SUMMARY: Mulder has his Smoking Man, but what about Scully?  We've come 
a long way, baby....  NC-17, Scully/f, X-Files/Pretender crossover.  

DISCLAIMERS: Dana Scully, Fox Mulder, Walter Skinner, and Alex Krycek 
are creations of Chris Carter, and *The X-Files* is produced and owned 
by 1013 Productions in association with Fox Studios.  Miss Parker, 
Sydney, Broots, and Jarrod are creations of Steven Long Mitchell and 
Craig Van Sickle, and *The Pretender* is produced and owned by MTM 
Productions in association with NBC Studios.  No copyright infringement 
is intended, as this is a not-for-profit work of fanfiction.  *Whew...*

CAVEAT: In spite of the rather silly title, which just sprang into my 
mind and set up camp there, this is a fairly angsty piece containing 
mild bondage and dominance, and heavy Mulder/Scully tension, as well as 
Scully using naughty language and generally behaving unprofessionally, 
not to mention Mulder telling bad jokes and generally behaving 
insensitively.  It also contains Mulder/Scully phone conversations, 
because I wrote it, and they seem to happen in all my stories -- too 
much "War of the Coprophages" in my formative years, I think.  
Time-wise, it takes place shortly after "Bad Blood" and before "Patient 
X."  It *is* part of the same reality as the rest of my slash.  Your 
enjoyment of the story will doubtless increase if you're familiar with 
The Pretender, but I think even non-viewers will be able to follow it 
easily.

DEDICATION: To the Gillian Anderson Estrogen Brigade and the Order of 
the Blessed Saint Scully the Enigmatic, for not being afraid to stand up 
for the Second Lead....

ARCHIVE: DSSA

FEED ME: hth29@hotmail.com

                       Thank You For Not Smoking
                              by HTH

"Wh- Hmph? H-hello?"  Scully reversed the cordless phone so that she was 
speaking into the correct end.  Rolling over, she tipped back her alarm 
clock so that she could read the display.  Six thirty-six in the 
morning.  Must be Mulder.

     "Scully!  I knew you'd be worried, so I called to let you know that 
my red-eye landed sweet and soft in Mexico City.  I'm A-OK, I've got my 
luggage, and I'm in an Aztec mood.  I'm good to go.  You going into the 
office?"

     Scully flung one arm over her face, resisting the urge to say, *No, 
I worry when *I* fly, Mulder; you flying is not a problem for me.*  "Of 
course.  It's Wednesday."  My God, there was light coming in the window.  
The sun apparently did *not* rise at 6:59, immediately before her alarm 
went off.

     "You sound like shit, Scully."

     The sound of her neck creaking as she sat up in bed bothered her a 
bit more than the frog in her throat.  *Thirty-four, Dana.  The body's 
beginning to think labor rights, hazard pay, benefits.  Next come the 
slow-downs, then the strikes.*  "A little head cold, I think."

     "True story -- an X-File from the pre-Scully era.  A man from 
Pasadena calls me and says he answered his front door, and what does he 
find but -- no shit -- a six-foot cockroach, which proceeds to beat the 
living fuck out of this poor bastard and scuttles off."

     "Sell it to someone else, Mulder."

     "True story!  He drags himself inside and calls an ambulance.  Of 
course, he's telling me all this days later, and this is before you, so 
I get the name of his attending physician in Pasadena, and just as a 
jumping-off point, I ask him, you know, What did they say in the ER when 
you told them what happened?  Guy says, Oh, they didn't seem that 
concerned.  Just said there was a bad bug going around."

     Scully sighed.  Fox Mulder, the lunatic angel of shaggy dog 
stories.  "Mulder, I have to get ready for work."

     "I thought you were going to take some time off?"

     "I'm taking Friday.  Today is Wednesday.  They said *you* were 
experiencing stress episodes, not me."  Scully knew she sounded smug, 
but -- hmm, well, they'd discussed phone calls before seven a.m. before; 
Mulder was a morning, noon, and night person, but she needed the 
occasional eight hours.

     "Oh, gimme a break, Scully!  You *know* they were vam--"

     "Mulder, I'm getting ready for work now."

     "Are you still...upset?  Over that thing we -- we talked about 
during the holidays?"

     *Slow down, Mulder; I don't take these conversational corners like 
I used to.  Hmph.  From the six-foot cockroach to the six-foot rat.*  
"We agreed we wouldn't discuss it anymore."  Scully padded into the 
bathroom, turned on a light, and immediately regretted the necessity.  
Someday, she was going to master the skill of applying makeup in the 
dark, and she would never need to face her first-thing-in-the-morning 
reflection in the bathroom mirror again.  Scully turned on the tap and 
dangled her fingers under the water, waiting for it to warm.  "And I'm 
not upset.  It's just early."

     "You know it's over.  It was a mistake, and it won't happen again."

     "It never should have *happened* at all," she rapped out, and 
regretted that, too.  This was exactly why she hadn't wanted him to 
bring it up; Scully was in no way impartial, and yet she didn't want to 
be pushed into passing judgement on what was, after all, Mulder's 
personal life.  Alex Krycek possessed by unknown lifeforms was business, 
X-Files business, Agent Scully's business.  Alex Krycek naked in 
Mulder's apartment was *Mulder's* business.  No one paid her to have an 
opinion on that.

     Although she did have an opinion.  But that was neither here nor 
there.  Why couldn't he just *shut up* about it, anyway?  Why bring it 
up now, when she was sleepy and vulnerable and hadn't even brushed her 
hair yet?

     He had taken offense; she could hear the injury in his voice.  "I 
didn't have to tell you about it, you know."

     *Oh, then why the *hell* did you?*  "I have to go."

     "Whatever.  See you Monday."

     "See you Monday."

     With one ruthless twist, Scully pulled her hair away from her face 
and secured it with a cheap plastic clip.  In high school, this and a 
coat of mascara would have seemed sufficient preparation to go almost 
anywhere.  She might even have worn this t-shirt, an oversized Les Miz 
shirt with the waif peeling and flaking off the front.  In those days, 
she'd required less costuming.  A less elaborate screen against the 
world.

