From: Megan Kennedy Date: Sat, 10 Jul 1999 18:20:16 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Story submissions Title: "Cautionary Tale" Author: Megan E. Kennedy Email: mekamorph@yahoo.com Rating: PG Category: SRA Spoilers: None Keywords: Mulder/other; pre-TXF; rape Summary: A cautionary tale for the 'shipper set. Disclaimer: All the characters in this fanfic belong to Chris Carter and 1013 Productions. No copyright infringement is intended and no money is being made off this story. "Cautionary Tale" by Megan E. Kennedy Before you start, let me explain. We knew the regs, about consorting between agents and the like. We knew the risks, too-it was inevitable that we'd be caught out. But when you are deeply, truly, and madly in love, you don't think straight, and you're certainly not capable of risk analysis. All we cared about was each other. When we were assigned as partners I was wary. Who wouldn't be? But she proved herself to me time and again and I quickly fell in love with her. I fell in love with every woman I met, it was nothing new. But this time I stayed in love. No matter how har d I tried to hide it, to deny it, it kept coming up again and again. This was the woman I wanted to spend the rest of my life with. We finally...uh, consummated our affections after years of working together. We were very discreet, very professional about it. Hell, during the working day I could swear she was a different person altogether. And if we went to each other's apartments to do paperwork and one didn't leave until, say, 4 a.m., who was the wiser? You wouldn't have recognized either of us at the time; one always searching, always looking for facts even where there were none, the other leaping to the weird and bizarre as gos pel truth from the start. Most people either assumed that we'd been sleeping together from the start, or were of two such different temperaments that we'd never get around to it. They were our cover, actually, since it was the same old rumors flying, only this time they weren't really rumors. I finally got up the guts to propose to her and did so. Her mother was ecstatic, the rest of the family ambivalent. We didn't announce it, didn't even wear the rings in public, because we were still partners. I worked out a plan--she'd request reassign ment, and we'd delay the announcement a few months so no one would figure out we'd been fooling around on the job. She submitted the paperwork to the AD just before we left on the New Orleans case. Oh, the New Orleans case. I think hell is in New Orleans. It started out like any other X-file, and we'd been on them long enough to know the signs. We'd thought it would be as routine as those things can get. A classic case of entity rape in a purportedly haunted house, and only one other suspect to consider . About as open and shut as X-files get. I should have known it was all going wrong when I was five minutes late to the suspect's hotel room because I had to get dressed. Our entity had escaped the house and was attacking people. I was the only one who kn ew how to handle ghosts; two cops had been shot trying to contain the thing and our suspect was missing. I tried to make up for the gaffe by trailing him all the way down to the river docks, where he announced he was going to kill himself because of somet hing I couldn't quite catch which was related to the ghost. In the middle of talking him down, my cell phone rang. It was a hospital emergency room; the ghost's latest unwilling paramour had been my partner and fiancée, whom I'd left sleeping in her bed. The suspect jumped, and I had half a mind to follow him. I couldn't face her after that. I went to the hospital, got a glimpse of her huddled on the bed, and couldn't bring myself to come any closer. I pulled out of the investigation altogether; I had no vent for my anger against the discorporate monster tha t had done this to her. Instead I buried myself in my work, starting another investigation immediately. It was a long-distance affair; I couldn't bear to leave the city without her. But at the same time I couldn't bear to face her after what I'd allow to happen. Eventually, of course, she was released. I offered to pick her up and she said, no, she could get around just fine. She came to my hotel room and, without preamble, slapped me on the mouth. She grabbed her luggage from where it was stacked along t he wall and left. Without even slamming the door, Diana Fowley had walked out of my life forever. By the time I got back to D.C., she'd already left on the first flight to Berlin. Section Chief Blevins broke the news, and added, "Of course, you will be assigned another partner." But I didn't want another partner, I wanted Diana. And when Dana Scull y had walked smiling into my office, my too-empty and too-cold and too-lonely office, I'd made every effort to hate her. To make her hate me. I'd had Diana's desk moved out weeks earlier in anticipation. I didn't want another partner to make the little ba sement room cheerful and warm and inviting; I wanted to wallow in misery. I rejected familiarity with her and resisted her overtures of friendship. Yet when she walked into my hotel room in her bathrobe and a panic, I was floor by a sudden, overwhelming wave of trust. Trust that has been proved time and again, that overcame all wariness and hate. But I don't fall in love with every woman I meet an ymore. I learned my lesson with Diana Fowley. And so Scully will, must, and should always remain a friend.