FIC Banging Your Head Against a RedHaired Brick Wall (2/2) (XFILES)

[blairprovence]

You might be wondering by this point why I chose to begin my narrative with Ma's little riff about the importance of avoiding cops as possible lifemates, or why I made such a case about my father's partner Ray.

It has to do with the *other* woman in Mulder's life, the one who - I came to find out later - got all the parts of him I had such a yen for.  For months after we'd first met, I had no idea Mulder's partner was a woman. Comments about "Scully" had of course dotted our conversations periodically, as co-workers do in discussions between workaholics.  I most definitely had the sense that he and his partner were close, but I'd have to say I didn't dwell on it.  Ma's warning was the furthest thing from my mind on those lazy Saturdays we spent together.

I found out near the end of April that Mulder's fabled Scully was a member of my fair gender.

He was taking a shower in my bathroom when his celphone rang.  I debated a few seconds before taking it out of his coat - he was a federal employee, after all, and Lord knows what kind of heinous crime compels the government call an FBI Agent on his day off.  And I had no idea whether or not answering somebody else's phone could be considered a federal offense. But curiosity, as it often does, got the best of me, so I pulled the phone out and flipped it open.

A breathless (in the sense of being in a hurry, I mean, get your mind out of the gutter) female voice plunged into a long, involved commentary before I could even say hello.

"Mulder, it's me.  I ran a toxicology on the blood found at the scene.  It doesn't match that of the deceased, and it tested positive for trace amounts of..."  etc. etc. so on and so forth.  I only understood about every third word of it, anyway, and couldn't remember it accurately if my life depended on it.  But you get the idea.  FBI stuff - blood, guts, and gore.  Yick.

Finally, I cut into her monologue.  "Uh, hello?"

A brief silence fell on the other end of the line, before her voice came back, sharpened by suspicion.  "Who *is* this?"  Drill sergeants couldn't possibly sound more commanding.

"I'm Cass...uh, Cassidy.  I'm a friend of Mulder's.  He's...er...in the shower.  He should be out in a minute or two.  Can I take a message?"

Another silence, but this time I could hear her soft breathing.  "Tell him Scully called," she said finally, her tone unreadable.  "Tell him I have the results from the autopsy and he needs to meet me at the office right away."  She hung up before I could reply.

"Did I hear the phone?" Mulder asked, toweling his wet hair as he entered the room.  He wore a pair of faded jeans and well-worn tennis shoes, and water droplets glistened on his damp chest.

I started guiltily and dropped his celphone, which effectively answered his question.  His gaze narrowed.  "Cass?"

I felt my cheeks redden.  "Er, yeah.  I thought I could take a message for you."

He nodded.  "Well?"

"It was Scully."  He didn't react to the news, just raised his eyebrows questioningly.  "She said she has the results from the autopsy and something about blood not matching...I didn't really get that part. Anyway, she needs you to meet her at the office."

He nodded again and disappeared back into the bedroom, shortly reappearing with his shirt and dufflebag.  "Mulder?"

He paused in the doorway, his fingers poised mid-button.  "Hmm?"

I tried for a jaunty smile.  "You never told me your partner was a woman. Keeping it a secret for some reason?"

A furrow appeared on his forehead.  "Scully?  Scully's just...Scully. I've got to go.  Sounds like she found something to break this case wide open, as usual.  I'll see you later, Cass."  And then he left.

It wasn't exactly a bolt of lightning from the sky, as you can see.  It took me a very long time to unravel all of the layers present in that day's conversation.  But I was left with a vague feeling of disquiet, which I dutifully tried to quash, unwilling to believe that I was capable of petty jealousy.  I'm not one of those people who believe that men and women can't be friends without the sexual component.  I have a lot of guy buddies myself.  I'm also not generally a jealous, possessive type person, either, since I have a relatively healthy sense of self-esteem.

But something about this Scully-person was really wigging me out.

***
 
That Saturday afternoon in April changed something for Mulder and me. Well, for me, anyway.  Mulder pretty much acted the way he always had - funny and interesting...detached and remote.  I suppose it was my expectations that changed.  The wedding-bells fantasy was on its way out, in favor of less grandiose visions of him telling me his favorite color and the name of the town where he grew up.  Not all that much to ask, really, but the answers weren't forthcoming.

