Acknowledge The Corn 
by D. Agnew

Disclaimer:  The characters and situations of the television program and
movie "The X Files" are the creations and property of Chris Carter, Fox
Broadcasting, and Ten-Thirteen Productions, and have been used without
permission.  No copyright infringement is intended.

Spoilers:  Never Again, The End and the movie Fight For The Future.  Set
sometime after the movie.

Rating:  G

Classification:  A, UST

Summary:  After Mulder and Scully return to their new basement office,
they discover truth is illusive as ever and some things never change.

Author's Note:  Based on what I saw in the movie, I think Mulder and
Scully have moved to a new dimension in their relationship.  Who knows
if Chris Carter will do?  But then that's half the fun, isn't it?

Acknowledge The Corn 
by Denise A. Agnew
writer@agnewdt.demon.co.uk

X-Files Basement Office
Tuesday, July 21
8:00am

     Back in the basement.

     Back where it all started five years ago.

     Scully walked down the hallway, her eyesight adjusting to the sting
of the florescent lights.  Dim, the white light left the hall in a half
hidden eerie ambiance that could have made it's own X-File.  She felt a
comfort in being within the murkiness.  Familiarity.  She needed the
dull, the ordinary, the things around her never changing.  At least for
a little while.  Until she retrieved an indomitable sense of balance.

     One of the lights flickered and she winced.  Ever since she'd been
cloistered for hours in the gloom of the cavern in Antarctica, in the
darkness of the "craft," her eyes sometimes rejected bright light.  As
another side effect of her strange internment, her temples started a
steady, annoying throb.  Headaches, the doctors said, that might be
tension.  Who wouldn't be stressed after everything she'd been through?
Used to pressure, used to extremes, she didn't like the fact she might
be having stress headaches.  If she could beat cancer she could damn
well beat headaches.

     Maybe even those little spidery, broken blood vessels in her cheeks
would disappear soon and the odd, dark hollow in her eyes would drop
away.  She had to get that old spark back before it faded completely.
Sure, she'd encouraged Mulder to continue his search for the truth, just
as he had begged her not to leave the X-Files...

     Even the memory of being in that hallway...of being within inches
of something so profound it brought tears to her eyes-

     Until the bee sting had taken the moment away from her.

     No.

     Better not explore.  Better not go where the deepest danger
resided.  

     She stopped at the door to the office...the clean, new, soot free
door that proclaimed Fox Mulder lived here.  She looked again at the
name plate.  Dana Scully.  Dana Scully was printed, sure as day, right
under his name.  Shock held her still as marble.  Surely not.  Some
things in the X-Files world never changed, and one thing that didn't
budge was Mulder's insistence on a sense of permanence in the office.
While his world went chaotic, his office would remain the same.  His
last link with sanity.  Perhaps that had been the main reason the
narcosis of seeing the burned office had been so great for him.  All the
material perpetuity had been stripped.  Totally and completely.  They
could have burned his apartment.  They could have burned the entire FBI
Headquarters...but leave his office alone.

     Maybe even Mulder could change.  A sign with her name nestled to
his could signal adjustment.  A new step in a new direction.

     For a moment, as she waited, barely moving, a myriad of memories
flew back.  

     "Why don't I have a desk?"

     She remembered the day she'd asked him.  She recalled the sharp,
specific pain she'd felt when he'd walked out the door after saying
maybe they needed time away from each other.  She remembered her battle
not to call him when she'd been half certain Ed Jerse had murdered the
girl and that ergot poisoning had caused Ed's psychotic behavior.  Yet
even then, like now, she didn't know anything for certain. 

     Except, perhaps, for one thing.

     A loud blast of music jarred her risky thoughts and she jumped,
startled by the noise coming from the office.

     Taking a deep breath, she opened the door to...

     ZZ Top.

     She's got legs.

     Smiling slightly she marveled at how rejuvenating a good blast of
rock and roll could be.

     Mulder had installed a stereo with speakers on a shelf above his
computer.  With his back turned to her, he tapped out something on the
computer, his fingers flying over the keys.

     "Mulder."

     He didn't move a muscle.

