Date: Sat, 04 Apr 1998 14:42:57 -0500 From: Mary Anne Cullinan Reply-To: macspooky@erols.com Subject: New Story The X-Files belongs to Chris Carter, Fox, 1013 and probably others that I don't know about. I am just borrowing them. I am not making any money writing fanfic. I hope they don't mind. No copyright infringement is intended. I finished this story March 14, 1998. Spoilers: Patient X, Black & Red, Bad Blood, Never Again Tooms and other earlier eps. Summary: Mulder and Scully think about the events surrounding the episode and their relationship with each other. I don't care who archives this where. I just hope the fanfic sites remain open in light of recent actions on the part of Fox which I would like to protest. It seems they used the fans to spread the word about "X-Files" in the beginning and now that the show is a winner, they want to shut websites down. It seems to be a pretty shabby way to treat the people who helped you to make millions of dollars. Thanks to G. Hill and V. Mosely for beta reading this for me I hope I remembered to make all the changes they suggested. I am going to rate this story R for adult situations and thoughts and some "cuss words." NOTE: Macspooky has yet another new e-mail addy. It is macspooky@erols.com "Frightening Changes" Chapter 1/2 by Macspooky Dana's Narrative: He loves me. I know he does. He loves me more than anything. I'm sure of it. I don't know what came over me when I heard him speak the name Marita on the phone. It suddenly made me feel sick, so sick that I had to walk out. No, I do know what came over me. It's jealousy. I know that the problem is mine, not his. Maybe it wouldn't have bothered me so much except that I was trying to talk to him. It's hard for me to talk sometimes about what is bothering me and I didn't need to be interrupted. I'm scared and I need him now and he turned away from me to answer that damned phone. I know him. I know Mulder. If I don't walk away, he'll push me away and go to her, and I'll still be alone and scared. Marita is an informant and that takes priority. She might have information for him, information about his latest quest, a quest that suddenly, too suddenly, no longer contains aliens. This scares me. I want the old Mulder back. He might have been insane, but he was predictable and I grew to love him. When we were in Chaney on that awful vampire case, I sat on that stupid vibrating bed and I told him I did it all for him. He thought I was ragging on him and maybe I was. Okay I definitely was. He was getting on my nerves, but I do do it for him. I do it for me too, but more and more it is for him, only for him, and he just can't see it. With or without aliens, there is always a quest, but this time I wish his belief in aliens was back. Maybe I'd be less scared. I wish Marita hadn't called. Maybe I could have talked to him then. Marita is everything I have always wanted to be, tall and thin...absolutely beautiful, and I'd say even a real blonde and women can usually tell these things. I know Mulder thinks she is gorgeous. I followed him once when he went to meet her. I couldn't help myself. I told myself it was because I didn't trust her and I don't, but it was more than that. I wanted to see how he would react to her. They didn't talk for very long that night, but he put his arm around her under that street lamp and got into her personal space and I found myself resenting it. That arm belonged around me. He didn't belong in her space. He belonged in mine. I was his partner. I wanted to be more. I think I must be a very sick sick person to be so jealous of someone he isn't sleeping with, except that for all I know, he could be. Oh hell, I know damned well enough he has, even if he isn't now. Why am I kidding myself? I'd tried to make myself forget how I had followed him., but I couldn't. I'm not proud of it. I wish I hadn't done it, but I did. He was so sweet to me in the hospital when I had cancer. He would come in and he would kiss me. I liked that kind of attention from him. It felt right somehow. And when they released me from the hospital three days earlier than expected and very suddenly and mom wasn't home to come and get me, I called him. He took me home in his beat up Toyota, the one I was, still am, always nagging him to trade in, and took care of me until my mom got there later that night. I don't know what I would have done without him. I was still so weak and nauseated I could barely stand up and when I had a bout of vomiting, he literally cleaned me up, not to mention the bathroom. He had truly gone beyond the realms of partner that day before retreating from me once again. Now I was really scared though. Mulder had suddenly become convinced that everything he had believed for five years was wrong. He was the skeptic now. The turnaround was too abrupt, although I knew he had been having doubts. He