A Truth Too Far

A Truth Too Far

Try and look casual. He'd been reciting the phrase like a mantra ever since he got in the car to come over here. Now that he was actually stood at the door to Dana Scully's apartment, Fox Mulder neither felt, nor looked casual. Tense, stiff, embarrassed perhaps, maybe even faintly bemused by just how on edge he felt, but certainly not casual.

The sound of footsteps approaching the door didn't help him to calm down. Especially not when he recognized that he was hearing not the anticipated pad of Dana Scully's feet, but a heavier sound. Mulder hastily forced himself to stand up straight as the door opened.

"You." Bill Scully surveyed the visitor quickly, a faint distaste brewing in his eyes. "I was expecting a pizza."

"Sorry to disappoint you. I was just," a faint pause and a quiet sucking in of air, "passing by and wondered if Dana needed any help."

"She's got all the help she needs."

Mulder hesitated, gave a brief acknowledging nod. "I can see that. Tell her, I'll see her at the office."

Bill smiled lightly, a smile of little humor and rather more triumph. Then a woman's voice came through from the living room. "Fox. Is that you? Come in and have a drink."

The slight shiver hit Mulder's body before he could stop it. He looked quickly up at Bill, noting the man's delight at the accidental admission of discomfort. "No. Thank you, Mrs Scully. I just wanted to see if Dana needed anything. But.."

Dana Scully's arrival at the door stopped his words. "Come in."

Finding the chair nearest the door, which was fortuitously also the furthest position from the others in the room, Mulder perched on the edge of the seat and tried not to look at anyone.

After Dana Scully had finally left the hospital, she had gone to stay at her mother's for convalescence and to use as a base to visit her Doctors for further tests. She'd now completed a couple of weeks light duties at Quantico and was returning to the X-Files tomorrow. Today had marked her return to her own apartment.

Bill eyed Mulder carefully, he talked quietly and kept it conversationally casual, his eyes offering only the slightest of sneers. "I guess I should be congratulating you. Seems like we both got our sisters back."

Mulder scanned the glass of iced tea in front of him and nodded.

Mulder remained silent so Bill carried on talking, a little more animation in his words this time. "And you're off the murder charge. Lucky break that. Tell me, what's it like to have to shoot a dead man to hide the evidence?"

The next second could have taken an hour. Then the moment was broken by a soft, but surprisingly harsh voice. "Bill." Dana Scully was up on her feet and in front of her brother and looming rather larger than seemed reasonable given her actual height and weight. "If you can't be polite to my guests, then I'd like you to leave."

But it was Mulder who was already at the door. "I'll see you tomorrow. Bye Scully. Mrs Scully."

Bill's voice broke across the room, all apparent conciliation and regret. "Mulder, wait. I wanted to apologize for getting on your case at the hospital."

Mulder paused, desperately trying to keep his hands from clenching and his feet from running. He turned back towards Bill and the others, cleared his throat. "That's ok. It was a difficult time. Goodbye."

The X-Files office had a bleak, cold, silent air, oppressive in its isolation. Dana Scully felt uncomfortable and then felt angry that she felt uncomfortable in her own office. Until finally, she felt regret that she'd opted to move down here fulltime and out of the daylight and the normality of the main offices. That regret made her angrier still.

The soft sigh that slipped from Scully's lips worsened the situation. Mulder looked towards her, eyes full of apprehension. At that moment Dana Scully would have happily screamed. She needed a breath of fresh air. How long was this farce going to continue without either of them actually talking about it?

She had been back with the X-Files for four weeks and they had done nothing. Unfair. She knew her thought was unfair. She tried the thought again. Four weeks back and Mulder was controlling the agenda, choosing the cases, evading her eyes and her questions. But it was wrong to claim it was nothing. They'd worked, they'd investigated, they'd defended the innocent, they'd got the bad guy. And that was the trouble, they'd got the bad guy. Not uncovered the truth. Not pushed closer to those government funded maniacs with their clones, their bees, their experiments, their agenda.

Mulder had handed her a bunch of files today, cases awaiting investigation. Not an abduction, not a light in the sky, not an experimental facility, not a mysterious informant anywhere in the pile. A Psycho who thought he was not responsible for his actions because he was channeling the Boston Strangler; a poltergeist that had stoned a woman to death; a child who had seen her dead friend beaten to death by a relative in a dream.

