The Alcatraz Coup by Jean Helms 
(jeanlhelms@yahoo.com) 
TITLE: "The Alcatraz Coup" 
AUTHOR: Jean Helms 
RATING: PG-13 
SPOILERS: Post-ep for "Grotesque" 
CLASSIFICATION: MSR, A, V 
SUMMARY: Silly rabbit ... 
ARCHIVE: This is its home, come visit. 
FEEDBACK:Oh, yes, oh, yes, OH, YES! 
DISCLAIMER: Mulder, Scully other characters from "The X Files"
are the property of 1013 Productions and I claim no ownership of
them. What my dog, B.D. Barnacles, claims is another matter
altogether, and he is a very litigious dog. Beware. 
DEDICATION: To sybils, who pokes me and pokes me and tells me
she loveses and misses me. I loveses sybils, too. 

The Alcatraz Coup 
by Jean Helms 

_____ 

There is something so dreadful about lifting my hand to knock
on Mulder's door. 

When I have to knock, it means he doesn't know I'm coming over,
it means he may not want me here. A knock means something is
terribly wrong, something I'm afraid I can't fix. 

It is so much better when he's expecting me, when he's waiting
for me, waiting to hear my footsteps in the hall. The door opens
before I get close enough to knock, and Mulder is standing
there, maybe holding a basketball in one hand and smiling that
beautiful, joyous smile that says so much he'll never say with
words. 

He may not smile tonight when he opens the door; as a matter of
fact, he may not even open the door. 

But I have to be here. I have to try. I have to know that he's
all right. 

Still, I am afraid. 

I lift my hand and knock, two soft taps. Maybe I'm hoping he
won't hear, or maybe I'm hoping that he already knew I'd be
coming to him tonight, and that he's waiting for this soft
little sound ... 

Waiting for me. 

There is no sound from inside, and that frightens me. 

"Mulder?" I call out quietly. "Mulder, it's me." 

Still nothing. 

Don't make me use the key, Mulder, please don't ... if I have
to use the key that means you're not here, you're out wandering
the streets alone and lost, or you're inside and hoping I'll go
away if you just stay quiet ... 

I knock again. This time, thank God, I hear a soft shuffling
sound, and the door creaks quietly as it opens. 

It's Mulder -- unshaven, still with a butterfly bandage near
his eye, weariness and sadness clinging to him like a cold
December mist clings to barren ground. 

"Scully," he says, and his voice is thick and gritty with
fatigue. He still hasn't slept, then. 

"Mulder," I say, and I feel the smile starting on my face, a
small smile, a smile afraid to be but it must be, it has to be
because he is here, he is alive and he is opening the door to
me, and I am so relieved that it frightens me ... the vastness
of my relief serves only to force my recognition of just how
afraid I really was, and of what. 

"Now that we've got that out of the way ..." he says, and a
gentle hint of a smile begins on his face as well, and I do
smile now, I really smile. 

"Mulder, may I come in?" I say, and just asking makes me feel
so helpless. I can't remember ever having to ask before. 

"Yes, of course you may," he says, looking a little abashed
when he realizes his lapse of manners. He steps back and I walk
past him into the apartment, peering around in the gloom which
is relieved only by the street lights shining through the
windows and the eerie green glow from the aquarium. 

Now that I look at it, there's something different there ... 

"Mulder," I say, as he closes the door and comes back to the
living room, "what is that thing in your fish tank?" 

"A model of Alcatraz," he says. "Bought it at a souvenir shop
the last time we were in San Francisco." 

"Why on earth did you put a model of Alcatraz in your fish
tank?" I ask, slipping off my coat. Mulder takes it from me and
drapes it gently over the back of a chair, then sits on the
couch. 

"It seemed appropriate," he says, and he pats the seat next to
him. I think he's going to explain, but he doesn't, so I come
and sit down, but at the other end of the couch. He doesn't seem
to notice. 

"Mulder, I'm worried about you," I say, crossing my legs and
clasping my hands over one knee. "You went through a terrible
ordeal with the Bill Patterson case, I know, but I haven't seen
or heard from you in four days. Skinner's assistant said you
were taking some time off ... she told me, Mulder, not you. You
couldn't even call me to tell me that yourself?" 

"Scully," he says uncomfortably, shifting a little. "Look, I
didn't mean to slight you. I just ... I wasn't very happy about
the way I'd behaved toward you and I thought a little space
might help us both..." 

"A little space?" I say, interrupting him. "Mulder, a four-day
absence, no telephone calls, no emails, nothing? That's not a
little space, Mulder. That's an unexplained disappearance." 

"Scully," he says, and then he stops. 

