Title: The Spender Defense
Author: Flywoman
Rating: R for language (No Spender sex. Even I'm not that sick.)
Classification: VA
Spoilers: "Patient X"/"The Red and the
Black", "The End"
Synopsis: A few words on Spudner's behalf by the author who made
you feel sorry for Mulder's mom and will one day persuade you
that the CSM is sexy.
Key words: Jeffrey Spender
Disclaimer: Agent Jeffrey Spender belongs to Chris Carter and Ten
Thirteen, and they can have him. I'm just experimenting with
something a little different and putting a few words in his
mouth. Don't sue. Somebody needed to make a case for the little
whiner.
Thanks: To the talented Nascent, for encouragement, publicity,
and friendship in lieu of a judicious swat, to FirePhile and
The-I for reading, and to Angela, my thesis advisor, who demanded
more.
That's a funny little triangle they've got going there. Bet Diana
Fowley never suspected that coming back to their little basement
lovenest after all these years would prove more hazardous to her
health than a LEGATT
assignment among terrorists. I feel sorry for her, even if she
was as crazy as her former partner, even if she did effectively
help him steal my first big case right out from under my arm.
Sure, she screwed up, lost the kid, but she's lying in the
hospital now not knowing where her next breath is coming from,
and the other two escaped with nothing worse than a scorching. Do
I sound too nonchalant about the sudden destruction of half a
career's worth of work? It's a tough break for them, sure, but I
look at it this way: their talents have been wasted for five
years, and this might be just the kick in the ass they need to
start over in the right direction midgame. Forget about this
alien bullshit and employ their respective talents towards more
worthy ends.
Hard to believe that Special Agent Fox Mulder was once the Golden
Boy of the VCS. By the time I entered the Academy, his glory days
were over and his nickname, once a mark of awe and admiration,
had become a joke, a snigger around the water cooler. And he's
single-handedly responsible for the change, him and his X-files,
his dubious paranormal sidelights. Me, I started with the Bureau
already weighed down with my own share of cock-eyed history, of
family baggage. The last thing I wanted was to be saddled with a
reputation like the one he's earned. And frankly, it's less than
the crazy bastard deserves. Bottom line is, he scares me. Because
of what he was, and because of what he has become. After all, if
it could happen to a star like him, it could happen to anybody.
Including a green rookie fresh out of the academy with big
ambitions, a closet full of skeletons, and an unfortunate knack
for pissing people off.
Of course Mulder's no slouch when it comes to provocation either.
I am not a violent man, but that little scene in front of the
suspect's cell came *this* close to making me lose it. For a
second, I could actually feel the veins bulging under my fingers
as I crushed his larynx. But I focused, I breathed. I didn't
snap. Not even when he called me arrogant, stopped just short of
accusing me of treason, and told me I should be taking notes as
the Wunderkind got to work. Not even when he sent me out to fetch
a meal like some delivery boy. "I will not tolerate
that." That was my prisoner, my case, and I had been in that
cell for six hours trying to shake a crumb of information out of
that murderous scumbag. I don't know whether it would have made
me feel worse or better if Mulder had actually managed to squeeze
anything useful out of him. In the end, all he got for his
immunity carrot were some vague hints about a missing link and a
dead suspect.
I'd explicitly requested that he *not* be involved in my case,
and the next thing I knew, he was barging into my briefing with
no less than the A.D. himself as back-up. Christ. And then
without having even seen the shot, he ordered me to roll the tape
back so that he could prove that not only was the assassin's
bullet not meant for the victim, but the 12-year-old kid across
from him was some kind of fucking psychic. Like I was his little
projectionist instead of the agent in charge of the case, that
big arrogant prick. I waited for the A.D. to put him in his
place, but of course it never happened; not only did he not
reprimand Mulder, he actually seemed to take the man's ridiculous
claims seriously. I'd bet half my monthly paycheck that those two
are having it on together in secret. I know Skinner doesn't look
like the type, big ex-Marine and all, but Mulder's fey, a pretty
boy with a big mouth. And how else to explain why he hasn't
touched that partner of his after five years?
That partner. Agent Dana Katherine Scully. Oh my god. She may be
well over thirty, but she's got the body of a goddess under those
tailored suits. The first time I met her, it was all I could do
to keep from falling all over myself like some fucking lovesick
schoolboy. The thing that surprised me most was that she seemed
so normal. Not *average* by a long shot, but nothing like that
psycho she shared the basement with. She was deceptively
soft-spoken, and smart as hell. I'm really disappointed in her
after all that's happened, of course. Once I honestly thought I
could trust her, that she understood why I wanted to keep her
loony partner away from my mother. She claimed that I found them
in that hospital room because my mother had contacted them, but I
don't buy that for a second. I still believe that they were
somehow responsible for my mother's disappearance, I don't care
that the prints on the wheelchair don't match. I am perpetually
amazed by the incompetence I encounter in what should be the most
intelligent and efficient organization in the country: apparently
my mother simply vanished without a trace. Nothing vanishes
without a trace.
