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OUR DARKER PURPOSE
by Rae Lynn
(claypotatoATnetscape.net)RATING: PG
CLASSIFICATION: SA
SPOILERS: Through "Grotesque."
KEYWORDS: Post-episode for "Grotesque."
ARCHIVE: Please inquire within.
SUMMARY: Mulder and Scully and the aftermath of "Grotesque." Scully's POV.
AUTHOR'S NOTES: Well, folks, I've fallen off the fanfic wagon once again. This story has already been written in the fanfic community -- many, many times -- but it's hard for anyone who eats MulderAngst for breakfast to resist the siren song of trying their own hand at a post-"Grotesque" fic. Midway through the writing of this fic, I attended a very weird production of "King Lear," hence the title and all the quotes, which belong to Shakespeare.
DISCLAIMER: All the characters contained within are the property of Chris Carter and Ten Thirteen Productions. No profit will result from this story and no copyright infringement is intended.
"The weight of this sad time we must obey; Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say. The oldest hath borne most: we that are young Shall never see so much, nor live so long." --Shakespeare, King Lear (last lines)
Nearly every argument Mulder and I have had about our partnership has begun or ended the same way, as if something in me can't resist pointing out to him what he once accepted without question but now stubbornly refuses to acknowledge. Why was I assigned to you in the first place, Mulder? To debunk your work. To discredit your theories. To piss you off. And I have done that, and somehow managed to validate you at the same time. My scientific inquiries have only intensified Mulder's passion, his paranoia, his pursuit of the truth. Like a Hydra. Cut the head off Mulder's unique investigative philosophy and more will grow in its place.
In the three years Mulder and I have been partners, I have found myself living two lives. Mulder's and my own. For three years I have been holding the future of Mulder's work in my hands.
Mulder's life.
Partners are supposed to look out for each other. I have pressed my hands into Mulder's flesh and felt rivulets of blood flow through my fingers. I have shone penlights into Mulder's eyes and willed his pupils to dilate. I have burst numbly into emergency rooms only to watch Mulder code on the table. I do it because it's Mulder, because I know he would walk barefoot over broken glass for me if I -- or anyone else -- asked him to. All the while I've tried not to think about the absurdity of it, or the odds stacked against one woman up against a formidable force. Dana Scully, meet Darkness; and get comfortable with it, because you two are going to be at each other's throats for a long, long time.
I knew when I met Mulder that I would be expected to hold his life in my hands.
But nothing in the Federal Bureau of Investigation's code of conduct ever prepared me to safeguard his sanity.
Mulder's lifeless eyes and stumbling steps as I ordered him repeatedly to get in the car. Mulder's bloodless face, glazed with fever, his shirt still incriminatingly spattered with his father's blood.
The rigid outline of Mulder's back, these last few days, the tenseness that gripped his shoulders as I watched him walk away from me.
I hadn't answered when Skinner asked me if I was worried about him. Even my silence felt like a betrayal to the man I once thought only of in terms of superlatives: the most articulate, the most passionate, the most intelligent, the most infuriating. I felt that man slipping away from me and this time there was no physiological source to explain it away.
I told Mulder I was scared. It was simpler than telling him the truth: that I was terrified. For him, for all of us. It was a shortcut to the truth I could never admit to him: it is easier to watch Mulder die than to watch him go mad. It felt like a lifetime before I heard the comforting wail of ambulance sirens arriving. Still hunched over Patterson, I don't dare look up at Mulder kneeling beside us, still clutching his cell phone, his head bowed as if for a benediction. A final prayer for peace.
There had been a struggle. But Mulder -- usually so impetuous, so reckless in his pursuit -- had been precise. He had not shot to kill. Patterson, I decided as the EMTs approached, would live, at least long enough to torture Mulder with his madness. Just as I had tortured Mulder with my pointed questions, with the unwelcome concern he must have felt radiating off me in waves. I was scared, Mulder. I didn't know where you were. As if Mulder didn't already do a stunning job of torturing himself.
This thing exists, Scully. It's real.
And it had been. As real as the bullet in Bill Patterson's chest.
The paramedics who arrive are efficient, separating my hand from Patterson's breast and herding Mulder off to one side.
"Agent Mulder, we're going to need to take your statement," says a police officer. Mulder nods mutely and follows the officer to a dark corner of the roof before I can even open my mouth in protest.
"Agent Scully, we'd like you to ride with us," says a paramedic, and I watch helplessly as the distance between Mulder and I grows. Mulder would crawl to the ends of the earth for me, but tonight he can't even bring himself to traverse the length of Mostow's roof.
