Title: "Dark Place in the Sun: Just Call Me Jeff"
Author: Amatia
Email: violinst@pitnet.net
Feedback: Please? I have marshmallow Spenders!
Category: A, UST (If you squint)
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: "Patient X/The Red and the Black"
Archiving: Gossamer & The Ferret Cage - all others please ask first.
Disclaimer: Special Agents mentioned therein belong to Chris Carter, as do
their mothers.
Summary: Spender's weekend is interrupted by a visit by Dana Scully.
Note: Don't freak out yet, LH, no romance in this one...I decided to
backtrack a bit, and write some Post-Red&Black fic...It's the first one in
a planned series. :-)
Dedication: I have to send this one out to CO himself, he wrote such nice
inscriptions on the photos he autographed for me. :-)

***

"Dark Place in the Sun: Just Call Me Jeff"
by Amatia

	A knock on my door starled me from the photo album. Wondering who
it could be, I set it down, and went to the door. Special Agent Dana Scully
stood there, her hand ready to knock again. "Agent Scully," I asked, "how
can I help you?"

	"I'm sorry to bother you on a weekend, Agent Spender," she replied,
"but I'm in need of a skeptical eye, and Agent Mulder just doesn't cut it.
And I don't have many friends in the FBI, because my reputation, or rather
Agent Mulder's reputation, seems to preceed me wherever I go."

	"That I can understand," I replied. "Please, come in. I'm afraid
it's somewhat of a mess."

	"That's all right, I'll only be here for a few minutes. Skinner was
kind enough to give me your phone number, but your line was busy, so I
looked your address up in the book."

	"I have the phone off the hook. Can I take your coat?" She really
wasn't the person I most wanted to see at the moment, but since she'd come
without Mulder, I figured I could live with it.

	Scully handed me her jacket, and stood in the entry way looking
around the apartment. I hung it on the coat rack. "We can talk in the
kitchen," I said, not wanting her to see the photo album.

	She followed me into the kitchen, and we sat down at the table. She
slid a tape across the table to me. "This is the tape from my regression
hypnosis. I was wondering if you'd mind listening to it. I know...I know
that you've had your own share of experience with this sort of thing."

	"I showed you my tape, Agent Scully. You know I don't believe it."

	"I understand that. But perhaps you can offer me a more rational
explanation."

	"Than the one Agent Mulder gave?" I took two cups from the cupbord.

	"Agent Mulder told Assistant Director Skinner that my session was a
gestalt impression of a kind of "religious rapture" - that I witnessed a
very powerful event. But he couldn't give Skinner a clear picture of what
that powerful event was, except to say that your mother had been taken
aboard a military aircraft as part of a staging to test or cover up a
classified military project."

	I set a cup of coffee down in front of her. "And what did AD
Skinner say?"

	"That he doubted Mulder because he thought extraterrestrial
phenomena was the more plausible explanation."

	"That's quite unusual for the AD." I opened the refridgerator. "Cream?"

	"Please."

	I set it down next to her cup, then picked up the cassette tape,
knowing she didn't want me to listen to it in front of her. "I'll go listen
to this in the bedroom."

	"Thank you." Scully was pouring cream into her coffee as I went
into the bedroom. I put the tape in the player, then slid the headphones
on, and pressed play.

	What I heard was familiar, yet disturbing in its own way. Each
session I heard, despite the differences they might have, was still similar
enough to my own regression therapy sessions call up emotions from places
inside of me that I thought I'd paved over, a long time ago. My soul was
nothing but a highway constantly under contruction, with little signs
reading "Men at Work" all over it. Each syllable she spoke was like the
rattle of a jackhammer as it tore up hardened concrete.

	When it was finished, I removed the tape, and looked at myself in
the mirror. The Jeff Spender I had always known stared back out at me, hair
touseled as if often was on weekends, navy sweater and cream-colored
slacks, a birthday present from my mother several years ago. The shadows
under my eyes from fighting recent nights of insomnia, worrying about my
mother, about Mulder and Scully.

	Who was still in my kitchen, drinking coffee. I left the bedroom,
went through the living room, and back into the kitchen. Her hands were
wrapped sround the mug, and she was looking out the window. She turned as I
neared the table, and took the tape from me. "What did you think?"

	I poured myself a cup of coffee, and slid into the chair across
from her. "I think the question is, what do you think?"

	She flinched a little, then seemed to steel herself. "In all
honesty, Agent Spender -"

	"Jeff." I added cream to the coffee, watched it swirl into even color.

	"Jeff. In all honesty, I don't know what to think." Scully drummed
the tape on the table for a moment, until she realized what she was doing,
then put it in her purse. "I can't remember saying what was on the tape,
and I couldn't tell you why I'd have any reason to be saying it, unless it
happened."

	"Or it was somehow fed to you through the chip in the back of your
neck."

	She reached a hand up to touch the back of her neck, almost
unconsciously, and I noticed that the shadows under her eyes were as dark
as mine. "How did you know I had one?"

	"My mom's got one." I took a drink of my coffee. "But she refuses
to have hers removed, and from what I know of you, you developed cancer
when yours was."

