hurst?” His mouth opens but she does not pause to give him breath. “Don’t tell me. He’s your reliable source.”
“And he’ll be very reliably meeting us in a couple of hours.”
“In a dingy diner somewhere, I bet?” He shrugs. “Maybe one day we could actually rewrite the cliché of dark and mysterious and try clean and decent.”
“And spoil my fun, Scully?” Her lips become a pressed pout. “Come on. It’s a cup of coffee. Almost as good as dinner and a movie, if you throw in my scintillating conversation.”
“Mulder, if that’s your idea of a good date, you’re way out of practice.”
He nods. “Probably.”
“I didn’t mean….” She is tentative, looking at him softly. There is something indistinguishable flickering among the concern of her half-turned lip and wide eyes. Panic rushes and he raises his hand to cease her apologies, letting his fingers curl up into his palm. She accedes, picking up her things on her way out through the connecting door leading to her room.
“I’ll see you later.”
A quiet echo and her voice, her presence, are gone. He turns off the laptop and waits for two hours to pass.
~~
The diner is brighter than Mulder expected. Scully glances at him, face held carefully neutral before she avails him with an uplift of eyes and chin. He opens the gambit.
“Not bad, huh?”
She picks a table and slips into a moulded plastic seat. “Well, Mulder, I have to say I’m almost kind of impressed.”
“Almost?” Odd disappointment settles upon him as he seats himself opposite her. The word takes on proportions it usually would not, his mind still ruminating on their earlier discussion. He was hoping they would return to their old form in the elastic band resilience their relationship has always shown in the backdraft of any rift or disagreement. “Almost” now seems a subtext for what is wrong between them, for the words and thoughts neither of them can unsay. It as if their bond is becoming saggy and overstretched, something lacking that he can’t quite put his finger upon. An awkwardness remains that neither of them can shift. How many times will he wish today that he had never mentioned the word “date” to her?
Her eyes slide slyly towards him, as she folds her hands into her lap. “Couldn’t give it up that easily.”
Opportunity is afoot, a gap he has to fill, and he delivers with a practised almost wink. “That’s what all the good Catholic girls say.”
She freezes him with ice cold eyes but a shimmer of smile is about her lips. He allows himself the victory of a semi-reaction and leaves her to her silence. It is somehow more interesting to him to sit and watch as she rearranges the salt and pepper shakers to sit in a neat line either side of the bowl of sweeteners, the distracting game of a woman bored and in desperate need to kill time without talking to her companion. Their stock of easy banter and small talk has temporarily run dry.
He thinks about what it would be like to get dinner with her when they weren’t on a case, weren’t lonely or too late to get the company of anyone else. For them to just talk and eat, drink and laugh, and argue over who gets the bill. To do something normal and utterly alien to his life, to their life. Would it be so hard to step out of the shadows, to stop worrying about the endless twists and chases and dangers of life, to let go, to just be Fox Mulder again? Whoever he is.
Odd slivers of his time on the Queen Anne return to him, memories or hallucinations he does not know. Scully in a red dress, hair up in a thirties do, attitude unmistakably frosty and taking no crap. He has never seen Scully in a going out dress; he doesn’t even know if she owns one. Probably she does. That’s a woman thing, like shoes and purses. He imagines the type she would wear, something elegant and simple, form fitting with just the slightest hint of cleavage to offset the formality of her attire. To remind herself that first and foremost she is Dana, she is a woman with wants and desires, a woman who could lead a normal life. He sees flashes of this in her work clothes, her personality and confidence styling the suits tighter, the shoes higher, all while she becomes more solidly encased in the archetype that is Scully. Tough, loyal and formidable. His partner, Mrs Spooky. It’s one hell of a label to heft through life, through the hallways of the FBI. And she does it with a quiet authority that silences any naysayers or critics. That makes them regard her with a grudging respect. Because of her, he is not quite a lost cause. Because of her, he still wants to believe. In something, anything or nothing more meaningful than being an empty hollow man in an even more barren life. Samuel Beckett doesn’t speak to him any more than T.S. Eliot. Even if he believes in channelling, he is beyond the wisdom of dead literary greats now. Sitting in a diner, waiting for the next big tip off, the latest sign that will either damn him or save him, or leave him hopelessly, eternally adrift in a limbo with no answers and no truth. He has only Scully for company in this peculiar version of purgatory and for all his fears and nightmares, he is glad she will share the burden another day.
For reasons not entirely clear to him, this has become her quest as well as his. To know the truth, for more than the whys and hows of what they did to her, what they took, for more than justice, has enflamed her. His ideals, his motivations have somehow enmeshed with hers, growing into something independent and fierce that will not die. Because he cares, because he believes so passionately and blindly, she continues with him to see this journey through, to make sure they reach the end of the path to the truth intact. She is his one in five billion and there is no one else who could take her place.
