From: ephemeral@ephemeralfic.org
Date: Fri, 26 Aug 2011 21:26:23 -0500 (CDT)
Subject: 7 Days in May (1A/7) by prufrocks love
Source: direct

Reply To: prufrockslove@yahoo.com

TITLE: 7 Days in May
AUTHOR: prufrock's love
GENRE: X-file, MSR, Post season 7, Sequel to The 13th 
Sign. 
RATING: R
DISCLIAMER: Fox Network owns The X-Files. No 
copyright infringement is intended and no money is being 
made from the use of these characters.
SUMMARY: It might be the end of the world - with a 
psychic vampire on the loose, a six-year old son, a shit-load 
of emotional baggage, and an FBI budget - but he wasn't 
dead and Mulder felt things were looking up, romantically 
and apocalyptically.

****

Day 1: Romance is dead; Hallmark and Disney acquired it 
in a hostile takeover.

****

Past or present tense, he wanted Dana Scully by his side in 
a game of Scrabble, any planned or accidental exposure to 
hallucinogens, or an alien apocalypse. She didn't split 
infinitives, suffer fools, or shoot to wound unless she meant 
to. It didn't matter that she wasn't a field agent anymore; 
she remained an FBI agent and a medical doctor, so if she 
only winged someone, she'd planned it that way all along. 
A small, beautiful woman, she over-compensated 
linguistically, and he thought she'd never met a Latin 
compound word she didn't like. In the last twenty-four 
hours, Mulder heard her use the words 'prosopagnosia,' 
'zombify,' 'Dickensian,' and 'cryokinesis' in casual 
conversation.

'Zombify' earned 76 Scrabble points, before any double-
word or triple letter spaces. That, and she wore little lace 
panties and soft sweaters and she smelled like amber and 
rain and William's No More Tears shampoo. That, and 
Mulder kind of, maybe - in a way - still loved her. 

It wasn't even a fair fight. 

She talked at him so she didn't have to talk with him. She 
used intellect and reason as body armor and, since "An 
Inconvenient Truth" came out, treated sex as if she was 
doing her part for the environment: reduce, reuse, and 
recycle. As if letting a perfectly good erection go to waste 
was socially irresponsible. 

He didn't think she knew he knew that.

Serial killers and monsters in the dark? He had a big gun 
and a fancy degree from Oxford. Aliens, mutants, zombies, 
super soldiers? Not a problem. A global conspiracy against 
innocent citizens? He called in the Gunmen, picked up a 
fire ax, and took no prisoners. One aesthetically-pleasing 
former partner who didn't know what the hell she wanted? 
Mulder was forty-five years old and Mr. Big Shot with the 
Investigative Support Unit, and yet he might as well 
Google 'How can I tell if a girl likes me?'

Thanks to her, he knew different kinds of suture stitches 
existed. He could recognize the simple interrupted stitch, 
the horizontal mattress stitch, and - her specialty - the fuck-
just-make-it-stop-bleeding stitch.

Thanks to her, he wasn't still dead.

Thanks to her, he had a son who observed that his list of 
sight words for the week were all onomatopoeia. Meow. 
Chirp. Scully had passed on her predilection for super-sized 
words to their six-year-old progeny. When William 
repeated Frohike's joke - that if a sheep and a pig made a 
baby, it would say "boink" - to the teacher, Dana blamed 
Mulder's genetics.

Last night, Mulder rented the second Pirates of the 
Caribbean movie on pay-per-view at the hotel just to hear 
her parse its scientific inaccuracies while wearing prim 
cotton pajamas and drinking mini-bar rum and cokes. 

Dana had no idea who he was - only who she thought he 
was.

That scar - the one on his left shoulder where she winged 
him during Clinton's first term in office - twinged again. 

When William was a baby, Mulder remembered lying in 
bed with her as she examined each of his scars, trying to 
match them to the case files she'd been reading. That was 
after her abduction in 2001, when they'd spent that summer 
on the Vineyard, letting her get to know her son - and her 
son's father. Waiting for her memories to return. Mulder 
remembered taking his turn at the name the scar game, and 
telling her Federal Blue Cross/Blue Shield had subsidized a 
fair amount of their foreplay. He remembered how her 
laughter sounded, and how the sun played across her bare 
white skin and auburn hair.

Almost six years had passed since that summer.

Dana said he treated her like she was a child. 

He begged to differ. 

He wanted his Scully back, and he suspected she did know 
that.

"Don't look at me like you know me, Mulder!" she'd 
ordered him this morning, while he was still naked in the 
king-sized bed in her hotel room. It was cosmically wrong - 
making love to a woman in a room with hidden Mickey 
Mouse icons on the duvet cover. In the scheme of world 
domination, the Disney Empire made the Syndicate look 
benign. Only The Dark Side held the 2007 conference on 
criminal psychology at Disneyland, and noted available 
child care in the brochure. 

And we can't go to Disneyland without Scully, Daddy.

