Bargains
by Amperage
Written before Momento Mori



     Click.  Click.  Click.  High heels on concrete as she walked
across the parking lot to her car.  Scully knew her pace was exact,
unvaried, even, just as she knew her face was beginning to acquire
the lines of age.  Just as she knew that tonight she would go home
and think to herself that she ought to go out.  Just as she knew
that she hated her life and all that was in it.

     Dana Scully.  44. One of the first female SACs in VC.  She had
24 agents under her.  She was a success, right?  In Violent Crimes'
serial crime section, where occasionally the FBI fielded calls 
from movie producers.  

     Oh fuck it.  

     She sat down in the car, stared at a brown paper bag sitting
next to her as though it were a snake.  It contained candy bars, a
Telmann CD, two new pairs of warmups, and 12 books.  The Mulderbag.

     She slammed the door shut.  Started her engine.  She wanted
desperately to go home tonight.  If she did, Mulder would wait
patiently until visiting hours were over and then go do something. 
Maybe violent.  Maybe self-destructive.  Maybe none of the above.

     You don't have cancer, Scully.

     She wasn't dead.
     

     Scully nodded at the parking guard as she drove up, out onto
the DC street.  Mulder hadn't told her what the deal was, what he'd
bartered for her freedom.  Frankly, Scully hadn't wanted to know
any of it.  She'd been so caught up in her own pains and
feelings...

     Enough.  Scully levelled her gaze at pedestrians, at tourists,
crossing the street.  It wasn't her fault that Mulder had made the
deals he did.

     But if he hadn't, would she be alive?

     Scully knew the answer to that.  Knew that Mulder still did
not regret his choices.

     She thought about the winter barren trees that ringed the
center, kept it away from prying eyes.  Thought about Mulder when
he had good days and was himself, curled up in the library on a
couch, writing on his laptop.
     Could not help thinking about the bad days when he spent hours
crying or shivering or hitting his head against a wall.

     What had they done to him?

     Scully knew the answer to that.  She had the X-rays of his
skull in her apartment.  From a strictly unemotional, clinical
standpoint, you had to marvel at the technology that had allowed
placement of the metal strands into his skull.

     But what did those metal strands do?

     They disordered his thinking.  When he was CAT scanned during
a bad period, you could see the electrical energy radiating from
the thin, spider infiltration.  You could also see the imitation of
the patterns of someone with a psychosis.

     And the orientation of the pulses was random.  Was it a self-
functioning mechanism that worked by random chance?  Five days of
psychotic, depressive behavior.  A day of almost normalcy.  A week
of violence.  A month of Mulder being Mulder.  Relaxing, thinking
things are okay and then one night he thinks of something no one
has thought of, a new way to hurt himself.

     There was also the hope that one day the mechanism would wear
out, run down, but at this point, no one thought it likely.

      Scully swallowed and her gut wrenched to think of anyone
deliberately choosing the timing.  Of this thing working by remote
control.

     And it could have been worse.  She'd been told.  

     They could have taken away all the good days.  They could have
blanked his memory.  They could have induced seizures.  They could
have taken away his short-term memory. 
     

     Scully blinked, startled by the fact that she was on the 
George Mason bridge already.  Pentagon on the right.  Up yours. 
Another 35 minutes and she would be in the center, checking her ID
on the way in.  Going through sets of locking doors and polite
carpeted hallways, going past the wards where people went in and
out on a weekly basis, going past the swimming pool that was hardly
ever used, and the activity room that was only used by Mulder's
ward and, sometimes, by the Geris.

     It would be about supper time when she came.  Mulder's ward
wasn't allowed to eat out of unit.  They brought the food in on a
warmer, on hospital trays.  Once a week, Pizza Hut delivered.  When
Mulder was having good days he was allowed to order in, sometimes.

     His world was the length of a ward of 10 rooms.  A small
outside area with a bolted picnic bench.  A big open, public area,
a couple of conference rooms, a library that was sided by
plexiglass.  

     On good days he understood why he couldn't go home.  

     On bad days sometimes the staff had to haul him away from the
doors while he sobbed and cried and screamed and Scully went out to
her car and cried.
     

     She had to park in BFE to get a slot, carefully balancing 
takeout Mexican and his bag.  The woman at the front desk smiled,
looked back at her college textbook.  They were old acquaintances.
She'd seen Marie go from Freshman courses to Graduate work.  Scully
signed the guestbook, indicated "E" ward and got herself a
visitor's badge from under the lip of the desk.  She was buzzed
back into the hospital proper without many words.
     
     The guy at the desk in Mulder's ward took the packages.  "Some
of the patients are going out for Christmas."  He said, rifling
through the bag.  "Going shopping."