     You couldn't compare, though.  In those days, she'd been simply 
herself, all of her selves -- brainy, jaded, sexy, naive, secretive, 
anything and everything she could imagine, sometimes in the same day.  

She had played soccer, been captain of the debate team, driven her 
father to apoplexy each time her speeding tickets nudged up their 
insurance rates.  Made out with a cheerleader named Hayley at the junior 
prom, read every book on anatomy in the library, smoked behind the Fine 
Arts Annex with disaffected drama club students.  Gone to confession 
every week.  Refused to trade in her glasses for contact lenses.  Dyed 
her hair brown once.  Written terrible poetry.  Swiped the X-acto knife 
that her brothers used for their model airplanes and used it to carve a 
fine network of hatches on the pale skin of her inner arm.  Wanted to be 
a surgeon.

     A hundred years ago.  Now it took more effort to be herself.  
Cleanser, facial scrub, moisturizer, two kinds of foundation.  
Professional, elegant, composed.  Year by year, she had shaved away one 
Dana Scully after another, paring down to essentials.  First to go was 
the poetry, then the cigarettes, and eventually soccer and speeding 
tickets and confession.  No longer naive.  No longer jaded.  No longer 
sexy.  Got the contact lenses.  Ditched neurosurgery for forensic 
pathology.  Grew up.

     *This is you, Dana Scully.  Stripped down and sold for parts.*

     She had been ambitious once.  When that was taken from her, when 
her career had been derailed and turned into a heap of twisted, smoking 
metal in a Hoover building sub-basement, she had discovered that the 
work thrilled her for its own sake.  That she was a natural 
investigator.

     She had been a romantic once, a nice Catholic girl saving her 
heart, if not exactly her virginity, for the right Catholic boy, the 
love of her life.  When that was scalded away, when she had fallen hard 
for a manic-depressive parapsychologist with a skewered sense of humor 
and a Christ complex...and realized that she could never love him, any 
more than she could ever love anyone who wasn't him....  Well.  She'd 
learned a lot about herself there.  She'd learned that friendship was a 
sweeter, more sacred pleasure to her than anything she'd fantasized for 
herself back in her romantic days.

     Once, she had been self-satisfied, felt that she, Dana Scully, was 
wiser and more noble than most people, unselfish, skillful, and brave.  
Only when she faced death and became resigned to her own fated end, did 
Scully realize that her life had been an empty tangle of beginnings 
without endings, questions without answers.  It made her humble.  
Smaller, but more real.

     The heteroglossia of self from her past was gone, honed into one 
tight, lithe personality: Scully.  Affirmed, defined, sacrificed to 
every morning in front of this bathroom mirror.  Rebuilt from the 
essentials up, with the clockwork craftsmanship of eyebrow pencil and 
lipliner, concealer and blush.

     Scully opened the drawer under her sink and examined the tools laid 
out as neatly as scalpels.  Such time and patience, morning after 
morning, duplicating herself.  Preventing herself from straying into 
unfamiliar, unsanctioned alternatives, from looking at the world through 
extreme eyes.

     To hell with it.

     She had a surgeon's hands and a detective's eye for pattern and 
design.  She brought the plum of her eyeshadow further up on the inside 
corners. smudged it beneath her lower lashes -- cat's eyes, bruised 
eyes, strange eyes.  All right, so it was a small thrill, hardly a 
rebellion at all.  But it fed a hunger that was beginning to be so much 
a part of Scully that she could barely feel it at all.

     Not one, but three layers of dark eyeliner; Scully feathered it out 
beyond her eyes a bit, the subtle hint of a Cleopatra curlicue.  She 
chose a lipstick she never wore, a bloodtide color, and as Scully smiled 
very slightly at her reflection, she saw something predatory and 
unpredictable in her own familiar features.  Her hand jerked, reaching 
for a tissue to wipe off the lipstick, and only sheer will quieted it.

   When would she have this chance again? A quiet day of paperwork in 
the office, no field assignments, no *Mulder*("Ooh-la-la, Scull-ee!  
*Dig* that Queen of the Damned look.")  A boring, wasted, businesslike 
day.  But Scully could feel her pulse, heavy in her veins, and she felt 
sleek and stark and hungry -- aware of her hunger.  How many times, in 
the hospital, had she regretted the sterility of her life, wished she 
had more time to crack her own existence between her teeth, taste its 
salt and grain?  *Ante up, Scully.  If you're going to regret something 
on your next deathbed, at least have something new to regret.*

                               *

     She played Ella Fitzgerald all the way to the office, sat at 
Mulder's desk, left her shoes on the carpet.  Cross-legged in his chair, 
humming out of tune, going over months' worth of data sent down from 
other departments and then marooned on Mulder's Island.  Penciling the 
case they addressed, putting them aside to be filed -- tedious work, but 
she enjoyed the tedious every once in a while.  Mulder treated follow-up 
work like wolfsbane; once a case was over, he couldn't drop it fast 
enough, always jittery until the next big lead came along.  Sometimes 
she forced him to come in on a Saturday with her and clean out the 
backlog; casual clothes, cartoons on Mulder's portable black-and-white, 
a box of Fig Newtons and a six-pack of Brisk to split between them.  
This time, however, Scully preferred to do it herself.

     Someone knocked on her office door, but entered before she could 
respond.  Well, there wasn't much you could say to the Assistant 
Director if he felt like breezing right in, but she gave Skinner a 
narrow look.  "Where's your partner?"

     *Hm, *good morning* to you, too, sir.  Speaking of stress 
episodes....*  "I believe you required him to take his vacation time.  
Sir."

     Skinner frowned.  "I did.  Goddammit.  Bring her in, let's go," he 
added over his shoulder, and half the FBI tracked into the office that 
Scully had, only moments ago, been enjoying in rare privacy.

