TITLE: Trust (1/3)
AUTHOR: Jess M
 
DISCLAIMER: Not mine. Never were.
DISTRIBUTION STATEMENT: Anywhere, just let me know.
SPOILER WARNING: Various small references, nothing to drive you too
crazy
RATING: PG 
CONTENT WARNING: none
CLASSIFICATION: MSR, almost an x-file
SUMMARY: Mulder and Scully investigate a case as a favor to Skinner and
find themselves dancing around a touchy subject. 

Note: Dover Beach is a real poem (and my favorite one ever ever), as is
the one by Walt Whitman, and no, I don't know which one it is. If you
do, feel free to tell me. The other poems, by "Alex" are purely my
creation and a bad holdover of the last time I actually wrote this
stuff, many years ago.



The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furl'd.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.
     -- Mathew Arnold, from "Dover Beach"

Walter Skinner was tired. Between his illness and all the nastiness with
Agent Spender's death, it seemed that he was suddenly too old to be
chasing ghosts and demons into the never-ending night. Leave it to
younger men, men better equipped to deal with the inevitable failures of
the game. Men like Mulder. And men like Scully, he thought with a small
smile. Definitely men like her. Staring at the file in front of him,
neatly labeled and categorized, he saw in his mind the man beneath the
manila folds and he knew with certainty that his days as an AD were
coming to a close. 

"Sir?" His secretary's voice interrupted his thoughts, pulled him back
to the desk, to the office, to the work, like a sweetly disguised
tether. "Agents Mulder and Scully are here."

"Send them in," he replied, reassuring himself with his own gruffness.
They would take this thing from him, this pain, and make it their own.
As they had before, with Sharon, with his illness. Walter was not a man
to take friendship lightly. He had learned that in the Marines, along
with a myriad of other useful things. Like how to kill and still the
aching voices that accompany the dead. 

"Agents," he greeted them as they sat in their familiar places. Scully
looked up, pleasant and ready, Mulder looked insolent. A wave of
tenderness threatened to overwhelm him. "I need to ask a favor of you
both."

They shifted slightly, in unison, uncomfortable and wary.

"Sir?" Scully said.

"Don't worry, Agent Scully, it doesn't involve any real danger. Just a
bit of boring leg work."

She smiled, slightly as always. "Danger wouldn't keep us from helping
you, Sir. You know that."

"But boring leg work might," Mulder added, grinning.

Skinner simply nodded and continued, unable to share in their ease.
"When I was in the Marines, when I first made it over to Vietnam, I was
assigned a 'buddy'. You know, some young kid, fresh out of basic,
needing someone to help him adjust. His name was Alexander Lymann. He
wasn't a great soldier, but he was a great friend, open and sensitive.
In fact, Agent Mulder, you remind me a bit of him."

Mulder's face turned every so slightly pink, a blush of acknowledgement. 

"When we had been there about two months, Alex and I were out on a recon
mission, not too deep into enemy territory, but dangerous enough. He had
begged to go with me, wouldn't take no for an answer. I knew he wasn't
ready, but I gave in. Sure enough, we came under heavy fire. Alex was
wounded, gravely, a bullet through the spine. Somehow, I managed to get
him onto a evac helicopter and he lived, but he was paralyzed from the
neck down. He was eighteen years old."

He saw Scully wince and admired her for showing her displeasure, after
all these years of bodies and wounds and death? to still feel. He also
envied her, though only for a moment. Truthfully, to feel as she did
would probably kill him.

"Alex was not one to give up. He went back to college, believe it or
not, and became a poet of some note. We kept in touch, on and off. He
disapproved of my work here, thought I should have moved into a more
civilian sphere."

That brought a hearty smile from Mulder and a muttered "little did he
know."

"Six months ago, Alex died. His injuries finally caught up with him, I
suppose. I was too ill to attend the funeral." Pausing to clear his
throat, he saw Scully raise her chin a bit, shoring him up. Grateful, he
continued. "His sister contacted me last week, asked me to look into
something for her. It seems someone is still publishing Alex's poems.
Brand new poems that she's never seen before. She's suspicious that
someone is cashing in on his name and wanted me to look into it. I told
her I would assign my best agents to the investigation. And that would
be you two. I know this isn't an x-file, but I would appreciate the
help."

Scully stood immediately and took the case file from the edge of his
desk.

"We would be only too glad to help you out, Sir. Contrary to public
belief, we are capable of occasionally investigating something that
doesn't involve freak mutant satanists."

"Yeah," Mulder added, "but we really like the freak mutant satanist
ones."

Skinner watched with affection as they left, Mulder's hand gently
pressing Scully's back as they moved through the door. Now, at last, he
could relax. Alex, he thought, I promised to take care of you and this
is the best I could possibly do.


Scully leaned back into the seat, twisting slightly to easily address
Mulder. She was grateful for this case. It wasn't that the x-files were
difficult or frightening, but they always seemed to involve her too
deeply, dragging her into Mulder's wake and threatening to drown her.
Ever since Diana? no, she thought, that was an internal lie. Ever since
the near-kiss in the hallway, she had been routinely overawed by her
partner, knocked flat by him as surely as if he had socked her in the
jaw. A simple case, a little sleuthing, would ease them away from each
other and back toward the easy camaraderie they sometimes enjoyed.

