His bruises had bruises. Scratches marred his cheek, and nearly every step he took felt wrong. The Mark 7 was long gone. It gave its life for the human race, helping him delivery the goddamn nuke where it belonged instead of mid-Manhattan. He was paying for the heroics now, and Tony liked to pretend he was used to it. It was just another day after saving the world—except it wasn’t—but he wasn’t telling. Suffering in silence, beneath fourteen layers of arrogance was more his style.
He used his ass to push open the doors of the lab where the new pathologist was pulling on a pair of gloves to protect her hands from alien gore. Dana Scully was pretty, and yet another redhead. What was it with him and gingers? Pepper. Nat. And now Scully who looked to be about as much fun as Maria Hill—in other words—not fun.
“Ice cream?” he asked holding up a soft-serve cone for the former FBI agent, and then took a nibble of his cone before it melted over his hand. “This your first alien autopsy, Doctor?”
He’d read her file. How could he resist especially since he wasn’t too sure he completely trusted SHIELD. Fury kept too many secrets, and he had a tendency to distrust anything his father had his fingers in. “What an ugly bastard.” He could’ve been talking about the thing from outer space or Nick. Either worked.
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Scalpel & SHIELD: Chapter 4 - An Unexpected Visitor
Georgetown, Washington DC, 2002
William had babbled and gurgled for the first leg of the nearly hour drive back to Georgetown, but had well and truly nodded off by the time that they hit the DC metro limits. As she cruised through the streets towards the same, comfortable apartment she had lived in since she’d moved to the city, she hoped that she’d be able to keep him out long enough to get him inside and into bed. That was getter harder and harder to do now that he was over a year old, growing like a weed. Gone were the days when she could just sneak him in his car seat and slip him into his crib.
She pulled into the quiet drive, the same spot she’d had for years. Scully was a fixture in the building at this point, the crazy FBI agent who always had weirdos breaking into her place. She single-handedly had been the cause for the upgrade in security around the apartment, which in and of itself wasn’t a horrible thing, but she was certain her neighbors felt much better now that she no longer worked a job so dangerous that they had to fear that strangers were lurking in the shadows, waiting to pounce on unsuspecting targets.
Unfortunately, that didn’t mean they weren’t there, either.
She noticed him almost as soon as her headlights ran across the quiet, unmarked sedan sitting serenely by the trash bins. It wasn’t precisely a parking spot there, but visitors often liked to use it if they were only there for a short time, and the manager rarely made a fuss about it. Still, while people liked parking there, it was rare they sat in their cars, slumped in the seat, trying to look as inconspicuous as possible. Scully may no longer be an FBI agent, but she wasn’t an idiot.
She pulled into her spot, glancing in her rearview mirror towards the car and the occupant. He sat up after she had parked, and she could see at least part of his face through the darkened windshield.
Quietly and as coolly as she could, she reached across to the glove compartment, where her Smith and Wesson lay under a pile of registration papers, a spare diaper, and one of William’s stuffed toys. She carefully pulled it and the holster, clipping it under her light jacket as she stepped out, half an eye on the car in the back as she rounded to where William was still out like a light. As she did, the man in the car opened his door.
She spared him a glance as she opened passenger’s side, busying herself with gathering William’s scattered things. In reality, she was watching the man as she tugged at his sport coat, buttoning it neatly in front of him. He was an inconspicuous enough person, the sort you’d expect in a special agent: pleasant features, serious demeanor, strong jaw, dark haired, not too tall, not too small, the sort of pleasant attractiveness that didn’t draw attention to himself. The typical agent type. But from where? FBI would just call her or show up at her door, they’d not be secretive about it. The CIA, maybe, but why in the world would they want to play cloak-and-dagger games with her? The same applied to the NSA. This left only one group, really, one she’d hoped would leave her the hell alone since she stepped away from the X-files. She had no wish to play in Spender’s sick games anymore, and he’d better stay the hell away from her son.
“Excuse me,” he called, as her hand tightened on the handle of William’s overnight bag. She set it on the ground, looking around her SUV at him.
“Yes?” Her hands wandered to her hips, the impatient mother trying to get her child into the house. She slid the right one ever so closely to the small of her back, where her holster lay.
He smiled, a pleasant smile, all things considered. “I saw you driving up with the little one. I thought I could help.”
Little one? Scully doubted there was any way in hell he could have seen William’s car seat in the back, especially in the twilight. “I think I’m good, thanks.”
“You sure? I mean, I can help carry something inside.” He continued forward, all careful concern. Scully didn’t hesitate to let her right hand whip behind her back. Before he had another step, her weapon was trained on him, pointed right in the middle of his kindly, concerned face.
“You can also stop where you are and tell me who you work for.” She barely raised her voice above a whisper, desperate to keep William asleep and not in the middle of this. Her heart thumped painfully as she stepped away from the car, closer to the stranger who took a step back, hands slowly moving upwards, palms out.
“Easy! I was just offering to help.”
“Convenient, as you were also hiding out in an unmarked sedan behind my building, waiting for me to arrive back home. Why?”
Something flickered across his stoic face for a moment, but he only sighed. “Look, I didn’t mean to scare you.”
“Do I look scared?” She flicked the safety off her gun. The man swallowed hard.
“I’d read your file. I knew you were good, but...perhaps I underestimated things.”
“My file?” She knew it. She almost rolled her eyes with the predictability of it. “Who are you with? The CIA? NSA? Can’t be the Bureau, they’d just come by my office to bother me.”
“None of those, no.” His calm demeanor barely flickered as she raised her aim even higher. “I’m not from any US based agency. I work for something more international.”
“Interpol?”
“Close. SHIELD.”
Well, that was unexpected.
She lowered her gun, flicking the safety back on. The man raised a dark eyebrow archly and she wondered if that was what his relieved expression was.
“What does the likes of SHIELD want with me?”
“To talk to you, Doctor Scully. That’s all. Your work has caught our attention and they are interested in you.”
She considered. It was Sunday evening, and here he was, lurking outside of her apartment. If he wanted to kill her and take her son, he could. So far, he seemed on the level.
“Well, if you are offering to help me, you can take the suitcase and his diaper bag.”
This brought a hint of a smile to his expression as he gladly took the items from her, waiting patiently for her to unhook William from his seat. He barely whimpered as she cuddled him close on her hip, keys replacing her hand gun. She jerked her head, a silent request for him to follow her as she led the way to the front of the building, where her apartment door lay.