denigrated his own work and I couldn't tease him out of it, and he couldn't understand that I too was having doubts, doubts about my disbelief. As usual it had to be the way Fox Mulder said it was, only this time our roles were reversed. Everything was changed but nothing was changed. And of course, Fox Mulder being Fox Mulder, he set about pursuing his new beliefs with an absolute passion. When Agent Spender approached me about not talking to his mother Cassandra I said I understood. I suppose I did after a fashion although it felt just a little too much like dealing with Tom Colton. Get Scully to do the dirty work for you. Don't approach Spooky yourself. Something might rub off. We wouldn't want Spooky to talk to good old mom. It might give us a bad rep. at work. Scully the Ice Queen already had the bad rep., so let her talk to Spooky. It was said she could reason with him. God, I was so sick of it. Mulder is a good man. He is. And, he is a good agent. No one can see it though. There is something about Agent Spender that gives me the creeps too. I can't explain it either and that really scares me because there is nothing scientific about the creeps. I can't explain it anymore than I can explain Mulder's "whammy." When I opened Cassandra Spender's case file, which I did precisely because Spender gave me the willies, and saw that she had been abducted from Skyland Mountain, I felt something twist inside my gut. I went to warn her not to take out the implant in her neck, and in speaking to her, she voiced so many things that I have been feeling lately. I wanted to tell Mulder. I wanted him to understand how frightened I was, how concerned, but he answered the phone and it was Marita and I knew he would not have time for me. I knew he would blow me off and so I left first instead. I have to go now. I have to go to the place where I am being called. I know not by what or who but I have to find out. If it is all part of a government conspiracy, I have to try to unmask it. I have to do it alone. This time Dana Scully is going to ditch Fox Mulder. Let him know how it feels. If there really are aliens, then I have to understand the science, their ability to travel here, everything about them. I just have to know and I only hope I am not going like a sheep to the slaughter. I feel sick to my stomach, but I feel sicker in my heart that Mulder will not be with me. And, I don't like myself very much right now because I know I am ditching him because I am very jealous of Marita, and the fact that I knew her phone call would take precedence over me. Sometimes I wish I didn't know Mulder quite so well. I know I wish I didn't love him quite so much. Sometimes I wish I had died in that hospital and was with my daddy now and Melissa, but then again this depression is something all the abductees seem to suffer so I am going to fight it. I don't want to give anyone the satisfaction seeing me give up, even if I do feel completely alone. I know I am not being rational. I know it, and yet I don't seem to be able to do anything about it, God help me. Could this implant be doing this to me? Nothing would surprise me anymore....nothing. **************************************** Mulder's Narrative I'm worried about a lot of things. I'm particularly worried about Scully. Just when it seems that I have come to my senses, if I have come to my senses and I do wonder about that, Scully has gone the other way. She is starting to think the way I used to. At least I am trying hard to convince myself and everyone else that it really is "used to." I know I've been coming on like gangbusters about my new theories. The way people are looking at me isn't lost on me. Oddly it is almost as though they think I am crazier now that I claim not to believe in aliens. I'm an A number one jackass and I know it. I know that Dana is jealous of Marita. She usually is when I'm around a woman. Dana loves me. She doesn't hide her jealousy very well although I suspect she thinks she does. Hell, I'm not exactly subtle either when I think she is attracted to a man. I acted like a three year old over that sheriff in Chaney and I never would have left the two of them alone if I had honestly thought anything would happen between them. In the end, Scully is not the kind of woman that would long be attracted to Gomer Pyle. I went ballistic over Ed Jerse. Oh yeah, she was acting like a real asshole over that one, picking a guy up in a bar and getting a tattoo and all of that and I sure did let her know it. The truth was though that when I saw him I understood why. He was one hell of a good looking guy, and I wanted to kill him right there. The thought of his hands on her....Well, I was relieved that he hadn't killed her, but I was even more relieved in a strange fashion when I found out that he hadn't f**ked her. I wanted that to be my domain, only I