"The Eighth Side of the Triangle"(8/?) by Susan Jameson
(DrBarnBarn@aol.com)
See part I for archive info, disclaimers, etc.



~~~~~

Badlands
As Mulder Saw It

~~~~~

I had absolutely no goddamn business being at Badlands. 

There's nothing wrong with the place itself. It's one of the best gay
bars in the District, although it's maybe a bit too near Dupont Circle
for comfort. But Badlands is the kind of bar I like: not a hard-core
sex bar, not heavy into leather and sure as shit not a government-
employee hangout like Zeigfeld's Secrets, which is way too damn close
to the Hoover for me. I still can't believe how many of the younger
agents hang out there.

Even in Georgetown, though, my being in a gay bar constituted an
indiscretion of mammoth proportions, given the enemies I'd collected
over the years.

Ask me if I gave a shit. It was where I wanted to be.

I mean, I wasn't cruising or anything, although some of the patrons
were cruising me, including a few who had definitely perfected the art
of filling out a pair of Levis. A few years earlier, you can bet your
sweet ass -- or their _very_ sweet asses -- that I'd have been taking
one of those boys home with me. 

But I wasn't giving any of them any encouragement tonight. Not even
the hunky twenty-something go-go boy behind the bar was getting a
response from me that night. 

Well ... not much of a response, anyway. I was looking. You couldn't
not look. 

But I was just looking; I wasn't looking for a trick. No way. I just
couldn't stand the thought of being alone, and I was goddamned if I
wanted to go to an ordinary bar and hang around with a bunch of
straight guys and pretend to be straight. 

I'd had enough lies for one day.

Dr. Arlinsky, the forensic anthropathologist from the Smithsonian, was
dead as a fucking doornail, the alien body -- if that's what it was --
was gone, this Kritschgau asshole was telling me I'd been played
royally for years and Scully... Scully seemed to have no use for me at
all.

I couldn't blame her. That was one stupid goddamn stunt I pulled in
Connecticut, climbing in bed with her and pulling her clothes off.
Shit, she had every right to expect that something was coming -- no
pun intended. When it didn't, she cried the rest of the night.

I don't know what the fuck I was thinking, letting that fucking quack
Goldstein drill holes in my head and shoot me full of horse tranks.
Christ. 

I just know I wound up half insane in Rhode Island. Sounds like a
fucking book title.

It just ... it didn't feel stupid at the time. It felt like survival.
It felt like a life raft, and it felt like the culmination of the
search, just as lying in bed with Scully that night felt like the
culmination of everything Scully and I ever were to each other or ever
could have been.

No, we didn't make love. Sometimes I think the whole goddamn world is
waiting for that, as though I couldn't possibly love her the way I do
and not have intercourse with her. 

It was ... close. Closer than we've been, anyway. And I liked the way
it felt. I liked the way _she_ felt, soft and smooth and pliant
against my skin, but with those hard little nipples pressing against
me. She probably didn't get a huge maternal rush out of it, but I did;
I mean, from her, I did. The whole Jungian mother archetype, right
there in my arms: Soft, warm, comforting, with that gentle rhythm of
her heart beating beneath.

For the first time since Daniel left, I felt comforted ... I felt
safe. I felt as though the pieces of my soul that were torn out of me
had come back and that Scully had soothed them into place. I felt her
love for me in a way I'd never felt it before. 

I could have stayed there forever.

I knew that when she was gone, it was this night that I would
remember, above all others, and that the memory would give me peace.

But it wasn't like that for her. It made her miserably unhappy. I'd
come as close to cheating on Daniel as I ever want to come, and it was
all for nothing. No goddamn thing. 

And of course, it got worse when we got home. I found that out when I
called her and interrupted her family dinner and discovered that she
had no interest at all in helping me.

I kept hearing it all in my head -- me asking Scully if she thought it
was all foolish, my search for extraterrestrial life, and her telling
me she had no opinion, that it was my Holy Grail, not hers. Which, by
the way, is a totally Christian myth, and not one in which I'm heavily
invested.

So I'm digressing. Fuck you.

She said it was, and I quote, "not my last dying wish."

She had to remind me. She wanted me to remember it, she wanted to jab
that knife in me just as hard and as far as she could, because without
me, folks, well, she's not going to be dying young. She knew that even
then. She just didn't know how far it went.

Well, she knows now. They didn't just give her cancer ... they gave it
to her for no better reason than just to make me believe. No fucking
reason except that. 

