From: Lyle Bontrager Date: Fri, 16 Jul 1999 12:14:58 -0500 Subject: Collection 3 Title: Collection 3 Author: RM >lebontrager@iname.com< Disclaimer: Mulder and Scully belong to CC, 1013, and Fox. No fringe is intended. Summary: Since we're a bit into the story, I'll give a real summary. Mulder is taken from his apartment leaving Scully left alone to fend of the sudden attacks from the Syndicate. Each story coresponds to a flower and explores the symbolism there. ====== C O L L E C T I O N ====== Wisteria -- I Cling to Thee ====== The cat stalked through Mulder's apartment and Scully had the sudden silly thought that Any could pick up her partner's scent and tell her exactly what had happened to him. Any turned her head back to Scully and peered disdainfully over her thin nose, dispelling Scully's wild thoughts with that one glance. She had been here four times now, searching for something, some kind of clue. More and more she had the feeling that this wasn't right. It wasn't just Mulder ditching her, and it wasn't his impetuousness that had gotten him missing. There was more to his absence than a budding mystery. That Monday had been rather uneventful, even Skinner had taken Mulder's absence as merely an annoyance. When he came back, Mulder would be relieved of duty for not taking proper channels for his little excursion, but the AD didn't seem to be worried. Scully was worried. Usually Mulder would have called, asked her to cover for him, explained tantalizingly little about where he was, then left her hanging. She hadn't heard a word. No anonymous email, no two a.m. phone call, no letter mailed to her conveniently after he was already gone. She was furious at him and yet, she was afraid. Scully picked her way through his apartment again, going over the desk she'd searched millions of times already, running her hands along the drawers, pausing again to flip through his photo album, blinking back the tears of frustration. "Mulder." She said his name out of discouraged anger and niggling worry, his name sounding foreign to her ears and tasting strange on her lips. She couldn't quite wrap her tongue over the 'ld' in his name and the rustiness of the speaking made her shiver with fear. Was her voice already forgetting him? She closed her eyes and tried to conjure a picture of him in her head but she only found blankness and panicked, running back through his apartment and to his bedside drawers. Pulling the top drawer open roughly, she pawed through the junk until her fingers snagged on the picture frame. She took it carefully into her hands and gazed at it for a long time, realizing that her fingers were shaking. She traced his features with her eyes, over and over to memeorize every curve and angle, ignoring her own form next to him in the photo and focusing every bit of attention on his form. How could she have already forgotten? She clutched the framed picture in her hands and glanced to the ceiling for help, squeezing her eyes tight to gain control. Any's thick fur slid across her ankles and made her jump before she recognized the cat's presence. Sighing with relief, she sank to the floor and gathered the cat into her arms, placing the photo on the bed so she could look at it. She wondered what the picture was doing lying facedown in his bedside drawer, the frame looking old and worn. She remembered a picture of Samantha being in this frame, so he must have changed it recently. Changed. Mulder had changed priorities years ago, and she had known and felt it shockingly one night on a bridge when he had bartered his sister for her life. Scully sank her face into the bed as she remembered the cold clutch of fear around her belly and the impossibilities that still refused to unhook their claws from her mind. If Mulder had asked her that night if she believed him, if she believed in aliens and a huge plot by the government, she would have said yes. Yes. She had seen Mulder's very image standing before her, heard his voice in her motel room, and then, strangely on the phone. She had pulled her weapon on the imposter and ended up smashed into a glass table and then held roughly on the wall by a face that was Mulder and then was not. A man she would later see again, chasing after Jeremiah Smith as once again, Mulder ditched her. She had seen that and the image of Mulder's face morphing still had not left her. It was frightening to know that only moments ago she could not remember anything of Mulder's features, but now, she could so clearly recall every pore of the bounty hunter's craggy face. She wiped her face free of the tears that had unknowingly fallen, and gathered herself together, pulling the cat and the picture with her. It was Thursday and she had asked for all of next week off, in order to concentrate on finding Mulder, and she had to get started looking. Anything. A clue, a not-very-likely lead, anything. She closed her eyes and calmed her fast beating heart and stroked the cat. Calm again, Scully thought about forensics. She pulled out her rubber gloves, knowing that by now it was really useless, and walked back to the front door. She pulled a little toolbox from the floor and popped it open. She took two packages of powdered cloths from the top tray, then a tiny handheld Dustbuster from the bottom tray. She dusted very carefully for fingerprints in all of the obvious places, easily picking out the multitudes that swarmed like flies over carrion on the knobs and shelves. Then she wiped down the couch and coffee table with the square cloths, and set them in a solution she had poured into a sterilized container. They came up negative for known narcotics and she repeated the test for other traces. She found the first fruits of her labor when the solution turned bright pink. Morphine based drug. The swatch of cloth had been wiped over the arm of the couch, meaning Mulder had been there when he was taken. Scully shivered. Was she really going to believe this? Mulder had been taken from his couch Friday night? Given some kind of morphine to incapacitate him, then taken far away. . . She rested her chin in her hands, perched away from the couch to not mess up any more evidence, trying to solve this puzzle through the only methods available to her. Science. Logic. They told her that Mulder frequently left without saying, and had even been gone for weeks at a time without calling her. Logic said she should wait a bit until something concrete was discovered, and Science whispered that the chances of Mulder being outright taken were very low, almost inconsequential. But her gut told her that this tiny speck of morphine on Mulder's couch and his absence from her life was more than a wild goose chase. She couldn't so easily let go of him. Something was wrong. The cat nudged her foot and Scully turned to it, realizing with annoyance that she should not have allowed the animal inside until she was finished with the forensic investigation. She'd been too distracted to do her job right, and that wasn't going to help Mulder. As she reached for the cat, her arm bumped the Dustbuster and she looked at it for a long moment. Vacuum. She pushed the cat away and eagerly began running the handheld vac over the carpet and wooden floors, feeling that strange excitment that came when she was on to something. Four hours later, two vacuum bags were filled and the results of her tests were carefully recorded and copied, sent on Mulder's own fax machine to the office and to Skinner, and her own things packed back inside the tool box. Any was twining in and out of her legs, and she stood in Mulder's doorway, still worried about him, but feeling relieved that she was actually doing something. As she shut and locked the door behind her, she had an overwhelming sense of grief wash over her like a tsunami crashing into Japan's harbors. She sank against his door and closed her eyes fighting the desperation and the sorrow. He couldn't be dead. He just couldn't be dead. ~~~~ end 3 adios RM