Title: First Flight Author: Ellie (windblownellie@yahoo.com) Rating: PG-13, for language and graphic images Category: X, M/S UST, AU (veers off mid-S4) Summary: Mulder and Scully meet a woman who may provide answers about the origins of Scully's cancer. Author's Notes: This has been a long, exhausting, exhilarating process. Thank you to everyone who’s sent feedback along the way. I can only hope you’ve enjoyed this journey half as much as I have. Major beta thanks to XScribe for comments, advice, and smoothing over the rough edges. **** Chapter 10 **** Mulder sat in another uncomfortable orange chair, waiting. He'd calculated the number of ceiling tiles in the hallway--214--and monitored the average length of time the doctors spent in their patients' rooms-- six minutes--and was now busy figuring out the ratio of avocado floor tiles to melon ones. The door to Scully's room swung open and the doctor's shoes squeaked against the garish tiles. Mulder barely looked at him; the doctor had been clear in his opinion of Mulder when he and Scully had presented the chip to be implanted into her neck. The doctor had thought they were both crazy, and had nearly refused to be involved. It had of course been Scully who convinced him that there would be no harm in trying. Either nothing would happen and she would resume treatment as she had been receiving it, or it would work as she expected it to. It wasn't even an operation, really, just a bit of anesthetic on her neck and a quick slice of the scalpel. She hadn't told him to leave the room, but he couldn't stay. He wasn't even sure why--he'd seen her cut and bleeding before and this would at least be for her own good. He only knew that he couldn't stay and watch that chip disappear into her neck. In the abstract, it had seemed like such a good decision, one that would save her life. Yet he could only see the specter of the smoking man as the doctor stood ready with scalpel and chip. So he had fled to the tacky refuge of the hallway. Less than ten minutes had passed between his flight from the room and the doctor's departure. Drawing a deep breath, he stood and pushed the door open. Scully sat on the bed, two pillows propped neatly behind her. Before Mulder could draw a breath to ask, she drew her hair aside and turned her head slightly, revealing a neat white bandage to him. "All done." Stepping closer to the edge of the bed, he traced his index finger down the taped edge of the gauze. "So that's it." She dropped her hair back and he drew his hand away, sitting half on the edge of the bed. "That's it," she echoed. "What do we do now?" "Dr. Zuckerman thinks I'm crazy for even doing this, but he doesn't see any need to keep me here. As soon as I get changed, I can go home. And then...I guess I wait and see." "It seems too easy." He toyed with the edge of the battered hospital blanket. She nodded and reached back to touch the gauze, herself. "It does, after all this. But we still don't know anything. We won't for a few weeks." "Weeks?" He looked up, meeting her entirely reasonable gaze. How could she remain so pragmatic? "I was scheduled to have another MRI on Friday to monitor my radiation treatments. I'll still have that, of course, but we won't have any way of knowing whether what we see there is a result of the treatments or this chip. Then I'll just wait a few weeks and let this chip do whatever it's supposed to do. Dr. Zuckerman is going to schedule me another MRI in three weeks; we should know something then." He forced a smile that appeared more enthusiastic than he felt. "Well, then, what are we waiting for? Get dressed so we can blow this joint." As he headed back out the door, he saw her trying to suppress a smirk at his lame attempt at humor. Just maybe, things were going to be all right. **** A corner of the tarp flapped loose on the back of the truck bed; if Charlotte had peered closely as it drove down the tree-lined drive, she could have seen the curve of hoof it revealed. She didn't care to look. Making the decision to destroy all evidence had been simple enough and easy to accept. Even acknowledging that this meant the death of Belle had not been difficult. But actually killing her had been more wrenching than anything she'd ever done. It was no crime to destroy one's own property, of course, so long as the end of one's living property is humane. She could have simply shot Belle in the middle of one of the pastures and no one could have done a thing about it. But that would not have the intended effect. The quiet death in the night of an almost-forty pony would attract no attention. One shot, far too much tranquilizer, and it was done; without an insurance claim by her, there would be no one to question the death. The truck carting away the body disappeared into the descending dusk, and she turned to enter the house. The pack of corgis watched her as she passed through the entryway, only Tristram rising to follow her through the house. Moving purposefully, she went directly to her mother's office to begin the removal of more delicate evidence. Casting her eyes about the room, the glint of the setting sun on her mother's collection of silver-framed photographs caught her attention. Quickly taking inventory of the pictures and thinking of the paperwork to disappear, she stepped back into the library and dropped to her knees