And I stopped asking the questions.  Somehow it began to seem as if that would be cheating.  I wanted him to *volunteer* the information because he *wanted* to tell me.  (I know, I know, but remember, I was deeply in denial by this point.)

I did, however, try to find out more about the mysterious Agent Scully, in my own inimitably subtle way.  Which is to say, I came out and said, "Tell me about your partner, Mulder."

We were, of course, sitting in my living room eating pizza, drinking beer, and discussing the intricacies of the designated hitter situation.  Mulder seemed surprised by my abrupt change in subject.  "What about her?"

I averted my gaze and concentrated on removing the pineapple from my slice of pizza.  (Mulder has severely disturbing ideas about what constitutes appropriate pizza toppings.  Pineapple is one of the more harmless selections.)  "Well, how long have you been partners, for starters?  My Pop had the same partner for twelve years.  He said they got to the point where they could finish each other's sentences."

Mulder's lip quirked in that wryly adorable way.  "Oh, well, I imagine Scully could finish my sentences, but she wouldn't like what most of them had to say."  His laugh was rueful.  "Let's just say we tend to see things rather differently."  He glanced up at the muted television and reached for the remote.  "Hey, the game's on.  I'll bet the dishes on the Yankees."

And that was it.

***

I'd say that by the beginning of May I pretty much had the whole picture.
 
Carly, who was, by that point, understandably quite sick of my moaning, told me that I should "Dump the guy".  She was very incensed at him on my behalf, the way only best friends can be.  "He treats you like a lapdog, Cass," she opined with regularity, urging me to find my suddenly absent backbone of steel.  Very good for my self-esteem, is Carly.  And she often gives me the kick in the butt that I need.

I ran over various breakup scenarios in my mind - if you can truly call the end of an association such as ours a "breakup".  More than one of them ended, I'll admit, with Mulder falling down on his knees in front of me as the sudden realization of my importance in his life dawned upon him.  I could never quite work out why he'd have a handy engagement ring in his pocket, but I became quite adept at composing flowery, extremely unMulder-like proposals for him to utter.  But somewhere underneath it all I was quite aware that the possibility of those outcomes tended vanishingly toward nil.  If I broke things off with Mulder, he'd accept it, and that would be that, and, frankly, it was extremely difficult to imagine my life without him in it.  So I waited, and stalled, and procrastinated...

Until it became too hard to live with things the way they were.

Something had been wrong with him for weeks.  We hadn't made love in over a month, and it wasn't just my growing doubts putting even more distance between us than usual.  And then I didn't see nor hear from him for almost three weeks in a row - though, admittedly, I myself was out of town at a convention for ten days.  When he finally showed up at the park the second Saturday in June, I was spoiling for a fight, in my own understated way, and his mood had altered drastically as well - only in his case, for the better.

"Hi, Cass," he offered cheerfully, his face splitting into an all-too-rare smile as he stretched his legs in preparation for our run.  "Long time, no see."

His good mood made mine even worse, if that were possible.  I glared at him, my hands on my hips.  "No kidding.  Come on, you couldn't have *called* me, Mulder?"

He looked slightly taken aback, as if I'd just made an extremely improper suggestion.  "What?"

My lip twisted bitterly.  "Oh, I forgot, that's too much to ask, isn't it? I mean, it's not as if I *matter* to you or anything.  We only sleep together, after all."

His eyes narrowed speculatively as he considered my expression and my words.  "What's this all about, Cass?"

I let out a pained laugh.  "Exactly *my* question, Mulder.  What *is* this all about?  What *are* we?  Lovers?  Friends?  Acquaintances?  Virtual strangers who happen to have sex periodically?  What?"

Mulder glanced at the all-too-interested pair of senior citizens feigning obliviousness from a nearby bench, but I was past caring whether or not we had an audience.  "Well?  Answer me, Mulder!"

His hazel eyes darkened angrily.  "I don't know what you're asking, Cass. What exactly is the problem?"

That's it! I thought, enraged further by his oblivious reply.  "The *problem* is that I don't have any idea where I stand with you, Mulder.  I don't have any idea how you feel about me, or about us, or about whether or not we have a future, and I'm so damn tired of living in limbo!  Talk to me, Mulder!"

