Title: Off Center Author: Maria Nicole E-mail: marianicole29@yahoo.com Distribution: Anywhere automatic is fine. Anywhere else, I'd appreciate an e-mail to let me know where it's going. Spoilers: Up through Biogenesis Rating: PG Classification: SA Keywords: None Summary: Fill in the blank and a little post-episode for Biogenesis, from Skinner's POV. Off Center Maria Nicole Once, she had fallen before him, her lips forming the word "you" as she fell, contempt in her closing eyes. Before her gaze, he had felt unnerved and guilty, although he had not betrayed her, although what he had done, he had done to save her. The guilt was worse now that he had betrayed her, betrayed both of them, and her eyes did not close this time as she accused both him and Diana Fowley of being liars. He wanted to tell her that he wasn't like Diana Fowley, that he wanted to be on their side, that it was only fear for his own life that was momentarily placing him on the side of their enemies, that he would be their ally again when he could wrest control of his own life back from Krycek. But she walked back into the surveillance room, where the doctor was waiting, and shut the door in their faces before he could say anything. For a long moment, he and Diana Fowley looked at each other, as if assessing each other's treachery (who are you to judge what I've done under pressure, he wanted to ask), before Diana walked towards the closed door, saying, "She can't block me out of this. This is my concern, too." She strode to the door and opened it. "Whatever your opinion of me, Agent Scully, you have no right to block me from this room and from access to the facts," Diana said firmly as Scully and the doctor turned away from the monitors. "Don't trust her, Scully!" he heard Mulder yell from the monitor. "Don't trust either of them. Trust no one, trust no one, not either of them, don't trust *anyone.*" Scully's voice was cold, but Skinner could feel the energy of her even from the doorway as she replied, "Actually, as I was telling the doctor here, I have Mulder's medical power of attorney. If he is incapacitated, I, and only I, have input on the medical decisions to be made. Neither of you do." "This may be related to an X-File...that makes it my business." "Scully, don't let her..." Mulder yelled. "You are no longer assigned to the X-Files. Furthermore, the doctor here has agreed that your claim that Mulder's illness came from looking at a piece of paper..." "Open your mind to the truth, Dana," said Diana, and Skinner felt the anger that was radiating off Scully up a notch at the use of her first name. "The truth?" asked the doctor. "I have to agree, your claim, ma'am... it's ludicrous. Now I know you were the one who brought Mr. Mulder in, but you're not a medical doctor like Ms. Scully here." "So you're going to close your mind to any other possible interpretation of the facts? How like you. Mulder said that you were always like this, uninterested in the truth if it didn't fit into tidy little boxes." Scully blinked, very slowly, and the figure of the Mulder on the monitor stopped moving, stopped mumbling, and stood very still, almost as if he could hear their conversation and was holding his breath, waiting for a response. "Agent Scully has always pursued the truth," Skinner said to break the silence, and for a moment Scully's eyes raked over him, contemptuously, before dismissing his defense of her and returning to Diana. "Agent Fowley, I will not defend myself, my methods or my goals to you. Nor will I stand here and let you invent or twist my partner's words in an effort to drive a wedge between us. You have no place here. Get out." "I will not..." The doctor cleared his throat. "Ma'am, medical information in cases like these would only be given to family members or someone with power of attorney. I'm afraid that, under the circumstances, you will have to leave. Both of you." "This relates to an open case at the FBI." "You aren't on that case," Skinner said. He could give them this, at least, although Scully turned away from him and back to the monitors as he spoke. For a moment, he saw something besides anger in her eyes, a hurt that twisted in his stomach. "And it may not even relate. If it is related to the case, that's Agent Scully's concern." "You'll regret that decision," said Diana, and then turned to address Scully's back. "You'll both regret this later on when you need a person who understands the paranormal. Because as long as you're relying on conventional wisdom, Mulder will stay here, trapped in his own mind, because of you." "You brought me here! You did, you brought me here, you put me here," Mulder yelled. "It wasn't Scully. Not Scully. Never Scully." Scully's eyes remained focused on the monitor. "Get out of here." "Ma'am," said the doctor, and gestured at the door. Scully spoke to the monitor very softly as they moved to the doorway, and Skinner and Diana both turned around, but she wasn't speaking to them. "I'll get you out of here, Mulder. I promise." Mulder stopped the pacing and stood, looking up at the camera. "I know," he said, almost calmly, and a shiver went down Skinner's spine, as he remembered Gibson Praise. And then the door closed on them again. *** He had to appreciate Krycek's twisted, logical reasoning, at least. Mulder regularly carted things from his office home with him or shifted them around, but he wasn't likely to touch the smoke detector after the office fire. He watched as she walked into Mulder's office, beginning to look around. It was only a matter of time before she found the small recorder hidden in the smoke detector; he saw her face get closer, and his palms began to sweat, and then the phone rang. The sigh he let out as she stepped off the chair was part relief and