He didn't know how the hell she wanted him to look at her, 
but he did know her. He knew her through cancer and 
Emily and in vitro and William. Through budget meetings 
and Black Oil and far too many funerals. Through lots and 
lots and lots of files. Through the Temple of the Seven 
Stars and the Church of the 13th Sign and the Mystic Pizza 
Hut. Through Robert Modell and Duane Barry and Donnie 
Pfaster. Through the mid-west, the east coast, every ER in 
Maryland and Virginia, and the Arctic and Antarctic. 
Through a thousand stakeouts and lonely motels, a hundred 
summer days on Martha's Vineyard, and one endless March 
night in the year that the world didn't end, he damn sure 
knew her. 

She was the one who didn't know her these days.

When Dana Scully got a tattoo, it meant trouble. Tattoos 
equaled stormy seas, dangerous waters, and big 'keep out 
Mulder' signs. The pretty little patch of ink was always 
about him, and she always said it wasn't. 

Mulder rolled his sore shoulder a few times and reminded 
William not to forget his new Mickey backpack. Using his 
badge as his photo ID, Special Agent Mulder followed 
William's mother past the gate agent and onto the plane 
bound for Oregon. 

And back to where they started. 

Again.

****

He thought of asking Dana if the airport or the Lariat rental 
counter seemed familiar, but he didn't, since it wouldn't. 
She still had a hard stop in her memory between 1992 and 
2001. She'd disappeared from a Virginia cult's compound in 
January, shortly after William's birth, and woke in April in 
an Allentown hospital room to an FBI profiler she didn't 
know holding an infant son she didn't recognize.

At first, Mulder marveled at the effort she put into piecing 
together her life. She memorized their old reports and the 
surviving case-files. She'd quote them to him, as if he 
hadn't been there. She studied photographs and video tapes, 
her old checkbooks and journals and medical records and 
expense reports. When they lived together, he found 
timelines she'd made, trying to recreate what happened 
when. When her father died, when her sister died. What 
shade of red her hair was that autumn. She knew what Dana 
Scully wore, ate, investigated, spent, and thought - or at 
least, committed to paper - the entire time they were 
partners. 

She hated the phrase "You don't remember that," 
particularly if Mulder said it.

She knew that on a Saturday in late April 2000 she rented a 
movie and ordered a pizza delivered to her apartment at 
eight o'clock at night. She picked up her dry cleaning that 
morning and paid her credit card bill in full on-line. 

She didn't know she'd spent that afternoon at the batting 
cages with him, and then Mulder went home to shower and 
change clothes. She didn't know he appeared at her door 
with a bottle of red wine to go with the pizza. She didn't 
remember them holding hands, or embracing, or her - about 
a month pregnant - suddenly falling asleep against his 
shoulder. She didn't remember waking in the small hours of 
the morning, while the DVD menu of "Bull Durham" 
replayed on its thirty-second loop, to find he still held her 
as he dozed. She didn't know he teased her about being a 
lousy date; he brought a thirty-dollar bottle of wine, and 
she didn't even put out. She took his hand, mumbled 
something about the ERA and the Penthouse forum, and led 
him to her bed, where they'd slept straight through till 
morning.

He could have told her those things happened, but she 
didn't ask him.

Eventually, it dawned on him that her effort was less 
because she needed to recreate Dana Scully for her, and 
more because she wanted to recreate Dana Scully for him.

He was the FBI profiler, after all.

As Mulder drove toward Bellefleur, Oregon he slowed the 
rented Taurus, looking for the orange X he'd spray-painted 
on the road during their first case together. No landmarks 
existed on the long, straight stretch of asphalt through the 
forest, and the road was patched and repaved in places. 
After miles and miles of scenic, Pacific Northwest nothing, 
he started thinking the X was gone, when suddenly, 
comfortingly, he saw it.

He wanted to tell his son that this was where Daddy first 
fell a little in love with Mommy.

When he looked in the rear view mirror, William was 
engrossed in Mulder's new phone.

"No more new applications, William," he said.

In the rental car behind them - because she wanted her own 
rental car - Dana held up her hands questioningly, as if 
wanting to know why he'd stopped in the middle of the 
road. 

He'd salvaged the case file after their office fire, but the file 
didn't mention his Krylon X. In the official report, nothing 
noted their conversation in the motel room the next night, 
or just before his abduction, years later. Those things, she 
couldn't recreate from files and receipts. Those moments, 
those details put flesh on bones and made them the people 
they were. Or at least, the people they had been, when she'd 
marched into his office wearing a suit that belonged on a 
Lazy Boy and certain every one of his bizarre cases had 
some rational scientific explanation.

Yeah - that first case, fourteen years ago - he'd loved her 
just a little, even then.

A little boy's voice said, "Daddy, Scully wants to know 
what the hell you're doing." 

William held up the iPhone to show him the text message 
on the screen. Having no memory of the Internet 
revolution, she texted and e-mailed in full sentences, with 
capital letters and proper punctuation. He didn't know if 
that pissed him off or turned him on or a little of both.

"Nothing, buddy," he answered immediately, and put his 
foot on the gas again.

****

Like super-soldiers and true love, old habits died hard and 
returned when least expected. 

