By Amanda Finch
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Disclaimers, etc. w/ first part.

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FBI Headquarters
9:40 AM

Since last night, the rain hadn't stopped. For a fortress comprised of mostly
glass and stone, the Federal Complex looked wet, burdened down with
saturation. The rain stained the beige of the fountains and stairwells,
glancing off the slick umbrellas of the crowd surging through the courtyard.

It never failed to amuse me that the same agents grimacing at the rain and
cinching their trenchcoats tighter were the same who had climbed rope
lattices at Quantico, glowering at the signs planted in the dirt alongside
the track that told them to keep running. Were they to find themselves
fighting for their lives in the woods, they could probably dimly recall the
various berries, leaves and bugs given Federal approval for survival
sustenance.

Yet those same agents now groused about having to take the stairs when
elevators were shut down, and getting them to have their morning bagel in the
woods would probably be a stretch. Quantico could've saved the effort by just
putting them in some kind of simulator that aptly mimicked the sensation of a
three year desk gig, replete with the appropriate ass-numbness.

A man angrily pushed past me. How dare I stand still while the world kept
moving? I held my hand out tentatively from under my umbrella. They were
upset at this - at a little rain.

I suddenly didn't care if I lost my job today or not.

I'd said it before, but always with the uncertainty afforded by a hope that
life could get better. It was a miracle my FBI career had lasted this long,
as I had heard it said often enough. No doubt the cost of maintaining this
career had been a lease extension wrought by the very men I'd once hoped to
bring to justice.

Well, they could have it now if they wanted it. Hostage negotiators, SWAT
teams, bomb diffusers, criminal psychologists - these required training,
skills, maybe even prowess. But unknowing tools were easy to come by. Working
in a less-sabotaged capacity with the same government that had made me one of
those tools was unthinkable.

Regardless, I still bothered with a suit, and having misplaced about twenty
pounds, an ill-fitting one. I likened it to how the dead were dressed to the
nines for burial. Of course, death probably wasn't as boring as an OPR
meeting.

Once the crowd had thinned out, I walked towards the elevators, moving in the
general direction of the one that chimed as I approached. The doors opened,
and I stood aside, waiting for the usual load to be disgorged into the
hallway. No one came out. The button for the fifth floor was already lit when
I started to push it, and Skinner stood in the corner behind me, watching the
strip of numbers above the doors slowly progress upwards.

He cleared his throat. "Agent Mulder - "

I watched the elevator chime for the third floor as I activated the stop key.
The humming of movement ceased. Skinner waited for the next chime, watching
the three blink on the strip as the elevator shifted underfoot. I turned to
stare at him now, smiling as he hooked his finger under the band of his watch
and pretended he wasn't looking at the digital face. Uncomfortable? I
thought. The elevator, nothing more than a box suspended by a cable in
mid-air, inescapable save for a blowtorch or death, was looking more and more
like a bad idea.

I checked my own watch. "Security is notified by a maintenance alarm after
seven minutes if the floor sequence on the elevators doesn't shift." I turned
my head now as he watched the number. I could almost *hear* him try to
tabulate just how much of that time had passed. "I figure seven minutes -
that's enough time to run a very tight, very discreet consultation with you."

His smirk seemed a little forced. "You think you can kick my ass in seven
minutes?"

"Who said anything about kicking your ass?" I stepped closer anyway. "I just
want you to take a few moments to ponder your complicity in Agent Scully's
disappearance."

"Complicity?" He snapped. "I'm not complying with anyone! Kersh searched my
apartment, the same way he told me he searched yours."

"What did you tell him? What was his provocation for searching *anything*?"

"I don't know," he answered coldly. "Asking Agents Essary and Griffin how
they got their jobs and good reputations reinstated might be a good place to
start."

"They didn't know about the letter."

"They knew about the box," he argued. "The box is what they were looking for
when they came to my apartment. What they found was the receipt for the work
order I put through to Forensics on the letter. They left from there. A.D.
Kersh stayed behind." Checking the time again, he added, "It's three minutes
till ten and your seven are almost up. If you're done - "

"Not even close," I muttered casually, flipping the key. The elevator hummed
to quiet life. I didn't say another word to him as it climbed the remaining
two floors.

Her disappearance - or this investigation, as Skinner would have me call it -
kept bringing me back to old haunts. First, the very hospital that marked
Scully's first return. And now, the same room where I'd put a bullet in the
Smoking Man's head. For weeks, I had regarded that incident as anecdotal
only, as if it had happened to someone else. Maybe Scully had, too. Maybe
that's why she hadn't brought it up, not once. Maybe it simply made it easier
to wake up next to me every morning, not having to decide between the
Hippocratic oath and the hypocrite beside her. A murderer. Was I? My finger
automatically tensed into trigger position. I only regretted the act after I
saw its consequences, just like any killer.