     Fine, really only four people in all.  Two wore FBI badges; she 
recognized the younger black agent as Garvey from the Child-Abduction 
and Serial Killers Unit down at Quantico, and a third man was West 
Virginia highway patrol.  There was a freshly-closed wound underneath 
his eye, still swollen, and he was pushing a woman in front of him, a 
woman in handcuffs.  She seemed to be limping, until Scully noticed that 
she was wearing expensive boots -- leather, like everything else she 
wore -- and the high heel had broken off one, unbalancing her severely.

     "Who's this?"

     "Beats the hell out of us," Agent Garvey admitted, tossing a 
document pouch onto Mulder's desk.  "Bitch won't give us anything."

     "Until I see my lawyer, I'm not even giving you the correct time."  
She had a low, throaty voice, but rich with the burgundy tones of a 
cultured upbringing.  Old money.

     The patrolman shoved her into a chair, and the woman spared him one 
glance -- dismissive, yet somehow threatening at the same time, a look 
that clearly said, *I'll get to you later.*  She tossed sleek, dark hair 
back from her face and favored the whole room evenly with a white-hot 
look of tightly-leashed hostility.  "Says her name is Parker," Garvey 
continued.  "We're trying to reach her lawyer now."

     "I don't understand.  Why are you bringing this person to me?"

     Skinner ignored her question completely.  "Can you get your partner 
on the phone?"

     "I think so.  What--"

     "Just tell him I'm pulling some strings to put this in his 
jurisdiction.  I'm running on credit and my sunny smile with CASKU, and 
he damn well better get his ass back to Washington and look into this."

     "Is she a serial killer, sir?"  Scully flattened her voice out, 
hoping that Skinner would catch a goddamn clue and explain this.

     He looked puzzled, but at least he seemed to be looking directly at 
her for once.  *I guess I am on the list, when there's no Mulder nearby 
to fixate on.*  "What? No."

     "Not yet," the woman said, arching a look at the highway patrolman 
that unsettled him visibly.  Scully couldn't quite fault him for that.

     "Get him back here.  McGrath, Garvey, let's pursue this from my 
office; Parker will be fine in custody here for the time being."

     "Wh--? *Sir...*"

     "She's an X-File as of now.  Officer Volk, just turn over the 
arrest reports and feel free to go on home.  Thank you for your help."

     Feeling dazed, Scully took the report.  He leaned closer as he 
handed it over and said, "Keep your eyes on her.  She's a fighter."

     Scully made one last try as Skinner opened the office door, about 
to vanish, along with his retinue, as suddenly as he had appeared.  "She 
was arrested on what charges?"

     "She's a suspect in three kidnappings.  Do you look... different?" 

     On second thought, Scully was just as happy that they were all 
leaving.  "I'll make that call.  I'm sure everything is in the arrest 
report."

     Slowly, watching her unexpected guest warily, Scully reached for 
the phone, picked an outside line, and dialed Mulder; thank Christ for 
satellite technology.  Parker was simply observing, her expression 
granite.  She extended one long leg, her leather jumpsuit creaking 
loudly, then crossed the other leg with it at the ankles.  She looked 
indecently comfortable, for someone with her hands cuffed behind her 
back.

     After so many rings that Scully was about to give up, she got an 
answer.  "Mulder."

     "Yeah, it's me.  I'm holding a prisoner that Skinner's just had 
reassigned to the X-Files.  He has requested your personal attention.  
Here."

     "Skinner said that?  He's the one who told me to go away!  Take my 
vacation time, he said, someplace warm, someplace with no relationship 
to work.  Not Roswell, he said.  Leave the country, he said."

     She was annoyed at Skinner; Scully knew that, but it was so much 
more rewarding to be annoyed at Mulder.  "I'm afraid I can't speak to 
that.  But I'm stuck here with a woman who appears to be from a lost 
episode of *The Avengers,* and I'm not dealing with this by myself.  The 
Assistant Director said quite specifically that she's in *your* 
jurisdiction now, so I suggest that you get on a plane."

     "Fine."

     "Fine."

     "*The Avengers*?" Parker repeated, arching an eyebrow at her as 
Scully hung up the phone with a little too much enthusiasm.

     Scully picked up the arrest report, began to scan down it.  "Unless 
you prefer *Batman.*  Maybe it's my line of work, but I don't see many 
catsuits on a day-to-day basis."  Picked up for trespassing in a -- 
trainyard.  Outside of Perkey, West Virginia.  The name prickled along 
Scully's scalp, and she frowned intensely at the report.  What had 
Skinner seen?  What was the X-File here?  "You want to tell me what you 
were doing in a boxcar in Perkey, West Virginia?"

     "When Sydney gets here, you two can both talk until you choke on 
your own tongues."  She lolled her head from one side to the other, 
loosening her neck.  She seemed almost bored, and Scully had the urge to 
apologize for Mulder's absence.  How inane.

     Something about this woman, though, seemed to demand an apology.  
She was too rangy, too athletic to be kept chained up, and God knew how 
long she'd been in those cuffs -- sorry, sorry.  She sizzled with 
aristocratic outrage; how dare law enforcement fail to treat her with 
due deference?  Sorry.  Being arrested was an inconvenience, a detour, 
and she had business to take care of.  Sorry, we'll find your lawyer, 
we'll get Mulder here as soon as possible, sorry we can't expedite this 
a little.  *I'm sorry,* Scully had the urge to say, *that the world has 
no love for any of us, that people deceive and betray and die, that they 
hurt us, that they leave us.  It's not my fault.  I'm sorry.*

     Strange.  Strange reaction, but this woman was a nuclear warhead of 
diamond, deadly pain, beneath her brazenly insincere serenity.  She 
was...disconcertingly Mulder-like, when Mulder was at his absolute 
lowest, a gun that could go off at any moment, a walking murder-suicide 
in the making.  She even had his beauty -- lank, physical, mummified in 
Paris-runway clothes and an empty, inscrutable expression, with eyes 
like raw and bleeding wounds, and a mouth--

     Enough of that.  Mulder's mouth was a *verboten* topic in the 
orderly salon of Scully's mind, and this woman's mouth--  Well, it 
hadn't been about this woman; she'd been thinking of Mulder.

