TITLE:  The A.D. 
AUTHOR:  Brandon D. Ray 
SPOILERS:  None 
RATING:  PG 
CLASSIFICATION:  SA 
WARNINGS:  Character death 
SUMMARY:  The Assistant Director visits a pauper's grave 

The A.D. 
by Brandon D. Ray 

The chauffeur was puzzled.  He had driven for the Assistant Director for five 
years now, and for the previous incumbent for three years before that.  He was 
therefore used to being called to duty at all hours of the day and night; he was 
also used to ferrying his charge to meetings in odd, out-of-the-way places.  But 
being called on a Saturday afternoon to take the A.D. to a pauper's cemetery in 
a driving rainstorm -- that was downright weird. 
He glanced briefly in the rearview mirror as he powered the big limo around a 
corner.  The A.D. was sitting quietly in back, seemingly staring out the side 
window at the passing scenery -- but the chauffeur knew from long experience 
that whatever the A.D. was looking at, it wasn't rain-swept Washington. 
At length he eased the car to a stop in front of a small, run-down cemetery.  A 
black, wrought-iron fence, waist high, ran the length of the block.  Long grass 
and weeds grew up along the fence line; a cracked and tired-looking sidewalk led 
up to a rusty gate. 
The chauffeur started to get out of the car, but the A.D.'s voice stopped him:  
"You can wait in the car.  I won't be long."  The chauffeur glanced again in the 
rearview, and for a moment the A.D. caught his eye.  They both knew it was a 
violation of the new anti-terrorism regulations for the A.D. to travel anywhere 
unescorted; they also both knew that it was far from the first time they had 
broken that particular rule. 
The right rear passenger door clicked open, the sound of rain thrumming on the 
sidewalk suddenly becoming noticeably louder.  The A.D. stepped out onto the 
pavement and hastily slammed the door again.  The chauffeur settled down to 
wait. 
                                                           #     #     # 
She walked slowly up to the gate in the wrought-iron fence.  Rain continued to 
pour down out of sullen skies, and in moments the Assistant Director was soaked 
to the skin.  The gate swung open with a creak and a groan of protest, and she 
stepped through it and into the small, ill-kept cemetery. 
For a moment, she thought she was alone.  It was a small, cramped lot, with an 
abandoned building, apparently formerly a rooming house, on one side, and a 
shabby, dejected-looking church on the other.  Stretching out across the lot 
itself in neat rows were the headstones, a few shiny, white and new, most worn 
and pitted with age and neglect.  Here and there, someone had planted flowers, 
but most of the graves looked as if they hadn't seen a visitor in decades.  
Nothing moved. 
The Assistant Director peered through the rain and general gloom.  In the far 
corner was a mound of earth, partially covered by a tarpaulin, rising next to an 
open grave.  She advanced a few steps towards the grave, then suddenly stopped.  
There was someone standing next to the grave.  After a moment, she realized who 
it must be, and closed the remaining distance. 
"Mrs. Mulder," she said. 
The figure turned towards her.  Tired eyes flicked from the Assistant Director's 
face to the waiting limo and back again.  Finally, she spoke.  "Dana Scully.  It 
has been a long time."  Again, she glanced briefly at the limo.  "I didn't 
expect...."  Her voice trailed off. 
The Assistant Director tried to think of something to say, but everything that 
crossed her mind seemed ridiculously inadequate.  Finally, she could only say, 
"I'm sorry."  She hesitated a moment, and then nodded awkwardly towards the open 
grave.  "Is he...is he...here?" 
The other woman nodded.  "Yes."  Bitterly:  "They dug his grave and put him in 
it; then the rain started and they left.  I suppose they'll be back tomorrow, 
when the weather's fair." 
The Assistant Director winced inwardly, as she heard the echo:  "Fair weather 
friend."  Angrily, she shook her head.  <<There was nothing I could do,>>  she 
insisted to herself.  <<Nothing.  Lord knows, I tried.>> 
Mrs. Mulder took a step closer, and laid a hand on her shoulder.  "I'm sorry, 
Dana.  You didn't deserve that.  I know you did everything you could.  Fox 
was....was headstrong.  Willful.  Even as a boy, we could never control him.  I 
sometimes think he must have had some...some urge towards self-destruction."  