"So, it seems Alex Lymann was indeed something of a poet. He published
nearly eleven books in the last fifteen years, some of them
award-winning. He was resident poet at several colleges and universities
and was published in the New Yorker and Atlantic Monthly. He never
married or had any children, no doubt because of his injury, but he did
have the same assistant for the last ten years. Her name is Eloise
Hartley and she lives in Richmond. His sister, Candice Bernstein, has
been his editor since he started writing. She continues to control the
rights to his work. The disputed poems have been published in a magazine
called 'Apple', which he often used to debut his work while he was
alive. The editor there, a Miguel Ricardo, insists the poems are being
given to him by someone who knew Alex well and they have been widely
accepted as genuine by the literary community. He is sending residuals
to Candice, so that doesn't seem to be the issue."

Mulder spit out a toothpick he'd been chewing on since they left the
greasy spoon where they'd had breakfast. The wind sucked it right back
into the car, depositing it on the backseat. Scully glared at it for a
moment, too annoyed to actually do anything about it.

"So what is the issue, here, Scully? How much money can these things
possibly be worth? It sounds like his sister is a bit miffed that these
poems have somehow slipped past her, leaving her out of the editing
loop. I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't editing a famous poet's
work something of a feather in one's literary cap, even if he was her
brother?"

Scully nodded. "I think it would be. I'm wondering about something here,
Mulder. How does she know these aren't his? Most of the literary world
seems to be pretty sure they are."

"Well, let's start with the magazine guy. Maybe he can tell us exactly
where he's getting these things."

Scully flipped through the last of the folder. A picture of Alex lying
in his bed, hooked up to a respirator, obviously talking to someone. He
was a handsome man, fine-boned even before the accident, with a
pleasant, honest face. Another of Alex in his wheelchair, accepting an
award to a standing ovation. And then, taped to the back of the second
photo, she found a poem.

To Walter

How I wanted to receive this 
moment of clear recognition -- without it, still 
trapped in thick black mud, feet immobile,
hearing the grass shattering, blood pounding, left
to die. But waiting alone on the grand stage, 
after the men have clapped 
and smiled and abandoned me 
to my attendant, I realize that you never left me, 
and that I was pulled, yanked and shoved and 
persuaded like a reluctant buffalo, from the insect-thick hell 
of my own insistence and delivered here
by you. Not to receive this award, but to live
quietly, knee-deep in cool water and those soft
white floating flowers the girls wore 
tucked behind one ear.

She read it through, several times. Scully's entire poetic experience
could be contained in several readings of "Poems Recommended for
Children." But something touched her about the words on the back of that
photo. A small glimpse into two souls, one of which she thought she
knew. 

She read it aloud to Mulder.

"Damn," was all he said.


The offices of Apple Magazine were well-hidden in a small suburban strip
mall. The heat of the early afternoon bit into Scully's concentration as
they waited for Miguel Ricardo to return from his late lunch. Mulder
leaned forward, elbows on his thighs, hands turning over each other
restlessly. She couldn't stop looking at him, glancing his way, watching
for the moment when he grabbed her and dragged her screaming into his
existence. It would come, she was sure now. It didn't matter that it
wasn't an x-file. Just being with him was enough to ensure her doom.

"Scully," he said suddenly. "What if someone's channeling him?"

"Huh?" she answered, totally distracted by his moving fingers. "Mulder,
that's ridiculous. Trust you to make this into an x-file before we've
even begun the investigation."

"Yeah," he said, voice soft and reasonable. "Trust me."

"Oh Mulder?" She felt like slowly lowering her head to her knees and
banging it there. "That's not what I meant."

He nudged her shoulder gently with his own. "I was kidding, Scully.
Don't be so sensitive. That's my department, remember?"

"How could I forget?" she said lightly and swallowed the knowledge that
he already had her, hook, line and spooky sinker.

"Agents? Mr. Ricardo can see you now."

How Miguel Ricardo could even afford a secretary, much less a beautiful
and competent one, was beyond her understanding. Especially when Walter
Skinner, demi-god at the FBI, seemed to always be assigned mousy
dimwits.

They followed the girl into the bright, pleasantly chaotic office of the
Editor in Chief. Miguel Ricardo turned out to be a small, happy little
man. Not young, not old, he seemed to defy any attempt to pin him down,
buzzing in his chair like a strangely exaggerated bumble bee.

"Agents Mulder and Scully," Mulder said, offering his hand. Scully
waited politely and then offered hers. She wondered, not for the first
time, if it would ever be "Agents Scully and Mulder."

"Nice to meet you. I hear you're here about the whole Lymann thing."

"Yes Sir," Scully said, sitting in her usual right-hand chair while
Mulder settled into the left. "We were wondering if you could tell us
how you are receiving new poems by an author who has been dead for six
months?"

"Sure," Ricardo answered, hands moving across his desk, fluttering.
"Someone mails them to me, once a month or so, about five to an
envelope. No return address, no instructions, printed on standard
computer paper with a standard computer. Nicely untraceable."

"If his sister is the exclusive owner of the rights to these poems,
shouldn't they be cleared through her first?" Mulder asked.

"'Course. And they would be, if I was sure they were his. But since
there is doubt?"

"And since she'd never clear them," Scully added for him.

