From: cofax <kofax@concentric.net>
Date: 24 Oct 1999 14:32:54 PDT
Subject: NEW: 9.8 meters per second per second by cofax  Rated PG

Title:  9.8 meters per second per second
Author:  cofax
Spoilers:  vague ones for SR 819
Rating:  PG for a couple of bad words
Content warning:  character death (off-stage)
Summary:  Meetings in strange places.
Archiving:  Gossamer fine, anywhere else please ask

Disclaimer:  I write this in full recognition that the characters of
Mulder and Scully and Skinner belong to 1013 Productions and Fox
Broadcasting.  I'm just borrowing them for a little road trip, and
will return them with the gas tank full and the fast-food wrappers
cleaned out of the backseat.  Yosemite Valley belongs to the people of
the United States, inasmuch as any place of such incomparable beauty
can be owned.

Notes:  This story is written to stand alone, although it could also
be considered part of the Climbing Series stories.  I prostrate myself
to my wonderful betas, Maria Nicole and Maggie McCain.  Special thanks
to Jesemie's Evil Twin for last-minute reassurances.  All three of
these generous ladies spent a great deal of their valuable time on a
small story in which damned little actually happens.  Thanks, folks -
drinks (or German-chocolate cake) are on me.

Feedback:  feedback makes me do the wacky.  Send it to
kofax@concentric.net.



***

9.8 meters per second per second
by cofax
October 1999



The redheaded woman looked very comfortable as she sat, coffee in
hand, on the porch railing in front of the climbing shop at Curry.  
It was October in Yosemite Valley, late morning; the sun had finally
begun to warm the valley floor.  The worst of the tourist season was
over, but that only meant cars weren't bumper to bumper from one end
of the Valley to the other.  There were plenty of people around, and
most of the campgrounds were still open.

Certainly the climbers were still there. October was near the end of
the climbing season in the Valley, with chill nights withering the
oaks and turning the aspens yellow, but the days were golden.  Some of
the climbers would stay in the Valley until the snows fell and the
cold granite burned their fingers.  The holdouts were the climbing
bums who squatted in Sunnyside Campground hard under El Capitan,
Sunnyside which they steadfastly continued to call Camp Four in honor
of the old days of hob-nailed boots and hemp ropes.

This woman was clearly one of the climbers, happier 300 feet off the
deck and scrambling for a gear placement than almost anywhere on the
ground.  While idly perusing the newest edition of "Accidents in North
American Mountaineering," she eyed the tourists wandering by. She
looked utterly relaxed, but also watchful, the kind of person who
would remember what color shirt someone had worn the day before even
if he didn't himself.

She was on the small side, and appeared even smaller in the oversized
green sweatpants and fleece jacket she was wearing.  Her hands were
scabbed, the short nails chipped, and dirty white athletic tape was
wrapped around two joints on her left hand.  On her feet were the
climber's staple, a pair of sport sandals over an extremely large pair
of wool socks.  The tops of the socks flopped loosely around her
ankles, and once in a while she reached down absently to pull one up. 

She was very fair, without the leathery tan so common to climbers, but
her face was heavily freckled nonetheless.  There were crows' feet in
the finer skin around her eyes.  Like most climbing bums, she was
lean, and strong: tendons and ligaments stood out starkly under the
pale skin of her forearms.  Her hair was fading to strawberry-blond on
the top where the sun had bleached it, and curled loosely past her
shoulders.  Despite her size and her clothing, she wasn't young --
probably on the far side of thirty.

If anyone other than the climbers had been paying attention, they
would have known that she'd only been in the Park for six weeks, had
come there from two weeks of climbing on the south side of Lake
Tahoe.  She'd rolled into the Valley on the last night of August in a
battered old Toyota pickup, its green bed rusting out and its
transmission in a questionable state.  Before South Lake Tahoe she had
been at Donner Summit, and before then -- before then, anyone who
asked would find the trail cold, and muddled.  But no one asked.  Who
pays attention to climbers but other climbers?