Once inside, she nodded towards the living room as she carried her sleeping son, warm and snuggly, into his room. Whoever her guest was, he’d have to wait as she stripped William down ,out of his clothes, and changed him into pajamas. William barely woke enough to whine pathetically as she cooed at him, smoothing dark curls off his forehead as she settled him into his bed. He rolled over, asleep again before she even wandered away.
The stranger stood by her fireplace, studying the photos above, a motley collection of pictures of her family over the decades. She noted him studying in particular one of William’s hospital photos, when he was little more than a scrunched up face swaddled in blankets, a tiny hat covering his dark head. The old fear and apprehension rose within her, her fingers itching for her weapon once more.
“What does SHIELD want with the likes of me?”
He spun around, a polite smile on his face. “Why wouldn’t they?” He gestured to her comfortable armchair. “May I have a seat?”
She nodded as he settled across from her couch where she chose to sit, watching him as if he were a suspect, liable to strike at any moment. “I don’t believe you gave me your name.”
“Agent Phil Coulson.” He reached inside his blazer as Scully tensed, but he merely produced a simple card emblazoned with the name ‘Philip Coulson” in black text. To the left, the stylized seal of an eagle was produced in silvery gray, surrounded by the full name of the organization he claimed to be from, the “Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement, and Logistics Division”.
“I always felt it was a long way for you all to go to spell the word ‘shield’.” She murmured, setting the card on the coffee table in front of her, a reminder of who he was.
“It is a bit obvious, but I suppose it expresses our charter nicely.”
“Ahh, yes, an international anti-terror and intelligence agency focused on global security.” She knew of SHIELD by reputation. As an FBI agent, she’d had to deal with them far less than Interpol, but the idea was similar; an extra-government organization centered on the idea of providing intelligence for global protection independent from the agendas of any one particular government or regime. Of course, Scully had found it amusing that was their chartered goal, though they were mostly based in the United States and served a very specific point of view.
“So, again I have to ask, what does SHIELD want with the likes of me?” She returned them to the topic at hand, namely why he was lurking at her apartment on a Sunday evening.
“Why wouldn’t they?”
“I suppose a better question is why you are here at my house this time of night wanting to chat with me about a secret spy organization?”
“I’d have chatted with you during the day, but you were busy.”
She pursed her lips as he smiled at her in his equinaminous way. “Agent Coulson, I am not in the business anymore. In case you haven’t noticed, my priorities have changed. I’m a mother, I’m a teacher, and I don’t go around playing cloak-and-dagger games.”
“You used to. In fact, until you had your son, you were a full FBI agent, working on the X-files.”
“I’m well aware of what I used to do.”
“You asked why SHIELD wants you and I told you.” His fingers steepled as he sank further into her chair, clearly at ease. “You have a background in physics from the University of Maryland and a medical degree from Stanford, and yet you went into pathology with the FBI only to be stuck on the X-files detail with Fox Mulder.”
“I wasn’t stuck. I was assigned.” She bristled, even after all these years.
He at least had the grace to look apologetic before moving forward. “You were assigned. Your cases weren’t unknown to us, nor is the work you and Agent Mulder did; hauntings, alien abductions, the unexplained. I was a particular fan of the flukeman incident.”
“I am glad someone was.” She still had nightmares about it.
He beamed, briefly. Clearly he meant what he said. “You’ve been on SHIELD’s radar for quite some time. Your unique skill set and experience intrigued us.”
“What about alien abductions and ghost sightings could possibly interest SHIELD?”
“We are interested in global security.” His smile was enigmatic. She wondered if he practiced that a lot.
“I have a feeling that’s all classified and you can’t tell me.”
“Let’s just say that you and Agent Mulder were a lot closer than anyone would like to acknowledge to the truth of a lot of things.”
The truth? She smirked, throwing herself deep into the cushions of her comfortable chair. “What truth is that, Agent Coulson? That there are aliens in the universe who have made a habit of making off with ordinary people or that there is a massive conspiracy to experiment on the public in the most grotesque ways?”
“Both. What do you know about HYDRA?”
“You mean the old Nazi organization? I know of it, of course, mostly from history courses ages ago and watching the old Captain America films with my father growing up.”
“I loved those movies.” A hint of delight worked its way through his equanimity.
“I thought HYDRA died off with World War II. Wasn’t that what the Howling Commandos were up to?”
“Yes. But as we both know, conspiracies aren’t easy to kill off like that.”
That caught her attention. A sick feeling rose inside as she processed, both because of what Coulson was saying and what he wasn’t. “Are you implying that they had something to do with the work Mulder and I did?”
“I’m implying they had everything to do with it.”
“And why would you assume that?”
He slipped a hand into his suit coat, pulling out a slim, long white envelope. He passed it over to her as she studied the unlettered outside of it. She stared at it for long moments, before flickering her gaze to his in silent question.
“A photo you might be interested in. We found it recently in some files, ones that were hidden.”
She reached for it, plucking it out of his grasp. Inside she could feel the thicker stock of photograph paper. Flipping open the flap, she pulled out a black and white photo, obviously taken from a concealed camera, perhaps something from a covert operation. The lab they were in was clear enough, subjects being hooked up to machines by technicians, some looking quietly placid, others fearful, even in tears. Above them on an observatory platform stood two men, watching the scene. The shorter man was older, a shock of white, thinning hair stick around him like a halo. She didn’t immediately recognize him. His companion though, that face she would recognize in her nightmares.
“That’s Spender!” She flipped the photo around to point to the tall, lanky man with a mane of dark hair, not yet the grizzled older man she hated.
“Well, Busch to be more precise, but yes.” Coulson leaned forward as he took one corner of the photo. “Carl Gerhard Busch, born October 29, 1926 to German national parents with ties to the growing Nazi party. When his parents divorced, his father returned, but he stayed in America with his mother. She remarried to a man named Spender, hence the name.”
That was far more than Scully had ever found out about the mysterious smoking man who had terrorized her life for so long, and she had the Lone Gunmen looking. “How did you find that out?”