wouldn't f**k her either. Marita...yeah, but not Scully. Hell, I already had....Marita that is. She was hot stuff, an easy lay. I hoped Dana never found out about it. It would hurt her, but the woman had come on to me and a guy has to get laid sometime. It had been months. I would make love to Dana, though. It's different. I don't know how to explain it, but I know that it is. Dana is special and I love her so much. Despite Jerse, I knew she wasn't "easy." Dana didn't tell me that Ed hadn't touched her like that, of course. She was really angry with me. I had been treating her basically like shit. Jerse did...told me....during an interrogation. He said he'd wanted to but his tattoo told him not too. Jeez. Maybe I should have let Scully know how I felt then, but when she got out of the hospital, I just yelled at her instead. Then I found out she had cancer. No wonder she had been acting a little crazy. I did get her a goddam desk though so we could trip all over each other in the office. I guess that was my reward to her for not getting herself killed. Now aren't I a nice guy? Anyway, I have the strangest feeling that I screwed up again. Scully was trying to talk to me, to tell me something when the phone rang. It was Marita. Then I heard some violent noises and my informant was gone. Scully was gone too. I had to go find out what happened to Marita. I figured that I'd straighten it out with Scully later. I always figured I'd straighten it out with Scully later. Now Cassandra Spender was gone and Scully was gone and something inside me told me there was a connection. Every instinct told me that my partner was in danger, grave danger, perhaps had even been abducted again. The blood was turning to ice in my veins as I spoke to Jeffrey Spender on the phone. Why couldn't I just tell her how I felt? Why couldn't I just say, "Dana, I love you. I want you." I know she cares about me. According to old Billy Boy Scully, she adores me. Oh yeah...she gets bitchy sometimes. Jeez, we just about killed each other in Chaney. The problem is that as she sat on that vibrating bed ragging on me, telling me she did it all for me, I knew she wasn't lying. She did. She did it because she loves me. I repaid her by dropping muddy towels and clothes all over her room and eating her dinner...and just being an inconsiderate bastard. When I brought her home from the hospital after her cancer because her mother couldn't be reached, I should have told her I loved her then. Her cancer was gone but she was still very weak and sick for that first week or so at home. I should have taken her in my arms and held her and told her I loved her, but she had been so ill...had had a tough time keeping food down....so weak she could barely walk to the bathroom, and I didn't want to burden her at that time. Then the moment passed. Her mom came over later that night. Dana bounced back quickly and returned to work, and I retreated from her again returning to the status quo. Why, oh why, had I insisted that she call me Mulder that night we sat in the car doing our illegal stakeout of Tooms? Why did I let myself be so frightened by my growing love for her? Where was she? Why couldn't she have waited until he had gotten off the phone? Whatever was bothering her, why couldn't we work it out together instead of being at odds? Was this payback time for all those occasions on which I ditched her? I better get myself in gear and look for her. I only hope I find her in time before I lose her forever. I know Dana. If she thinks there might be aliens, she will want to know. She will want to understand the science and physics. She could put herself in danger. She could go like a sheep to the slaughter. End Chapter One macspooky@erols.com "Frightening Changes" by Macspooky Chapter 2/2 Mulder's Narrative Oh, God, oh my God....Scully. The firemen were zipping a body into a bag on that bridge and all I could see was the red hair. They were dead, all dead, burned like the others on Skyland Mountain. The smell made me want to vomit. It was like I had pictured Auchswitz smelling when the crematorium had been running full speed ahead. All these bodies...and one with red hair. I looked closer. It wasn't Scully. Thank heavens that there were enough features preserved that I could tell. Then Skinner told me that she had been found alive along with about 50 others. Skinner and I approached the paramedics. She looked so pale, looked dead....but they said it was vasogenic shock. It was Skinner that made the arrangements to get her medivaced back to DC so she could be where her medical records were once the hospital in Pennsylvania had her stabilized. It was something else I owed him for. I got to the hospital in DC as soon as I could and touched her hair. I wanted to pull her still form into my arms and hold her, never let her go, but all I did was touch her hair. Her