"Exactly, and since she'd never clear them, I've taken the liberty of
just going ahead with it. I send her a share though, you saw that,
right? I'm not trying to bilk her. I just want to be the first one with
these."

"Clearly that's what someone else wants, too." Mulder was mulling
something over, she could tell from the slow sinking of his eyebrows.
"Can you tell me something, Mr. Ricardo? How do you know these poems are
by Alex Lymann?"

The editor shifted in his seat a bit and smiled weakly. "That's a very
gray area, Mr. Mulder."

"Oh I'm familiar with all sorts of gray areas, Mr. Ricardo."

"Well, in the literary world? unless something is copyrighted at the
time of it's creation, there's really no way to prove someone wrote
something conclusively. You might have someone who can testify that they
knew the person was working on it. Or you might have journals, letters,
whatever that mention the project. But if you don't, you have to analyze
the style the piece was written in and then you sort of? make an
educated guess."

"And that's what you've done in this case."

"Yep. Look, I've known Alex Lymann for nearly ten years. I published his
work long before anyone else would, that's why he was so loyal to me. I
really believe this is Alex's work. It sounds like Alex. It feels like
Alex. It reads like Alex. I can't explain it any other way. And the
scholars I've taken the pieces to have agreed. If it isn't Alex Lymann's
work, than it's the work of someone who knew him very, very well.
Because it isn't just writing style. Anyone could emulate that. It's
that the thoughts contained in the poems? well, they just are Alex. It's
what he would think."

"Do you still have any of the originals?" Scully asked. "We'd like to
take them in for analysis."

Ricardo looked at her, uncomfortable. "You'll bring them back, right? I
wouldn't want these to get damaged."

She nodded and he pulled a manila folder from a file drawer next to his
feet. 

"That's all of them. Twenty-three in total."

"Mr. Ricardo?" Mulder rose and examined a framed cover of the magazine
hanging on one wall. "Do you mind if I ask how much subscriptions to
'Apple' have risen since you started publishing these poems?"

"Well, Mr. Mulder? I mean," Ricardo stammered, "it isn't like we've had
a huge increase in sales? we are more recognized in scholarly circles, I
suppose? but?"

"How much?" Mulder asked, not moving.

"Double," Ricardo said weakly. "Double the subscriptions. But if you
think I'm making these poems up myself, I assure you, I'm not. I'd be
seen through in a minute. I mean, I like poetry. Hell, I love poetry. I
even write a little, on occasion. But I am not Alex Lymann. I couldn't
even come close."

"Thank you, Mr. Ricardo." Scully shouldered her bag, the phantom Alex
Lymann's poetry tucked safely inside. "Here's my card. Feel free to call
me if you think of anything else."

He nodded grimly. "I'm not going to get in big trouble for all of this,
am I? I didn't really think this through."

Mulder turned at last and smiled at the small man. Scully admired his
ability to pounce on something, play with it and let it go, like a
housecat.

"Maybe," he said. "But somehow I don't think this is really your
problem. I think it might be a good idea to hold off any further
publication, though, should the opportunity arise."

"Right," Ricardo said. "No problem."

end 1 of 3


TITLE: Trust (2/3)
AUTHOR: Jess
 

Summary in Part 1

"It's about trust," Candice Bernstein said, holding out a cup of coffee
to Mulder. "I don't know how well you two trust each other, but just try
to imagine my sense of betrayal."

Scully lowered her face over the steaming cup and let her hair hide her
eyes from Mulder's sudden gaze. She had been right, it didn't need to be
an x-file. There were so many years between them that anything, no
matter how seemingly trivial, could contain another link in the chain
that locked her to him.

"Go on, Mrs. Bernstein," Mulder said gently.

"When Alex and I were born, my mother said that if she hadn't been sure
I was a girl, she would have sworn we were identical, not fraternal. And
that's how it felt, growing up. We knew everything about each other. We
could finish each other's sentences. So you can imagine my horror when
he enrolled in the Marines without telling anyone. The Marines, for
heaven's sake. The one place he knew I couldn't follow. And then
Vietnam? well, you can see where I'm going there. When he got back, so
badly injured, I made him promise me something. I said: Alex, if you
ever hide anything from me again, so help me God, it'll kill me. And he
swore, swore to me that he would never keep anything from me. When he
started writing, he gave the poems to me to read. I started editing
them. Who better? He never wrote a poem I didn't see. And I tell you, I
have never seen these."

She gestured to the magazines, open and brazen on the coffee table.

"I thought I had a good relationship with Miguel. We have always been
good friends. This is a total betrayal. I am just flabbergasted."

"Mrs. Bernstein," Mulder said, setting his coffee down and rubbing his
hands together. "Is it just possible that your brother really did write
a series of poems you'd never seen? Perhaps the subjects were too
personal?"

"Nonsense. These poems aren't that different from any others he would
have written. They're love poems, just like the last volume of work."

"Love poems?" Scully picked up one magazine and read the poem's title:
Skinny Double-Dip. She wasn't sure about that one. "Who were they for?"

Candice sighed and brushed her hair back, wrapping it quickly into a
neat bun. Scully envied her ability to fasten up the loose ends without
a rubberband. 

"I think he wrote them for Eloise."

"His assistant?"

