#most of this is just preliminary thoughts from study hall this morning I could probably expand on this if I gave in and rewatched soul eater | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

kateyes224 · 8 years ago

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A Preponderance of the Evidence: Subpoena (Part 1 of 3)

Author: KatEyes224 Rating: Teen (For language) Timeline: Post-ep for Never Again and Memento Mori.

A/N: Many thanks to @crossedbeams and @2momsmakearight for the brainstorming sessions and suggestions. And, of course, love and hugs to my angelface baeta, @piecesofscully.

March in D.C. is considered to be the harbinger of spring. But on days like today, the third straight day in what’s being reported to be a week-long downpour mixed with sleet and possible snow flurries, Mulder doubts whether spring will come at all. Under his umbrella, he stares up at the sky and flips his coat collar up against the biting wind before jamming his gloved hands back in his pockets.

Spring shouldn’t look like this; nearly every day this month he’s awoken to a morning that barely bothers to brighten past the point of endless gray monotony. Precipitation falls in bleak sheets of either rain or something that wants desperately to be snow. It’s depressing. It sure as hell isn’t spring.

Watery sunlight sieves through the haze overhead. It’s Friday, and even though the rain has let up a bit, the Mall is practically deserted. With no one to purse her lips and remind him that nitrates are terrible for his heart and studies have shown they’re a leading cause of cancer, he buys and chokes down a couple hot dogs from a vendor near the Smithsonian. A banner draped from the roof of the museum proclaims that next month will feature an exhibit on Buddhist healing practices through the ages.

He makes a mental note to mention it next time he sees her. She’d probably get a kick out of it. If she’s back at work by then.

Despite the damp chill, Mulder decides to keep walking. No need to head back to his empty basement just yet.

His thoughts drift, as they always seem to lately, to Scully. She’s been out of the office most of the week for her latest round of chemotherapy. Before she’d left, she’d implored him to get the expense report for one of their recent cases done before he left for the weekend so they wouldn’t piss off accounting. Again. She’d shrugged into her trench and thrown what he’d assumed was meant to be an encouraging smile over her shoulder before the cadence of her heels had been swallowed by the elevator.

That had been on Tuesday. Mulder still hasn’t gotten the expense report done. He’s been telling himself it’s because he doesn’t have the last receipt he needs from the rental car company, but that doesn’t explain why he hasn’t been reviewing other possible new cases. Preparing slide shows for himself is next to useless. With no one to interrupt him or roll her eyes at his wildest pre-investigatory conjectures, he doesn’t really see the point.

He wonders when he started thinking of his work as something that he could no longer do without her.

Soon he realizes he’s wandered farther from the Hoover building than he originally intended; the dark, solid angles of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial slope like a scar from the ground up ahead. Mulder’s eyes roam unseeing over the thousands of names etched into the black stone.

He remembers that Skinner had once told him about his time during the war; that he had died and seen himself and his dead platoon from above in the jungles of Vietnam before returning to his body. An autoscopy that Mulder could relate to, then. He, too, had felt like he was living outside of himself since Scully had been returned to him after her abduction. Returned by whoever or whatever had taken her so that he could watch her die. He’d wanted to quit.

He’s started to feel that way again, like the fight is leaving him little by little. She’s dying, slower this time, and it's left him feeling untethered, without the pull of her to ground him.

It’s so overcast that his reflection is naught but a ghost, formless as he drifts along the wall. When he finally stops walking, the echo of his footsteps dies as the wind picks up.

He realizes that he’s standing in almost exactly the same spot he was in when he’d been talking to Sevlov Pudovkin.

Shivering despite his coat and gloves, he grits his teeth to keep them from chattering and wonders what the hell he’d been thinking dragging Scully out of bed in the middle of the night to meet with the man.

What time had it been? Almost 3 in the morning, and well below freezing that night. When had he begun to just expect her to accompany him without complaint on his insomniac escapades to meet with questionable informants? No wonder she’d walked away from them. She’d probably just been trying to keep the blood flowing in her limbs. But her mind had been elsewhere, too. Remembering her distraction suddenly, Mulder turns and looks around to see what might have grabbed her attention.

