TITLE:  Good Partners 
AUTHOR: Wylfcynne 
E-MAIL ADDRESS: Wylfcynne@aol.com 

DISTRIBUTION: All-XFiles, Crystalship, Ephemeral, 
Further X-Plorations, Gossamer, 
MulderInJeopardy, MulderTorture, Xemplary, XF- 
Digest; XFC, anyone else, please ask; that way I'll 
know where it all goes, so I can visit. 

SPOILERS: Fire 

RATING: PG 

CLASSIFICATION: missing scene, MT-lite, MSR 

SUMMARY: if I say "black silk boxers" you'll know 
what scene this follows... :-) 

DISCLAIMER: They certainly aren't mine; if they 
were, they'd be having more fun, and I wouldn't 
have to save up for a new car! Mulder & Scully 
belong to FOX Networks and 1013; I'm just 
borrowing them for a little fun and games...I 
promise I'll bring them back on time and 
unharmed... and they won't remember a thing... 

FEEDBACK: The Wylf howls at the moon for 
feedback... 

DEDICATION: Overall, all my X Files work is 
dedicated to my writing partner, Ravenwald, without 
whom I would still be doing all this using a ballpoint 
pen, who introduced me to fandom on the 'Net, and 
awakened the Muse, who had been sleeping for a 
VERY long time. 

This piece is for the Sisters Spooky, for mink roses 
and homemade candy, nifty Christmas cards and 
fresh-burned CDs, for grins and giggles and healing 
candlelight...for being the sisters I never had in Real 
Life. 

19990325/20020131 
===================================== 

Scully waited until the door closed behind Inspector 
Greene. She still could not help but feel a certain 
guilty pleasure in the way Mulder had been relaxed 
enough in just his boxers with her, but when Phoebe 
stuck her Sloane Ranger nose into the room, he 
had wrapped the thick terry robe snugly around 
himself. 

(*He was shielding himself from her,*) she realized 
suddenly. The thought made her very happy. But 
then she remembered what he had been saying 
before they had been interrupted. "Mulder?" 

"Yeah?" 

"Tell me about your friend's house burning?" 

He turned to study her, visibly evaluating her 
reasons for asking him that question. "You aren't 
the psychologist on this team, Scully." 

She spread her hands in a disarming gesture. 
"Humor me. Obviously you haven't dealt with it 
well, or you wouldn't have been so disturbed by 
today's fire," she said gently. "Talking about it can't 
hurt, can it?" 

He looked away again, and she saw him wrap his 
arms around himself. 

"Hey." 

He turned, puzzled. 

"Hugs are free," she said softly. "But it takes two 
people." 

He froze. 

Scully walked over to him, slid her arms around him. 
Slowly, cautiously, he put his arms around her, 
expecting her to stiffen against his touch. She did 
not. After a moment she looked up. 

"It's not just you alone against the world, anymore, 
you know," she said softly. "You're my partner. 
Anybody who comes after you has to go through 
me, first." 

He smiled faintly, though she could see the fear still 
lurking in his eyes. 

"Cat fight?" he teased. "I've got some videos you 
could study..." 

"You'd do it for me," she said confidently. Then she 
took a deep breath. "Do you still love her?" She 
tried to keep her own opinion of Phoebe out of her 
tone. 

He let go of her, moved away from her touch. "I... 
It was never love," he said very softly. "At first, it 
was flattering. She's three years older than I am. 
When you're a freshman in a strange country, and 
you're all alone, attention from a junior is " 

"Very flattering," Scully finished the sentence, 
nodding her comprehension. "And she is 
attractive..." 

"Yeah. And she's from one of those connected 
families they have in Great Britain: money from the 
Industrial Revolution, some relatives who married 
into titled families, but no real titles of their own. So 
all my classmates were mightily impressed." 

"And that affected your social standing among your 
peers." 

"Definitely. But then I discovered that she didn't 
want to be in love. She wanted to be in control. I 
wasn't a lover, I was a possession. I called my 
father for help. I didn't want to go back for my 
sophomore year." 