"Wait a minute," Mulder interrupted, "what do you mean, you 'think'? I
thought he told you everything. He wrote an entire volume of love poetry
and never told you who it was for?"

"I said he didn't keep anything from me, Mr. Mulder. That doesn't mean
he told me everything in his heart. I just assumed they were for her and
he never said anything about anyone else. Hell, he didn't know anyone
else. They must have been for her."

"Mrs. Bernstein," Scully said. "Do you think Alex wrote these poems?"

Lifting up a magazine, Candice looked closely at it, as if the print
would give away the answer, a rosetta stone to her brother's work.

"Maybe. It does sound like him, sort of unfiltered, as if he hadn't sent
it to me yet."

"Could Eloise have written this?" Mulder asked.

Candice smiled, setting the magazine back down.

"God no. There's no way. She never even graduated from high school. I
mean, don't get me wrong, Mr. Mulder. She's a lovely woman. But write
this kind of poetry? Listen: 'You move, seal-like, slick against me and
the resistance of the warm water. Glistening and shivering like the
sheen on my own hairless skin.' No, Eloise didn't write that."

"All right," Mulder said, smiling gently, "who do you think wrote
these?"

"Honestly? I don't know. Maybe Miguel. Maybe even my brother. I suppose
I'd just like to know. Right now, the knowledge that he might have is
worse than it would be to hear that he actually had. I keep speculating?
why these poems? Why now, as we seemed so close? I mean, this wasn't
Emily Dickinson hiding little poems from Daddy under the floorboards. He
couldn't move. He would have had to go to great lengths to keep these
things a secret. And who's sending them now? I felt I knew my brother as
well as I knew myself. I can't imagine discovering that I was wrong."

"Could Eloise have helped him? Could she be sending these out now?"

Candice shrugged. "Sure. I suppose. She says she knows nothing about it,
but you know how truthful people are. I certainly am discovering how
misplaced my own faith was."


"What do you think, Scully?" Mulder asked. Outside, the world seemed to
slip by in a mist-drenched gray line. Scully sighed.

"I don't know," she said. "But it sounds to me like Eloise holds the
key."

"Agreed," Mulder nodded. "But that's not what interests me, really."

"You're interested in this case?" She raised a weary eyebrow. "I'm
surprised, Mulder. So far no one has mutated, the dead haven't spoken.
It seems like we may instead be in the middle of a family feud."

"And that's what's exciting about it, Scully. The trust those two people
shared? don't you want to know? Did he break it? Did he do it for
Eloise? Ah? romance."

"She was foolish to believe that he would hold nothing back. Everyone
keeps some part of themselves private. We have to, it's essential to our
ability to survive."

"I don't think she objects to him having a private life, Scully. I think
she objects to him breaking a trust between them."

Scully leaned her head on the seatbelt, cradling herself. The joys of
being short in a big car. "Every trust is broken at some time, Mulder.
That is also in our nature."

"Duplicitous?" he said quietly. "Scully, you didn't always believe
that."

"No," she answered, driving in the wedge. "I didn't."

He was silent for a moment, then he said, softly: "I trust you, you
know. And you have never broken that trust. I'm dependant on that, like
food."

Moved, she reached across the space between them and tugged on his arm
like a child. But she couldn't answer him, couldn't lie. Fortunately, he
seemed placated by her touch.

"Want to hear the only poem I've ever memorized any part of?"

She nodded, still clutching him.

"It's Walt Whitman. We memorized it in school, though I can't remember
which poem it's from? 'My left hand hooks you round the waist,  
My right hand points to landscapes of continents and a plain public
road. 
Not I, nor anyone else can travel that road for you, 
You must travel it for yourself. 
It is not far. . . it is within reach, 
Perhaps you have been on it since you were born, and did not know.'"

Sliding her hand down his arm, Scully joined her fingers with his.


Eloise Hartley was quiet, but with the warmth of a long-time nurse. She
smiled at them both, intimate, personal smiles designed to comfort.

"Alex was my whole world." She sat in the middle of a massive stuffed
chair and pointed to his wheelchair, folded against one wall. "I was
sure I couldn't live without him, and yet, here I am. Living. Strange,
isn't it? I miss him terribly though."

Scully found herself wanting to pat the woman's hand, but felt it might
be an imposition. "How long were you with him?"

"Ten years," Eloise said. "When it started out, he was just another job.
I had been a caregiver before. It's not a bad life, if you have the
stomach for it. People are grateful, and there's always someone there.
But with Alex? things were different. I liked him immediately. He had so
much romance, so much life in him. Some people, when something bad
happens, curl up and withdraw. But he didn't, no he projected all his
wasted energy out, always out. It was like living with a candle after
being in the dark. We grew to be friends. Great friends, the best. I've
never known anyone as well, not even myself."

Scully was deeply aware of Mulder next to her. Remembering her own words
in Kansas. "? suddenly the only person you can ever imagine yourself
with."  Mulder's phone startled her, sending a small shock to her
muddled head.

"Mulder." he whispered, moving away.

"So, Eloise?" Scully began, "Are the poems for you?"

The woman seemed startled by the thought. "Oh no? I mean, Alex and I? we
were never physical. He couldn't be. I always thought they were written
about? before. You know, when he could feel. No, we were just friends."