At the hospital, I find myself supervising Patterson's transfer from backboard to gurney and then, literally, washing my hands of him. As I emerge from the ladies' room I spot a familiar figure striding purposefully down the hallway -- the only body language other than Mulder's I would have no trouble picking out of a crowd.
Assistant Director Skinner must feel the same way, because he makes his way over to me immediately.
"Agent Scully," he says. "I received a call from local PD that there was a shooting at Mostow's studio, but they weren't clear on the details." His eyes track grimly to my bloodstained sleeves and I know what he must be thinking. If there is blood on my hands, it must be Mulder's. After all, it always has been.
"It was Patterson, sir," I say quickly. "They're working on him in the ER."
Skinner considers this impassively for a moment before asking me where Mulder is.
"He's still at the scene. They're taking his statement," I say, and suddenly I realize that I am desperate to see him -- and determined to see him, this time, all of him, not the pale shadow who's been living inside my partner for days.
Skinner looks at me closely. "His statement?" he says. "He hasn't been taken into custody?"
My breath rushes out of me so explosively I can feel it pounding in my ears. "Taken into...? No, sir." Skinner and I stare at each other for a moment, and I imagine our faces as twin masks of horror and confusion, realization dawning on both of us.
"You thought it was Mulder," I say finally. "When you received the call, you thought Mulder was the..."
I can't bring myself to finish the sentence, but Skinner's eyes do it for me. I am not the only one who has betrayed my partner with my silence. "Believe me, I hoped otherwise, Agent Scully," he says in a low voice. "What the hell happened out there?"
The facts of the incident are, at least, indisputable and something I can hang onto for dispassionate recitation.
"I received a message tonight from Agent Nemhauser. It sounded urgent. When I called him back, Agent Mulder answered Nemhauser's phone. He seemed..." My voice falters despite myself. "He seemed disoriented. He told me he was in Mostow's studio and I asked him to wait there for me. When I arrived, Mulder had his gun trained on Patterson. I ordered him to desist, but Patterson attacked me and fled. Agent Mulder and I pursued him to the roof."
Skinner, usually so guardedly reserved, seems vaguely stunned by my explanation. I watch as he removes his glasses and carefully rubs his eyes. "And you believe Patterson was the killer," he says flatly as he replaces the frames.
"I think the facts speak for themselves, sir," I say evenly.
"Bill Patterson personally requested Mulder's involvement on this case," Skinner says, avoiding my eyes.
"Because he knew Mulder was the only person who could catch him," I reply.
Skinner's heavy sigh mirrors my own, and we are silent for a long moment. I struggle to imagine Bill Patterson -- the proud, arrogant man who'd reduced my confident and articulate partner to a stuttering and hesitant subordinate. There is so much, I realize, that I don't know.
"I worked a case with Mulder once, when he was still with the ISU," Skinner says suddenly, as if reading my thoughts. I am struck by the childish urge to put my hands over my ears and chant something to block out the impending doom of Skinner's words. But there is no stopping the story he needs to tell me.
"It was a difficult case." Skinner looks at me and I am unable to look away. "High profile. Very bloody. Guys with ten, twenty years' experience couldn't keep it together. And Mulder..." His shoulders rotate in what might be a shrug. "Mulder was just a kid. Or he seemed that way to those of us who had been born before the Kennedy administration. But Patterson was insistent that Mulder be brought in."
Skinner spreads his hands, palm up. "The Bureau devoted a lot of manpower. Agents combing the District, conducting a dozen interviews a day, grunt work to get the job done. But Mulder...Mulder just sat there, in the same corner of the bullpen, looking at pictures of the crime scenes. It was..."
"Spooky?" I finish before I can stop myself, my voice little more than a harsh whisper. Suddenly I am seeing my partner through Skinner's eyes: that dark figure in the rumpled suit, his lips moving soundlessly, his eyes darting and tracking but never coming to rest. Spooky. Spooky Mulder. They had called him that for years, but I had never questioned why or how. Spooky Mulder, so fond of the paranormal.
I hadn't known.
Skinner doesn't bother to nod. "He was adamant that there was something in the photographs, something about the staging or the crime scenes that we had missed." He exhales deeply. "Frankly, I thought he was wasting our time. His behavior was...erratic. I thought the case was taking a toll, I was afraid he would get sloppy. I said as much to Agent Patterson."