     Her lipstick was a mod, silvered shade of ice-lilac.  For an 
instant, Scully saw the artful overlay of color, the Gothic bloodstain 
on her own mouth smeared across that pale watercolor....

     Scully turned away.  This was unacceptable.  She was Dana Scully.  
She was not Mulder, and she did not fuck felons.  Mulder did, Mulder 
had-- it did not *matter.*  That was Mulder, and she had nothing to do 
with it, and it had nothing to do with this Parker woman.  Goddamn him.  
Goddamn him, anyway.  *Where's your partner?  Can you get your partner 
on the phone?*  Oh, yes, *sir.*  Shall I reserve you two a room, while 
I'm making calls?  While I'm his fucking receptionist for the day?  
*Scully!  I knew you'd be worried--*  I'm not *worried,* Mulder.  Leave 
me *alone.*

     *I need to tell you.  You deserve to know.*

     Fuck you, fuck you, I don't *deserve* this.

     *...The way I feel about him -- it goes back -- I don't know how 
long.  Since before I knew about your, the, um, your medical, ah...*

     Go to hell.

     *...slept with him...*

     Go to hell, Mulder, you *traitor.*  *Hate* you....

     She was crushing the arrest report in her fingers, seeing nothing 
but red.  Three kidnappings -- where was that in the report, why 
couldn't she find it?  Not *here.*  Just trespassing.  Mother of God, 
Skinner, help me *out* here.  What did you see?  I'm only human.  Not 
*Mulder,* after all.

     The voice behind her was a surprise because unexpected, a shock 
because it caught and fractured, failing to live up to its former glossy 
arrogance.  "Mulder?"

     Scully whirled, eyes wide.  "What did you say?"

     "Agent Mulder...."

     "No, I...what do you want?"

     Parker licked her lip once, then bit at it, as if to negate 
whatever gentleness she might have shown, even toward herself -- perhaps 
especially toward herself.  *Don't analyze, Scully.  That's not your 
job.*  "My bag."  She nodded toward the document pouch on the desk; 
Scully had actually forgotten about it.  "I have cigarettes in it."

     Aha.  Being held in custody by the FBI wasn't getting to her; the 
break in her control had been the addict's unease.  "You said -- Mulder.  
Why?"

     "Aren't you Fox Mulder?"

     What an astounding thought.  "Me?  *No.*  No, I'm-- Agent Scully."
  
     She looked irritated at her own mistake, or maybe at Scully for 
refusing to conform.  "I assumed this was your office.  The sign says--"

     "I know what the sign says.  It *is* my office."  Something else 
she could blame Skinner for.  To hell with the desk; six years in the 
same office, and the Federal Bureau of Investigations couldn't tack a 
brass plate to the door?  Fox Mulder, Special Agent.

     Fox.  A relatively androgynous name.  It was reasonable that she 
would assume....  It made Scully think of that Pam Grier movie, what was 
it?  *Foxy Brown.*  You'd have to be the right kind of woman, to pull 
off a name like Fox.  Tall, with Spanish eyes, wavy hair, a Julia 
Roberts sort of smile.  You'd have to have unshakeable cool, be more Pam 
Grier and less...Dana Scully.  To make *Fox* work on a woman.

     "My cigarettes?"  Arrogant again, imperious.

     "I'm sorry.  I'm afraid you can't smoke in the Hoover building."  
Shouldn't that be obvious, in 1998?  You couldn't smoke in McDonald's 
anymore, let alone a federal facility.

     "Serial killing begins to look good."

     Scully was more amazed than offended.  "Is that a *threat*?"

     "Do you find it threatening?"

     "*No.*"

     "Well, then."

     The document pouch was leather as well; it looked hand-tooled, with 
a silver buckle as its clasp.  Scully picked it up gently, enjoying the 
texture.  It was monogrammed with an *MP.*  "What does *M* stand for?"  
She hadn't really meant to get into a conversation here, but...it was 
odd, sitting in dead silence with a complete stranger.

     "*Miss,*" she said coldly.

     Unwittingly, *Miss* Parker had punched a big, flashing red button 
in Dana Scully's psyche.  A moment ago, Scully couldn't have cared less 
what her name was.  Now it was something being concealed, deliberately 
concealed from her specifically, and Scully knew that *MP* would drive 
her slowly insane until something else even more mysterious came along.  
God *damn* it.  "Madeleine," Scully grumbled under her breath as she 
opened the pouch.  "Miriam.  Monica.  Meredith.  Meredith, that's nice.  
Not a Melanie, not a Molly, not a Margaret.  Marie.  No.  Maya."  She 
happened to glance toward Miss Parker, who was eyeing her suspiciously.  
Scully gave her a bland, innocent smile.  *M* for Michelle, *M* for 
Moira.  Meredith was still a pretty name.  *M* for Emma Peel....  Scully 
steeled, trying to force the obsessive throb of names out of her head.  
Stop stop *Marta Miranda* stop.  *Stop.*

     Three file folders inside the bag.  Joanna Carroll -- Michael 
Eisenbath -- Jasen Morisaki.  Scully flipped them each open in turn; now 
*this* was more interesting than Miss Parker's name.  Medical records.  
IQ and aptitude test scores.  Report cards.  Medical records on family 
members.  Joanna Carroll, born 1989.  Michael Eisenbath, 1985.  Jasen 
Morisaki, 1991.  Scully picked up the phone and placed a call to CASKU 
to have them fax over whatever missing persons reports they had on those 
three names -- to AD Skinner's office.  It would give her an excuse to 
go up there and take one more stab at getting information from Skinner.  
For the first time that day, she really wished Mulder were here; *he'd* 
have no trouble getting the AD to part with his information.  Scully 
wouldn't be surprised if Skinner confessed to the Jack the Ripper 
killings, if he thought it would advance Mulder's career.  *Ah, ah.  
Catty, Scully.  Very catty.  You should be *thrilled* that Mulder's 
found a friend.  Or whatever.*

     Prudently, she went back to the files before this line of thought 
could take on a life of its own.  An IQ of 260?  "Jasen Morisaki is a 
bright boy."  Eisenbath -- 290.  Carroll -- 275.  "These are all bright 
children."