She turned and walked back towards the grave.  "I suppose I should move him, now 
that I've found him.  I suppose that eventually I shall.  But for now...I just 
can't.  He has been so troubled; he deserves to rest.  My boy, " she murmured.  
"My poor boy." 
The Assistant Director moved up to stand next to the other woman, and looked 
down into the grave.  Resting there in the mud, water pooling around it from the 
steady downpour, was a cheap wooden casket.  Standing there, staring at it, she 
felt a sudden rush of memories: 
<<Was it really only five years ago?  Has it really been only five years since 
we were together?  Only five years since we crisscrossed the country, seeking 
the strange, the unnatural, the unexplainable?  Only half a decade since that 
final day, when I came to your apartment to tell you they'd offered me Skinner's 
job? 
<<Oh, you supported me.  You urged me to take it.  You told me I had to think of 
my career, and pointed out what we both knew from the start:  That our 
partnership couldn't last forever, and that if it had to end, this was a better 
reason than most.  You said you would carry on, that your efforts would be 
bolstered by having an ally in management.  You said... you said....you said.... 

<<And so I took the job, and then came that terrible day, only a few weeks 
later, when I arrived at work to find your resignation letter sitting on my 
desk.  I tried to call you.  I wanted you to reconsider.  I wanted to tell you 
how valuable you were to the Bureau, and how desperately we needed people like 
you, who were independent, and willing to take risks.  I wanted to remind you of 
the essential balance the two of us created.  I wanted to tell you that...that 
my life wouldn't be the same without you in it.  So many things I wanted to say. 
 But the phone just rang and rang, and you didn't answer.  And the next day, it 
had been disconnected. 
<<I looked for you, Mulder.  I looked everywhere I could think.  I even enlisted 
those three oddballs on your behalf, but even they couldn't find you.  Even 
Frohike finally gave up.  And slowly, we drifted apart as well.   You were the 
glue that held us together.  Eventually, even I stopped looking.  But I never 
stopped thinking about you. 
<<Then this morning the phone rang.  A routine identity check of John Doe #27 
had revealed him to be a former member of the Bureau.  The man on the phone 
asked me if we wanted to assert jurisdiction, since you were once one of ours.  
He was polite, respectful and entirely correct...but I could tell from his tone 
of voice that he was just going through the motions.  After all, what interest 
could the Bureau have in one more homeless alcoholic, found dead in an alley, 
apparently of natural causes?  And of course, I had to say that we had no 
interest. 
<<But I couldn't stay away.  In the back of my mind, there remains that last, 
lingering doubt.  How many times, when we worked together, did your persistence 
and dogged determination prove in the end that an apparently natural death was 
not natural at all?  How many times was I forced to admit that the world was a 
larger, stranger -- and more wonderful -- place than I had believed?  That there 
are, after all, more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in my 
philosophy. 
<<I could do it.  I could take action, even now.  I could call the authorities, 
and tell them that I want to exert our jurisdiction after all.  I could have the 
body shipped to Quantico, and I could pick up the tools I haven't touched in 
half a decade, and perform the autopsy myself.  The findings would be 
inconclusive, and some data would be lost, since the body has already been 
embalmed. But I could do it.  I could.  In the old days, when we were together, 
you would have insisted on it, and the odds are better than fifty-fifty that you 
would have been right. 
<<And yet, I cannot  I haven't the heart.  I look at the worn, haggard face of 
the woman standing next to me, and I realize that I cannot be so inhumane as to 
put her through that -- it might destroy her.  She has lost her daughter.  She 
has lost her husband, first through estrangement and then in the final parting 
of ways which we all must face.  And now she has lost her son.  I cannot -- I 
will not -- endanger what peace she is able to find for herself by disturbing 
your remains. 
<<And so I am here.  I am not here as your former partner.  I am not here as a 
government official carrying out a routine, if onerous, duty.  I am not even 
here as a scientist, trying to further the extent of human knowledge.  I am here 
as a woman, a woman in sorrow because she has lost someone very dear to her.  I 
am here to say goodbye to a friend.  I hope that you can accept that.  I hope 
that you can forgive me that I don't have the strength to press the issue.  You 
were always the engine, driving us forward.  That was never my idiom. 
