| Out of Focus : One By Amanda Finch [email protected] CATEGORY:
XAR Essential Reading: Out of Sorrow, Out of Patience. You can find these two stories at my fanfic archive: http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Chamber/7335/ficlist.html Author's notes follow story. ~^~^~^~^~^~^~ 1/12 Washington, D.C. January 26, 1999 12:11 PM The trick was to stay busy. This realization was late in coming, hitting me as I sat on the cold stone steps of the Lincoln Memorial with my jacket wadded up under me, and tie blown over my shoulder by a tourist-deterrent wind. It felt like the first time I sat down in weeks and I was already restless to get up again. Busy, I thought, feeling the fatigue creep in. Busy then was to immerse ourselves in a caseload so banal that the mind chose to flee in terror while our bodies did the work. That meant our faculties were free to ponder more global dilemmas. Now that we were running from ourselves, the goal was quite the opposite. Not busy, but swamped. Spare moments felt wasted. We bid for different positions in different units, swing shift autopsy and ISU, respectively. Our mistake, maybe just my mistake, was thinking Kersh would be delighted to sever all ties. Instead, he reminded us that we were on probation, weren't eligible for any self-chosen transfer. Two choices: take it, or leave it. "Is there a problem?" He had asked, as close to amused as I'd ever seen him. I don't know what bothered me more: the question itself or the momentary consultation Scully and I took to make sure our answers were the same. No, not a problem. Fighting required talking, talking required being in the same space with one another for more than five minutes at a time. Kersh had no say over how much overtime we could work, so I ended up spending any off time with ISU. I was convinced that Scully was fabricating fictional corpses so she could conveniently leave the tension to go autopsy them. And if a quarter past noon was any indication, she was standing me up for our lunch date. No doubt a cadaver would be the better companion, these days. I wasn't being fair. I knew that. I had no right to expect things to remain unchanged, not after the shootings. Three weeks had passed since I pulled the trigger. There was no way to casually drop it into conversation, not even with her. I *still* didn't know how she felt about it, so all of my allusions to the event had to remain neutral. Was she angry? Was she proud of me? It was impossible to tell. Internal Affairs had spent two weeks tearing her apart about how she'd come to be in the apartment with Spender. The official explanation was that he'd taken her there against her will. They had to admit that, yes, she hadn't made a forced entry and had been shot on the scene, so they bought it. A lie between two truths. We'd learned it from the best liars in the field. She held strong through the Internal hearings, but at the OPR meeting, Diana had regarded the two of us with sad, burning eyes. You should've told me, she admonished, and with a voice thick with swallowed tears, she looked into Scully's face and said, "You're blaming me. I'm being punished...for not knowing." Scully had walked quietly back into her - our - apartment, closed the bedroom door, and cried. I could kill Diana. But I didn't say words like those without falling victim to my own irony. "Mulder?" My vision was suddenly obscured by a white bag that swung from Scully's fingers. "Meatball sub, sweet tea. Three to one ratio of napkins to meatballs." "You brought lunch?" I took the bag, more interested in the fact that she sank onto the step next to me, sitting close and opening her own bag. "I'm starving," she said, stretching her legs. "What did Skinner say?" "He hasn't been here yet." "Our tardiness runneth over." I unwrapped the sandwich. There was no polite way to eat these suckers. She'd already unwrapped hers, and it sat on the paper between us while she searched for her straw. I poked at it, lifting up the bread. "There must be some mistake. Under the rye layer, there seems to be...yes, some abundant melted cheese substance, and...the presence of meat, coated with actual grease. This culinary perfection is botched by a proliferation of sauerkraut -" She slapped at my hand. "Don't autopsy my Reuben." "It looks distinctly unhealthy," I said through a mouthful of meatballs. "I am so proud of you." "I'm going to have to start running with you in the morning if this keeps up." I glanced at her carefully. "I would like that." She chewed slowly, staring across the courtyard. "What did Skinner's e-mail say?" "Nothing. Just to call. I called and he told us to meet him here. At noon." "I'll give him fifteen more minutes." She pulled her trenchcoat around her. That meant I only had fifteen more minutes with her, too. "Maybe he meant noon-ish." She checked her watched. "12:30 is well-past noon-ish, Mulder. 