***

Dana Scully was no more nervous than usual, as she lingered in public
over her small indulgence, a non-fat double latte.  She had been in
the Park for six weeks now, with no difficulties other than losing her
sunglasses on the second pitch of Snake Dike.  Dee Stockton's life was
simple, easy to inhabit.  

Too easy.

She was vaguely disturbed by how smoothly she had adjusted to this,
and by how she found a strange renewal in this nomadic existence.  It
was a life pared down to the essentials: eating beans and rice out of
a saucepan heated on a decrepit backpacking stove, washing out her
underwear in the restroom sink and hanging it to dry on a branch, and
spending days on end with people about whom she knew little other than
their first names and what kind of climbing shoe they preferred.  It
was, she felt, like the best of the old days, without having to worry
about picking up dry-cleaning or getting shot.  

If Scully had any complaints now, it was that Dee couldn't afford good
wine, and that the showers at Camp Four only had about six minutes of
hot water in the morning.  Well, she had to admit those weren't her
only complaints.

She missed her family, her apartment, clean towels.  

She even missed Mulder, dammit. 

That was a bad sign, given the circumstances under which they had
parted.  She twitched away the thought, as if wincing from an old
scar.

Despite it all, she found herself sleeping better, laughing more, than
she had in years.  It helped that the last two years had been pretty
lousy, and the two months before they ran positively hellish.  Dee's
life gave her time to settle back into her skin, re-establish
herself.  She still carried a gun, always did, despite the multitude
of federal laws that violated in the Park.  She hadn't touched it in
weeks however, other than to clean it, hunched carefully in her tent.  

She felt safe.  

She knew she wasn't.

While Scully waited for word, she made do with Dee Stockton.  And it
wasn't that bad.  Scully loved to climb, loved hanging two
rope-lengths above the world, knowing that she could bring her partner
up the next pitch with no difficulties.  She loved facing and
conquering the concrete fears of falling, of exposure, through
technique and self-control.  It was a long way from the amorphous,
metaphysical terrors of working on the X-files.

Now she was stronger than she had ever been, stronger even than she
was at Quantico.  It would be easy, she thought sometimes, just to
drift along, following the VW buses and ancient Hondas to Joshua Tree,
and then to Hueco for the winter; then back north with the spring,
perhaps to Needles, or the Gunks.  The temptation to slide fully into
this life was always there, lurking; it got stronger every week.

Tomorrow, she and Lynn would try the Knickerbocker route on Lost Arrow
Spire, a climb she had lusted after with a fine and tenacious hunger
since the day she had entered the Valley.  Today was a rest day:  she
would drink her coffee, buy groceries, do laundry.  If she had time,
she would read that mystery Terry had lent her, the one about the
Boston detectives, and make pencil checks next to the errors in logic
and procedure.  Maybe she would sign up for an hour on the one public
internet terminal in the Valley, and check six different email
accounts for a message.

Or maybe she wouldn't.

It was his gait that caught her attention first; his face was obscured
by distance and the trees lining the path from Curry Cabins.  A man
with a peculiarly graceful, long-legged stride . . . then he turned
his head, scanning the passersby covertly as he approached the
building, and that single movement released a cascade of memories.  

So.

Scully didn't react, didn't appear to notice him as Mulder bought a
cup of coffee and sat down at a table several feet away.  The table
was cluttered with the refuse of someone's early lunch, and he
carefully picked through the remains.  From her seat on the railing
she watched him attempt to coax a squirrel into taking a French fry
from his hand.  He seemed oblivious to her presence, but he knew she
was there.  He always knew.

Mulder had changed as well, although not as much as she had.  He was
wearing jeans and a Gore-tex jacket over a wool sweater.  The sweater
hung loosely: he had lost weight.  His big boots knocked nervously
against the boards of the porch as he jiggled his feet.  What she
could see of his hair was shaggy, longer than it ought to be.  He
looked like he hadn't shaved in some days.

The fat squirrel, skittish but experienced at this game, danced
gingerly towards the cold and greasy lump of reconstituted potato. 
Just before it reached his hands, she spoke.  

"You don't want to do that.  It just encourages them, and some of them
carry disease."