<<Oh, Mulder.  There is so much I wish I could have said to you.  There are so 
many things I didn't understand when we were together, which now seem so very 
clear.  Most of all, I wish I could have found the words to tell you that I 
understand you -- that I have always understood you, and what you were trying to 
accomplish.  Even as I was heaping doubt and skepticism on your ideas, I 
recognized their value.  I am a scientist, and as a scientist, I know that 
questions must be asked, or there will never be any answers.  Without the 
Galileos, stubbornly insisting that the Earth DOES move, there can be no 
progress. 
<<I never succeeded in making that clear -- that the truth IS out there, and 
that we both were seeking it, just by different means.  That is the biggest 
failure of my life.  I failed you, Mulder.  I hope that you can forgive me.  I 
don't think that I can ever forgive myself.>> 
"Dana?  Are you all right?" 
Scully looked around, and saw that Mrs. Mulder's eyes were on her, warm and 
gentle with concern.  Suppressing her own emotions, Scully forced a smile onto 
her face.  "Yes.  I'm fine.  I'll be fine," she repeated, speaking to herself as 
much as to the other woman. 
"Fox always spoke very highly of you," Mrs. Mulder said.  "Before... before..." 
Scully nodded.  "I understand.  I thought well of him, too."  Inwardly she raged 
at the awkward formality of her words.  <<Why can I never think of the right 
thing to say?>>  she thought angrily.  <<I always sound like such a cold fish.  
Why can I never manage to express my true emotions?>> 
Yet the other woman seemed to understand, for again she laid her hand on 
Scully's shoulder.  "It's all right, Dana.  It will be all right.  Fox was a 
hard man to know, a hard man to care for.  We both did the best we could, but in 
the end, he was too strong for both of us.  There is no shame in that.  And now 
all that's left is for us to grieve." 
There seemed to be nothing left to say.  Scully and Mrs. Mulder stood in the 
cemetery in the rain, looking at each other wordlessly, as still and silent as 
the abandoned monuments to the dead which stood all around them.  Finally, 
Scully stirred, and looked at her watch.  "I have to go," she said, hating 
herself again for her awkwardness.  She turned once more to the open grave, and 
looked down into it at the casket.  <<It's really just a box,>>  she thought.  
<<And inside of it is a human cadaver, no different from the hundreds of others 
I've dissected in my career.  There's really nothing there at all of the man I 
knew.>> 
Finally, she turned away from the grave, and walked back towards the car.  As 
she reached the ancient, rusty gate, Mrs. Mulder spoke for the last time. 
"Dana?" 
Scully turned to face her once again. 
"Would you...would you like to have coffee together sometime?  We 
could...reminisce."  She smiled slightly.  "Call it a wake for teetotalers." 
Scully paused.  Her instinct was to refuse, to flee from this uninvited human 
contact.  <<The only way to protect yourself is to avoid contact.>>  She opened 
her mouth to decline, and said, "Yes.  I'd like that very much." 
She turned and walked out of the cemetery.  Her driver started to get out of the 
car to hold the door for her, but she waved him back.  No point in both of them 
being soaked.  She opened the door and slid into her seat, heedless of the 
streams of water now running off onto the upholstery.  She pulled the door shut, 
and for a moment she sagged back into the cushions.  Then she opened her eyes 
again, to see the driver staring at her in the rearview mirror. 
"Destination, ma'am?" he asked quietly. 
She paused for a long moment.  Where did she want to go?  Lord knew there was 
plenty of paperwork sitting on her desk, demanding attention -- and on a rainy 
Saturday afternoon, she wouldn't have to cope with the damned phone constantly 
ringing, people demanding "just a few minutes while I run this by you", 
appointments, meetings, on and on, seemingly without end.  The idea was 
enticing; it would allow her to regain her equilibrium, and lay back to rest 
some of the ghosts which had been disturbed this afternoon. 
Except to hell with it.  Monday would come soon enough, and she would have to 
climb back down into the trenches, like it or not.  Today, and tonight, belonged 
to her.  To her and Mulder. 
"Take me home," she said. 
  
Fini