"Harbor"

RATING: PG

CONTENT: Angst

SPOILERS: "Piper Maru"/"Apocrypha", immediately follows these episodes

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"Harbor" by Rory D. Cottrell (CretKid@aol.com)

"I was angry with my friend,

I told my wrath, my wrath did end;

I was angry with my foe,

I told it not, my wrath did grow.

And I water'd it in fears,

Night and morning with my tears;

And I sunned it with smiles,

And with soft deceitful wiles...."

William Blake

The drive from the cemetery had only lasted long enough to let the anger grow and fester to a muted roar in her ears. As she pulled onto the parkway, she had come to the realization that nothing was going to make her feel better about the situation, even if she had never known Louis Cardinal was dead. There was once a plea for justice, oh so long ago, when the ache started to gestate inside her chest and head, a scant three hours after Melissa died. She didn't care about the truth, she didn't care about the consequences. She wanted justice. For Missy, for her mother, and even then, for Mulder. Cardinal's death wasn't justice, just part of the cover-up, another layer added to the blindfold. Her eyes had become so accustomed to the dark that it was hard to see any light.

She wasn't sure when everything had started its downward spiral on the express track to hell, but it had been a very long time since anything seemed to go right. There was a nagging suspicion that it all started when she told Skinner to make the deal for the tape. Mulder had been prepared to run forever, but she couldn't. She had tried, for the sake of truth. She had tried to see the turning windmills, she had tried to raise her gauntlet. But she had to see Missy, she had to apologize, she had to make the deal. Mulder should have understood that.

It wasn't until those three agonizing hours following Melissa's death that she realized what she had done; she had traded Mulder's quest for her sister, when only a few months previous, he had done the exact opposite for her. Mulder had given up what he thought was his sister for her. Maybe he felt betrayed and that was why he started to pull away, why she had pulled away from him. It was a wound too fresh, too open, to simply step away and see the bigger picture.

Step away. Skinner's advice had been to step away. But if she had, they might have never found Louis Cardinal. Agents Fuller and Caleca would have botched the investigation from the get-go. No one would have known about Cardinal, or his connection to Krycheck and the Consortium. No one else would have seen the conspiracy for the light of day, no one but the paranoiacs in the basement. With each passing day it seemed there were more and more clues to the back-room conglomeration of financial do-wellers and political opportunists that wanted to make sure they stayed ahead, even after Reagan and Bush put an end to the Cold War.

Cold War indeed. It never ended. Where she saw the continuation of World War II politics, Mulder saw little gray men. He fought her tooth and nail about the truth of the matter, when simple common sense dictated a reasonable answer that did not break the laws of the physical universe. Mulder hated having his theories shot down, well, so did she.

Whatever happened to 'when convention and science offer no answers, might we not consider the fantastic as a plausibility'? Well, there certainly was enough scientific evidence to go around. Why couldn't Mulder see that? Where had convention and science failed them? When had it failed Missy?

"When the men with the strings started yanking all the right chains, that's when," she thought bitterly to herself.

She was tired. Tired of it all. Tired of the untruths, tired of the lies, tired of the deliberate campaigns of misinformation. There were pretty ways to beat around the bush, but none of them yielded any more clues than the next.

How did the saying go? "All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players." Marionettes was a more apt description. Puppet strings. It was no longer who controlled the money, but who was the puppeteer. Who held the strings.

She was tired of playing. The manipulation, the constant denial, the questioning of belief. And not for the first time in as many months, she considered chucking it all. She had paid her pound of flesh, it was time to get out of the game.

*I would consider it more than a professional loss if you left.*

The words came back to haunt her. Would Mulder really care? Would he even notice? There were times in the past nine months when they were actually civil with each other. But their relationship had become as volatile as sweating dynamite and just as unpredictable. It had been better in recent weeks, with far fewer inane arguments over nothing at all. But it was only a matter of time. Tick tock. Tick tock.

Time bomb. Her mother likened her temper to her father's, a long, slow fuse that when ignited took a long time to boil over. She had only seen her father angry, really angry, once in her life. Stern, yes, maybe even forceful at times. Never vindictive, never vengeful, and almost never angry. It took a botched armed robbery attempt by a doped-up rejected recruit for her to see him blow his top. They had been home, it was late, everyone was in bed safe and sound. There was a noise, her father went downstairs with the baseball bat the boys kept in the upstairs hall closet. She wasn't more than eight at the time, and she remembered a lot of yelling and swearing. It was the first time she had ever heard a gunshot that had nothing to do with the BB guns or shooting range. The base MP's came, took the addict into custody.

The shear act of someone breaking into their house did not frighten her as much as she thought it would; even so, she spent the rest of the night in her brother Bill's room. And very early the next morning, unbeknownst to anyone, she slipped downstairs to see what had happened. The living room was a mess, there was a nasty looking hole in the wall.

The back door was open. Her father was outside in the backyard, wood axe in hand, attacking the wood pile like there was no tomorrow, and she saw such anger in his eyes that she was more frightened than she had ever been before.

