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 is a WIP. It is being updated once a week, and it's looking like the end is in site on the writing end! Major beta thanks to XScribe for comments, advice, and smoothing over the rough edges. **** Chapter 5 **** Beatrice shuffled through several files, seeming to pull sheets out at random. "Did you just want the shipping paperwork on Ophelia, or on all the horses?" "If you have them for Tinkerbelle, that would be wonderful as well." Mulder watched as she continued to pull on papers, gathering a large sheaf in her left hand. Scully stood to the side, near the table of photographs that had caught her eye on their first visit. Mulder stepped beside her, trying to see what caught her eye. Was there a specific picture? Or were these like the book she'd been reading the other night--reminders of things she'd like but never have? Apparently at least one of them had drawn her attention. As Beatrice approached them with the paperwork, Scully gestured to a beveled silver frame at the far end of the table. "Was that Ophelia?" Beatrice squinted slightly at the photo. "Yes, it was. That's Charlotte riding her in Florida." "She was a gorgeous horse. I'm sure she will be missed." "Very much. But we had a lovely time together, and all--Agent Scully, are you quite all right?" Panic cut through her previously casual tone. Mulder looked quickly up from the photograph to see a thin trail of blood streaking down from Scully's right nostril. Discreetly, he tapped his own. She saw his gesture immediately, dropping her face and covering her nose with a hand. "Do you have a washroom she could use?" "Oh, yes, yes of course. Right down the hallway. The doorway to the left of the staircase." Mulder's fingers grazed the small of Scully's back as she spun and marched out of the room. "Is she all right? Agent Mulder?" Beatrice's gentle voice broke into the worry scurrying through his brain. "She'll be fine." He hoped--he prayed to a God he barely believed in. If he had any control in the matter, she would indeed be fine at some point in the future. If he believed enough, it wasn't a lie. She would be fine again, eventually. Somehow. Silence fell in the room as Beatrice handed the shipping papers over to him. He barely registered the paperwork charting movements between Virginia and Florida as they waited without a word until Scully returned, looking as if nothing had happened. **** She'd collapsed, exhausted, onto her bed upon returning home. It had taken all her concentration to remove her shoes and jacket before she'd been dead to the world. The piercing ring of her phone broke into her dreamless slumber, forcing her into a groggy stupor. "Sc-Scully." She cast about, trying to locate her alarm clock's luminous digits. 11:17. She'd been asleep five hours and felt as if she'd not gotten a wink of sleep. "I'm sorry." Even if she hadn't recognized the voice instantly, she would have known who it was. "I didn't think about waking you up. You need to sleep..." "No, I'm already awake. What's so important?" "You're sure it's okay? You're feeling all right?" "Yes, I'm fine now. I was just asleep." "If you're sure..." "Oh, for God's sake, Mulder!" She was feeling every bit of her exhaustion now. "Just tell me why you called." He didn't say anything for a moment, and she was afraid he was going to make further inquiries into her health. "The smoking man was waiting for me when I got back tonight," he finally blurted. "Oh." She wasn't quite sure what to make of that. "What did he want?" "He came to discourage me from continuing to pursue this case. His exact words were that 'There is absolutely nothing amiss with the animals owned by the Stevens family, save an owner who has made one too many flights across the Atlantic.'" "What on earth is that supposed to mean?" "My guess is that like everything else he's discouraged us from investigating, the more we look, the less we'll find." "That doesn't make any sense. Why not just make it disappear without telling you? Then it really would just seem like the case didn't merit further investigation." She could hear him draw a deep breath through the crackling phone line, and knew there was more to the confrontation than he was telling her. "What else did he say?" "He offered...he said that if we dropped the investigation into the chips in these animals, he would provide us with access to another chip for you." It was her turn to draw a deep breath, before responding firmly, "And what would I need another one of those for?" "He said that without it, your cancer will progress just as it did in the animals we're investigating." Mentally she ticked off several implications of that statement for later discussion. "And why should I believe him? When has he ever told us the truth before?" His heavy sigh hung between them for a long time. "But it's a chance to save you, Scully. What's the value of a few animals against your life? I can't let that opportunity slide by." "You don't have to. It's not your decision to make." "But Scully--" "No. It's ultimately my life and my decision. I need some time to weigh that trade for myself, and I can't do that right now. Give me some time to think about it." "He said he would be in touch tomorrow." "Then we'll talk about it when I get into the office tomorrow afternoon." When she walked into the office the following afternoon, she could tell Mulder had been anxiously waiting for her. She could feel his eyes on her as she removed her coat and sat at her desk, expecting an answer from her. She tried her best to ignore him for a few moments, busying herself with the day's mail and checking her email messages. When she ran out of ways to credibly avoid discussion of the matter, she slowly swiveled her desk chair to face him. Before she could begin to speak, he began, "Scully, I really think you should consider this offer. I know that the smoking man isn't the most reliable of sources, but he's never done anything to intentionally--" "Just stop, Mulder. Stop." She heaved a