The anger had drained from his expression as my tirade continued.  By the time I finished, he was regarding me with a mixture of guilt and resignation, and I was terrifyingly certain that I had just passed the point of no return.  "I never lied to you, Cass," he stated quietly after a moment.

I snorted.  "You never lied to me, because you never told me dick," I retorted crudely, holding up a hand to forestall an indignant reply.  "And maybe you never broke a promise to me, but that's only because you never made any in the first place."  My voice dropped to a whisper as long-quashed frustration and pain overtook my fury.  "Why, Mulder?  Why wouldn't you just *talk* to me?"

His eyes held a mixture of sorrow and pity, the latter of which made me avert my gaze.  That was the last thing I wanted.  "I'm sorry, Cass.  I didn't know...I didn't realize how you felt about this...about me."

I looked back toward him, hearing the goodbye that underwrote his words and suddenly unwilling to accept that this was the end.  Now that the moment was at hand, panic froze me to the spot.  "Mulder-" I began, but I had no idea what to stay to stop him.

He regarded me silently for a moment, his face expressionless.  "I never meant to hurt you, Cass," he finally said simply.  I realized that it was an apology of sorts, but also a telling admission of his own feelings - as in *Sorry for your pain, but I'm really not feeling any myself...*  Our gazes held for another moment, and then he nodded a goodbye and turned and walked away.

I watched him until he vanished around a curve in the jogging path behind a line of trees.  My hands trembled against my side and tears streamed down my cheeks.  "Bastard," I muttered underneath my breath.  The two senior citizens/eavesdroppers turned to regard me expectantly.  Don't want to disappoint your fans, I thought bitterly as months of suppressed anger surged upward inside my chest.  So I screamed it.

"Bastard!"

***

It wasn't exactly the mature, dignified denouement that I'd planned, I'll admit.  Once I'd calmed down a bit (and cried my way through two pints of Ben and Jerry's Cookie Dough ice cream), I felt faintly ashamed of the way I'd reacted.  He never *had* promised me anything, nor misled me in any way, not really.  I don't suppose it was his fault that my dreams got way out of hand.  Did it really make sense for me to blame him for being exactly what he'd been all along?

Carly, my ice cream vendor, was inclined to be a lot less charitable.  "He was a loser, Cass.  You're better off without him."

I spend a lot of time trying to convince myself of that, and as the days dragged by, I met with some measure of success.  I found another park in which to jog and avoided watching sporting events on television.  I took up needlepoint.  I discarded needlepoint.  I cleaned my entire apartment from top to bottom - four times. I ate a lot of ice cream.

But by August it *was* getting better.  I went for hours without thinking of him, and the memories themselves were getting progressively less painful.  I went out with other guys, laughed a lot, drank a little...I never slept with any of them, but I chalked that up to healthy dating-caution in the nineties.  I was back to my reasonably happy self, and Carly wasn't the only one who was relieved.

Until the day I heard Fox Mulder's name again.

I don't generally watch the local television news, because here in D.C. it tends to be simply a catalogue of who was murdered where with what exotic weapon, kind of like that board game Clue, only with real dead people. Mostly I just watch CNN so I can be a reasonably well-informed citizen, and, incidentally, understand what the hell people are talking about at parties.  But that Tuesday evening Entertainment Tonight had done a story on the new upcoming Star Wars film, and I'd been too lazy to get up and switch off the TV.  (One casualty of my breakup with Mulder had been a functioning remote control - what is it about guys that makes the damn thing work for them and not us, anyway?)  So I was lying on my couch, watching the parade of violence through half-closed eyes, when a reporter mentioned "Special Agent Fox Mulder".

He'd been injured - of course.  I don't know what kind of physical training program the FBI has, or how in heaven's name Mulder managed to pass it even though he's got to be the clumsiest man in God's creation. His insurance rates must be through the roof by now, if his list of injuries from the past year is any indication.  Anyway, the reporter mentioned that he'd been shot during the resolution of a hostage situation downtown, and was in a hospital in Georgetown.

I didn't think.  I just acted.