Mulder felt odd not having Billy Miles or his father greet 
them, though both deputies were declared dead years ago. 
The FBI had Portland agents in Bellefleur, but Mulder 
assumed they were out interviewing the victims' friends 
and families. In the station, a metal ceiling fan still hung 
from the low ceiling, the blades stationary. A collection of 
potted plants still thirsted for light in the two front 
windows. At one of the rear desks, a young, dark-haired 
female deputy glanced up as they entered, then returned her 
attention to her computer screen. A middle-aged deputy 
paused his telephone conversation. Mulder didn't know 
either of them, nor did they know him.

The set was unsettlingly the same; only the actors had 
changed. 

The only person Mulder recognized in the little station was 
the Native American woman who held the combined 
position of dispatcher and secretary. She cradled the 
telephone against her shoulder as they entered, writing a 
message with one hand and rooting for something on her 
desk with the other. Her black hair had white streaks at 
each temple, and reading glasses sat low on her nose. In 
1992, he'd placed her at about his age. Now, however 
improbably, photographs of her grandchildren decorated 
her desk.

When she spotted them, she put the telephone caller on 
hold and left three other lines to blink and beep impatiently. 

"Agent Mulder," she said. "When your secretary called, I 
asked her to repeat your name three times. It's good to see 
you again."

"Mrs. Bahe, you're still holding down the fort. It's good to 
see some things haven't changed," he answered. As he 
spoke, he touched Scully's shoulder blade lightly with his 
fingertips. It was their old signal, and one he hadn't used in 
several years; this person knew Dana, but she wouldn't 
remember them.

Scully's head nodded almost imperceptibly. 

The secretary looked the two of them over, and then her 
eyes settled on William. She looked at the tall, slim build, 
the wavy brown hair, the angular features, and then at 
Mulder. She noted the blue eyes and fair skin, and then 
looked at Dana. With the casual precision that would have 
made any of his agents proud, she silently checked both of 
their hands for wedding bands, did the mental math for a 
six-year-old child, and in about three seconds, Mulder 
knew she had their number.

She just gave them a knowing smile and said, "You must 
think our little town has the worst luck in the entire nation, 
Agent Mulder."

"Per paranormal occurrence per capita, I'd say you're 
running head to head with the rough side of Philadelphia, 
but still a far distant second to Chaney, Texas."

"What happened in Chaney, Texas?"

"Entire town of vampires," he answered.

Dana cringed and covered her face with her hand, as if she 
hadn't read the report.

"Hard to top that," Mrs. Bahe responded, whether she 
thought he was joking or not. As she opened her center 
desk drawer, she said, "I knew Claude Johnson, the third 
person they found. I went to school with him. He started 
running with a bad crowd, didn't graduate. He spent most 
of the 80's in either jail or the state mental hospital."

"Our records indicate he was last hospitalized in 2004," 
Mulder said. "After that, he seemed to fall off the grid."

"For a while, he lived in a tent off an old logging road north 
of town," she told them, looking from him to Dana and then 
back again. "If Deputy Hoese or Deputy Miles went out, I 
used to ask them to look in on him." She paused. "No one 
expected Claude's story to have a happy ending, but he was 
someone's son."

"We're sorry for your loss. Unfortunately, we can't undo the 
crimes that have been committed," Dana said, speaking for 
the first time since they entered the station. "But if we can 
discover what's happening and why - who's doing this - 
perhaps we can prevent it from happening to anyone else."

Mrs. Bahe nodded, being just as polite as Dana, and smiled 
as if comforted by that pat answer.

An awkward silence followed. Dana hadn't said anything 
wrong, and Mulder had recited those same phrases to a 
thousand victim's relatives over the years. The FBI taught 
new agents to be professional but sympathetic to victim's 
families, and Dana had repeated the textbook paragraph 
almost word for word.

Behind the reception area, the station held four battered 
metal desks, one for each deputy. Files and half-empty 
Styrofoam coffee cups littered a table on one wall. A series 
of laptops were plugged into a surge protector connected to 
an orange extension cord. Mulder presumed that area was 
the Portland FBI agents' makeshift office space. Each 
deputy's desk had a chair beside it, and folded metal chairs 
in a corner had masking tape labels indicating they'd been 
borrowed from the VFW building next door. A map of the 
area was tacked up on the far wall, perhaps thirty feet 
behind Mrs. Bahe's desk. Plastic tacks marked points in the 
forest around the town, each with a Post-it flag with a 
name. The flag due east of Bellefleur read 'C. Johnson.' 

"Karen West worked with my daughter at the hospital. 
They went to nursing school together," Mrs. Bahe added, 
and blinked quickly before her polite expression returned.

Mulder recognized the name, though he hadn't seen a file 
yet. Searchers found a fifth body yesterday afternoon, and 
so a fifth plastic tack and Post-it flag went up on the map.

Murder wasn't anonymous in a small down. 

"Something lives as long as the last person who remembers 
it, so these people live on through you and your family," 
Mulder told her, and this time her sad smile seemed more 
genuine. 

"It's a comforting thought, Agent Mulder, but that's a 
Navajo proverb and I'm not Navajo."