In all her life, she never saw that type of anger from him ever again, an anger borne of fear. Fear for his family, fear for himself, fear for what he might have done. He hadn't noticed her, hovering in the corner, watching with wide eyes brimming with tears. Her mother had found her, carried her back to their bedroom, cooed her to sleep.

And now she knew that fear, knew it like no other. Adrenaline had carried her to and from North Dakota, a vengeful hope that they would find Krycheck and bring him to justice. There had been no time to think, only act. Impulsive, reactive. No thought involved. Do, or do not, there was no in between. It had been that way since Skinner's shooting, since she had discovered that his assailant was the same man that shot her sister.

All she needed to do was pull the trigger. One slight twitch. Her fuse had burned long and slow, edging closer and closer to the gun powder chamber, and it was then when that she knew what her father had gone through all those years before. Commander Johansson's words came to her like lightening in a bottle; we bury our dead alive, conscience was the dead speaking to us. They were screaming at her then, and had returned to haunt her yet again.

Once the adrenaline cleared, once her heavy lidded conscious came to bear once again, she went to the source. If the dead truly did speak through the conscience, all her connections were buzzing now. The flowers had been an afterthought, a random assortment. The fact that she didn't know Melissa's favorite flower was like lead in her belly, added only more gasoline for the fire.

She didn't have the energy to try and fight it, not any longer. She did not like what she had become.

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After watching her circle the parkway from his car, Mulder was grateful that he had decided to follow. Scully had not taken the news of Cardinal's death like he thought she would. He expected more fight, for some reason. Maybe it was because they had fought like cat and dog on everything from driving to diners. It had gotten better, or so he conned himself to thinking after the near amicability of late, but he knew the hatchet had not been buried.

He was worried. After the way he had treated her over the past few months, -- he was not immune to the effect of his actions, not totally anyway, -- he knew he had no right to be worried and expect her to graciously accept any comfort he had to offer. He had acted like an ass on more than one occasion, rebounding to old routines of ditching his partner when things did not go his way. He was rather surprised she had put up with him for so long.

Not wanting to intrude on her privacy at the cemetery, he had let her leave without saying a word. It wasn't until he had seen her wipe a few errant tears from her face as she started her car that he decided to follow. He had not heard the listlessness in her voice since Melissa's death. He had tried to be supportive then, and realized he might have gotten through if had said nothing at all. Scully did not want to be placated, talked down to like some teenager that had just been stood up at the prom. She had grown distant, understandably, more so after the incident with the train. He had ditched her, plain and simple. She didn't appreciate it, and in not so many words, told him so.

They had been driving for hours, she in her car, he following 4 cars behind. He watched as she turned off the parkway, and knew that she was not headed home. Still he followed, intent on making sure she... he wasn't sure why he was following her. Apologies went unsaid between them, always. Maybe he was making up for lost time, when he wasn't a safety net, not wanted and occasionally needed.

Driving along, he only took a cursory glance at the scenery around him; they were headed for the sea shore. The Chesapeake Bay and coast were dotted with marinas and harbors, tall ships and motor boats skimming the waves like water bugs. Unlike Massachusetts, cliffs towered over the beaches. Over-looks, spotted with picnic pavilions and decorative stone and wooden fences, historical plaques stamped on nearly every tree. Slowing, he watched as Scully parked alongside a set of picnic tables, overturned for the off-season.

Hands held deeply in the pockets of her open trenchcoat, Scully walked over to one of the stone overlooks, wind whipping against her coat tails and hair. The day had taken a rather gray pallor during their drive, overcast clouds shrouding the ground from the warming glare of the sun. Draping her arms over the top of the stone fence, she rested her chin on her hands and stared out over the ocean.

Sitting in his car, he let the engine idle for a time, debating whether or not to approach her. She had come here for a reason, alone, and may not want company. He knew she wouldn't do anything drastic; the thought never entered his mind. She, like her father, respected the sea.

He had a feeling he knew what was bothering her, though never in a million years would he presume to dictate to her what to do about it. Whereas he vented his frustrations and anger out on the system, bucking back in the face of adversity, she was restrained, the obedient soldier that did not rebel. Public displays of outrage were expected of Spooky Mulder. He had no inhibitions about making a fool of himself if it was all for the truth.

Scully was different. Reserved to a fault, she never expressed her emotions aloud. She even looked out for his image, dragging him out of Skinner's office before he could make an ass of himself in front of the powers that be. He had never witnessed her making a scene. While he had belittled her theories in Comity, she had pulled him aside to tell him he was acting like a jerk.

He had a release. She did not. He spit in the face of other people's expectations of him. She always lived up and exceeded those expectations, with strength and control. It would not do to lose that control.

The wind started to pick up, and fat pellets of rain and sleet began to hit his windshield. Reaching behind his seat for the umbrella he always kept there, he decided to let the weather determine his actions. Wouldn't be the first time.