Mulder glanced back at her over his shoulder.  "Ah, but where do they
carry it?"  He sounded like he was flirting with her, but under the
battered Red Sox cap his eyes were intent.  Scully could tell his
pupils were dilated, even from twelve feet away.  

Something was wrong.  Something other than the obvious.

"Anywhere they want to."  She flung herself down from the railing,
impatient with the charade.  Slinging her knapsack to her shoulder,
she stalked past him to throw her empty coffee cup away.  On her
return, she muttered, "The boulders across from Housekeeping. Seven
o'clock."

He didn't respond, but she knew he would be there.  He'd come this
far, hadn't he?

***

It was full dark in the Valley at seven p.m.  Scully settled her
headlamp a little more firmly on her forehead and shook her hands
ruefully.  She been climbing on and around this boulder for the past
hour, and her forearms were aching with the abuse.  But there was one
move, a sequence over the overhang, that she thought she could get
with a little more effort . . . .

Scully didn't hear Mulder arrive until he was nearly underneath her. 
Unfortunately, she had chosen that moment to give up on the move: the
muscles in her forearms were giving out and she let herself fall
without looking below.

"Jesus!"  Mulder sprang back in shock as she dropped to the ground in
front of him.  

She straightened a little stiffly and shook her hands out, then flexed
her fingers against each other.  "Relax, Mulder.  It's just me."

"Right.  Who else would tackle me in the dark?"  He rustled
suspiciously, and she moved backwards a step.   But all he was doing
was digging around in his knapsack, illuminating his search with a
small flashlight clutched between his teeth.  Scully kept her
distance, suddenly self-conscious of her attire, even in the dark.

Mulder didn't look up at her until he had produced a thin blanket, a
box of crackers, and a jar of what looked suspiciously like
Cheese-Whiz.  He switched off the flashlight and stashed it in the
pocket of his jacket.  

"So here we are.  I brought dinner, in case you didn't eat.  Where do
you want to do this?"  He gestured awkwardly with his arms full of
picnic supplies.  There were few options; this area was close to the
road, and fairly open.  On the other hand . . .  Scully glanced
upwards with half a smile.

Two and a half minutes later, after an argument and some technical
scrambling, they were settled in a shallow bowl on the top of the
Pebble.  The minimal illumination provided by their flashlights would
not be seen from the road in this location, and anyone who stumbled
across them would certainly think they were lovers out for a romantic
evening.  Well, until the passerby noticed how far they sat from each
other, and the discomfort on their faces.

Scully took off her climbing shoes, grimacing as she straightened out
her toes.  Her socks and sandals were on the ground below, so she
pulled her sweats down over her feet and tried not to think about
putting the size four Stingers back on later in order to get down.

They ate quietly for the first few minutes, saving the conversation
for later.  Mulder had, considerately, brought more than just
processed cheese and crackers.  Scully finished her apple just as he
reached for the bag of Oreos.  She snatched them out of his reach.

"No.  Not until you tell me why you're here."  

The light from her rapidly dying headlamp wasn't enough to show her
the color of his eyes; they were as dark as his hair in the dimness. 
But she expected she knew the expression on his face.  It was the same
one he had worn when they parted in West Virginia ten weeks ago:
affection, pain, and frustration all knotted together.

"I got worried."  Mulder looked away, up towards where Glacier Point
hung four thousand feet above them in the darkness.  Last spring a
climber had been killed in a rockfall not far from where they sat.  He
had been belaying a friend, and realized that if he tried to escape
the falling boulders, he would yank his partner off the wall to his
death.  So he stayed where he was, and was crushed under one hundred
tons of Sierra granite.  The partner survived: walked away with
bruises, and a burden he could never lay down.

Scully began to reach out to Mulder, then hesitated, pulled her hand
back and tucked it inside her sleeve.  The air was colder now.  The
sun had been gone from the Valley for hours, and in October at this
altitude they might even see snow.  "Mulder.  Tell me."

"You'd said you would tell me if you moved, but it had been six weeks
. . .  I wasn't sure you would still be here."  He twisted around to
fish a bottle out of his knapsack.  This one had a screwtop, and was
clearly not iced tea.

