From: Kbxf@aol.com Date: Fri, 13 Aug 1999 11:56:59 EDT Subject: NEW: Corpus Delicti (1/2) by KatyBlue Source: xff TITLE: Corpus delicti (1/2) AUTHOR: KatyBlue SPOILERS: One son RATING: PG-13 CLASSIFICATION: UST, SA CONTENT WARNING: This one's in a dark place. Read at your own risk. Put yourself back at one son and remember none of the good things since... SUMMARY: One dark moment as Scully autopsies the consortium and contemplates Mulder's actions. ARCHIVE: Just let me know where... ACKNOWLEDGMENTS: As always, Meredith, who reads my pieces with a practiced and skillful eye. A very special thanks to Laine, who has taken me under her wing and who gave me the inspiration and incentive to allow Mulder's part of this story to be told, even though, at the time, I didn't think he deserved it! And to everyone who continues to read my stories and send me such wonderful and constructive feedback that it makes me want to write more...like a caged rat pushing a lever! :) ************************************************************ corpus delicti - [Nlat. : Lat. corpus, body + delictum, crime.] a. The material substance on which a crime has been committed. b. The material evidence, as the discovered corpse of a murder victim, of the fact that a crime has been committed. c. The victim's corpse in a murder case. ************************************************************ Part (1/2) I was tired. The autopsy bay was full. Packed to the rafters, one might say, with the charred remains of what we believed to be the consortium. Every FBI pathologist had been called in to contribute. And I was there. Of course I was there. I was trying to be precise, but this particular corpse was making it difficult. The last one had retained at least a little moisture inside the body cavity. We'd been finding that with some of the larger bodies. The remnants of bodily fluid maintained the integrity of the thoracic and abdominal spaces. Enough to get some tissue samples at least. A piece of liver or kidney. A slice of spleen. Some heart or lung tissue. I had my little receptacles all lined up and labeled on the next table for this one but he wasn't being cooperative. I'd identified the sex with some difficulty from the shape of the pelvic girdle and some tissue remnants. Male. I'd roughly identified the age according to the comparative body size of this shriveled, charred skeleton to the rest. Young. A mere boy. I'd roughly guesstimated the age at ten to twelve. Ten to twelve years of age. This was all he got. I sighed, staring for a second at the way the charred skin had flaked away, right down to the bone. The ash had once been a hand. Reaching out, I pinched some of the blackness between my fingers. It was slightly greasy but mostly dry. Little flecks crumbled down onto the sterile stainless steel and the semblance of a fingertip disappeared into nothingness. I took a moment to remind myself that this was once a person. A boy. I sent up one small prayer for his brief attempt at life. A prayer without words. Silence. All that I could offer was this inadequate blessing of a pause. That, and the somewhat more concrete messages of anatomy and physiology that might be waiting to speak to me, locked within his tiny, shriveled corpse. I pulled out my scalpel and examined the thorax area, looking for where the hell to start this sham of a Y incision. Lost in my work, I jumped only a little when someone cleared his throat directly behind me. I turned and found Mulder. He wore his hangdog expression, his eyes glancing away from me to the other pathologists working around the room. Noticing that we weren't alone. It surprised me that he was down here at all because he usually tried to avoid the process altogether, preferring to let me handle this end of things. Maybe this is the only reason I've been allowed to stay on the X-files with him. My substantiated anatomical findings have mostly helped support his cases. And he certainly can't do the autopsies himself. And then I realized he must be anxious for word. "We haven't identified her yet, Mulder." I hadn't meant for the words to be as cold and sterile as the room. He didn't look at me but distractedly watched the other pathologists from his distance. Unable to meet my eye. Usually, if Mulder decides to come down and I am working with others, he leaves immediately. He only stays if I am alone. Something about a group of us together, huddled over a dead body, clinically hypothesizing the cause of death, seems to unnerve him. Sometimes, when I'm alone, he does stay to watch me. Always, he keeps some distance on those occasions. Mincing around the table. Wincing when I make the incisions. Leaning oh so carefully over the body when I try to show him something. Unenthusiastic about getting his hands dirty. Mostly he stays away. I'm sure that, deep down, Mulder finds what I do just slightly on the other side of horrifying. Probably, if I am honest with myself, everyone does. My scalpel