His eyes wander over the names on the wall. Had she been looking for someone’s name? A friend, a cousin, an uncle? His gaze drops when a bright red model car with orange blazes on the side catches his eye from the ground.

Stooping, he mouths the words to himself as he reads the note left under the car, barely legible now that the ink has bled in the rain. “Dear brother, Twenty years later, I still miss you. We know what you did was right.”

Mulder takes a gloved hand out of his pocket and traces the flames on the side of the car. He doesn’t know the make or model of the toy, but Scully would. She’s a font of random trivia, able to fill the gaps where his own eidetic memory falls short.

What had this message meant to her? Why would she would take and keep a petal from the roses left behind these words? To remind herself of something...but what? She’d seemed to question the agency she had not only over her own life, but the importance she had in his.

He’d thought, after the Roche case, that they had finally turned a corner. But after Philadelphia...

“This is my life.”

He remembers reeling as if she’d slapped him. The set of her mouth and the arch of her brow made it perfectly clear as she’d stared at him unblinking that he’d vastly overestimated his role in her life.

“Yes, but it’s m-”

Her defiantly lifted chin had dared Mulder to contradict her, knowing that he wouldn’t. For once in his life, she’d rendered him speechless.

In the silence that had followed, the thought that she might not always want to be there with him had reverberated in the air around them like a tuning fork had been struck. For the first time since Diana had left, he was painfully reacquainted with the idea that this woman might one day desire to leave the X-Files; and that would necessarily mean wanting to leave him.

A foreign, bitter taste had tinged his palate. It was hard to detect and even more difficult to admit to, but as soon as he’d recognized it for what it was - jealousy - he’d bitten his tongue, indefinitely postponing yet another conversation that he and Scully might never have.

A gust of bitterly cold wind jolts Mulder back to the present, his umbrella shuddering. Still stooped on one knee, he glances down to see the few remaining petals scatter, soft and rotting. Picking one up, he puts it in his pocket before turning back towards Pennsylvania Avenue.

xxxxx

As soon as the elevator doors hiss open, Mulder hears the muffled brrrrring of his desk phone echoing down the hall from behind the closed door of his basement office. Fumbling his keyring out of his jacket pocket, he sprints the last few yards, hoping it’s Scully calling to check in.

He unlocks the door and turns the handle in one deft motion, wills the phone to keep ringing. He barely manages to snag it off of its cradle, exhaling a breathless, “Yeah, Mulder,” into the receiver just before the call goes to voicemail.

“I’m sorry, who is this?” a woman’s curt voice questions, the Mid-Atlantic syllables choppy from the other end of the line.

“Special Agent Fox Mulder,” he enunciates slowly, not recognizing the voice. “Who is this?”

“This is Assistant District Attorney Regina Flores-Venegas, from the Philadelphia DA’s Office. I’m calling to speak with Special Agent Dana Scully,” the woman says, her words clipped and tinged with an impatient air of authority. “Is she there? This is the number she gave to Philly P.D.”

Mulder blinks, switching the phone to his other ear and shedding his coat to stall for a few seconds while his brain churns slowly into gear, the pieces gradually clicking into place. Philadelphia. District Attorney. Police. His heart rate doubles, sounding a throbbing, steady bassline in his ears. Jerse.

“Uh, no, I’m sorry. Agent Scully’s not here. She’s on medical leave for the next couple of days.” Mulder swallows and clears his throat, wincing past the glassy shards of hurt and resentment that have been lodged there since she’d walked through his door bruised and beaten, but still ready to do battle.

He glances over his shoulder at Scully’s tidy tabletop area, where she’d usually be sitting now with her legs crossed, looking up at him with a quirk of her brow as she mouthed, “Who is it?”

Why don’t I have a desk?

He’d made a space in his office, in his life, where her desk should be. With few exceptions, that had been more than he’d been willing to do for Diana, at least in the office. Scully had certainly made enough room for herself in his heart over the last four years. Why had he thought clearing a surface for her in the back corner would ever be enough?

Mulder holds the phone to his ear with his shoulder, presses the heels of his hands into his eye sockets, staving off a sudden headache.