     "I've never met them."

     "Then why were you carrying files on them?"

     She seemed about to deflect the question with another remark about 
her lawyer, but then she paused.  "It was a set-up.  I'm just not sure 
who was being set up."

     "Can you explain that?"

     "Can I have a cigarette?"

     The pack was indeed right here in the bag, along with a lighter and 
four rolled-up fifty-dollar bills.  "You can wait.  It's not good for 
you anyway."

     "Who are you, my doctor?"

     "Well, not yours, per se," Scully answered mildly.  Miss Parker 
rolled her eyes.

     There was something surreal about going back to work as though 
nothing unusual had happened this morning, but...she had started this 
back paperwork, and Scully hated leaving a task half-finished.  Given an 
hour or two, Skinner would surely be finished with the CASKU people; she 
could go upstairs and make another bid for his attention.  By then maybe 
this AWOL lawyer Sydney would surface, and the case could move forward a 
square or two.

     She could feel Miss Parker watching her work.  Scully tried not to 
let it get to her; what else was the woman going to look at, after all?  
There was a muted thump thump thump jsut on the edge of Scully's hearing 
-- Miss Parker's intact heel picking out an irregular but repetitive 
pattern on the carpet, like a trick metronome.  Work lasted about 
fifteen minutes, until Scully's sanity broke cleanly in half.  Her head 
shot up, fixing Miss Parker with a firing-squad look.  "What the hell is 
your name?"

     Miss Parker smiled for the first time -- more ironic than amused, 
but definitely a smile.  She let her dark eyes widen, tipped her head 
down and to the side, shifted in her seat to set off her body, a long, 
unraveled ribbon of leather and sinewy muscle, dropped carelessly after 
the Christmas presents had all been unwrapped.  "What would you like it 
to be?" she sing-songed, her voice just one grade off from its former 
throatiness, round with breath.

     In spite of herself, Scully grinned.  Well, Catwoman had a sense of 
humor, anyway.  She looked bored as hell, very much like a cat who, 
accustomed to mousing for herself, has suddenly been put on a strict 
diet of Nine Lives.  Scully could sympathize; she'd been on Nine Lives 
all her life, and that wasn't really a picnic either.  Especially when 
everyone else assumed she was...*domesticated.*  What was with Skinner, 
anyway?  Mulder was on vacation; why did he have to come back?  Why was 
this so fantastic a case that Scully couldn't check into it on her own?  
Sure, she probably couldn't come up with Mulder's working theory.  But 
Mulder's original working theory was very rarely right.  Coming at it 
from a different angle, it wasn't so impossible that Scully could have 
an insight of her own, was it?  Or did they all really think she was 
that...pedestrian a thinker?  So well-fed and tame and complacent that 
she needed *Mulder* to be the brilliant one, the creative one.  Well, 
she'd let it go on long enough; delegated so much of the creative work 
to Mulder, simply because it was expected, that now Scully was *bored,* 
too.  She was bored, and she worked in the X-Files; something was 
definitely amiss with that scenario.

     *Okay, *Miss* Parker.  You want to play?  I can play.*

     Slowly, knowing that slowness would hold her attention better, 
Scully stood up and moved around the desk to perch on the corner nearest 
Miss Parker.  "I don't know."  She picked up the unopened box of 
cigarettes and pounded them against the heel of her hand.  Scully did 
not look at them, but it was all too obvious that Miss Parker was 
looking.  "Meredith is a good name.  What about Melody?  Morgan?  You 
look like a Monica."  She opened the pack and, unhurried, drew out one 
cigarette.  She set it between her first two fingers, shifting them back 
and forth slightly so that the end of the cigarette tapped against her 
thumb, lightly and quickly.

     With the air of a woman making a tremendous concession with as much 
grace as she could possibly manage, Miss Parker said, "All right.  You 
can have one too."

     "Thank you.  But I don't smoke."

     Miss Parker raised an eyebrow.  "You handle them very well.  Is it 
a natural aptitude?  Or maybe you're just good with phallic symbols.  
No....  No, I don't think that's it."

     Her first instinct was denial -- *I don't know what you mean.*  But 
she did know.  She just didn't know why....  Was Miss Parker (odd how 
naturally that name adhered to this woman) -- reading something off of 
Scully, picking up on -- on some half-conscious...?  *Scully, listen to 
yourself.  You don't set off *anyone's* gaydar, never have.  You lived 
with Clarice for a *year,* and everyone knew she was gay; they still 
made all the wrong assumptions about you.*

     "Well," she began, "I -- did.  Smoke.  But I quit years ago."  
Mostly quit.  Except when she was at the very end of her rope, exhausted 
and scared, and everyone in her life, the good guys and the bad, was 
scrutinizing her, watching for the tiniest tic, one hairline fracture in 
her strength, control, reason, judgement, sobriety -- her *Scullyness,* 
Mulder called it, as if she held the patent on moderation.  In this 
office, she supposed she did.  On those days, when she could feel 
herself bottoming out, Scully would buy cigarettes at the nearest 
convenience store and drive somewhere outside of town, somewhere she 
could park and smoke the whole pack, one after another, letting her 
chains burn to ash and be discarded.

     It sounded really good right now, actually.  She hadn't had a 
cigarette in ages -- not since that debacle in New Hampshire, when 
Mulder had been such an absolute bitch to live with, and hellbent on 
laying a sexual veneer over everything he did, *sniffing* her, for God's 
sake, then getting half-blitzed in the middle of a case and 
tongue-fucking with that bleach-blonde detective.  Not that it wasn't 
Mulder's right to -- with whomever -- well, not *whomever* -- she'd been 
so *irritating,* not Alex Krycek, but definitely not good enough for 
Mulder -- but drinking was inappropriate -- *sniffing Scully* was 
inappropriate -- blaming it all retroactively on Jupiter aligning with 
Mars or *whatever* was just insulting.