“We have a file on him. We’ve had one since the 1950s, when he first appeared on the scene as a State Department operative working alongside Bill Mulder. The two of them met in the Army. College kids, they got fast-tracked as officers working in the liaison office, then stepped sideways to State. On his own, Bill Mulder wouldn’t have drawn our attention, but Spender did. His biological father, Gerhard Busch, was a high ranking member of HYDRA, key in it’s growth and organization. He disappeared after the death of Schmidt and was never found.”
“And you thought his son knew where he was?”
“It was suspected that the elder Busch fled to America, along with other former HYDRA operatives, perhaps under the protection of his son. We never found Gerhard.”
Perhaps, because his son had killed him, too.
“Who is the other man?”
“His name is Richard Reinhardt, the head of the bioengineering division of HYDRA. He was the former second to Arnim Zola, who headed up much of the scientific research HYDRA conducted.”
“Zola was captured during the war.”
“He was and never saw a day of prison for it.” Only the slightest tick hinted at Coulson’s displeasure at that fact. “After the war he was brought over to the US to do research.”
“Project Paperclip.” Scully spat the words out. She knew that particular Cold War side project all too well. As if by muscle memory, she turned towards the large, plate glass bay window in her apartment, the one Duane Berry had broken through and take her to Skyland Mountain, turning her entire life upside down. She shivered.
If Coulson knew anything about that, he was polite enough not to mention it. “Higher ups championed keeping Zola around after the war, if nothing else because the SSR and later SHIELD could use his research. He died of cancer in 1972. On his death, SHIELD higher ups suggested looking at other options, other scientists brought over by the government and given amnesty.”
“And this is why you looked into Reinhardt?” The pieces began falling into place almost against her will.
Coulson nodded, looking less than pleased by the fact. “That picture was taken by one of ours, doing some reconnaissance work before approaching Reinhardt. We knew he’d been working for years for a US project, deep undercover. It wasn’t clear what or for whom, and SHIELD wasn’t willing to offer him a position without knowing what he’d been up to. That picture was shot at a US Army research facility at April Air Force Base in San Bernardino County, California.
April Air Force Base?
That name rang like a klaxon as Scully scanned the photo again, picking out the individual patients, some with downturned, blurry faces, others whose features came out quite clearly. “When was this taken?”
“August of 1974.”
That was well within the timeframe. Even as that thought floated to the top of Scully’s brain, she found what she was seeking; a young girl, only nine-years-old, dark haired and elvin faced. She recognized her as surely as she’d recognize her own son. William had the same distant, forlorn expression when he was tired or sick, the sort that melted the heart of most anyone who saw it, especially his daycare workers. That familiar ache, the searing pain of Mulder’s loss, roared to life as she held the photograph with shaking fingers, seeing for the first time visual evidence that the girl who had disappeared on that long ago night in 1973 had been alive long after she was thought gone.
“Samantha,” she breathed, reverently touching the glossy face.
“The best we can tell, she was a part of a program being headed up by Reinhardt, research, using alien technologies.”
“And SHIELD did nothing to stop them?” Anger at the sight of this woebegone girl who had cost those who loved her so much flooded her as she snapped back, directing her ire at Coulson.
“SHIELD doesn’t exactly have the capacity to just call out a foreign government without hard evidence of wrongdoing. Not long after this, our agent was compromised, we had to extract. We were never able to get hard evidence again. The operation was kept so tight, we weren’t even able to get a team put together for removal. Contrary to popular belief, while SHIELD is capable, we aren’t all powerful, and HYDRA is very crafty at hiding when they want to.”
“And you are certain it is HYDRA?”
“Well, the remnants, at least. The core died off long ago, but there are still seeds of it all over. SHIELD roots them out where they can. Which is where our interest in you comes in.”
The last piece of the puzzle clicked into place painfully. “You want me to search for Spender.”
“No one knows him better.”
Did anyone really know him at all? Scully wasn’t so sure. She stared at the photo of the younger Spender in stark black-and-white, looking out over his subjects, a curl of smoke circling up over his head lazily. In panic, she dropped the photo on the coffee table, throwing herself up and out of her seat, pacing blindly to the window Duane Berry had come through.
“You don’t know who you are dealing with here.” She turned on Coulson who watched her quietly.
“We’ve followed Spender for years.”
“Yes, but you’ve not had to deal with him.”
“In all fairness, Doctor Scully, SHIELD is well versed with dealing with all matter of demons.”
“Not this one, you aren’t.” She stalked back towards the mantel and the one photograph of Mulder she had up there, a snapshot of him from a Yankees game she’d taken him to, weeks before he disappeared. He had a ball cap on, crunching on his ever-present sunflower seeds, attempting to teach her the finer points of the game and failing. She’d deliberately played at being confused, of course, just to irritate him as he tried, in vain, to explain a box score. He waxed poetic about Derek Jeter at one point, calling him the greatest Yankee since Mantel. He’d been happy that day.
And then he was gone. Vanished, as if he never existed. Just like his sister.
“This man took everything from me,” she murmured into the silence of her apartment. “He had me kidnapped and tested on, gave me cancer, ripped away my life and my choices out of his own cruelty. He killed my sister. He killed my friends. He created my daughter only to die as a lab experiment. He toyed with Mulder for decades, puppetted his life, stringing him along only to rip his hope and his integrity away time and time again, crushing him gleefully, all the while knowing he was his own son. And I can’t tell you what he did to the one son who did carry his name, how he abused him, abandoned him and his mother, using them and discarding them when it suited. He plays his games, acting as if we were nothing, as if we were little more than toys. You say you know what you are dealing with, but do you really?”
“Perhaps not as much as you, but if we did, we wouldn’t be coming to you, asking you to join us.”
He had a point, as much as she hated to admit it. She blinked against the film in her eyes as she turned to face him. His expression was sympathetic, but quietly expectant as well. Did he understand what he was asking of her, approaching her like this?
“If I agree, I am putting my son in danger. I won’t do that.”
“We will work with you to help protect you and your son. Unlike the FBI, we take the threat seriously.”
“That’s what our old boss said, right before Fox Mulder disappeared.”
“I’m well aware that asking you back into this life is dangerous, Doctor Scully. I’m also aware of what you sacrificed for your work before and what we are asking you to do again. But without you, Spender still is running free without any check to his plans. How many other people will he suck up into his machinations by then?”
He was right, but it didn’t make her want to rush back into the breech anymore. “I’ve had an offer from Howard University, full time faculty.”
“We’ve heard. It’s why we moved.”
