TITLE: Every Look in Your Eye(1/1) AUTHOR: Nynaeve E-MAIL: scully@on-net.net RATING: PG-13 CATEGORY: fill-in-the-blanks - "Sein und Zeit" KEYWORDS: (implied) MSR, UST, Skinner POV SPOILERS: Sein und Zeit, minor ones rest of show, just to be safe SUMMARY: Skinner muses. DISCLAIMER: Chris Carter... yadda, yadda, yadda ... 1013 ... blah, blah, blah. Bottom line: not mine. FEEDBACK: Yup. Love it. Keep it all in little folders, specifically marked for each story. Respond to all of it too. DISTRIBUTION STATEMENT: Anywhere, just let me know please where it's going so I can visit. Spookys - feel free to archive. DEDICATION: to A and J, as always. Every Look in Your Eye Special Agent Fox Mulder is a brilliant man, had all the makings of one of the best agents ever produced by the Bureau, impressed the hell out of everyone from just about his first day at Quantico. I think he's heard that a few times in the years that followed his finding and taking up the work of the X Files. I know I've said it to him more than once. The fact remains he *is* one of the best agents ever produced by this organization, but the unorthodoxy of his pursuits frequently obscures that truth. Then, at times there is the almost blatant stupidity of his own occasional actions that also contribute to his less-than-sterling reputation. This case, this LaPierre kidnapping case, is just the latest example of his inability to follow procedure and protocol. I know Scully has done her best to constrain him, but I realize there are limits to what even she can do. I made that mistake once, three years ago, and in her subtle way she made it clear she is not Mulder's keeper and won't be held accountable for all of his actions. They have a relationship like none I've ever seen. The Powers- that-Be who assumed she could destroy him miscalculated that one. I've never known two agents who could work so closely, could look once at each other and know what the other was thinking. In a dark alley, I'd have no qualms with either of them at my back. I've rarely seen two people so protective of one another, so fiercely loyal, with a bond forged through years of trial by fire, yet both have remained vehemently independent, maintaining a personal distance that astonishes me. As concerned as they are about one another, both allow the other to falter, to err in judgment on occasion, respecting each other's rights to be true to their own natures. That and I don't think Mulder always tells Scully what he's up to. Which is why she's not here getting chewed on too for his holding that little impromptu press conference. One thing you have to admire about Fox Mulder is his stubborn belief that he's right and almost everyone else is wrong in cases like these. He is so certain he has more pieces of the puzzle than anyone else and he stands by that, no matter what the professional consequences may be. The only person I've ever met who has as much integrity as he does is Scully. Any other agent would humbly beg forgiveness, would apologize for his rash actions, would promise profusely to act more prudently in the future in the face of my onslaught. Not Mulder. He argues with me, meets my every objection with an argument of his own. His audacity still, after all these years, has the power to amaze me. I'm about to launch into some serious ass-ripping when I hear the door open behind me and a woman enters the room. I can tell by the soft sound of heels against carpet, the soft sent of perfume, and the look in Mulder's eye that it's Scully. 'Sir?" Her voice is quiet, rough. I turn my head around and bark at her, "What? What is it, Agent Scully?" Her posture is straight as ever, but there is something missing in the set of her shoulders, as though the burden she carries into this office with her is one of the heavier ones she has had to bear. "I need to have a word with Agent Mulder." "It can wait," I inform her tersely, expecting her to back out of the room and wait meekly in the outer office. "No, it can't, Sir" she replies with a finality I have no choice but to accept. I wonder what the hell I was thinking to expect Scully to go away and wait like a good girl, especially if Mulder is concerned. This is the woman who nearly tore my head off last year when I refused to help find him in Bermuda, then kissed me when I presented her with the information she needed. Meek is one adjective that shouldn't even cross my mind in connection with Dana Scully. "What is it, Scully?" he asks her. Her face is soft, her eyes aching. Her lips tremble the slightest bit. She blinks as she says his name. "Mulder," she hesitates only briefly before continuing in that gentle voice filled with sorrow. I know, from watching