     Scully stared at the burly guy, blinked.  Did not ask.

     "Mulder wants to.  Bad."

     "He can't handle. . ."

     "It's like a special morning thing.  Nobody in the store but
handicapped."

     The CD came out.  "Good day today."  It was dropped back in. 
Sharp edges.

     Scully nodded.  "Is he going?"

     The guy shrugged.  "Kelly says we'll see how he's doing that
morning.  If he's willing to take some tranqs."

     The bag was now approved.  A larger set of hands came and took
the Mexican. 

     His hair was shot through with grey, but his face was almost
young.  Scully felt her face relax into a smile, an honest smile at
the almost sane face.

     "Hey."

     "Hey.  Great."  He sniffed appreciatively.  "Fajitas."

     They took the food down to an empty corner of the activity
room.  Mulder had his laptop up and running.

     "How's your day been?"  Scully asked, putting the bag down,
eyeing the other patients who were eyeing their supper.

     Mulder shrugged.  Looked up at her.  The bifocals he wore when
he was lucid made him seem like a wise old doctor, someone you
could tell your heartaches to.  Not a patient on a disturbed ward.
"I heard Jack telling you about the trip."

     "And you want to go."

     He nodded, began scooping meat onto his tortilla.  "How was
work?"

     "I'm still working on Gordon."

     Mulder nodded.  His last long lucid period, he'd written her
a profile of the man who called himself Gordon Sumner and played
Sting's music. The man who was currently their high media coverage
case.  

     "Barry Reed wants to fax you a dozen cases to profile."  She
said it jokingly, and had taken Barry's offer jokingly.  But Barry
had been deadly serious when he said it.

     Mulder was staring off into space now.  

     "Earth to Mulder."

     "If I get to go, will I look like a mental patient?"  His
voice was small and young.  The fajitas in his hand were shaking.

     "You'll go when it's safe.  And no one will think anything."

     Mulder nodded.  Came back to her, ate his fajitas.

     They kept the conversation on little things.  His latest
article.  It was supposed to be TLG, but now The Skeptical Inquirer
wanted it.  Mulder found the entire idea almost ludicrous.  

     "I keep seeing ghosts."  His voice was soft, staring at the
empty styrofoam box.

     "Ghosts?"

     "Ghosts.  People.  Like ghosts.  They can walk through walls."

     "Have you told Dr. Kelly about the ghosts?"

     "Are they hallucinations?"

     Scully nodded softly.

     Mulder contemplated the carpet.  "I want to go shopping."

     "I know."  Scully leaned across the chairs, drew Mulder close
to her.  

     "I don't like it here."

     "I know you don't."  She whispered into his hair.

     "But I have to stay?"

     "You have to stay."

     "Why can't I die?  Why can't I?" he asked softly, shuddering
with the force of tears he would not shed.

     Scully did not have an answer for him.  She didn't know, but
sometimes she thought she wished she'd just died of cancer.

--------

Dealing
by Summer
The flip side of "Bargains"

     His shoes squeaked on the tile floor, the echoes following
him down the long hallway as Fox Mulder passed the first
checkpoint.

     He looked at his watch. He'd be a little late. Six years. Six
years too late. Six years, and it never got any easier to walk down
this hall. 

     Second checkpoint. They stopped him here. The orderly's
name was Oscar. A big man who always worked the night shift. Mulder
passed a paper bag across the counter. Oscar opened it up, but
after six years, he no longer bothered to empty it out and check
each item.

     "Clothes," Oscar observed. "Just sweats, right?"

     "Right," Mulder answered. Just sweats. She liked flannels.
He used to bring those for her. But flannel shirts usually had
buttons.  Sometimes she tore off the buttons and swallowed them, or
threw them at other patients, and once she managed to get a button
in her ear canal and a doctor had to carefully tweeze it out.
Mulder had held her hand, gripped her fingers while she thrashed
and the orderlies pinned her down.  After that, it didn't matter
how she felt when she woke up; they wouldn't let her have clothes
with buttons.   

     "How is she today?" Mulder asked.

     Oscar gave him back the paper bag. "She's okay. Happy. Let
me call ahead."
     Mulder nodded, closed his eyes. It was worse when she was
happy.    He thought about the barren winter trees that ringed the
center, kept it away from prying eyes.  Thought about Scully when
she had good days and was herself, curled up in the library on a
couch with the New England Journal of Medicine. 

          Could not help thinking about the bad days when she spent
hours crying or shivering or hitting her head against a wall.

     He never thought it would end like this, not even when
she finally came to him. 

     "I have cancer."

     "Is it treatable?"