“Is there something I can help you with, Ms. Venegas?”

“No, not unless you can give me another contact number for Agent Scully. It’s important that I speak with her as soon as possible,” Venegas replies. Her tone brooks no argument; this is a woman who is used to getting what she wants, and quickly.

“I’m sorry, Agent Scully is unavailable,” Mulder repeats slowly. “But I can deliver a message for her?”

“Just take down my number and ask Agent Scully to contact me immediately. This is in relation to an upcoming preliminary hearing that has just been confirmed for next week,” Venegas barrels on, all business. “It’s important that I speak with her. Immediately,” she stresses again.

“And what case can I tell her this is in relation to?” Mulder asks gently. The interrogator in him recognizes that lowering his register to a non-threatening tone might convey a desire to help and an eagerness to placate. It’s a tone that he hopes doesn’t sound at all like he’s trying to needle for more information. Which he most certainly isn’t.

“The defendant’s name is Edward Jerse,” Venegas says, a whisper of paper in the background telling Mulder that she’s flipping through her file. “This is regarding a homicide and attempted murder. Agent Scully was the sole surviving victim.” Venegas pauses, and the crisp sound of her file snapping closed punctuates her next point. “She should remember the case.”

Mulder chews on his bottom lip. Scully certainly remembers the case, but she hadn’t spoken about that night since she’d come back from Philadelphia, choosing instead to let her wounds scab over in private.

While her physical scars knit themselves neatly shut, she’d also been hard at work reinforcing the wall of stone and steel that surrounded her heart. She’d taken two days of medical leave after the Philadelphia Incident, as Mulder had come to refer to it in his head. She’d not bothered to call him until she was home safe and sound after being discharged from Jeanes Hospital. And even that call had been suspiciously devoid of detail.

“Mulder, I won’t be coming in on Monday. I’m taking a couple of days of sick leave. I’ll see you Wednesday morning.”

She’d called when she’d known he wouldn’t have answered, leaving a voicemail less than ten seconds in length.

It wasn’t until Skinner had called him later that night to update him on her “condition” that Mulder had realized something had gone wrong. Terribly, horribly wrong.

And since she’d forwarded a copy of her written statement directly to the Philadelphia P.D., he’d not seen it or signed off it before she’d sent it off.

Mulder had to admire her handiwork. For once, she’d made sure that he had been the one left completely and utterly in the dark.

He had known then that the line they’d both been respecting and at the same time pretending didn’t exist was not going to hold for much longer. He’d been ready to sit her down and take her to task for her recklessness, hoping that by doing so he’d tangentially broach this weighty, cumbersome thing that was burgeoning between them, that had been affecting their work, affecting them.

But then, almost a week after she’d been back, he’d gotten her heart-stopping early-morning call from the oncology ward at Holy Cross Memorial. She’d asked him in her most subdued doctor voice to meet her, and no she didn’t want him to pick up any coffee for her but thanks for asking, before she’d hung up.

He knew that any hope he’d had of finding out what had really happened with Jerse that night needed to be banished indefinitely. Knew it the instant his eyes blurred and he lost focus on the stark black and white of her CT scan. His mind had needed to recalibrate itself on nothing but the Rorschach-splotch of tumor that was invading her brain. Everything else could wait.

Mulder shakes his head, jarring himself back to the present. “Why is the Philly D.A. handling this case?” he asks. “The feds should have taken this one over, right?”

A quick exhale of air into his ear tells him that playing dumb is not going to get him anything useful from this attorney.

“Agent…Mulder, is it?” Venegas spits into the phone, not waiting for an answer. “I got word just yesterday before my prelim confirmed that the feds had no interest in pursuing this case on their own, and it was being lumped into my homicide case. Why your people decided not to press charges and leave that to my office is beyond me. Seems to me like it wouldn’t do much for morale over there at the Bureau if your people aren’t willing to take on an attempted murder of one of their own. But that’s neither here nor there,” Venegas says, barely able to hide her derision.

