Subject: New:The Message - MSR From: "Sarah & Matthew " Date: 26 Jun 1997 06:10:14 GMT Disclaimer: All characters in this story belong to Chris Carter, Fox Network and etc etc. I'm glad I don't have to be responsible for them! Classification: MSR Spoilers: none Summary: Scully hands in her resignation. Author's note: 2nd posting ( I think, the other one dropped off the edge of the Earth) One day I'll write a story with a plot, until then...And now it has a title! The Message 7.39am Hoover building basement. Fox Mulder heard footsteps and looked up curiously as Skinner walked through the door of his office. Trouble, he thought. His superior didn't often make it his business to come visit. In fact, the last time was when Scully.... Mulder got to his feet. "What's the problem?" Skinner was examining Mulder through his round spectacles much as though he was a piece of blackened debris found in his food. He handed Mulder a piece of paper and turned to go. Then he looked back, grasping the door frame with his large hands. He seemed to be trying to control his temper. "I don't know what the problem is Agent Mulder. But I don't accept the contents of that message. You have one week to resolve the situation." Mulder had scanned the e-mail from Scully but hadn't quite taken it in. "Then what happens?" Skinner sighed. "I will then have to review this division. We either have a team or we don't, Agent Mulder. I suppose could get involved, haul you both upstairs and find out what the hell is going on. But I don't want to do that." Mulder shook his head. Still unable to believe his eyes. "Then you have one week. The X-Files are suspended until then." With that, Skinner headed out, back towards the lifts and some kind of normality. He was as angry with himself as he was with his two agents. He should have seen it coming, their orbits had obviously been skewed for weeks now, maybe he could have done something. Walter Skinner shook his head, suddenly feeling very tired. Agent Dana Scully's Apartment 8.04am Scully's cellphone rang. The timing was about right, she had imagined Skinner opening his mail at 7.30am as he usually did, his expression would have remained impassive as he'd scanned the message, then he would have made a hard copy and gone straight to the basement. Mulder would have read the message, then tried to call her on his way to her apartment. She left the phone to ring. There was just a matter of leaving the note for her neighbour on the worktop as discussed and grabbing her jacket. Her overnight bag was already packed and in the boot of the car, with any luck she would make a clean getaway and get Mulder and the FBI out of her system as soon as possible. She took one last look round, then opened the door of her apartment. "Mulder!" he stood there blocking her way, his cellphone held up like some accusing piece of evidence. "Guess what, the lights weren't against me for once." He said, though his bitter smile held little humour. "Want to talk about it, Scully?" He tossed her the printed e-mail message like it was some kind of dead thing, and pushed past her into the apartment. "Mulder...I was hoping..." Scully looked at the floor, then with some difficulty, into his eyes. "I just didn't want to have this conversation until I was ready." "Until YOU were ready!" She could almost feel the temperature rise. He loomed over her. "Do you realise what you have done? Do you?" Mulder struggled to keep his voice down. "Dana, I trusted you, I thought we were friends. How could you do this to me?" It was then she realised that there were tears in his eyes. She dropped her coat and her keys, and covered her mouth with her hand, closing her eyes. "Please Mulder." But when she looked at him again but he had turned away. Scully went to the couch and crumpled into a corner of it, wrapping her arms around her legs in a protective bundle. "We've sometimes been closer than I could believe two people could be, without becoming intimate." "Your message to Skinner," said Mulder, in a low voice. "Said you couldn't bring yourself to work with me any longer. That you could no longer reconcile your professional ethics with your personal beliefs, and that your respect for my work had been stretched to its furthest limit." He still wouldn't look at her. "I need to...to know how you could...what you meant by that Agent Scully." Scully swallowed. "My respect for your - our - work, will hold true for as long as I live, but, it isn't all that I am Mulder. And my professional ethics, which dictate that I must never let my emotions interfere with my work are beginning to .... conflict with my personal belief that if I don't get myself together soon I could end up like..." "Like me?" He faced her now, from across the room, his eyes bright with some inscrutible emotion, but so intense that she could only hold his gaze for seconds at a time. "Which brings us to point one. You couldn't work with me any longer. Why, Agent Scully?" He took two steps closer. "I want to know exactly why you have chosen to end both our careers in this," he gave the ball of paper lying between them on the carpet a savage kick, and it bounced off the front of the couch. "This stupid, pointless way!" Scully wanted more than anything to be able to cry right now, but she couldn't, not in front of him, and not now. "Okay *Agent Mulder*, you want this mess cleared up? You really