TITLE: Dendrite - Chapter Two - You Bet Your Life

NAME: Mik
E-MAIL: ccmcdoc@hotmail.com
CATEGORY: M/Sk
RATING: NC-17. M/Sk. This story contains slash i.e. m/m sex. Not suitable for children, Baptists or Republicans.

SUMMARY: First time M/Sk. Do you need any more information? Well, I guess you do. I know what this story appears to be...but please, please bear with me. It's gonna' be okay. They promised.

ARCHIVE: Only with my permission.
FEEDBACK: Feedback? Well, yes, if you insist.
TIMESPAN/SPOILER WARNING: Okay...hmmm...no specific spoilers for specific eps. Back in the good old days when Skinner was still their boss, nothing had been burnt and no one's best friends had died needlessly for the sake of ratings or to jump sharks.
KEYWORDS: story slash angst Mulder Skinner NC-17
DISCLAIMER: Fox Mulder, Walter Skinner, and all other X-Files characters belong to Chris Carter, Ten-Thirteen Productions and 20^th Century Fox Broadcasting. No copyright infringement is intended and no profit is being made from their use. I personally think Chris Carter, et al, should just give them to me, since they're not using them anymore, and anyway, I treat them much, much better, but there you are.

Author's notes: See Chapter One for assorted notes, credits and ramblings. They will be omitted henceforth to save virtual trees.

Okay, more notes: I don't know what happened. They rushed headlong in this direction. I tried to talk them out of it, but they weren't listening to me.

If you like this, there's more at https://www.squidge.org/3wstop

If you didn't like it, come see me, anyway. Pet the dog.

Dendrite - Chapter Two - You Bet Your Life

by Mik

I like my job. I truly do. I wake in the mornings eager to face the challenges of a new day. I go to bed at night anticipating the morning. I bring home briefcases and boxfuls of work each weekend. I am a man who lives to work, a textbook Type A personality, and I'm proud of it.

There are some challenges I like facing more than others. There are two or three I could happily avoid. I had two of them that morning. One of them was my most intractable agent, the only man I'd pay someone else to take on, and the other was putting him on a plane to the middle of Ohwhyoh, as he called it, for a complete waste of his talents and my time.

I appreciate the value of these 'face times'. It's important for the men and women of this nation who pay our salaries to see us as part of the main, to know we're human beings with hearts and souls and compassion. To know we don't just invade privacy and shoot people. This was an opportunity for the FBI to be seen as civic minded, encouraging and supportive of the nation's youth, a part of the national consciousness and pride.

This particular agent saw it only as a photo op, and a waste of time. He didn't want to be there, and he didn't care who knew. If it hadn't been for his partner and her mystical ability to keep him in line, I doubt I would have gotten him on that plane.

He felt he was being singled out and punished for some embarrassing incident, or for losing his gun/mobile/badge. The truth was far less ignominious. He was a high profile agent. It would look good on his sheet to participate, and it would look good for the Bureau, as well. For, no matter how he was perceived within our walls, outside those walls he could be and often was perceived as a hero.

No one could be less hero-like. Despite his well groomed, by the book appearance, he was as fidgety as a four year old in Sunday School. He shifted and rocked in his chair, rolled his eyes, snorted softly in derision at some of the more fervent phrasing, muttered under his breath about some damned fly, and drummed his fingertips restlessly on his thigh, the tabletop, even the back of his hands. And that was just during the opening remarks. By the third or fourth speaker, I wanted to take him out behind the woodshed for some meaningful hand-to-butt time.

He wasn't the only one I felt like spanking that morning. The new Education Secretary was the most obsequious, toadying politician I had yet to encounter, and that was saying something. Throughout the speeches he would utter ecstatic little sighs of 'oh, yes!' or 'well said!' or 'absolutely!' with the same gushing conviction of a teenaged girl with a crush. Sitting between the Education Secretary and Agent Mulder, I felt I was between matter and anti-matter and about to either implode or go into warp drive.

One way or the other, I was having some smack down time before lunch.

Of course, after lunch, things changed dramatically.