Worthy of attention. Sure. But what had happened to the chase? They'd pushed for five years on what Mulder had told her was, "the only thing that mattered" and now just as they were getting close, he'd pulled away.

Of course he'd got Sam back. Maybe. Five minutes in a Diner was hardly a fair exchange for 25 years of guilt and fear. Nor for years of hunting that had almost killed him, that had killed some of him, killed some of her.

Surely, it didn't stop there. Five minutes with an unidentified woman. Five minutes that Dana Scully had almost died for. She'd gone through that horror story, that pain, so he could retreat? So he could go and sit in a corner and lick his wounds? So he could look at her as if she was the latest fuel for his nightmares?

Bastard. 'Put this chip in your neck, Scully. Make it all go away.' As if it was going to go away while she had some, unknown thing in her neck. As if that violation was ever going to be acceptable. As if the threat of a relapse wasn't there, all the time. Waiting for the day the chip failed or waiting for the day she'd outlived her usefulness and they signaled it to fail.

Bastard. How dare he ask her to ignore what they'd done to her. And why? What was his theory. Leave the conspiracy alone and they'd leave her alone? Maybe he really had done a deal with cancer man or whoever the latest figure in the shadows happened to be.

The folders on Mulder's desk were the ones Dana Scully had placed there. Her suggestions for where their next case should take them. Disappearances. People returned from abductions with strange marks on their bodies. A victim who remembered a bright white place and a train.

Dana Scully watched him as he read. His hands shaking slightly as they skimmed through the pages, his shoulders stiffening as he looked at photographs of the missing, the ones returned 'damaged', the ones returned dead. He clung to the mug of coffee like that was the only warmth in the room. He didn't look up at her. She waited for him to remember his job.

There was just the right amount of self confidence in Dana Scully's voice as she spoke to Walter Skinner. "It is my belief that Agent Mulder's judgment on which cases are to be investigated is flawed. I am making no other complaint about his conduct."

This discussion had batted back and forward between them for several minutes. Skinner desperately trying to understand what Dana Scully wanted. It was a question he'd been asking himself ever since she asked for this private meeting. She wanted to leave the X-Files? Apparently not. She wanted Mulder to leave? Apparently not yet. She wanted him to tell Mulder which cases were to be investigated? "So, you want me to authorize one of your 302's, without Agent Mulder's backing?"

"I believe they are valid cases and are receiving insufficient priority."

There was a caution in Skinner's reply. "Agent Mulder's ability to identify solvable cases from within the many unsolved files passed to the division has contributed to your high success rate."

Dana Scully paused and in a single deep breath pushed down her irritation. "Based on my experience with the X-Files, I believe these are solvable, Sir. If I thought otherwise, I would be asking the local authorities for more information before bringing them to you."

Skinner nodded, sucking in a little of the tension that was in the room to fuel his decision. "I will offer Agent Mulder the opportunity to select the most appropriate case from amongst those you have identified."

A compromise then. Dana Scully tried to keep the triumph from her eyes.

It only took Mulder a few minutes to identify their next case from among the shortlist that Dana Scully had prepared. Scully hesitated at that, he was too quick. It was apparent now that he had already read the files in full. She hadn't really thought he'd even bothered to do that.

A few minutes later he was confirming flight details, motel and rental car arrangements with the administration desk. Scully watched as he efficiently set up their trip. Even that administrative chore rang alarm bells for her. If he was serious about the case he'd be calling Sheriffs, reading incident reports, he'd have thrown the paperwork at her.

The process rolled forward, they both knew this sequence off by heart. The quick collection of already almost packed luggage from their apartments and then a shared car out to National. Some things hadn't changed. Scully found that oddly reassuring. So much had changed since she'd been cured. No, not cured, treated. Treated by this thing that she'd have to carry around for the rest of her life. Unless.

It was hard to know when the routine of the trip changed from welcome reassurance to disturbing deja vu. How often had they done this before? This time would it be better? This time would they get closer to the truth? Would they be able to keep the evidence? Could they use what they discovered?