poised for a second over the thorax, just below the throat. I pushed in, at first with the amount of pressure that it would take to cut through the epidermal layer of a normal corpse. No give beneath my blade. Putting some effort into it, I pushed down hard. The scalpel blade bent and broke on the blackened body. "Damn!" I swore, snatching my hand back quickly. I'd almost sliced my finger. Examining it closely under the lights and thankful as always there was no blood, I noted the nick in the latex glove and stripped it off to find a new one. Mulder watched without expression. I pulled on another glove and peeled the foil off a new scalpel blade. "At least I don't have to worry about disease transmission," I quipped inanely. He didn't laugh. Neither did I. It wasn't necessarily true. Even I knew that. I'd seen one particular virus alive and well inside a couple- of-million-years-old rock. It could undoubtedly survive a few flames. In fact, when I glanced at Mulder again, his eyes were accusing me. His lips twisted as if to say, is that what you think, Scully? I turned back to the body before I got angry. I poked the blade a few more times into a few more places before I finally realized that I was wasting my time. This one needed the big guns. I slipped the protective goggles down and my mask on and pulled out the bonesaw. Mulder, behind me, was a silent watcher. I felt his eyes boring into my back. I felt like a ghoul. Maybe I was a ghoul. "Scully..." I started up the saw, hoping to drown him out. "Scully, can you stop for a second?" Mulder inquired loudly. Impatiently, over the whirring noise of the blade. Taking my hand off the switch, I watched the blade circle slowly to a stop. I put the saw down and turned to him, slipping the goggles back off with a sigh and yanking the mask down. "What is it, Mulder?" He glanced around again. "Why are you doing this, Scully? Can't they get someone else?" "Excuse me...?" "It just seems as if you would be a little too close to this," he stated, as if it should be obvious. He was not doing this, was he? He was not trying to tell me what I should and shouldn't be doing. And wasn't his statement implying, once again, that I was too personally involved? I took a very deep breath. "For your information, Mulder, the Federal Bureau of Investigation does not exactly have a plethora of pathologists." I indicated my co-workers in the room. "Jack and Danny are both here. Marsden and Nells are out at Quantico. I let Grace off, she's got a new baby. And I didn't want to call in Virginia's forensic labs. Kay's busy enough right now." He stared at me as I spoke the names of colleagues. He knew none of them nor cared, it seemed. He shuffled from one foot to the other. "How long do you think it'll take?" "We'll never positively i.d. everyone, Mulder. We barely have a list to start with." I lowered my voice when Danny glanced over in our direction. "If this is the consortium, Mulder, they didn't exactly have a roster of members." "What do you mean, if?" he hissed back at me. I fought for control of my emotions. "I'm not questioning it, Mulder." I finally managed. "Sounds like it to me," he shot back. I closed my eyes and turned back to the corpse. A boy. A little boy. Fried to death with something hotter than a blowtorch. "We haven't i.d.'d Diana, Mulder." My lips closed with difficulty around her name and I had to wonder about it. My memory chose that moment to supplement my discomfort with Gibson Praise's remembered observation. That Mulder was thinking about one of us and I was wondering which one. I knew now and it hurt. "We may never be able to conclusively say whether she was present or not," I stated without inflection. "We have two female corpses burned beyond any hope of anatomical identifiers. So already, there's a possibility that she could be one of those." I heard him let his breath out in a rush and turned back to catch the expression on his face. Was it concern or morbid curiosity on my part? Had I meant to be so blunt? Had I meant to hurt him with these words? I might have. He was staring at me angrily. I'd never seen that particular expression directed at me. It strongly resembled dislike. It struck me that, right then, he looked a lot like a stranger to me. This was a man whom I'd considered, for the better part of six years, my best friend. His face, all at once, seemed new to my eyes. Someone different. Someone that I'd never met before. But this was Definitely Mulder who stood there, eyes so detached from mine. Face so distant and unreadable. A man whom I'd shared countless hours with. Meals. Laughs. Hopes. My one constant link to the world for the past six years. He stared at me as if he didn't know me. As if I were indeed the grim reaper, bent gleefully over my corpses. And there was some unbridgeable distance between our two bodies. There seemed to be no going back to the point where we were standing in the same place on all this. If we ever had