her deal with the cancer, she is good at hiding her own pain, but she can't seem to outrun the pain of others, lets her natural softness, so ruthlessly stifled in her own emotional life, rise to the surface to calm and comfort those around her. "Your mom's dead," she finishes, her eyes never leaving his, never letting go of that connection they share. I turn back to him. His eyes reach out for her, seeking in her own what he needs to sustain himself in this moment. His face goes dull, cold, its lines blur, become indistinct as pain bleeds into its planes. "Sir?" her voice again, questioning. I know she is asking permission only out of form, giving me the respect due my position when the reality is she would shepherd him out of here even in the face of my strictest prohibition. Her eyes, tender for him, gentle with solicitude for Mulder, flash at me, challenging me. I turn back to Mulder again. "Go, Agent Mulder. We'll finish this at a more appropriate time." He rises, as one not quite in control of his movements. His gaze never leaves her face. She is like a lighthouse to his footsteps, warning him off the rocks, guiding him to the safe harbor. He mumbles something in my direction. I watch him in fascination. Shock has blurred the outlines of this man, made him less than a solid reality. He is still steps from her when his hand reaches for hers, blindly. I doubt he even realizes he has done it, but she does. Without looking, she takes the hand, tightens her own over it, and Mulder seems to regain some sense of balance. His form seems to solidify again, her strength bolstering him, sustaining him. She glances in my direction, sparing me a few seconds only. "Thank you, Sir." I nod. FOLLOWING MORNING FOX MULDER'S APARTMENT I knock on his door. There is a long list of places I'd rather be than where I am. The reasons are manifold. I do not know what I will find behind his door. I know from occasional references, from that case a few years ago, that Mulder was not close to his mother, but I suspect that may actually be worse. I think of the knife blade unsaid words send straight to your heart, picture again my wife lying in a hospital, all the things we meant to say lost forever in the mists of a prolonged coma. Mulder has always been one to take the weight of the world upon his back and this will lie heavily on him. He deserves this time to grieve, to accept the loss, to make some sense of it and yet I cannot give it to him. I know, from a brief phone call from Scully, that Mulder had once again interviewed the prisoner in Idaho and that he had asked Scully to do the autopsy. I hope he understands the measure of devotion Scully gives him, doing the post-mortem on his mother, searching for the answers he wants in a place I'm sure she never imagined looking. I don't have any idea what she found, if anything, and what she told him. I hear footsteps crossing the floor. Soft footsteps, yet distinctive, clattering just a bit in heels. Part of me is surprised. I know this is not a first, for if I can't find one of them, the first place I usually try is the home of the other, but that has always, without fail, been in connection with a case of some sort. This was - is personal. I think what astonishes me the most is that Mulder, who for all his outward charm is actually a man who guards his emotions vigilantly, allowed her to stay, to observe, to partake in his grief. The door opens. She is in the same clothes as yesterday. Gone is the professional veneer of freshly pressed suit coat, perfectly creased trousers, and crisp shirt. Her hair in its disarray speaks of the side of her that has nothing to do with her career, but volumes of the woman who hides beneath all those accoutrements. Her posture is defensive, bristling. She has to look up to meet my eyes. That action intimidates a lot of people, women in particular, makes them slightly more malleable. Scully gives not an inch. She has faced things I cannot even really imagine and dealt with them all with the same impassive equanimity. The X Files have tutored her in all manner of the world's demons, both physical and emotional. The men she and Mulder strive to topple have instructed her in horrors that would defeat most people, have burned from her the urge to admit to the world any fragility. I lean in a small amount, look over her shoulder, look back at her. Her face is controlled but I can read her eyes. I'm not getting past her and that's all there is to it. She knows I have a foot of height on her and probably over a hundred pounds, but her eyes tell me none of that matters. And if it came down to it, somehow I don't think I'd want to try it right now. She burns with the ferocity, not