Slashx: 7 July 1998
ArchiveX: 13 July 1997

Title: Watching
Author: J. C. Sun
R for naughty words.
If Chris Carter and the Freaks ever did something like this to their boyz and their chick, I'd have to hurt them.
With the damned byproduct of organic chemistry to the Snark, for everything.

---

.surfacing
.jcsun

She'd had some trouble persuading the orderly to let her into ICU--the man eyed her pantsuit carefully, weighing whether such was standard FBI garb, and had finally decided against questioning her. Which was a sad sort of thing, considering how she'd lost that edge. Used to be that she could waltz into fucking *surger* and no-one would question her right to be there. Absolutely no-one, and now she was sitting here watching the people go in and go out and sitting out here and--

She cuts this train of thought off decisively.

"So, how long have the two of you been living together?"

He blinks at her slow, carefully, rather deceived by the placidity of her voice, the even ups and downs of it, and the smooth discaring curl of her eyes.

"Excuse me?"

"How long have the two of you been living together, sir?"

Her face, it isn't exactly cold--cold is too sharp and angry a word to voice that particular anger. Just this sort of giant, vast indifference across her face, done in broad uncaring strokes and thick paint. And casual is too loose a word, and bland too smooth.

With something like a jolt he realizes that this is her habitual expression: this is what she looks like this always, and it's only the shock of several months of not seeing, of being away--that's what's bringing out the shock at her voice and her face and the way her hands are lying, perfectly neutral, in her pantsuit lap.

She opens her mouth to ask him again, and he pauses her inquiry with a shrug of his shoulders and looks back at her with closely guarded face.

"Why did you two break up?"

This makes her blink, it gives her pause, and the hospital lights play across the tight skin of her cheekbone. A passing gurney flicks a light that turns her eyes into a bright blazing dying autumn blue that flicks into the grey of a surgeon's scrubs.

"I. . ."

Leaning back into the hard wooden bench, she tilts her head faintly, wondering at the curiosity of men and that of women, at the words that will pass between the family and the doctors entering the counseling room located across the hall. The mother is weeping steadily, but the wife is cool, the faintest edge of a sneer on her lip, and the doctor shoots her a faintly approving look as he closes the door and contains the domestic drama about to explode.

And nearby, on her right, Mulder's room door swings open and the doctor and the specialist Skinner turns his head, angling for information. The doctor nods, and the specialist flicks a weary, glad smile to Skinner and holds the door open him; Scully can see the sunlight coming through the frame and she watches it play across the disinfected linoleum.

"It was never about love." she says, raising a hand to pause Skinner.

"It was never about love." she says, and her voice quiet and proud, so very very proud.

And the smile he gives her is sad, so quiet and sad, so very quiet and sad before he steps inside, leaving her in the corridor, with the doctor.

.end

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