So, sure, Scully denies taking my mother to that bridge, but
officially she doesn't even recall how she got there herself.
Unofficially, though, is another story. I know she's been talking
to that fucking snake-oil peddler Werber. I've been trying to
extricate my mom from his pseudoscientific bullshit for years
without any success, and now he's got Scully wrapped around his
little finger too. Mulder used to be his patient as well - it
didn't take to much digging to uncover *that* little connection.
Just one big fucking happy family. But I digress. Scully went to
see Werber, and word around the Bureau was that she came out with
some insane alien conspiracy story - something with a UFO and
faceless men setting people on fire. And my mother apparently
ascended into heaven like a New Age Enoch in front of her eyes,
like a divine hand plucked her right off the board. Oh, yeah.
What's next, NE headlines screaming "FBI Agent confesses 'I
was impregnated by aliens!'"?
So really it was only a matter of time before they got shut
down after a stunt like that. I only advanced the inevitable by a
year or two at most by going public with my indignation at the
way this case was handled. And after all, they and that Moonunit
Fowley managed to fuck up royally. I'm not just bitter because it
was my first big case in the VCS. Thanks to their diddling around
with immunity privileges and ESP tests, our suspect is dead, a
kid is missing, an agent is critical, and the Bureau has been
made an international laughingstock. They should have been
demoted, even suspended, when their gambit ended in sacrifice and
checkmate. Instead they've ended up with new assignments in
opposite corners. Maybe The Powers That Be hope that they'll
simmer down once they're separated, no longer each feeding off
the other's madness. Sure. And maybe my father will come back and
my mother will be found, miraculously returned to her senses, and
we can all live in a little house with a white picket fence and
be the poster children for the American nuclear family.
There's one thing that fuck Mulder doesn't seem to understand.
I'm not out to get anybody, not even him - although I'd hardly
expect a megalomaniac of his caliber to grasp that. I meant it
when I told Mulder his days were numbered, but I said it out of
fear and surprise more than anything. Where the fuck did he get
off threatening *me*, asking me who I worked for when all along
I've been trying to do my job here, no more, no less... Physical
assault on a fellow agent is a fucking no-no. Par for the course
for that asshole, though. I've read his records - official and
less so. Some very interesting facts came to light last week when
I opened my morning paper and a few excerpts from his classified
file fell out. His background is absolutely riddled with slips
like this one: Duane Barry, John Roche - even the A.D. for
Christ's sake. The man's a fucking menace. It was a matter of
simple justice to draw attention to his latest outrages and then
sit back and watch it happen.
But I have to admit that there is a personal element in all this
for me.
I love my mother despite everything, the secrets, the psychotic
episodes, the personal humiliation. I tried so hard to protect
her from herself, from the press, from the contagion of that cult
she got involved in. And I blame Mulder for that alien abduction
theory she's concocted, for the starry-eyed beliefs in some
fucking ordained mission of enlightenment that let her go off
half-cocked from the hospital with God knows whom.
Oh yes, I know, how can I hold him responsible when it's been
going on since I was twelve, the stories, the memory lapses. She
hasn't been able to hold onto a job for as long as I can
remember; good thing she's such a genuinely sweet woman or she'd
never have gotten a new one every time her employers caught on to
the fact that she was certifiable. But reading about the Almighty
Mulder's "experiences" really transformed her, gave
solidity to her previously vague delusions, and (this is what
I'll never forgive him for) led her straight to the tender
ministrations of Herr Werber. I've tried to explain it to him so
many times. I've tried to
make him see that those stories were just her pitiable defense
against the unbearable truth: that my father left us to fend for
ourselves, that he wasn't coming back. But Werber's obviously got
his own agenda.
And speaking of agendas - that smoking man. I'd give a lot to
know whom he works for. More to know why he keeps playing the
ludicrous Darth Vader routine. Granted, I've tried to block out
many of my childhood memories, get past them in order to make
something real out of my life, but he's definitely not the man I
remember abandoning us. Why he shows up claiming to be my father
after all these years is beyond me. What the hell does he want
from me, and why has he become my self-avowed patron? I have no
reason to believe he's not the guy Skinner was referring to, but
why me? Was he really trying to help give me a boost in the
Bureau by snagging me a high profile case... or was he
deliberately setting me up to fail? Have I merely been a tool in
his whole fucking operation, a mindless pawn marching
self-righteously forward, eliminating pieces in my path with no
idea of the stakes, the strategy, even the rules of the game?
But if there's one thing I've had to learn to get this far, it's
patience. The truth is out there, and someday I will find it. And
I do have a hidden pin to spring the next time he contacts me:
meeting him outside the elevator that day, I noticed he reeked of
ash, and it wasn't just the Morley's. And he had a case file
folder under his arm. I didn't have time for more than a glance,
but I'm sure the label said "Mulder." Thank God I had
the sense to keep my mouth shut.
With a little strategy, even a pawn can win the end game from the
right position.