Title:  Prayer for the Living I: Mea Culpa
Author: Kristin Mackenzie
Email:  krismackenzie@my-dejanews.com
Rating: PG
Spoilers: Tiny FTF
Category: S/V A    Warning! Character death.

Disclaimer:  Scully, Mulder, Skinner and the X-Files belong to Chris Carter,
Fox, and 1013.  No infringement is intended and no money is being made from
this piece.  Unless you'd really like to send me some money.

Archiving: Gossamer yes, all others please ask.

Summary:  An exploration of the nature of guilt and healing.

Mea Culpa

I keep my hands lined up at 10 and 2 on the steering wheel and try to focus
solely on navigating the clunky government-issue car along the rain-slick
highway.  No easy task – not because the road requires so much attention, but
because the events of the past twelve hours have left me reeling with shock
and grief.  Things an Assistant Director isn't allowed to display.

My tie is knotted perfectly at my throat; I can see it in the rearview mirror.
Precision and control have ruled all of my adult life.  Only those who can
control themselves will be given the power to control others.  The suit jacket
that hangs on the dry-cleaner's hanger in the back seat is black, as is the
background of my tie.

The sign up ahead indicates that North Platte is fifteen miles away. 
Something in my chest tightens slightly.  Fifteen miles – fifteen minutes –
until I have to face the horrible, mindless thing that's happened.

It is my fault.  I sent them here, on a boring routine assignment, as a
punishment for a rather flagrant disregard of Bureau policy and procedure
during their last case.  I'd been receiving a great deal of pressure from my
superiors to keep these two gifted and notoriously indiscreet agents in check.

So, they'd been sent to check out a string of small-town bank robberies.  It
should have only taken a couple of days and a small mountain of paperwork. 
But early this morning, I received a call from Agent Scully.  She was sorry
to inform me that Agent Mulder was killed last night by a drunk driver on a
county highway in central Nebraska.  He had, apparently, been out in search
of an all- night convenience store that sold sunflower seeds.

Scully's voice was clinical, professional, holding neither grief nor blame.
She indicated that the local authorities needed my authorization to ship
Mulder's body back to DC.  This could be done by fax, but I felt that I had
to go out there, to do whatever I could do.  I was on the next plane to
Omaha, and rented a car for the four-hour trip to North Platte.

I am surprised to find myself pulling up in front of the hotel Scully named
during our brief phone conversation.  Somehow the last fifteen minutes got
away from me.  I sit in the still-running car for one minute, two, and then
purposefully turn the key and listen to the motor die.	When I look up,
Scully is standing in the doorway of the room directly facing my parking
space.

I get out of the car and take a few steps toward her.  She meets my gaze
evenly, but I can see that there is no Scully there.  Scully has been
carefully hidden away.	Her pain and utter fragility are evident only in the
careful way she holds herself, and seeing this, I begin to understand the
depth and breadth of what guilt can be.  I suddenly know that I will spend
the rest of my life trying to assuage this woman's pain in whatever capacity
she will allow, and that I will never forgive myself for having been part of
its cause.

Scully puts out one hand and lays it gently on my arm.	"Thank you for
coming, sir," she says seriously.  Her voice is huskier than usual.  I am
frozen, completely taken aback by the strength that radiates from her even
now.  I find that I have to look away.

"Agent Scully, I . . ." I swallow.  Anything I can say right now is
inadequate.  "I'm sorry," I tell her feebly.

"So am I, sir," she tells me softly, and pulls her hand away.
___________________________________

I had to physically jerk myself back into the present.	Whenever my guard is
down, my psyche decides to replay those first weeks after Mulder's death for
my personal enjoyment.	I had slept very little and eaten even less, and I'd
been spending a great deal of time checking up on Agent Scully through both
official and unofficial channels.

The day after the funeral, I went down to the basement office and found her
sitting at Mulder's desk, fingering the snow-globe paperweight Mulder had
given her after their horrific trip to Antarctica.  I could see that she'd
been crying, but had apparently stopped before I got there.  She looked up as
I came in and managed a small smile.

"Agent Scully, I . . . came to see how you were doing," I said stiffly.  And
she put on her brave Scully face and murmured something about being fine, and
I knew right then what Mulder must have felt all those years ago, when Scully
was still too busy being super-special-agent to let him comfort her.  What
had it taken?  How had he come to earn her trust?

It occurred to me now that not only did she have to face the grief of losing
Mulder, but that she had also lost the only person with whom she would be
comfortable sharing her pain.  Her hand shook just a little as she put the
snow- globe down.

"I never thought it would be something like a car wreck," she said softly.
"All the things we've seen and been through, it should have been something
more momentous."  She paused and then said something else.  I couldn't quite
hear, but I thought she said, "And it should have been both of us."

She stood up and straightened her suit.  "I was going to come upstairs,
anyway, sir, so this is just as well.  I'm going to take a . . . leave of
absence."

I nodded, squaring my shoulders.  "Of course, Scully, take as long as you
need."

She met my eyes then, over the rubble and debris of her life with Mulder, and
I knew that she didn't intend to come back.  But neither of us said that.
Instead, she gave me another tight little smile, and shouldered her way past
me and out the door. _______________________________

Two days went by.  Still no sleep.  On Saturday morning I decided to go
running, hoping, I guess, to exhaust myself enough to be able to get some
rest.  After half an hour or so, I found myself running past the crowds of
tourists by the Washington monument, down along the relatively deserted
galleries by the reflecting pool.  Down at the far end, the gleam of a
windswept swirl of red hair brought me to a full stop.  I shaded my eyes to
see.  It was Scully, swathed in an oversized leather jacket that might have
been Mulder's, sitting with her knees drawn up to her chest and staring
sightlessly into the water.