eyes opened and all I could manage to say was hello. Dana's Narrative I felt his touch. I knew it was him. I sensed his presence the way I always did even in my sleep. I was wondering what he was doing in my bedroom. I was hoping when my eyes opened that he would kiss me, but he didn't. Then I realized that I was in the hospital...again...and didn't remember getting there. When I realized I had no memories I became more frightened than ever. I wanted him to stay with me, but a nurse came in and essentially told him to get lost. He gave me the thumbs up and promised to come back. He did too, just as soon as he could get back in, but I didn't want him to leave in the first place. I didn't mean to be cruel when I told him I couldn't, wouldn't follow him anymore without his beliefs. I wanted to...I don't know...wake him up....before it was too late, to show him that for years I had had faith in him, even though we had always disagreed. Instead I ended up hurting him. I could see it in his eyes and on his face. When they released me from the hospital the next day, I called him. Thank God my mother was out of town and no one had been able to reach her. I didn't want her to know that I had been injured again. I called Mulder and he took me home just like he had the last time, only this time I had to ask him to come in. He didn't volunteer. I was still kind of shaky, but I asked him to sit down. I had him fill me in on all the details including the part about the missing Marita. Then I took his hand. "Mulder, we have never agreed on a whole lot, but we've always been there for each other. I wish I hadn't said what I said yesterday, but the new you is scaring me." "It's the way things are, Scully," he told me. Typical Mulder. His eyes looked at me with such gentleness and his words put a hole in my heart. We sat in silence for some time. "Take me to see Dr. Verber," I asked him softly. "Maybe he can give me back my memories." It was the only way I could think of to give me an out. I didn't want to leave Mulder, but I knew that if I couldn't remember something I would have to. He knew it too. I hadn't been bluffing yesterday when I had told him that without his beliefs I needed my memories or I could not longer make the journey with him. Mulder's Narrative Instinctively I hadn't notified Dana's mother about her being in the hospital again. I didn't want to alarm her if she didn't need to be. She'd been through enough. Skinner's office had tried but apparently Mrs. Scully was out of town, so they couldn't reach her. That gave me the job of taking Dana home from the hospital once again though and this time it was not a job I relished. She had cut me to the quick when she told me she couldn't...wouldn't follow me without her memories. I don't know... it sounded as though she believed she had martyred herself to me somehow. I thought she loved me bit if she did, then she would not feel that way. It hurt. I didn't want to enter her apartment when I took her home, but she asked me to come in, and one look into her blue eyes convinced me it was the only thing to do. She insisted I fill her in on everything that had happened. Then, she once again shocked the hell out of me by asking me to take her to Dr. Verber. I knew that she was doing this for me too. A part of me was touched. A part of me was angry at her. I didn't want her to have any more ammunition to make her feel martyred. That session was a nightmare. I sat on the opposite end of the couch from her, but she started screaming. Her hand reached out for mine and I took it and held it. What could I do? Whatever she saw, it was so horrific that Verber had to bring her out of it. I let her hand go. When she heard that I had been there the whole time, she smiled at me sadly. We didn't say much in the car. We went back to her place. She made coffee and we played the tape Dr. Verber had made since she couldn't really clearly remember any of the session. I was afraid that I was going to lose my partner for sure this time. "So," I said sadly, "You still have no memories...." I felt something inside me break. She would no longer come with me, follow me. "No, Mulder, I don't, not exactly, but I've got something now." For the briefest instant her face lit in a smile. "I'm not adverse to compromise upon occasion you know." I put my arms around her and hugged her. It was a brief hug but I was afraid if I didn't let go, I never would. She was still with me. Sensing that she needed some space, some time to study the tapes, I left her. We would have to bring them to Skinner in the morning. Scully's Narrative Mulder and I still didn't agree. I was sure listening to the tape that I had seen aliens and Mulder sat with Skinner debunking it all. Skinner seemed annoyed, seemed to agree with me. I know that I was peeved to put it mildly. I wanted my old Mulder back. I had