If Scully heard him approach, she gave no indication. He stood behind her right shoulder, tapping the fence next to her with the tip of the umbrella. Unstartled, she lifted her head and looked over her shoulder, and he noticed that her expression had yet to change from the one he had seen in the cemetery. Returning her gaze back to the water, Mulder let the umbrella fall to his side, the rounded hook dangling from his upturned wrist.

The wind whistled with the sound of pounding surf below. Waves crashed and sprayed along the rocks, tossing small boats as if caught in a whirlpool.

There was so much to say, and things better left unsaid that his head spun thinking about it. Planting his hands deep into his pockets, he watched the maelstrom ahead of him, the infinite expanse of cloud cover, tasted the spray of salt-laden air against his face, and felt the rush of windburn-heat on his cheeks.

Scully straightened a bit, gaze landing on an array of docks down the shore in a small cove. Pointing towards one, she said, "My father used to rent a cabin over there. The dock on the end, right there, he'd get the sail boat out of storage in Annapolis, and we'd come up here every summer, for three weeks in July."

"Is that so," Mulder replied softly. She hadn't told him to get lost, but still he tread carefully, stepping closer to block the crosswind a bit better.

Nodding, Scully still stared at the dock, caught in memories of childhood. She leaned forward again, chin resting on her hands. "I was twelve when we moved back to the east coast, the trips up here were more frequent then. I remember my father teaching me to sail right out there in that cove. My brothers would go off hiking, Missy would be reading on the dock or writing her poetry or whatever on the porch. But I think I spent every waking moment near the water."

"A regular water rat, huh?"

Her eyes dropped, he watched as her shoulders tensed, and decided as an afterthought that humor was probably not the way to go. Just because humor was his defense mechanism didn't mean he had to inflict it on everyone. "I'm sorry, that was uncalled for."

"No, it's okay. It's just... that's what my father used to say."

"I'm sorry."

She shook off whatever had bothered her for the moment, and looked back at the water. "I was eight the first time we came here. We needed to have some reconstruction done on the house, so my father decided to take us on a long vacation until the repairs were made. We drove all the way from California, made all the tourist stops. Grand Canyon, Bryce National Park, St. Louis Arch, Cumberland Gap, Blue Ridge. But I remember it wasn't until he got here that he was relaxed, not until we hit the water."

"Awfully far to go to hit water, when you had a whole ocean right next door."

Scully smiled briefly, closed her eyes. "His first love was always the Atlantic."

"Is that why you're here?" he asked.

When she didn't answer, he stepped closer, opening the umbrella to fend off most of the attack of sleet and falling rain. He could feel her body trembling next to him, unsure if the cold was the cause.

"Skinner told me what happened on the street with Cardinal...." He paused, wondering how she would react. When he had talked with her on the phone that night, she had said 'we' caught the man that shot Skinner. The cops on the scene had given their report to Skinner, who himself refused to leave until he knew what had happened.

"I know," was all he said. He often thought about what might have happened if he had pulled the trigger on Cancerman, how much of this mess might never have happened. He had drafted and signed a letter of resignation because he had thought about pulling the trigger, because his life had spun so far out of control and he didn't care at that precise moment who lived and who died. Maybe he had heard his own voices of the dead, or who he had thought would die soon, and that's why he stayed his finger, dropped his site. He looked out over the bay, watched as the harbor patrol made their rounds, and wondered what peace his partner found in watching the waves. Old habits died hard, he supposed.

"I would consider it more than a professional loss if you left."

Now he had caught her attention. He had only guessed, based on personal experience, that she was thinking of leaving. Never one to shy away from a challenge, she carried on through adversity; her father's passing, her sister's murder, the suspensions and quarantines.

The only sound between them was the roar of the wind and the rippling of umbrella canvas. When she did finally speak, he had to lean in close to hear her over the howling effects of nature.

"I'm taking some time off," she said, straightening.

"I think it's a good idea," he replied, placing his hand near the small of her back. It felt so good to do that again. So wrapped up with his own demons, he had failed to the incubus sitting on her shoulders, sapping her strength of will and trust. "What will you do?"

Taking a deep breath, she backed away from the wall, never looking at him or anything else for that matter. "I don't know. Spend time with my mom, I think."

"Take all the time you need."

For the first time that day, she looked at him, and he saw the light return to her eyes, lifting the brooding cloud that had firmly set itself there for he didn't know how long. "Walk with me?"

"It's getting a little chilly out. Are you sure you wouldn't rather go back to the car?"

Scully shook her head, slowly advancing along the pedestrian path. "Not just yet. I've got some thinking to do."

Mulder pushed her along, shifting to the windward side of the path and adjusting his grip on the umbrella so the wind wouldn't take it. "They got a swing set somewhere in this joint?"

"I think so. Why?"

"Haven't been on a swing of my own volition in a real long time. Thought I'd try my luck at it under my own power. And if you're nice to me, maybe I'll even offer to push you once or twice."

He watched her smile, that expression so long ago forgotten that he wondered if he would ever see it again, and how long it would last.