A Well-Oiled Machine
By Anna Otto
annaotto1@aol.com

Category: VA

Rating: PG-13

Spoilers: Two Fathers/One Son

Summary: A re-evaluation of beliefs in the wake of a bittersweet 
victory.

Disclaimer: After watching One Son, I am now fully convinced that 
Mulder and Scully belong to CC, 1013 Productions, and FOX.

Archive: yes, but let me know.

Feedback: warmly welcomed at annaotto1@aol.com

Author's Note: this vignette originally had a different title, 
"Regular Patterns." And well... let's just say that it was a 
really *wrong* title. Trust me on this one. So skip this if it 
seems familiar. My apologies.

A Well-Oiled Machine

The occasional rustle of paper seemed incongruously out of place in 
the darkened basement office. The two people who occupied it moved in 
silence, carefully sidestepping the mines both corporeal and imaginary.
The carton boxes with their possessions stood forgotten in the corner, 
not even the personal photographs making their way to the tables, 
something usually accomplished with the automatism of a reflex. The 
organized chaos of the time before the fire was gone, replaced by the 
clean tidiness of the uninhabited space. 

"Could you hand me a few more files, please," Scully's voice was a 
study in calmness, but it still disrupted the utter stillness of air, 
sounding harsh to her own ears.

Mulder stood up, gathering several folders off the top of the 
teetering pile, wordlessly depositing them on her desk. She watched 
as he stopped on the way back, as if his feet were glued to the 
polished floor, his gaze focused intently on something only he 
could see. Passing a hand over his face, he slowly crossed the 
remaining few feet to his desk, seemingly relieved to be seated. 
Opening another potential X-File, he stared at it with unseeing eyes.

"What are we doing, Scully?"

She looked at the papers laid in front of her. "Sorting the cases by 
priority."

"So we simply pick up from where we were before, as if - " his voice 
broke in mid-stride. "As if nothing ever happened."

Scully's fingers clenched tightly around a pen, the only outward sign 
of the inner turmoil. Every morning as she came in the office, she 
searched the clean floors for signs of blood, knowing full well that 
she was only imagining the crimson stains under her heels. If she 
closed her ears and concentrated, she could hear the screams of people 
burning to a crisp, could see the hands of Cassandra Spender 
prostrated in front of her.

She could still remember the determined eyes of her partner as he 
aimed a gun at a woman beseeching to kill her.

"I hated him."

Jeffrey Spender. Scully struggled to control her voice. "You're 
exaggerating."

"Perhaps," Mulder leaned forward, head falling heavily in his hands. 
"I despised him. I envied him. And I allowed those feelings to take 
the better of me when he had asked - when he pleaded with me, in his 
own way, to see his mother. To help him find the truth."

"You did what you could," Scully replied mechanically. 

"No," he expelled a bitter breath. "You did what you could. And 
I sat back and did nothing."

She could always trust him to redefine every event in terms of his 
guilt. And this time, she had no energy and no desire to persuade him 
to the contrary. With a sense that she was fighting a losing battle, 
she spoke anyway. "Mulder, the events that transpired were out of your 
control. You couldn't have foreseen Spender's murder. And I believe 
that if you could have done something to prevent the deaths of all the 
people at the El Rico Air Force Base, you would have."

"But I did absolutely nothing to prevent the holocaust of the planet."

Scully stared bleakly into space, listening to the short breaths 
coming from across the room. "Mulder, you know that I still doubt 
your theory..." she broke off at the sound of his humorless laugh - 
resolved to continue. "But if, indeed, there were plans for 
colonization being carried out... You're one of the only few who 
tried to fight it. And my disbelief, my skepticism prevented me from 
seeing the truth." She fell silent, feeling suddenly powerless. "I 
have my own measure of regrets."