     Her steady blue gaze. "There's almost no chance of survival."

     "Well-- if there's any chance, we've got to take it." Held
his breath, unsure whether she'd allow that, accept his assumed
"we".

     "I'm not giving up." A breath. "But I don't want either
of us to have any illusions about this."  

     It was so hard to find physicians they were sure they could
trust, so much time and effort spent to find a private clinic where
she could be safe. And then it was a different kind of difficulty,
waiting through rounds of chemo and radiation, waiting for
something to change and watching Scully get a little thinner, a
little less strong. 
     
     He kept searching. He would have done anything; anything.
He would have taken any chance, made any sacrifice, accepted any 
deal. 

     They had to know that. They did know that. They knew.
     
     But salvation never came, and the cancer metastatized
and took root. Scully had watched the CAT scans, her expression
unreadable, as they traced the slow march of sickness through
her system and into her brain.  

     Oscar hung up the phone. "She's awake. You can go on
in."  

     Mulder clutched the paper bag and went through the
doors. Down the hall to the visiting room. 

     "That piece has a flat side, so it probably belongs on
a border, right?" The therapist glanced up as Mulder entered
the room. Her voice dropped from enthusiastic cheer to a
gentle whisper. "Look, Dana."

     Her red-gold hair had dimmed and silvered, but the
face that tilted up to see him was still young and clear, her
blue eyes bright. Her mouth pursed with delight and she pushed
out of her chair and threw her arms around him. "Fox!" 

     He clamped his eyes shut, clenched his jaw. "Hi, Scully."

     She stepped back and seized his hand. "Come help me put
together this puzzle," she said. Her eyes were so bright. So blank.


     He'd been pursuing another false lead, butting his head
against another dead end, when he got the call. Remission. 

     The cancer was gone. But it was already too late.

     He had his suspicions. He'd had to start from scratch,
learning about microbiology. But the artificial DNA tags that  
Scully herself had discovered... the protein strings used to
identify cell-sample sources... did more than sit inert within
the body. They reacted to pathogens in the bloodstream. Scully
had once been exposed to a retrovirus that had suddenly been
defeated by her immune system. She hadn't been sick at all since
then. Until abruptly her cells had turned against her. 

     Mulder knew the cancer had come about as a result of
the tests they had conducted on her. He wondered if the disease
had been placed there deliberately, primed to infect her. If
it had been programmed, biologically, to remain dormant. 

     Or if someone had control over those intricate DNA tags,
if someone pulled those protein strings. He imagined a hand
hovering over a button, deciding the course of Scully's illness,
turning the cancer on. Turning it off. 

     The tumor stopped growing, died away and was suddenly
called "benign". Mulder returned believing that he would have
his partner back. The therapists and the doctors had dragged
him into a conference room and wouldn't tell him where Scully
was until he listened. Wouldn't let him see her until he knew.

     The first year was bad all through. She was always
violent, or else vacant and unresponsive. Scully swore at
the nurses, attacked orderlies, tore out her own hair and
left purple bruises all over her skin, hitting herself or
throwing her body furiously against walls, furniture, other
people. 

     Mulder, who had always fought tooth and nail against
drug therapy, found himself pleading for the doctors to try
new combinations of anti-psychotics. Tranquilizers. Valium.
Thorazine. It was almost a year before they found something
that worked. It didn't always work. But it was better.  

     Sometimes the medication worked, her brain chemistry
balanced out, and she greeted him with grave forbearance, asked
how work was going. She looked tired on those days, but she held
her shoulders straight, and she meted out steady doses of 
encouragement.
 
     "You can't give up," she'd say. "Or it's all been for
nothing. That's why they did this. But it doesn't matter. You
can't let it stop you. You can't give up." 

     And she was right. He couldn't give up. 

     Sometimes, it didn't matter what they tried. She stared
at nothing, barely breathing, each pupil a black pinprick. Or
lapsed back into fury, hurling rage out indiscriminately. Then
it was only a diet of tranquilizers until she was placid, or until
she tripped into an inane and manic period of good cheer.   

     Mulder loathed the happy bouts. He could stand to take
her violence, he could listen to her rail against him for hours;
she'd given him more than one black eye. The anger was a part of
her too, building up until she had to strike out against whoever
had done this to her.

     He could stand it. He had done this to her.

     It was times like now that his throat ached, when she
smiled childishly and hunched over a jigsaw puzzle. The woman he
had known didn't bite her nails or suddenly begin to sing at the
top of her lungs, didn't throw tantrums when she wasn't being
entertained, or cry when he left the center. Scully didn't seem
to remember these episodes when they passed, and he never wanted
her to know how sometimes she clung to him and demanded that he
had to stay. How she held her breath, threw things, tried to run
away. Or even merely how she stared, puzzled and enthralled, at
a simple jigsaw puzzle, and needed help to put twenty-five pieces
of a barnyard scene together.  
     