12:30 is late." Unlike 12:20, I thought, which was perfectly acceptable. "You don't think anything happened to him?" She asked, looking up. "Do you?" I finished the last of my sandwich, putting all the trash into the bag. "If you want to go ahead -" Anger compressed her mouth into a thin line. "I'll wait." I just let myself be scolded. I was guilty, of something. I was afraid she'd give me the entire list if I debated this one. "He's not coming," Scully replied. She took the trash from me and climbed the steps. I got up and shook out my jacket, trying to make it look like I hadn't sat on it for half an hour. I climbed the steps behind her. Once we were under the grim stonework and behind the columns, the wind was an eerie howl against the outer edge of the monument. I gazed up at the figure of Abe Lincoln himself, solemnly sitting there. "A completely obsolete notion of government," Scully remarked, stuffing the garbage into a trash container before she joined me. "All of the honesty and virtue gone, all of the respect sabotaged by greed. I was just wondering what he would think of the circus it is today." "I was just wondering if there were surveillance cameras up his nostrils." "If there are," boomed the voice behind me, "you're standing right under them." Skinner looked absolutely gaunt, and I would bet money I was getting more sleep than he was. "Sorry I'm late." He offered no excuses. "How's your shoulder, Agent Scully?" "Fine, sir. Doesn't even hurt." "Good." He walked around to the side of Lincoln and we followed. His words were point-blank, uncompromising. "The X-Files have been closed. I thought you should know." Well, they'd been closed to us for a long time. His words may have been for us, but their delivery was staged for the benefit of an unseen audience. Skinner's quasi-public goodbye. I was familiar with the tone by now. "Thank you for telling us, sir," Scully replied, words just as performed, before she looked away. I stared at my shoes, all the black coffee I'd sucked in working like blood, making me queasy. What could I add to that? Well, Dana Scully, the X-Files are closed and they win again. Man, Mr. Skinner, are we ever bummed to hear it. That puts a cramp in our plans and a lump in our throats but c'est la vie, and if you're watching, please don't shoot. Skinner walked away, and then, relunctantly returning, handed each of us an envelope marked with our name. "Your W-2 forms. They were sent to my office by mistake." Oh. I took mine and crammed it in my pocket. I wondered if Scully and I could file jointly. Was there an endangered couple credit? We both watched as Skinner walked down the steps, and we halfway followed, using the sound of the wind as an excuse not to speak. Scully spoke finally. "He called us out here? For that? Would it have mattered if they were staying open?" She turned the words to me like a poke in the side. "You weren't expecting to hear otherwise, were you?" Of course not, I thought. Was I? I wandered away on the step, distancing myself from her. She shrugged to herself and tore open the envelope. From the corner of my eye, I saw her remove the page and stare at it, gaze wide and mouth parted. I couldn't see the paper, just her face, so pale it was almost gray. "You can't be making less than me, Scully. It's impossible." "This isn't my W-2, Mulder. I picked up our W-2s. Monday. I didn't give it to you, but it's in my briefcase." She frowned, struggling to remember. She dropped her voice, talking to herself. "Didn't I? That's what I went upstairs for." I pulled the slim Bureau envelope out of my coat pocket. "Then what's --?" I jerked my thumb under the flap and ripped at the top. It was a standard issue police report. I squinted at the address, small print banded across the top of the paper. NE...Nebraska. Sheehan, NE. Like most police reports, only the most mandatory blanks had been filled. What in the hell was I supposed to notice