The door clatters open and he looks up, catching her eye as he does so. She is anticipatory, keen for the mystery of the source to be revealed. The path she is taking leads to the familiar, safe and solid ground on which he knows where he is. He follows her.
“The moment you’ve been waiting for, Scully.”
Her lips catch in a reluctant smile before she switches her attention to the man approaching their table. Average height, skinny, wispy dark brown hair and in his early thirties, dressed in a dark anorak and loose, faded jeans. This has to be Hurst.
“Thanks for meeting me,” Hurst says, ducking his head down as he sits beside Scully. Mulder notices that she gives Hurst an appraising glance, as if she is quantifying the weight of evidence of his worth. Hurst presses his lips together, pensive, eyes fixed upon his hands. Hiding something, the more suspicious part of Mulder’s nature supplies. He tries to dismiss it, but the nagging feeling remains.
“You must be Dana Scully,” says Hurst quietly, hands gesturing towards Scully, but his eyes never leaving their downwards slant. She nods and looks away. She’s uncertain and Mulder feels no easier.
Hurst looks up and his eyes pincer Mulder’s. “You are getting yourself into some seriously deep water with the lines of investigation you’re pursuing.”
Annoyance flares in Mulder. “What do you mean?” Hurst’s watered down eyes remain blank at the sharp hiss of Mulder’s voice. “You asked me to come here. You led me-”. Scully frowns. Mulder quickly corrects his mistake. “You led us into this investigation. Now you’re reading the riot act. What kind of crap are you trying to pull here?”
Hurst leans in close. “The real question should be what are you and Miss Scully trying to pull?”
“Who are you?” Scully speaks sharply.
“My name is Trevor Hurst. I’m a member of the local MUFON chapter.” Mulder looks at him impatiently, but Hurst remains unhurried. “Our focus is scientific study, and in this case we are specifically concerned with crop circles, not government conspiracies.”
Mulder’s mouth opens, angry bursts of emotion tussling to burst through, but Scully slides in quickly, cool and composed, leaving him in her wake. “Need I remind you, Mr Hurst, that not only am I a scientist, but Agent Mulder and myself are experienced investigators. We proceed based on the evidence in hand.” She lays her hands flat on the table, watching Hurst’s arrogance flail as her response has its slow and calculated impact. She draws herself upright in her chair, preparing her final damning statement. “If your opinion of Agent Mulder’s investigative skills is as high as your pursuance of him would suggest, I recommend that you allow him to continue unencumbered.”
“I cannot be connected to all of this!” Hurst stares at her, pure panic in his eyes. “None of us can.”
“Who’s us?” Scully asks.
Hurst stands up, determined to make his exit. “I think we’ve talked enough.”
“No.” Scully’s hand is now poised upon his arm, like a claw ready to snap into its unwilling victim. He stills. “You can’t just come here with BS and doubletalk and expect us to roll over and play dead. We deserve answers here.”
Mulder places his hand over Scully’s, ready to release Hurst’s arm from its grip. “Let him go, Scully.” Her mouth twists, eyes flicking to his, as Mulder watches her struggle to make sense of his actions. He knows that she will not understand but he sees something that she doesn’t, senses something that she can’t: Hurst is a dead end. And they have chased around in too many circles for too many years for him to lead them into yet more of the lies.
“Mulder.”
She says his name quietly and it is all the warning he needs. He takes away his hand without argument, all fire now launched towards Hurst. “He doesn’t know anything.”
Now Hurst looks at him, indignation blaring. “I know more than you’ll ever realise.”
“So why get us involved?” Scully’s sharp stare cuts into Hurst, laser-like in its intensity, her hand now firmly clutching his arm. There is anger there and something else. Mulder feels the urge to reach out, to reassure but something about her makes him hold back and wait. Crowding would be unwelcome now.
Hurst shakes his head. “Some things just shouldn’t be uncovered. The cost is too high. We just care about the science.”
”And we only care about the truth.” Scully’s hand snaps from Hurst’s arm and on the ricochet, Hurst steps away, his face creased and crumpled. He eyes Scully.
“Miss Scully, I don’t wish to get into an argument with you. Please, just leave this alone. Go back to Washington and continue with your normal life.”
Scully shakes her head. “You know, I think Mulder’s right. It’s all just a big act, luring us out here, arranging this cloak and dagger meeting. You’re out to discredit us.” A bitter smile twists at her lips.
Hurst’s eyes drop to his feet. “None of this was an act.”
Mulder feels an anger in him begin to itch. The pure impudence of this man is unbelievable. His hand clench at his sides. “So tell us about the helicopter, about the crop circle? What the hell do you want from us?”