Scully nodded.

"Do you remember him writing these?"

Eloise shook her head. "No, I don't."

"Then who do you think wrote them?"

She smiled and shrugged. "I think he did."

"But how is that possible?"

"I don't know. But they read like Alex. They have his way of thinking,
before Candice edited them down to the raw words. They have his?
brightness. Here?" She stood and moved to a bookcase next to the
wheelchair. "I have an extra copy of his last book. Please take it and
read it. You'll see what I mean."

Scully accepted the book and glanced up at Mulder, still standing in the
hall. He motioned to her. Wrap it up. She turned back to Eloise.

"Eloise, did you send those poems to the magazine?"

Eloise stared at Scully and then swallowed. It couldn't have been more
obvious, Scully thought. "No, no. Of course I didn't. Why would I do
that?"

And then Scully knew. At least part of the puzzle.


"We should go over tomorrow and check out the new ones he received,"
Mulder said, taking a huge bite of his hamburger. "Not that they'll tell
us anything, but it would be interesting to see the package they come
in."

"So," Scully said over the last of her Cajun chicken sandwich, "have you
formulated your theory?" 

She had told him she was sure Eloise was mailing the poems. Something
about body language, the tell-tale heart. Not that she was a sudden
expert on body language, she thought bitterly. At least some bodies.

"I have," he said, leaning forward and invading her space, even though
the table still sat between them. "I still think it's channeling."

She smiled, lowering her eyes. If Mulder were any more predictable, she
would be able to figure out why he didn't want to make love to her.

"I don't know why, Mulder, but I disagree."

"Probably because if you did actually agree with me, the wiring in your
brain would overload and you'd slip into a coma."

He was teasing her, grinning. She kicked at him under the table, but
only managed to hook one small foot behind his calf. For a brief moment
they were both completely still, then she slowly slid the top of her
foot up to the back of his knee, just for the hell of it. Bending his
leg, he trapped her there.

"Feeling playful, Agent?" It wasn't all leer, she could feel his
tension.

She shrugged, moving her foot away from him.

"Not really," she said, and wasn't sure if he seemed disappointed or
not.

"So here's my theory," he went on as if nothing had interrupted him. "I
think that over the ten years that Eloise and Alex were together, they
formed a bond. An incredibly close bond, maybe beyond love. When he
died, he wanted her to know, to see that he still loved her. So he
writes her love poetry, through her hand."

"How romantic," Scully sighed. "And how implausible. I mean, Mulder, I
can almost buy an identical twin receiving messages from his brother's
frozen head? but beyond the grave? Alex Lymann is dead and buried.
Eloise is doing just fine. Neither of them seem like candidates for
ghostly visitations."

"Scully," he said and leaned forward again, carefully catching one of
her legs between his own. She stifled a gasp. "What about when your
father died?"

Surprised, she covered for herself. "What about it?"

"You saw him. I know you did."

Looking away, she freed her leg and shifted out of his reach. "I did
not. Besides, Mulder, an imagined visit from a dead relative is a
logical extension of grief and longing. It's completely different from a
woman receiving dictation from the great unknown."

He smiled. "That's what I like about you, Scully. You can easily replace
one extreme possibility with another."

"Mulder," she smiled back. "Only you would have so many extreme
possibilities that they began to cancel each other out."


Scully gave a soft sigh, reading through the last poem in the slim
volume. She had devoured them, aware she was reading too quickly, but
swept along by their building fever. Her heart pounded and she felt
giddy, lightheaded and persuaded. God, to feel love like that and be
able to express it! In any form, whether the other person saw it or not.
Just to be able to write it down was such an astounding thing. Never in
her life had she attempted to explore her own emotions. She was in awe
of the ability.

Mulder lay across the bed, sideways, watching a Knicks game with great
intensity despite the fact that the tv was on "mute." They didn't often
sit in the same hotel room together, but tonight had leant itself to
that sort of easy familiarity. She wasn't even sure why they were
sitting in a hotel. The drive to Washington would have been long, but
certainly not out of the question. It had been Mulder who'd suggested
staying. Lazily he stretched one hand out to catch Scully's eye.

"So?"

"So what?" she answered, admiring his sleek, lean sides as he stretched
out further.

"So what are the poems like?"

She closed the book and smiled. "They're love poems, Mulder. To a woman
who didn't even know she was loved. God, how could she have missed it? I
mean, he wrote an entire book about her and she still hasn't figured it
out."

"You know what they say?" Mulder rolled over on his stomach and stared
at her. "Love is blind."

"That's not what they meant."

"I know. Read me one."

For a reason she didn't quite want to understand, the thought of reading
one of the poems, aloud, to Mulder, made her palms feel sweaty. He
smiled at her, seeing the reaction, asking for it.

"No. Read one yourself."

"I want to hear you read it. You have such a wonderful voice."

Her heart skidded to a stop and she opened the book slowly. Pick one,
her mind said. Any one, it won't matter.

"'Yesterday'," she read, her voice sounding tinny and high. "'Yesterday
I waited for you,
alone in the small room I have come to
think of as 'ours.' Your mind was elsewhere,
you said you'd read a new book and it had touched you, 
deeply. What must it be like, to touch you, to dip 
one slim finger into your mouth and feel 
the softness, the deep hot sleek dampness , barely 
remembered? Last night, I tried to tell you. I said the words
aloud to you and you gave them back 
to me, like an unopened gift from my birthday
two years before and you thought I wouldn't
recognize the my own wrapping paper."

