Bitter Grapes


Author: Amanda Barnes


Category: MSR

Keywords: MSR, Fowley POV

Summary: Diana thinks about her life with the Syndicate...

Spoilers: General, takes place before Biogenesis.

Feedback: Loved at [email protected]

Rating: PG-13, for language

Disclaimer: The X-files and all properties thereof belong to Chris Carter and 1013 productions. This is intended only for reader enjoyment and no money has exchanged hands.

Distribution: Anywhere is ok by me, as long as my name and email address stay attached. Special Thanks: To my beta readers: Barb, Nicole and CoryG. You ladies are the best! Without you, this story would be so much less. Thanks for the support! Also to Barb, thanks for putting up with the frequent emails and the panic attacks I made you suffer through. You, my dear, are a doll. ;-)


Bitter Grapes


When I was 33 I was given the assignment of a lifetime. My assignment was to seduce an attractive man. I was to make him want me, need me, love me. "Hell," my benefactor said, "marry him if that's what it takes".

At this point I had been working for the "Syndicate", the "shadow government", the goddamn MIB's, for 5 years. I had been recruited out of the FBI academy with promises of splendor, but more importantly, of life. I will live when millions will perish. I think about that when someone pisses me off...you may cut me off in traffic today buddy, but in a few years you may be nothing but slime under some aliens boot...or what ever aliens have in the way of foot wear.

It took less time than one would think to get used to covering up sightings, attacks, and abductions. I have also been present during many attempts to create a hybrid. I am curious by nature.

But, in all my years with the "Group", I had never had such an exciting assignment as the one that put me on the path to Special Agent Fox Mulder. In those days, before he came to be known as Spooky, he was such a fine specimen. Dark hooded eyes, and messy hair, a lower lip to suck on, and a body to drool over. I was just his type, aggressive and sensual, and after a few days of heavy flirting I got him to take my unspoken invitation. We began to date. We became a 'couple'. We began to have sex. Oh, the sex. Fox is an amazing lover. There were many nights when he wouldn't let me sleep, wouldn't sleep himself, until we were both exhausted. That mouth...

We married. I can still remember the night when he asked me, telling me he loved me and wanted me by his side forever. I agreed, knowing the Group would be happy.

I married a man I didn't love.

Married life was okay; I wasn't being paid to like it. The sex was still phenomenal, but Fox was so clingy, so needy, and his nightmares...I made him see a doctor.

That's when he began to get too close to the truth. That was the beginning of our end.

Somehow Fox persuaded the Bureau into allowing a husband and wife team to open a new division. Fox began work eagerly, and I almost felt sorry for him, knowing what I knew about his sister and the 'plans'. I was the woman he made scream at night, and yet during the day he couldn't make me speak the truth.

The Group began to get worried as Fox began to see truths he wasn't ready to see, and decided that perhaps if I were gone, he would stop his work and come after me. I was assigned to see someone else on the side. I picked an agent whose name I cannot remember and whose touch made me cringe. I was very open about it, and of course Fox found out. Instead of the fireworks and screaming matches I expected, he merely filed for divorce and went back to his files while I went overseas, ostensibly to work on terrorism cases.

I kept tabs on my ex husband.

For a half a year we left him on his own, allowing him to see some things, and hiding some others, until it was decided unanimously that he needed to be shut down. The hope had been that Fox would replace his Father on the inside, but those hopes turned out to be for naught. Thus, if he wasn't useful to the cause, he was a hindrance. To shut him down we needed someone who could provide the evidence. Someone Fox could trust and no one on the inside fit the bill. In desperation we turned to the graduating class at Quantico. This was my first encounter with the idea of Dana Scully. Fox would find it funny, I think, that his ex-wife picked his new partner for him.

She was young and na�ve, yet rational and scientific. I felt sure she would debunk the Files within a few months.

My father used to say that when I was wrong, I was remarkably wrong. I think he would say that in this circumstance.

She got too close. I would watch surveillance of them, growing closer. What had happened to me? Didn't Fox Mulder still think of his ex-wife? Why was this woman bothering me so? It wasn't as if I had ever loved Fox.

I laugh at the irony to think that when Fox was dying inside because of his partner's abduction I was in the same building with her. As she would cry out for him, though, I couldn't call him to let him know. Her abduction was for the greater good. I went down one night to where she was kept, and watched her as she slept. Her body had been greatly ravaged, and the chip was already in place in her neck. Earlier that afternoon I had watched as her ova had been fertilized. I wondered about this woman; I wondered if she was in love with Fox. Her eyes opened as I was leaving and she called to me, but I ignored her pleas. The next day her memories were wiped and she was taken back to him. I still have my memories.

A couple of years past and I checked on Fox occasionally. I watched as he and Scully grew closer, and then fell apart again. I continued my work of destroying everything my ex-husband wanted to see, and things were calm. Until I was suddenly called back.

I was unwelcome, at least by Scully, which is what we expected. I have been put into the place of the second woman, the ex-wife home to come between the ex-husband and his new woman. If life were a television show I would be hated by millions.

It worked. Almost a year later I can honestly say that my interference has kept them preoccupied enough to fuck up. Their work and their partnership has suffered. I may just be in for a raise. I shake my head realizing I have been waxing poetic in my office for too long. I should go home.

I arrive home to find my apartment in disarray. On guard, I slowly check each room, searching for the intruder. I find him in my bedroom.

"Diana." He exhales a cloud of smoke. "How are you?"

"What are you doing here?"

He smiles at me, and motions me to sit. I shake my head and he cocks an eyebrow, but doesn't press it. He pulls something from behind his back and hands it to me. "Looking for this."

I blush. Goddamn it. How could he...! This was hidden in the bottom of my closest, under quite a lot of junk. I only look at it on occasion...

I was so young, I think, looking at Fox and I in our wedding photo. And he was so na�ve.

The bastard stands. "I have something for you to hear, Diana."

"Not until you tell me what you're doing he.."he cuts me off by holding up a micro recorder and pushing play.

I hear nothing at first but some static, and then soft moaning. "umm...oh, yes...oh, God, Mulder...yes, there...oh,oh,oh,oh,oh..."

Continued I hear my ex-husband, "damn, Scully, so good...baby..."

I listen as my ex-husband makes love to another woman.

Deep breathing.

"I love you," he says, and she reciprocates. I hear a click.

All the blood has drained from my face.

He looks at me again. "I just thought you should know about the new situation, Diana."

And he is gone.

I am alone. And vulnerable.

I don't understand why.

I never loved him, anyway.


End.

Authors notes: This came to me just before I went to sleep one night. I kept seeing Diana listening to a recording of Mulder and Scully making love and hurting, but not understanding why. Because (in her own words) she had never loved Mulder. I titled it "Bitter Grapes" after the Aseop fable about the fox who kept trying to reach a bunch of grapes on a high vine. When he couldn't reach the grapes he consoled himself by saying, "They were probably bitter anyway." I hope everyone enjoys.

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