sigh and held up a hand to ward off his nervous rambling. "I need you just to listen to me, okay?" He seemed startled, and hastily closed the jaw that had opened to continue. Subtly, he bobbed his head in assent, relaxing back into his seat and ceding the floor to her. "You have nothing but the best of intentions in all this, and I know that. I understand that you only want to make this compromise out of a desire to see me healthy. I appreciate that, I really do." She was wary, trying to tread carefully and make her point while remaining respectful of the fact that he felt at least partially responsible for the situation. "But I also know that even if this would work--and there's no guarantee that it would--I can't live my life in debt to that man. And if I accepted this trade, that's what would happen." Mulder was quiet for a moment, until it was clear that she had finished. "But you're not the one making the trade. He didn't offer it to you. He offered to give me the chip in exchange for stopping the investigation. You wouldn't be indebted to him at all." "It's our investigation and my body that the chip would be effecting. It most certainly would be my debt, whatever you want to believe about it. It's not a trade, it's making a deal with the devil. I'm not going to do it, and I won't let you do it, either." "What if I want to?" "I have no doubt that you want to." Her eyes sparked with her inner turmoil. "God knows that I would love to know that something so simple could cure me. But nothing is that simple, and the consequences far outweigh the potential benefits. I can't throw professional ethics out the window and trade a case for my own personal welfare. And we don't even know that this chip would really help me!" "All the evidence in this case seems to suggest that it would." "Three examples in animals, with incomplete evidence, I can't take as proof, or even as good faith in what the smoking man told you." "You'd rather die?" It was the first time either of them had ever voiced the understood potentiality. The air in the office seemed to chill a few degrees and silence hung ominously. "I'd rather respect myself for the time I have left than live a compromised life." She met his eyes, refusing to be the first to look away. Mulder blinked first, looking down to stare at his hands, which had begun to clench against the edge of his desk. "Is it that poor of a trade to you?" There was a sadness in his voice that was tempered with a barely restrained frustration. "I can't believe you even have to ask me that." She met his tone with steel, refusing to yield on this. He met her eyes again, and she could see that he didn't have to ask. He was just weighing the consequences of running off and making the trade himself, letting her hate him and live. "Look, Mulder, it's not about the case. This case is too tenuous to concern me. Did you fail to notice the two men on the horses in the photo behind Beatrice and Jackie Kennedy the first time we visited?" He furrowed his brows and looked perplexed, something she was not used to seeing. She clarified, "The smoking man was one of the men. Much younger, but it was him. She had to know him." "You're sure?" "I wasn't certain it was, until I got a look at it again yesterday. I'm sure it was him; I figured you would notice, but apparently I shouldn't take things for granted with you." "What's that supposed to mean?" he growled. "You're the one who wants to make a deal with him. I don't want to live the rest of my life with the knowledge that either one of us is indebted to that man for my continued well being. Because it won't stop with this case if that trade is made." He nodded and glanced around the office. She could see tears sparkling in the edges of his eyes, but they cleared as he spoke again, softly. "I just...I want to see you healthy, Scully. I don't want to leave a possibility by the wayside just because it seems a little dangerous." "A little dangerous?" she exploded. "Having radiation directed at my brain every morning is dangerous. Making a deal with that man, while it might seem like the right choice now, would be fatal in the long run." "Better that you chose your own end? Sailors to the sea, horses to the hounds?" His voice was soft. Had he replied harshly, she would have stormed out. This compassion she wasn't quite sure how to take. She simply nodded. "Yes." "I'd rather you didn't have to make a choice at all. That it was decades down the road before you had to give thought to any of this." "So do I, but while I can't control the circumstances, at least I can have some choice in the outcome." "I don't like the choice, but I'll respect it." "Thank you." Silence fell over the office again, but it had a much different feel. They turned back to their respective desks and burrowed into their work. None of the tension remained that had surrounded her arrival. Rather, the silence held a palpable comfort and agreement between them, uneasy and unpleasant though it was. **** Beatrice Stevens carried the big green bucket in one hand, scooping feed out of it with the other. The sweet smelling grain drew the horses to the fronts of their stalls. At one end of the aisleway, she heard Belle bang a hoof against the oak door, impatient for her dinner. Prospero was much more of a gentleman about it, standing patiently in front of the feed bin as she poured grain through the opening in the front of his stall. His soft nose brushed her hand as he plunged his head into the feed, rattling grain and a salt block around in the plastic tub. The only sounds as she moved down the aisleway were the hearty tread of her sturdy barn boots and the shuffling of the horses in their stalls. When she heard the scrape of footsteps on the concrete aisle while pouring feed into the next stall, she froze, then sniffed the air. "How many times over the years have I told you not to smoke in the barn?" **** End Chapter 5 Continued in Chapter 6 **** Feedback makes my day: windblownellie@yahoo.com www.geocities.com/windblownellie/firstflight.htm