Hurst shrugs, a light, blasé movement and Mulder cannot contain himself. Hurst flinches as Mulder’s face comes within inches of his own, seething, ready to explode. “I want an answer from you, Hurst.” Mulder looks back at Scully, who is watching closely. “We both do.”
There is a pause, a slight puff of breath from Hurst’s lips as he shuffles back from Mulder’s intense glare. “Then you better come outside.”
They follow him into the street, Hurst walking towards a back alley a few yards from the diner, his nervous glances to his surroundings almost theatrical. The late afternoon sun is fading slightly now, a slight chill coming to the breeze which ribbons through Scully’s hair. Mulder wishes he could touch her now, soften the severity of her face, the quick precision of her walk, but there is no room for gentleness here.
Hurst presses himself into the alley, and for a moment Mulder thinks about turning away and saying “screw it” to it all. Yet a little part of him, ever hopeful and single-minded, will not let go. He touches the small of Scully’s back, briefly, the slight pressure guiding her onwards without resistance.
“I am part of a group who is trying to protect the future study of this UFO-related phenomena,” says Hurst. “What you are doing is seriously jeopardising our integrity as an organisation and any covert support we have from higher up to continue without interference.”
Scully shakes her head. “So what do you call interfering in our investigation?”
Hurst’s face becomes grim. “Legitimate damage limitation.”
Mulder feels his patience wavering. “Hurst, just tell us what we want to know. I’m tired of this BS.”
“You shock me, Mr Mulder. I thought you more than anyone was dedicated to seeking out the truth and understood the delicacies and complexities such an undertaking requires. Yet your behaviour in this case has proven you are reckless and foolhardy and we have had to take measures to protect our ongoing studies.”
Scully fixes Hurst with a hard glare. “The helicopters… you and your organisation were behind them? Or someone linked to you?”
“Yes,” Hurst answers quickly. “You and your partner have no idea how much trouble you could cause. Perhaps, Miss Scully, you are becoming a malign influence on your partner’s reasoning. I am well aware of how personal passions can cloud the waters.”
Mulder swallows the rising hysteria which Hurst’s comments have caused - Scully the malign influence? That has to be a real turn up for the books. “Hurst, you’re out of your mind,” Mulder snaps.
Hurst takes the challenge. “Really? Very different to what I have seen and heard. Miss Scully’s lack of objectivity here is stunning.”
Mulder’s patience is now so thin that he can virtually feel it stretching threadbare between himself and Scully. Yet he does not worry about himself. She is the real danger. “So please go back to your butterfly net and leave us to the real work,” she says, her voice tight. “When we need fairytales and another goose chase, perhaps you could bother us again then.”
Mulder lets out a long breath of admiration. She is deadly. Hurst’s bluster has been well and truly deflated. Scully casts a frosty glower at him as she prepares her final shot.
“The truth, Mr Hurst, is that you’re just a pathetic little man who gets his kicks from making up stories.”
Mulder moves closer to her and his hand drifts to her shoulder, comforting and reminding her, I am here, I am on your side. He watches Hurst leave and doesn’t try to stop him.
“Agent Scully, I believe that you just solved our case.”
Neither of them adds the words “at least the parts we can solve”. One look between them completes the conversation and nothing else needs to be said.
~~
It’s late evening now and they’re back at the motel. Mulder had insisted on dinner and both of them had decided that a change of scene was needed, so they had found another small-town diner. Scully had half-picked, half-played with a paltry looking salad while Mulder had made small pickings with his steak. But they had talked. Kind of. Not about the case, not about Hurst or how he had led them chasing monsters with butterfly nets. Instead they had returned to the subject of Mulder’s recent dip in the Sargasso sea, of Scully’s mad dash to save him and the endless sceptic-believer dance had begun all over again.
Mulder grins at the memory and wonders when they will have to slip out of the reverie into the harsh light of truth. That again they have ran into nothing but smoke and mirrors - black ops helicopters and amazing crop circles are nothing for them to go on. Nothing they haven’t seen before. In the end, it doesn’t hold a drop of water and he doesn’t need Kersh to tell him that. The truth is still out there, definitely not here.
But still he wonders about the many unanswered questions. As he knows Scully does too. He can walk away from Kansas, leave this part of the puzzle for now. If it is connected to the bigger picture, he will figure out how. That simple faith maintains him.
Scully stretches and yawns. “Mulder, I’m beat.”
He flops down on the bed. “Me too. It’s been a long day, huh?”
“Yeah.” She smiles at him. “I guess we should both get some sleep.”
He nods and waits, expecting her to leave, but she does not. Instead she sits next to him on the bed, letting her arms sprawl out towards him. Their arms brush against one another and make the barest of contact.
“Scully, are you okay?” he asks.