"Why did you?" She was a little unnerved by the 
bleakness of his tone. 

"I couldn't explain it to my father in anyway that he 
could understand. He told me that if I was a man I 
could handle my own love affairs, that such things 
were unimportant. I was supposed to be working, 
not playing. 

"But I wasn't a man. I was a terrified teenager, and 
I could feel the chains tightening around me, and my 
father was refusing to help me get free. I had no 
one else to ask, so I was trapped. I stayed for the 
fall semester and resigned myself to the chains." 

"How long did this go on?" 

"Till early in my senior year." He was not looking at 
her. 

"How did it end?" she prodded carefully. 

"Ugly," he said flatly. "She dumped me out like 
spoiled fish." 

"Why?" 

He shrugged, affecting carelessness he did not feel, 
but did not attempt to explain the scandal. 

Scully inhaled slowly. "That must have been hard to 
take, especially after so long..." 

"It was," he admitted. "I was in counseling for 
weeks." 

That was an admission she had never expected 
from him. "Did it help?" 

"Yeah. I didn't kill her or myself." 

Scully was shocked. "Were you seriously 
considering that?" 

"I...I'm not sure, now," he said very quietly. "It was 
a long time ago." 

"Well, I think she's got a hell of a lot of nerve being 
sweet to you, now!" Scully growled. "I wonder how 
she'd look with a black eye?" 

"Scully!" He was shocked, both at her suggestion 
and at her willingness to stand up for him. He could 
not recall the last time anyone had taken his side 
without some form of coercion or the possibility of 
advancing themselves in the process. 

She smiled at him, all wide-eyed innocence. "It will 
be an accident! I'll be so sorry she walked into the 
door!" 

He dropped to sit into a chair, ran his fingers 
through his hair, still smiling. 

"Feel better?" 

He looked up. "Yeah, I do. Thank you. Are you 
sure you didn't at least minor in psych?" 

She shook her head. "I promise. I minored in 
Poli-Sci." She sat down in the room's other chair. 
"You want to talk about the fire?" 

He blinked. "What?" 

"We started to talk about the root causes of your 
fire phobia. Phoebe was just a distraction tactic." 

He stared at her, and then shook his head in 
admiration. "You're good." 

"You're only now noticing?" 

He shook his head, smiling, and relaxed a little 
more. He tipped his head back and stared at the 
ceiling for a moment. Then he started to speak, in 
a calm, emotionless voice. 

"My father worked for the State Department," he 
began. "When I was little, we traveled with him. I 
lived in Brazil, Ecuador, Singapore, Japan and 
Kenya before I was five. I went to kindergarten 
and first grade in the embassy compound in Riyahd, 
Saudi Arabia. I went to second grade in Belgrade, 
and third grade in Tunis." 

"Sounds exciting." 

He looked down and shrugged at little, avoiding her 
eyes. "Probably would have been if I'd been old 
enough to appreciate it. As it was, Tunis was the 
last place we went; the next school year Samantha 
was old enough to start school, and in Tunis girls 
weren't allowed to go to school. So he sent us 
home, then, and came home when he could." 

"Where did the fire happen?" 

"Tunis," was the answer. "There was no embassy 
compound. We lived in the community. It scared 
the hell out of my mother: she and Sammy almost 
never left the house. An embassy car drove me to 
school every morning. I hated being that different 
from the other kids, and I tried very hard to avoid 
the ride home in the afternoon. I wanted to walk 
home with my friends; after all, we all lived in the 
same neighborhood! The embassy car would end 
up following me home. 

"One day, one of my classmates, Ali, asked if I 
could spend the weekend at his house. Much to my 
amazement, my father approved. I found out later 
it was probably because Ali's father was a general 
in the Tunisian Army, and the US was cultivating 
him, even though they were reasonably sure he was 
planning a coup. They knew he had a private army 
selected out of the Tunisian Army. Dad figured that 
if Ali and I were pals, Ali's father would be less 
likely to pull anything outrageous, especially while I 
was in his home. 