told him I was not adverse to compromise now and then and I meant it. I would stick with him for now regardless of his beliefs, but he was still scaring me here. The hug he had given me the night before had been awfully nice though. I know he had been pleased that I would stay with him. I know it. If I left, it would break his heart the same as it would break mine. He had some place to go and I went down to Mulder's office, the office that was now my office with a real desk, and there was Jeffrey Spender. Seeing him there bugged the hell out of me. It really pissed me off. I wondered what the devil he had been doing. Had he come to laugh at Spooky territory? I told him that Mulder had gone off somewhere and then found out it was me he wanted to see. He showed me a video tape from his childhood, told me not to let myself be used, compared Mulder to his mother feeding me stories of aliens for years. Maybe he had a point. I don't know. Still, Mulder was not my mother and I was not a 12 year old boy. I was an intelligent well educated adult. I was a doctor. I wanted to inform him that I had already been used. Hell, they had taken all my ova, but that was too personal. Mulder knew and I knew and Skinner knew, but I sure didn't advertise it. I basically blew him off politely. I found myself wondering if he really even wanted his mother back since he seemed to think she was such a nutcase. I have grown just that cynical in the last five years. Later that night, I went to Mulder's apartment. I had been trying to reach him. I just had the sense that something was wrong and wanted to check on him. He didn't even have the door locked. I found him sitting in the dark. I knew something had happened. He showed me a piece of paper. He told me it might lead to answers. Jeffrey Spender had told me not to let myself be used. God, I had wanted to, wishd I had punch the bastard when he was in the office. Never have I ever thought that Mulder was using me...never.....although there were forces that could be using us. I told Mulder that I had been doing some reconsidering. He said so had he. We were together again. I would follow him. It felt right. Mulder's Narrative I don't know whether I believe Krycek or not. The story he told was insane, at least insane to the new me who doesn't believe in aliens. Yet, as he got down in my face and spoke to me about warring factions in the heavens and armageddon, there was a ring of truth to it. Why would he make up something so totally crazy? It was so wild even the old Mulder would have found it implausible. I wanted to puke when he planted that Judas kiss on my cheek and when he called me friend...comrade. I was not that. I also felt that I had been given yet another burden to carry. It made no sense. What the hell was I? Some sort of Messiah? If I was, I sure as hell didn't want to be. All I wanted, I realized was a quiet life with my partner. Yeah....like that would ever really happen! Once that Russian spy bastard left and I got to my feet I just sat on the couch. I was surprised when Scully came in. I told her I'd been thinking, but that was a lie. I'd been vegging, my mind numb...a blank. I told her that I might know a place to find answers. I expected her to tell me to get lost. Instead, she said, "Let's go." Oh, she didn't say it just like that, but that is what it came down to. She was still with me. It turned into a nightmare, but then again, it always does. We finally got back into our rental car when the Mps let us go, and pulled away from the base. I didn't get more than 10 miles up the road when I started to doze behind the wheel. I'd been found by MP's near an abandoned military truck. I hadn't been able to remember a goddamn thing except that I had left Scully and climbed on board it as it had pulled out of the base. After that, things were a total blank. I felt exhausted. I nearly crashed the car. Scully grabbed the wheel and then took over driving. Sensibly, she pulled over into the first motel she found. We took the one remaining room under a name that didn't belong to either one of us. It wasn't the kind of place where they asked questions anyway. She informed me that I was running a fever as she forced some tylenol down my throat. God, I hate that shit, but I knew she was right. I hadn't been able to stop sweating. "This time it is me who has no memory," I sighed. I was glad she was with me. There had been such love in the way she had touched me when the MPs had brought me back from that truck, when she had asked me what happened. "Welcome to the Lost Memory Club. Get some sleep, Mulder. We'll drive back to DC in the morning." "What about you?" "Move over pardner," she said slipping off her shoes and jacket. "What about the rules against this?" "F**k it," was all she managed. My partner was asleep before I'd even closed my eyes. The End macspooky@erols.com