She wasn’t shocked he knew about the offer, only that they had moved so quickly to try and secure her. “Then you know that it’s a good job, with a possibility for growth. It’s a quiet, sedate job, without the threat of bodily harm or death that would leave my son orphaned.”
“But is it what you want?”
That caught her by surprise. “How would you know if it was or wasn’t?”
“If it was what you wanted, Doctor Scully, you’d have signed the paperwork last week when it was offered to you.”
Coulson wasn’t an idiot, she’d give him that much. “I feel I need to give full consideration to that offer, first.”
“Fair.” He nodded, rising from her sofa. “Whatever you decide, let me know.”
That was it? She had expected more of a high stakes sell from the world’s most secret intelligence organization. “You’ll just let me go, make my own decisions? Won’t make me an offer I can’t refuse?”
“I’m not in the business of making promises I can’t keep or idyll threats to scare people into doing what I’d like.” He buttoned his blazer with a hint of a smile. “Besides, you are right. Coming to work for SHIELD is dangerous, and you have a child to think of. As long as Spender’s alive, he is a threat, and your son will need protection. Either way, you have to choose what is best; working for us to stop him or working far away and hoping he takes no notice. Only you can make the right decision for you.”
As if that made the choice any better.
Clearing his throat, he crossed his hands in front of him respectfully. “I think I’ll leave you with that for the night, Doctor Scully. You can reach me by the information on the card.”
“Thank you,” she murmured quietly as she showed him out the door. She let it click as she locked the door, leaning for long moments against it, listening to his footsteps down the hallway. No matter how hard she tried, Spender kept coming back, like a god damned cockroach. Last time she’d seen him, he said he was dying. He had more than likely been lying. Wherever he was, she had no doubt that he would, eventually, come looking for her - and for his grandson.
As if on instinct, she wandered to William’s nursery. Oblivious to the adult conversation in the living room, he was asleep, laying on his back, one leg cocked sideways as he hugged his toy alien, Spooky, in one chubby arm. Tears stinging, she reached down in his crib to brush his tangle of fine, dark curls from his forehead, chuckling wetly at the little snuffle and snort he loosed before turning away from his mother’s ministrations.
“What are we to do, Will?” She sighed, pulling back to watch him sleep quietly and contently, without a care in the world.
At this moment, she really didn’t know what they would do.
A Scalpel & SHIELD: Chapter 1 - Everything & Nothing
Hoover Building, Washington DC, 2001
Skinner carried the last box of items from the old X-files office to her car, refusing to let her even so much as lift a finger.
“You know, I’m pregnant, not dying.” She eyed her boss - well, former boss - as he shifted the cardboard container filled with the final mementos onto one hip as he lifted the lid of the trunk of her car. Skinner only grunted by way of response. Her sedan was already stuffed beyond reason with other boxes and papers, the memories of seven years of work and of a partner, now missing, who no one cared to find.
“If you think you are unloading this at your apartment by yourself, you have another thing coming.” Skinner slammed the trunk closed, eyeing Scully suspiciously, as if fully prepared to follow her home and do the work himself.
“My family is coming by this evening to help me unload, and no, I’ll only carry the light stuff.” She could see the protest brewing and cut it off quickly. She had protested the help he had given her already, but he wouldn’t hear of it. His sense of honor, ingrained from his days as a Marine, cut too deeply and he had refused to take no for an answer. She had allowed it, knowing he wanted to do something, anything, to make up for the fact that Mulder was gone, lost outside of Bellefleur. It wasn’t his fault. Not that she could ever convince him of that.
“Thank you for everything, Walter.” She smiled, ignoring the mist that filmed her vision, her mouth almost hurting with the effort not to cry. “If it weren’t for you these weeks...years, really…”
Her voice cracked and shattered, scattering like her heart, like her work, like her life.
Without a word, he reached for her, pulling her close as she sobbed helplessly into his chest, not caring that she was soaking his button down and tie as he held her tightly.
“I’m so sorry,” he murmured, as she fell apart. “I tried to protect him, I tried…”
It wasn’t his fault. She couldn’t quite manage to words to tell him that, to reassure him, but they failed her. She only managed to nod, pulling away as she wiped at streaming eyes and accepted a crumpled napkin held out to her, trying not to see the worried sympathy in Skinner’s expression. He’d fussed over her for months now and she didn’t know if she could stand another minute of it.
“I know that it’s all overwhelming right now,” he murmured as she collected herself, trying his best to salvage his ruined shirt and tie. “But, I don’t have to turn in the paperwork just yet. It’s sitting on my desk if you change your mind. Maybe, just a leave of absence, till after the baby gets here, then reassess?”
“No,” she croaked around her plugged nose, a wobbly smile softening her blunt reply. “No, thank you, sir. I have already given this a lot of thought, and honestly, there is nothing here at the FBI for me anymore. I came here hoping to change the world, and maybe with Mulder, I did. But without him here anymore, I’m not content to just sit back and do random autopsies at Quantico and allow other agents to do the work. Few will ever care what sort of “out-of-the-box” thinking I will bring to the table, and if they do, they’ll just assume it’s Mulder talking through me. What little respect I had in the Bureau is gone and I’m not in the mood to be seen as Spooky Mulder’s widow by everyone else.”
Skinner almost couldn’t help glancing down to her middle, where the soft rounding of her belly had only just started to show. “I’d shrug it off and tell them all to go to hell, if it were me.”
She smiled, sadly. “No offense, sir, but it’s easier for a man like yourself to get away with saying that, and much harder for a woman in my position to say that. Like it or not, people talk, they’ve talked for years, and this only adds fuel to the fire.” She laid a protective hand against her waistband, even if you had to look hard to see the evidence of a new life protected within.
“I’ve waited for too long for this chance, Walter, to take back what they stole from me. Mulder gave up so much for me to have this chance. I don’t want to lose it.”
Skinner’s only response was to sigh in brief resignation. “What will you do now?”
“Maybe return to medicine.” That was the default fallback for her and always had been, but even she had to admit to herself it rang a bit hollow in her ears after all she had seen and experienced. “Who knows, maybe I’ll do something else. I can certainly teach and do research. Maybe I can join a hospital or university, apply the lessons I learned to the lab and classroom. Who knows?”