It was as they walked away from the check in desk that Dana Scully noted the faint tremors in her hands. She felt a hand drift to her back. Mulder's touch, steering her, reminding her he was at her side. Was he? Was he really still with her? After all their struggles was he the same man? She'd had to go over his head to Skinner to get him to even consider this case.

They sat in the uncomfortable chairs to await their flight call. Scully struggled with the words. "Are you ok with this? Me dragging you into this?" A pause, then, when he didn't look up or reply, yet another attempt at the wording. "This case I mean. Me going to Skinner to get it."

"Sure. I should have listened to you sooner." The words tumbled out of her in a rush as she begged for reassurance. Not that Dana Scully ever begged, but she knew that Mulder would spot the anxiety and uncertainty in her voice. "I thought maybe, you were avoiding these kinds of cases. Trying to keep away from them. That maybe with Kritschgau explaining things and finding Sam, that you weren't interested anymore. Or, that you were worried that I couldn't cope."

He lifted his head but still didn't look at her, he found her hand and took it into his, then let his eyes droop back to stare at their fingers. "We've always done other kinds of cases. You have to pick the right ones."

Scully slid back further in her chair at that thought. It was true, she supposed. Perhaps she was just more sensitive now. Perhaps she was wrong to assume that they could just rush head long into an attack. Perhaps they had to bide their time. Pick their cases carefully. "It's important to me." She said carefully.

"I know." He answered in a whisper.

He leaned in a little closer to her. As they sat, side by side, she could feel the warmth of his arm on hers. She looked at their hands and shivered a little. How could she have doubted his commitment to this work, to her?

They were close and quiet for the flight and for the rest of the journey to their motel. Scully suggested getting a meal, but Mulder quickly excused himself to take off on a run to unwind.

Unwind was about right. He was wound up like a spinning top and just as soon as she let go of his hand he'd almost spun himself into the ground. He knew he had to slow down, otherwise his unwinding run was going to come to a premature and painful end. No idea where he was running to, just away from the motel and away from the lights. He almost crashed into the branch of a tree that dipped down towards the unpaved road.

He slowed a little to try and get some air into his lungs, finally stopping when even that wasn't enough to stop him feeling light headed. He leaned forward and rested his hands on his thighs. She would not forgive him for this, no doubt about it. He probably wouldn't forgive himself either.

She really thought she was out here to find a young woman abducted by aliens, or the government, or whoever it was ran the special trains around here.

In the old days, when she first joined the X-Files, Dana Scully would have loved this case. Called out here on a story of alien abduction. Mulder was confident that by this time tomorrow he would be just about finished interviewing a husband who had needed to make up a story. Valuable work. Sure. But the work of a local police department. A real case certainly, of a real dead woman, but dead at the hands of someone close, not someone from far away.

It was good work, but it was not their work. It was certainly not what Dana Scully had imagined it to be when she pushed the three case files to him and demanded that he choose one. She was less familiar than him when it came to reading between the lines on abduction reports. The time of day, the trace evidence, the husband's eyewitness account. The wording of his recorded statement. Scully would understand soon enough. Then, she would realize that Mulder had chosen the case deliberately.

Mulder's return jog to the motel was rather slower than his outbound run. He'd be paying for this in the morning. He couldn't help but smile grimly at that idea, paying for this run and for this case.

It wasn't that he had lied. 'We've always done other kinds of cases. You have to pick the right ones.' True enough. He'd confirmed that he knew it was important to her. No lie there either. But it was not the truth, not the whole truth. Not really.

Truth was available for only the cost of putting a bullet in someone's brain and blowing their face away with a shotgun. His reward had been a cure for Scully, the return of his sister and an admission ticket to the club of people who knew the truth. But he already knew more than enough of the truth about himself. So easy to kill, so easy to cover up, so easy to care only whether he could get what he wanted and not get caught. He'd discovered his true self and it didn't sit easily in his stomach.

Mulder's guess at how long the case would take to break had been accurate, if a little pessimistic. He wasn't surprised that they had been able to move so quickly. Mark Lawrence was not, after all, a professional criminal. He wasn't even a very good liar. He was just not someone the local Sheriff wanted to imagine killing his wife. He was after all a nice guy, except for the bruises he'd left on his wife's face that other time she'd danced with a stranger in the Bar.