been. Perversely, I felt a tear escape. It was incredible really, because I rarely cry. I don't know where this one came from but it was definitely unwelcome. I wasn't even sure what it was for but I felt more threatening from where this intruder physiologically originated, swimming around in my eyes and ready to spill over. Angrily, I fought them back, irritated that they were showing themselves now, in front of the enemy. "Scully..." Mulder put his hand on my sleeve. I stared down at it. I successfully stilled my overactive lacrimal glands by staring away from his hand to the corpse's. The black and charred skeleton of a child. The finger that I'd crushed so easily between my own. And I thought I had it bad. This one would never even have the chance to learn the harsher lessons of life. My tears dried up and swam away. Mulder only saw the one. I dragged my dry eyes up to his. And for just a moment, I thought I saw the Mulder I'd known. I thought I saw the Mulder who'd made the past six years worth all the struggle. And I wanted him to understand me. But that Mulder vanished with his next words. "I don't think you should be doing this, Scully." "This is my job, Mulder," I hissed, pulling my arm out from under his hand. Across the room, both Jack and Danny were glancing in our general direction. They turned their faces away when they saw me looking. His implication, again, was that I was taking it too personally. I thought it was about time for him to get off his high horse. "I know how to handle a dead body, Mulder." I said for its shock value. Then, regaining some small measure of control, I continued my tirade. "I can slice into a body cavity with the best of them. Believe me, I am perfectly clinically detached and able to do my job." I pointed to the table. "That's a boy. A little boy. And sometimes, I don't even feel anything when I cut into them. I do my job, Mulder." I finished in an angry whisper. "I do my job. Go do your own." Mulder stared at me with something akin to the shock that I'd been aiming for. And then, his lips twisted into an expression of distaste as he digested my angry words. A look which faded, finally, into a detached mistrust. I was, once more, a ghoul before him. Someone he couldn't understand. Someone he might never understand. I stopped searching for understanding. I turned away from him with a finality to continue the task at hand, giving up on the body cavities. This boy was no longer anything more than ash and bone. I started up the saw and used it to get through the lower mandible. It sliced cleanly through the bone with a soft, whirring noise. I left the tiniest bridge of bone tissue on either side and shut the saw off. And then, finally, I used my hands to finish the job. When I broke the brittle jaw open, there was a distinct, loud crack, and I winced. Reaching out, I tilted the lower mandible toward me and saw two shiny fillings in the molars. For some perverse reason, the fact that this corpse was a child brought a rhyme subsurfacing up from out of the depths of my memories. For some more perverse reason, I began chanting it in my head for my own entertainment. The 'little piggies' that my mother used to do on my toes when I was a little girl and fresh out of the bath before I pulled my socks on... This little piggy went to market...this little piggy stayed home.... My more creative demons took the poetic license and ran with it. I was no longer a child. And little piggies were what I had in my ham sandwich. Which was really, in a twisted way, what that poem had been all about in the first place. Caught up in childhood's utter lack of experience, I'd never realized that more grisly aspect... But in the charred remains of this child's jaw, I now had the means to identify him. This little boy went to the dentist...This little boy now had a name...And this little boy would never, never, never go home again. I set down the jaw gently and felt a sigh slip out of me. My eyes felt hot and burned with unshed tears. And when I turned around, Mulder was gone. I took it personally. THE END ************************************************************** Part (2/2) I was tired. My reluctant feet took my more reluctant psyche onwards. The pathology lab was bright. The image almost burned into my eyeballs as I stared at a roomful of charred, withered bodies, resting around the room on their shiny, stainless steel tables, taking cat naps. Most of them caught in strangely fetal postures. The remains of the consortium. I spotted Scully easily. Her red hair was a contrast to the absence of color in this room. Blacks, whites, grays, blues. All of these were well represented and overwhelming. And in the midst of all this sterility, Scully's hair was like a vibrant reminder of life. A beacon of hope. But I hated coming down to this place when 'the gang' was all here. The reason is retained as an almost insignificant but nevertheless vivid image in my mind. During one of