From monicav@mindspring.com Thu May 15 02:14:14 1997 Subject: Honesty by Anne Cologna From: Monica Vallejo -------- I did not write this. Please forward all feedback to the author at Thanks, Monica _____________________________________________________ &*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*& Honesty by Anne Cologna posted to XFFanfic on May 15, 1997 Feedback to riveram@is4.nyu.edu or posted on the fictalk list Timeline/Spoilers - one week post-Elegy, US Season Four Classification - V A Relationship - Platonic Archivists - Please archive - please do NOT post to ATXC Disclaimer - The characters and situation of The X-Files are the property of Ten Thirteen Productions and Fox Broadcasting Company. No copyright infringement is intended and no profit will be recognized from this work. Acknowledgements - Glymax, Meredith and Lydia, you are wonderful and I thank you for sharing your encouragement and wisdom. Also to Miki, whose casual question inspired me to grow a bit. Summary - Scully learns a truth that had been hidden from her. Honesty basement office J. Edgar Hoover Building Another day, another round of paperwork off to the desks of the next set of paper-pushers. No case in the on-deck circle this time, giving her a chance to recover from the nosebleeds, murder investigations and apparitions of the deceased. "Agent Scully." She swiveled in her chair to focus on her supervisor standing in the office doorway. He held a floppy disk and a manila file folder, waiting for her to acknowledge his entrance. "Sir, what can I do for you?" Skinner walked toward her, pulling up a nearby chair to lower himself to her eye level. He held out the folder and disk. She frowned slightly. "Is this a new case?" He cleared his throat. "It's the information on the Lombard research facility, the database Mulder was attempting to access while you were hospitalized in Allentown." His voice was quiet, ominous in its gravity. "The infertility treatment records for all the women treated by Dr. Scanlon, Dr. Oppenheim and the others." Infertility treatment. She stared at Skinner, her fingers loosening their grip on the pen in her hand. His expression was serious, troubled. Her eyes focused on the disk and folder, and she watched her hand extend, as if an automaton, toward him. "Scully?" She blinked harshly, then opened her eyes widely to resist the spurting tears. The stiff cardboard crinkled from the pressure she applied, but she did not release the folder. Skinner's cough drew her attention, and she realized her actions had only deepened his concern. "Thank you for bringing this down," her throat closing just enough to make her words sound hollow. "I appreciate your attention to this." He started to respond, but she stood up first, grabbing her briefcase and keys. "With your permission, I'd like to read over this information at home." She didn't wait to see his confirming nod before heading out the door, nearly knocking over Mulder. "Scully?" He watched his partner walk down the hall, oblivious to his query. The echo of her heels on the hallway floor softened, followed by the whooshing sound of the door to the parking ramp. Mulder turned to look at his boss, who was still sitting in the office. "What was that all about?" Skinner rose slowly. "I was bringing her the information from the Lombard facility, the records from Dr. Scanlon." Realization slowly came to Mulder and the weight of those words left him slumped against the doorway, his head dropped forward. "Agent Mulder?" Skinner walked toward him, confused by his response. The agent raised a hand to rub at his eyes. "I never told her." --- Scully's apartment The keys in his grip bit into his hand. Well deserved pain, he thought, trying not to drop them as he inserted the silver key into the lock. His cellular phone impeded his progress, and he hastily threw the phone into his coat pocket before gripping the doorknob. She had ignored his calls anyway, as well as his pounding on the door and his shouts for her attention. He had never keyed into her apartment, and except for his recent intrusion to stop his mirror image from seducing her, he had always been invited in. Her apartment presented itself with its customary brightness and warmth, her trench coat, briefcase and file on the couch serving as the only signs that she was here. The sound of the running shower water identified her location, and he decided to wait for her to finish before alerting her to his presence, to give him time to organize his thoughts. How exactly do I address this? Only recently have we acknowledged and vocalized the existence of her cancer, of its potential to terminate her life prematurely. With every symptom, every doctor's appointment, every test - and there are very few, fortunately - I walk this unsteady tightrope between support and suffocation, offering to drive her to the hospital or encouraging her to take an afternoon off here and there. And I get the same answer every time. She consistently declined all offers of assistance, and he had been left with little or no outlets for the turbulence he felt swirling within him. 