She paused and looked up from the book. Mulder stared at her for a long
moment and then said, softly: "Surely some of them must be sweeter than
that."

Trust Mulder, she thought, to look for something sweeter. She smiled at
him. 

"I'll read you the last one, then."

He nodded. "Come closer. Sit here with me and read it."

End 2 of 3


TITLE: Trust (3/3)
AUTHOR: Jess
 

Summary in Part 1


She couldn't read him. Was he flirting? Was he coming-on to her? Why?
She sighed and slid along the coverlet until she rested next to him,
curled up like a cat beside it's owner. She was vaguely surprised he
didn't reach over to pat her head.

"This one doesn't have a title, but the note at the end says he wrote it
two days before he died."

Mulder nodded and rolled over on his side to curl around her slightly.

"Your skin is warm, and when you rub your palm
across my cheek, I can feel the end of summer 
there. We sit together on the porch tonight and eat
strawberries from your garden; small, tight and red,
like a woman's nipple or lipstick puckered lips.

I am sure I feel you, actually feel the cotton whisper of you
in places I had long ago forgotten how to sense. Perhaps not
tonight, but soon enough, I will remember how to slip inside
and beg for you. For the tangerine, apricot, fresh peach perfection 
of your body. But not tonight. We sit together 
on the porch and eat. You touch my hair and kiss 
my ear, because you know I can still feel you there."

By the time she finished, Mulder was gently stroking her leg. She shut
the book and smiled down at him. If she let herself believe him, she
might allow him to touch her, she might come to think that he loved her.
But each moment like this, alone and comfortable, close? she saw his
arms cross his chest and heard him say it: "Scully, you're making this
personal." And then her doors closed.

"Scully," he said, tracing a lazy arch around the muscle in her calf,
"who do you think is writing the new ones?"

"I don't know, Mulder." Fascinated, she wanted to grab his hand and
still it, but he was dipping his finger into the crease behind her knee.
"I think he probably did and now she's releasing them."

He stopped touching her then, and rolled over on his back, hands behind
his head.

"So you think he lied to his sister?"

"Yes," she said. "Maybe he didn't see it that way. Maybe he felt there
were parts of his life that should remain private. Things he didn't want
to share. But yes, I think he betrayed her."

"I don't know," Mulder sighed. "They had a closeness, a bond? wouldn't
she have known he was hiding something from her before this? There are
tons of poems. He must have been writing them for some time."

"Just because you're close to someone," Scully answered, slowly "doesn't
mean you can sense their betrayal before it happens. It can come from
nowhere, from some unexpected place. We base trust on such flimsy
things, Mulder. On words, on gestures, on perceived emotions. When in
fact it is as tenuous as a soap bubble. It can disappear before you
realize it wasn't substantial."

He was quiet for a moment, then turned on his side and clutched her
ankle so tightly she started.

"Scully, if you want to talk about Diana, then for God's sake, just talk
about Diana. Don't dress it up as a case."

Her mind froze, her stomach wrenched. How the hell had this happened?
She gasped and moved away from him.

"Don't make it personal, eh Mulder?" she blurted out, unable to stop the
on-rush of emotion.

"Exactly," he said, his voice still cool and reasonable. "Or do, but
don't sit in the middle and tease me."

She felt herself lose control, spiraling into her anger and fear and
hurt like a plane without wings, heading for the dirt.

"Tease you?" she said. "I have never in my life teased you. I have been
nothing but honest and open with you. I have trusted you from the
beginning."

"I agree," he nodded, not sensing the danger. "And I've trusted you. You
can't seem to see that, but it's the truth. One moment of doubt in your?
motivations does not a betrayal make, Scully."

She was fighting for air, the sheer force of her fall sucking it from
her lungs.

"You've trusted me, Mulder? Ever since we met, you've been telling me,
more times than I needed to hear, to 'trust no one.' And who do I trust,
Mulder? Let's run through the names, shall we?"

He smiled, a bit uncomfortable now. "Your mother."

"Wrong. I don't tell her about ninety percent of what I do on a
day-to-day basis. I haven't confided in her since I was fifteen. Try
again."

"Skinner," he said, sounding less confident.

"Please. We both know how often I've trusted him. Anyone else? My
father? is dead. My brother? Hates you, thinks I'm a fool. My other
brother? Can't be reached. Friends? Don't have any. Lovers? Nope, no one
there either. Gee, Mulder, guess that only leaves you."

"But you do trust me."

"Yes, damnit. I always have. Now, let's list the people you trust, ok?
Starting from the top?"

"You."

She shook her head, viciously.

"No, ignore me. Try again. How about? Skinner. Yes, you trust Skinner,
right?"

"I guess so?" She knew from his pained expression that he could see
where this was leading.

"And Byers? Frohike? Langley?"

"Yes, I guess I do."