our many cases together, I'd had a question for Scully. It had been a high profile case that needed answers pronto and had nothing but dead bodies to go on. I hadn't had a lot of sleep when I wandered down into the bowels of the FBI pathology labs. The scene that greeted me was one of the few times when Scully really scared me. She and her group of misfit colleagues were hovering over the body. A very large, very dead, or more correctly, murdered, senator. Scully was the ring leader at that moment, up to her elbows in the guy's ample intestines. Hauling out the spleen, I think. I've never honed those particular discriminatory skills. One piece of innards looks the same as another, thank you very much. Everyone else was bent over, peering intently like a flock of vultures at the carcass, eyeing the particularly juicy morsel in question. To tell you the truth, I almost lost my lunch. Scully hadn't had any more sleep than I had at that point in the case. And I was barely holding my feet under me, but she was in her glory. Bright-eyed and alert about that corpulent piece of whatever it was. She was explaining it to everyone else. Two of her admirers were even smiling and nodding. Show and tell, pathologist style. And if this was a scene out of some nightmare of mine, it would not fit an image of people doing good by trying to piece the puzzle of death together, but rather describe a gathering of ghouls, delighting in the event and feasting on the gore. Since then, I try to catch Scully alone down here. It scares me less. The body in front of Scully was small. Black and charred. The teeth visibly white in a skull that still sported a few tufts of hair. I felt my own lips drawing back in a grimace as I walked closer to the nightmarish image. Scully, somehow, still looked small in comparison. And was standing quietly before the corpse, as if in contemplation. Then she pulled out a scalpel and bent forward, peering at the chest. Getting ready to cut. I cleared my throat to get her attention, startling her. She whipped around, brandishing the scalpel at me like a weapon. Her eyes acknowledged me but I saw impatience register there also. She studied me for a moment and the scalpel lowered down to her side. A grim little voice inside dragged my eyes away from her and urged me to look closer at the body as morbid curiosity got the better of me. Definitely not a good idea if I wanted to eat today. "We haven't identified her yet, Mulder," Scully blurted out, pulling me back. Her words were hard and cold. Defiant. At first I thought she was referring to the tiny body in front of us and was confused. Samantha slammed foremost into my thoughts. But then I knew who she was referring to. I was both annoyed and flattered by this response. And recognized something in her tone that sounded suspiciously like jealousy. To tell you the truth, it kind of surprised me. Up to this point, I'd never really entertained the idea that Scully and I might be on the same page when it came to the whole possibilities between us thing. She always seemed so detached when it came to me and anything resembling a sexual urge that I guess I'd shelved that particular possibility about four years ago, when I finally figured out she barely responded to most of my more blatant innuendoes. And honestly, the prospect now alarmed me, given our recent failed attempts at communication. I could easily see us killing each other. Or at the very least, making each other miserable. I looked away from her accusatory gaze, at the other pathologists bent over their own grisly corpses. A roomful of ghouls. When I turned back, Scully was ignoring my presence and was bent over her own assignment. She took the scalpel and poked it into the chest a Few times. Then, with some violence, she pushed in. Only it didn't go. The blade snapped and she jumped back, swearing in a moment of loss of that fine control she holds so close to her, like a steel fist closed around her heart. Barely moved by the fact that she was violating this small corpse, Scully whipped off the latex glove and snapped on another one. Once more fully composed as she inserted a new blade into her scalpel. "At least I don't have to worry about disease transmission," she said with a small tight smile in my direction. Come on, Scully. I wanted to throttle her at that moment. Let's face it. Scully isn't exactly enlightened when it comes to these things. Her idea of possibilities involves the isolated event of a genetic mutation or an oddity of natural selection. Random probabilities of chance or the laws of the physical world. Why do a bowling ball and a piece of paper fall at the same rate? Beats me, though somewhere in there is something really interesting. But in Scully's world, even mirages are solved by nothing more exciting than the bending of light rays. There are all kinds of mysteries, I guess. But to me, the boring explanations of physics or biology just don't cut it. Scully poked at