She hardly pauses to take a breath before continuing, “All I know is, I have a defendant who’s refusing to waive time, and that means my murder prelim is coming up fast and hard on Monday. It’s Friday, in case you weren’t aware. This is going to be a multi-day hearing, I’m going to have to work my ass off over the weekend to get this case prepped, and all I’m asking for is an email address where I can forward Agent Scully a subpoena and a copy of her statement so I can review it with her over the phone before she drives up here, so we don’t waste one another’s time. Do you think you can handle giving me her contact information, or do you just want to be an asshole and forward me to personnel?” By the time she finishes, she’s panting slightly.

Mulder’s eyebrows lift higher as she steamrolls on, finally settling somewhere near his hairline. “Listen, Ms. Venegas, Agent Scully is gravely ill at the moment,” he states firmly. He hopes Venegas can’t hear the tremor in his voice as the memory of her sunken-in eyes and hollowed-out cheekbones flashes through his mind.

Mulder blinks and physically shakes his head to banish the image of her, frail and slight in a robe four sizes too big, shuffling back down the hall of the oncology ward to her room. “I think you may want to inform the magistrate that there may be good cause for a continuance in this case based on the fact that your key witness is on medical leave for the foreseeable future and-“

“Agent Mulder?” Venegas interrupts. “There’s this thing, it’s called the Sixth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, and it guarantees its citizens a right to a speedy and public trial.” Venegas sighs heavily into the phone, remains silent for several long seconds. “Look, I don’t like it either, but the defendant is not waiving his right to a speedy trial in this case, and there’s nothing I can do about that. So, unless Agent Scully is on death’s doorstep…” Venegas trails off, and Mulder glances back again at Scully’s designated corner of his office, his eyes coming to rest on the burnished red of the rose petal she’d inexplicably kept.

Mulder’s eyes squeeze shut and he pinches the bridge of his nose. The dull ache in his head ratchets up a few notches to a fierce throbbing.

“Listen, Agent Mulder,” Venegas’ voice softens noticeably. Mulder recognizes that, like any good investigator, she is also probing for information. “I’m sensing some reticence on your part here, and I can understand, given the nature of this case why you’d want to protect your girlfriend, but-“

“Partner,” Mulder corrects bluntly. “I’m her partner.”

“Her partner?” Venegas questions, incredulous. “Well then where the hell were you when Agent Scully was investigating this Russian mafia lead for the feds?” Papers start furiously rustling again in the background. “And why don’t I have your written statement?”

Mulder sighs, shaking his head. “It’s a long story. I, uh...I wasn’t there. She was on her own.”

Venegas is silent for a long moment, and he can almost hear her mouth drop open. “No offense, but what the hell kind of a partner does that make you?” she demands. “Sending Agent Scully out there to chase down leads by herself in the roughest part of this city, without backup? Listen, I’m all for women’s lib, obviously, but those are some seriously fucked up investigating tactics you’ve got goin’ on over there.”

Mulder’s jaw tightens again. “Yeah? And where the fuck do you get off, exactly? You know nothing about our partnership!”

“Based on her written statements and interviews with detectives here, I know she met some random guy at a tattoo parlor, they exchanged phone numbers, and she went home with him that night, Agent Mulder, rather than back to her hotel. And nobody was the wiser until she ended up battered and beat to shit and almost thrown into an incinerator. So you tell me…” Venegas pauses momentarily before going in for the kill. “Is she just a really shitty FBI agent, or are you just a really shitty FBI partner?”

Mulder pulls the phone away from his ear and stares at it for a long moment. He curls his left hand into a fist, digging his fingernails into his palm to keep himself from slamming the receiver down and throwing the phone against the wall.

Raising the phone back up slowly to his ear, he says, “I’ll have her call you, Ms. Venegas,” through clenched teeth. He takes down her number, then hangs up and quickly dials the extension to Assistant Director Skinner’s secretary.

“Yeah, hi, Kimberly,” he says, shrugging his jacket back on and flipping his computer monitor off. “I’m going to be taking the rest of the afternoon off. Personal day.”

xxxxx

The drive from the Hoover building to Georgetown takes no time at all. It’s the middle of the day and traffic on the Beltway is light. Mulder lets his mind wander, tangling itself over the scant details he’s already memorized from the Jerse case, snagging on those few things he doesn’t know for certain but imagines to be true.