"He was wrong." 

Scully leaned forward. "So, what happened?" 

"There was some kind of minor revolt that 
weekend. I was nine years old I didn't understand 
it at the time. There was an attempt to assassinate 
the General: rebels fired mortars at the house after 
dark. Ali's mother was wounded, his older brother 
and sister were wounded, several of their 
household staff were killed. The General wasn't 
home when the attack happened; he arrived shortly 
thereafter. The house was burning. Ali and I were 
trapped in Ali's bedroom, caught between the fire 
and barred security windows. He used a hand 
grenade to breach the exterior wall of the house 
and he came in and got us out." 

Scully was fascinated. "Were either of you hurt?" 

Mulder shook his head. "No. A little smoke 
inhalation, a lot of being scared. Once he was sure 
we were all right, he asked us for a favor." 

She watched his hands tighten into fists, and knew 
that, while his fear of fire was probably based on 
those minutes trapped in his friend's bedroom in a 
bombed-out house, there was more to this story. 

"He couldn't spare any men to take guard duty at 
the house that was a personal loss, and he had to 
be seen as supremely concerned with the national 
interests. The house wasn't totally destroyed, and 
he knew there would be looters. He gave each of 
us a pistol and told us to shoot anyone who 
wouldn't go away when we yelled." 

Scully stared at him. "The man armed two 
nine-year-olds?!" 

Mulder shrugged. "The Viet Cong did. Guerilla 
forces all over the world arm women and children. 
We knew how to shoot; both of our fathers had 
taught us already." 

"So the two of you were flattered and excited that 
the General would trust you with this duty?" 

Mulder nodded. "He said there were police nearby, 
and that if we made enough of a commotion, they'd 
come help us. We both knew that was a fantasy, 
but we didn't dare argue with the General. So we 
took the pistols, and he went off to quell the 
uprising." 

Mulder stopped talking. Scully studied him for a 
moment. 

"And?" she prompted him. "Something had to have 
happened." 

He shuddered. "It did. Something after midnight, 
four rebel soldiers came. From what we overheard 
them saying as they approached, they had come to 
kidnap us, to use us as hostages against our 
fathers, to pressure Ali's father into quitting his 
opposition to the rebellion, to pressure my father 
into withdrawing US support for the ruling 
government." 

"What did you do?" she whispered, enthralled. 

"Y'know, I've never told this part." 

"Why?" 

"I'm not sure," he admitted. "I usually just tell about 
the fires. Ali's house wasn't the only house burning 
by then, and there was no fire department. Fires 
burned until they burned themselves out. We were 
relatively safe in a stone garden shed, but the sky 
above us was orange with the flames, and smoke 
was all we could smell. The primary part of the fire 
had blown past us pretty quickly, but..." 

"And these soldiers were sent to kidnap you?" 

He nodded, his eyes staring backward into history, 
watching that night play back from his perfect 
memory. 

"What did you do?" 

"We killed them." 

Scully stared at him. At first she was not even 
certain she had heard him correctly. 

"What?" she whispered. 

"They were coming for us, for Ali and Fox. This 
wasn't just 'the bad guys,' or 'the rebels' that Ali's 
father was fighting. They were coming for US. 
They had assault rifles AK47s. We had two 
ancient forty-five caliber US Army Colts. We were 
both scared to death, but we were cornered. There 
was no place to run, no place to hide. We'd been 
ordered to guard the house, and we couldn't 
abandon our post. So our choices were simple: we 
could fight back, or we could surrender, and let 
ourselves be taken. We decided to fight." 

"And two terrified nine-year-olds killed four 
experienced soldiers?" 