The silence stretches out painfully for ... I don't know how
long, but a long time, a time measured by the thudding beat of
my heart and the bubbles gently rising from the barred windows
of the tiny Alcatraz, and for a moment, the tiny denizens of the
fish tank are sharks, lying in wait for the miserable prisoners
of Alcatraz to make their futile strike for freedom ... 

I understand that futility. The entrapping, inescapable silence
of Alcatraz is nothing compared to the entrapping silence of Fox
Mulder, a silence that terrifies me as it binds me ever more
closely to him. 

He cannot escape, and neither can I. 

"Did you know that my parents were duplicate bridge players?"
he says, and I'm startled to hear him speak. 

"No, I didn't," I say. "Were they good?" 

He shrugs. "I guess," he says. "I mean, anyone who plays
duplicate has to be pretty good, you know? But I hated it. They
used to get into loud arguments every time they played,
screaming about how when I bid this you KNOW you're supposed to
respond with that and what the hell were you thinking, ruffing
on that trick ... that kind of thing." 

I nod. "There were some people I used to babysit for who were
the same way," I say. 

"I used to wonder what the point of it all was," he says,
lacing his hands behind his head and leaning back, looking up at
the ceiling. "But when I started thinking back over this case, I
realized that I had learned a few important things from my
parents' bridge-playing." 

"This case?" I said, puzzled. "I don't know what you mean,
Mulder." 

"There's a move in bridge," he says. "It's called the Alcatraz
coup. It's cheating, really; the declarer leads from the dummy
hand, say a spade, but then deliberately fails to follow suit
from his own hand. When the player on the other side plays a
high spade, the declarer takes his card back, saying how sorry
he is, that he's made a mistake, and plays a low spade. The
opponent either takes his card back or he leaves it there and
takes the trick, but either way, the coup has worked. That trick-
winning spade has been located and effectively neutralized." 

"Clever," I said. "Dishonest, but clever." 

"People play games like that all the time, Scully," he says. 

"People like Bill Patterson, I suppose," I say. "Mulder, what's
all this about?" 

"You don't play the Alcatraz coup if you know what your
opponent holds, if you know what he can do to you," Mulder says.
"You play it as a last-gasp, dishonest effort to determine your
opponent's strength and neutralize it. That's what Patterson was
doing to me." 

"Mulder," I say, and then I pause. "Mulder," I begin again, "I
don't know what you're getting at here, but you're beginning to
worry me, the way you're talking." 

"No," he says, "don't worry. I'm getting there." 

"Please do," I say, a bit more sharply than I'd intended. 

He nods. "Nemhauser," he says. "Nemhauser was the wrong-suit
card in this coup. Patterson threw him out there so I'd leap in,
give it my best shot, and then he'd go in for the kill on the
next trick." 

"The next trick being you," I say, finally comprehending. "But
that's not how it happened, Mulder. Patterson asked for you
because he wanted you to stop him." 

He shrugs. "Maybe," he says. "Or maybe he just wanted to defeat
me once and for all, pay me back for having failed to worship
him, for giving up criminal personality profiling for the X
Files." 

"You can't be serious," I say. "I mean, I actually suspected
him of that at one time, but that was before I knew how
seriously disturbed he was." 

"Was he?" Mulder says, softly. "I'm not sure. Maybe he really
was just evil. Maybe he found himself turned on by gorgeous
young men like the ones Mostow had killed and he couldn't
stand to think that about himself, so he decided to take
Mostow's place as their killer, as their destroyer. I don't
know. He's not an easy man to read. But I do think he was right
about me." 

"That is utterly ridiculous," I say, bridling a little. "You
were better than he was, and he couldn't stand it. That is all
there is, was or ever will be to that." 

"I'm not saying I should have bowed down before him," Mulder
says. "I'm just saying that I strongly suspect ... no, honestly,
I'm afraid... that for the past three years while he was
supposedly chasing down this serial killer, he was really laying
his trap for me. He didn't know whether I really was stronger
than he was, so he pulled the Alcatraz coup to force me out." 

"Well, if he did, it didn't work, Mulder," I say, and I reach
over to take his hand. He looks grateful for the contact, and I
hold his hand a little more tightly. "It didn't work," I say,
"because you stopped him almost as soon as you got into the
game. You won." 

"I won nothing," Mulder says, sharply. "I went so close to the
edge I could feel myself falling over it, I hurt you and shut
you out, I cost Nemhauser his life and in the end, I proved
nothing and won nothing. I was just at the right place at the
right time." 