“You’ll land on your feet, no matter what.” He seemed certain of that, and perhaps a bit proud. He nodded curtly, shoving his large hands into his trousers as he glanced at her car. “If you need anything at all - a reference, a recommendation, even a late night food run - you call me. I’m here to help.”
“Of course, sir.” She smiled, knowing that she didn’t have to call him “sir” anymore and unable to stop herself as she did. Again, her eyes watered, hormones and true emotions mingling as she swiped they viciously. “If I don’t get out of here soon, I’ll ruin your shirt again.”
“There is always more napkins.” The smallest and briefest of smiles flickered across his stoic face. “You’re a damn fine agent, Scully. It’s a shame to lose you.”
“Thank you.” If nothing else, she could walk away from all of this with her head held high on that account. She busied herself with her purse, digging for keys and controlling the overwhelming urge to sob again. “I’m sure we will be in touch.”
“We damn well better be, if you don’t want agents casing your apartment.” His growl was real enough. “Take care, Dana.”
“You too.” On impulse, she threw her arms around his middle, a brief and grateful hug before turning to her car, shoulders straight, willing herself to not cry. She slipped inside the stuffed vehicle, waving briefly at her former boss as she pulled out, threading her way out of the familiar parking garage, glancing at his retreating form in her rear view mirror.
For a brief moment, her brain told her it was Mulder standing back there, watching her go, and she ruthlessly crushed the deep ache that rose viciously inside her. She had given up everything on the X-files: her career; her health, her life and worst of all, Mulder. She owed no more to this place, not to the X-files, or the government, or to the people who worked here. She had sacrificed enough. She had something else to live for now.
I’ll be posting a series of fics to flesh out this muse and the world she operates under. For more information on the background and canon of SHIELD Agent Scully, please see the “Head Canon” link on my page - Beshter
Scully knew Clint Barton long before she knew Natasha Romanoff. He’d joined SHIELD not long after she and Mulder had, brought in by Nick Fury himself, a young kid who had a mysterious past but had an aim that blew everyone, including Scully’s excellent one, out of the water. He and Mulder had bonded, unsurprisingly. Mulder, with his Oxford psychology degree and keen human insight could pick at the things that made the often taciturn Barton tick, and over the years he’d opened up a handful of times to her partner. They’d learned he was a kid from Iowa, he had a troubled home life as a child, and had done a stint in the military before Fury had snatched him up for SHIELD. He had a soft spot for hard-luck cases, that was clear, especially for kids, which is perhaps why he and Mulder got on so well. Other than that, all Scully really knew about Barton was that he loved watching sports with Mulder over cold brews and horrible food, had a perverse fascination in Scully’s tales of the morgue, and was a frighteningly skilled agent and spy.
Still, that didn’t mean she didn’t worry about the guy after what he’d been through.
She knew she could find him in the firing range. It was his “safe” place as it were, though it certainly wasn’t for the practice. He could hit bullseyes with his eyes closed. More than anything, it was likely because he was so good that he went there, he could just turn that part of his brain off and let his thoughts wander, or simply focus on that thing that bothered him most. And after having the likes of Loki, god of mischief, in his brain, she imagined the mindlessness of being was what Barton craved more than anything at the moment.
It was even odds as to what he could be firing at any one time. He was equally as proficient with firearms as with a bow. This day, it was arrows on the long range that SHIELD had installed just for him. She stood and watched him fire with precision, three, four, five at a time, all clustered in different configurations. She surmised they were just where he wanted them. It was long moments before he acknowledged her presence, though she knew he was aware she was standing there.
“Natasha send you?”
She shook her head at his drawl, even if he wasn’t looking right at her. “I came on my own. Was chatting with Erik over lunch.”
Thunk, thunk, thunk….
“How’s he holding up?”
“I’m not sure. Having a god in his brain was overwhelming at best.”
Thunk, thunk, thunk….
Scully wanted to asking him how he was doing, but knew she’d get a cursory grunt at best. He was too much like Mulder in that respect.
“So I finally got to meet the infamous Tony Stark.”
Barton nodded, crossing the range to pull arrows out of the target, re-sheathing them as he did so. “How did that end up?”
“I was the one with my foot in my mouth.”
“That’s shocking, I thought he’d swallow his own ass and I’d get a call from Tasha saying we had to hide his body.”
Scully chuckled. “I think he’s far more able to play the game of chicken than I am. Besides, he seems a bit...rattled. I think everyone is.”
“He did carry a bomb through a portal into outer space. That would be enough to rattle anyone, even with an ego as big as Stark’s.”
“Yeah. How’s your ego?”
He shrugged, broad shoulders reaching near to his ears. “It’s had better weeks.”
Scully couldn’t help the pang of sympathy that welled in her. “None of those things were your fault.”
“My brain hears you, Scully, but that doesn't necessarily make it feel any better.”
“I know.” She wished Mulder were there to talk to him, to speak some sort of wisdom into it.
He walked back down the length of the range again, slinging his quiver over his back, across his chest, shrugging as he adjusted it. He looked thoughtful, a side-eye glancing towards where Scully stood, watching her. “How come in the nearly twenty years I’ve known you, you’ve never asked.”
“About?”
He held up his bow as if it were obvious.
She shrugged mildly, her suit jacket pulling with the effort. “I don’t know. If figure if you wanted to talk about it, you’d tell Mulder, he’d tell me, and then I’d find out.”
That made him laugh as he pulled three arrows from the quiver, notching them smoothly and firing, barely even blinking as he did it. “You two always were close as partners.”
“Well, when SHIELD came and got one of us, they got the pair of us. It’s how it works. You and Romanoff aren’t that way?”
“We aren’t close in the way you two are.” Only the slightest of smirks hinted at his meaning and she rolled her eyes at his unrepentant laugh.
“Fine, why the bow? Not like you see that in anyone’s standard arsenal anymore.”
“Which is why I got an advantage using it.”
“Fair. I have a feeling that isn’t the only reason.”
“Nope.” Off went another round, closely aligned with the first. They thunked into the cork board down the range and he nodded in satisfaction. “My father was a trick performer. Used to do it on the circus and rodeo circuit, sort of the in-between act of the main attractions. He was pretty good at it. Used to practice with him when I was a kid. It was the only time we ever got along. Guess, I figured it would help us bond.”
Scully had a feeling it didn’t.
“Anyway, it’s not so weird where I come from. Lots of people hunt with the bow, it’s a good way of keeping meat on the table.”