I walked in behind Skinner. Kersh made a mental note of this as we sat down.
If he waited for me to take the hot seat at the opposite end of the
conference table, he was going to wait for a long time. I was planning to
stay close, where I could make them all the most uncomfortable. Skinner had
the opposite seat, next to Jonson, who simply nodded his greeting while Kersh
shuffled papers. Beside Jonson, Griffin studiously ignored my stare, feigning
unwavering fascination with his fingernails. The agents in the next two
chairs were half of the four that had approached us at Dulles. To Kersh's
left sat Essary, obsequious in his attention to Kersh. As I stared past him,
I was startled that the person beside me was April McGrath, the chair to her
right conspicuously empty of, I was guessing, her father-in-law. Of the seven
others present, she alone met my eyes without so much as a flinch. She leaned
to me, as if to say something, but Kersh began.

He turned to me now. "Are there any statements you'd like to make before we
begin, Agent Mulder?"

I didn't think the man could open his mouth without making me angry.
"Protocol would require that you ask me that question *after* the meeting
since I haven't been briefed on what we'll be discussing."

Putting his papers down, he checked to see if anyone else got the joke before
he turned back to me. "I find it hard to believe that you're trying to roll
out protocol."

I met his stare head-on. "Isn't that what you wanted?"

"He's right," Skinner agreed, eyes narrowed.

"You're both here to face the same charge. It's fitting you should pick your
side now and stay on it," Kersh said dismissively. "The charge is the
withholding of evidence in a federal inquiry. The suggested administrative
response is a psychological dismissal, the reasons for which are to be
outlined in prepared statements by Agents Essary, Griffin - "

Griffin was the one unfortunate enough to be in my direct line of sight, and
couldn't have behaved in a more guilty fashion if he ran screaming for the
door. (It's going to be easy to sit at that wiretapping assignment now, you
fucking coward.) He was doing a miserable job of avoiding my stare. (Because
I'm going to break your legs you stupid - )

Kersh's voice interrupted my thoughts. "To get to what Agent Mulder wants to
know, we located both a letter and a box."

It was Griffin. Griffin had broke first. He wasn't going to stand up to this
much longer, and if Kersh got said prepared statements out of the kid without
killing him, I'd be surprised. If a casual observer had to come in and guess
which person at the table was up for a psych dismissal, Griffin would've been
their boy.

"After I found the work order in A.D. Skinner's residence," he continued. "I
let the forensics test continue alongside a sample of Agent Scully's
handwriting. The composite analysis for a match was inconclusive."

I smiled. "I'm supposed to believe that you would tell us if it wasn't? If
there was a match?"

He glared. "Believe what you want to believe. You always do."

Skinner silently implored me to can it until Kersh was done. I sat back, for
now.

Kersh changed pages. "You'll also be interested in knowing that I had the
letter tested for any traits it might share with your handwriting as well.
Again, the results were inconclusive, but the percentage of likelihood was
higher. That's all I'm going to say."

Of all the stupid - "What real use would I have in forging a letter from
Scully and *withholding* it from you?"

"Just to lend credibility to your claim that it was from Agent Scully," he
answered calmly. "You've accused the government of similar methods, if I'm
not mistaken."

So, whether I had immediately turned it over to him or not, I was somehow
working in violation of the inquiry. A lovely Catch-22. "I suppose you found
some way to make the contents of the box below your investigative scrutiny as
well."

I caught a slight lift to the corner of April McGrath's mouth, hidden from
Kersh's eyes by the quick raise of her hand.

"There's nothing at fault with our investigative scrutiny, Agent Mulder." The
papers in his hands changed again, and I suspected for a moment that there
wasn't actually anything on them that pertained to why we were here. "Besides
the confirmation that the biological substance contained within the box does
indeed belong to Agent Scully, all we've been able to discern is that the
blood on the clothes doesn't belong to her."

As if he'd shouted, heads up, he had my undivided attention. "Doesn't belong
to her."

"Do I need to repeat it?"

"I wasn't asking," I replied flatly. "If it didn't belong to her, then what
was the obvious placement of the source?"

"The placement of the source," he mimicked drily, as if this were amusing.
"Maybe they were sitting down or standing up."

I looked down. "Someone want to let me in on the joke?"

April tilted her head so that her words were directed to me, but still spoke
loudly enough for the room to hear. "The tests showed that the blood was
probably poured and rubbed onto the clothes. There's no splatter pattern to
the stains themselves, and no obvious wound from another person it could've
originated from. Not in any likely scenario, anyway."

Poured on? I felt my own blood drain. I could've asked for what purpose he
thought this was done, but I already knew. The letter, addressed to me, sent
early in Scully's missing time so that, deliberately, it would be waiting for
me upon my return home. The box, purposely misrouted by the doctor himself,
so that I might find it before the NSA intercepted it the woods. It was just
more of the game.

But if Scully didn't write the letter, who did?

My hope for Scully dimmed. Even as I fought it down, it darkened. To imagine
that she hadn't poured out an urgent cry for help on the page only implied
that she *couldn't*.