“I’m fine.” Her typical answer, then. He looks at her for a moment, trying to eke the truth out of her. She smiles at him, lightly, but reveals nothing. Cryptic Scully is no huge surprise, he thinks philosophically.
“Let’s watch a movie.” He deliberately keeps his tone neutral.
She reacts with mock-horror at his suggestion, snatching the remote controls and hugging them to her chest. “Oh no, not some alien-chaser black-and-white B movie?”
“Nah, I was thinking of Thelma and Louise,” Mulder guffaws. “Now give me back the controls, Scully.”
She holds the remote controls out, her expression contemplative. “Only if I get Brad Pitt.”
“Brawn over brains! I am shocked.” Mulder may be putting on a show, but he is genuinely intrigued by this revelation of Scully’s hidden penchant for pretty boys.
She draws the remote controls back. “Hey, those are my terms.”
“Fine,” he concedes, taking the remote controls from her. “Anyway, Susan Sarandon is hot.”
Scully glances at him, curious. “You know, Mulder? You surprise me.”
“Why?” This conversation, he thinks, is taking some interesting turns.
“Well, I would have pegged you for Geena Davis.”
He gazes at her, feelings crackling in his system that he has long tried to control. He has to be careful now, oh so very careful. Lightly, gently, he proceeds, but he has to say this. It’s nearly bursting in his chest. “Smart is sexy, Scully.”
They stare at each other, and it’s suddenly as if all the air has been sucked out of the room. One sudden touch or a move in the wrong or right direction, and everything could change, could turn on a penny. Are they ready? Mulder doesn’t know, he’s not sure if he cares, but it’s okay, because Scully is grinning at him.
“You have good taste,” she allows and then nudges him. “Put the movie on, Mulder.”
He puts the TV on and some movie comes on, that is neither alien chasing or chick flick, but some action adventure they both settle for. She leans into him slightly, and he instinctively knows that she won’t see the end of the film because she is sleepy and won’t be able to stay awake.
He doesn’t mind. Time with Scully is a good thing. They have tomorrow for being serious and staid. Tonight he can pretend they are two normal people watching TV and let his head and heart run free with the possibilities. He can imagine a life that is different for both of them.
Who knows, he ponders, maybe one day they will get a normal life?
Author: Wendy.
Email: starrycynic@aim.com
Disclaimer: I am not Chris Carter and never will be. It's all his.
Summary: Mulder leads Scully off to investigate crop circles in Kansas and inadvertently the dynamics of their complex interaction. Set in early Season 6 of The X Files, just after "Triangle".
Rating: Low on the blush-o-meter.
A Different Sort of Life 4/4
The whir and bustle of the laptop’s modem disturbs the peace of the motel room. Scully looks up from reading at the desk, and adjusts her glasses as they shuffle down from their perch on the bridge of her nose. There is an innocence in the gesture that spins him back in time, to when her hair was longer, her suits were looser and there was no chip in the back of her neck. He blinks and a shorter haired Scully frowns up at him.
“What?”
He raises his head from his prone position on the bed, an eyebrow shrug quickly dismissing her question. There is no responding challenge, no pressing for an answer and she is back to her reading. An odd sense of disappointment settles over him, but he lets it go, allowing it to slip through the empty spaces and hollow parts of him until it sinks away and out of sight. The laptop’s screen flares brightly as words and images fill its void. Over the slow, crawling connection the modem has afforded, the webpage has finally loaded.
He scans it quickly. Crop circles, crop circles, crop circles, all electromagnetic energy and light anomalies. Nothing out of the ordinary for this field. He wonders what he is hoping to find. Some reference to unmarked helicopters and manure perhaps? How about a big flashing sign saying “Here’s all your answers, Mulder! The truth! The aliens! What happened to your sister, to Scully… and a bonus year’s supply of Turtlewax!” He rubs his eyes and turns away from the screen.
“Anything interesting?” The suddenness of her question startles him and he looks at her confused. She pushes her papers onto the desk and stands up. “No earth-shattering theories on crop circle formations and its links to a higher power?”
He shakes his head and points to an artist’s impression of an UFO shooting a beam of light onto a field. “Not unless you count Beam Me Up Scottie’s rendition here.”
She shoos him away from the bed, taking his place in front of the laptop. He crouches behind her, peering over her shoulder. “Well.” She takes a deep breath. “That’s certainly an impressive beam.”
He chokes down a smirk. “Nothing like my flashlight.”
She pushes the laptop away from her, colours and words becoming dimmer in their shift from the overhead light. “I was just reviewing the paperwork we need to file to Kersh. It would appear that Mr Colwyn checks out. Thoroughly.”
He waits.
“Mulder, I’m saying that we have no legitimate reason to stay.”