After nipping in the bud what I suspect was a fairly elaborate plan on Agents Mulder and Scully's part to remove themselves from the afternoon's events, no sooner had we been seated after lunch, when I received word of an event that would take precedence over even this vital demonstration of the passion of American youth. There is a specific code we use to indicate bomb threats. Thanks to modern technology, we can now use that code in mobile to mobile text messages, and spread the panic more quickly. I received notification of such a threat via text message. It came in the proper protocol that forced me to lend it credence. And Mulder forced me to share this information by grabbing my arm as I rose from my chair and demanding to know where the hell I thought I was going.

Typical Mulder, with no respect for the chain of authority. He was being inconvenienced and by God he wasn't going to let anyone else get out of it if he couldn't. Irritated by the entire situation, I flashed the face of my mobile at him so that he could see the message.

His fingers relaxed on my arm and he sat back with a faint nod, as if granting me permission to go. I sidled out along the dais, teeth clenched. It wasn't the possibility of a bomb that bothered me, it was Mulder. Mulder has always been a lot more dangerous than a bomb.

I was getting the details, which at that point were sketchy, when Mulder spilled out into the corridor. Like molten electricity, fluid yet crackling with energy, he swirled around me, trying to absorb me and the information at once. I put my hands over my ears and turned my back on him, but he kept moving to stay in my line of sight. He seemed actually excited, but I knew that wasn't really the case. Mulder had dealt with bombs too many times, seen the tragic aftermath. He wasn't excited, he was determined to act.

I folded my mobile and shoved it into my breast pocket. "We're going to have to get all those kids out of the building," I said heavily. "There's going to be panic."

Mulder was screwing up that preposterous lower lip but he relaxed it to say, "They're smart kids." His mouth twisted up again. "Maybe the Education Twerp has some..." he caught my disapproving scowl, "I mean...I'll go get the Education Secretary. He might have some ideas."

I couldn't imagine a single idea that man could have that I'd want to hear, but in this situation politics dictated he outranked me, for the moment, so I nodded. "We don't have much time, though. Mulder," I caught his arm, "be discreet."

Mulder whirled away from me and sprinted toward the door. All I could think at that moment, with hundreds of lives at stake, was that I'd never before noticed Mulder ran like a girl.

I am willing to give Mulder the credit for attempting to attract his attention without attracting any other attention, but the man in question was the sort of politician who couldn't take a dump without issuing a press release first, so there was no way Mulder was going to get him out of the room without everyone realizing something was up. I'm also willing to understand what motivated Mulder to jerk him out into the corridor with less than the appropriate amount of respect for the man's position. I would have wanted to do exactly the same.

Regardless of my personal urges, it was incumbent upon me to intervene. Still, I didn't waste much time succoring his wounded sensibilities. I tried to lay out the facts as we knew them with a measure of calm, but the moment the word bomb passed my lips he exploded. "A bomb? Good God!"

Behind me, Mulder started banging his head against the wall.

*******************************************

For years after, I would question my motives for letting Mulder out of the building that day. I want to believe I let him go out of respect for his deductive reasoning, and his gift for phenomena. But a part of me has long suspected I let him go just to get him out of my way. I was wound up enough and I didn't need his high strung interference. He was convinced that we were sending the children to their doom by sending them toward the buildings on the far side of the quad. He wouldn't wait for the bomb sniffing dogs. Oh, no, he had to go check the buildings himself.

Of course, he had a point. If the terrorists couldn't get into the building we were in, it made sense they would try to get us out of that building. Still, I shouldn't have sent him. And I did. What I didn't do was listen to him when he said not to let anyone out of the building 'til he got back, unless the dogs got there and indicated otherwise.

I didn't have much control over that, however. As I stood there at the doors watching him crossing the field of patchy, dying grass, the doors to the auditorium opened behind me and groups of people started moving toward me. The Education Secretary was shouting, "Get out! Get out! Run! Run!" Behind him, teachers were trying to exhort people to stay calm and move in an orderly fashion. Thus, there was a confused rush toward the door, some people running, some people trying to walk and all of them trying to get out the door.

