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Title: Clearing Out
Keywords: Vignette, Scully-angst, Pendrell
Disclaimer: Agent Linley is all mine. The LabMouse and everything
else
isn't. I'm not making a red cent off this, y'know
Archive: Hmmm. Maybe. Have your people call my people and we'll
talk.
Rated: PG (I refuse to rate anything G)
Spoilers: Tempus Fugit/Max
Author's note: Our beloved DBKate recently issued the following
irresistible
challenge to the Pendrell-fic list: write a Pendrell-fic
including the
following items. A pack of Morley Ultra Lights, a fish bowl with
one goldfish inside, a
caller ID box, a bean bag plush cow that moos when you squeeze
it, and a
pair of blue-tinted sunglasses. Jeez, that gal sure knows how to
throw down the gauntlet in
style... ;)
******
Clearing Out (1/1) by CazQ
( cazfic@ymail.com)
******
There's a cow in the corner of the SciCrime lab that moos when
you squeeze
it. Surely an X-file.
If only it were. This particular cow is two inches high,
covered in plush
material and filled with beans. Its head, overly heavy, with two
useless
cartoon-style horns, sags downwards sadly under the weight of
accumulated
filling. I pick it up carefully, stare it in its little beady
black eye, and
give it one more experimental squeeze.
"Moooooo."
That's possibly the most pathetic thing I've ever heard. I
replace the cow
where I found it, perched perilously atop a computer monitor,
looking as if
it longs for bovine companionship. I'm a little surprised,
actually, that
its former owner never took pity on it and bought it a few
friends. A little
plush herd of saggy Friesians colonising the Hoover building: it
has a
certain appeal.
Of course, I'm its owner now, by default, since no one else
appears to want
to claim it. I sigh and grab it again, ignoring its plaintive
mooing, and
stuff it into the box on the desk.
Mercifully, Pendrell only had the one monitor gonk. He did,
however, have a
plethora of yellow Post-its, covered with his distinctive,
slightly childish
looking rounded hand, adorning the monitor and hard drive tower
of his PC.
They give the grey machine something of a carnival air, as if
it's dressed
up in its party wear and just waiting for the other revellers to
arrive.
I pick one off at random and peer at it: a string of numbers
and letters,
coded in the secret languages of science. Hell, even I don't know
what this
means. Perhaps he was the only one who did.
I decide to leave the Post-its. Let someone else strip his
computer of its
gaudy finery: I refuse to do that.
I open the drawer beneath his desk and find it a jumble of
papers. Computer
printouts, dog-eared back copies of 'Scientific American',
conference notes,
lab equipment requisition forms, carefully annotated copies of
newly
published forensics papers and the menu of a good deli two blocks
down from
the Hoover building jostle for space. A quick rummage through
reveals
nothing of value, but I lift it all carefully out anyway and
stack it in the
bottom of the box.
All that's left in the bottom of the drawer are a couple of
baby dust
bunnies, a carefully framed photo and a packet of cigarettes.
Well well
well, Agent Pendrell, so you had a dirty little secret. A
nicotine addict,
hmm?
I take the cigarettes out of the drawer and feel an
instinctive stab of fear
as I see that Pendrell's brand of choice was Morley Ultra Lights.
For God's
sake: is borderline paranoia catching? It's not like I've never
touched the
things myself. The seal is broken and one cigarette has been
removed, but
from the dust coating the packet I'd guess he hadn't lit up in a
while.
Saving them for a rainy day? I slip them into the box atop the
papers, and
reach back in to extract the photo.
I'm not sure what I'd expected, but it wasn't this. A beaming
Pendrell, hair
longer than I remember, features blurred slightly by youth,
stands against a
Colgate-white snowy backdrop, with a shockingly blue sky arching
over him.
He's wearing full skiing gear, right down to the warrior-stripes
of coloured
zinc sunblock smeared over each cheekbone and down his nose, and
a pair of
reflective blue-tinted sunglasses with cheap plastic frames.
He has one arm around an equally happy-looking young woman,
who is bundled
up in a snowsuit and painted with matching zinc stripes. She has
her head
thrown back, frozen in time by the camera, her shock of red-gold
hair flying
out from underneath an over-sized ski-hat as she laughs, exposing
teeth as
brilliantly white as the mountains at her back.
I slip the photo reverently out of its frame and turn it over.
On the back
is scrawled in a looping, flamboyant hand "Brian, put this
on your desk so
you can boast about the gorgeous young woman you taught to ski in
Aspen!
Love and hugs, Katy xxx".
"Agent Linley?" I call to the elegant, slender black
woman bent over a
centrifuge at the other end of the lab. "Could I ask you
something?"
"Sure, Agent Scully," she replies, in a lazy
Southern drawl. "What can I do
for you?"
I hold up the photograph and try to remember not to use my
"investigative
mode" voice on her. "Do you know who the woman in this
picture is?"
