Subject: NEW: "Error In Judgment" by Tim Scott -- 1 of 2
From: Tim Scott <tscott@fix.net>
Date: Tue, 30 Sep 1997 08:53:38 +0000

Title:     ERROR IN JUDGMENT
Author:    Tim Scott
Email:     tscott@fix.net
Rating:    R for language
Spoilers:  Gethsemane
Archive:   Be my guest

Summary:   Aftermath of the episode.

Disclaimer:  Dana Scully, Fox Mulder and Cancerman belong to 
Chris Carter, Fox Broadcasting and 1013 Productions.  I have 
used them without permission.  No copyright infringement is 
intended.


          *****


He stood outside the motel room and considered how best to
open the coming discussion.  Unlike her partner, Agent Scully
was the soul of reason.  What could be more reasonable than
wanting to live?  He puffed on his Morley and arranged a thin
smile on his face before rapping on the door.

Bloodshot blue eyes narrowed for an instant behind a security
chain before she opened the door wide enough to admit him.
Her face was paler than usual and there were tiny flecks of
clotted blood around the base of her nose.  She wore FBI sweat
pants and a ridiculously oversized NY Knicks t-shirt.  He
strode past her and turned to deliver his opening line.

Scully stepped in fast and rammed the barrel of a gun into his
solar plexus.  The air whoofed out of him as he staggered back.
She closed the distance again and pistol-whipped him to the
floor.  His face went pasty grey as he labored to get some air
into his lungs and think past the blinding headache.  Her
blurry form receded, he heard the door close and then the
sound of her footsteps returned.  Her voice was calm.

"I've been expecting you."

This was ot going at all well.  She should be distraught,
guilt-ridden over her part in Mulder's suicide and ready for a
cure to be dangled like a carrot before her eyes.  Souls, he'd
learned, could often be purchased for a song.  It was all in
the timing.  His timing appeared to be a bit off tonight.

She let him gasp a little longer before she continued.

"I can guess why you're here.  Poor little Scully, poor little
*woman*, just offer to give her life back and she'll follow
right along."  She shook her head.  "Mulder could be dense at
times but he was preoccupied with his Quest.  You, on the
other hand, are fucking stupid."

His eyes widened at the profanity.  Scully never swore.  Never.
This did not fit the profile at all.  Time to get the hell
out and regroup, re-evaluate.  He started to rise, wanting
the psychological advantage of greater height.  Again she was
too quick for him.  Her knee broke his nose.  He flew
backwards, bashed his head on the wall and landed in a stunned
pile on the floor.

She waited until he could focus on her face again.  "Do I
have your attention?"

He couldn't see too well.  She allowed him to sit up again.
God, his whole *face* throbbed!  He had sense enough not to
shake his head to clear it.  It took a moment to find her and
focus.  He nodded, carefully, and tried to ignore the blood
dripping off his chin and into his lap.

"I've watched you people jerk Mulder around for years.  All
that crap about The Project and your holy mission."

She snorted derisively.  "Sell it to the Air Force, Spy Boy.
I'm a Navy brat.  I've worked for the government for years
and I've seen people like you come and go.  You don't give
a shit about the human race.  You just like being in charge,
pulling the strings, laying absurdly complex plans that take
decades to mature."

God, she was fantastic.  What an asset she'd be.  He didn't
even mind the pain in his face.  Well, he did, of course,
and she'd have to pay for it, but still...  He listened
raptly as she went on.

"I can see it now.  A bunch of superannuated white males
gathering in a smoke filled room somewhere -- God, what a
cliche -- and plotting to take over the world.  Jesus.  I'll
bet you have a secret handshake, too."  Scully shook her
head and began to pace.  "Would you like to know how I
managed to take you?"

Play for time.  Nod your head for the nice Agent.  Ignore
the pain, breathe through your mouth so the nose will hurt
less and pay attention.

She nodded back and resumed pacing.

"It took all of ten minutes to plan.  How do you like that,
Mr. Machiavelli?  I did my patented Ice Queen number at the
funeral, threw in a little air of fragility for good measure
and hit the road.  Drove aimlessly for three days and
checked into this roach trap because it's the kind of pit
Mulder used to love to inflict on me.  I knew somebody
would be along to make the offer.  I hoped it would be you."