the corpse a few more times, muttering to herself, and gave up. Hauling down some highly unattractive goggles from where they'd been pushed up on her head and deftly tying on her mask, she yanked out one of the more disturbing tools of her trade. A much too large circular saw. I knew where this was going. So did my stomach. "Scully..." I said as she started the bonesaw. "Scully, can you stop for a second?" I had to half-shout. I didn't particularly want to talk to her over the noise of the saw or of me puking. She took her time turning it off, maybe trying to scare me into leaving by displaying it like a weapon as the blade whirled to a stop. When she finally turned to me, she delayed the interaction even longer by taking her sweet time to lift off the goggles and pull down her mask. Her eyebrow was climbing and I knew that I only had about a minute, Scully-time, before she shut me out. "What is it, Mulder?" I looked around the room, at the charred remains of life. I looked at Scully and saw, beneath the detached facade she was showing me, the fatigue and disillusion that rested in her eyes now. That had set up camp in her soul. "Why are you doing this, Scully? Can't they get someone else?" Now I'd done it. Full blown Scully anger was clouding into her face like the wrath of a particularly wronged god. "Excuse me?" Her tone was lethal. I attempted to appeal to her common sense, which Scully seems to pride herself on, especially when comparing it to my lack of such a quality. "It just seems as if you would be a little too close to this," I said. Really, this should be obvious to her. The storm got worse. She took a very deep breath. It felt like the eye of a hurricane and I braced myself for what was coming. "For your information, Mulder, the Federal Bureau of Investigation does not exactly have a plethora of pathologists." She waved her hand wildly at the other occupants in the room. She rattled off their names and why these particular employees were here and why others weren't. I watched her rant and tuned it out a little. I thought it was bullshit that the FBI were such a bunch of tightasses that they made her work this case. I was more angry that it was probably due to the fact that they didn't believe one sorry word of my account. Not that Scully had supported me on it. She had probably volunteered for this and thought that I was as full of shit as I ever was. The big joke that manifests itself as her partner. I shut her off, anxious to leave this room of death. "How long do you think it'll take?" I asked. I wanted to get her out of here as well and decompress somewhere. I knew if I needed to, and I did sorely, that she was certainly due for it. Besides that, I also knew that I'd been particularly brutal on Scully during this case. I wanted to make it up to her, though I had no idea how to do so. "We'll never positively i.d. everyone, Mulder. We barely have a list to start with." The other pathologists in the room were glancing over at Scully's increasing volume. She sensed this and lowered her voice to a hissed whisper, meant only for my ears. "If this is the consortium, Mulder, they didn't exactly have a roster of members." Was she saying what I thought I'd heard? She'd probably lowered her voice just so her buddies wouldn't know that she gave my wild theories some merit. "What do you mean, 'if'? I hissed back. "I'm not questioning it, Mulder," she snapped back, looking away from me. "Sounds like it to me," I accused. She closed her eyes, another effective Scully method of shutting me out. She turned away from me, back to the corpse. Dismissing me and my reason for being here. "We haven't i.d.'d Diana, Mulder," she said acidly. Oh, for Christ's sake! She wasn't letting up on that one. I had pretty much convinced myself that Diana had escaped this particular trap. And that Scully's suspicions, which she'd dropped on me with the full support of her 'backup' team, the traitors who'd been almost assuredly led by Frohike's raging hormones, were justified. But I'd never give her the satisfaction of admitting she might be right. Not when it entailed her lording my stupidity over me when she didn't even know Diana or what had gone on between us. The flattery of her interest was starting to grate. She converted it to full blown irritation with her next comment. "We may never be able to conclusively say whether she was present of not. We have two female corpses burned beyond any hope of anatomical identifiers. So already, there's a possibility she could be one of those." She said it with relish. As if the possibility that Diana was one of those charred, anonymous skeletons was one that she would delight in. I let my breath out in exasperation. She turned back and I swear it was more curiosity to catch my expression than it was concern. I glared at her in response, not giving her the satisfaction of that either. Sometimes, I feel as if I truly don't understand Scully. I can't figure out why it