I am the instrument of her death, and it doesn't mean a goddamn thing.
Not ... one ... fucking ... THING. She doesn't even have the dignity
of being a martyr. Martyrdom is death for some cause. This isn't a
cause. This is a total fucking waste of the life of a beautiful,
gifted, intelligent woman, not to mention the only woman who's ever
really loved me.

I was so busy trying to decide whether I was going to kill myself that
night or wait until after I had killed the Smoking Man that it was a
few minutes before I noticed who was sitting next to me. Even after he
spoke, I didn't recognize him right away.

"You know," he said, in that dry, cultured voice, "I'm willing to bet
every cent I have that you're not here looking for company."

I turned and looked. It was Scully's doctor, Dr. Zuckerman, looking
just a little bit tipsy and a whole lot morose.

"Well," I said, taking a huge slug of my Scotch. "Fancy meeting you
here."

"Don't tell me you're surprised," Zuckerman said, taking a swig of
beer. "I thought you'd picked up on it already."

"Poor choice of words," I said. "And no, actually, I hadn't. I've had
my mind on other things."

"Oh, I'm sure you have," Zuckerman said, with a humorless laugh. "I'm
quite sure. I finally put it together when Dana told me that Daniel
and Jill Reilly have finally divorced. However, since he called me
from an aircraft carrier, I take it that's not an indication that he's
out of the closet."

"Would you be mortally offended if I told you that I don't want to
know what the hell you're talking about?" I said, irritated. "This is
not a good time for it, doctor. I've got a hell of a lot on my mind
just now."

"I've had a hell of a lot on my mind ever since Daniel called me, Mr.
Mulder," Zuckerman said. "Such as the incredible unfairness of it all.
That must cross your mind from time to time."

"It does a lot more than cross my mind," I said, turning back toward
the bar. I picked up my glass and downed the rest of the Scotch, then
signaled the bartender for more. "Tonight, I'm goddamn near awash in
it. Not that it has anything to do with Daniel Reilly; not at the
moment, anyway."

"I see," Zuckerman said. "Well, for me, it does. I look at you and I
see that at some point, Daniel finally became willing to give up his
marriage, if not his Navy career. He always made it quite clear to me
that neither of those was an option. I believed him, too. It's a bit
painful to find out that he just wasn't willing to give them up for
me."

"Dr. Zuckerman," I said, feeling my anger rising, "forgive me if I
don't choose to discuss this with you, but I have a hell of a lot of
other things on my mind, starting with the fact that my partner -- my
FBI partner, Dana Scully -- is about half dead from cancer and you
don't seem to be able to do much about it. Today, I found out that
this disease was induced in her by people who just thought it would
help them lead me around by the nose. Whether you're lovesick over
Daniel or anyone else isn't a matter of huge concern to me right now."

"Mr. Mulder," Zuckerman said, much more gently, "I am doing everything
I know how to do for Dana. My past relationship with Daniel doesn't
play any part in how I care for my patient. It's just that this kind
of cancer is highly aggressive and extremely difficult to treat."

"But you don't believe me when I say someone gave it to her, do you?"
I said, challengingly. "That's beyond you."

"No, actually, it's not," Zuckerman said, crisply. "I've seen quite a
few people who were given nasopharyngeal cancer by the indiscriminate
application of Agent Orange. It's not implausible that someone gave it
to Dana. What their reasons were is outside the scope of medicine, and
I'm afraid it doesn't help me treat her to know that it was induced,
either. That's my sole concern for her --treating her cancer as best I
can."

"But your best isn't going to be enough, is it?" I snapped. "She's
dying, and you're not going to be able to stop it. And knowing that,
all you can do is come here and cry in your beer over a long lost
love. Well, fuck you. I'm not here to counsel you about
relationships."

"Then maybe you'll let me counsel you, Mr. Mulder," Zuckerman said,
more calmly than I'd have expected. "Daniel Reilly is one of the
Navy's best physicians. That means a lot to him."


"I know that," I said. "I don't need you to tell me that."

"No, I don't suppose you do," Zuckerman said. "But what you may need
me to tell you is that when push comes to shove, you're in third
place. Medicine comes first, and then the Navy. And at that, you're
lucky. If Jill were still around, you'd be in fourth place, and a
distant fourth at that. I know I was. Maybe you can live with it. I
couldn't."

"Jill is still around," I said. "She lives in San Diego, but they're
still friends."