She made a disgusted sound at his look of surprise.

"What, you think nobody else ever read 'Faust'?  So.  You
guys played games with my career, abducted me, experimented
on me, tortured me, destroyed my chance to have children,
murdered my sister, tricked my partner into committing
suicide and you *still* thought I'd willingly climb up on
your operating table?"

She stopped pacing long enough to kick him in the face.  It
knocked him flat again.  She moved to stand over him and
watch his eyes as she continued.  Her voice was even colder
than her eyes.

"I find your estimate of my intelligence to be insulting.
Extremely insulting, in fact."

Suddenly he froze as she pressed the pistol barrel between
his eyes, hard.  She fumbled in his coat pockets, removed
the cigarette pack and his lighter.  She backed away too
quickly for him to retaliate.  The gun dropped to her side
again as she moved toward the bathroom, never taking her
eyes from his.  He heard a plop, followed by the flushing
toilet.  She examined the lighter, rolled her eyes at it
and stuck it in her pocket before continuing.

"I thought about taking you someplace quiet and devoting
some time -- oh, say three months -- to just making you
scream.  I have a lot of vacation time accumulated, you
know, and since I'm dying I'm not too highly motivated to
go back to the basement and fill out any more of those
endless fucking forms."

She showed him a truly evil smile.  "Now *that* would be
a good reason to get out of bed in the morning."

He discovered it was actually possible for one's blood to
run cold.  How about that.  Before he could speak she
went on.

"Then I thought about crippling you and leaving you for
your associates to find.  A middle-management trouble
shooter like you is a liability if he's too disabled to
do the job.  How's your Early Retirement Program?  Oh,
well, I'm sure they'd find some sort of experiment to
perform on you, too.  All for the good of the Project,
you know.  Waste not, want not."

The color that had been returning to his face drained
right out again.  He actually began to be frightened.

"Tempting as it was, I had to give that one up.  You
have access to medical science far in advance of what's
available to me.  There was no way to know what they
could or couldn't fix.  Too bad, I liked that option.
Poetic justice appeals to me."

She shook her head.  "No, the KISS rule applies.  Keep
It Simple, Stupid.  I never could get that across to
Mulder, either.  Must be a guy thing."

She brought her pistol out where he could see it and
waited for his reaction.  His eyes widened and he
froze again.  Instead of the Sig Sauer he'd expected,
Scully was holding a silenced .22 Ruger, the preferred
tool of assassins around the world.

Dignity could go hang, he decided, and prepared to
say the code phrase that would bring his MIB strike
team into play.  Scully sighted between his eyes and
slowly shook her head.  He subsided and waited for
her next move.

The redhead dragged a chair over to face him and
rested the Ruger on its arm, carefully never letting
her aim waver.  She got comfortable and studied her
captive.

"I'm sure your team can hear us.  Either you bugged
this room or you're wearing a transmitter, or both.
There are three reasons they won't help you.  First,
because I have this gun aimed at your head and they
will have orders to retrieve you alive so they'll
wait to see if I get careless.

"Second, I might let something important slip while
we talk.

"And third -- the real reason -- I'm sure you've
left some of their buddies to rot in various nasty
situations without a second thought.  People like
you never give a shit about their men.  Plenty
more where they came from, right?  This is their
big chance for payback.  All they have to do is
follow standard procedures and let nature take its
course."

He could almost hear the predatory grins out there
in the night.  He'd been on the other end of this
kind of conversation enough times to know he was
fucked.  Nothing to do but wait.  Scully looked
ready to go the distance but she might still
make a little tiny error and that would be all
he'd need...


End of Part One

Part Two of Two


          *****


Without taking her eyes off him, Scully rooted around
with her free hand in the purse hanging from the back
of her chair.  She produced something and tossed it
to him.  He made a clumsy catch and looked at it
blankly.  A sock?  A rolled up sock?  A roll of duct
tape landed in his lap while he was puzzling it out.
He looked a query at her.

