In Absentia I - Missing Time by QofMush Date: Sun, 24 May 98 15:23:06 CDT Disclaimer: Most of the characters included within belong to the Fox Network, the creative people over at 1013, Chris Carter, David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson. No infringement is intended. Classification: MSR Rating: PG Time line: Mid Season Five Archive: Anywhere, as long as my name stays attached. Feedback: Wouldn't miss it for the world - QofMush@aol.com Summary: Does absence make the heart grow fonder or smarter? Acknowledgements: As with everything I write, this wouldn't see the light of day without Sherrie and Jill. Words cannot express how much you both help me. Dedication: This one is for the Screamers, especially jeni. Thanks for all the hand-holding, support and laughs. Special mention goes to Amanda, who made In Absentia something of a crusade. ********************** I miss it. I miss them. I miss him. I don't remember much of my life before I joined the FBI; distant memories of childhood birthday parties, my college sweetheart and all-nighters in med school swarm together. Truth is, I don't know if I *had* much of a life before I joined the FBI. At least not one I really wanted - or enjoyed. I do remember teaching at Quantico, and liking it. At the time, I wasn't aware that anything else exsisted. I'd come from academia, it only seemed logical that I stay there. Teaching other curious souls to look to the evidence for the answers was a thrilling challenge. A dead body, while to many is repulsive, is a font of information. One that I never tired of exploring. Young minds, eager to learn and do-good, soaked up my lectures with interest. (Or so I convinced myself.) I vividly remember the X-Files. I can recite practically chapter and verse every case we worked on together. I never thought I'd say it, but compared to the "earthly" evil that I'm faced with these days, I could use a liver-eating mutant. Of course, I'd never admit he was a mutant - only that he had some kind of genetic disorder. I can see the frustrated head shake now. If I close my eyes, I can almost be back in that office. Disputing theories, getting our stories straight, arguing over paperwork. I miss him. Our partnership ended not with a bang, but a whimper. The new administration was looking to make budget cuts, and looked no further than the basement of the FBI Building. Oh, Skinner fought it. So did Mulder. So did I. But, we were outvoted, and the department was disbanded. It was done quietly; no one ever really paid much attention to us anyway. Skinner came through with promotions for both of us - at separate corners of the country. Mulder said it was part of the conspiracy, until he saw our new assignments and salaries. Truthfully, Mulder's passion for the X-Files had gone into remission about the same time my cancer had. I don't think he was too disappointed. Mulder got to go back to VICAP. As a supervisor. A mentor. Someone to look out for the next wunderkind if he showed up. Not to abuse them as Patterson had, but to shepherd them through the circles of hell. He got to pick and choose which cases he wanted to be personally involved with, and he oversaw the rest. The "Spooky" nickname was revived, but it didn't have the same derogatory tone it used to. People respected him and asked him for help. The solve rate over at VICAP has continued to climb in the year that he's been in charge. Skinner came through for me, too. I'm a regional ASAC. My region? The San Francisco Bay Area. They needed someone with field experience, headquarter experience and a scientific background. Luckily, I have all three. The San Francisco office is not one of the larger ones, but I get called up and down the West Coast for forensic consults. I have four agents under my direct supervision. Two male/female teams. I try not to get too nostalgic. My position now doesn't require that I have a partner. If I go out to the field, I take one of my teams. Otherwise, I'm chained to my desk, solving cases the old-fashioned way. Through science. There's that mental head shake again. I must admit, part of me likes applying science to the mundane instead of to science fiction. I miss him. Our "break up," if you could call it that, was a nonevent. Neither of us is big into emotional scenes. We packed up the office of our personal things; Skinner told Mulder he could keep the files in here, and that we had the only keys. Mulder took down his I Want To Believe Poster and rolled it with such care, I knew it would be the first thing he hung in the new office. Imagine my surprise when I received it in the mail a few weeks later accompanied by a note: "Even a Skeptic wants to believe." I'm looking at it on the wall of my office now. My co-workers give me strange looks, but I don't explain. I miss him. Because the FBI was moving me, I didn't have much to do. One day, movers showed up and packed everything for me. They loaded it onto a truck and shipped it out to San Francisco. I was left with a few suitcases and the need to say goodbye. Mom drove me to the airport. She hugged me and promised me she'd be out to visit as soon as I got settled. Mulder and I said goodbye the night before. He dropped by with a guidebook to the "Unexplained San Francisco" and an accompanying map of the city with certain spots highlighted. We both made the regular noises about keeping in touch, and hugged as friends do. Did I want to drag him into my bedroom and tell him goodbye like they do in the romance novels? You bet I did. I think part of him wanted me to as well. But he's too much of a gentleman to make the first move, and I didn't have enough courage, so we settled for a nice long hug. One of those hugs Mulder specializes in where he makes me feel like nothing is ever going to hurt me again. He gathers me in close, kisses the top of my head, and for one of the few moments in my lifetime, I revel in my petite stature. Silly, yes. But unless you've been hugged by Mulder, you just couldn't understand. We keep in touch as best we can. Phone calls, Emails and the occasional letter. We're both busy people, and we never did talk much outside the office. Careful, neutral conversations about our current cases, how I like San Francisco, how Mulder likes being a part of FBI society again are topics we exhaust without ever once mentioning how much we miss each other. Sometimes it's a painful ache in my gut. I'll see someone walking with *his* walk, and my heart will leap, only to crash when my brain takes over and tells me it couldn't possibly be him. Sometimes it's a warm feeling of remembrance - like when Sandy, one of my agents, offered me sunflower seeds from a huge jar on his desk. I'm sure he had no idea why his ASAC smiled tenderly and said "sure" as if he'd offered her the Hope Diamond. I miss him. I know he misses me. A file was just tossed on my desk. We've just been pulled in on a case that's been haunting the SFPD. There's a serial killer on the loose in San