Outside, a half dozen vans were swerving to the curb, and almost before they rocked to a stop, men in black, heavily padded, with helmets scrambled out, some with guns, some with dogs, some with other search equipment. The containment van pulled up last, pulling the unit built to hold and transport explosives. Watching them, and not the students swarming toward me, I was knocked to one side, and people shoved the doors open and rushed down the steps.

Across the quad I could see Mulder backing up, waving his arms. I couldn't hear what he was trying to say, but I could see he was in danger of being trampled. He got himself braced against a door and was pushing people away. I couldn't hear what he was saying, although I could tell he was yelling, and I think he was flashing his badge with one hand and trying to physically move people with the other. Standing at the top of the stairs, I could see just enough to realize one man in particular was giving him a lot of trouble. I didn't fully understand why Mulder didn't want anyone to open that door, but I understood that Mulder knew why, and that was enough for me. I ran down the steps and grabbed a bullhorn from the hands of one of the bomb squad.

"People, move to the center of the quad," I commanded, "walk, do not run, to the center of the quad. I repeat, for your safety, walk, do not run, to the center of the quad." Behind me, Scully held the stragglers off, forcing them to move to the right and not straight ahead. "I repeat, for your safety, walk, do not run, to the center of the quad."

The crowd was slow to respond but gradually the undulating, screaming mass started to veer away from the building. I was surprised how quickly that many people could move in concert. Within a matter of two or three minutes, all that remained by the door of the auxiliary building were Mulder and the man who had been arguing with him. The man shoved Mulder, hard, slamming him back against the door with enough force that the door opened behind them.

And then it happened.

First there was a crack. Then windows shattered. There was a flash of fire, and another sound, a deep, ominous sound that made the earth tremble under my feet. Then one last sound, eerie, inhuman, horrifying. I dropped the bullhorn and raised my arms over my face instinctively. But I wanted to cover my ears, instead.

And then the dirty gray smoke and ash roiled toward us like the blackest sea. The blast must have deafened me for I heard nothing more; no yelling, no crashing, no glass breaking. When I turned my head I couldn't hear Agent Scully screaming his name as she rushed past me. I caught her shoulders. She fought me, and I didn't hear her pleas or cries.

Somewhere, from the middle of the crowd, a woman fought her way to the perimeter, her mouth working soundlessly, her hands extended to grasp something that no longer existed. Her face was no longer human; her lips were stretched over her face, leaving a gaping hole and her eyes were wide and wild. People in the crowd held her back, and her arms and legs thrashed as if she were having a seizure.

And then the ground stopped shaking, and the rain of dust and glass stopped falling. We stood still, perhaps five hundred people, staring at the blackened rubble where two men had vanished. It took me nearly a full sixty seconds to turn toward the man nearest me, a veteran agent. "We've got a man down. Let's get rescue equipment in here."

His response was to hurl his lunch at my shoes.

Agent Scully, who had stilled for a moment, began to struggle in my arms again and I released her, letting her run up to the scorched grass, before someone else stopped her. I'm not sure what he said to her, my ears were still deadened by the explosion, but she dropped to her knees, her head pitching forward, and her shoulders shook violently.

For the first time in a dozen years, I felt absolutely helpless. I'd sent a man, a good man, a good agent to his death. I was angry. I needed someone to blame. I wanted to invade Canada. I wanted to shoot someone. I wanted to get my hands around the throat of the man responsible for the bomb and squeeze his life out, slowly. I wanted to watch his eyes pop, and his mouth open and close in a soundless, desperate attempt to plead with me. I wanted him to bargain, to confess, and then to die.

I could do none of those things. I turned around, searched the crowds and spotted someone hunched against the stair rails, snuffling into his tie. "You!" I marched to him, and slapped him. Hard. "You created an unnecessary panic. You sent those people out of the building before we had a safe place for them to go. You murdered one of my agents. You could have been responsible for the deaths of hundreds of innocent children." I slapped him again. He just sat there, snuffling into his tie.

Disgusted, I jerked away from him and returned to the grassy area, to find Dana Scully and try to comfort her. I was surprised when she accepted my embrace and sobbed against me. I had never seen Agent Scully lose control before. I'd seen her cry, of course. I've seen nearly every agent in my department weep at some point or another. It's how I know they're still healthy and human. But this was something different. Something I could never have imagined from a woman whose chief career was to open dead people up and determine how they had died. It should have inured her to such tragedy. It hadn't. Her emotion was so raw, her tears were so hot that I felt I'd be scarred by them.