"Are they?" Zuckerman said, softly. "I wouldn't have expected that.
But maybe it does make sense. He would want that, wouldn't he?"

"Look," I said, my patience at an end, "I told you at the outset, I
have other things to think about than your past relationships, no
matter who they were with. Why you think I want to hear this, I can't
imagine."

"I don't think I ever implied that I thought you wanted to hear it,
Mr. Mulder," Zuckerman said. "As for the reason, I'm sure you can
deduce that. Even though what Daniel and I had was over a long time
ago, I never really got over him. He's not an easy man to get over."

"No," I said, for the first time feeling some sympathy for Zuckerman.
"I'm sure he wouldn't be."

"When he called me from the carrier last winter, I was happy,"
Zuckerman said, more softly. "Really happy. But when I found out he
just wanted to ask a favor, it hurt. A lot. And then I started
treating Dana, and I met you, and I began to wonder what had happened
-- how Daniel had changed so much. But now I begin to understand.
Daniel hasn't really changed -- you're just his latest victim."

"Fuck you," I said. 

Whatever sympathy I'd had was gone now. I tossed a couple of bills on
the counter and stood up. 

"Daniel has priorities, Dr. Zuckerman," I said, "but that doesn't make
me a victim. I can understand being hurt when a love affair ends, but
it happens to everyone. Get over it."

"What makes you a victim, Mr. Mulder, isn't Daniel's career, be it
medicine or the Navy," Zuckerman said, sadly. "It's that no one's ever
known him to be faithful -- to anyone. Not for very long, anyway. He
was unfaithful to Jill, God knows, and to me, and as far as I know, to
every man he's ever been with."

"Not to me," I said, through gritted teeth. "Never."

"Well, maybe you'll be the exception," Zuckerman went on, calmly.
"Please believe me when I say I hope that you will be. I never thought
Daniel was happy living the way he did. But if he's in the middle of a
shooting war, frankly, I'd make sure I had some protection when he
gets home -- assuming he comes back to you at all."

"If you weren't Scully's doctor, you'd be lying on the ground right
now," I said, furiously. "You have no reason to say that to me. None
at all."

"Actually, I do," Zuckerman said. "I was with him when he left for
Desert Storm. He was gone for almost a year, but I waited for him;
unfortunately, he couldn't wait for me. Don't misunderstand me, Mr.
Mulder. I'm not saying that Daniel's a bad person; actually, he's a
very good man, in a great many ways, a real mensch --but I don't have
to tell you that, do I?"

"No, I think I know Daniel pretty well," I said, coldly, ignoring
Zuckerman's blatant appeal to our common Jewishness. I wasn't going to
be won over that easily. "I don't believe there's anything you need to
tell me about him."

"I think I do need to tell you one thing," Zuckerman said. "War
changes people, Mr. Mulder, even the best of people, and doctors have
to deal with the worst that war can create. They have to stand by
helplessly while young men, some of them scarcely more than boys, are
carted in one by one, screaming with the pain of wounds so horrible
you can't imagine them. I've known doctors who worked in big city
emergency rooms without flinching who had to run out of field
hospitals and vomit -- or cry. It's more than most men can deal with."

Zuckerman picked up his beer and took a big swallow.

"Some of them quit," he said, softly. "Some drink. Some become
hardened and cynical. Daniel deals with it by looking for someone new
to sleep with. But that's not necessarily fatal to a relationship,
depending on how the people involved work it out. No, what makes us
all his victims is that when it's over, he always goes running back to
Jill. Always."

"Not anymore," I said. "Things are different now. Daniel's divorced;
he's not trying to change."

"He never did try as hard as he liked to think he did," Zuckerman
said. "Certainly, he never wanted romantic or sexual relationships
with women, no more than you or I do; emotionally speaking, Jill is
his mother, not his lover. And he needs that -- far too much to give
it up. But then, if you'd seen what he's seen, you might need it, too
-- enough to destroy a relationship to get it."

Zuckerman drank down the rest of his beer and put his own money on the
bar. "I'm not afflicted with the wrath of sour grapes, Mr. Mulder," he
said, putting the bottle down with a clunk. "I just want you to be
ready, because sooner or later, you will lose him: first to another
man, then afterward, and with far more finality, to Jill. It's one of
life's few true inevitabilities." 

He slid off the stool and walked away.


END "The Eighth Side of the Triangle"(8/?) by Susan Jameson
(DrBarnBarn@aol.com)