     Her world was the length of a ward of ten rooms.  A small
outside area with a bolted picnic bench.  A big open, public area,
a couple of conference rooms, a library that was sided by
plexiglass.  

     On good days she understood why she couldn't go home.  

     On bad days sometimes the staff had to haul her away from the
doors while she sobbed and struggled and screamed and Mulder went 
out to his car and cried.  She was going to grow old and die in the
lockdown ward.  Someday she'd be in the geriatric unit where no one
would know she'd once been a successful FBI agent.  All they'd know
was the long-term mental patient.  
     
     He had been willing to do anything. He would have taken 
any chance, made any sacrifice, accepted any deal.
     They didn't want his sacrifice. They didn't need to deal.

     Mulder still had the basement office. He still investigated
the cases no one else could explain, the files marked "X" and
forgotten by everyone else. No one threatened him. He never
received mysterious late-night phone calls. No clues were left on
his doorstep. He had been taken out of the game, cleanly and
effectively. Scully told him not to give up. He didn't give up. He
was given up. The years went by and he never found another lead.
The data from their previous cases was compiled, reported, filed,
ignored. Every possibility ended in failure. Every road led nowhere
at all.

     He worked. Fervently, that first year, convinced that he
would turn a corner and find the cure. But the secret world never
opened up to admit him again. He had only ever found his way into
the shadows of coversion when Scully was with him. They used Scully
to keep track of him, and later, to keep control of him-- threaten
her, and watch how quickly he fell back into line.  

     And then they didn't need him anymore. Whatever purpose
he had served in the larger scheme of their designs had come to
an end. So they knocked his feet out from under him. Took away
his partner and watched how quickly he fell. 

     The years went by and he worked himself to weariness
and worked more. He couldn't give up. Even now he pursued cases.
Went out on the road sometimes, when he thought he could wrap
up an investigation and get back by the weekend. He didn't like
to be gone more than a week or so. Especially now that Scully had
more good bouts, when she could be lucid for days at a time. She
even looked at case files with him sometimes, her mind as sharp
and analytical as ever.  

     "Will this one fit here?" The high, quizzical voice didn't
sound like Scully, but he tried to answer with a smile and pretend
he saw his partner in those empty eyes. 

     "Try putting that one in the middle, where the door is,"
he suggested. 

     Her hand moved toward the puzzle, but she let go of the
piece, fingers trembling. Mulder beckoned for the therapist who
waited discreetly near the door, and they sat on either side of
her and waited. 

     It wasn't bad this time. Scully's hands snatched at
empty air, darting forward and scissoring uselessly. She nodded,
eyelids fluttering, a thin whisper winding in and out with her
breath. Finally her head drooped and her muscles went slack.
Mulder slipped his arms around her waist, holding her up in
the chair. 

     She stirred against his shoulder a few minutes later.
Coughed. "Seizure?" The strained voice was Scully's again. 

     "Not bad," he answered, masking his relief in the tired
washboard rhythms of his voice. "You just took a quick vacation,
that's all. How do you feel?"

     "I'm fine, Mulder." 

     "You sound worn out." 

     "How was Texas?" 

     "Shitty. I brought you back a sweatshirt. From El Paso."

     "Thanks. Find anything?"

     "Nothing new." 

     She nodded. Looked at him. "You won't give up."

     "I won't give up." Mulder returned her gaze. "Even...
if it's true, if things are really how they seem. If they just
used me, and now they don't have to use me anymore. Even so.
Someday they might need to use me again. And I'll have another
chance."

     Scully closed her eyes. 

     Truth. Truth was, they had left him alive for just that
purpose. Why else let him stay with his X-files, why else allow
him to survive? And to ensure his silence, his patience... Scully.
Alive, but wounded. Alive, but forever crippled by what he had let
them do to her. Alive. In case they needed him again. Take away his
partner, his caution, his last reason to hesitate; remove her from
the game and see how easy it is, someday, to hold her cure over his
head and let him jump for it, without anyone to hold him back,
without
any hope to prevent him from giving them everything. Take away the
one person he would give it all up to protect. And his life was
forfeit, could be collected on at any time.  

     Mulder held his partner in silence. They both knew the
truth. There was a chance. At someone else's command. There was
hope that someone would manipulate them again; hope that one day
they could walk into a trap that would spring and maybe, just
maybe, set them free. And until then... there was time.  

          He didn't know, but sometimes he thought that she wished
she'd just died of cancer.


end.