"And let's see?" She ticked them off on her fingers. "Deep Throat, X,
various informants, Casandra Spender, Phoebe Green, that damn dog woman,
Diana? hell, Mulder, you've even trusted Krychek! The only person who
has ever, ever had to earn your trust was me. Me. Think about it, how
often did you question my motivations? How often did I struggle to live
up to your expectations of what a partner should be? How many times do I
have to save your sorry ass before I get the slightest benefit of the
doubt when it counts? Damn it all, Mulder, I've earned that trust a
thousand times over and you couldn't give it to me. You go into every
relationship like a puppy who doesn't know it's about to be kicked, and
yet you strike back and kick me the second you get the chance. What did
I ever do to you, Mulder? What?"

He was silent, absolutely stunned by the force of her anger. She picked
up the book, pried his fingers off her leg and stomped through the
connecting door to her room. Shutting it behind her, she finally let the
stress of her confession, of her anger drain from her. It left her weak,
defenseless, as if she had removed her own skeletal structure, the only
thing holding her up. Sliding down the locked door, she curled into a
ball and wept. On the other side of the door, she could hear Mulder
moving, creeping toward the same door, listening. 

"Scully," he whispered. "Scully? Please let me in. Let's talk about
this. Scully? Scully?"

She moved away from the door and crawled onto her bed. She heard him
settle against the door, and knew he wouldn't move. It no longer
mattered. Exhausted, she closed her eyes and nearly slept.


By morning, Scully felt swollen and misused. Every inch of her body
ached from weeping, her eyes were puffy and her chest heavy. Standing in
the shower, watching the water bead on her night-oiled skin, she
wondered how on earth she was going to face her partner today. She
hadn't slept a moment all night and it wore on her, making her movements
slow and stilted, like walking through snow.

He knocked as she finished smoothing her hair, tucking the ends into the
right places, where today they refused to stay. Even her hair looked
tired. She straightened her jacket and opened the door to find Mulder
holding two cups of coffee and two cheese Danishes. The smell made her
stomach flop. She felt like she'd been ill for weeks.

"Good morning, Scully," he said awkwardly. Her heart seemed to sink into
her stomach.

She nodded and accepted the coffee, not trusting her own ability to
speak. Following him down the hall, she noted how stiffly he moved. My
God, she thought, he spent the entire night against that door, waiting
for her to come through and ease his pain. And she hadn't. Before she
could stop herself, she caught up with him, one hand resting on his arm.

He stopped her, one finger up.

"Don't," he said and started walking again. She felt sick, her
light-headedness causing her body to sway.

"Mulder, please?"

He turned and returned to her, right against her, pushing her back
against the wall.

"You know what, Agent Scully? I don't want to talk about this. I've been
dying all night long while you? slept." He practically spat the word at
her. "And now, I don't want to talk about it. Do you understand that?"

She nodded, suddenly very small and miserable, sure she would cry but
knowing she wouldn't at the same time. If it were possible to feel more
dejected than she did at that moment, she couldn't imagine it. Now that
she had vented her anger, her frustration, she realized she was finally
open to him. Perhaps it was too late, again.


Eloise Hartley seemed surprised to see them. On the way there, Mulder
had explained how he was sure Eloise was receiving the poems from Alex
after his death, how they were going to tell her, how they would? her
mind had ceased working. "Ok, Mulder. Ok," she said, sinking. "Fine.
Whatever."

He had glared at her, hating the expression. "Scully, I just think I'm
being reasonable here. Do you care to argue?"

And now here they were, sitting on opposite ends of the couch. Eloise
sat near Mulder and Scully heard his soft voice soothing her. Eloise
sighed.

"I didn't mean to lie, Agent Mulder. But I really didn't feel like I was
writing them. It just explains so much."

"He loved you," Mulder said. "He just wanted you to know."

"I loved him too," she whispered. "I was afraid he would be too
miserable if I let him know it. It just makes sense."

Scully stood and walked over to the mantle, staring at the pictures
there. Alex as a young man, a track star, running. Alex as the
quadriplegic, Eloise just behind him, a blur from her hand arranging
something on his chair. Eloise and Alex in the sunshine, smiling. Eloise
and Alex, Mulder and Scully? her head whirled and she reached out for
the mantle to steady herself. Something was there, lingering on the
outside edge of her thoughts. Over them she heard Eloise say: "I wanted
so badly to tell him, but you know? he couldn't feel me. He couldn't
touch me. What kind of love could we have had?"

"You don't have to be physically intimate to be madly in love with
someone," she murmured, half to herself. She was suddenly aware of the
silence in the room, of the two of them staring at her. She shifted and
looked for the first time that morning into Mulder's wary eyes. It was
then that she knew.

"My God," she said. "This is all so stupid of us!"

Eloise's eyes opened wider and she started to say something. Mulder
rose.

"Scully," he said, his voice a warning. "What's going on?"

"Oh Mulder," she said, looking rapturously at him, dizziness washing
over her in little waves. "It's all so obvious. I can't believe we never
saw it. Do you remember when I thought you were dead? When you were in
the boxcar? Remember?"

He nodded, his head to one side, wondering. Eloise waited behind him.

"If you had died, Mulder, if you hadn't come back to me, what do you
think would have happened to the x-files?"

He shook his head. "I guess you would have continued them. Scully, what
does this?" and then he saw it too, his face registering his surprise.

"Eloise," she said. "You are writing those poems."

"What?" the woman started, drawing her hand up to her chest. "I'm not a
poet. What he said? that made some sense to me?"