     "Mulder!"

     He about came off his chair, swinging around with his mouth hanging
open and his eyes a little wide.  When he saw her his lips barely tilted
up in a smile...just enough to show he might be embarrassed.  He reached
up and turned the radio off.

     She didn't move into the office.  Instead she looked around, taking
in the way he'd replaced practically everything that had gone up in
smoke.  Including the I WANT TO BELIEVE poster.  

     "I can't believe you, Mulder."

     He stood, holding his hands out to the room.  "What's not to
believe?"

     "This office."  She took a tentative step into the room, crossing
the threshold, hearing the one footfall echo.  "Your photographic memory
at work?"

     He nodded and came from behind the desk, his gaze following her as
she took a few more steps in.  

     "That and a little help from the Lone Gunman.  Langley has this
phobia about bad luck coming to anyone who doesn't put stuff back in the
same place...exactly where they last placed it.  Hence, he remembers
every detail of where everything was in the office.  He made sure I got
stuff right."

     "Then I'm in big trouble."

     "You?  The Scully I know is tidy."

     Of course, he was right.  She was tidy.  And that clean cut way of
doing things helped her now.  Her home stayed orderly, and when her mind
threatened to wander, she could slam it back to where it belonged.

     She looked into the corner and noticed something had changed.  Her
desk...

     Bigger, better...fancy.  She walked toward it, touching the surface
of the dark, obviously expensive wood and noted the quality far
surpassed Mulder's metal pulpit.  Far more expensive, ridiculously so.

    She turned to look at him, and his attentive gaze caught her off
guard.  She swallowed hard.  "This desk is great, but why is it
so...big...so..."

     "Ostentatious."

     "Exactly.  Why didn't you take this desk?"

     "Don't you think you deserve it?"

     "A desk, yes, but not a Rolls Royce model."

     Without blinking an eyelash, he said, "You deserve it, Scully.  You
deserve a lot more."

     A lot more of what?  She could have asked.  Could have opened her
mouth and let the words slip.  Something stopped her.  The same old
something that always stopped her.  Self-protection.  The unquenchable
knowledge she could never be hurt if she didn't let anyone in.  Keep
Mulder back where he belongs.  For anything would be safer than speaking
the truth to him.  A deeper truth than anything she'd ever spoken to
anyone.  Had almost spoken back in the hallway--

    "I thought this place needed a little fashion statement," Mulder
said when she didn't reply.  "Before it was early nineties efficiency
model.  Now it's almost the same, but with modifications."

     She gazed directly into his eyes and saw it there.  

     Just like us.

     We're the same, with modifications.  Physical and mental.

     "Thank you," she said, knowing that more words wouldn't come, and
anything extra wouldn't be what he expected.

     He swung back to his desk and sat down as if his legs wouldn't hold
him.  She knew the weakness.  They might have had time to recover from
the ordeal, but something lingered, as all the five years between them
loitered like unspoken promises.

     "How's the head?" he asked, and she realized she'd been squinting
in the bright light. 

     "Still the same.  Bright light hurts and my headaches continue.  It
will take time to disperse."

     He nodded toward the door.  "At least they did as I asked and kept
florescent lighting out of the place. Check out the light switch next to
the door.  It's one of those adjustable things."

     She twitched one eyebrow and sauntered back to the door.  She
turned the switch slowly and the lighting grew very dim.  "And exactly
how are you suppose to see anything in this lighting?"

     Mulder shrugged and let that tiny slanting smile part his lips for
a millisecond.  "I guess I could always bring my girlfriends down here
for a party."

     Giving in to a full fledged smile, she turned the lights up a tad
more.  Walking toward his desk, she said, "You can do anything you like
in here, Mulder.  This is your office."

     His smile disappeared.  "It isn't just my office.  It's never been
just my office since you walked in the door five years ago."

     How could the atmosphere in a room change to quickly?

     "But you set this all up.  If it was my office, too, you would have
asked me what I wanted.  Instead you went ahead and did it all.  Without
telling me-"

     "Stop."

     His softly spoken word shook her and got the result he wanted.  She
stopped and stared at him, waiting.  Trying to read the hard light in
his eyes and the real meaning behind his closed expression.