'I know what you're afraid of, Scully.' In his opinion, he was much more willing to confront the possibilities than she was. Yet her persistent denial, the passionate skepticism he had matched wits against since their first case, was becoming a hindrance. Had her concealment of the evidence in their most recent case aided to the completion of another murder? She had seen a victim. She had seen the catchphrase on the bathroom mirror. She had remained silent, becoming, yet again, an intrinsic facet of an X-File. Had her silence allowed the killer to take another life? She may not want the empathy he could provide, but she could not discount that he understood exactly what it felt like, if she could perceive it objectively. Their pursuit of the answers had taken them up, around, and through his family tree, all of his secrets exposed to others' scrutiny, his very sanity ripe for their manipulation. The file folder rested on the cushion next to him, and he tentatively reached out to flip the cover open. A sheaf of computer printouts listed names, dates, addresses, including one all too familiar entry: SCULLY, Dana 0000121336540-009 10/29/94 720 400 837 Super-ovulation resulting in infertility and nasopharyngeal tumor Oh Scully. His focus narrowed from its vast possibilities to the solitary pursuit of a truth that grew more hideous every day. And he was slowly coming to understand the distinction between his hypothesizing and her personifying. I'm only watching the nightmare; but she lives it, every day, every hour, every second. The squeak of the bathtub knobs and the subsequent silence marked the conclusion of the shower. He debated his next course of action, weighing her anticipated fear at any intruder versus what he assumed would be her desire not to see him. He knocked on the bathroom door. "Scully? It's me." Silence. "Scully?" No response. "Scully, talk to me." "Go away, Mulder." Her voice was muffled, choked. "I'll wait for you on the couch," he walked over and sat next to the file. "Go away." One last plaintive protest, although she knew it would be ignored. She rubbed the towel across her body with a violence that chafed, for that was the only sensation she could endure. Her back faced the mirror in an abortive attempt to elude confronting her failure. 'The body is a temple,' she recalled from her childhood catechism. But the sanctity she had never consciously questioned had been breached. Catastrophically. Irreparably. As she wrapped herself in the oversize robe she had used for years, a single tear rolled down her cheek. Her body would never require the extra space of the bathrobe, would never swell with the promise of a child. The dreams and hopes she had carefully and privately nurtured since her childhood would never see fruition. And sitting out in the living room was one more reminder of all she would lose before she found her truth. He heard the bathroom door open and turned to see her standing at the edge of the living room. He rose, his mouth hanging open. "My God, Scully." She was wrapped again in her terry-cloth bathrobe, but she held no resemblance to his memory of her in the same bathrobe just last week. Her hair was wet from the shower, her face etched with the streaks and blotches of tears and the tension of crying. Her neck was red, bright red, with angry welts signifying that she had been scrubbing her skin raw. Her hands and what he could see of her feet held the same evidence. One set of scratches stood out boldly on her left leg, a pattern that would certainly match three of her fingers. He took one step toward her, but stopped as she wrapped her arms tightly around her shoulder and waist, cringing as if he would strike her. He had seen that same look on her face once before, with a gun aimed at his head. Her mother, however, was not here to intercede. "Go away, Mulder." "Scully, please. We have to talk about this." "No, Mulder. We don't." "Scul - " "Mulder, damn it! Go home. Go away. There is nothing for us to discuss here." "No, Scully, I'm not going to do that. I want you to talk to me." "About what?" He had heard that phrase before, in that exact manner. A heartbreaking combination of stubbornness and sorrow that he had combatted with a quiet persuasiveness. Tonight he couldn't stop his voice from rising in anger. "Everything. All of it. Yell at me. Yell at them. Cry if you have to, but I'm sick and tired of you shutting me out!" "Who the hell do you think you are? Me shutting you out? So you're telling me that my not telling you the truth is, what were the words, Mulder? Working *against* you? But you withholding information from me is what, Mulder?" He looked at her, a volatile mix of bitterness and fury. "I did it for your own good, Scully." He softened his voice again, hoping vainly to calm both of them, but there was a steely edge to his tone. "For my own good? So telling Skinner was for my own good too? Did you tell the Lone Gunmen too? You hypocritical son of a bitch! When were you going to see fit to tell me that little truth?" "Scully, I didn't do it to hurt you." He struggled to maintain his composure, knowing that lashing out was not going to help her, regardless of how much it would help him. "Do you know what I feel like right now?" Her eyes blazed wildly, lashing out with laser beams aimed at any target. "Mulder, I've been violated, betrayed. My body has been