is that she sticks with me on the X-files. She doesn't believe in what we have seen. She has argued every detail with me, lately to the point of blind refutation. It struck me that, right then she was a mystery to me. An enigma, as Frohike would say. I would go so far as to say that she looked a lot like a stranger. I barely knew this person, who held her beliefs and her science before her like an indomitable shield. Who held me off with her skepticism and disbelief and her tight control. Who let no one close, it seemed. And who shut me, in particular, out time and again. It exhausted me. It hurt me. And then I saw her eyes start to water. The flush of color that crept into her face. Jesus...she looked like she was about to cry. And I suddenly felt like a heel. Like I was the one doing the hurting. I hadn't meant to. I wanted to understand her but I didn't. "Scully..." I reached out to her. I put a hand on her sleeve and she stared down at it as if it were some particularly loathsome creature. I swear she wanted to say 'get it off me' but satisfied herself with just glaring at it without any hint of welcome. I couldn't reach her. Her eyes drew away from my hand and back up to mine. The tears were gone. She stared at me coldly. Without invitation. Scully is as strong as anyone I've ever known. And her eyes said it all, a most eloquent 'get the hell away from me, Mulder'. There was a yawning chasm between us that just kept getting bigger. Any bridges I attempted to build she knocked right back down. I tried one last time to reach her. "I don't think you should be doing this, Scully." That did it. "This is my job, Mulder," she hissed, yanking her arm out from under my hand. The suddenness of the motion drew the attention of her co-workers. Scully turned the Medusa glare on them and they quickly returned to their corpses. I didn't blame them. Scully wasn't done yet and her full, volatile attention was back on me. I braced myself for a thorough ass-chewing. "I know how to handle a dead body, Mulder." She paused to wind herself up even more. Her words were measured and meant to wound. "I can slice into a body cavity with the best of them. Believe me, I am perfectly clinically detached and able to do my job." She pointed to the pathetic corpse laid out helplessly under her knife. "That's a boy. A little boy. And sometimes, I don't even feel anything when I cut into them. I do my job, Mulder," she finished harshly. "I do my job. Go do your own." I registered the bitterness in her voice. The fatigue and a disturbing loss of faith in a more hopeful perspecitve on life. But my empathy for Scully's plight was overwhelmed by the callousness with which she'd just treated a topic she knew was sacred to me. I knew that this could be Samantha on the table before her. So did she, if she let herself. I'd imagined every possible way that my sister could have died. Even more vividly of late, now that I knew some details. Details that Scully has probably convinced herself are my deluded imaginings. I felt the horror of the moment as I looked at the corpse and my lips twisted, imagining it as my little sister. A little girl that might never have grown up. That might not actually be an adult right now, wondering about me, but was instead, some very long time ago, more like this corpse. A life blunted and cut short, never allowed to bumble around, searching for meaning, as I've had the chance to. Scully was staring at me without remorse for her actions. Without a word, she dismissed my presence again and turned back to her friend, the corpse. When she picked up the bonesaw in her all too capable hands, I stayed where I was. Caught for one last moment in the horror of the grisly scene. She buzzed lightly through the hinges of the jaw, a mist of bone rising from the whirling blade. When she set it down and reached out to grip the skull with her strong, sure hands, I wasn't at all prepared for what came next. The loud crack of her breaking the jaw open almost sent me crashing to the floor. And even though I knew I would only sit mindlessly waiting for her results, I made my exit post haste and returned to our empty office. I backed out the door, watching Scully as I left. She was bent over the body, and appeared to be listening intently to something only she could hear. A message of death. She didn't turn around again. I left quickly because I had to. And my heart grew heavier with each step I took away. THE END ************************************************** All feedback to Katy2blue@aol.com. FEED ME! It makes me hungry to write more... ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ As lines, so loves oblique may well Themselves in every angle greet, But ours, so truly parallel, Though infinite, can never meet. Therefore the love which us doth bind, But fate so enviously debars, Is the conjunction of the mind, And opposition of the stars. ~Andrew Marvell~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~