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Author: Sarah Segretti
E-mail: mrsblome@aol.com
Website: http://members.aol.com/mrsblome
Rating: PG (two bad words)
Classification: VA, MSR. Implied adventure.
Spoilers: Tiny ones for Triangle, FTF
Disclaimer: Not mine. Just playing.
Archive: Anywhere, just keep my name and address on it and
tell me so I can bookmark your site.
Summary: A lost scene from an unfilmed episode. Colonization looms. A stolen moment on the tarmac. In medias res.
Glossary: As always, CDC is the acronym for the federal Centers
for Disease Control and Prevention.
Operation Clean House
By Sarah Segretti
June 1999
Andrews Air Force Base
2:06 a.m.
Their breath hangs frozen and white in the night air.
Helicopters throb to life around them, stirring the air, rotors slowly accelerating into invisibility. Jet engines whine as pilots power up; the exhaust sends eddies of heat into the winter cold.
Soldiers trot by in groups, heavy boots clomping in rhythm on the tarmac, packs and rifles rustling and creaking against their dark green combat fatigues.
This is the last time I will ever see this man, she thinks.
Like the soldiers, he is dressed for battle – suit and tie replaced by black fatigue pants and combat boots, black turtleneck covering the ubiquitous gray T-shirt, Kevlar vest over it all. A dark helmet is trapped under one arm. His Sig rests at his hip, as always. A velcroed pocket on the vest conceals a very particular kind of stiletto; the special mask she helped design to protect him and the others from the fumes dangles from his neck. Only the shapeless black windbreaker with the yellow "FBI" emblazoned on the back – protocol uber alles, even now – spoils the commando look.
He’s been attached to Special Ops. He’s one of only two people on this planet who have been inside one of Their ships and lived to tell the tale.
She’s the other. But she doesn’t remember the details.
He’s never quite forgiven her for that, she thinks, although he
knows – and she knows he knows – that it’s not her fault. She wishes she
could remember. She doesn’t want to be separated from him on this night.
He watches her watch him from inside her too-big white biohazard suit. Her assignment is to the CDC strike team, the men and women who will safely collect and quarantine anything that Special Ops leaves in one piece.
Doctors with guns. Jesus. That idea frightens him more than what’s really about to happen. He pushes both thoughts aside, focuses on the woman standing in front of him.
Her red hair is skinned back tightly in two barrettes visible above her ears like tortoiseshell antennae, her head perfectly centered in the Elizabethan metal collar that will seal her massive helmet to her billowing suit. Silver tape circles her wrists and her ankles, bracelets of duct tape designed to prevent pathogens from seeping in at the seams. Like him, she’s tucked her helmet under her left arm. The Tyvek of her suit floats and ripples around her in the wash from the helicopters, settling around her hips until she looks like an albino, headless Teletubby.
His mouth quirks in a smile as he imagines the variety of her possible reactions to that image, and he picks the most likely one. When he gets back, he thinks, he’ll tell her she looked like a big white Po, just to see if he guessed right.
He won’t tell her now; no sense getting fragged by friendlies before you even get to war.
War. Shit.
In the space between breaths, it all flashes across that face she can read as if she truly were psychic. <Say it, Mulder, make that smartass comment. Say something so ineffably you that I won’t be able to help but smile. Break that mood you’ve just put yourself in. Let my last vision of you be your face smiling back at me.>
"Agent Scully!"
"Agent Mulder!"
The voices come from opposite ends of the staging area, carrying even over the rising aircraft noise. A young scientist, wearing a biohazard suit that actually fits, motioning for Scully to join the knot of similarly dressed men and women. Skinner, also in Special Ops black, helmet covering his bald head, holding an extra rifle. The AD is gone, replaced by the Marine. Soldiers stream past him, onto the transport where Mulder is expected to go.
They look to their summoners, then back at each other. The air feels suddenly taut. She can almost see individual molecules shimmering, visible. A drop of sweat courses down her back despite the cold. It’s too warm inside the suit.
Mulder puts on his helmet and smiles crookedly at her.
<Thank you, God, for that little gift.>
"Showtime," he says.
She raises an eyebrow at him for old times’ sake. "Be careful."
He nods quickly. "See you at the victory party."
There is a moment, a heartbeat, where she can hear all the things unsaid, considers saying them. She thinks of a hallway, and a bee, and what never came to pass. No regrets, Dana, not now. Take consolation in the fact that you will see him again in the next life.
"Agent Mulder!" Skinner calls again, more urgently.
"Agent Scully!" The scientist’s voice sings odd counterpoint.
The spell is broken.
"Don’t get cocky," she says.
He gives her his patented who-me? look and turns to go. He is barely three steps away before her heart lurches, and she wants to run after him, stay with me, be with me, don’t leave me alone –
She is not surprised to see him stop.
Backlit in the harsh tungsten lighting illuminating the field, he
spins, and locks his gaze on hers.
Their life flashes before his eyes.
<most unwanted lost found my father my sister her sister can’t lose her gotta save her the truth is in her the truth will save us Scully Scully Scully Scully >
And in one long stride he is before her, kissing her, crushing her mouth under his, her face in his hands, drinking her in, tasting her courage. She presses against him as close as she can through Tyvek and Kevlar, her mouth hard and fierce against his, one hand gripping the back of his neck, the other still awkwardly holding her oversized helmet.
"Dammit, Mulder, now!"
He curses Skinner, and tears himself away, and allows himself one last look at her. Her hair has become mussed, her face flushed, her eyes bright. Her white coverall reflects the blue and red lights of the runway and the aircraft, a beacon that will guide him home after this long night.
"I love you," he says, and runs.
This time, she knows he means it.
For a second, she allows herself to see him the way she always does in her mind’s eye: trenchcoat billowing around him in the fog, tie streaming over his shoulder, long legs propelling him forward, a dark angel running running running towards the truth.
He accepts the extra rifle from Skinner and vanishes into the maw of the transport. One soldier among many.
Her soldier.
<I love you, too.>
Fingers brush half-consciously against the lips he’d finally kissed, touching a memory, touching belief, touching hope.
She adjusts the helmet under her arm before it slips to the ground.
"See you at the victory party," she says quietly.
-30-
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Author’s note: This springs from a thread on atxfa a few months back about how the first kiss would happen. (This was before "The Unnatural," obviously. <g>) This image popped into my head, and wouldn’t leave. I had to get it out so I could write something else. Dedicated to the good folks at Delta Air Lines, at whose gate I was waiting and whose plane I was on when I wrote this.