In retrospect it seems a little odd that my first impulse to rush to his side was not discarded upon further reflection.  At no point during the seemingly endless drive to the hospital did I second guess my need to see him, or question whether or not it was even a good idea.  He was hurt, that's all that mattered, and knowing that I never would have found out about it had I not seen it on the news did not diminish my certainty that he needed me there.  Maybe it was the Florence Nightingale thing, or maybe I just hadn't let go of my dreams nearly as completely as I thought.

Whatever the reason, I was standing in the lobby of the hospital less than forty-five minutes after I heard the news.  It was there that my headlong rush came up against a hard wall of reality, in the form of hospital security guards, who were apparently assigned to keep out the press, the ambulance-chasers, and anyone else they didn't like the looks of - which included me, as I was informed by a six-foot ex-defensive-lineman-looking man by the name of "Earl" - or at least that's what it said on his nametag.

"Can't go there, Miss," he informed me laconically as he barred the hallway with one beefy arm.

"I have to see Mulder," I insisted, a bit desperately.  My plea caught the attention of a dark-haired older woman exiting a room further down the hall.  She walked over to Earl and conversed quietly with him for a
moment, then turned to me with a kind, if tired smile.

"Are you a friend of Fox's?" she asked, leading me down the hall past Earl.

Fox's? I thought as I nodded, all the while wondering if it had ever been the truth.  "We...we jog together sometimes," I finally said.  "I, uh, saw what happened on the news.  I'm Cassidy."

"Maggie," she murmured, darting a quick glance toward the crowd Earl held at bay.  "None of them called him Mulder," she explained, seeing my confused expression.  "Just Agent Mulder, or Mister Mulder, or Fox.  I figured you must know him if you knew to call him that."  We shared a companionable smile, acknowledging his quirks.  "I'm Dana's mother," she added, as if that should mean something to me.  I smiled again, hiding my ignorance.

The sound of angry voices caught her attention, and she grimaced, slightly and glanced heavenward.  "That's Bill.  Excuse me."

She walked back toward the door she'd just exited, in time to greet two people leaving the room.  I could only make out one of them, a large man with a thunderous scowl who dwarfed the person behind him, of whom I could just see an outstretched hand.  I could hear her voice, however.

"You shouldn't be in his room, Bill.  The last thing he needs is to be upset.  In fact, I don't understand why you're here at all.  I told you I was fine when I called you."

"And I'm not supposed to care that your goddamn partner almost got you killed *again*!?!  My God, Dana, what's it gonna take for you to see him for who he really is?  He drags you all over the world chasing after a sister he believes was abducted by little green men, he gets Missy *murdered*, he's responsible for your having cancer and damn near *dying*, and now he's gotten you shot, for God's sake!"

"Mulder didn't *get* me shot, Bill," the hidden figure retorted, and I thought Bingo!  This must be the famous Scully.  "For your information, the case we were on had *nothing* to do with the X-Files, we were *assigned* to help with the hostage crisis, and thanks to Mulder, fifteen people who might have died are still alive.  *He* was the one who nearly lost his life, not me.  And I just have a minor flesh wound, anyway."

"Just a minor flesh wound," he snapped bitterly.  "Tell me something, Dana, how serious will a wound need to be before you'll see that Mulder is *ruining* your life?  You have to get away from him and his damn files before it kills you!"  He turned to glance down at the older woman.  "Help me out here, Mom."

She glared up at him.  "I'm not helping you, because I don't agree with you.  And a public hallway in a hospital is *not* the place for this.  Fox needs his rest."  She turned to the hidden figure.  "Dana, honey, the doctor said he'd be by to see you in a few minutes.  Don't you think you should get back to your room?"

I ducked into the alcove of the doorway behind me, instinctively sensing what was to come.  All I knew was that I *didn't* want that angry voice aimed at me.  "I don't want to leave Mulder alone, Mom," came the somewhat muffled reply.

"A friend came to visit him," her mother offered in a soothing voice. "Cassidy...someone.  She said she jogs with Mulder.  She's right...well, she *was* right down the hall.  I suppose she thought to give the two of you some privacy for your little argument.  I guess *her* mother managed to teach her some manners."  I stifled a slightly hysterical giggle at her pointed remark.

"Cassidy?  I don't know any Cassidy," her daughter murmured distractedly. "Oh, wait, I think Mulder might have mentioned her once..."  A resigned sigh.  "All right.  But as soon as the doctor gives me the okay, I'm coming back to sit with him.  And I don't want to hear a word about it, Bill.  Not a word."