Mulder shrugged. "I doubt they were very 
experienced; those rebels were more of an armed 
rabble. We had cover, and they didn't expect us to 
be willing to fight, or to be armed. It wasn't even 
hard to do, though that old Colt kicked like a mule. 
The hard part was stripping their bodies of 
armament so it wouldn't be used against us later. 
Just as we were stashing the rifles in our shelter, 
an airstrike hit a block away, and lit up an entirely 
new horizon of fire. We barred the door with a rifle 
barrel, and sat back to back watching the windows 
until dawn, when a company of Marines from the 
embassy came looking for me. Ali's dad had finally 
managed to get a message to my father about our 
situation. 

"The Marines were proud of me when they found 
the evidence of what had happened out in the yard," 
he said wistfully. "They made me their company 
mascot, an honorary Marine." 

She smiled. She had been brought up in the 
military, and she knew how military children longed 
to belong somewhere, no matter how much their 
parents tried to help them. 

"That must've been wonderful." 

"It was," he nodded. "I don't remember ever feeling 
as accepted as I did, then. But my mother was 
horrified, and couldn't bear to even look at me once 
she learned what had happened. And she wouldn't 
let Sam near me." 

Scully swallowed hard. (*His parents should have 
been taken out and shot!*) But she did not say 
anything: Mulder was still talking. 

"My father never said anything about he felt about 
it all he talked about was how Ali's father and the 
President felt. He treated it all as if it had been a 
political move designed to further my government's 
agenda. 

"It hadn't been political, at all," he whispered. "It 
was survival, pure and simple. And I had 
nightmares for months of the fires blowing back at 
us, of our guns misfiring, of the dead men coming 
after me to avenge their deaths, of their families 
coming after the infidel whose son had killed their 
son, and of me coming home from school to find my 
parents and my sister butchered in our home in 
retaliation for what I'd done..." He shivered and 
looked away. 

She could not help but believe that these 
guilt-ridden nightmares were the basis of his 
life-long guilt over his sister's abduction. It was not 
reasonable, but it made perfect sense that as a 
child he would have blamed himself for anything bad 
that happened. Samantha's abduction must have 
almost been a relief: the bad thing had finally 
happened. He had finally been punished for the 
murders he had committed. 

"And wild fire brings it all back?" she asked softly, 
gently. 

He nodded mutely, unable to articulate an answer. 

"You have every right to that fear, Mulder. That 
scenario would be awful if it was just something you 
dreamed, it would be bad enough! For it to be 
real...? My God!" 

He shivered a little, again, and then squared his 
shoulders and threw it off. 

"What about you, Scully? What's your deepest, 
darkest, most shameful secret?" 

"You shouldn't think of any of that as shameful, 
Mulder," she said sharply. "You did nothing to be 
ashamed of! You know full well that those men, or 
their superiors, would almost certainly have killed 
you and your friend eventually. And that by the time 
they did, you would probably have been grateful for 
it." 

He sighed. "I know that now. I didn't, then." 

"Mulder. You were nine years old. You killed two 
adults armed with rifles whose intent was to kidnap 
you and use you to blackmail your government. 
How were your actions anything but admirable?" 

He looked at her expressionlessly. "'Thou shalt not 
kill'?" 

She snorted in disgust. "'Thou shalt not commit 
murder.' And you didn't." 

"We fired from cover without warning." 

"You were outnumbered, outgunned, in a war zone. 
Survival is the ultimate morality, Mulder. You 
deserve to try to survive. You succeeded. And I, 
for one, am very glad you did." 

He cocked his head to one side, but did not ask. 

"If it hadn't been for you, my application for field 
assignment probably would have landed me in 
Domestic Terrorism, and I'd have to kill someone if 
they assigned me to that for very long," she said 
with all seriousness. "Or else my application would 
have simply been denied, and I'd still be teaching at 
Quantico. And I'd be so bored I'd probably have 
killed someone by now, just for the excitement." 

"You getting enough excitement, Scully?" he 
drawled. "I don't want you to get bored and leave." 
He did not realize how revealing that was until it 
was too late to stop it. 

Scully smiled slowly. "Don't worry," she assured 
him. "I'm not planning to leave." 

"Good. Good partners are hard to find." 

"Yeah," she nodded, studying him. "They are."