here? What was I looking for? I scanned the street address, name of the complainant, name of the reporting officer, the claim itself. Nothing remarkable. "What's in yours?" Scully asked, voice unsteady enough to break my concentration. "What's in *yours*?" She flipped the paper so I was facing it, and held her fingers so that the creases fanned out and the corners flared back as the wind threatened to spirit it away. Alex Krycek. As I live and breathe. It was an artist's composite, but it couldn't have looked more like him if Sears portrait studio had put him against a sky background and asked him to smile and say "Uzi." I wordlessly handed her mine and held the drawing in two tight fingers. "What's this mean, Mulder?" I stood next to her, putting the two pages side by side. "The composite is marked Lincoln, Nebraska, but the case number is the same. What's that charge again?" "Stalking," she answered. That was what I'd read, yeah. But damned if it belonged to the face staring out at me. "That's a few rungs down the ladder from murder and international espionage, don't you think?" "Depends on who he's after." She held the sheet out. "Pamela Wyeth." "Who's Pamela Wyeth?" "It only lists her street address and a couple of phone numbers. This doesn't track." "No kidding. Krycek pulling a John Hinckley out in the middle of podunk Nebraska." "Not just that." Scully pointed at the composite with one corner of the police report. "What are the chances that a composite that detailed was published in a newspaper?" "Pretty damn good. That's probably *why* it's so detailed, if they wanted to run it." She folded the crime report, tucking it under her arm as she pulled her coat tight against the chill. "Why would Krycek risk that kind of visibility?" "He wouldn't," I said firmly. "Unless it was worth the risk." "Unless this is a trap," she corrected. "Maybe it's drawn so well because it was drawn for us." I started to defend Skinner, but then I realized we had no idea where Skinner was getting his information these days. "A lot of trouble." I stared at her back. "For a hoax." "The best hoaxes always seem to be." I didn't need reminding. I walked away from her again and called Danny. "Valadayo." I didn't bother to say hello. "The NBA called off the lock-out. Players and owners co-exist peacefully for at least one more belated season. You paying for your own tickets?" "Jeee-sus," Danny mumbled. "You again. What do I care about the NBA? Jordan's gone, man. There *is* no basketball." "Jordan?" I snorted. "But you can watch him be a corporate whore until the dream team games in 2000." "You --" He cleared his throat. "You are dead to me." Scully was behind me. "Who are you talking to?" I held up my finger. "How in the hell am I going to bargain with Redskins tickets in January? Run a number for me." "Man, what part of ‘you are dead to me --?" "C'mon, Danny," I edged carefully, and Scully shook her head, smirking. "Like you have something better to do? You work in Data Resources, so don't give me that crap." After a long silence that threatened to become a dial tone, Danny sighed. "Give me the damn number." I reeled it off and handed the pages to Scully, putting my hand over my ear so I didn't miss anything. "A stalking complaint in Nebraska?" He puzzled over the words. "No aircraft, no ghosts...what gives, Mulder? You been in Nebraska?" "Shut up. What's the status on it?" "Actually...actually, it closed this morning." "Closed?" I raised my eyebrows at Scully and she climbed one step, pulling the receiver out so she could hear. "Does it say why? Or why we were involved in the first place?" "Hey, yeah." I heard the computer keys chattering in the background, the phones ringing. "Yeah, this one got sent directly to us for a composite cross- reference. Sheehan, Nebraska P.D. wanted to see if we had another stalker on the federal files who looked like the one they sent. It says here we didn't. Not why the case was closed though. Says it was sent to A.D. Skinner, but he's not the one who signed off on the dismissal." "Who did?" "Umm...an A.D. Kersh..." The typing stopped. "That all you need?" "He can't do that," I growled. Scully silently concurred. "It's not his jurisdiction." "Actually, it was." More typing. "The cross-reference request was issued while A.D. Skinner took a sick leave two weeks ago...Kersh was put in charge of both areas. He was the acting assistant director." I