"A wise old Navajo man told it to me. Recite one 
comforting Jewish proverb," he challenged. When she 
conceded she couldn't, he said, "Exactly. Because there 
aren't any. If Jews made Hallmark cards, every one would 
say 'Such a tragedy, but it could be worse. Have some 
soup.'" He adjusted a framed school picture of a 
prepubescent girl on her desk. "Some stories don't have 
happy endings, but we'll do everything we can. You know 
that."

"I know you will, and we appreciate it. I saved rooms for 
you at the motel. They're a hot commodity." As she handed 
the room keys up to Mulder, she added apologetically, 
"Two rooms. I didn't know..."

"That's fine," Dana told her easily.

Mulder looked down at the blue plastic tags attached to the 
keys, then looked again. They stayed in the same rooms in 
1992, before the fire, and, after the motel was rebuilt, again 
in 2000. The town still only had ten motel rooms, but he 
found it statistically unlikely they'd get the same two rooms 
three times running.

"You have a few hours before the next briefing, if you want 
to get settled in and have a late lunch." 

On her desk phone, four lines blinked red SOS signals, but 
she let them wait. The national media descended along with 
the FBI.  Mulder planned to offer what assistance he could 
and get back to DC before William missed any more 
school. He'd do his job, as ordered, but the less time they 
spent in Bellefleur, Oregon, the better. Already, a dull little 
knife started to twist inside his gut, making it hurt to take a 
deep breath. 

"Meatloaf today at the diner." Mrs. Bahe paused again. 
"We're glad to see you. Both of you."

"I wish I could say I was glad to be back," Mulder told her, 
and Dana said nothing.

"Coconut cream is the pie of the day," she responded. 
"Susie makes them fresh each morning. Get it before it's 
gone."

He put his hand on William's head, toying with the boy's 
hair. "Now maybe that's worth coming back to Oregon for."

****

"Ayden J. has two mommies," his son informed him in 
aisle four of the Bellefleur drug store. 

"He does," Mulder agreed absently. And both mommies 
were hot.

"So does Denver Bowles-Chang. Barbara Marie has two 
daddies. Two daddies who love each other, not a daddy and 
a step-dad," the boy clarified. "They're homosexual, and 
that's fine." As if in afterthought, William added, "Uncle 
Langly is definitely not homosexual."

"Buddy, Langly isn't your uncle. Uncle Bill and Uncle 
Charlie are your uncles," Mulder explained. "They're 
Mommy's brothers. My sister Samantha would be your 
aunt, and my Aunt Miriam and Aunt Rebecca are your 
great aunts."

As if Mulder hadn't spoken, William continued, "Maya has 
a daddy and a step-daddy and an old step-daddy. None of 
them love each other."

Mulder added a travel-sized tube of toothpaste to his 
shopping basket. He'd packed his carry-on bag for a three-
day trip to California, and the extension to Oregon meant 
the supplies needed restocked.

Dana, with whatever new age quirk compelled her to eat 
bee pollen, drink green tea, and take Bikram yoga classes, 
had voted for a private school in Alexandria, Virginia so 
liberal that Mulder got a scornful note from the teacher 
after sending William's lunch packed in zip-lock plastic 
bags rather than reusable cloth baggies. He'd turned the 
note over and written, "Dear Miss Janet: According to the 
FBI database, your parents live in an apartment building 
once occupied by a hibernating, human-liver-eating mutant 
we apprehended. We arrested three sex offenders in your 
neighborhood and we are tracking a serial killer, a child 
pornography ring, and possibly, a demonic shape-shifter in 
your area. Please let me know whether you'd like me to 
focus on continuing to keep our world safe or on how my 
son's pretzels are packed. Sincerely, Special Agent Fox 
Mulder."

He didn't get anymore haughty hippy notes from Miss Janet 
after that, but Dana got the invitations to parent-teacher 
conferences.

"Ayden M. has a mommy and a daddy. They're married," 
William added. In the shopping basket, a three ounce can of 
shaving cream joined three ounces of shampoo and the 
miniature tube of toothpaste. Miss Janet would have been 
appalled, but even Mr. Big Shot with the ISU had to fit all 
his carry-on liquids into one clear, quart-sized plastic bag 
before they'd let him on the plane home. "They're married 
to each other."

"How conventional of them."

As they made their way to the front of the store, he let 
William toss a pirate coloring book, a box of crayons, and a 
little candy bar into the basket. While they waited at the 
register, and while William looked the other way, Mulder 
started to reach for a box of condoms, but lowered his hand 
again.

Before last night, he hadn't been with Dana in months, and 
years before that, but he'd never given STD's a thought. 
Pregnancy wasn't an issue; the tests after her second 
abduction revealed the same absence of ova that puzzled 
the doctors after her first abduction. Mulder didn't think of 
himself as monastic, but between work and William and 
battling Armageddon - in truth the last woman he'd been to 
bed with besides Dana Scully was his ex-wife. He wasn't 
married to Diana at the time, but still...