     Before she realized it, Scully was lighting the cigarette.

     "Okay.  What do you want to know?  I'm a Capricorn.  I like sushi, 
Patti Smith, and *Buffy the Vampire Slayer.*  I've never been abducted 
by aliens, and I wanted to be a ballerina when I grew up."  There was 
something mocking in the narrative, but Scully couldn't tell if Miss 
Parker was bantering with her, or punishing herself for this display of 
neediness.  Under the circumstances, though, Scully decided to table the 
name issue.

     "Why do you mention aliens?"

     "Are you sure this is your office?  You have had a chance to look 
around, right?"

     Point taken.  Scully exhaled another thin line of smoke; no drug 
could ever carry with it this reckless taste for Scully.  Tobacco was 
the ultimate in mindless brutality, more addictive than cocaine, with no 
rewarding side-effects, no mind-altering properties.  It didn't do a 
damn thing for you, but God help you if you didn't have it.  There was 
nothing in the world less logical, which explained Scully's fascination 
with it.  Alcohol might actually dull the pain, hallucinogens might give 
her something new to think about, sleeping pills would make some sense.  
Only a pack of cigarettes was truly, dangerously, deliciously futile.  
And, Scully thought with rare philosophy, like irrational behavior, 
smoking was universally deplored, and pervasively practiced.

     "I ask because I think you were brought here...for some reason 
associated with alien abductions.  My partner studies them, and there's 
a -- connection here.  To that trainyard in Perkey.  I don't know what 
it all means, but I thought you might."

     "If those children were abducted, Agent Scully, I assure you it 
wasn't by aliens."

     "By whom?"  She was almost moved to pity Miss Parker, who was still 
fixed with animal focus on Scully smoking her cigarette.  "You said this 
was a set-up."

     "The police were tipped to my location.  But...it might have been 
someone else they were expecting."

     Scully tipped over the brass nameplate on Mulder's desk and used 
the back of it for an ashtray.  "Where did you get those files?"

     "An...acquaintance sent them to me.  Don't bother to ask me his 
name.  He goes by Jarrod.  At least, I thought they came from Jarrod.  
Now I'm not so sure.  This may have been false information, meant to 
lead me into this.  Or...it may have been leaked to Jarrod, to trap him.  
It would be so *Jarrod* to screw someone's plan totally by accident, 
because he gave away his tips."

     "You think you're being framed for kidnapping?  There's no real 
evidence linking you to--"

     "Not yet," Miss Parker said darkly.  "And if this was a trap for 
Jarrod, then the whole thing's blown to hell by now.  But if it was 
about me all along...then you'll get your evidence.  They'll make sure 
of that."

     Wonderful.  A conspiracy theory.  "They?"

     "*They,*" Miss Parker said with finality.  "Margot."

     "We call them -- Margot?"

     "We call *me* Margot.  That's my name."

     She seemed extremely mellow about this revelation, for someone who 
had refused to answer the question so many times.  "Really?"

     "As far as you know."
 
     Scully tapped off another edge of ash.  "I prefer Meredith."

     "And I preferred Fox.  Life is cruel."

     "Now, now," Scully said dryly.  "We learned in my cancer support 
group that viewing yourself as a victim is self-defeating."

     "Yeah?  Well, my doctor says that ignoring the fact that your ulcer 
has started to bleed is fucking stupid.  Which is a metaphor, as far as 
I'm concerned."  She paused.  "You have cancer?"

     "It's in remission."  Miss Parker nodded.  For one disorienting 
moment, they could have been old college friends, meeting for coffee to 
catch up on the last decade or so.  Scully put out the last of the 
cigarette, and suddenly there was nothing friendly about the look Miss 
Parker was giving her.  "You have an ulcer?"

     "I prefer to think of it as a pet.  It feeds itself, which is 
nice."

     Scully heard herself chuckling.  She liked this woman's... 
unpredictability, liked it that she wasn't following any social script.  
It was hard to imagine anyone else lounging handcuffed in the FBI 
headquarters, giving off this particular mishmash of hostility, 
flirtation, humor, and shrewdness.  Miss Parker -- Margot? Scully 
doubted it somehow -- was an utterly renegade personality, from catsuit 
to conspiracy to the pet ulcer and the *Miss* that Scully was beginning 
to believe *was* her given name.  Scully lit another cigarette, took a 
drag on it, and held it in her fingers.  "Come on."

     Miss Parker sprang up, and vainly tried to look blase as she 
staggered over to the desk on her one high heel.  It was a strangely 
intimate act, holding the cigarette delicately as Miss Parker put her 
lips around it, pulling the carcinogens down into her body with her eyes 
closed in feral pleasure.  When her dark eyes flickered reluctantly open 
and she drew away, giving in to the oxygen addiction much more 
grudgingly than she had to the nicotine, Scully found herself unwilling 
to break their eye contact.  What amazing eyes -- what a rare person 
they indicated.  Brutal, vulnerable, a cynic, a seeker, the vain and 
selfish stepsister from a fairytale crossbred with Mary Magdelene on the 
day between the crucifixion and the resurrection.  A soul inclined to 
large vices and immortal loyalties, petty cruelties and mute generosity.  
She was like an elaborate Russian novel, the kind that kept Scully awake 
nights, glued to it in breathless suspense even on the fourth reading.  
Scully was dying to know what happened next....