Francisco. He targets unmarried women in their 30s. They don't know how he selects his victims, but he's very clever. He leaves no forensic evidence at the scene, and there's no obvious pattern. The women come from all races, occupations and walks of life. There's no connection. Just as Sandy is telling me that this case has received top priority from DC and that VICAP is sending out a profiler, my phone rings. I answer, and a familiar voice butchers an old sixties folk song in my ear. "If I'm going to San Francisco, do I have to wear flowers in my hair?" ******************************** I miss it. I miss them. I miss her. My entire life has been shaped by one night. One night twenty years ago changed everything for me. I don't remember much from before that night - and almost nothing for years after. Just darkness. I wandered aimlessly through high school, college and my early days at the Bureau. I was smart, gifted, but socially and emotionally retarded. I formed few emotional bonds - those that I did never lasted long. I'm 37 years old and I can count on one hand - on a good day two - the people I call friend. Nice. This has been my choice, and mine alone. My quest, a noble and self-sacrificing one, martyred me in my own eyes. Who had time for friends, lovers, or soulmates when looking for the truth? Once I succeeded in my quest, the pieces would fall into place, and my life would be complete. I was wrong. My quest is over. Samantha is found. She and I did not have the heartwarming reunion I'd always dreamed of, but I take comfort in the fact that she's healthy and seems to have a normal family life. I'm apparently an uncle. She has yet to contact me after that one night, and that saddens me more than I'd like to admit. But, I live by her decision. I have to. I miss her. No, not Samantha. How can I miss someone I barely remember? I miss our childhood. I miss that we never had a chance to grow up together - I never got to tease her about her first date, hit on her girlfriends, or grill her about her prom date. I will never get that back. We will never have that. My ache is for another woman in my life. A woman who has become more important to me than any other, though I'll be damned if I tell her. It would ruin my image. I miss Scully. More than I thought was possible. I let my guard down, and she snuck in. Somewhere between that first argument in my office and the first autopsy, I was lost. She became my friend. Of course I didn't recognize that because I wasn't used to having a friend. A true one. One who would stick by me no matter what horrors, what tests and what sometimes downright inexcusable behavior I would subject her to. Our time together was too short. The people who run our government these days decided that the country's tax dollars might be better served solving earthly crimes. Part of me agrees with them. There is evil out there, and if Scully and I are better served protecting innocent people from that evil, then maybe we should pack up the X-Files and go our separate ways. Which is what we did. I'm happy for Scully. She's finally getting the recognition she deserves. Unfortunately, she had to move to San Francisco to get it. It's probably better for her in the long run. Wouldn't want her tarred with the "Spooky" brush too long. She'd never mention it, but she was on a great career track before she ran into the speedbump called Fox Mulder. In one fell swoop, I stopped her career path, got her abducted, killed her sister and gave her cancer. Ouch. Self-flagellation, Mulder-style. I'll never forget the night she found out her cancer had gone into remission. Without a doubt, it was the happiest moment of my sad life. Never in the months preceding had she once blamed me for her illness. I did enough of that for both of us. Just as I was the first person she told of her illness, I was the first person to learn of her recovery. She humbled me yet again. I miss her. When we packed up the X-File office, I threw out a lot of my old pictures. Although Skinner told us we could keep the files here, I still wanted to clean out some of the memories. Imagine my surprise when I received a framed picture of the fluke monster in the interoffice mail. No note. She thinks she's funny. It's hanging on my wall. I miss her. Saying goodbye to Scully that last night was one of the hardest things I've ever done. I dropped by with a silly going away gift and couldn't stay. Almost everything had been organized for the movers the next day, and I just couldn't be in there for too long. We made small talk and wished each other luck and I wanted to kiss her so badly I could taste it. Is that cliche? Too bad. My intuition told me I would hardly be satisfied with one kiss, and I didn't want to relive a single kiss for the rest of my life. Fool. I settled for a bone-crushing hug. Not a replacement for the big kiss, but it had to do. The kind where I try to communicate that a man whose never "been there" for anyone will "be there" for her. Whenever I get to hold Scully, I am dumbfounded to rediscover how soft a woman of steel feels. And, how small. She'd really hurt me if she knew I thought that. I'll keep that one to myself. I make up any excuse these days to call her. I ask her about silly forensic things that I know she knows I know, but she tolerates me. She indulges me because I think she misses me too. I ask her how the weather is out there, I fill her in on headquarter gossip, and I tease her about Frohike pining away for her. The last part isn't hard, I just change the name to protect my true identity. I miss her. I have no explanations for when or how it hits me. It just does. Sometimes I'll see her signature on a report, and I'll be momentarily lost tracing it with my fingers. What a loser. I recently reread Moby Dick. Just because I felt like it. I must admit that I enjoy being back at VICAP. The work is still incredibly taxing and difficult, but I have more leeway now. Having lived through it myself, I can tell when those agents who work for me are on the edge and I cut them some slack. I'd like to think I'm a good boss. I don't get too involved in active profiling anymore; I'm there to put the final piece in the puzzle when I'm asked. Every once in a while a case will catch my eye and I'll jump in headfirst like I used to. My assistant, Katrina, brought in a file this morning. We'd been given the word that this case was to get top priority. I read the words "serial killer"..."women"....and "San Francisco." When opportunity knocks... I picked up the phone and dialed the familiar number. "Scully." Authors Notes: Okay, now you know where we're going, right? Wrong. When this first began, it was merely a twinset of vignettes I used to play around with POV. An exercise in determining who spoke loudest to me. Somewhere along the way, I let others read this, and through much wheedling and convincing, they told me I was on to something and that I should expand this. So, here we go. Hang on.