“Since when has that stopped us?” She clears her throat, looking sideways at him. “Okay, me,” he corrects.
“After all the warnings we’ve received, the rope we have around our necks…” He watches her hands trace the pale skin around her throat, winding and constricting. “Is this worth jeopardising our careers for, jeopardising getting the X Files back? I need to be sure.”
“What happened to your big theory? To trusting your instincts?” His words come out in a push of irritation, little breathless bombs that fall upon their target with deadly accuracy. She stands and steps away. He feels instantly guilty, angry with himself that he has allowed himself to selfishly plough headlong into the well of her pain. He softens and releases the guilt. It will not serve him now. “Listen,” he says. “This morning you were so certain that Colwyn is hiding something that you were hellbent on finding any inconsistency you could to pin on him. What’s changed?”
She looks at her feet. No amount of his stare makes her look up. “I can’t let personal issues prejudice my judgement on this.”
He joins her in standing. Her eyes stay on a downward course as he moves closer, sliding honey-like into the tight whorls of her personal space. “So don’t make it personal. This is about the work.”
“Since when-” and she stops, eyes arced up sharply, directly into his gaze. “This can only be about the work.”
A pause. Breath caught for a spinning moment as he focuses on the crystal ball held upon her face, hoping to catch a glimpse of what the future will be. He reads the indeterminable in her eyes and is no closer to understanding what she wants or where he fits in. He goes on the only thing he knows. “So we stay?”
A step back and she is freestanding again. “We stay.”
The trill of his cell phone interrupts. He answers it.
“Fox Mulder,” crackles a male voice. “Hello again.”
Eyes quirk up, stalemate forgotten. He is possibly about to encounter something very, very interesting. Scully approaches and hovers beside him. “Again? Do we know each other?”
“Yes,” the man responds quickly. “I suggest we meet. There’s something I have to share that may prove enlightening.”
Something about the forced precision of the language pulls at a memory. Formal, clipped, yet strangely tentative. He has never heard this voice, but he recognises its rhythms from the many emails he has exchanged with its owner. “Is that Hurst?” he asks. There is no immediate answer. Target sighted. He puffs a loud impatient breath. “Okay, Hurst. Enlighten me.”
“Meet me in two hours at the pre-arranged meeting place.”
“Wha-” The line clicks dead before Mulder can speak. He drops his cell phone onto the bed and sinks down after it. “Looks like interesting just got less so,” his dry mumble lost to the scramble of hands on face. Another wild goose chase is all he needs.
Scully’s voice cuts through. “Who’s Hurst?” His mouth opens but she does not pause to give him breath. “Don’t tell me. He’s your reliable source.”
“And he’ll be very reliably meeting us in a couple of hours.”
“In a dingy diner somewhere, I bet?” He shrugs. “Maybe one day we could actually rewrite the cliché of dark and mysterious and try clean and decent.”
“And spoil my fun, Scully?” Her lips become a pressed pout. “Come on. It’s a cup of coffee. Almost as good as dinner and a movie, if you throw in my scintillating conversation.”
“Mulder, if that’s your idea of a good date, you’re way out of practice.”
He nods. “Probably.”
“I didn’t mean….” She is tentative, looking at him softly. There is something indistinguishable flickering among the concern of her half-turned lip and wide eyes. Panic rushes and he raises his hand to cease her apologies, letting his fingers curl up into his palm. She accedes, picking up her things on her way out through the connecting door leading to her room.
“I’ll see you later.”
A quiet echo and her voice, her presence, are gone. He turns off the laptop and waits for two hours to pass.
~~
The diner is brighter than Mulder expected. Scully glances at him, face held carefully neutral before she avails him with an uplift of eyes and chin. He opens the gambit.
“Not bad, huh?”
She picks a table and slips into a moulded plastic seat. “Well, Mulder, I have to say I’m almost kind of impressed.”
“Almost?” Odd disappointment settles upon him as he seats himself opposite her. The word takes on proportions it usually would not, his mind still ruminating on their earlier discussion. He was hoping they would return to their old form in the elastic band resilience their relationship has always shown in the backdraft of any rift or disagreement. “Almost” now seems a subtext for what is wrong between them, for the words and thoughts neither of them can unsay. It as if their bond is becoming saggy and overstretched, something lacking that he can’t quite put his finger upon. An awkwardness remains that neither of them can shift. How many times will he wish today that he had never mentioned the word “date” to her?
Her eyes slide slyly towards him, as she folds her hands into her lap. “Couldn’t give it up that easily.”
Opportunity is afoot, a gap he has to fill, and he delivers with a practised almost wink. “That’s what all the good Catholic girls say.”