And this hearing - more of the game, whether it was planned or not. The
results were in, and I had no leads. The remainder of the meeting droned
about the room, more an annoying, unidentifiable sound than actual words. I
held my teeth tight, hearing them grind in my head with the sound of my own
breathing. Scully -

Scully no longer existed to anyone in this room but me. To Skinner, just
another liability that he was now being charged for. To Griffin, the gist of
what had almost unraveled his career until he started talking his way out of
it, started talking about formaldehyde and bloody clothes. To the two agents
from the airport, nothing but a nice commendation on their record. To Essary,
she was a problem that, for him at least, had passed. To April, she was at
least indirectly responsible and interconnecting with a murdered husband. But
to Kersh, she was nothing more than the poor reflection in the forged words
of a letter, the now-deceased recipient of some fraudulent blood. She was a
piece of paper. She was a box. And how stupid, how ignorant of me to be
searching for a woman who was nothing more than a piece of paper and a box. I
didn't have to hear his words to hear this lurking behind them. It was loud
to me. It was the drone in my ears, louder than the one that had occupied my
head since I regained consciousness in Nebraska.

"Agent Mulder." Kersh's voice summoned, loud and clear. "I just asked you a
question."

"I surrender."

The drone stopped. The room collectively held a breath. Kersh peered up from
the pages, caught off guard. "What?"

"I said I surrender." My voice sounded pleasantly steady to me, bound
together with the flow of it to my ears. "I'm sure the room is under some
sort of surveillance. Aren't they all? Well, I surrender. I'll let them all
hear that. I give up. You can have your fucking truth." I raised my face and
addressed the corners of the room near the ceiling, the light fixtures. "Are
you listening? Is anyone listening? I give up! That's what this has been
about all along, right? Show me that I can't win. Take the wind out of my
sails, thwart me at every turn, sabotage the crusade and make me think that
it's yet another reason to continue. Then, hit me where it hurts, take what
matters most, show me just how hopeless, pointless and stupid the whole thing
is so I'll give up. Well you know what, you've won!"

Their discomfort was palpable. April's hand was extended, slightly, as if she
anticipated my rising up and beating the table. No histrionics, I reassured
her with a look. She didn't look reassured. Even Kersh - he looked afraid. My
heart beat against the bandages, my breathing was too quick. Kersh fumbled
under the table with one hand. Suddenly, I imagined it was his head with the
bullet.

"The button you're looking for is closer to your left. Actually, Griffin
could find it more easily." I looked at him, my eyes so wide they hurt. "Go
ahead, Griffin. Push the button. Push the fucking button! Are you panicking
now? That's what it's there for! Go ahead. I came here today prepared to lose
my job. I came here today prepared to be lied to. I walked into this building
everyday, for about eight years, prepared to be lied to. But whether you send
me on my way, transfer me to yet another useless waste of taxpayers' money,
nail me with a sniper shot through my apartment window - none of that matters
now. I'm not looking for the truth anymore. Just her. Maybe that's why they
still have her, you think?"

April's hand snagged my sleeve now, pulled. "Mulder - "

"Am I finished?" I practically screamed it. Her fingers opened and jerked
back in shock.

"Yes," Kersh answered, tapping the papers into one stack resolutely. "I'd say
you are, Agent Mulder." He turned to the two agents from the airport. "I'm
filing for your immediate psychological dismissal - "

The loud thud of my gun, holster and all, hitting the top of the table, cut
off his words. Half of them jumped back as if I'd just fired a bullet. My
badge hit the table next. I slid them both across the table, hard, in
Griffin's direction. He bolted up, his chair overturning behind him as they
went past the edge of the table to the floor. "You can't dismiss me. I just
quit."

"Sit down, Agent Mulder!" Skinner surged forward, shifting his attention to
Kersh. "Protocol states that Agent Mulder gets a psychological screening
before you can call for his dismissal - "

"Ten years ago," I told Skinner, "I substantially helped write the
psychological screening exam for the FBI. Irony, huh? I already know I failed
it." I leaned down, yanking my at the holster around my ankle. Griffin caught
my back-up gun, barely. "Besides... I just resigned. Unless you really just
want to debate my sanity, I see no reason to continue."

Kersh stood, still wary. "All OPR meetings should be so brief. Assistant
Director Skinner, keep your itinerary clear for the next two weeks. Your
charge still stands."

Skinner stood. "The last time I checked, you have no rank to pull on me,
Kersh."

"You're correct," Kersh noted tonelessly. "For now. Agent Mulder, I'd say
it's been nice working with you, but it hasn't."

He left the room. The arresting agents at Dulles followed behind him.

April stood in the way of my leaving. "Agent Mulder - "

I moved past. Griffin retrieved my badge and gun from under the table like he
intended to stay down there with them.

I walked out. I hadn't expected it to feel like a release.

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