From: claypotato@netscape.net   
      
   IN THE CLEARING (3/4)   
      
   by Rae Lynn (claypotato_AT_netscape.net)   
      
   ________________________   
      
   Reggie was nodding sagely.  "Yeats," he said.  "One of my favorites."   
      
   "I'm glad you enjoyed it," Mulder said shortly.  "Are we done?"   
      
   "Not quite, Mulder, why don't you tell me what happened in Oregon?"   
   Reggie said smoothly, in one breath.  Mulder looked momentarily stunned,   
   as if he'd been blindsided.  Then he smiled.   
      
   "I see.  The poetry, lulling me into a fugue state from which I might   
   reveal my twisted confession.  That was good, that was a new one.  No   
   one's asked me to recite Yeats in twenty years."   
      
   "Do you know any Auden?"   
      
   "I have a photographic memory," Mulder said evenly.  "I know a lot of   
   poetry.  In fact, we could sit here all day and -- "   
      
   "You know a lot of other things, too, don't you, Dr. Mulder?" Reggie   
   asked as he leaned forward, his eyes suddenly piercing.  I glanced   
   uneasily back and forth at the two of them.   
      
   "I know you're not going to get anywhere springing questions on me like   
   you expect me to be taken by surprise and tell you what you want to   
   hear," Mulder said, sounding easily more comfortable than he had since   
   his return.   
      
   "What is it that you think I want to hear, Mulder?" Reggie asked.   
      
   Mulder's shoulders moved in a half shrug.  "That I'm irreversibly   
   haunted by the memory of what happened to me.  That I'm out for revenge   
   for myself...for Scully.  That I'm unhinged and I need to start dealing   
   with it."   
      
   Reggie raised his eyebrows.  "That's what you think I want to hear from   
   you?  Imagine the things I might be afraid of."   
      
   Mulder's eyes narrowed.  "Dr. Graver," he said, "I'm a behavioral   
   psychologist.  I've profiled murderers -- hundreds of them -- profiles   
   that led to their arrests..."   
      
   "I'm aware of your credentials," Reggie responded.  "You were...25, 26?   
     Weren't you?  When you started with the ISU?"   
      
   Mulder nodded as I considered for the first time what that meant.   
   Twenty-six years old, shot straight like a rubber band from the higher   
   academia of Oxford to the ugliness of the ISU.  I hadn't been just   
   trying to flatter him those many years ago when I had told him that   
   there were agents in the Bureau who had been talking about him when he   
   was in the Academy.  I had been one of them.  The word from Quantico   
   back then was that this Mulder kid was brilliant, intuitive, practically   
   empathic with his instinctive grasp of the criminal mind.  There were   
   rumors that Mulder might someday give Bill Patterson a run for his   
   money, or at the very least a solve rate that climbed through the roof   
   as the eerily on-target profiles kept rolling in.  Twenty-six years old.   
     Christ.  Suddenly I had to fight to keep the bile down.  Mulder had   
   been good at his job, so good that when he'd burned out on Patterson's   
   exhaustive and somewhat twisted unit, he was allowed the freedom to   
   pursue his own personal interests within the FBI in exchange for an   
   occasional stint back at VICAP.  Mulder had been so good that the FBI   
   had allowed him the X-Files, and in exchange the X-Files had brought him   
   to the brink of every truth he had ever pursued...and effectively   
   destroyed his life.   
      
   Fate, I thought, had not been kind to Fox Mulder.   
      
   "So you've been doing this for a long time," Reggie observed.  "Have you   
   ever profiled yourself?"   
      
   Mulder gave a short laugh.  "Haven't you?" he asked pointedly.   
      
   "Haven't we all?" Reggie responded vaguely.  "Look, if it makes you feel   
   any better, I'll go first: Obsessive workaholic haunted by the memory of   
   a past tragic event, driven by a savior complex but prone to destructive   
   relationships with loved ones.   
      
   Mulder looked mildly impressed.  "Were you describing me, or yourself?"   
   he said neutrally.   
      
   "You tell me, Mulder."   
      
   Mulder grimaced, obviously starting to feel pissed.  Reggie leaned in   
   further -- as if moving in for the kill, I thought privately.   
      
   "Are you tired of it yet?" he said in a low voice.  "The verbal   
   sparring, the light-hearted little dance we're having?  Because I can go   
   all day, Mulder, and we've barely just scratched the surface.  Now I   
   know you've got to be tired.  And I know you don't feel like talking and   
   probably never will.  What you choose to say here is entirely up to you.   
     But I'm telling you now -- consider this your warning -- that what   
   happened to you will haunt you.  Forever, if you let it."   
      
   Mulder had listened impassively to Reggie speak, and when he finally   
   spoke I could barely hear him.   
      
   "What do you want me to say?  That I have nightmares even when I'm   
   awake?  That losing the past two years of my life may have been more   
   distressing that the trauma I was experiencing before I was gone?  That   
   I'm *angry*?" he spat.  "Do you really want to know?  It's all true.   
   And it turns out it wasn't a nightmare, the dream I've been having for   
   the past twenty-five years of my life, it was real.  And I lived it, and   
   I have to go on living it, whether or not we sit here for another hour   
   while I tell you my feelings."   
      
   By the end of his speech Mulder was breathing hard, but his eyes were   
   dry and filled with a simmering anger, not the broken and hollow grief   
   I'd grown accustomed to over the past week.  Reggie nodded at him   
   encouragingly.   
      
   "You're right, Mulder," he said.  "And I never said there was anything   
   we could do to change that.  I can tell you're a tenacious man.   
   Passionate.  And I can tell you from experience that that's what it takes."   
      
   "To do what?" Mulder said flatly.   
      
   "To do just what you said," Reggie answered, as if he were providing   
   Mulder with the answer.  "To go on living."   
      
   Mulder merely stared at him.  Then, without a word, he got up and walked   
   out of the room.   
      
   "That's it?" I said to Reggie, who was gazing thoughtfully at the door   
   Mulder had just walked through.  "That's your idea of an evaluation?"   
   Reggie looked me over shrewdly.   
      
   "What was it exactly that you thought I could do for him?" he said.   
   "Fix him?  He's not broken, Walt.  You heard him, he knows he probably   
   needs concentrated, intensive therapy and he doesn't want it."  He   
   tilted his head towards me.  "I know you, Walt.  And all I can tell you   
   is that whatever your friend Mulder's got it in his mind to do, I'd say   
   he's going to do it whether or not you have him evaluated, tested or   
   even committed by a hundred doctors.  That man is not kidding around."   
      
   "Tell me something I don't know," I said grimly.  But I couldn't help   
   pressing him further: "He keeps telling me doesn't remember what happened."   
      
   "Maybe he doesn't," Reggie shrugged.  "Maybe he does and he doesn't want   
   to discuss it with you.  You were his boss.  He doesn't need to be   
   coddled by you."   
      
   Even so, I left the room to go find Mulder.  He was leaning over a water   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)