Scully shook her head. "No, no it doesn't. It's just?" She was going to
say nonsense, but thought better of it. "It's just that you loved him,
you lived with him, you were with him every day. You came to know him so
well, that now, when he's gone, you write to him. Not for him, Eloise?
to him."

Mulder stood between them, watching Eloise, his face unreadable.

"Look, Eloise. I've worked with Mul? Agent Mulder for seven years. I
know him. Everything he does? I can explain it, I can categorize it, I
can understand it. Everything. Even the things I hate, those are part of
what makes him Mulder, what makes him the man I've come to believe in,
to trust. And if something were to happen to him, I know I could
continue where he left off, because we have become one person." 

Her voice pleaded with Mulder to look at her, trying to capture him, but
he was staring at his shoes. 

"Eloise, when he died, you had so much to say to him. So you wrote it
down as a poem. It sounded like him and you thought? you thought you
couldn't possibly be as smart, as educated, as brilliant and wonderful
as he was. But you're wrong. You've learned from him. All these years
you've learned from him. And you've learned about him. The poems are
yours, claim them. Tell him again and again until you feel that he must
have known. It's blindingly obvious to everyone but the two of  you."

Eloise opened her mouth and then closed it. She looked cautiously at
Mulder, who glanced down.

"She's right," he said quietly, without looking at Scully. "Listen to
her, Eloise. She was right from the beginning." 


Scully set her bag down wearily by her door. She hadn't been able to get
out of the car fast enough and into her own house. They had solved the
case, yes, but to what cost to themselves? She wasn't sure and her head
ached, pounded. She needed aspirin and her bed.

Stumbling into the bathroom, she emptied the bottle into her hand and
then poured all but three tablets back in. A glass of water later, she
sat shaking on the edge of the tub. A shower. She could take a shower
and feel better.

The water stung her eyelids, bit into her aching muscles, easing
nothing. Everything had been so wrong. Mulder was trusting because he
was Mulder. Without that level of acceptance, of naivete, he would have
been Krychek or Diana or any of the other seeming humans who had
betrayed them. Without that trust, he would have been his father. She
scrubbed at the skin above her breasts with a loofa, punishing herself. 

Everyone he had ever known had, in some way, sought to destroy him. She
was the only one who had served him steadily. She had been unable to
understand how, in the face of that evidence, he could doubt her, but
now it was so clear to her. To fully trust her would mean to be let down
by her. If he never quite believed in her, the inevitable horror of her
betrayal would be less painful. What he didn't seem to realize was that
she would never, could never, hurt him. Until now, she thought ruefully,
feeling a stinging pain from her tender skin. Until now.

Her longing was palpable, hovering around her like an aura of need. She
dried herself off and slipped into the darkened bedroom like a fugitive.
If she didn't turn on the light, she couldn't catch her own disgusting
reflection in her bedroom mirror. It was a trick she had learned during
the cancer and tonight she reverted to it. Pulling back her covers, she
lay down slowly, easing her burning skin onto the cool sheets, not
wanting the relief it brought. When her head hit the pillow, she felt
something beneath her. A crinkling of paper. 

Starting up, she reached underneath her hair and retrieved it, slightly
damp and crumpled, but otherwise stark white in the dim light from her
window. Fumbling beside her bed, she found her reading glasses and
slipped them on, turning on the small night light next to her. The paper
was ripped from an FBI notepad and read "from the desk of Fox William
Mulder" across the top. 

Mulder's lean writing swam before her. She began to read.

"Scully," he had written, "I've been looking for this since we started
this case. I read it in college and it reminded me of you, though I
didn't know it was you I was reminded of, yet. I realize now that you
are the road I have been on since I was born, and did not know, to
totally bastardize old Walt."

She smiled and continued, eyes scanning the poem he had transcribed for
her. From the first two words, a wave of hope swept her up:

"Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.
	Mathew Arnold, Dover Beach, final stanza"

For a moment she was unsure. Was it a compliment? Beyond the obvious use
of the word "love"? Then she read it again and, letting her analytical
mind shut off, she saw the words for the first time. They were alone,
just she and him, in a world where nothing else was honest or good. He
was begging her to be with him, or be lost in the battle. She sighed and
slipped out of bed to put on her clothes.

From beside her bed, a soft voice sounded.

"Keep going, G-woman."

She smiled to herself and left the top button of her nightshirt open as
she approached him. He sat in the stuffed armchair by her armoire, his
hands on his knees. In the dark she couldn't read his face, but she
could smell him, open and inviting as a million acres of virgin forest.
A redwood among sprouts.

"Mulder," she whispered. "I take it this is yours?" She handed him the
poem.

"Do you want me to take it back?" he said softly.

"No," she answered. "I want you to read it to me. Out loud."

He sighed and without looking at it, began:

"Ah, love, let us be true to one another, for the world, which seems to
lie before us like a land of dreams?"

She sank onto his lap and kissed him deeply, not letting him move into
the condemnation of the rest of the world. That could wait until
morning. His arms wrapped around her back and slid up against her naked
skin, a balm for her guilty scrubbing. Pressing down into him, she
leaned her forehead against his and closed her eyes against the light.
For now, she thought, let everything else lie before them; an open road,
a land of dreams.  

End 3 of 3

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