"You wanted him off the case?" I ask neutrally.
"I wanted him to eat a decent meal and sleep for more than two hours at a stretch," Skinner rejoins. "Do you know what Patterson said to me?"
I shake my head mutely, but I am as afraid of the answer as I have been afraid for Mulder these past few days.
"He said, 'Nothing gets between Mulder and the truth.' He warned me not to try." He pauses for a moment. "If Agent Mulder says Patterson is his killer, then I believe him. But I want to warn you, Agent Scully. The Bill Patterson I knew understood Mulder better than any other agent in the Bureau. Maybe better than Mulder understood himself." Skinner's eyes are dark. "It's not going to be easy for him."
"It never has been, sir," I respond quietly. "If you'll excuse me..." I make small weaving motions with my hands, not bothering to finish my sentence. Skinner and I both know where I'm going. He nods his acquiescence and I take off down the hallway, grabbing my cell phone as I speed toward the hospital exit.
I know exactly how many times Mulder's phone will ring before it transfers to his voicemail, and it isn't until the middle of the last ring that Mulder picks up. It's the first time he has answered a call in three days and I can feel my hands shaking with relief.
"Mulder, it's me," I say; surely even his overworked mind will comprehend that familiar refrain. "Where are you?"
Of that, at least, he seems certain. "I'm still at the crime scene," he says without emotion. "We're just finishing up."
Two sentences more coherent than anything he has said to me in days. Just the first would have been enough, but the second -- that was a freebie. I close my eyes for a moment. Maybe, I think, maybe Mulder is not lost after all.
"Stay where you are," I tell him, not knowing or caring whether Mulder will interpret it as an order or a plea. "I'll be right there."
I hang up without saying goodbye, afraid of the silence I might find on the other end of the line.
Mulder is still on the roof with half D.C.'s law enforcement when I arrive. I watch him from a distance first as he nods down at a detective, a slow up and down motion of his head that seems to cost him great effort. He is beyond exhausted, the white bandage on his forehead smudged with soot from the roof. It aches to look at him. I mentally catalogue all the things I want for myself at the moment: a warm bath, hot tea, a thick blanket, about forty hours of sleep. I wish I could provide my partner with all these things a hundred times over, but Mulder's mind is always charged and rarely refuses to turn itself off.
"...and you should change that bandage, the wound looks like it might be infected," I can hear the cop advise Mulder as I approach. Mulder acknowledges the officer's departure with a tight nod, then tilts himself backward and slides his back deliberately down the wall in one unhurried movement until he is sitting on the ground. He still hasn't seen me. From a few feet away I find myself studying his hands, watching closely for signs of trembling, but I should know better than to expect any wasted movement or outward bodily betrayal on the part of Fox Mulder. Part of me wishes the tightly wound tethers holding Mulder together would abruptly snap, that Mulder would scream or hit something, that we could get him in restraints or have him sedated -- anything a hospital or medication might cure. But Mulder is too complicated for that. Mulder, I realize, has been keeping himself sane for a long time.
Instead he just sits there. It takes longer than usual for his finely calibrated Scully honing device to kick in, but just as I'm beginning to worry I watch his head lift up and swivel towards me.
"Mulder," I say, and cross the last few feet between us to stand beside him. Mulder closes his eyes and leans his head back against the wall.
"How's Bill?" he says, his voice surprisingly soft. The hoarseness has gone from it, along with the desperation, the pleading that asked me to believe him against all logic. Now he just sounds tired.
"He's in surgery," I tell him. "They're relatively confident he'll survive."
In the ensuing silence I finish my unspoken thought: The question is, will you? But I don't dare speak it aloud. Instead I offer him my hand, to help him up, but Mulder stares at it uncomprehendingly as it dangles in front of him as if he's not sure what to make of it.
"Come on, Mulder," I say quietly. "Let's go home."
Mulder swallows convulsively as he rises, shaking his head, and too late I remember the state of his apartment, the hundreds of gargoyles he has plastered to his walls. Your new wallpaper, I had called it, a delicate blend of caution and sarcasm, willing Mulder to respond with a trademark crack or even any spark of life at all. Any clue that he understood.
"No," he says, some of the determination seeping back into his voice. "I..."
For the first time, his eyes meet mine, and with a shock I realize it's been so long since we've looked at each other like this that I've nearly forgotten what Mulder's eyes look like. For three years his eyes have startled me out of a hundred reveries, alternately furious and wild, at times pleading and gentle. Once again I am startled now -- at the strength there, the conviction.
