TITLE:  "Chapter and Verse" (1/1) by Lucy Garner
E-MAIL ADDRESS:  lucygg@hotmail.com
SPOILER WARNING:  Everything's game, 6x - 2F/1S specifically
TIMELINE:  A couple of months after M&S get back to the basement.
CONTENT WARNING:  Suggestion of physical violence.
CLASSIFICATION:  MSR/V/A
SUMMARY:  Diana Fowley pays Mulder a late-night visit.

DISCLAIMER:  Mulder, Scully, Fowley, Spender the Junior, The X-Files
and the crispy people in the hanger belong to Chris Carter, 1013
Productions and 20th Century Fox.  No copyright infringement is
intended.  Just playing, no paying, I promise.
FEEDBACK:  Bless your little peanut-pickin' heart.  lucygg@hotmail.com
THANKS:  To CazQ, for beta that is equal parts humor, skill,
cheerleading and candor.  Somewhere, a funky, infectious Latin rhythm
plays in your considerable honor.

********************

"CHAPTER AND VERSE"
by Lucy Garner

********************

"Ten p.m., and you're still here."

Mulder started at the unexpected sound, turning to look up from the
open file drawer.  Diana Fowley stood in his office doorway.

"You should probably just keep a change of clothes here, Fox."

Mulder made way as Diana brushed past him to lean against the file
cabinet.  Shoving aside a sea of clutter, he lowered his lanky frame on
to the corner of the desk.

"Once I brought a clean shirt and put it in my drawer. By 11:30
I'd already spilled coffee on the one I was wearing.  I took it
as a bad omen."

"What's keeping you so late?"

"We waited all day on something from the lab.  I guess I'm just...
still waiting.  Did you leave something down here?  We took a pretty
good look around."

"No, I'm not here for missing office supplies.  I wanted
to talk to you.  We haven't spoken since that night, and I feel
that we've left some important things unsaid...that we're not
finished."

"Diana, I'm not convinced there's anything else *to* say.
Recent events left me long on questions and short on the kind
of answers I'm willing to accept. I'm finally back where I need to
be to make some sense of it.  Why come to talk to me now, just as I'm
getting settled again, after a rather *conspicuous* absence on your
part?  What could you possibly want from me now?"

Diana shook her head as though confused by his response, but
recovered quickly, forcing a placating smile to her lips.

"What did you tell me last summer?  You said 'I've done okay
without you?'  Have you considered that *okay* won't always
be enough?"

Mulder studied her for a long moment, even as the silence
begged for an interruption.

"I'm as content as I ever get, right here like am, doing what
I do.  I know what to expect from the people who are close to
me.  I think I know how to do my-"

"I know you manage.  We've both done what was necessary.  But
we're learning things, only now, truths we never imagined.
Getting by isn't going to be nearly good enough."

She paused as if she anticipated a reaction, but Mulder's only response
was to shrug his shoulders and shake his head.

<Does this conversation have a point?>

Diana's eyes narrowed, a familiar line creasing her forehead.  Mulder
knew it well from years past, a sign of frustration.   She stepped
toward him and searched his face before taking a breath to start anew.

"This isn't about what I need from you, but what we can give to each
other.  I'm ready to help you, to be there with you.   You just have to
say yes."

"A lot of time's passed, a lot has changed since we met, Diana.
Scully-"

"You may work with her, but you and I are alike, Fox.  She'll never
bring herself to believe like you, like I always have.  If what you
were told is true and a select few can survive this, then there are
plans to be made.  Despite El Rico, there may still be a way, and
before long, you're going to have to worry less about your work and
more about your *life.*  Preserving it.  The time is coming when you're
going to have to make choices, sacrifices you think will cost you now,
but they will guarantee you a future."

"Diana, I..."

Mulder shook his head, frustrated by the curious lack of words
that would make plain his meaning.  Taking his silence as an
opportunity, she stepped nearer and laid her right hand on the side
of his face.  He squeezed his eyes tight shut and turned away
when she traced the line of his jaw with her manicured fingers.
The response of a child.  If you can't see it, it can't see you.

"You deserve a relationship with someone who understands you.
If there is truly security to be had, those who find it will bear
a responsibility to our kind."

Mulder shrank away from her right hand, but met her gaze, which was
penetrating, superior and uncomfortably direct.  Another expression he
recalled from before, now practiced and perfected by countless battles
of will with terrorists and madmen.

"*Diana*..."

"No.  You need to think about securing a place for yourself.
Your legacy.  Having a family, children of your own.  Things
Dana Scully would never be *able* to give you even if she
*wanted* to."

Conscious reason fled, along with all the air in the basement
room.  An instant, visceral urge propelled him to his feet, his
right arm nearly shoulder-high, his open palm rushing to obey gravity's
command.  To strike a blow.  To erase those last words from the air and
punish the mouth that spoke them.

*Slap!*

The impact was solid, but his hand nowhere near its target. Confusion.
An opposing force.  Hands, unyielding, met solidly with his arm as it
made its downward turn toward Diana's cheek.

"*Mulder*!"

Small, strong hands. Cool around his wrist and his forearm.  Without
preamble, she was behind him, binding him, preventing him from
releasing the mass of his unchecked anger.

Scully.

Mulder's chin dropped to his chest, his gaze to the floor.  His partner
was wearing boots, ones with rubber soles that abetted a noiseless
approach.  Black leather boots.  Friday shoes. Sturdy, utilitarian,
with thick heels to augment her height.  Even with that advantage her
heels were nearly off the floor in the effort to draw him back.  Little
boots.  Next to his shoes, impossibly so.