She freezes him with ice cold eyes but a shimmer of smile is about her lips. He allows himself the victory of a semi-reaction and leaves her to her silence. It is somehow more interesting to him to sit and watch as she rearranges the salt and pepper shakers to sit in a neat line either side of the bowl of sweeteners, the distracting game of a woman bored and in desperate need to kill time without talking to her companion. Their stock of easy banter and small talk has temporarily run dry.
He thinks about what it would be like to get dinner with her when they weren’t on a case, weren’t lonely or too late to get the company of anyone else. For them to just talk and eat, drink and laugh, and argue over who gets the bill. To do something normal and utterly alien to his life, to their life. Would it be so hard to step out of the shadows, to stop worrying about the endless twists and chases and dangers of life, to let go, to just be Fox Mulder again? Whoever he is.
Odd slivers of his time on the Queen Anne return to him, memories or hallucinations he does not know. Scully in a red dress, hair up in a thirties do, attitude unmistakably frosty and taking no crap. He has never seen Scully in a going out dress; he doesn’t even know if she owns one. Probably she does. That’s a woman thing, like shoes and purses. He imagines the type she would wear, something elegant and simple, form fitting with just the slightest hint of cleavage to offset the formality of her attire. To remind herself that first and foremost she is Dana, she is a woman with wants and desires, a woman who could lead a normal life. He sees flashes of this in her work clothes, her personality and confidence styling the suits tighter, the shoes higher, all while she becomes more solidly encased in the archetype that is Scully. Tough, loyal and formidable. His partner, Mrs Spooky. It’s one hell of a label to heft through life, through the hallways of the FBI. And she does it with a quiet authority that silences any naysayers or critics. That makes them regard her with a grudging respect. Because of her, he is not quite a lost cause. Because of her, he still wants to believe. In something, anything or nothing more meaningful than being an empty hollow man in an even more barren life. Samuel Beckett doesn’t speak to him any more than T.S. Eliot. Even if he believes in channelling, he is beyond the wisdom of dead literary greats now. Sitting in a diner, waiting for the next big tip off, the latest sign that will either damn him or save him, or leave him hopelessly, eternally adrift in a limbo with no answers and no truth. He has only Scully for company in this peculiar version of purgatory and for all his fears and nightmares, he is glad she will share the burden another day.
For reasons not entirely clear to him, this has become her quest as well as his. To know the truth, for more than the whys and hows of what they did to her, what they took, for more than justice, has enflamed her. His ideals, his motivations have somehow enmeshed with hers, growing into something independent and fierce that will not die. Because he cares, because he believes so passionately and blindly, she continues with him to see this journey through, to make sure they reach the end of the path to the truth intact. She is his one in five billion and there is no one else who could take her place.
The door clatters open and he looks up, catching her eye as he does so. She is anticipatory, keen for the mystery of the source to be revealed. The path she is taking leads to the familiar, safe and solid ground on which he knows where he is. He follows her.
“The moment you’ve been waiting for, Scully.”
Her lips catch in a reluctant smile before she switches her attention to the man approaching their table. Average height, skinny, wispy dark brown hair and in his early thirties, dressed in a dark anorak and loose, faded jeans. This has to be Hurst.
“Thanks for meeting me,” Hurst says, ducking his head down as he sits beside Scully. Mulder notices that she gives Hurst an appraising glance, as if she is quantifying the weight of evidence of his worth. Hurst presses his lips together, pensive, eyes fixed upon his hands. Hiding something, the more suspicious part of Mulder’s nature supplies. He tries to dismiss it, but the nagging feeling remains.
“You must be Dana Scully,” says Hurst quietly, hands gesturing towards Scully, but his eyes never leaving their downwards slant. She nods and looks away. She’s uncertain and Mulder feels no easier.
Hurst looks up and his eyes pincer Mulder’s. “You are getting yourself into some seriously deep water with the lines of investigation you’re pursuing.”
Annoyance flares in Mulder. “What do you mean?” Hurst’s watered down eyes remain blank at the sharp hiss of Mulder’s voice. “You asked me to come here. You led me-”. Scully frowns. Mulder quickly corrects his mistake. “You led us into this investigation. Now you’re reading the riot act. What kind of crap are you trying to pull here?”
Hurst leans in close. “The real question should be what are you and Miss Scully trying to pull?”
“Who are you?” Scully speaks sharply.
“My name is Trevor Hurst. I’m a member of the local MUFON chapter.” Mulder looks at him impatiently, but Hurst remains unhurried. “Our focus is scientific study, and in this case we are specifically concerned with crop circles, not government conspiracies.”