	"Yes..." her voice was faint as she stared into her cup. Then she
looked up at me. "I don't know what to believe anymore."

	I looked into her eyes, and saw the conflict within. Taking a
chance, I asked gently, "Did you ever?"

	Scully looked away, out the window again. When she spoke her voice
was muffled by the hand she rested her chin on. "I don't know why I came
here."

	I stood up, and got the coffee pot, letting her gather her
emotions. I refilled her cup, and warmed my own, although it wasn't yet
cold. "I have just as many demons as you and Agent Mulder do, Agent Scully."

	"I don't doubt that you do," she replied as I put the coffee pot
back on the burner.

	She was still looking out the window, one hand wrapped around her
coffee as I sat back down. "You asked for my opinion on the regression
tape, and I have to tell you that I don't know what to believe either. My
head tells me that it was the military who took my mom, that it had to be,
but my heart tells me it's something even more sinister."

	"Finally, a man who doesn't take for truth everything his heart
tells him," she said softly. She looked at me again, a slight blush
staining her cheeks. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean...I know that you and Mulder
aren't on the best of terms."

	I leaned back in my chair. "You didn't come here to talk about
Mulder, but he seems to have worked his way into this conversation anyway."

	"I came to talk about what happened to your mother."

	"AD Skinner says they haven't found her yet."

	"Jeff...what did you do...after your dad left, when your mom was
missing?"

	Flashback to being seventeen, and sobbing on my mother's bed
because she was missing again, seeing in my mind's eye the bright lights
that had taken her, and hearing the cult leader's voice in my ears,
"Jeffrey, they've always brought her back."

	I decided to answer honestly. "I cried. And then I let myself
believe that it was aliens who had taken her."

	"Why?"

	"Because it was what she believed. Because it was what I was told."
I took a drink of my coffee. "What did you think had happened to you when
you were returned?"

	"I tried not to think about it, until I started having flashbacks,
of the tests. But I still can't remember any concrete details, the only
thing I have that is tangible is the chip in my neck."

	"That's all the evidence any of them have," I replied. "And as far
as hypnotic regression goes, it can be faked through a series of hypnotic
suggestions prior to actual questioning about the experience. Agent
Scully...have you ever thought that perhaps Dr. Werber was working for the
people that could be staging these so-called abductions?"

	"Mulder was there the entire time I underwent the hypnosis. Dr.
Werber couldn't possibly have suggested anything."

	"But it's like I told you three weeks ago...you've been hearing
abduction stories for years. So have I. It's why I said what I said on that
tape I showed you."

	"Haven't you ever stopped to think that maybe it's all true?" she
asked suddenly, her voice hard.

	I was startled for a moment. "I've spent half my life stopping and
thinking about what may or may not have happened to my mom and me. I'm
tired of stopping and thinking about it. It's easier to just say it didn't
happen."

	"It's easier for you to pretend it didn't happen," she replied.
"It's easier for all of us, but we have to face that fact that something
did happen. Did you ever check to see if you had an implant?"

	"I don't. I had all manner of x-rays done when I was in my early
twenties, in college. When I was paranoid about whether or not it happened
to me."

	"You're not what you appear to be."

	"I never have been."

	Scully made a show of looking at her watch. "I guess I should go."

	"Don't want to finish your coffee?" I asked.

	She looked into her cup, then shook her head. "I really should go."

	"Look, Agent Scully..."

	"Call me just Scully, or even Dana."

	"Dana, then. If you ever need to talk about this...with someone
who's got a different point of view than Mulder...just call me, ok?"

	Scully nodded. "And if you need to talk about your mom with
someone, come find me. I still have another week of desk-duty along with
Mulder, Skinner's mandate. I think he's afraid I'm going to run off in the
middle of a case to a bridge and get abducted, while Mulder get
brainwashed." She sighed, and stood up. "Thanks for listening to the tape."

	"You're welcome." I held out my hand, and she took it, and
squeezed. She had a surprisingly strong grip for a woman, but then again,
she was an FBI agent.

	We went out into the hall, and I handed her her coat. "Thanks for
the coffee," she said as she slid into it. "You make much better coffee
than Mulder."

	"I'll take that as a compliment," I chuckled, opening the door.
"I'll see you on Monday."

	"Bye," Scully replied, and I shut the door behind her, then leaned
against it, and closed my eyes for a moment until I regained my sense of
stability. I hated talking about that time in my life when I believed in
everything I was told, and about the time in college when I was so paranoid
because I didn't know which way was up, because there was no one to tell me
what to believe anymore, and I had to learn to think on my own.

	I crossed the room, and sat down on the couch once more to look
through the photo album. I didn't know why I had kept it, it was from when
I was a teenager. Photos of Mom and me by ourselves. Mom with her friends
from the group. Me with her friends. No pictures of Dad. I hadn't seen a
picture of my father in years. Mom had pulled them all out when he left,
and destroyed them. She must have known he wouldn't come back.

	I closed the album, and put it back on the shelf...

				*end*

	(No, Ladyhawk, not the piano!! At least, not yet...)


violinst@pitnet.net
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