<Like a girl's.  So small, tiny, painfully small...>

Muscles and tendons tightening under her grasp, Scully held
on even tighter.

<No, Mulder.>

The quality of her touch, her hands; they were as sure and familiar
to him as the command they imparted.  Mulder stilled when a
whisper, more the move of her lips than an audible sound, fell
between his shirt collar and his right ear:

"*No.*"

He took in and let out a long breath.  Again.  And then Scully
was doing more to hold her partner's arm aloft than he was.
Lowering it, cradling his trembling right hand between her palms,
she watched his eyes.  Not yet willing to meet hers, he turned
marginally toward Scully, and she squeezed his fingers.  He nodded
a silent reply.

<Okay.>

At length, he became aware of Diana.  If her face did not, then her
soul surely bore the imprint of his hand.

Pressed back to the cabinet, her posture still anticipated the blow,
and her glare accused him of an unthinkable violation.

When Mulder finally spoke, his tight, gravely words left little doubt
as to the quality of his regret:

"Diana, no one here needs your instruction in how to make forfeitures
for the good of mankind.  We *know* sacrifice, chapter and verse."

Diana's alarm faded and was replaced by an amalgam of disgust,
embarrassment, and finally, resignation.  There was no more latitude to
be had with Mulder.  She'd grossly overplayed her hand.  When she
chanced a glance at Scully, the smaller woman returned it serenely,
levelly, and with disinterest.  As though Diana had just asked her to
hand over a report or pass the salt shaker.

<You're dismissed.>

Eyes on the door and nothing else, Fowley left without further comment.

The basement fell into a blessed silence.  Weary, Mulder let his eyes
slip closed as he tried to match the slower cadence of Scully's
breathing and wondered what came next.  He did not have to speculate
long.

"Mulder, it's time to go home."  His partner's words fell as a
gentle admonition, softly and without judgement.  "It's late."

"Scully, I'm so sorry."

Her laughter was sickly and brief.  It made the room sound empty.

"Don't apologize.  I've wanted to do the same thing for months."

"That's not what I mean."

"I know, Mulder.  It just doesn't sound right to me to tell you
I knew."

"But you did."

"Yes."

"I was close to her back then.  What does it say about me when
I made that choice *that* badly?"

Scully released his hand with a sigh, a signal of the tone to come.
Avoidance.  She would say just enough to placate him, ease a measure of
his guilt, and take her leave.  From behind crossed arms, she looked
away.

"Maybe that you believed in the possibility of absolute trust.
I can hardly fault you for that.  And it's unreasonable for either
of us to think we have any kind of claim over a past we had no part
in."

"But the problem is I allowed the past to have some claim over my
present.  And yours."

"We're fine, Mulder."

"*Now* you're wrong."

"Mulder-"

"Don't start being easy on me now, Scully.  Not now.  Not over
this.  That would mean you don't think it's worth it."

She looked up, solidly meeting his gaze, squaring her shoulders before
her reply.  It was a replay of a night months before when she first
made her case.

"You want to hear that I left the Gunmen's that night feeling
disregarded?  Wondering how it is after six years and a thousand leaps
of logic on your part that I'm not permitted to ask honest questions
about something that could affect our work or your welfare?  You need
to hear that from me?"

"No.  I need to apologize for it.  I need you to know that no
matter how desperate the circumstances were at the time, I've always
told you the truth about needing you.  *This* is what's right in my
life.  I hate myself for ever making you think otherwise.  I...I can't
abide anything that separates us, especially if what separates us is
*me.*"

Mulder watched her, waited, but Scully did not respond.  Now her eyes
were fixed doggedly on some point in the anteroom, probably important
to her only because it wasn't him.  Under each eye, a tear clung
defiantly to her lashes.

"Scully, I need to know how to *start* making this better."

"This is.  You are."

For a moment, she looked at him, allowed him to be convinced.
He was relieved to finally see into her, but it only lasted for a
moment before she turned.  Shied away physically, as if his observation
was painful.  With a sickening, obvious sort of clarity, he realized
that this was about more than one hurt.  Scully really had heard
Diana's every word.

"Hey.  Scully."

Her only reply was to wrap her arms tighter about her middle, as if it
were possible to make herself a little smaller.

In two strides he covered the distance she'd placed between them.
Mulder did not touch, but listened.  Waited.  She breathed slow
and long, the end of each breath the slightest tremble.  Trying *so*
hard.

Scully did not back away when Mulder finally lowered his face, his
lips, to the crown of her head, and spoke in the lowest of tones.

"Scully, you never gave me any of this.  Not even...before.  I wish
you would."

Moments passed as Scully hovered inches away, unmoving.  Or rather
being tugged in opposite directions by forces of comparable magnitude.
He watched as her self-sufficiency did war with the need to be held,
and honestly did not know which would prevail.

What finally came was a tiny concession, at least physically.  Scully
leaned toward him, her head coming to rest against his shoulder.  Only
her more labored breathing told him she was crying.

His chest constricted a little with that knowledge, and he gathered her
in closer.  He could not see the tears, but numbered them all the same,
assigned one to each uneasy rise and fall of her back under the palm of
his hand.  Pressing a kiss into her hair, he counted in silence.  When
he reached forty-three, her voice startled him from a reverie formed
from her warmth, the smell of her hair, the rhythm of her heartbeat
beneath his hand.

"Mulder?"

"Hmm?"

"I think you'd have been a good father."

###