Mulder’s mouth opens, angry bursts of emotion tussling to burst through, but Scully slides in quickly, cool and composed, leaving him in her wake. “Need I remind you, Mr Hurst, that not only am I a scientist, but Agent Mulder and myself are experienced investigators. We proceed based on the evidence in hand.” She lays her hands flat on the table, watching Hurst’s arrogance flail as her response has its slow and calculated impact. She draws herself upright in her chair, preparing her final damning statement. “If your opinion of Agent Mulder’s investigative skills is as high as your pursuance of him would suggest, I recommend that you allow him to continue unencumbered.”
“I cannot be connected to all of this!” Hurst stares at her, pure panic in his eyes. “None of us can.”
“Who’s us?” Scully asks.
Hurst stands up, determined to make his exit. “I think we’ve talked enough.”
“No.” Scully’s hand is now poised upon his arm, like a claw ready to snap into its unwilling victim. He stills. “You can’t just come here with BS and doubletalk and expect us to roll over and play dead. We deserve answers here.”
Mulder places his hand over Scully’s, ready to release Hurst’s arm from its grip. “Let him go, Scully.” Her mouth twists, eyes flicking to his, as Mulder watches her struggle to make sense of his actions. He knows that she will not understand but he sees something that she doesn’t, senses something that she can’t: Hurst is a dead end. And they have chased around in too many circles for too many years for him to lead them into yet more of the lies.
“Mulder.”
She says his name quietly and it is all the warning he needs. He takes away his hand without argument, all fire now launched towards Hurst. “He doesn’t know anything.”
Now Hurst looks at him, indignation blaring. “I know more than you’ll ever realise.”
“So why get us involved?” Scully’s sharp stare cuts into Hurst, laser-like in its intensity, her hand now firmly clutching his arm. There is anger there and something else. Mulder feels the urge to reach out, to reassure but something about her makes him hold back and wait. Crowding would be unwelcome now.
Hurst shakes his head. “Some things just shouldn’t be uncovered. The cost is too high. We just care about the science.”
”And we only care about the truth.” Scully’s hand snaps from Hurst’s arm and on the ricochet, Hurst steps away, his face creased and crumpled. He eyes Scully.
“Miss Scully, I don’t wish to get into an argument with you. Please, just leave this alone. Go back to Washington and continue with your normal life.”
Scully shakes her head. “You know, I think Mulder’s right. It’s all just a big act, luring us out here, arranging this cloak and dagger meeting. You’re out to discredit us.” A bitter smile twists at her lips.
Hurst’s eyes drop to his feet. “None of this was an act.”
Mulder feels an anger in him begin to itch. The pure impudence of this man is unbelievable. His hand clench at his sides. “So tell us about the helicopter, about the crop circle? What the hell do you want from us?”
Hurst shrugs, a light, blasé movement and Mulder cannot contain himself. Hurst flinches as Mulder’s face comes within inches of his own, seething, ready to explode. “I want an answer from you, Hurst.” Mulder looks back at Scully, who is watching closely. “We both do.”
There is a pause, a slight puff of breath from Hurst’s lips as he shuffles back from Mulder’s intense glare. “Then you better come outside.”
They follow him into the street, Hurst walking towards a back alley a few yards from the diner, his nervous glances to his surroundings almost theatrical. The late afternoon sun is fading slightly now, a slight chill coming to the breeze which ribbons through Scully’s hair. Mulder wishes he could touch her now, soften the severity of her face, the quick precision of her walk, but there is no room for gentleness here.
Hurst presses himself into the alley, and for a moment Mulder thinks about turning away and saying “screw it” to it all. Yet a little part of him, ever hopeful and single-minded, will not let go. He touches the small of Scully’s back, briefly, the slight pressure guiding her onwards without resistance.
“I am part of a group who is trying to protect the future study of this UFO-related phenomena,” says Hurst. “What you are doing is seriously jeopardising our integrity as an organisation and any covert support we have from higher up to continue without interference.”
Scully shakes her head. “So what do you call interfering in our investigation?”
Hurst’s face becomes grim. “Legitimate damage limitation.”
Mulder feels his patience wavering. “Hurst, just tell us what we want to know. I’m tired of this BS.”
“You shock me, Mr Mulder. I thought you more than anyone was dedicated to seeking out the truth and understood the delicacies and complexities such an undertaking requires. Yet your behaviour in this case has proven you are reckless and foolhardy and we have had to take measures to protect our ongoing studies.”
Scully fixes Hurst with a hard glare. “The helicopters… you and your organisation were behind them? Or someone linked to you?”
“Yes,” Hurst answers quickly. “You and your partner have no idea how much trouble you could cause. Perhaps, Miss Scully, you are becoming a malign influence on your partner’s reasoning. I am well aware of how personal passions can cloud the waters.”
Mulder swallows the rising hysteria which Hurst’s comments have caused - Scully the malign influence? That has to be a real turn up for the books. “Hurst, you’re out of your mind,” Mulder snaps.