"Do you realize that now there is no buffer against the colonists?" 
He smiled mirthlessly at her blank look. "Of course - I forget - you 
don't believe. The Syndicate. The men we struggled to bring down so 
hard and so long - now that they are dead..." he aborted his speech, 
waving his hand dismissively. "I suppose I will have to live with this 
particular fear alone."

"Mulder, this may sound heartless, but those men have signed their 
own death warrants," she tried to meet his eyes unsuccessfully. "You - 
you've said it yourself."

"They were our enemies," he pulled out a paper from his pocket, 
unfolding it with unsteady hands. She was tempted to come closer, to 
see what he was seeing. And yet, intuitively, she knew and understood - 
was not surprised that he'd carried the pictures of burnt remains in his 
pocket for days since the disaster. "I believed they wanted power. 
Money. What else would you make a bargain with the colonists for?"

Scully shook her head, closing her eyes briefly to distance herself 
from the invisible fire that seemed to emanate from that photograph. 
From the dark flames inside Mulder's eyes, the eyes she recognized no 
longer as those of her partner and the man she came to trust. 

"Each one of them sacrificed a family member. The choices they made 
are suddenly becoming so much clearer. Had I been in their place, I 
might have ordered the same abductions and tests. Made the same deals 
with the devil. Ignored everything to achieve the ultimate goal," he 
choked on the last words, slamming his fist into the table. 

"Is that why you decided to side with them at the end?" Scully 
questioned hollowly. "So that you could see your sister?"

His eyes focused on her impassive profile, as if trying to gauge her
reaction to the answer. "It was part of the reason." He watched as 
she pursed her lips, remaining silent. "Twenty-five years, Scully. 
Twenty. Five. Years. Did you expect me to say no?"

Scully averted her gaze. "I cannot judge your choices."

"If I am guilty of betrayal, Scully, Samantha was not the only reason 
for it. I wanted to save you. I wanted for my mother to see her 
daughter again. I wanted for my father's choice to have some meaning," 
Mulder's words came slowly, as if by speaking, he expended great 
amounts of energy. "And in that, I was no better than any of these men 
who did the dirty work - for me."

"I didn't know you called your mother."

"I didn't have to," he whispered. "She knew... I suppose C.G.B. Spender 
was considerate enough to invite her to the Air Base as well. And she 
said no."

Scully came closer to him, and yet she could not touch him - could no 
longer find the ways to ward off the darkness that surrounded them 
both. "Mulder, in the end, you also made the right choice."

"In the end, you forced me to make the right choice," he faced her, 
both gratitude and resentment in his features - the two emotions he 
didn't try to hide.

Scully focused on the wall behind him - suddenly missing the cutouts 
from the paranoid newspapers and pictures of would-be UFOs. When she 
dared to envision the victory before, the game winding close to finish, 
she anticipated feeling satisfaction, a sense of pride. And now, 
instead of celebrating the triumph, she felt only stark emptiness and 
fear for her partnership. 

Once upon a time, she naively believed this partnersip impossible 
to break. 

"Mulder, we have won," she whispered with a questioning intonation. 

His lips trembled imperceptibly. "Then why do I feel as if I've lost 
myself?"

Why do I feel, she asked silently, as if I've never been so far away 
from you?

Scully turned around, picking up his carton box full of silly newspaper 
cartoons and toys. "You will find what you believe in again," she said, 
projecting every ounce of strength she had into her words, needing 
them to ring with truth not just for him, but for herself. 

Digging inside the box, she brought out a light frame with the picture 
of Samantha, and placed it reverently on his desk. "And for now, we 
just pick up where we left off."

Mulder took a long look at the old photo, running his fingers over the 
familiar face of the elusive comrade of his childhood - then searched 
the set face of his present partner. There was no conviction in his 
gesture when he picked up a discarded X-File, no power in his voice 
when he spoke uncertainly:

"As if nothing ever happened."

The End.

P.S. Memorial Services for the Consortium are now in progress. Please 
drop a line for the dearly departed at 

http://www.geocities.com/~annaotto/requiem.html

annaotto1@aol.com