pulled the phone away from my ear, staring Scully in the eye. "Has Skinner been sick?" "No," Scully said evenly. "No he hasn't." "Is that all, Mulder?" Danny said in my ear. "My other line's ringing in." "Yeah, that's all." I stared at Scully, who stared back. "Thank you." "Don't think you don't owe me." He hung up. The last three weeks of deftly avoiding one another, brooding and seething, all came to a close. Time to test water that I knew to be scalding hot. I always thought of these great things to tell her, clever segues into hazardous subjects, when she was nowhere around. Maybe I could write them all down and fax them to her one day. I looked at my watch. "Whatever you were in a hurry to do...looks like you're going to rush there." "I wasn't in a hur --" She stopped. Too late. I laughed, but it sounded like a short, asthmatic sigh. It was enough. She touched the space between her brows, pressing in hard, leaving white bloodless places behind in the shape of her fingertips. A headache was coming. "An autopsy," she said. "I have an autopsy." Always. People were dropping like flies, apparently. "You make your autopsy." I turned away, walking just to move. "And I'll make our flight arrangements." Her anger flared bright and sudden, alarmingly like mine. "Oh, really? Mulder, this is...this is an invitation, inviting us into a set trap. Why can't you see that when it's put right in front of you?" "Because Kersh wouldn't have closed it. Because I don't think it is." "You never do," she said coldly. "I have a job here, Mulder." "I forget you're the only auxiliary medical examiner in D.C. You work with those bodies in your cooler and I'll work to keep people from ending up in it." I could be cold, too. Her voice was a muted scream, tactful only because we were outside. "Don't you *dare* put it like that." When I put my foot in my mouth, I choke on it. I curled my fingers around her arm. (Please, Scully. Hit me. Throw a punch. Scream. Call me a motherfucker. But don't call me off.) She relented stiffly, unsure herself as to why. "This isn't even a case as of this morning. Much less, ours. How are you going to get a 302?" That was *almost* a yes. "Between the two of us, we have enough frequent flyer miles. I lost two weeks of vacation last year because I never used them, but I started the year over with 6. 6 weeks, and you have three." I put the composite and my hands in my trench. "Wanna take a vacation? If we only take two days each, we have four days with the weekend." "We're going to catch Alex Krycek in four days?" She scoffed. "In a town where he's been plastered across the front page of the paper? He's long gone, Mulder." "I'm more interested in who he was after. Aren't you?" Even if we didn't find Krycek, even if we found nothing, we could use some time away from this town. She knew it. I hoped she did. "Pack for me, okay?" I nodded, and she squeezed my arm, trying to appear as if she'd done it absently. But her fingers waited there too long, her eyes averted too slowly. If she had lingered there for two more seconds, I would've...I don't know. Something symbolic. The moment was wrong, they were all wrong. Like I said, I have rotten timing. She walked away, buckling her coat around her. "Call me when you've booked the flight. We'll talk. On the plane." After she'd gotten back out into the courtyard, Jonson, looking like another guy in a bulky g-man coat who'd had a bad day, followed behind her. He didn't trust her since she'd gotten away from him in a crowd similar to this one. Not once, but twice. "Flight arrangements don't make themselves, Mulder." I turned. "Can it, McGrath." He swallowed what appeared to be the last remnants of lunch. "Just trying to be helpful. Give me the bug." I unfastened my tiepin and put it in his palm, to record a meeting that was over before it had even begun. I took the stone stairs down, trying to remember some vague anecdote from college, where the dead sultan was buried at the foot of the stone steps up to the temple, to make the people who descended them afraid of being haunted as they stepped over. I paused at the last step, in McGrath's shadow as it stretched beyond me, not fighting the wind as it pulled at my coat. The game was afoot. ------------------------------------------- One / Two / Three / Four / Five / Six / Seven /Eight / Nine / Ten / Eleven / Twelve .. ------------------------------------------- |