No, Mulder is not lost.
"Not yet," Mulder says, breaking away from my gaze. I nod and reach for his arm, grateful when he doesn't flinch from my touch.
"Then let's go for coffee," I suggest as evenly as I dare. I can tell Mulder doesn't want to come home to my apartment, either, where the clear walls and tidy couch will only remind him of what he has given up in the last few days to Bill Patterson. "There's a diner just around the corner." Where it's brightly lit and you can't escape inspection, I want to add. Mulder has been only half-listening to what I'm saying, but he nods anyway, taking a small step forward as if to test his balance.
Mulder seems somehow more familiar to me as we head down from the roof of the building; it's almost as if whatever has plagued him during this case -- Patterson, Mostow, the demon, evil itself -- has left him, as if his insistence that the reality of the "thing" killing the victims had been true. The thought makes me shudder visibly as we settle into a booth at the diner, and Mulder glances up at me.
"Someone walking over your grave?" he asks, almost conversationally.
You, Mulder, I want to tell him, it's always you walking over my grave. But instead I shake my head and glance out the window.
"No," I say, "just a chill. It feels like rain."
"Sympathetic fallacy," Mulder murmurs into his coffee.
"What?"
"The literary device by which an author uses the weather in his story to reflect his character's mood," Mulder says without looking up. "'Thou, all-shaking thunder, smite flat the thick rotundity of the world.'"
"That's from King Lear." Mulder nods and looks out the window, his hands absently shredding a spent sugar packet. "You've studied English literature," I observe. 'Studied' is a mild word for it; no doubt he has the collected work of Shakespeare memorized, stored in his arsenal of disheartening quotations to dredge up at moments like this.
"We two alone will sing like birds in a cage, Scully," he says hollowly, his voice muffled as it bounces against the windowpane.
"I'd say that makes you a man more sinned against than sinning," I return gently. Mulder chokes on something in his throat -- half a sob, maybe, more likely a bitter laugh.
"Why did you join the FBI, Mulder?" I ask, suddenly curious. Mulder looks up at me, startled; ordinarily I tiptoe around the pieces of his past as if his memory is a minefield that might explode if probed the wrong way. He tips his head back against the seat, his hands gripping the coffee cup as if he would prefer them to be scalded than shaking from the cold.
"It was Patterson," he admits, swallowing difficultly. "My second year at Oxford, he gave a lecture in a behavioral psychology course of mine on his work with the Investigative Support Unit, profiling serial killers. I was fascinated. I stayed after to talk to him." Mulder's eyes are hard with the memory. "They say Patterson always did have a sixth sense for talent," he says bitterly.
I am surprised at his story. I think of Mulder the way he looked in shadow on our first case, the fierceness in his voice as he told me nothing else mattered to him save for the truth about his sister.
"It had nothing to do with Samantha," I say aloud, somehow unwilling to let the matter drop. It is Mulder's turn to look surprised.
"No," he says. "No, that came later. After I discovered the X-Files." Suddenly I find myself busily revising my personal evaluation of Mulder's history in my head. The man I knew had always been on a singular trajectory, had always been preoccupied with his missing sister and his somewhat unusual theory regarding her disappearance. I knew that Mulder was brilliant, that his success in the ISU had afforded him the opportunity to pursue his own interests with the X-Files, but I had always pictured Mulder the way I knew him: a maverick agent nicknamed "Spooky" for his investment in the paranormal, biding his time until he could clear his own path. I had never considered that perhaps it had gone the other way around: Mulder, just a kid to Assistant Director Skinner, whose uncanny abilities had earned him a peculiar nickname and a vested interest in cases outside the ISU mainstream -- ones that might cost him his life, but never his beautiful mind.
"Whatever talents you have, Mulder, Patterson didn't create them," I say firmly.
Mulder's face relaxes for an instant and then tightens again. "No," he says distantly, "no, you're right about that," and I realize that it was entirely the wrong thing to say. To assure Mulder that Patterson had no hand in his creation is tantamount to insinuating that his ability to tap into the minds of monsters is inborn -- to imply that it takes one to know one.
"I scared you," Mulder says suddenly, his voice trying for accusatory but not quite making it.
"Yes," I nod; there is no use denying it. Part of me is relieved to hear that Mulder even remembers that conversation; he certainly hadn't seemed to be listening to me at the time.
"Scully," Mulder says in a low voice, "you have to know that I would never..."