in front of the fireplace. In two minutes, she had a small blaze kindling, deepening the burgundy tones of the room and casting out the damp spring evening. Returning to the office, she gathered four of the frames and carried them to the fireplace. Tristram hopped onto the couch, alert eyes following her movement. Removing the photos was simple, and she soon had the four in hand. First into the blaze was Bea and Galahad at Westminster; that went with little difficultly. She had not been lying when she told Mulder that her mother often seemed to care more for her animals than her children, and Galahad above the others. A magazine-perfect shot of Julie foxhunting Belle went into the flames next, as easily as the first. Thom hitting a tennis ball to Galahad followed with little sentiment. Charlotte lingered on the last photo, however. The shot of her on Ophelia was such an image of show ring perfection she hated to part with it. The scuttle of the dogs' nails on the slate entryway floor and the creak of a floorboard interrupted her reverie and she nearly cast the photo into the fire without any conscious thought. She tightened her grip on the corner of the page as she turned. "You really must learn to knock." "Tsk, tsk. I see the hospitality here is already in decline." "Friends of the family are always welcomed with the greatest of conviviality." "Always so wise, my dear Charlotte. And always one step ahead of the game." He stepped closer and tossed a cigarette butt into the smoldering pieces of photographs. "Just doing a little cleaning up around here. Someone must clean up the messes, after all." She rose to face him, wishing she were eye-level. "You're quite good at cleaning up messes," he smirked, "especially other people's." On the couch, Tristram sat up, alert, watching the two of them. The foxy little dog's seemed to understand the tension crackling around him, and chose to bound to Charlotte's side, where he sat like a sentinel statue. She patted the dog and responded coolly, "Perhaps if other people took time to think their actions through beforehand, their messes would not become my problems with such alarming frequency." "Anticipating messes and averting them has always been your specialty. I see you're at it once again." He nodded towards the fireplace. "I'm just doing what should have been done in the first place. It would have been so easy, if you'd just taken the time to ask." "Like you took the time to ask me about sending that chip to Agent Scully?" She met his eyes and refused to look away. "I don't know anything about Agent Scully receiving a chip." "Spare me, Charlotte. I'm not so naïve as some of our compatriots and am well aware that Agent Scully received an 'anonymous' envelope the other day, containing a chip identical to one that went missing from our vaults the day prior. Curious, isn't it?" "It certainly sounds curiously like something you would do." "Are you going to accuse me of this?" Incredulity crept into his voice for the first time she had ever heard. "As far as I know, nothing happened at all. And I'm just disposing of some of my mother's things, that are no longer of importance." "We have an understanding then?" "I understand that my mother is dead, the case she brought to the FBI is no longer being investigated as you wished, and now I am lady of the house here and free to dispose of what I wish. As to the well-being of Agents Mulder and Scully, it's outside my realm of knowledge. You should understand that you're no longer welcome at Avalon." "Fair enough. I'll be seeing you, Charlotte." Without waiting for her reply, he faded back into the shadows of the room and glided out the door. Charlotte sighed and headed back to the office, and began pulling paperwork out of the filing cabinets, Tristram trailing along behind her. Most of the sheets were merely tossed in the trashcan; a smaller pile was made on the desk, which she then took back to the fireplace. She reached down to stroke the loyal dog's head as she watched the old paper burn quickly, leaving no trace that a trio of the Stevens' animals had ever existed. **** Mulder was surprised to see Scully bent industriously over her keyboard when he entered the office. Since implanting the chip several weeks ago, she'd been feeling better, though she had made no mention of any appointments to confirm that her good health was more than coincidence. "Morning, Scully." Her head whipped around from the monitor. "Oh, good morning." For a few moments, they settled into companionable silence, before Scully spoke up once more, with some measure of hesitation. "What are you doing the week of September sixth?" He wasn't quite sure how to respond to her query. What on earth was she talking about? "Nothing that I'm aware of. It's a long way--" in the seconds it took him to speak, a conversation on her couch replayed in his head. Name a date, he'd said. "Oh." "You were serious when you made the offer, weren't you? I don't want to impose on you, but I thought..." She trailed off, looking embarrassed, face reddening as she looked down at her hands on the keyboard, hair obscuring her face. "No, no, I definitely meant it. I would love nothing more. So what do you want to see across the pond?" **** End **** Feedback is always welcome: windblownellie@yahoo.com www.geocities.com/windblownellie/firstflight.htm