Which indicated that at some point in his life he’d had to rely on that to get by.
“Still, I can’t see you waltzing into the local army recruitment office and saying ‘enlist me, I know how to use a bow and arrow’.”
“No, but it helped.” Three more arrows followed the rest as the center of the target began to get crowded.
“So now I know the big secret, maybe I can be the one to tell Mulder this time.”
“You can always talk to me, you know. You don’t have to have him run interference.”
“I always got the feeling you preferred to have manly time with him, grunting and scratching.”
“Grunting and scratching are time-honored means of male communication, along with swearing at ball games and fixing cars.”
“I have brothers, I remember well.” She watched him fire off one more volley at blazing speed. “You know, I’m here too, if you need to talk. I mean, I’m sure that Romanoff is always going to be your go-to, but if you need...especially after Coulson.”
She was surprised she managed to say his name without breaking.
“Yeah.” Barton winced, setting down his bow. “Add that to the list of things I hope that fucker gets paid back for. Pity he’s so hard to kill.”
“Would you have done it, if you could?”
Barton only shrugged, wandering back to his target. “I’ve killed better people than him before.”
“He’s not exactly human.”
“Well, guess I could have bragged about killing a god, then.”
That brought Scully back to her conversation with Selvig. He’d been hurting, too.
“If you need, you know I’m around. I may not grunt or work on cars, but I’m good for beers and gruesome autopsy stories. It’s not much, but it’s better than sitting and brooding.”
He paused in his gathering of arrows to regard her with a small, grateful look. “Thanks, Scully. And for the record, I like the autopsy stories as much as the football.”
She smiled, shaking her head. “You are a braver man than Mulder, Clint Barton.”
“Didn’t need to be a Stark or Banner level genius to figure that out.”
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“So he seriously believes he’s the god of thunder?”
Eric Selvig shook his head in the negative, mouth too full of pastrami to speak in the moment. It took him a long chew and a swallow of his Coke before he could answer. “No, no, Thor is very much the god of thunder, the one my ancestors worshipped.”
“But that doesn’t make sense,” Scully insisted, picking at her much more sensible turkey sandwich. They sat in a little sandwich shop not far from the SHIELD offices, one that blessedly wasn’t affected by much of devastation that ripped through the rest of the city. “If he was a child a thousand years ago, how could your people know and revere him as the same god of thunder with his giant hammer that we saw in the battle?”
“Time often does work differently elsewhere, and his people do make use of wormholes on a fairly regular basis.”
“Still...it’s just…” Scully drifted off, trying to wrap her head about what it all “just” was. “I mean, do you really think he’s a god?”
Selvig chewed for a very long time, considering. “I can see why people thought he was a god, yeah. I mean, I saw it with my own eyes. He is far more powerful than any human being on earth, except maybe Bruce Banner, and only when he’s in his other face.”
“But strength at arms doesn’t make you divine.”
“He controls lightning.”
“So does a properly placed conducting rod and you don’t see me worshipping one of those.”
Selvig glanced at the cross nestled against Scully’s throat. “Is it that you can’t really believe that there is such a thing as a living, breathing corporeal deity or is it because it conflicts with your own theological beliefs?”
Selving was a scientist, just as she was, and he could cut to the chase. Still, it didn’t make her feel comfortable as she shifted, suddenly no longer hungry for the sandwich she was picking at anyway. “Maybe? Yes. I mean, my faith teaches that God made himself incarnate into flesh and sacrificed that flesh for the salvation of all. It’s not precisely unheard of, this living, breathing deity.”
“But you never met Christ, no one in living memory has. It’s very different when you see a god walking around in front of you, drinking you under the table.”
“You went drinking with Thor?”
“Tried to go drinking with him. Emphasis on ‘tried’. Long and the short, I don’t know if we can think of the Asgardians as ‘deities’ in the way that Christians think of God. I mean, they are living people with a society and culture all their own. We just made sense of them as ‘gods’ once upon a time and the label stuck. Perhaps, it’s far better to think of them like the ancient Greek heroes of old, legends that have been glorified to this status.”
“Which does very little to help my existential crises,” Scully groused, fingers plucking at the crucifix at her throat.
“Well, there I can’t help you, I’m a scientist, not a theologian, and not one who believes in any gods, less so now.” He grimaced and Scully knew that it wasn’t Thor they were discussing anymore.
“I’m sorry about what you went through, with Loki.” What else could she say to something like that?
Selvig only grunted, pulling from his Coke through the straw, staring at the hustle and bustle of the New York streets around them. “I think the worst part was that I just went with it, as if it was the most natural thing in the world. I didn’t even question it, didn’t fight against it. It’s like my heart and my mind were turned against me and it didn’t even occur to me that they were. And look at all the destruction it caused.”
Even from where they sat, eating a companionable lunch, she could see the still scattered damage, the piles of rubble, the plywood in windows, entire buildings with gouges across them. “That wasn’t your fault, Eric, no more than it was Barton’s or anyone else’s. Just Loki’s.”
That didn’t seem to soothe Selvig’s conscience any. “You know, we talk a lot about good, kind benevolent gods, Jesus who loves you with all of your sins, that sort of thing. We rarely anymore think of cruel, capricious gods, ones who use you because they can.”
“I think it makes it a bit more difficult to discuss deities when they look and act just like us.”
“Or maybe the deities always did. Maybe they were just people, good people, bad people, normal people who just so happened to have extraordinary abilities. Maybe the gods were little more than the Avengers are, folks who took a stand and said that they would defend everything because someone has to.”
“And the idea of a supreme, divine being?”
Selvig shrugged, grinning lazily. “Well, maybe that’s for the rest of us to sort out whether such an idea exists or not. I’ve met Thor, and while he is my friend, he is not precisely the type I’d worship as being a source of existential, salvific atonement. More than anything, he’d likely he’d be the cause for the need for atonement.”
“The life of the party?”
“The instigator. But, if he should ever make it back to Midgard sometime and away from his father’s duties, I should introduce you. It would be fun to see your mind blown, meeting a deity.”
“Eric, if only that were the most weird thing I’ve seen in my life. Did I ever tell you I once saw the face of a seraphim?”