"Mulder?"  This was unexpected; a chill ran down her back despite
several layers of high-tech insulation.  She moved a little closer to
his warmth.  Regardless of the weather, Mulder always threw off heat
like a well-designed woodstove.

He took his iced tea can, shook it to get the last drops out, and
poured a healthy slug of liquor into it.  Scully tilted her head to
read the label: Glen Morangie.  Despite her growing unease, an eyebrow
went up and her lips twitched.  Trust Mulder to feed her bruised
apples and Cheese-Whiz, then pull out a fifty-dollar bottle of Scotch
for some sort of ritual toast.

The remainder of Scully's root beer was dumped unceremoniously over
the side of the boulder as well.  She took her can from his hands, and
waited.  Mulder stared down at the top of the iced tea can, rotated
it, as if he were sitting at a bar, gazing into his glass to avoid
seeing what was behind him in the mirror.

"Skinner's dead, Scully.  They buried him last week."

"What?"  He didn't respond.  "Oh, no, Mulder, no ---"  She rocked
forward, wrapped her hands around her cold toes.

Skinner, dead.  Skinner, whose broad shoulders and brusque demeanor
had belied his inability to protect either himself or his agents from
the machinations of the men in the shadows.  Skinner, who had tried
his best -- but who had come up short half the time.  Yet, despite
that, he had been their only bulwark.

Scully couldn't say she had liked the man much.  He was demanding and
difficult, but not contemptuous.  She had respected his abilities and
his good intentions, and acknowledged his inherent authority.  She had
fought hard to save him, repeatedly, often despite his own wishes. 
And despite her own conviction that he might be forced to betray them
in the end.

Could she mourn him?  Yes.  More for what he should have been than for
what he was, but for all his weaknesses she had trusted him, after
Mulder, more than anyone else in the Bureau.

"Scully?"  Mulder gave her sleeve a gentle tug.  "You in there?"

She raised her head, wiped her eyes on the sleeve of her jacket. 
"Yeah.  I'm OK, Mulder, it's just -- dammit!"  She took a few breaths,
blew her nose into the handkerchief that Mulder handed her.

"How did it happen?"

Her flashlight had finally died entirely.  So far from the city, the
Valley was utterly dark at night and it was impossible to see Mulder's
expression.  "Car-jacking, they think.  He was missing for two days
before they found his body in a dumpster in Anacostia.  He'd been
badly beaten and then shot in the head.  His car hasn't turned up."

"Was it -- was it because of us?"  Scully didn't think she could bear
it if it was.  Skinner had covered for them when they realized they
had to run this time, had to go so deep no one could find them. 
Skinner had been one of five people who knew they were still alive --
even her brothers thought she was dead by now.

Mulder's voice was soft in the darkness.  "I don't think so.  Not
directly."  Operating more by feel than anything else, he poured them
both some more Scotch.  "I think he had reached the end of his rope,
and instead of hauling him back in, they decided to use him as an
example."

Scully shook her head, resisting the certainty in Mulder's voice.  It
was too convenient, that their only ally with any official credibility
would die while they were in no position to help him.  If they had
stayed in D.C., tried something other than running as fast and as far
as they could, perhaps they could have saved him.  Instead she spent
eight weeks playing the climbing bum while Skinner guarded their backs
. . . 

"Scully, don't."  Mulder's voice had roughened.  He put a hand on her
shoulder and shook her gently.  "Don't do this, Scully.  If we'd been
there, we would have died, too."

She shrugged off his hand.  "How do you *know,* Mulder?  How can you
just write him off?  Maybe we could have done something.   Instead he
died alone--"  Scully caught a great breath, strangled a sob.  She was
glad it was so dark; she was suddenly shaking with fury and the burden
Skinner had laid on them.  

Mulder shoved his hands into his pockets.  He stared up at the sky for
a few moments, then spoke again, his voice low.

"I know because he told me so, Scully."

"What?"  She jerked upright and away from Mulder's warmth.