Things like whether Jerse had had to talk his straight-laced, Catechism-reciting partner into inking that vibrant red coil of a serpent onto her lower back, the lone photograph of which he’d pilfered from the file to study for hours. Or if it had been her idea, and she’d gone voluntarily, eagerly, even. Whether she’d cried out in pain or pleasure when Jerse’s hands had gripped her so hard he’d left the bruises on her arms and thighs that he’d glimpsed in the file before Scully had glared at him and snapped the file shut. Had those bite marks on her neck been made as she’d pulled away from him? Or had she lifted that exquisite jawline to bare herself to him, wanting him to mark her and hoping that he’d leave some tenable sign that she’d been with him?

Mulder’s grip on the steering wheel tightens the further he allows his vivid imagination to meander down that forbidden path. Thou shalt not covet thy platonic coworker’s body and soul. He ignores his cock hardening at those same thoughts, refuses to think about what kind of man that makes him, that he is simultaneously enraged and aroused by the thought of another man touching her.

Mulder glances down at his watch and notes that the hour is creeping towards 2 p.m. Scully’s latest chemotherapy appointment had been that morning, and he thinks that she’s probably getting hungry, or whatever the equivalent of hungry would be after going through her treatment. Mulder curses himself for not checking in with her after she'd started treatment, to ask her what she’d felt like afterwards, whether she’d felt like eating.

But she’d all but banished him from seeing her after her first round of chemo, demurring gently that her mother would take her home. She’d promised she’d call him if she needed anything. “I’m fine, Mulder,” she’d said when she’d shown up at work right on time the following Monday. Only the dark bruises beneath her eyes that she couldn’t manage to cover with make-up indicated that she might not actually be fine.

He hasn’t exactly been as attentive as he should be, but he has been there for her. Hasn’t he? He’s been busy with the Gunmen chasing down leads for possible alternative treatments rendered to other MUFON members, and he’d recently stolen a vial of her ova from a secret government lab (which he still hasn’t managed to tell her about, but that probably isn’t worth mentioning when she seems fragile enough to break). Mulder is trying his best to be useful, and the only way he knows to do that is to keep moving, keep fighting.

Irrespective of his cloak-and-dagger efforts to get her well, he hopes she knows that he is fighting for her. But how could she know? He’s seen so little of her lately. Aside from those few stolen moments in the hallway, when she’d smiled sadly up at him and vowed to keep working as he’d pulled her in close, he can’t remember the last time he’s felt connected to her.

Lost in thought as he zigzags his way towards her apartment, he wonders if she knows just how much he’s been thinking about her. When he drives past the corner deli near her house that he knows she likes, he makes up his mind suddenly that he needs to try harder. With a smile, he squeals into the next turn lane and pulls a U-turn, angling his car back towards the deli and stopping to get her some split pea soup and a half a turkey sandwich with sprouts and lite mayo, and an extra pickle on the side, just the way she likes it. On his way up to the cashier to pay, he also snags a bottle of ginger ale from a refrigerated cooler. Maybe it will help her stomach if she’s feeling nauseated.

Never let it be said that he isn’t a keen observer, he thinks to himself as he ties the white plastic bag’s handles in a knot and tucks the food under his arm. He still knows his Scully.

At least, he thinks as he slides into his car and tries desperately to banish the thought of her snow-white skin inflamed and reddened from the tattoo artist’s needle, he hopes he does.

xxxxx

Mulder arrives at her apartment just before 2:00 p.m., knocking a few quick raps. He starts when Maggie Scully opens the door. She blinks up at him, a gentle but surprised smile crinkling the corners of her green eyes.

“Fox! I didn’t know Dana was expecting you?” she says, moving aside and tugging on his arm to show him in. She rubs her hand up and down his back in a familiar, maternal way that makes his heart ache.

“Hi, Mrs. Scully,” he says, ducking his head to hide the strange combination of bashfulness and shame that washes over him every time he’s around Scully’s mother.