There had always been speculation about Agent Scully and her partner. Smirking remarks in the cafeteria, bad jokes repeated in the men's washroom. I knew he cared for her, but I never sensed that he loved her and I was certain they had never crossed that line between professional relationship and physical intimacy. To be brutally honest, there was a time when I'd suspected that he was involved with one of his male partners. But her tears, so hot and so heavy, made me wonder if I had been wrong all along.

I envied her those tears. It had been a long time since I had had anything or anyone I could care so deeply about. I could think of nothing and no one in my life that I could lose and feel such a profound loss.

I held her, rocked her in my arms, stroked her hair, wondering what memories would be flooding her dreams tonight. Her fingers clenched and unclenched in my shirt. "He can't be dead," she sobbed. "He can't."

It did seem impossible. Agent Mulder was like a cat, he seemed to come out of every situation on his feet. He might be limping and maybe with his fur a bit singed but always upright. I'd seen him escape fires, gunfights, exploding trains, and professional suicide. He had survived them all, and remained undeterred in his quest for The Truth.

I would miss that. He irritated me, he was maddening in his inability to understand working through channels, gauging his battles, using a little political savvy to get the job done. He was impatient, irreverent, and without regard for the dignity of the office … or for me. And yet, when I'd needed someone and had no one to turn to, I'd turned around and he had been there for me, no questions asked. He had revealed his infinite compassion to me. I'd seen him cry when he thought Agent Scully was dying. I wish I'd thought to hold him the way I was holding Agent Scully now.

It seemed like hours, but in reality it might have been less than two minutes when, from the cadre of vehicles, a debriefing team emerged, and began setting up a tent to interview witnesses, and provide medical attention for those who had been cut, received mild burns, or who might be in shock. With no little effort, I managed to convince Agent Scully to visit the tent, if for no other reason than to get a cup of coffee, and assess the needs of others.

I chose to pace the grass, watching as rescue workers scrambled into the wreckage, tossing blackened cinder blocks and melted rebar steel aside in a desperate search to find some trace of the two men. At one point it was evident that someone … some thing had been found for the energy and effort was shifted to one spot, and everyone began digging a little faster.

"He's alive!" someone shouted, and I hurried forward. It was a miracle. How could he have … I stopped when I saw what they found. There was hardly anything of him left. Everything below his rib cage was completely flattened … there were no words then to describe it nor have I looked for any since. He wasn't alive. His body's arching, shuddering and gasping were just the last instructions his brain had sent before shutting down for good.

Still, I thrust my hand between the stunned rescuers and grasped his, holding it as a paramedic rushed up to him. The world weary face of the man beside me blanched a little. He didn't even kneel to look for signs of life. He glanced around, in agitation and hollered to another orange vested man. "Hey, get me one of those black tags, will ya?"

Black tags. I'd been on the scene of enough disasters to know what he meant. With any scene of multiple casualties, the paramedics triage with a packet of color coded tags. These tags would tell other medical personnel how to utilize resources. A red is Immediate. These victims are removed from the area immediately to surrounding hospitals. Yellow is Delayed, for those who can wait a while for treatment. Green is Minor, those patients medical personnel refer to as the walking wounded. But Black...Black is dead or dying...not salvageable, conserve resources.

The paramedic returned with a dreaded black tag. "I can't just leave him here," he explained defensively. "But there's no point in trying to scrape him up to take him to the hospital, either." He affixed it to Mulder's wrist and closed his eyes. But I kept holding Mulder's hand. His hand was warm with blood, his fingers still twitching. But I kept holding his hand. "If I can find a doctor around here to pronounce him, we can bag him here and take him to the morgue."

I knew both Agents Scully and Mulder would understand his callous detachment, but I wanted to smash the bastard's face in. I just knelt there, holding his hand.

At the word 'doctor' I thought for a moment his eyes opened. But they didn't. And I held his hand until someone came to take him away.

End 02