Last night, on the soft skin of Scully's abdomen, not far 
from the old gunshot wound scar, he'd noticed a small, 
fresh tattoo of a monarch butterfly.

"What's this?" he'd asked her in the darkness, his voice 
rough and his body starved for hers.

"What do you think it is?" she responded last night.

"I dunno," he mumbled, and at the time that was the truth. 

He'd run his thumb over the tattoo again, she kissed him, 
and his higher brain functions sputtered to a halt. The next 
time he could think, dawn had broken in the Magic 
Kingdom. By then, William stirred in the adjoining hotel 
room. Coffee brewed, birds chirped, and Mulder woke 
alone in her bed. The steam from the bathroom smelled of 
her fancy organic shampoo, and he heard Dana brushing 
her teeth efficiently; in the bedroom, Mulder had stared at 
the ceiling in disbelief and realized any worries about 
protecting himself from sexually transmitted diseases were 
belated.

"Don't look at me like you know me," she'd ordered Mulder 
perhaps a minute later, gesturing with her clean toothbrush 
for emphasis.

Just once, he'd like her to have an identity crisis without 
letting some man stick his penis or tattoo needle in her.

"Why aren't you and Scully married?" William's voice 
asked, bringing Mulder's attention back to the present.

The overhead lights in the drugstore seemed too bright, and 
Mulder blinked a few times. He emptied the basket onto the 
checkout counter and, reaching for his wallet, answered, "It 
didn't work out that way, son."

"Why not?"

"It just didn't."

After a long, wonderful summer on Martha's Vineyard, 
they'd returned to her apartment and the real world. She 
started work at Quantico part-time, and he grudgingly 
agreed to a desk and some office hours at the ISU. They 
resumed their former lives, as if they'd never been assigned 
to the X-files; they were still Agent Mulder the profiler and 
Dr. Scully the forensic pathologist. 

She taught, and spent two days a week doing autopsies. He 
let the Bureau send him on cases in Arizona, Maine, and 
North Dakota. Skinner approached him about running the 
ISU, swearing it somehow involved fewer hours, less 
travel, and no actual supervising. Skinner turned out to be a 
big fat liar, and Mulder's sixteen hours a week increased to 
four long days, plus endless e-mails and phone calls that 
he'd handled from home with a toddler underfoot.

Before long, Dana would be busy with William when he 
left for work on Monday. Mulder was in bed by the time 
she finally got home on Thursday. They saw less of each 
other and communicated more via e-mail and notes on her 
kitchen counter. 

His flashbacks and nightmares had started again.

He hadn't told her, and in retrospect, he should have. He 
pushed people away when he needed them the most - that 
was the marriage counselor's opinion the one time he went 
with Diana. He should have told Dana, but he hadn't known 
where to begin. Dana baked bread from scratch and took 
William to Kindermusik and, when Mulder was on a case 
in Manhattan, faxed him a shopping list for the new Whole 
Foods store. He had to put the profile on hold to buy 
whole-grain pasta somehow more organic than the organic 
pasta in DC. Dana met her mother for lunch and went to the 
beach with her family. She visited her sister's grave every 
week and mourned her father and became close friends 
with Agent Reyes. She still read every scientific and 
medical journal on the planet, and twice a week she taught 
a few classes and cut up dead people for the FBI. 

He didn't know how to explain to her that after being 
infected with an alien virus, shot a couple times, abducted 
by a UFO, and tortured to death, his biggest concern wasn't 
reducing his carbon footprint. 

He could have told her, but no Rosetta stone bridged the 
gap between what he'd experienced and what Dana had 
only read about. She was smart and beautiful and funny, 
and she wanted her boyfriend - the title he'd finally settled 
on - to stop for diapers on the way home and remember to 
take out the trash, not to be afraid of an alien boogeyman.

He had a dresser drawer in her bedroom and a shelf in the 
medicine cabinet. His suits hung in her closet, but his books 
and furniture stayed in Alexandria. When they had to start 
wading through the piles of baby sundries, he let the lease 
on his apartment go and bought a house closer to Quantico. 
In retrospect, no, she hadn't specifically agreed to the 
house, but she'd looked at it and it was a nice house and it 
wasn't an hour drive from work.

That fall, as William approached his second birthday, 
Mulder gradually moved into the new house, and Dana just 
didn't. She came over. She had clothes and makeup and a 
blow dryer there, and often spent the night, for a while, but 
she never moved into his house anymore than he ever really 
moved into her apartment.

They never had a fight. No 'we need to talk' or 'I made us 
an appointment with a marriage counselor,' conversation. 
They just slowly, in the most adult, friendly manner 
imaginable, drifted out of being lovers and back to being 
friends, now with a child in common. One weekend, she 
worked on a research paper and couldn't come over. 
Mulder kept William and let her work. The next, she had 
the baby while Mulder hung out with The Gunmen; Mulder 
didn't invite her to come along because she didn't 
particularly like The Gunmen. 

He and Dana saw each other because of William, but soon 
a month passed without them spending a night together, 
and then a season, and soon the only things they had in 
common were a preschooler and working for the FBI. 
Sometimes meeting for lunch if he wanted her opinion on a 
case. And, in the last few months, when the moon was 
right, the occasional passionate roll in the hay.