"You *can't* expect me not to say anything when..." came his strident answer as their voices receded down the hallway.  I exhaled slowly in relief.  So that was Scully, I thought ruefully.  No, that was *Dana*. Which makes the older woman his partner's mother who makes the casseroles.  I leaned back against the unyielding wood of the door as Dana Scully's words ran through my mind.  "I think Mulder might have mentioned her once," she'd said.  I winced.  Ouch.

I took a deep breath, pushed away from the door, and headed down the hallway, pulling to a halt outside the door to Mulder's room, nervous and unsure.  What am I going to say to him?  The last memory he has of me is an infantile tantrum in the park.  Will he even *want* to see me?  But it seemed the height of foolishness for me to let pride get in my way when I'd managed to come this far without it.  I reached for the doorknob and slowly opened the door.

The room was shadowed with evening light, the monitors' beeping the only sound in the room.  Mulder was asleep, his face calm in repose with the kind of peace that seemed to elude him in life.  The covers were drawn to his chin, a relief to me, since I really didn't want to *see* the extent of his injuries, though I felt an insatiable need to *know*. I stared down at him for a moment before reaching for the chart that hung at the foot of the bed.  Unfortunately, I, not being possessed of the universal translator that allows television characters to immediately understand medical jargon no matter what their purported profession, was unable to make heads nor tails of it.  My gaze traveled from unfathomable abbreviations in crabbed handwriting to the only legible part of the form, the patient information typed at the top.  Name, address - So *that's* where he lives... - and next of kin - Dr. Dana Scully...  I closed my eyes, finally conceding defeat in the silent, one-sided battle I hadn't realized I'd still been waging.

I turned away from the bed and maneuvered my way toward the door, eyes still shut, unwilling to look at him even one more time.  My dignified exit hit a snag when I tripped and knocked into the bathroom door.  I stumbled inside the tiny room and collapsed on the lid of the toilet seat, the adrenaline from my headlong rush to the hospital finally wearing off.

What am I doing here? I asked myself blearily, my shoulders slumping. Like it wasn't obvious enough before how unimportant I am to him...

The *snick* of the outer door opening caught my attention, and I froze, my mind unable to formulate a good explanation for my presence in Mulder's room, hiding in the dark in the bathroom.  A vision of Earl tossing me out of the hospital on my ear swam through my brain.  I squinted through the crack in the door, trying to catch a glimpse of beefy biceps, but the only thing I saw was a fleeting flash of red hair as a figure most definitely too small to be Earl's entered the room.  The chair next to the bed squeaked softly, so I assumed she'd seated herself at his bedside.

"Hey, Mulder," she said in a voice so soft it was almost a whisper.  There was a comfortable timbre to it, as if sitting vigil at his bedside was a long-accustomed ritual.  I suddenly felt like the worst kind of voyeur,
but wild horses couldn't have dragged me out to meet my unknowing nemesis. That would have been the final straw, meeting someone who was probably drop-dead gorgeous in addition to being a genius - both a doctor *and* an FBI agent.

She continued her monologue uninterrupted.  "You can wake up now, Mulder...Bill's gone.  Mom kicked him out of the hospital, so you know he won't dare come back."  A rueful chuckle.  "He doesn't know you,
Mulder...and he worries about me.  He takes it out on you because he's been yelling at *me* for years and he hasn't ever been able to change the choices I've made - choices about the FBI...and about the X-files."  A small silence.  "I'm sorry that he said what he did about Samantha, Mulder.  He had no right to say that."

Samantha... I frowned as the pieces of the puzzle fell into place.  The sister abducted by little green men?  Bill's litany of Mulder's sins had taken a while to sink in, and I'm ashamed to say that my first
consideration was rather selfish.  He never told *me* he had a sister, let alone that she'd been kidnapped!  He'd never informed me of his partner's cancer, either, and I hadn't the slightest idea who Missy was or what had happened to her.  To my eternal mortification, I felt tears threaten as I was again faced with my lowly position in Mulder's life. He didn't tell me anything.

And she knew everything.

The silence stretched for long minutes, until I finally emerged from my self-pitying reverie to entertain more practical considerations.  How the hell am I going to get out of here without her seeing me?