(So this bears a passing resemblance to a thread I have with @imnottheherotype - as it should because it is based off the same OOC conversation! But it’s not the same storyline, however, I jotted these stories in a series and wanted to include it. Let’s say that RP @shieldagentscully is likely going to have a lot more productive conversation with Tony in RP than this one in which she shoots her mouth off. Sorry, Tony.)
2012 - SHIELD Offices, New York City
Make no mistake, SHIELD paid Scully much better than the FBI ever paid her, she recognized this. But there were days, particularly this one, in which she realized that they certainly did not pay her enough for the job she sometimes had to do.
“Subject is identified as a ‘Chitauri’, a race of alien beings as identified by...Thor Odinsson of Asgard, a planet off of this world.” Scully rolled her eyes at the ridiculousness of that statement, refusing to name his as “Thor, God of Thunder”. The advanced recording system in the lab began taking her dictation as she made her visual observations.
“My analysis will be, obvious, very rudimentary as this is the first time a subject such as this has been observed by human scientific methods.” She cleared her throat, unsure of where to even begin. After all, it was an alien, a real alien. Absolute proof that there was not just one type of creature outside of themselves living in the universe, but several. She didn’t even know where to begin with it, nothing in her entire background had prepared her for anything like this.
“So is this your first alien autopsy?”
The question was followed by a slurp that caused Scully to spin on her heels, startled out of the quiet of the high-tech lab to stare at the intruder. It only took her half-a-glance to identify him as he leaned over one of the other lab tables, a cup of what looked like vanilla ice cream in his hand, blissfully sucking on the end of a bright pink spoon. If the distinctive goatee didn’t give it away, then the glowing blue light in the middle of his chest just under his Ozzy Osbourne t-shirt certainly did. At least she could appreciate his taste in music.
“I was warned you would be around here, Mr. Stark.” She turned to her subject again, heartily wishing he wasn’t. After all, her autopsy was going to be challenging enough, and now he was going to be in the back as her personal her peanut gallery?
“I’m glad to hear my reputation precedes me, Agent Scully….Doctor Scully...Agent Doctor Scully? When you are doing this, are you still an agent or are you officially a doctor?”
“I don’t see how one precludes me from the other as long as I’m licensed to practice.”
“But is it practicing if the subject is dead to begin with?”
“Are you here for a purpose, Mr. Stark, or just come to be annoying and puerile?’
“I see fancy words came with that fancy degree from Stanford, and yes, I do know what ‘puerile’ means. We weren’t complete ingrates at MIT.” He sauntered to the table where the specimen lay. “Can’t imagine they had too many of these at Stanford, though, but you know the FBI may be hiding one or two…”
“If your want to be of assistance, you can sit over there.” She gestured to a stool by a keyboard connected wirelessly to a glass screen on the far side of the lab. Stark merely scooped up a large spoonful of vanilla and chocolate, sucking on it petulantly with large, brown, puppy dog eyes that had utterly no effect on Scully.
“Fine! See if I share my ice cream with you.”
She pointedly ignored him swaggering to where she indicated as she continued her oral examination. “The subject seems to be semi-humanoid in structure, though it’s appearance is perhaps more analogous to reptilian than homo-sapien.”
“Do you think the Chitauri would agree with that?”
She glared across the body at Stark, who pointed at creature with his spoon. “I mean, I suppose that it goes without saying that they likely don’t have what we assume are ‘reptiles’ on whatever rock they live on. They just are what they are, and yet here we are putting labels on them that make no sense outside of a human context.”
“Since I have no other context to use in the study of them, what do you suggest I use?”
“I suppose ‘creepy ass nightmares’ isn’t a properly scientific term?”
“Maybe it is at MIT, but certainly not Stanford.”
That earned a snort and smirk out of Stark. “Touché, Agent Doctor! Well played! Tell me, how do you think that they all could move like they did, communicate like they did, swarm like a hive?”
“Since I’ve obviously not even gotten a chance to do a medical examination on the body yet, I can’t begin to speculate.”
“But there are answers you could conjecture, right?”
“Sure! There are animals in nature who can do what you suggest, insects, birds. They use a combination of pheremones and patterns of behavior to be able to communicate in a way to make that possible.”
“What about more complex life forms?”
“I don’t know, a bee is a fairly complex being.”
“I’m sorry, Agent Doctor, I didn’t nearly get killed fighting a giant bee, so I’m asking more on the level of a creature who is large and sentient enough to form an army for a megalomaniacal deity with daddy issues.”
Scully took a deep breath and counted to ten, releasing it in a low, slow sigh. “Till I’m able to cut into one and do a proper examination, I’m not going to know anything. If you let me do a bit of dissection, maybe I can tell you something. My best guess, if it’s not natural then maybe it’s enhanced. maybe technology is used to keep them all in line. I don’t know.”
“Right.” He nodded thoughtfully, his attention already somewhere other than her. He returned to his cup of soft serve as Scully ignored the growling in her own stomach and returned to her notes. “The subject appears to be between 6.5 and 7 feet tall and weighs around 375 lbs.”
“I’d have not seen that one coming. Rather heavy for that frame, don’t you think. Course, could just carry the weight well.”
Scully ignored him as she continued. “The subject’s build indeed seems to not quite match its weight as presented. This could be attributed to a difference in bone and tissue density or any modifications that have been performed on the subject during its formative years.”
“Nice, I didn’t think of the bone and tissue density. I suppose, being human, I just assume since we are mostly water everything else is.”
“The subject seems to display symmetry of bodily development, displaying four limbs, both anterior and posterior and symmetrical facial features, including eyes, what appear to be nostril cavities and a mouth.”
“And a face only a mother could love, assuming they have those.”
“Do you mind?” She snapped across the space at him as he paused in his ice cream contemplations to blink at her.
“My pardons, Agent Doctor, the habit of brainstorming out loud.”
“Do you need to brainstorm here?”
“I’m curious about your work.”
“Then let me do it!” She snatched a scalpel from the medical tray beside her, wrapping one gloved hand around the cool stainless steel. “I will begin with a standard Y-incision.”
“Are you sure you want to start there?”
“Mr. Stark…”
“Tony, please, and frankly I have to say while it’s a little hot seeing you just carve into it like it’s a Thanksgiving turkey, I’m just saying you don’t know what you’ll find in there. I mean, treasure hunting is fine and all, but I do have some medical equipment I could loan SHIELD that might help the process, let you get a sense of what you are dealing with.”