Hurst takes the challenge. “Really? Very different to what I have seen and heard. Miss Scully’s lack of objectivity here is stunning.”
Mulder’s patience is now so thin that he can virtually feel it stretching threadbare between himself and Scully. Yet he does not worry about himself. She is the real danger. “So please go back to your butterfly net and leave us to the real work,” she says, her voice tight. “When we need fairytales and another goose chase, perhaps you could bother us again then.”
Mulder lets out a long breath of admiration. She is deadly. Hurst’s bluster has been well and truly deflated. Scully casts a frosty glower at him as she prepares her final shot.
“The truth, Mr Hurst, is that you’re just a pathetic little man who gets his kicks from making up stories.”
Mulder moves closer to her and his hand drifts to her shoulder, comforting and reminding her, I am here, I am on your side. He watches Hurst leave and doesn’t try to stop him.
“Agent Scully, I believe that you just solved our case.”
Neither of them adds the words “at least the parts we can solve”. One look between them completes the conversation and nothing else needs to be said.
~~
It’s late evening now and they’re back at the motel. Mulder had insisted on dinner and both of them had decided that a change of scene was needed, so they had found another small-town diner. Scully had half-picked, half-played with a paltry looking salad while Mulder had made small pickings with his steak. But they had talked. Kind of. Not about the case, not about Hurst or how he had led them chasing monsters with butterfly nets. Instead they had returned to the subject of Mulder’s recent dip in the Sargasso sea, of Scully’s mad dash to save him and the endless sceptic-believer dance had begun all over again.
Mulder grins at the memory and wonders when they will have to slip out of the reverie into the harsh light of truth. That again they have ran into nothing but smoke and mirrors - black ops helicopters and amazing crop circles are nothing for them to go on. Nothing they haven’t seen before. In the end, it doesn’t hold a drop of water and he doesn’t need Kersh to tell him that. The truth is still out there, definitely not here.
But still he wonders about the many unanswered questions. As he knows Scully does too. He can walk away from Kansas, leave this part of the puzzle for now. If it is connected to the bigger picture, he will figure out how. That simple faith maintains him.
Scully stretches and yawns. “Mulder, I’m beat.”
He flops down on the bed. “Me too. It’s been a long day, huh?”
“Yeah.” She smiles at him. “I guess we should both get some sleep.”
He nods and waits, expecting her to leave, but she does not. Instead she sits next to him on the bed, letting her arms sprawl out towards him. Their arms brush against one another and make the barest of contact.
“Scully, are you okay?” he asks.
“I’m fine.” Her typical answer, then. He looks at her for a moment, trying to eke the truth out of her. She smiles at him, lightly, but reveals nothing. Cryptic Scully is no huge surprise, he thinks philosophically.
“Let’s watch a movie.” He deliberately keeps his tone neutral.
She reacts with mock-horror at his suggestion, snatching the remote controls and hugging them to her chest. “Oh no, not some alien-chaser black-and-white B movie?”
“Nah, I was thinking of Thelma and Louise,” Mulder guffaws. “Now give me back the controls, Scully.”
She holds the remote controls out, her expression contemplative. “Only if I get Brad Pitt.”
“Brawn over brains! I am shocked.” Mulder may be putting on a show, but he is genuinely intrigued by this revelation of Scully’s hidden penchant for pretty boys.
She draws the remote controls back. “Hey, those are my terms.”
“Fine,” he concedes, taking the remote controls from her. “Anyway, Susan Sarandon is hot.”
Scully glances at him, curious. “You know, Mulder? You surprise me.”
“Why?” This conversation, he thinks, is taking some interesting turns.
“Well, I would have pegged you for Geena Davis.”
He gazes at her, feelings crackling in his system that he has long tried to control. He has to be careful now, oh so very careful. Lightly, gently, he proceeds, but he has to say this. It’s nearly bursting in his chest. “Smart is sexy, Scully.”
They stare at each other, and it’s suddenly as if all the air has been sucked out of the room. One sudden touch or a move in the wrong or right direction, and everything could change, could turn on a penny. Are they ready? Mulder doesn’t know, he’s not sure if he cares, but it’s okay, because Scully is grinning at him.
“You have good taste,” she allows and then nudges him. “Put the movie on, Mulder.”
He puts the TV on and some movie comes on, that is neither alien chasing or chick flick, but some action adventure they both settle for. She leans into him slightly, and he instinctively knows that she won’t see the end of the film because she is sleepy and won’t be able to stay awake.
He doesn’t mind. Time with Scully is a good thing. They have tomorrow for being serious and staid. Tonight he can pretend they are two normal people watching TV and let his head and heart run free with the possibilities. He can imagine a life that is different for both of them.
Who knows, he ponders, maybe one day they will get a normal life?