The silence stretches between us, so palpable I can hear its buzzing in my ears. What I would never admit to Mulder -- what he would die before he would let himself hear -- -was that I didn't know. Two Mulders warred within my memory: There was Mulder, gently comforting a victim with his words, his empathy propelling him with such grace toward a conclusion. And then there was Mulder, his voice harsh and angry, his limbs lashing out, his eyes wild. If Mulder's greatest desire was the truth, then my greatest fear was finding out what he was capable of in pursuit of it. And while my heart and my gut -- all the parts of me that connected with Mulder in ways that overruled common logic -- said Mulder could never commit even a single atrocity against another human being, my head was in constant opposition, filling me with doubt, insisting that I look at the facts rationally, from a scientist's perspective.
A scientist would have suspected Mulder of murder.
But it hadn't been science that had captured Bill Patterson. It had, in the end, been Mulder.
Without thinking I reach across the table and separate Mulder's hands from his coffee cup so I can hold them in my own. They are warm, finally, and I can feel the soft, slow beats of his pulse in his thumb.
"I was scared, Mulder," I admit softly. Hearing it again from my lips, he flinches. "I didn't understand what you were doing, where you were going, why you wouldn't return my calls. You seemed so..."
"Spooky?" he suggests bitterly.
"I was going to say isolated," I return mildly. "From everything and everyone around you."
"From you," he says, relaxing his hands so they are splayed palm up on the tabletop.
"Mulder..." I hesitate, unsure if telling him this story is truly the right thing to do. "I spoke to A.D. Skinner at the hospital. He told me he had worked with you once before, when you were still with the ISU."
Mulder grows still at the memory, and then he nods without speaking.
"Is that what it was like, Mulder?" I ask quietly. Mulder's hands clutch at another sugar packet and then fall still.
"It was like..." He looks away, stumbling over the words as they tumble rapidly from his lips. "It was like dreaming. Like a cycle of nightmares without mercy, without conscience, without end." His voice is soft. "It was like being buried alive."
I consider this for a moment and find his words difficult to bear. I think of my partner as I know him now-his insomnia, his nightmares, his sense of humor, his intuition -- and try to imagine the agent he must have been. Just a kid, A.D. Skinner had said. Just Mulder.
"Why didn't you tell me before?" I ask. Mulder looks at me for a long moment, a street lamp from outside the window casting murky shadows over his eyes.
"I couldn't tell you," he says. His voice is almost a whisper. "There was no reason for...Scully, I wouldn't have wanted you to know."
Mulder and I have gotten good at keeping each other's secrets; hardly a day goes by when we are not reminded that we can trust no one but each other with our lives and our work. But, I think, Mulder and I have gotten good at keeping secrets from each other as well. I could lecture Mulder about honesty, about the integrity of our partnership and how we must be open with each other to stay alive. But that, I know, would be hypocritical of me, and the last thing Mulder needs right now. Instead I feel myself let out a small sigh. Our partnership may need repairing, I think, but we won't accomplish that tonight.
"Mulder," I say. His eyes look lost, somewhere far away, so I repeat his name again. "Mulder." He looks up at me, unsure of what he'll see in my eyes. You're my partner," I tell him gently. "I wasn't scared you were becoming a murderer, Mulder. I was scared I would lose you."
"Howl, howl, howl, howl; o, you are men of stones," Mulder says wearily, staring out the window.
"Mulder." I say his name forcefully this time, and he looks at me, his eyes suddenly clear.
"You won't lose me, Scully," he says, his voice so steady it sends chills down my spine. "Not as long as you're my partner."
I would find you, Mulder, I think; I will always find you.
"Ready to go?" I ask to break the long silence, reaching for my wallet. But Mulder's long fingers grab my wrist, his grip firm but impossibly gentle.
"Not yet," he says, in a voice I recognize as one struggling to keep out his anguish. "Let's just sit here a little while longer."
I slip my wrist out from his fingers and turn his hands over to stroke his palms. "Okay, Mulder," I agree softly. "Let's sit here a while."
Mulder doesn't answer, but I can read the gratitude in his eyes. In them, for the first time since this case began, I can see my partner -- the one who speaks to me without words, who consumes the hurt of others as if it is his own -- and I realize that, against all logic, I am grateful for this too.
<As long as you are my partner,> I think, and outside, Mulder's rain begins to fall.
END.
Thank you for reading. Feedback is very gratefully accepted and acknowledged at claypotatoATnetscape.net.
If you enjoyed this story, please send feedback to Rae Lynn
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