"About a month ago, Skinner sent a message to one of the Hotmail
accounts for me.  He told me . . .  he told me Krycek had a hold on
him, but he thought he'd found a chance to break it.  He said that it
was his risk, and under no circumstances to return to D.C. -- that we
could blow it if we turned up.  If it worked, he thought he could
bring us back in pretty quickly.  He didn't say what would happen if
it didn't work."

"I guess now we know what would happen."  Scully picked up her
forgotten soda can, drank a little Scotch too quickly, and it spilled
on her jacket.

"Yeah."

Scully took another mouthful of Scotch and rolled it around on her
tongue, letting the fumes work their way into her brain and disable
the command center.   Give her a few minutes and a little more Scotch,
and she could work up an unholy rage.  Mulder had seen her angry, and
he'd seen her drunk.  He'd never seen both together.

"Mulder, how could you not tell me this?"  She tried to keep the edge
out of her voice, but she wasn't entirely successful.

"Scully, how could I tell you?  You were god-knows-where doing
god-knows-what.  You go for *weeks* without checking your email."  His
voice had sharpened, too.  They were both too tired, too drunk, and
too overwrought for this conversation.  But they were having it
anyway.

"Oh, that's rich, Mulder."  Her voice was as bitter as the sudden rush
of bile in the back of her throat.  "You're mad at *me* for dropping
out of contact?  This from the man who regularly disappears on me to
follow half-assed leads to kingdom come.  This from the man who
*demanded* we stay separate, and keep contact to a minimum--"  Scully
forced herself to stop before she said something unforgivable.  How
had they come to this so quickly?  She had moved entirely away from
Mulder, was now hunched three feet away, her hands tucked into her
armpits and the soda can balanced precariously between her thighs.

She heard him draw a breath, begin to respond.  She waited for the
angry words, the justifications to spill out as they had in West
Virginia.  

But they didn't.

Mulder sat quietly for a long time.  Scully waited, and her feet began
to get cold, and still he didn't move, or say anything.  Uneasy and
stiff, she shifted position, and the soda can slipped down, spilling
Scotch on her feet and the dry granite of the Pebble.  "Shit," she
muttered, and tried to dry her feet with her filthy sweats.

"Scully."  His voice was distant -- he'd gone away, like he did
sometimes during a case.  

"Yeah?"  She was still angry.  She knew that Mulder was Mulder, and
keeping her out of the loop was hard-wired in him after six years, but
she was never going to like it even when she understood his reasoning.

"You're right," he said.  Scully blinked.   

He continued, "I should have told you.  But I'm right, too -- we
couldn't have made a difference."  She didn't answer.  If Mulder,
Skinner's champion when even she had deserted the AD, believed the 
man's death wasn't preventable, then it probably wasn't.  But
certainly there was a connection between Skinner's death and the
X-Files, even if they didn't know what it was.

Yet another burden to add to the rest, she thought, and moved back
towards Mulder.  He was probably cold, too, but he had the blanket to
sit on.  If she was lucky, she could get a corner of it for her feet.

Mulder poured some more Scotch into her can, then shifted over a bit
to make room for her on the blanket.

"Do you think our cover's still good?"  she asked.  It was a safe
question, even if that wasn't what she wanted to know.  But Mulder
answered the question she hadn't asked.

"I don't know.  Even if he -- talked, Skinner didn't know how to find
us, just that we were alive."

It all depended upon whether They thought to ask; one had to assume
men who could wipe memories had the ability to encourage testimony.  
But then why the beating?  Like most of the last seven years, it made
little sense.  Scully tried to think about it, but the Scotch and her
cold feet kept distracting her.

"Hey, Scully."  She realized several minutes had passed in silence,
glanced up to see that Mulder had trained his small flashlight on one
of her climbing shoes. "You actually fit in these?"

She sighed.  Few climbers buy climbing shoes to fit; they buy them up
to two sizes smaller than their street shoes, to increase sensitivity
and contact with the rock.  Her ordinary shoes were small enough: her
black-and-yellow climbing shoe looked like a five-year-old's bedtime
slipper in the center of Mulder's palm, an oversized bumble bee.

"They actually do fit, yes.  They're painful but useful."  