"We're going to have a little discussion, you and I.
I will talk and you will listen.  When I'm done you
will talk and I will listen.  Put the sock in your
mouth, secure it with the duct tape and put the rest
of the roll on the bed over there."

He considered his alternatives and obeyed.  She went
on.

"That's Mulder's sock, by the way.  I took it off his
body."  Her eyes glittered with malice and she leaned
closer.  "How does it taste?"

He held his temper.  Wait, wait...

"First off, let me thank you for giving me the most
rewarding four years of my life.  Not that you meant
to do either of us a favor, of course.  Like most of
your decisions, though, it seems to have had a
different effect than you expected.

"You wanted somebody to spy on Mulder, to debunk his
work.  Instead you created your own worst nightmare,
a partnership that had so many different complementary
elements that it became more than just the sum of its
parts."

She got up to pace again, unable to sit still.  He
watched her every move.

"How many differences?  Male and female, light and
dark, rich and poor, intuitive and empirical, liberal
and conservative, Catholic and Jewish...  I could go
on but I'm sure you get the idea.  Serendipity is a
wonderful thing."

She moved around behind him.

"We realized we were under surveillance when we tried
to find that UFO you got from the Iraquis.  It took a
week or so to get over the initial depression and
anger.  Then Mulder saw a way to use it to mess with
your heads.  He never could turn that sort of thing
down."

He couldn't see it with her behind him but the smile
in her voice and the reminiscent tone were obvious.

"We began faking an affair for the tapes we knew you
had to be making.  Remember the diner scene in WHEN
HARRY MET SALLY, when Meg Ryan fakes an orgasm to
embarrass Billy Crystal?  Mulder loved that bit.  He
also loved the fact that you guys must have gone nuts
looking for physical evidence of our 'affair' so you
could use it to shut us down."

He turned to glare at her.  She laughed in his face
and used the barrel of the silenced pistol to turn
his head away from her again.

"One night the frustration was just too much.  There
I was, spending all my time with this gorgeous, funny,
outrageous, aggravating, brilliant caring man and my
sex life had been essentially nonexistent for far too
long.  I snapped.  I damn near raped my partner."

His eyes widened in shock, then narrowed in suspicion.
How much of this could he believe?  He began to see
where this was going and didn't much like it.

A wistful tone crept into her voice for a moment.  "We
spent the next day working out how to have incandescent
sex while leaving no trace.  It's not as difficult as
you'd expect, and we were FBI agents, after all.  And
besides, your guys had been unsuccessful for so long
we figured they weren't looking too hard any more."

The wistfulness was gone now, replaced by pure heat.

"Mulder teased me at first about not being very vocal.
Well, it was one thing to fake it for you bozos but
when it was for-real I got shy.  He just wouldn't let
it alone so I had to get even.  That was the thing
about Mulder, you had to chop him back from time to
time, like kudzu.

"Anyway one day, during a particularly stressful case,
I came back to the motel room wearing a white short
sleeved blouse, a plaid skirt, ankle socks and Mary
Janes.  Even had my hair in pigtails.  His jaw hit the
floor when I asked if this was the Principal's Office.
Then his eyes lit right up.  He was very... energetic
that night, and I was beyond vocal.  He quit teasing
me after that."

God.  He remembered that tape.  His mouth went dry
just thinking about it.  It must have showed on his
face.  The Ruger made that distinctive 'phut' and
agony exploded in his left shoulder.  His scream
never made it past the sock.  She noted his injury
clinically before continuing.

"Our solve rate went even higher after that, once we
stopped wasting so much time fantasizing about it and
actually began fucking like crazed weasels.  Mulder
actually began sleeping at night.  No more nightmares,
for either of us."

She chuckled again.  "We used to wonder if you whacked
off to those tapes.  Mulder was sure you did.  I, on
the other hand, was sure you hadn't been able to get
it up for years."

The fury and pain on his face obviously pleased her
no end.  She smirked.  "Ah.  I see I was right."

He measured the distance between them speculatively.
She waved the silencer at him again: no, no, no...