There was a muffled coughing from the room.  "Mulder?" she murmured.

"Hey, Scully," he replied in a low, pained voice.

I could almost *hear* her smile.  "Welcome back, partner.  Sorry the gift shop didn't have any cheesy football videos, but I did get you some ice chips.  Are you thirsty?"

"Mmm"  A crunching noise, and then Mulder's voice again, stronger this time.  "S'okay, Scully.  I own all the Superstars of the Superbowls series, anyway.  But I really think I could use a new flavor in this IV,
here.  Maybe something with a bit of kahlua."

She laughed.  "I'll be sure to mention that to the staff."

A beat of silence, then Mulder asked, "Are *you* okay, Scully?"

"I'm fine, Mulder.  He only winged me.  You're the one he tried to turn into a piece of Swiss cheese, with considerable success, I might add. How's the pain?  Do you need anything?"

"I'm fine," he parroted, a note of laughter in his voice, though I didn't understand the joke.  "So...What did Skinner say?"

"Well, he muttered something under his breath about approaching some sort of record with regard to insurance premiums, and then he gave us the week off."

Another laugh.  "What, no gold star?  We aren't the poster boy and girl for the Bureau now?  Aw, damn, Scully, I thought for sure all the other agents would wanna come out and play with us now."

She chuckled.  "Oh, sure, Mulder.  In fact, Colton mentioned maybe commissioning a statue in our honor for the lobby."

"I'm sure."  Another cough.  "So have they said anything at all about when I might be getting out of this prison?"

"Well, if the nurses took a vote right now I'm sure they'd be arguing for indefinite incarceration, but after a few days of you awake and lively, I'm sure they'll be booting you out the front door.  I'd say they'll be
releasing you on Friday."

A groan.  "Goody.  My goldfish should definitely be dead by that point."

"Tell you what," she laughed.  "I'll feed your goldfish.  I'll even clean out your refrigerator in preparation for all of Mom's casseroles...*if* you let me borrow your cable on Saturday.  I'll even make popcorn."

"Hmmm...I give, what's Saturday?"

"There's an Ed Wood marathon on that old movie channel that your cable dealer gets and mine doesn't.  What do you say?  If you're nice to me, I'll even change your bandages."

"What about giving me a sponge bath?" he asked with a definite leer in his tone.

"In your dreams, Mulder.  You don't have plans on Saturday, do you?"

"No," he replied.  "But you don't have to babysit me, Scully.  I promise not to pull out my stitches by getting up too soon.  I know you've always preferred to keep Saturday for your 'normal' life whenever possible."

She chuckled.  "Mulder, life with you is anything but normal.  And I think I can sacrifice a Saturday if I get to see you recite all the dialogue to Plan 9 From Outer Space.  What do you say?"

He laughed.  "I say...It's a date.  In fact, I can't think of anything I'd rather do that spend Saturday with you, my goldfish, and Ed Wood."

Not long after that the nurse came to retrieve Scully for her checkup, and Mulder drifted off to sleep again.  After a decent interval I snuck out of his room without awakening him.  I finally knew all the answers I hadn't realized I'd come to the hospital to learn, and I was conceding defeat with all the graciousness of a losing political candidate.  Which is to say, I was smiling on the outside, and inside...I wasn't.  But at least I had the full picture, grim though it was.  Maybe they weren't lovers...maybe they never had been...but whatever they were, it didn't leave room for anyone else.  It didn't leave room for me.

So that's it, really.  I know, I know, a pretty tame ending.  It isn't Thelma and Louise sailing off into the Grand Canyon in all their feminist who-gives-a-good-goddamn-about-men glory, but, then, Thelma and Louise didn't survive to write their story, did they?  (Not to mention screwing the hell out of any chance for Thelma and Louis II, something that probably pissed off many a studio executive.)

I, on the other hand, am here, alive, reasonably sane and semi-coherent. My heart's a little the worse for wear, my pride's more than a bit bruised, and my ego's a tad deflated.

Carly says it gives me character.

I tell her to stuff it.

And like all good daughters, I called Mom and thanked her for the sage advice.  "No cops for me, Mom," I swore with more vehemence than she probably thought my statement warranted.

Because I learned my lesson.

And now I'm passing it on.

End