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Chapter 17
Accountability
by Pam Gamble

As she drove, flashbacks ripped into her conscious
memory like a demented slide show. Tumbling out in no
particular order, some silent, some in full stereo.

Bouncing against the shabby carpet and metal of a car
trunk, the road humming beneath her.



Screaming into her phone for Mulder.

Blades and drills and men in surgical masks.



Terror, squeezing her heart like a fist.

Cold metal tables beneath her chilled skin. 

Restraints pulling her down, keeping her still.



Needles.

The insanity in Duane Barry's eyes.

Helpless. Powerless. Forsaken.

From numbness to pain to numbness, not knowing which
was worse.

Drugged nightmares, colored with darkness and Mulder
screaming her name.

God, no wonder she hadn't allowed herself to remember.

She had wanted these memories back. Now she wasn't so
sure.

Tears mercilessly blurred her vision as she grasped
the steering wheel, concentrating on not blacking out
again. But it seemed that had been a one-time event,
her mind's last ditch effort at protecting itself.

Exhausted, Scully pulled onto the shoulder of the
road, her forehead falling onto the textured softness
of the steering wheel.

"Oh my God."

She was losing her mind. That was all. Really bad
timing, too. Mulder needed her on this case, needed
her support and...

Support. What evidence did she have to support her
belief? Was it enough to deliberately destroy the
family he had worked all his life to find?

Forcing her mind to slow down, she ran over the facts
as she knew them. 

Memory is a terribly inaccurate thing. Ephemeral,
morphing over time to fit our best representations of
what we think happened, not what *actually* happened.

Repressed memories have been shown to be even more
inaccurate. Their admissibility in court cases debated
for decades. 



So despite the fact that she could see his face so
clearly in her mind, Scully resolutely decided once
again not to believe.

Not without proof.

Dizziness swooped over her again, and she lowered her
window, hoping the frigid air would keep her alert. 

Arriving at the Gunmen's, she waited impatiently as
the deadbolts slid away one by one. When the door
opened, she found herself staring into Mulder's pained
face, dark eyes that seemed born to sadness. She
didn't want to add to that pain, but had a
professional obligation to put the case above all
else, even him.

"What?" Not rude, just a comfortable shorthand. She
could read everything else in his troubled expression.

She was shaking, and he eased her down onto a low
stool by the counter. Scully cursed herself for not
gaining more control before getting there, but each
time she would assimilate one image a new one would
leap out at her. It was like watching a videotape of
herself when she didn't know she was being filmed.

"Mulder, I..." She vaguely noticed that the actual
inhabitants of this shadowy burrow had scuttled into
the other room. "I don't know where to start." She
hated this weakness, the insecurity her memories
delivered to her.

She took a deep breath, but couldn't stop the tears
that began to flow once again down her cheeks. "Shit."
She defiantly wiped them away with her fist, then
began to speak. "I've, I think I have, remembered some
things. About what happened to me, while I
was...gone."

She looked up, unprepared for the calm expression on
his face. He nodded, squeezing her hand. "Tell me."

She managed to stagger through the emotional minefield
without exploding, although her steps and words were
cautious to the extreme. Mulder could see her
analyzing every word for clarity, conciseness, and
objectivity and knew that as hellish as it sounded,
she was not exaggerating. If anything, she wasn't
telling him the whole truth.

"I think that's what caused me to black out, Mulder.
David's voice triggered that memory. I remember those
words, 'We're just going to run some tests.' And there
was a man..." She choked, feeling her chest constrict
at the memory. Black spots danced in her vision as she
gasped for air. "He could have had similar physical
characteristics, or the same cadence to his voice..."

He wanted to give her time to let her feel everything
she needed to feel. To cry and scream and rage and cry
some more. But they did not have the luxury of time at
the moment. One day there would be time to expose her
scars (and his) to the open air, allowing them to
begin to heal. 

But right now, they had to draw a line between their
personal needs and their professional obligations,
even if that line was only a shimmery mirage in the
sand.

He touched her face, lightly. "You don't believe that.
You think it *was* him."

It wasn't just that he trusted her judgment, although
he did, implicitly. It was a leap of logic he wouldn't
be able to document in a case file, would have to
chalk up to intuition.

He had seen that look on her face before.

*********
They'd been having sex, playfully rough, and he'd
grabbed her wrists, forcing them over her head.
Holding her in place with one hand, he'd looked into
her face, seeing not love or passion or even anger,
but absolute terror.

Before he could ask, she'd begun kicking fiercely at
his lower body, trying to push his weight off hers.
"Let me GO!" Stunned, it had taken him a moment to
move, then he'd rolled over and away from her, lifting
his hands and eyebrows in complete surrender.

As her heartbeat had slowed to normal, she'd turned to
him, not quite understanding what she'd done. "I'm
sorry."

He shook his head. "Don't apologize. It was my fault."

The certainty in her expression convinced him. "No,
no, I don't know what that was, but I do know it had
nothing to do with you."

He'd reached out tentatively to put an arm around her
shoulders, and she crushed herself against him,
reassuring herself as much as him.
****************

Scully's shaking voice brought him back to the
present.

"Everything is so hazy, and it was so long ago, I
can't be sure of anything. I don't know for sure that
he was there. I don't have any proof, Mulder."

He moved his hand away from her face and onto the
counter, and she noticed for the first time the manila
folder lying there. 

"Maybe you don't. But I do."