They'd achieved a post-modern, passive-aggressive split 
that would have done their old partnership proud. 

"Don't you love Scully?" William asked as they left the 
drugstore.

"Of course I love Scully," Mulder answered, and that was 
the truth. "But I also know Scully, and I know you'd better 
eat that candy bar before we get back to the motel."

****

In the dense forest around Bellefleur, Oregon, citizens and 
search parties had found five bodies. At least two more 
bodies awaited discovery, according to the pattern. The 
corpses were completely unmarked, and none of the 
victims had a clear cause of death, though the M.E. guessed 
exposure. The same thing happened in Arizona last year, in 
the spring of 2006: seven bodies, with the estimated times 
of death spanning a week. The remote Hopi tribe in Oriabi 
Village, Arizona, hadn't cooperated with the local 
authorities, so details from the first deaths were sketchy. 
The theme was the same, though. At least seven victims 
died during seven days in May.

The victims weren't alien abductees. No abductions had 
occurred in years. Mulder never heard whispers of Alex 
Krycek or CGB Spender or the alien-human hybridization 
experiments. No super-soldiers. People still reported the 
odd UFO sighting, and a handful of doomsday cults 
persisted, but Agents Doggett and Reyes spent most of their 
time on poltergeists and mutants while the X-files in the 
'Syndicate' and 'Purity' sections gathered dust. Agent Reyes 
worked part-time these days, and spent the rest of her week 
chasing a two-year-old girl who bore a striking 
resemblance to her partner Agent Doggett.

Skinner had asked Mulder if the drinking fountain outside 
the basement office in the Hoover building could have 
fertility drugs in the water.

Mulder watched the photographs of the Oregon crime 
scenes flash onto the wall of the deputies' cramped 
headquarters. Each photo showed a nude, gray body 
sprawled peacefully on the new green grass of spring. In 
the metal chairs, six FBI agents and three deputies listened 
and took notes as the SAC briefed them, telling them what 
they already knew. 

The FBI had no clue what was happening. Or why. Or how 
to prevent it from happening again. If they didn't figure it 
out now, if the pattern continued, the next opportunity 
would be May 2008, when the bodies started appearing 
someplace else.

While the Bellefleur team brought Mulder up to date, Dana 
had William at the motel. After the briefing they'd trade; 
he'd take their son while she went to the morgue for a few 
hours to examine the victims. 

At Quantico, Mulder preferred Dana do the autopsies in the 
cases he profiled, and often had her review old autopsy 
reports or the incomprehensible jargon the forensic labs spit 
out. His secretary - a 24-year-old, gum-chewing, magenta-
haired fount of romantic wisdom - poked her pierced nose 
in and shared her opinions of his requests. Secretary Diane 
could roll her eyes and sigh all she liked; Mulder valued 
Dana's expertise. Dana might not remember being Agent 
Scully, but she still thought like her. Except when it came 
to the paranormal. If Mulder mentioned zombies or ghosts 
in Dana's autopsy bay, the scientific scorn could blister in 
seconds.

They hadn't worked a case together in the field since before 
her second abduction. Since before William's birth, 
actually. Dana didn't do field work; she didn't even carry a 
weapon. When Skinner called him about this case, Mulder 
suggested Dana and William spend another day at 
Disneyworld and then fly back to DC. Dana offered to 
accompany him to Oregon, though he didn't see the 
necessity in that. William had school, and any corpse 
Mulder wanted Dana to examine could be shipped back to 
Quantico. 

"Maybe it will be like old times," she countered last night, 
after her second rum and coke and about nine minutes 
before she started stripping off his clothing.

Right. Like those old times she didn't remember.

The iPhone in his pocket vibrated, then began to play 
Blondie's "Call Me" loudly. He scrambled to silence it, still 
not sure how to operate a phone with only one button. 
Heads turned, and SAC Boyle stopped speaking. Perhaps 
letting William play with the settings on the new phone was 
unwise.

The text on the screen read "time out 4 fib bout candy bar 
rapper not fare in trap ment help" 

Mulder frowned and texted back, with the phone 
automatically correcting his spelling. "Don't lie and stop 
using Mommy's phone or you're in more trouble"

He made sure the volume was turned off, but as he started 
to put the phone away, its screen brightened again.

"Evry 1 out 2 get me :( "

Mulder typed back, "Some days seem that way, buddy," 
and then resumed watching the white cinderblock wall. The 
SAC showed the group a projected photo of a woman's 
nude corpse laying facedown, as if sleeping. It looked like a 
painting, or artsy porn. Her body was perfect in every way, 
except for being dead. 

Friends or family had identified all the bodies. Some, like 
Mr. Johnson, were easy victims at the fringe of the 
community: alcoholics, drifters, prostitutes. Karen West 
worked as an RN and competed in triathlons, though. She 
disappeared four days ago while running alone in the forest 
a few miles from her home. The fourth victim last year, a 
solo male backpacker, was a well-known author. The file 
listed another Oriabi Village victim as a local Navajo artist.