I argued with myself for a full five minutes about whether or not to approach
her.  In the end, my selfish need to do something to ease my own guilt won
out.

Scully looked up as I got closer, but wasn't really seeing me.  For a brief,
unguarded moment, I could see past the layers of strength and courage to the
raw pain and confusion beneath, and the acrid taste of self-loathing rose up
like bile in the back of my throat.

"Scully," I said gruffly, and without preamble.

She jerked back, and focused on me with a split second of wild hope that
dissolved quickly back into despair.  This had been their place, then.

One small white hand came up to brush at the tears now visible on her cheeks.
"Sir," she said, looking carefully away.  "I wasn't expecting company."  The
comment was pointed and unmistakable in its intent: get the hell away from me
and let me grieve in peace.

My father taught me that sometimes you have to hurt a wounded animal a little
in order to, ultimately, help it.  I hoped the same tenet applied to a wounded
Scully.

"You don't need to hide, Scully," I ventured, still in the mode of the
concerned superior.  "I know this is hard for you."

Not the right course to take.  Scully confronted with professionalism will
respond in kind.  "Thank you for being concerned, sir, but I'll be fine," she
said automatically, almost sing-song.

I took a deep breath, and allowed myself to slouch slightly against the tree
at my back.  "I miss him, too," I told her, immediately regretting having
said it.

She nodded slowly.  "I know . . . "

"But it's not the same," I finished for her.  "I know."  One breath, and
another.  The silence was closing in.  "Scully, I'm so sorry, I  . . . I never
would have sent you out there if I'd thought . . ."

She turned toward me, and I was instantly reminded that Dana Scully is one of
the most beautifully compassionate people I've ever known.  "Sir, you can't
blame yourself," she told me levelly.  She looked down to study her hands,
which lay like two limp orchids in her lap.  "That kind of guilt is very
difficult to live with."

That gave me pause.  It shouldn't have; certainly guilt and regret and all
the facets thereof were something she was very familiar with, personally and
tangentially.  Slowly, I moved to sit down on the bench next to her.  "You
mean the kind that keeps you awake at night and haunts your dreams when you
do finally manage to sleep?"

I caught her looking at me sidewise, unsure what to do with an AD showing
signs of emotionalism.	Then one litte hand lifted from her own lap and
settled coolly on my fingers.  "Especially that kind," she said softly.
_________________________________

"There's just so much left unfinished," she told me sometime the next week,
sitting tucked up in her usual chair in front of my desk.  The chair next to
her screamed its emptiness.

"Cases, specifically?  Or other things?" I prompted her.

"A couple of cases.  Nothing that couldn't be handled – appropriately – by
someone else.  I don't know . . . we just never quite got the answers.	Every
time we turned something up, it turned out there were just more questions. 
His sister, my sister, the cancer, the abductions.  It's hard just to walk
away from that, not knowing."

I found myself fixated on the empty chair, on Mulder's chair.  "Can't you
continue your investigations?" I asked her.  "Official and unofficial?"

"I can't do it alone," she told me simply.  "Neither could Mulder.  That's
what it all came down to – neither of us could do this alone."

The chair stared back at me.  "I'll do it with you," I said, surprising
myself and also Scully, whose right eyebrow jumped up about two inches.  I
took a deep breath and realized I meant it.  "I will help you finish . . .
what was started."

"With all due respect, Sir, you haven't done this kind of work in a while . .
." she protested.

It was my turn to raise an eyebrow.  "I haven't entirely forgotten all my
investigative techniques," I told her wryly.

She flushed.  "Of course not, but . . . but, you're the AD, Sir."

"That can be remedied," I said, taking a deep breath in, feeling really alive
and proactive for the first time in weeks.  I held my hand up to stave off her
protests.  "There's precedent for this; I'll just say how much I've missed
being in the field since my promotion."

Scully was looking mutely up at me, questioning, curious.  I laid my last card
on the table.  "And I think I have some – acquaintances – who may have some of
the answers we're looking for."
_____________________________________

Dana Scully is, by nature, a healer.  Mulder's neediness and vulnerability
were what drew her to him and what helped her allow herself to need him as
well.  I would never understand all the unique complexities of their
relationship; she didn't speak much about it.

I found myself invigorated and horrified by the reality of the truth-fragments
that formed our investigations.  Mulder and Scully together had uncovered a
great deal that they had not yet chosen to share with anyone; I'm certain that
no one, not even the smoking man, was aware how far they came on their
journey.  The element of surprise is the greatest weapon.

Scully was, I think, beginning to recover a sense of normalcy (such as it
was) in her daytime life.  Occasionally I could surprise a smile or a laugh
out of her, which acted as a temporary balm for the permanent burning guilt
lodged in the pit of my stomach.  And sometimes I would look up to find her
watching me, eyes full of mute sympathy, and I knew she was aware of and
sorry for my burden.

I knew, too, that she still cried for him at night, because some mornings she
would come into our sunny second-floor office with traces of red around her
clear blue eyes.  She tried to hide this from me, to keep from adding any
more to the weight already pressing on my heart, but I always knew.  And the
specter of Mulder and a lifetime of guilt and healing ahead hung between us
all the time.

End