"Well sure," she says, the slight smile on her lips
erasing itself. "That's
Agent Pendrell's kid sister. Katherine, I think her name was. She
died last
year: car accident. She'd just started at CalTech, brilliant
future ahead of
her. Poor kid." She takes the picture from me, runs one
manicured fingertip
over it and sighs. "Agent Pendrell never spoke of it, but we
all knew he
took her death pretty hard. You didn't know?"
"No," I mutter, taking the picture back off her,
"no, I didn't. He...he
never spoke of it to me. Thank you."
"Anytime," she says, shrugging fluidly and making
her way back across the
lab. "I'm gonna head home now, if you wouldn't mind shutting
off the lights
when you leave."
Pendrell had no living relatives, I'd been told when I
enquired with
Personnel after his death. His parents had passed away within
months of each
other while he was at Quantico, and apparently no one in
Personnel had
thought his pretty, laughing, dead kid sister worth mentioning.
I'd
volunteered to clear out his personal effects, feeling as if I
ought to do
*something* for the man I'd been unable to save.
I trace the lines of his smiling face on the photo and slide
it back into
the frame, placing it gently in the box with everything else. I
add his
neatly ordered collection of pens and pencils, the box of
computer diskettes
and the personal organiser sitting on the desk, and then tuck the
box under
one arm, saddened by how light it is.
One last thing. I squat down and peer into the glass fish bowl
sitting on
the desk. Vlad gives me a cold-eyed, impassive stare in return,
before
flicking his tail and swimming to the other side of his tiny
little
glassed-in world.
Only Pendrell. Only he could be so sentimental as to rescue
the fish that
sat behind the counter of the local news-stand for so long. When
Tom, the
old man who'd run the business, finally collapsed of a heart
attack one day,
Pendrell had been the one to head down to the street corner and
gallantly
rescue Tom's beloved pet, a pretty little goldfish that Tom
carefully
carried to and from the news-stand every day. He'd installed the
critter on
his desk, and sworn the SciCrime staff and myself to secrecy
until he could
find a way to smuggle it back out of the building.
"Vlad, Pendrell?" I'd asked, bewildered.
"Yes, you know, Agent Scully," he'd said earnestly,
giving the fish an extra
pinch of fish-flakes before straightening up and peering over the
desk at
me. "As in Vladimir Zworykin."
"Ah, that Vlad," I'd responded, enlightened. Only
Pendrell could name a fish
after the inventor of the electron microscope.
I slip Vlad's fish-food into my pocket, and carefully lift his
(her?) bowl
with my spare hand. God knows how I'll get the poor creature
home, but I
have to try. Pendrell would have wanted it.
That's that, then. All cleared out. I take a last look around,
and head for
the door, setting Vlad down gently to flick off the lights, one
by one,
until the lab is sunk in darkness. All's quiet on the Western
Front, then.
"Goodnight, Agent Pendrell," I murmur as I leave,
glad that there's no one
but a fish to witness my flash of sentimentality.
******
The phone is ringing as I shuffle awkwardly into my apartment,
weighed down
by a dead man's life in a box and a terrified fish. I set Vlad
down on the
coffee table, breathing a sigh of relief that some water stayed
in the bowl
rather than on the floor of my car on the drive home, and grab
the phone.
"Scully."
"Hey, Scully, it's me. Where've you been? I've been
trying to reach you for
the last half-hour."
"I got caught in traffic, and my cell battery was
drained. Mulder, I...did
you know Agent Pendrell could ski?"
"No, I didn't, Scully," he says gently.
"Listen...I know you must be tired
if you've only just come in, but do you mind if I come over? I
wanted to go
over some things in the Zellerman file before we fly out
there."
I gaze at Vlad, still frantically swimming round and round as
the water in
the bowl starts to settle, and find myself saying simply
"No, Mulder, I
don't think so." And then I hang up.
The phone rings again a moment later. A glance at my caller ID
box tells me
that it's Mulder: no surprises there, then. I picture him staring
at the
phone in shock, before deciding I must've dropped the phone and
hit the
cut-off button by accident or something along those lines.
No dice, Mulder. I ain't picking up, not tonight. A good man's
fish and I
have an appointment with a bottle of wine and 'Breakfast at
Tiffany's'.
Something tells me Pendrell would've liked that movie.
I grab a half-finished bottle of Chardonnay and a glass from
the kitchen,
and return to the living room, settling cross-legged on the floor
in front
of the bowl. After a second's thought, I rise again, grab the
Morleys from
the box and a book of matches from the kitchen, and light up. I
haven't
smoked in six years, but I think Pendrell would understand why
I'm doing it
now. I take a deep drag, coughing a little as the smoke
hits my lungs, fill the glass, raise it in Vlad's direction and
then toast
the empty air.
"To the electron microscope, and its biggest fan, Brian
Pendrell," I propose
to the fish, who ignores the tears trickling down my face and
mixing with
the wine as it enters my mouth. That doesn't seem quite right,
though, and
so I raise the glass again, and think for a minute.
"To unsung heroes," I mutter thickly, and this time
I drain the glass to the
dregs.
FINIS
******
cazfic@ymail.com