part...disappointment? He realized, sitting in his office, that part of him wanted her to find the recorder, to storm up to his office and denounce him. That would settle things, one way or another. He wondered if his slip in the hospital hallway--he wasn't an idiot, he knew what she had sent him and what she had only talked over with Mulder and their scientist friend Chuck--had come from that desire. He heard her repeat Sandoz's name, agitated, and realized with a plummeting stomach why the other man had probably been disconnected.Rationalizations didn't help; a man had died because of what he'd done. Scully slowly hung up the phone, and then walked over to stand on the chair again. He watched her face get closer, watched her hand come up to flip open the smoke detector, watched her finger trace the lens of the tiny recorder. She didn't tear it out by the roots, as he expected. Instead, she stepped off the chair and regarded the fire detector thoughtfully. She took a deep breath, and he recognized the signs that he had seen in his office however many times, of Scully preparing to speak. But she let out her breath, shook her head, and walked out of the office. He waited, in his own, for her to storm in, not bothering to hide the scene of her office playing on his TV screen. If she walked in here--when she walked in--she would have proof. She would know exactly what he had done, and why he had done it, and although she would hate him for it, he would at least no longer be lying to her. He waited, but she didn't come. He waited, and he gradually realized that she wasn't coming. He sat in his office for a long time, watching the empty office on the monitor, long after he understand that she didn't care about his reasons, or his rationalizations, long after he understood that she had surgically cut him out of her life, that there would be no atonement this time. *** Later, he would piece together her movements over the next 72 hours. She would have spoken to her friends, the trio of odd men that he had met a few times before. He knew this because when he went to the hospital the next time, they would not release any information on Mulder to him. When he asked to speak to Scully, they said she wasn't there, but that Mulder's power of attorney was very specific... if the event that Ms. Scully was not present, power of attorney was decided by one John Fitzgerald Byers, and Ms. Scully and Mr. Byers had ordered that no information was to be released to any person except themselves regarding Mr. Mulder's medical condition. She had probably used their phone, a secured line, to call Gallup, New Mexico. He knew this because, after he had called the police in Gallup to hear about Sandoz's body being found, he had called Albert Hosteen's nephew to question him about the work Hosteen had done for Sandoz. The man had been polite, but firm: "My uncle is dying; he cannot answer your questions. And Dana Scully has requested that we not speak with anyone about this matter." She had probably used a false ID and passport to get out of the country, because there was no record of her using her own. When he next saw her, she was striding down the corridor of the FBI, heading towards the elevator. "Scully," he called, and she turned to face him, head held high. She wore a crumpled beige suit, and her face was burned pink. "Where have you been?" he exclaimed, drawing close to her. For a moment, the mask on her face dropped, and he watched in amazement as she let out a chuff of bitter laughter, as she shook away the tears that filled her eyes for a moment. "Nowhere I ever expected to be." "Scully..." The coldness came into her eyes again. "I'm afraid I can't tell you that." "Don't..." "Don't what? Don't stop trusting you?" She leaned closer to him, into his personal space, a habit that he knew she had learned from Mulder. Her voice was very low. "I can guess your reasons for what you've done. I can even guess who's doing it to you. And I understand why. But I can't trust you, and if you're part of what's happening to Mulder, I can't forgive you." "What would you have done?" he whispered back, harshly, although he knew as he said it that he was asking the wrong person. She shook her head. "Does it matter? You made your choice. You could have come to Mulder and me. Even if we were under Kersh at that point, even if he told us to stop investigating, even if you asked us purely unofficially...we would have risked our careers. We would have risked our *lives,* because of the way you had helped us in the past. And you must have known that, but you didn't choose it." "How could I put you both at risk that way?" "You were putting us at risk either way." She stepped back. "I have to go." "Go where?" "Why should I tell you, so that you can report the information back to Krycek? It is Krycek, isn't it?" She nodded, even though he tried to keep his face impassive. "We thought so. Well, you can tell your puppet master that first I'm going down to the office...but then, you'd probably be able to figure that out...and then I'm going to keep a promise I made to Mulder." "You can get him out?" But she was already turning and walking away, and didn't answer his question. *** He wiped the sweat away from his forehead, and watched her on the monitor screen, tiny, searching for something in Mulder's desk before she walked swiftly out of the door again. Krycek had told him to call as soon as he saw Scully again. Krycek had told him that if he didn't obey any of his orders, it was only a matter of time. He sat at his desk and watched the phone, and then walked over to shut off the recorder. And then he sat back at his desk, and buried his face in his hands, not moving to touch the phone. And waited. End. Feedback always appreciated at marianicole29@yahoo.com