Disclaimer: Any names mentioned herein and those not mentioned but inferred don't belong to me but to Chris Carter, 1013 Production and FOX. No profit was or will be made.

Author's Notes: This was made for After the Fact where you can find missing scenes and fill in the blanks for episodes. All feedback is received with excitement - simple things and all that. XScout

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Come Undone

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I didn't mean for it to happen.

It's not like I consciously decided 'I will let her in and trust her', it just happened. Came right up behind me and blindsided my subconscious. I had tried so hard to keep my distance, holding her at arms length with barbs about her part in the agenda to shut down the X-files and my sharp wit daring her to believe what science couldn't explain away.

Each brick I had been so carefully building since she walked into my office fell into a heap at my feet in a single moment. Her arms were wrapped around me and her body trembled like a leaf in the wind. If I had to pick a moment, that would have been it. That was when I realized that perhaps it wasn't necessary to keep her at such a distance. Perhaps she could be trusted. Perhaps.

So I entrusted her with the most vulnerable piece of my soul. Samantha. I suppose I could have started with something smaller, but as I sat on the floor in the candle-lit motel room and looked up into her questioning eyes, it just came pouring out. Well, why not? Throw the biggest curve you can and if it's hit you don't have to worry about anything smaller. I gave her the edited version. Baby steps, okay? Told her that Sam disappeared from our room in the night, a light and my paralysis. No need to go into the details, those I'll keep to myself for now.

I waited for the laughter. That cruel chuckling that I've heard too often from people long before I earned the nickname 'Spooky'. It never came. Instead she accepted my words with silence, as though she was absorbing them and considering all their implications. It was a new experience for me and one that took me off guard. I wasn't sure what to make of her, my paranoid mind insisting that she was filing the information away to be used against me at some later date. Another part of me that I hadn't heard from in a long time told my paranoia to shut up. Somewhere deep in my heart I knew that she somehow understood the magnitude of my confession.

And I came undone.

The armor I had so carefully constructed to keep myself safe apparently had a few chinks. I had worn it for so long that I had forgotten what it felt like to be free of the heavy weight. Starting at age twelve I donned the psychological shield and as the years passed I added thicker and stronger pieces to it. Emotional armor was enhanced by a few failed relationships in high school and college, culminating with my disastrous alliance with Phoebe Green and topped off with Diana's betrayal, dropping me at the slightest hint of an advancement in her career. Then there was the jealousy and disgust of my fellow profilers in the ISU, hating me for my success and yet not willing to accept the price I paid for that success.

I learned early that you should trust no one because sooner or later they will betray you. First my father blamed me for Samantha's disappearance and I accepted the guilt without question. He was my father, why would I? Then my mother retreated into a shell, shutting herself off from me when I needed her most. I became the parent - cooking the meals, cleaning the house, and making sure the bills were paid. Both my parents were gone - Mom in a haze of Valium, Dad in a drunken stupor. I escaped to Oxford where I found comfort and what I thought was love in Phoebe's arms. I was grossly mistaken and my heart was crushed when I discovered that I was a mere distraction and once she became bored with my novelty she went in search of new game. So I immersed myself in my studies and was recruited right into the FBI where I continued to focus single-mindedly on work. My profiling skills developed and soon my colleagues, people I was supposed to look to for support and guidance, were whispering behind my back that I was some sort of cracked genius, a profiling freak of nature that needed to be kept on a leash. Then came Diana. She almost made me believe that I could take off my armor and let some people in. But then she left me abruptly when she was offered an assignment overseas with better pay and more prestige. Apparently I wasn't exactly one of the rungs in the stepladder of success.

With that kind of track record is it any wonder that I am less than trusting of others? Why should I think any differently of some woman assigned to be my partner, who readily admits that she was sent to me to 'validate' my work? Why should I believe her when she insists that she's here to solve this case just as much as I am? How many lies have I been offered and how many times have I been torn asunder by them?

As I lay my head back on the hard motel bed and return her earnest gaze, I feel something give in my chest, as though a rubberband that had been constricting my heart had suddenly snapped. And I revealed to her the deepest and most painful part of my soul, my brain not even aware that my mouth was moving. When I realized what I had done I almost panicked. But she didn't laugh. No recriminations, only understanding.

And any regret of my confession vanished.

We stayed that way for a while, me on the floor and her on the bed, discussing the case. Then the phone began ringing and a stuttering voice was whispering "Peggy O'Dell is dead."

After that I had no time to think about what had just happened in that dim room, my need to know overriding all other thoughts. But later, years later, when she once asked me when it was I decided to trust her, I told her it was then.

It was then, in the middle of the night in a cheap motel room lit by a few candles, that I came undone.

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End