Mulder knew the victims: where they'd lived, what they'd 
eaten the day they died, and whether or not their neighbors 
and co-workers liked them. Bank account balances, cell 
phone records, sexual proclivities, mental and medical 
health histories. The unnaturally dead didn't get to keep 
secrets. He knew who had scabies or hemorrhoids or 
herpes, and who'd ingested Prozac or alcohol or opiates in 
their final hours. He knew that the pretty woman on the 
screen died with semen from two men in her vagina. She'd 
been with her ex-husband, a surgeon, as well as her 
boyfriend, an executive at the hospital where she'd worked. 
Both men said the sexual encounters were consensual and 
swore they loved her.

The Portland FBI agent who conducted the interviews that 
afternoon believed both men told the truth.

Ten minutes later, Mulder's pocket vibrated again. This 
time, the text message was, "What did you feed this child? 
Crack cocaine? Will swears his math homework is done 
and you have it. Your son just called me 'harsh' because I 
won't let him watch 'Stargate.'"
 
"Subject sugared up & AFAIK unreliable," Mulder texted 
back, grinning. "Secure your cell. Withhold SciFi until 
visual on math. Got your back & I'll be there ASAP. AML"

"AML?" the bright screen asked a few seconds later.

He hesitated, then typed, "Ask me later"

If she looked it up, that would be somewhere on the list of 
what AML meant.

"Is everything okay, Agent Mulder?" the SAC asked, and 
Mulder realized the briefing had come to a halt and every 
eye in the room focused on him again.

Mulder nodded, turned the screen off, and slid the fancy 
phone back in his pocket for good.

Right. Just like old times.

****

William was Her Baby in the original plan, and he'd 
respected Scully's wishes. After that one "wild and 
passionate and perhaps ill-considered" night, Mulder's 
contribution to paternity ended. At least in Scully's view, 
and Mulder didn't get a vote. When people asked - and 
everyone from Melvin Frohike to Walter Skinner cornered 
him and asked the moment he returned from the land of the 
only mostly dead - Mulder just didn't answer. 

Even after Scully's abduction, he took care of Her Baby as 
her friend and former partner. Except for the pediatrician's 
office. He couldn't hedge on consent forms. Either Mulder 
signed the forms as William's father and the baby got 
vaccinated and checked out by the doctor, or Mulder took 
an infant home and tried to keep everyone from coughing 
on him until the spaceship returned Mommy. He signed the 
forms.

Mulder never, directly or obliquely, to any person or at any 
time, denied he was William's biological father. When 
creating Her Baby had involved a Petri dish and a turkey 
baster, he'd stipulated that single thing. He'd be the silent 
partner, but only out of love for her and to protect her child. 
She'd be an excellent mother, but if Her Baby ever needed 
His Father, Mulder would be there.

He'd like that noted in the transcript of their relationship.

William was nine months old when they'd returned from 
the Vineyard. Mulder had dropped by his old apartment one 
morning to collect his mail and check on his lone surviving 
fish. He noticed his neighbor Mr. Pao had left a cardboard 
box on the coffee table, along with a summer's worth of 
junk mail. The box was addressed to Special Agent Fox 
Mulder, with a return address in Bellefleur, Oregon. The 
box felt surprisingly lightweight, and since it didn't tick or 
drip blood or Purity, he gave William a cracker to slobber 
on, pointed the baby toward the kitchen, and opened the 
box.

It had been full of baby clothes and toys and 
accoutrements, and Mulder's first reaction was fear. When 
he put monsters behind bars, he didn't want an Internet 
search of his name producing William's photograph and 
home address. Some digging in the box turned up a thank-
you note from Teresa Nemman Hoese and pictures of her 
with her little girl, and he relaxed.

About every six months after that, there had been another 
box of hand-me-downs. The ballerina outfit wasn't much 
use, but Teresa sent L.L. Bean snowsuits and books and 
wooden puzzles. Her daughter outgrew a cowboy hat and a 
surprising number of flannel shirts and overalls, even for a 
little girl growing up in rural Oregon.

Last year, when she came to pick William up on a Sunday 
night, Dana asked why their five-year-old son wore kelly 
green snow boots and a lime green winter coat. "His are 
wet and these were dry," Mulder told her.

Now, Teresa Hoese sat on the front porch of her father's 
house, as if waiting for Mulder and William. She looked 
much like she had the last time he saw her, with long, dark 
hair and brown eyes far more expressive than the rest of her 
face. 

On a tire swing in the yard, beneath a long swirl of tangled 
chestnut hair, a little girl spun wildly. As they approached, 
the girl stopped twirling and watched them. She leaned 
back from one side of the tire while her legs dangled from 
the other.

"I was hoping you'd come by," Teresa greeted him, 
standing up and coming to the edge of the porch. "Special 
Agent Mulder."

As they shook hands, her grip seemed delicate, but 
everything about her always seemed delicate. He wondered 
if he'd be delicate, too, if he'd been abducted a half-dozen 
times and then had the love of his life come back as a 
super-soldier.