Since the moment he’d first met Maggie, in the chaos of Scully’s apartment after Duane Barry had taken her, he’d expected her to hate him. Instead, Maggie gentles his disquiet the way he imagines she would a spooked horse, smiling softly and murmuring to him in soothing tones, often reaching out to touch his arm or his shoulder. He wonders what Maggie’s daughter has told her about him that she would treat him with such kindness, or whether she simply accepts everyone she meets with the same tenderness and warmth.

As she takes the plastic bag of takeout food from him, she peeks into it and gives an exaggerated sniff. He hears her say something about how thoughtful this all is before she ushers him down the hall, telling him she’ll give them a minute or two. She turns and bustles back into the kitchen to do something about the food he’s brought.

Mulder pokes his head into Scully’s bedroom, releasing a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding when he sees her sitting up and tucked into bed. She looks well-rested, a peachy blossom of color having returned to her cheeks since the last time he’s seen her. Mulder ignores the splattered waste basket that stands next to her bed.

She must sense his presence, because she glances up from the medical journal she’s engrossed in and when their eyes meet, a flushed half-smile flashes over her features before she remembers herself.

“Mulder!” Scully exclaims, glancing down at her bedside clock as she dog-ears the page she leaves off on and tosses the journal aside. “What are you doing here?”

“Just wanted to see how you were doing.”

“At 2 p.m. on a Friday? Mulder, you never leave the office early.” When he doesn’t answer, just continues to stare at her with questions in his eyes, Mulder can almost mouth the words that slip immediately past her chapped lips right along with her, as if they’re both reading from the same script. “I’m fine, Mulder.”

He purses his lips, but before he has a chance to second-guess her, Maggie appears again at his elbow and gives it a squeeze as she brushes past him and perches next to Scully for a few moments. Mulder watches Maggie tuck a strand of hair behind her daughter’s ear.

Maggie brings some levity to the room as she asks about some of their recent cases, and how his mother is doing. Mulder notices that Maggie doesn’t mention anything about the most recent case in Philadelphia.

After a few minutes of small talk, Maggie clears her throat and says she needs to be going before traffic gets too bad, but that she’ll be back in the morning. She disappears almost immediately.

The silence she leaves in her wake as the front door snicks shut is close to deafening. Mulder coughs and shifts on his feet.

“So, how are you feeling? Hungry?” Mulder asks hopefully, gesturing to his offering of soup and a sandwich on the tray Maggie left nearby. “I stopped at Jimmy’s, I know you like their split pea…” He trails off when Scully blanches slightly and shakes her head.

“No, unfortunately,” Scully says, glancing forlornly at the food. “My mom actually had a chocolate croissant waiting for me when she picked me up. I had a few bites, but it just made me sick. I can’t really find it in me to eat for a day or so after the chemo. I'm afraid split pea would have me doing a remarkably realistic impression of Linda Blair.”

Mulder nods. Of course. He should know that. He should have known that already. He picks the tray up from her bedside table and sets it down just outside her bedroom door.

“What does it feel like?” he asks as he moves back towards her bed.

She lifts a bony shoulder. “Not great. I can’t really describe it. My body just feels...invaded. Like I’m not really here, like something is just...off. The next couple days are going to be pretty brutal. I wasn’t sick as much after the first round, but I’ve heard the second tends to make up for it. And after today-,” she gestures towards her wastebasket, wincing. “I’d have to agree. I think I got lucky the first time around.”

“Can I get you some water?” Mulder asks, and Scully tries to hide it when her eyes slide again to her bedside table. A water bottle and a dose of her anti-nausea medicine already sit waiting for her, along with a couple saltine crackers on a plate. Seeing her eyes dart from the water bottle back to him, Mulder sighs. “Right. Your mom’s probably got everything squared away for you.”

Scully stares up at him, the defeated slump of his shoulders and the way he can’t seem to meet her eyes. She cranes her neck to look again at the tray of food he’s brought, notes the extra pickle spear sitting next to her favorite turkey sandwich. He’s trying so hard.