want to know why things have been going so wrong for us? I'll tell you. It's all my fault." She stood up and put the couch between her and her partner. "I'm in love. There. I can't carry on working with you because I just can't concentrate any longer, I'm a danger to everybody who trusts me to be a functioning part of their team, and that includes you. I could end up getting someone killed, Agent Mulder, maybe even you. Do you really want that to happen?" Mulder opened his mouth, but nothing came out. "No, I didn't think so." Scully wasn't waiting for him to find his voice. "The note to Skinner was not intended as some kind of character assasination, Agent Mulder, I merely wanted to make it clear that I would not, and could not come back. I believe that I indicated my sincerest admiration for you as an agent of the FBI and even recommended that you be allowed to choose a replacement for me as soon as possible. I think you should do that Mulder, just put me out of your mind, and just let's all get on with our lives." She ended up back on the couch, the tears coming before she even realised what she was doing. Mulder, the analytical part of her mind noted, was still standing there with his mouth open. "In love?" she heard a voice, and realised it was his. "With....Scully...who are you in love with?" His voice was still flat and low, but no longer held that dangerous tone. "I told you!" Yet, no. She realised, she still hadn't made that confession, she was still waiting for him to make that final connection. "No, you didn't." Mulder hesitated, then made himself cross the void between them, sitting down carefully on the opposite end of the couch. "You didn't tell me Scully." He wanted to reach out and touch her, somehow comfort the sobbing woman on the other end of the couch. All the anger that had built up as he read the e-mail message barely an hour ago had gone, now there was just - hurt. "Scully, is it me?" The quiet sobbing stopped, as if someone had flicked an off switch. Scully was holding her breath. Or perhaps the whole world was. "Are you in love with me, Scully?" She turned her head slowly. Tear stained cheeks, reddened eyes, full lips, tousled hair. Expression pleading , ashamed, defiant. Finally her lips formed a word. "Yes." She rubbed her eyes as if awaking from a deep sleep. "Yes, Mulder. That's the problem. That's why I have to leave. Do you understand now?" He was nodding thoughtfully, like she'd just explained how his latest loch ness monster theory held no more water than a tramps' sock. Then he smiled, much as he would if he was dismissing her explanation as something a scientist WOULD say. "I thought you knew" he said. "I just, assumed that you knew....I guess I..." He placed both hands on his knees, staring at the carpet. "It's me who got it wrong Scully. We've been so close for so long, that I took for granted something which has to be communicated." "What do you mean?" Mulder shrugged. "I always knew we'd be together one day, Scully. When the alien conspiracy had been dealt with, when the government had been forced to open up to everyone about what they know, and when they finally tell me where my sister is....I obsess about those things, it's part of who I am, and for a while it seemed like part of who you were too. Then you started to drift away and I had to give you that space. It was always going to be my fight first, Scully. But..." He took her hand at last. "I should have told you what you really meant to me. You were never just a partner, but I couldn't let myself fall in love. I didn't want to lose my..." "Your edge?" Scully said, looking into his eyes. "Like I have?" "My God Scully! Don't you know yet? I'd start singing "You were the Wind Beneath My Wings, if I thought my street cred would take it. You are the only reason the X-Files has continued for as long as it has. All that has been revealed is thanks to you Scully. Don't think I don't know it, because I do. And don't think I didn't fall in love with you at first sight because I did." "You did, Mulder?" He rushed on "But we were professionals, Scully we had a job to do, maybe even a planet to save!" "Mulder - a planet?" Her head was spinning with newfound emotions. Hope was one of them. "You could be overrating our work, and my input." "Don't think like that Scully. Give yourself some credit! Don't you think that I would have told you if you'd started slipping? I've - we've always been honest with each other haven't we?" "It seems not..." she pointed out. Mulder opened his mouth, then paused. "You're right - but you know I'm right too." There was silence then. Mulder held both her hands, and she found herself thinking that his hands were the most gentle she had ever seen or felt. Her thumb began to trace the small hairs on the back of his fingers almost of its own accord. "Dana." He pulled one had away and used it to lift her chin, forcing him to stare him in the eye. "Skinner has given me an ultimatum. He wants to ignore the message. He gives us a week to come to terms." "Mulder..." "May I kiss you Agent Scully?" "Um. Yes please." There, for the sake of dignity, we must leave them, save to say that they all lived happily ever after. Hope you liked it. Sez sez@grebo.clara.net -- - Matt and Sarah mattandsarah@grebo.clara.net And God said, "Let there be light" To which Monty Python replied, "Piss off, I'm trying to sleep!"