"Huh," he grunted, and extended the shoe to her like an offering. 
"Like the truth.  Or some partners I could name."

She took the shoe from him, flexed it between her hands.  "Yeah.  And
once they're broken in, they're a lot more comfortable."  

Mulder didn't answer, but he pulled out more of the blanket for her to
wrap around her feet.  And then poured her some more Scotch.

***

They made a sizable dent in the bottle, huddled together against the
cold on top of the Pebble. Neither of them suggested finding someplace
warm; there wasn't anywhere they could go together without taking an
unconscionable risk.  Eventually they stopped drinking and
occasionally talking about Skinner; the wake was over.  But they
didn't move.

It was very late, but still a long way from dawn.  The stars were
strange, Scully thought fuzzily.  She had rarely been up this late
anywhere that she could see the stars, and the constellations were
unfamiliar.  Scully slumped lower, shifting sideways against Mulder
until her head was propped up against his chest and she could watch
the sky without craning her neck.  Now her back was warm but her feet
were freezing.

"Comfy, Scully?"  She didn't hear Mulder's question so much as feel it
through the vibration of his ribcage.  She grunted without answering. 
Telling him her feet were cold would make him want to do something
about it, and she didn't want him to move.

The Scotch was making her head spin; looking up at the sky, she could
almost feel the earth turning below her.  There was a quarter of the
sky where there were no stars: that was Glacier Point, she realized,
leaning out over the Valley.  From this angle it loomed right above
them.  She considered the possibility that the seven thousand tons of
granite nearly a mile above could come loose at any time, calculated
the probable velocity at impact.  Struck by a sudden sense of vertigo,
she flung out an arm for balance, and found Mulder's hand instead.

The vertigo subsided as quickly as it had come.  Despite the cold of
the night, and the alcohol in his system, Mulder's hand was warm.  He
wrapped his palm around hers, and rubbed gently at the tape on her
fingers, but said nothing.  She realized that he was nearly asleep,
and thought a bit desperately about the long months of solitary fear
before them.  

It was still some time until dawn, when they would have to separate. 
She wanted to stay awake; God only knew when they would stand together
in the sunlight again.

"Mulder, what are we going to do now?"  *Tell me we're going to be all
right.*

Mumbles.  "I don't know."

That was ok; they had a little time.  And thinking about a plan was
preferable to thinking about Skinner in the ground, in the October
rain.  "Fine.  Guess I'll have to save us, then."

"Sounds good to me, Scully.  Got a plan?"

"I'm working on it."  She wasn't though, not really.  She was
drifting, thinking about Glacier Point again, and whether their
bodies, added to the seven thousand tons of rock above them, would
even be noticeable when the tourists came to see the wreckage.  It had
taken a long time to dig out the belayer's body from the tons of
fallen granite.

They would have buried him at Arlington, of course.

Mulder shifted, pulling her back from the edge of sleep.

Lying  in the dark, propped against Mulder, still holding his hand,
she wondered what that climber had felt, when he understood his
friend's sacrifice.  But she knew the answer to that; they all did. 
As she knew the price of that understanding: to accept the burden as
the gift it was.

The only way to honor the gift was to keep climbing.  

Anchored to earth by Mulder's warmth and the cold granite beneath her,
Scully felt as she did at the bottom of a new route up a bare wall: an
admixture of joy and terror that caught her breath with exhilaration,
and an unspeakable gratitude that she was not alone.

*This is going to be more interesting than Knickerbocker.*

***
END

Note 1:  In June of 1999, Peter Terbush was belaying Kerry Pyle, who
was climbing Apron Jam below Glacier Point when a 100-ton rockfall
began above them.  Rather than run, and yank his friend off the wall
to his death, Peter stayed where he was.  Kerry survived; Peter did
not.  Here's to the heroes, wherever we find them.

Note 2:  The floppy socks are for Khyber.  What, you thought she'd
give them back?  <g>

-- 
"Speak as you would write, as if your words were letters of lead,
graven there for all time, for which you must take the consequences. 
And take the consequences." -- Dorothy Dunnett, Queens' Play