“Um...actually, if you could grab my Chapstick from the coffee table, I’d really appreciate it,” she says softly. “And I was thinking I’d like to take a look at the Carbon County file you left for me on Tuesday. I think it’s on my dining room table. Would you mind bringing it to me?”

Mulder’s lips thin into a grim line. He’s made no secret of the fact that he doesn't want her working while she's going through treatment.

“Please? I need to take my mind off of the nausea,” she says. “After a day of gossiping with my mother about whose daughter is expecting a proposal from whose son, I could really use the stimulation.” A smile ghosts over her face and her eyes rake over him. When he doesn’t smile back, her brow furrows.

He ducks out of her room and returns in a few moments, setting the Chapstick down next to her water bottle and wordlessly handing her the casefile. She smiles her thanks and glances down at it, fingering the red and white striped label as she reads the case subject to herself.

Scully stifles a gasp when she realizes that he’s retrieved the Ed Jerse casefile instead. Her hands leap from the folder as if it’s burned her. Fixing Mulder with a hard stare, she watches him as he links his hands behind his head and begins to pace back and forth at the foot of her bed.

“Speaking of stimulation,” he begins, and she can tell immediately from the way his shoulder muscles are tensed that he isn’t going to let this go. She closes her eyes and wills herself to stay calm.

“You’ve been subpoenaed for a prelim on Monday morning,” he says quietly, and when he doesn’t meet her eyes she knows exactly which case she’s being called to testify for. Her molars grind together and a fresh wave of nausea overtakes her.

“Any chance it’s going to continue?” she asks weakly, knowing already from the set of his jaw what the answer was going to be.

“Nope. It’s going. And so are you.” His tongue rakes across the front line of his teeth before he worries his bottom lip. As his mouth opens, readying to barrage her with questions, her lips clamp shut and her eyes narrow. Not ready. She most certainly is not ready to talk about this case with him. Not now. Maybe not ever.

“Monday morning,” Mulder states again. “As in, two days from now. You’re going to need a ride.” It isn’t a question.

Scully glares at him. “I can drive myself, Mulder. I’ll let Skinner know that I won’t be in on Monday. Thanks for coming by to tell me.” She turns away from him and crosses her arms over her chest, effectively dismissing him.

After several moments of loaded silence, Mulder stares at her profile, his mouth slightly agape. He isn’t quite ready to be dismissed.

“Scully, you can barely get yourself to the bathroom if you need to be sick,” he hisses, gesturing to the wastebasket by her bedside. “What makes you think you can drive two and half hours by yourself in rush hour traffic to hang out in a hallway all day at the courthouse until you’re called to testify?” Scully says nothing, studies the floral pattern of her bedspread and smooths the wrinkles on her lap. “I’m going with you.”

She turns to face him. “No,” she shakes her head, crossing her arms tighter over her chest. “Absolutely not.”

A harsh bark of what might be either incredulous laughter or the cry of an animal in pain escapes from his throat. “No? Who are you going to take with you? Your mother? Like she’ll want to listen to your testimony about fucking some psychopath?” He starts pacing again when she doesn’t respond. “Did you even tell her about what happened in Philadelphia?”

The only movement she allows is one slow blink of her eyes before the muscles in her jaw clench. Unable to stop himself, Mulder fails to heed her silent, deadly warnings.

“You really want Maggie to meet this guy? The guy who fucked her last surviving daughter before trying to kill her? That’s a bold move, Scully, but I guess if you think he’s special enough to meet your mom, who am I to stand in your way?”

“Mulder.” Her voice is dangerously low. “I’m gonna stop you right there.”

Mulder stops pacing and plants his hands on his narrow hips. “No.”

“No?! Mulder, you have absolutely no right to speak to me like this. And you don’t have to assume any responsibility for me. I’m a grown woman and I can take care of myself. My life is not your life. What I do with my personal time is none of your fucking business!”

“You were on a case, Scully. This wasn’t your personal time. And you made it my business when the choices you made put my work at risk.”