"But you knew you were supposed to be there," I say, softly,
still holding his hand. "You knew, even if you couldn't
articulate the reasons, and you did what you had to do. You
stopped a psychopathic serial killer before he could take
another victim. Patterson couldn't do that, and if the reason
was that he didn't want to, it's just further proof that you're
a better investigator -- and a better man --than he is. You did
want to. You wanted to even if it cost you your sanity, or your
life." 

Mulder is silent for a moment. At last, he spoke. "But not if
it cost me you, Scully," he says, very quietly. "I nearly paid
that price, and it was the one price I wasn't willing to pay.
And I knew what I'd done when I couldn't get you to trust me and
drop your flashlight." 

His words, even though they are so softly spoken, hit me like
rocks dropping into the pit of my stomach, and it is my turn to
fall silent.

"Mulder," I say, finally, "I'm sorry. I didn't understand what
was happening to you. I hadn't seen you like that before ... you
frightened me. I was afraid you were becoming as insane as the
killer you were chasing." 

"I was, Scully," Mulder says, quietly. "I had to do that, I had
to think the way he was thinking, because it was the only way to
make it all come together. The difference between me and him,"
he says, turning to look at me, "is that I knew I could come
back out ... and I knew that because I knew, I believed, that
you'd be there to help me, to put me back together when it was
over." 

I can't look him in the eye now. "I let you down, Mulder," I
say, feeling more ashamed than I can remember feeling for a long
time. "I can't believe I did it, but I did." 

"No, you didn't," Mulder says, softly, and I feel his thumb
rubbing gently over the back of my hand. "You're here, aren't
you?" 

"I'm here," I say, and I smile at him, but it's a shaky smile --
I can feel that. "I should have been here sooner, but I'm here." 

"No," Mulder says. "You're here at the right time. And I am
grateful for it, believe me." 

"Then I'm glad I'm here," I say. "But Mulder, if I may offer
some constructive criticism ..." 

"When did you ever not?" he says, but now he's smiling. 

"Mulder," I say, warningly. "I just wanted to suggest that next
time you find yourself having to think like a serial killer, you
warn me in advance of what's going to happen and what it's going
to be like. I want to trust you, Mulder, but it's hard when you
keep me in the dark." 

He nods, solemnly. "You're right," he says. "I'm just ... not
very proud ... of how easy it is for me to think like a
sociopath. It's not a side of me I ever wanted you to see." 

"And you thought you could keep it from me?" I say. "You
thought I wouldn't know, even now, after all that's happened to
us?" 

"I hoped you wouldn't know," Mulder says. "I know things have
changed since we ... you know ..." 

"Became lovers," I say, softly. "You can say it, Mulder. I
think 'lovers' is a beautiful word." 

"I think Dana Scully is a beautiful lover," Mulder says, and he
takes my hand to his lips for a soft kiss. "But it's all still
so new ... it seems kind of ... fragile." 

I smile. "That's almost exactly what I wrote in my journal last
night," I say. 

"You keep a journal?" Mulder says. "How come I didn't know
that?" 

"Because I didn't want you to know that," I say, and then I
realize what I've said. So does he. 

"We're both keeping a few too many secrets from each other,
aren't we?" Mulder says, smiling softly. "What do we do about
that?" 

"We try," I say, and then I do move over toward him, I sit next
to him and he puts his arm around me. I lay my head on his
shoulder, and I feel his fingers stroking softly over my hair.
"We try," I say again, and I place a delicate kiss on his
throat, right over his strong pulse. 

"Try to bring our secrets out?" he says. 

I nod, my hair rustling over his shirt. "But no Alcatraz
coups," I say, firmly. "No trickery, Mulder." 

"No," he says, and he turns his face to mine. "No trickery. You
offer me a secret, and I'll follow suit ... unless I honestly
can't." 

"You've got a deal," I say. 

"No," he says, bending closer to me. "A contract." 

"A contract," I repeat, and then his lips are on mine, warm and
soft and strong, his hands are on my face, and I feel the chasm
that this case had opened between us closing firmly, forever ...
I slide down on the couch, lie on the worn leather and feel my
lover moving above me, touching me, covering me, and I surrender
to his need of me, to my need of him, and the deadly silence is
broken forever by the gentle beating of his heart above mine. 

For the moment, we have escaped from our prison. 

We are free. 

---------- 

This fic was written for the first-ever Haven challenge. 

The elements of this challenge were: 
MSR 
a journal, preferably a blog 
constructive criticism from Mulder, Scully or Skinner 
something slashy 
Mulder's fishtank 
A bridge, the game of bridge or Omar Sharif 

NOTE: Okay, so it's a paper journal, not a blog. Sue me. 

END "The Alcatraz Coup" by Jean Helms 
(jeanlhelms@yahoo.com)