     "I thought we'd gotten beyond all that, Scully."

     "Beyond what?  We still have work to do.  We still have to find the
truth-"

     "No.  That isn't what I mean."

     She hadn't imagined this scenario when she woke this morning.  When
she knew she had to go into work and face the day as if nothing had ever
happened and that old times meant good times.  What did she do when old
memories felt so good...even with their blanket of skullduggery and pain
attached?

     It wasn't as if she could start from scratch and kid herself every
minute of the day and every moment of her life from then on.  Change was
inevitable, and she'd better step forward and embrace it and take it
with both hands open.  Otherwise the waiting...the constant wondering
would drive her insane.

     Mulder stood and moved around the desk and came to a halt in front
of her.  Familiar.

     As familiar as the ten thousand other times he'd stood in front of
her.  This time, however, the light silvering his hair, made him look
older and younger at the same time, gave him a solid sheet of
vulnerability.  Turned his eyes darker than they'd ever been.

     Before he could speak she thought of a subject yet unresolved.
"How is Diana?"

     "Still in a coma.  They don't know if she'll ever recover."

     She nodded.  "I'm sorry, Mulder."

     "About what?"

     "For you.  For Diana."

     "Why be sorry for me?"

     She couldn't say it.  Couldn't repeat what she knew.  How could she
tell Mulder she'd gone behind his back and asked the Lone Gunman what
she couldn't ask Mulder herself.  Diana had been his "chickadee."  

     "She's your...friend...your old partner."

     He nodded, but his expression remained neutral.  "Old partner."

     "She didn't deserve what happened."

     "No.  But then you didn't deserve what happened to you."

     "I was in the wrong place at the wrong time, Mulder, just like
Diana."

     "They were after her just as they were after you.  But they didn't
try and kill Diana to get to me.  Your situation was entirely
different."

     "The bee sting was by chance.  It just as easily could have been
you stung by that bee."

     He shook his head and leaned back against the desk, sitting on the
edge.  "No, I don't believe that."

     "Then what do you believe?"

     Straightening, he towered over her, looking down from his superior
height.  But instead of being intimidated, as many others would be, she
found a comfort in this other common denominator in their relationship.

     "You know why they took you instead of me, don't you?

     "Why?"

     He put his hands on her shoulders, squeezed lightly, and she felt
her own heart constrict with the movement.  "Think, Scully.  Don't stand
there and deny your memories."

     Ah, yes.  The third side effect of her time in Antarctica. 

     Memory loss. 

End of Part One

Acknowledge The Corn (2/2)
by Denise A. Agnew
writer@agnewdt.demon.co.uk

     The memory of the bee sting hit her like a brick in the face.

     Scully felt her throat tighten, and for one horrible moment she
imagined the ghastly sensation of being dizzy, of her heart pounding, of
not being able to catch her breath.

     A delayed reaction.

     She sucked in a sharp breath, and his fingers tightened, sliding
down her arms.  He bent to look more closely at her face, then tipped
her chin up with his finger.

     Worry lines etched his forehead.  "Scully?"

     She sucked in another breath, ragged and incomplete, and she saw
his expression go from worry to the panic of the time in the hallway...

     "Scully-God, what's wrong?  Are you sick?"

     She shook her head, but mouthed the word screaming through her
mind.

     Mulder.

     His fingers left her chin and suddenly his hands cupped her face.
"Breathe, damn it.  Take a deep breath for me."

     Her thoughts went back to when she'd passed out in the space craft,
and how she'd awakened, choking, inhaling air with a gasp.  Now, she
absorbed the second breath, this time deep and easy, and the
constriction in her lungs left immediately.

     "I'm sorry," she said, gasping once.  "I...the memory of the
sting."

     The breath she'd taken for him hadn't improved the expression on
his face.  Solid fright registered in his eyes, threatening to fix there
permanently.

     "Are you all right?" he asked.

     "Yes.  The therapist I went to at the Employee Assistance Program
said I might have trouble with flashbacks for awhile.  A little Post
Traumatic Stress Syndrome."