     It began as a kiss in the hollow of Scully's collarbone, and became 
a bite, low on her throat.  Scully hissed, but not in pain.  She let her 
head drop back, and Miss Parker moved with lips and tongue up the bared 
throat; Scully took one last smoke and put out the cigarette.  "*Bitch.*  
That was *mine.*"

     "No smoking in the Hoover building."  It was a risk, but it paid 
off.  Miss Parker bit her again, just below her earlobe, and though it 
was hard enough to hurt, even to distract Scully a bit, it was followed 
by the slow glide of a tongue up the edge of her ear.  Scully braced her 
hands behind her on the desk, the pleasure slowly reshaping her into a 
taut bow of awareness.

     Conscience knocked incessantly behind Scully's eyelids.  *Can you 
say, *unethical*?  If anyone were to see this -- you wouldn't have this 
career, or any other career -- and anyway, you don't *know* this woman 
-- you don't know that she isn't a kidnapper, or worse -- you *do* know 
that she's a prisoner in your custody -- this isn't you, Dana, you don't 
do this.*

     She wondered...God, she didn't want to, did *not* want to go 
here...but she couldn't help wondering, was this how Mulder had felt?  
Cut loose from reality, from law and truth and knowledge, arrowing 
upward into some sky-bright wilderness where nothing was certain except 
that this person, this dark and faithless, *beautiful* person, made him 
-- made her -- feel -- new.

     *...I can't explain it, Scully.  It's how I feel -- with him -- I 
can't explain it, it defies....  Would you just *listen*?  I'm trying to 
tell you something....*

     *No.  No, I won't listen.  I don't want to hear it, Mulder.  Mulder 
-- stop.  I said *be still,* Mulder.  This is over.  We're finished with 
this....*

     *...Why won't you...*

     *Because it's not right!*

     *Don't you think I know that?  It's all different.  When he's 
there.  There are no rules....*

     *There are rules.  If you choose to ignore them, it doesn't mean 
that there are no rules.*

     But maybe, Scully thought, as she laid hesitant hands on Miss 
Parker's arms, let them slide down the butter-soft leather of her 
sleeves, maybe Mulder had a point.  Not that there were *no* rules, 
but...that sometimes this was a rule.  Change, after all, was the 
underlying scientific principle of the universe.  And this was changing 
her.  This was...quantum.

     Their bodies collided lightly, Miss Parker's breasts pressed 
beneath Scully's as she chewed on the back of Scully's neck.  Scully's 
fingers sank into her arms, just above the elbow.  "Not..."  Scully 
pulled in her breath hard, felt her torso scrape along Miss Parker's, 
the shirt beneath Scully's suit jacket riding up off her stomach.  "Not 
here.  Too dangerous."

     "Unlock me."  She snapped the chain on her handcuffs with a loud 
chink.

     "Pam Grier wouldn't," Scully mumbled.

     "What?"

     Scully met her eyes, and a small smile arched her lips.  "I 
said...no."

                                    *

AD Walter Skinner was thumbing through paperwork as she talked, but he 
continued to shoot Scully looks over the top of his glasses -- looks 
that straddled the fence between suspicion and simple puzzlement.  "Are 
you sure about this, Agent Scully?"

     Scully reclined slightly in her chair, projecting nothing but 
quiet, conscious calm.  "Sir, we can't be certain of anything yet.  But 
Miss Parker very clearly believes that her life is in danger, that she 
has ties to some sort of conspiracy involving the abduction of children 
they believe to have extraordinary mental faculties.  If she can help us 
identify...."  Scully closed her eyes.  She had seen Mulder handle this 
man a hundred times; she did not have Mulder's... advantages, but she 
had his savvy.  Putting her hand to her hair in a half-hearted gesture, 
Scully opened her eyes and gave him a softly-focused, wistful look, the 
look that Mulder always used to drive home an argument.  *No one but 
*you* can help us, sir.  You will, won't you, sir?*  She leaned in, 
setting her fingers to the edge of his desk.  "Sir, I know we've all 
been down this road before.  But this woman is not Alex Krycek, and 
Blevins won't be responsible for this -- we will.  You and I and Agent 
Mulder."  *Mulder Mulder Mulder.  Abracadabra.*  "But we need to move on 
this, before they know we have her."

     "Do you agree that her life is in danger?"

     "I think that unless she remains in our custody, they can reach 
her.  The last thing I want is another Cardinale."

     Skinner heaved a sigh, a familiar *I expect to regret this* sigh, 
and returned to his paperwork.  "You want to move her again."

     "Neither you nor I believe that Section Chief Blevins was the only 
spy they have in this office, sir."

     "All right.  Where do you plan to hold her?"

     Business accomplished, it was time for one sharp needle of revenge.  
*This is for the plate on the door.  Sir.*  "I've considered that.  I 
think it's best that Miss Parker and I go to Crystal City, sir.  Your 
home."

     His head snapped up so quickly that Scully expected it to bob 
zanily like a sprung jack-in-the-box.  "*What?*"

     "The most paranoid man I know chose it as a temporary hiding place 
for the most wanted man I know.  Frankly, sir, that's recommendation 
enough for me."  Skinner was turning an interesting roseate color; 
Scully could hardly wait to hear him explain how that case was different 
from this one.

     "Agent Scully," he finally said, "my home is not a holding cell for 
felons."

     "Miss Parker is hardly a felon, sir.  She was arrested for 
trespassing, and the evidence for her connection to these kidnappings 
has to be stretched even to be considered circumstantial.  
Fingerprinting has turned up no criminal record.  We don't know anything 
that would suggest her involvement with contract killings or espionage."

     His mouth twitched slightly as he accepted her points scored.  "It 
seems unprofessional."

     "I no longer trust the professionals.  Only you and Mulder."  
*Mulder Mulder Mulder.*  "I trust your committment to finding these men, 
and I suggest this only because I appreciate how important it is to you 
to handle a potential source like this *personally.*"

     Skinner turned such an odd color so quickly that Scully was 
momentarily concerned that she'd given him a stroke.  "Whatever you're 
implying--"

     "Implying?  I'm not sure what you mean, sir."