The Sheriff had almost pleaded with them to do the interrogation. Good cop, bad cop. Dana had played the heavy and now Mulder was moving in for the softly softly kill. In the old days, she would have loved it, a case solved, a killer caught. These days it was a waste of her valuable time, time meant more to Scully now.

This maneuver was not taught at Quantico. There were good reasons for that, but none that Mulder could be bothered to remember. With a light sigh and a gentle look, he briefly captured Mark Lawrence eyes. He blinked and gave a slow nod of his head, a soft movement that signaled a message of understanding. Lawrence looked vaguely stunned, then confused, then at last relieved.

Mulder let his eyes droop to look away from Lawrence, frowning at the table. Then, very slowly and gracefully, he laid one hand down on the smooth plastic surface, just a few inches from Lawrence's own hand. He let his fingers straighten and sprawl wider, edging them forwards like a spider until the distance between him and Lawrence was an inch or less, a gap that Lawrence could cross simply by unclenching his fist.

A long silence. The words that finally came were so quietly said and the inflection was so soft it sounded as if it had to be coming from outside the room, not from the bowed head of Fox Mulder. "I understand Mark, it was an accident, you didn't want to hurt her. Tell me about it, Mark."

Mark Lawrence's throat tightened, his jaw flexed a couple of times. He quietly gasped for air. The gasps were the only sound for long seconds. He flexed his fingers and then closed the gap, moving forwards and gripping Mulder's hand as it lay stretched on the table. "I just wanted to.... She was...."

"Tell me Mark, it's for the best."

Lawrence's sobs rippled from his throat, through his chest, along his arm and into his fingers. Mulder felt the shivers and tried to stop himself from choking up as his eyes started to sting. Sorry son of a bitch, his brain offered, rebelling against the grotesque irony that some bit of him was actually drawing some kind of comfort from this stage managed connection with a murderer.

So Mulder was in a hurry. "Tell me where you left her, Mark." Voice soft, confiding, with just the faintest quiver of emotion marring the monotone.

Lawrence choked a little, stared at the hands on the table, cleared his throat and started to describe a bridge on the river. Mulder looked up at the Sheriff sitting silently in the corner of the room. The Sheriff nodded an acknowledgment that he recognized the place. Lawrence talked until he'd said as much as Mulder thought he could get in the first wave.

Mulder gently pulled his hand away and mumbled soothing encouragement to Lawrence. He asked a Deputy to bring in coffee for the prisoner and when the drink arrived, Mulder left the room. The Sheriff and Scully followed and they quickly reviewed how to finish the job, now the FBI were dropping out of the picture.

The faces of the Sheriff and his men all carried the same mix of awe, fear and relief. Awe at the speed of the confession, fear of the man who'd handled the interview and relief that the man would soon be gone. Mulder understood the reaction, he had, after all, seen it before. In any case, he was relieved to be going as well.

Dana Scully's expression was a little different, Fox Mulder recognized the look, it put him into the same category as pond scum.

The return trip to Washington was silent and uneventful. When Mulder had leaned towards Scully to show her a copy of his final report, she'd flinched away. He'd retreated to sit as far from her as was possible for two passengers who were sitting side by side in a crowded plane. An invisible barrier slid into place between them.

Not that Dana Scully had sympathy with wife killers, but it was not their job and Mulder's fast track to a confession had horrified her, for all its softly softly appearance. Mulder had anticipated every step of this case. It had been as if he'd rehearsed every move, every remark. He'd known this before they'd ever left DC. Yet he'd said nothing before they left. Just held her hand at the airport and pretended this was an X-File

Then today, she'd watched him, as with ice cold calculation he'd manipulated that man into accepting comfort, before twisting out that confession. Mulder had played with him like a toy. Mulder could lie with his body, better than most people could lie with their mouths.

Dana Scully forced herself to take up the smallest space possible as she huddled against the window of the plane and tried to rest. Sleep, she knew, would not bring peace.

The journey in Mulder's car from airport to home was passed in silence. Yet there was communication underway, like static electricity, sparks flew as the tension built. Arriving at her apartment, Scully batted his hand away as he offered his help to remove her luggage from the trunk. He quickly retreated back to the driving seat.

Looking out of the window of her apartment, she didn't breathe until his car finally pulled away.

Continue to "Truths & Lies"