Scully exhales a bitter chuff of laughter. “Your work. That’s right, I forgot. It’s your work. Not mine. It’s always all about you, isn’t it, Mulder? Never mind what I’ve been through since I’ve been assigned to you. It’s only about you, and the cross you bear. Even when this quest you’re on starts to take its toll on my life, you can’t find it in yourself to give a damn until it starts to affect you.”

Mulder studies the tops of his Italian leather shoes and shifts his weight back and forth on his feet. He stays quiet, relishing the way her voice fluctuates, the way her cheeks burn the angrier she gets. Objective signs that she still has some fight left in her. “You are a selfish, self-centered asshole who cares only about himself. Fuck you. You’re not driving me anywhere on Monday morning. I’ll figure something else out. Now get out of my apartment.”

Mulder advances on her, drawing some morbid satisfaction when she involuntarily shrinks back against the pillows piled high behind her back and pulls her comforter tighter to her chest. “You think I don’t care about how my search for the truth has affected you, Scully? How can you say that? How dare you say that? I hate myself a little bit more every day because of what you’ve been through, what you continue to go through. Ever since you walked into my office, the losses you’ve suffered because of me have staggered me. You’ve lost everything that I’ve lost, now. A father, a sister, the respect of your peers, and all because you continue to take the elevator down to me instead of up to the rest of the world.”

She opens her mouth, but Mulder isn't finished. “And now your health, your fucking life is being taken from you because of me. Again. Because of what they’ve done to you. Because they know what you are to me.” She stares up to him with watery eyes, and his voice almost breaks. “They already know what you are to me, Scully. How can you not know?”

Scully closes her eyes and exhales through her nose, tilting her head away from him so he can’t see the tears that are gathering and threatening to slip past her lashes. Dammit, he's made her cry.

“You tell me every time I ask, Scully, that you’re fine.” He gestures again to the wastebasket at her side, and the skyline of pill bottles of varying sizes that litter her nightstand. “You are not fine. You have cancer, Scully. You need help.”

Mulder’s shoulders sag suddenly, and he turns away from her. The dark form of him is silhouetted against the gray afternoon light that filters through her blinds, painting him in shades of blue. He rubs his hands over his face and walks towards her window.

“Scully, Philadelphia is at least a two-hour drive, probably three, in rush-hour traffic. You need to be at the courthouse no later than 8:00 a.m. That means you’d need to leave here by 5 a.m. at the latest.”

He turns back to her, resolute. “It makes more sense to just drive up on Sunday night, spend the night at a hotel near the courthouse, and not have to worry about traffic the day of the hearing. The Bureau will cover it, I already talked to accounting. Jennifer’s already requisitioned a couple of rooms for us.”

Scully closes her eyes, feeling her stomach roil.

“Will you just…let me drive you? Please?”

When she opens her mouth to answer, much to her horror and consternation, a wave of nausea finally overtakes her. She scrambles for the wastebasket and clutches it to her chest, leaning over and heaving into it. A small bit of the yogurt she’d had for breakfast and the rest of the chocolate croissant her mother brought her for lunch is deposited into the bin. Swearing softly, Mulder hurries to her side and holds back damp, stringy strands of red hair from her face as she retches.

For several minutes, she breathes in and out, waits for her stomach to settle. She squeezes her eyes shut and pictures a long, lonely drive up to Philadelphia in stop-and-go traffic in the darkest hours of the morning on Monday.

Then, as Mulder’s hand tentatively starts running over her back, she envisions a quiet Sunday afternoon drive north, checking into a small hotel near the courthouse, and what will presumably be a relatively peaceful dinner so long as Mulder can keep his mouth shut. She’ll be able to wake close to seven the next morning and take her time to prepare for the hearing, emotionally and physically.

Unwilling to see him gloat, she simply opens her eyes and nods slightly, letting him continue to stroke the back of her sweaty neck with his thumb.

When she finally leans back and scoots down under the covers, pulling the comforter up over her head and turning her back to him, he sighs. He mutters as he leaves that he’ll call her on Sunday before he comes by to pick her up. She doesn’t respond.

Mulder looks back at the small lump of her buried under her blanket before he turns and closes the door softly behind him. He knows he’s won this round.

But it feels nothing like a victory.

#my writing #a preponderance of the evidence

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