     "Get her out of here."  It was as much a growl as speech.  "Make 
sure she stays cuffed; I don't trust her.  Call Mulder and tell him to 
meet us there as soon as he lands."  Skinner pitched a keyring at her, 
and Scully caught it in one hand.  "I'll be there by six."

     "Thank you, sir."

                                 *

     Scully buckled her prisoner into the passenger seat.  "What did you 
tell Ward?"  Her voice glinted and spun like a flipping coin; right now 
she was bright, alert, but what goes up must come down, and Scully knew 
this could all come falling to the earth without warning.  There was a 
grisly inevitability, in fact, to the idea that this charged state of 
conspiratorial simpatico would never last.  Or maybe it was just 
Scully's cynicism talking.

     "That you were going to give us a statement about your conspiracy."

     Short, almost inaudible laughter took Miss Parker in its teeth and 
worried at her for a moment.  "You believe that?"

     "I'm sure you can tell us something.  You've already told me--"

     "I didn't tell you shit.  Do you think we're having some sort of... 
cops-and-robbers slumber party here?  You'd like an affadavit out of me 
in a game of Truth or Dare?"

     Scully took a slow breath, reminded herself to be calm.  "I 
consider you a potential witness."

     "No."

     "Even if they framed you for kidnapping?"

     She stared out the passenger window.  "I'll handle it on my own.  
I've played this game with Raines before, and I've always handled it."

     "Raines?"

     Miss Parker glanced over at her, frowning.  "You have a nice ass, 
and I like the redheaded thing, but you're beginning to fucking annoy me 
anyway.  I may not be the Centre's favorite child right now, but I *am* 
still Centre.  We handle our problems internally."

     "*Sorry.*"  After a moment, it wasn't enough.  "Someone brought in 
the FBI to handle you," she reminded Miss Parker.

     Her irritation faded more quickly than Scully anticipated, and she 
quirked something humorless, and related to a smile.  "They would have 
had to.  The Centre wouldn't dare push me beyond another T-board, not 
openly.  You know what would really upset me?  If I find out that 
someone tried to turn the FBI loose on Jarrod.  Jarrod is *my* 
assignment."

     "What's a T-board?"

     "Torture board."  Miss Parker's tone discouraged Scully from even 
speculating about that one.

     At a stoplight, as Scully was wondering what exactly had happened 
in the office, and what had changed since then, her cell rang.  
"Scully."

     "A-agent Scully?"  It was a man's voice, one she didn't recognize.  
"I was given this number -- an Agent -- ah, Director....  Mr. Skinner.  
I'm looking for Miss Parker?"

     *Are you or aren't you?* Scully wanted to ask, but he sounded 
confused enough as it was.  "Who is this?"

     "Can I talk to her?  Can you tell her it's Broots?"

     Was that a name, or something intended to describe the situation, 
some peculiar shadow-government slang for "urgent" or "top secret"?  
"Broots?"

     Miss Parker sat forward.  "Give me the phone."  Traffic being as 
light as it was in the middle of the morning, Scully felt confident 
driving with one hand; with the other, she held the phone for Miss 
Parker.  "Have you found Sydney?  ...  That's the *wrong* answer, 
Broots.  ...  You could tell me he was on a pilgrimage to Tibet and I 
wouldn't cut you any *slack* on this.  I have been fucking well 
*arrested.*  You *find* him.  Cut you some *slack.*  If I have to cut 
you anything, Broots, I promise you that it will scar.  ...  You *find 
him.*  ...  Yeah, either that or you'd better start planting some 
evidence yourself, because you don't ever want me to get out of jail.  
...  Not yet.  Not at all, if I have a chance to work with Sydney on 
this.  ...  You've already *tried.*  Now start doing it."  She leaned 
away, and when Scully pulled back the cell she could hear a dialtone.

     "You must be a joy to work with."

     "Broots is such a tragically small little person."

     "Is he your secretary?"

     Miss Parker shrugged.  "No, he's some computer genius.  We pay him 
good money to find things, but of course now he can't even find Sydney, 
who's usually all too present for anything that makes me look 
ridiculous.  Poor Sydney.  He'll absolutely cry when he finds out I was 
detained by a rent-a-cop in Pussy, West Virginia and he wasn't on the 
scene to smirk."

     "Who's Jarrod?"

     "I don't know."

     Scully had expected any snide, snappish, or defensive answer to 
that question -- anything but *I don't know.*  "What do you mean, you 
don't know?"

     The look Miss Parker gave her was unusually devoid of venom; she 
had become suddenly all business, the consummate company woman.  "I 
mean, I don't know.  I know what he looks like.  But *who* he is....  
He's whoever and whatever he wants to be.  You plan your little 
investigation, if it keeps you busy and happy.  But forget Jarrod.  
You'll only find him if he wants to be found."

     Ever since she had joined the FBI, Scully had met scores, maybe 
hundreds, of men and women who could adopt this kind of remote, 
mechanistic facade as easily as they put on their dark suits in the 
morning.  It was a defense against horrors that no sane person would 
willingly seek out, a studious, cultivated insanity to be used and 
discarded as required.  But somehow on Miss Parker, the look was more 
foreign than familiar to Scully.  It wasn't a wall -- she could feel 
that.  Her glistening, provocative glibness, the black words she fired 
off like semi-automatic rounds, *that* was her facade.  This was Miss 
Parker, and Scully was amazed to realize what a dark, noiseless 
emptyness she contained.  Pain and desire alike were the stone and 
crystal of a vast cavern, deserted except for business, obligation, the 
ceaseless, passionless trading of facts and favors.

     How often had Scully wanted that for herself?  She'd had a 
recurring nightmare, at Quantico, about autopsying herself -- making a 
tidy Y-incision, splitting herself open, prying out the insides.  And it 
had been strangely welcome.  *Exhibit A, Scully.  This is what you 
wanted to be when you grew up -- yourself, only less so.  How does it 
look, now that you're well on your way?*

     "My name is Dana," she said, unsure why it seemed important.

     "Spiffy."

                                *

[end 1 of 2, Thank You for Not Smoking]