solely of a woman deeply in love, but of a woman driven, back to the wall, needing to protect all that is hers. I regret again the reason for my presence here. "How's he doing?" I ask, knowing as she does I do so not only out of courtesy, but our of concern for a man I do admire when circumstances permit. Her voice is soft still, no longer edged with the held in grief of yesterday, but now drawn out by what I suspect is an exhaustion more emotional than physical. "It's been a hard night for him." Her words, her tone encompass more than the few utterances. Without verbal expression she tells me the night has been hardly any easier for her. Her continued presence here tells me that. Her look tells me my intrusion is not welcome, that work matters, if she has her way, will have no hold here, not today, not tomorrow, not in any immediate future. Mulder is off limits and she will brook no attempted breach into the fortress she's constructed around him. Deplorably, I have to continue, have to explain what I'm doing here and why it won't wait. "Billie LaPierre is asking for him. She's got something to say and she'll only talk to Mulder." Her jaw is clenched, set hard against my words. There is no hesitation as she speaks. Her voice, as ever in sorrow, is soft, but the steel she brings to the task of living is unmistakable in it. "It's not a good t---" She stops. Her voice does not trail off. This is not a pause. She stops speaking to me, at once. Mulder has come up behind her. His steps were soft, barely audible. She just knew he was there and her whole being changes focus. She tenses, not because of him, never because of him, but because she is afraid for him, afraid he will go chasing after this case, as I've come to ask him to do. She does not turn to face him, won't turn her back on me, won't expose him to any sort of perceived attack. But her eyes, as they come to rest on his chest, are all his. Mulder looks at her first, as though I am little more than an apparition, part of the nightmare of the last few days. His eyes caress her hair, glow with an unspent passion. She bows her head, slightly. Silently, I watch her prepare to submit herself to his will. I can not imagine Dana Scully complying wordlessly, without argument, to any man, to any one at all, other than Mulder. His gaze lights on the back of her neck, drinking her in, looking through her skin, seeing, perhaps, the chip hidden underneath her flesh, making all the connections between them sizzle with vitality. His look is hungry, yet controlled. I know I have intruded on far more than bereavement. I am stealing from them the time they need to resolve what lies between them, to close the circuit that makes them whole people only in each other's presence. "What is it?" he asks, his voice replete with the same exhaustion I hear in hers. "This case has heated up," I tell him, her eyes coming back to rest on me. I read the accusation in them. Yesterday I was chastising him for his behavior and today I come in supplication to beg his help. "I've booked two flights for us." She closes her eyes for a moment, hiding from me the tumble of emotions I know is there. She opens them and swiftly cranes her head in his direction, waiting. Though I can't see them directly, I can see in those deep blue eyes all the ache and concern, the desire to shield him from a world which seems to appreciate his unique talents only sporadically, only when he can be of service. I feel coming off her in waves the words she will not say, demanding I leave. These two are nothing if not equals and she will not make this choice for him. His eyes flicker, then fall on hers. He knows the job she's done, the manner in which she has tried to protect him, even from himself. His regard is full of his gratitude toward her. His gaze promises her this moment they've built, this scene to which I've been privy, will continue. He walks away, going to ready himself for this trip back to Sacramento. She faces me again. Her lips are compressed, tight, a line settled onto her face. Her eyes glow with repressed anger, not at me so much as the impossibility of the whole situation. "Well then, you better book three," she tells me, leaving me no room for argument, no margin for disagreement. I acknowledge her with a nod. I look at her steadily for a moment. For years I have watched them, watched the evolution of the seconds that just passed in front of my eyes. Every look in their eyes this morning confirms what they have been reluctant to accept. These two who live life alone, who shun unnecessary connection, sustain each other in ways rare and surpassing beautiful. END Nynaeve Temple of X http://members.xoom.com/Nynaeve1723/