“You have medical equipment that can do a full body scan workup the likes of which we need without me having to cut up an alien entity for 7 hours?”
“Yep!” He popped the last “p” as he scooped up the drippy dregs of his downed sundae.
“And you haven’t thought to offer it until now.”
“Well, you know, was rather preoccupied with defending us all from alien invasion, nearly dying because of it, and cleaning up my hometown after it got demolished, but I got around to it.”
Scully gripped her scalpel tighter. “Would you be so kind to offer it to SHIELD for their use?”
“Sure! I’ll have my boys upstate send some stuff down. In exchange, you share your results with me.”
“I plan to make them open to give a full report to SHIELD.”
“Ahh, but I want them all, unadulterated and complete, and SHIELD is not me! I am many things; an engineer, superhero, sometimes businessman, often late, and Romanoff said I was a textbook narcissist.”
“Wonder where she got that idea,” Scully breathed, tossing her scalpel on the tray.
“You barely know me, Agent Doctor! I’m hurt!”
"Hardly the first time, I imagine, judging from your impeccable social grace and long history of emotionally stable relationships. But, please, tell me how to do my job, a woman whose been in field work for twenty years and has seen more weird shit in her career than you could imagine before breakfast. I'm sure your Masters' Degrees in building erector sets will be endlessly useful in telling me how I get it wrong!"
Where in the hell had that come from?
She turned wide eyes on Stark, as stunned as he was that she even said it. For long, horrible moments, nothing but silence reigned between them. When it broke, it was him clearing his throat as he quietly scrapped at the bottom of his little, plastic container.
“I don’t know, Agent Doctor Scully, after the last week, I can imagine a lot of weird shit before breakfast.”
Right now would be a great time for the earth to open and Scully to be swallowed up. She doubted her prayers would be answered, though, as Stark rose, tossing his empty container into the bin nearby, not-so-quietly wondering where Fury got these red-heads he kept bringing into the building.
The most disquieting thing about Bruce Banner wasn’t what he could become, it was just how disarming he was in person.
“So when you were at Stanford did you work with Dr. Samaan? Specialized in human neurological development, particularly looking at human cognitive growth potential?”
“I didn’t work with him as such, no, but I did read up on his work at a later date. I was focused on cardiology at the time, working with Dr. Daniel Waterston.”
“Ahh, I knew him. Ridiculously gifted surgeon. Pity he left the field, though. Where did he end up?”
“GW in DC.” Scully didn’t like thinking about that particular chapter of her life. “I think he’s left and has gone back to teaching on the West Coast, USC, I believe.”
“Glad to hear he’s still in the teaching game. I gave cardiology half-a-glance, but liked medical research too much. Besides, too many egos involved in the doctor game. You ever hear of Stephen Strange?”
“That he’s brilliant, but an asshole.” Scully had indeed heard of him, the brain surgeon who wowed the masses but made Mulder look meek and humble by comparison.
“Yeah, see that is why I couldn’t ever be a medical doctor.” Banner gestured with his pen, shaking his dark head ruefully before grimacing a bit uncomfortably. “Well, that and the other thing. Don’t think the big guy would appreciate putting up with that level of stress.”
Oh, yes, the other guy. He spoke of it as if this “Hulk” side of him was a completely different person. Maybe he was. She was fascinated by the very idea of it, but was too polite to just blurt it out, so chose to move on
“In fairness, I don’t know if I’d have been good or not. I think I’d have been fine at it, but I do have a fondness for being in the field.”
Banner seemed to understand that. Perhaps, as a research scientist, he got it more than the average doctor would. “What in the hell possessed you to go into pathology?”
“I like a good murder mystery.” That was more true than she liked to admit. “Though a lot of it was just realizing I wanted to do more with my life than earn a fat salary at a hospital working a high stress job.”
“So you decided to work for pittance on a government salary and work a high stress job?”
“Fair!” She leaned back at in her chair, rubbing her eyes. She and Banner had been staring at X-rays and data for hours on these creatures that had been dubbed “Chitauri” by the man - well, she supposed he was an alien, god, thing - Thor. “How about you? You could have made a mint working for a research company. Stark Industries likely would have given several different right arms to get you and your talents.”
“Some days I wish I had done it.” Banner’s perpetually pleasant smile faltered somewhat. “But, you know how it goes. I was in love. My fiancee was a research scientist, too. She had ties to the military. Her father wanted to revive the old ‘super soldier’ serum Abraham Erskine was working on and we were given a big, fat grant for it. The chance to maybe create another Steve Rogers, hard to turn that sort of opportunity down.”
That was the allure and danger of science, the seduction of discovery and the possibility of cracking wide the mysteries of the universe. It had caught up many a good research scientist before. “You know, that’s the trouble with sciences, sometimes. We are always so busy being concerned with if we ‘can’ that we rarely ever think of if we ‘should’. Then we wonder why it is that it all blows up in our face.”
Banner could only snort and laugh in his sad sort of way. “Yeah, well, it blew up in my face, big time.”
Scully’s heart went out to the quiet, self-effacing man who had a brilliant mind and a tortured soul. How horrific that had to be. Many people had their lives ripped away from them due to circumstances beyond their control. Right now, New York City was full of such people. But Banner wasn’t even in control of his body. At a moments notice he could change and not be the same man he’d been before. That had to be terrifying.
“Whatever happened to your fiancee?” She was prodding a sensitive area, she knew it, but she couldn’t help the question tumbling out. She was an investigator after all.
“Betty? She moved on, I hope. Was engaged last time I saw her. I don’t know what ended up happening with her.” He shrugged, clearly uncomfortable touching that topic. “Her father’s still around, being an asshole. General Thaddeus Ross.”
She knew that name. “Oh, Thunderbolt Ross! Yeah, have bucked heads with him a time or two.” He and Mulder did NOT get along.
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be.” Scully smiled. She had a feeling Banner said that a lot. “You know, we’ve been at this for hours and I’m in dire need of caffeine. Coffee?”
“Nah, that’s never a good idea with this guy.” He tiredly tapped the side of his head. “Herbal tea, though, if you can get it.”
“I can manage that. Maybe a pastry, a hit of sugar as stimulation.”
“I like the way you think, Dr. Scully.”
“You know what they say about great minds and all of that.” She rose, setting her glasses on her work station. “The city may be destroyed, but I’ll lay even money there will be a Starbucks open despite it all.”