invaded, not once, not just by the cancer, but repeatedly. It's my body, Mulder, *mine*. And no matter how hard I scrub, no matter how many times I try to wash it away, I can't get it out." She tightened her arms, her fingers scratching and clawing, unconsciously attempting to extract the poison within her. "Yet you've kept this information from me and you can't understand how that's just another violation. You can't understand how it feels to have a piece of you ripped away, to know that you'll never get it back." His efforts at control, to let her work through her emotions, failed abruptly. "The hell I don't, Scully!" He began pacing his end of the living room, moving no closer to her but releasing some the building pressure. "Jesus, this isn't a competition here! I'm not the enemy! I want to help you through this, but I don't know what you want anymore. When should I have told you, huh? After Penny died? Or maybe after we found Max? Or how about after Pendrell was killed? Or before you went into the hospital again for another treatment? When, Scully, when the hell should I have told you this?" She watched him pace, the pattern hypnotic in its effect and she felt the fire inside herself extinguish as quickly as it had flared. She leaned back against the wall and slid slowly to the floor, pulling her knees against her chest. He looked over at her and saw her pitiful effort at self-protection, squeezing herself in the smallest space possible. Her head rested against her knees, her hands behind her neck. His approach was slow, making enough noise so that she could hear what he was doing, but also giving her time to protest if he came too close. He knelt down and reached out a hand to her shoulder, touching her gently. "I don't think I can do this anymore, Mulder." She raised her head to look at him, fresh tears in her eyes. He tightened the grip on her shoulder, trying to pour his strength into her small body. "Scully . . . it's hard . . . hard to know what to say to you." She looked at him, a portrait of grief. "Scully, I can't give you the answers here. I . . . wish that we could talk it out, help you deal with - help us both deal with it." She laughed, a brittle sound filled with no joy. "Talking's never helped bring Samantha back." He bent his head lower to catch her eye. We can do this, Scully. We can hit the sensitive subjects. "And it's not going to cure your cancer either." She considered that for a moment. "Then what's the point?" Just like Scully, always cutting to the heart of the every situation. "I was wrong not to tell you about Dr. Scanlon, Scully." He swallowed and continued on. "But we can't keep working against each other." "Mulder, I think you're looking for some big revelation from me, some kind of . . . pledge that won't cause you to doubt me. But I can't do that." His fingers fell from her shoulder. "You're looking for this complete and perfect trust, without risk, without fail. And I understand why." So fearful of loss, of abandonment. "But you ask for honesty, at all times and at any cost." He looked at the floor. "And you don't?" He did have a point. "Yes. I do." He wasn't expecting her agreement and looked up sharply. Hazel eyes met blue, comforting, challenging, questioning. "Mulder, it feels like I'm consumed by this cancer, swallowed whole, and there's nothing left. And what little I do have, you ask to take from me." And I push you away, so very hard, because giving to you means losing all of me. He shook his head. "No, Scully, not to take from you. I would never do that." He swallowed nervously, searching for the words. "But to reinforce it, strengthen it, strengthen you." To save you. To save myself. "Is that why you didn't tell me?" Is that why you leave me to question if I'm alone in this partnership? "I . . . don't know why, Scully." Because if I didn't tell you, it wasn't true. "But does when you found out or how you found out really change the truth?" Would it? If I had learned it two months ago, two days ago, would that lessen the severity of the blow? If you had told me, instead of Skinner's innocent delivery of the facts, could there have been a difference? She shook her head almost imperceptibly. "So where does that leave us, Scully?" "I don't know," she whispered. "But I need to be alone now." "Scul - " "Please, Mulder. I'll be fi - " No, Scully. Don't say it. It's a lie. Another lie. And we don't have time for anything but honesty. She stopped, not wanting to meet his eyes anymore. "I'll be okay." "That's just another word for 'fine'." She smiled gently, a wan, fragile ray of light. "I know." "Scully . . ." The truth, Scully. Only the truth. Be honest with me. "Maybe not fine. Maybe not okay." The words both liberated and shackled. "But I'll see you tomorrow." He nodded, waiting for her to stand. She followed him to the door, turning the deadbolt and opening the door for him. He took hold of her fingers, squeezing them briefly. "Call me if you need anything." "I will," she responded, concentrating on her fingers in his hand, feeling his lifeforce, culling his essence into her own, taking his strength. He pulled the door shut behind him and walked down the hallway, offering a fervent plea that tomorrow would not be the last. --- End