     He cursed under his breath and closed his eyes for a second. His
hands dropped away, and he stuffed his hands in his pants pockets.
"Don't scare me like that, Scully."

     "I...I didn't know it was going to happen."

     "Then don't think about it.  Don't think about what happened in the
hall way."

     But she couldn't forget one moment.  Of the fear and sadness she'd
felt mixed with the pleasure of being embraced, of having the comfort
they gave to each other.  Of having him say what he'd never admitted
before.  Telling her he wouldn't go on.  Couldn't go on without her.

     They must have stared at each other for a solid minute before he
shifted, taking his hands out of his pockets and shoving them both
through his hair.  He looked totally rattled.

     "Mulder."

     He looked up.

     "Mulder, if we want to move forward, if we want to get to the truth
we have to get passed our insecurities.  We have to find a way to work
around them or over them."

     "There are some things a person can't get over.  You know that.
They just hide them.  Pretend they aren't there."

     Funny how Mulder could seem to read her mind, yet leave just enough
obtuseness to make her wonder if it was all her imagination.

     "What do you need to get over Mulder?"

     "I need to get over the bee stinging you and the way you looked
when you told me something was wrong."

     She'd tried so hard to pretend all right.  She'd striven to mislead
herself into thinking they hadn't almost-

     "Scully, I thought you were dying.  And it was worse than when you
lay in that hospital bed with cancer eating away at you.  Much worse."

     She stepped forward and put her hand on his arm, and felt the
muscle tense as she touched him.  "Why?"

     He covered her hand with his, held it against the heat and hardness
of the skin and blood and muscle beneath.  "Because if you'd died they
would have won.  I would have stopped chasing after the truth because
without you there is no truth."

     She sighed and looked at the I WANT TO BELIEVE poster, and wanted
to scream out loud exactly the same thing.

     Tears surged to her eyes.  Somehow since she'd been stung by the
bee, tears came to her more easily.  She couldn't speak for a long time.
Instead she fought the urge to cry until her eyeballs ached with the
effort.

     "No.  I think you would have gone on.  They underestimate you time
and again.  They do not know how much this means to you to discover the
entire truth.  Because they are not as strong as you.  No one is as
strong as you, Mulder."

     "No, I'm not--"

     "Promise me one thing."

     Slowly he nodded.

     "If anything happens to me again, and you can't save me...go on
alone.  Don't you dare quit.  Fight on until the very end."

     "Scully-"

     "Promise me."

     He nodded again, and she saw a deep sadness cover his eyes at the
same time. 

     "You've got something that lives on...beyond anyone's death. Your
father died and it didn't stop you from continuing your search for the
truth."

     His fingers tightened on her hand.  "As much as I loved my father,
his death didn't...it didn't mean what you-"

     "No."  With a tight throat she said, "We do have one truth, Mulder,
that they can never take away.  And it would have existed whether I had
died or not.  Whether you hadn't found me and saved my life with the
vaccine."

     The smile started in his eyes and glowed, moving to his lips.  

     He knew and she knew, and that was all that mattered.

     The phone rang, and when Mulder released her hand and he reached
for the phone, she felt the familiarity come back again.  She could go
on from this point with no doubts.  Whatever the next case led them she
had an assurance she'd never had before.

     Mulder put down the phone and turned to her, the old twinkle back
in his eyes.  "Skinner wants to see us in his office.  He's got a new
case for us."

     As they headed for the door she said, "As long as it doesn't have
anything to do with bees and corn crops I'll be happy."

"Acknowledge the corn."

     She made a tiny scoffing noise, mingled in with a disbelieving
laugh.  "What?"

     "Acknowledge the corn.  It's an old saying used frequently in the
last century.  It means to admit the truth." 

     There would be a day when they could speak the ultimate truth, but
now wasn't the time.  Not yet.  Not just yet.

The End       


-- 
Denise A. Agnew
"I cannot forget the follies and vices of others so soon as I ought, nor their 
offences against myself...my temper would perhaps be called resentful.  My good 
opinion once lost is lost forever."  Mr. Darcy, PRIDE AND PREJUDICE