"Did you ever figure out that we learned signing?
We used a combination of Ameslan, military signals and
special symbols that Mulder invented for our work.
As we moaned and groaned for the tapes we discussed
strategy and planned our moves against you."

Damn.  He knew it.  They'd have to wonder how much,
if any, of what she'd said tonight was true.  There'd
never been any solid proof of the affair, after all.
She'd learned Mulder's lessons well: if you can't
beat 'em, mind-fuck 'em.

"Didn't you ever wonder if we turned in *all* our
evidence so you could destroy or steal it?  Or did we
keep some?  Where did we put it all?  How much did
we manage to accumulate, and on which cases?  Who did
we tell about it?  How many leaders of the Consortium,
as you like to call yourselves, did we backtrack and
identify?  Of those, how many did we turn?"

That was a really nasty little chuckle she had, there.

"Spooky Mulder got his nickname for a reason, you
know.  He also got tired of playing by the rules
toward the end, there.  Don't you think he might have
set up a bit of revenge on a dead-man switch?  Then
there's me, of course.  I'm Irish, you know, and we
have long memories for grudges.  How many time bombs
are out there, ticking away?  How badly do you want
to find out?"

She ripped the duct tape off his face.  It had been
in place long enough to take some skin with it.  He
spat out the sock and snarled an incautious threat
about her mother.

The skin over the agents cheekbones stretched tight
as a drum.  She snapped the Ruger to full extension,
just like on the firing range.  She spaced the shots
so he'd get the full effect, so the pain from each
one would be separate and distinct.

Phut -- right shoulder.  "That's for Samantha."

Phut -- left elbow.  "That's for Mulder's dad."

Phut -- right elbow.  "That's for Melissa."

Phut -- left knee.  "That's for Mulder."

Phut -- right knee.  "And that's for me, motherfucker!"

He shrieked in agony, a long high-pitched wail that
ripped through the night.  He'd never known pain like
this.  Never.  It was suddenly very cold.  He knew
the symptoms of shock and wondered if the strike team
could medevac him in time to do any good.

Things went grey for awhile there until she popped
smelling salts under his nose and brought him back to
the horrible pain.  There was no pity in those ice
blue eyes.  She was speaking for the tapes now, he
knew.  Disinformation.  He could see that she knew he
knew.  She didn't hat to say the words out loud, he
heard them just fine: let's see *you* try to prove a
negative for a change, asshole.

Jesus, what a Player she was!  All that time he'd
wasted on Mulder when she'd been right in front of
him all along!

Now she just looked disgusted.  She shook her head
wearily and paced away from him to the door, then
back to stand in front of him again.  Her voice was
quiet now, bone tired.

"Dad was right about you guys.  You're all the same,
you Spec Ops idiots.  I can see it in your eyes.  You
think this is a new game with a new player.  Listen
carefully, now.  I.  Do.  Not.  Play.  Games.  This
is real life, my life, and I'm tired of having you
in it."

She looked away from him and spoke to empty air.
"You might as well join us, guys."

The door opened immediately to admit six men dressed
in black.  They were hung about with interesting bits
of hardware and none of them made a sound.

"Sorry about the mess.  My temper is a bit short lately."

A tall, rangy black man nodded courteously.  "You were
provoked, Agent Scully.  We heard it all."

Scully took a deep breath and blew out a short sigh.

"Look, let's be real clear about this.  I'm going home
for a bath and a good night's sleep in my own bed.  Then
I want to live out my remaining time in peace.  I'm not
sure yet what I'll be doing but I don't want my family
bothered.  If I even *suspect* any of your people are
within five miles of me or mine there will be a massive
data dump to interested parties.  Your bosses' life
spans will become shorter than mine.  Are we clear?"

The man nodded.  "Crystal."

She put the Ruger back in her bag, paused just long
enough to spit carefully in the Smoker's face, and left.

The six men of the strike force contemplated the man on
the floor.  None of them said a word, none of them
stooped to check his wounds.  Their leader was as
expressionless as ever but there was just the hint of a
smile in his eyes as he produced a secured satellite
phone and called for instructions.


THE END