"This is Mrs. Hoese, William," he answered, and put his 
hand on William's shoulder. "She's an old friend of mine."

Teresa smiled, and William smiled enigmatically, the way 
his mother did. "We brought you a thank-you present," his 
son said, producing a plastic shopping bag from behind his 
back. "Thank you for the toys and clothes, Mrs. Hoese."

They'd practiced the manners on the walk from the motel. 
William got his smart mouth honestly, and he got it from 
both sides.

"Stella," Teresa said, motioning for her daughter to come 
over. "This is Special Agent Mulder and his son William. 
Special Agent Mulder knew your daddy."

"What makes you special?" her daughter asked, not 
seeming to notice the present.

"No one's ever really said. Being forty-five with no gut and 
a full head of hair?" Mulder answered, nullifying William's 
politeness.

"You're tall," the girl told him. "My daddy was tall."

"He was," Mulder assured her, though he didn't remember 
Deputy Ray Hoese being particularly tall.

She appeared to like that answer, and invited William to 
play. William didn't hesitate. He'd been cooped up on the 
airplane, then a rental car, then the motel with only boring 
adults for playmates. Like Mulder, regardless of the carrot 
or the stick, William's best behavior was a limited time 
offer. The plastic shopping bag hit the sidewalk with a 
thud.

"We just came by to give you-" Mulder started, but 
William headed for the tire swing and Teresa gestured for 
Mulder to sit down. Dana was at the local morgue, 
examining the bodies with Teresa's father, Dr. Nemman, 
who remained the county medical examiner and a Grade A 
asshole. They wouldn't be done for several hours, and she'd 
be fuming for at least half an hour after that. "We can't stay 
long," he said instead.

"The case, I know. When I heard- When my father told me 
about what was happening in the forest, I wondered if you'd 
come," Teresa said awkwardly.

He offered her the bag William dropped. "I don't know who 
or what a Hanna Montana is," Mulder said, showing her the 
new karaoke machine, "but the lady at the Disney store 
assured me I couldn't go wrong buying it for a seven-year-
old girl. Hopefully, it comes with earplugs and isn't easily 
breakable."

"She'll love it. Thank you. Thank you both so much. Please, 
sit down."

She resumed her place on one end of the porch swing, and 
he sat on the other end. Her feet were bare, and her toes 
brushed against the painted boards as they swayed. She'd 
painted her toenails the palest shade of pink.

"My father said he was meeting with Agent Scully this 
evening," she told him, as they watched the kids play. "Do, 
do they know what's happening yet? Who's doing this?"

"Not really," he admitted. 

She wore a long-sleeved sweater, and she pulled the cuffs 
down over her hands and held them in place with her fists, 
the way a child would. "You don't think these are abductees 
being returned?"

"No," Mulder assured her. 

The swing swayed for a while as the sun set and the air 
cooled. The moon rose, silvery and three-quarters full over 
the forest.

"He's so handsome," she said next, watching William. 
"Your son."

"He's very aware of that," Mulder responded. 

"I thought your and Agent Scully's baby might be a boy. I 
hoped, at least."

He shifted in the swing, turning toward her. "How did you 
know about him?"

"My court hearing - after I was returned, the hearing to get 
my daughter back - when you testified over the telephone, I 
could hear a baby crying in the background. I, I 
remembered you watching Agent Scully holding Stella, 
before you and I were taken. I remembered you on the ship, 
how you fought Them and struggled to stay alive. I 
remembered Agent Scully in the compound after I was 
returned, searching for you. Finding you. Your body," she 
amended.

He looked away, watching William closely and Teresa not 
at all. The nightmares still came, on occasion, when he was 
tired and had something on his mind. He still had scars, if 
he looked closely. On occasion, he still looked in the mirror 
and momentarily saw a dead man looking back.

"On the Internet," she continued, "on the abductee message 
boards, people talked about your return, and then her 
abduction. Before it was deleted, I saw a thread about 
Agent Scully being pregnant. When I heard a baby crying 
while you were trying to talk with the judge, and the baby's 
mother didn't come to take it, I- I knew." She released her 
sleeves and picked at her skirt, seeming uncomfortable. 
"Do you think I'm a crazy stalker girl now?"

"No," he said honestly. "Resourceful, though."

"Agent Scully is an instructor at the FBI academy," Teresa 
said stiltedly. "Neither of you are assigned to the X-files 
division anymore."

"The Internet again?"

"The FBI website," she confessed. "I looked up your 
names."

The tree leaves rustled, the chains on the porch swing 
squeaked, and her naked feet scuffed against the floor. A 
thirty-something year-old woman, she still lived in her 
father's house. She never remarried, despite being a 
passably pretty female in a town full of single men. Teresa 
probably didn't know that he knew, but her father now had 
co-guardianship of her daughter. Teresa spent some time in 
a mental hospital two years ago, and Mulder had talked 
with that judge too, before the hospital agreed to release 
her.

"No, someone else answers the phone in the X-files office 
these days," he answered eventually. "Two pretty 
competent someones."

"Do they ever hear anything about Ray? Is he..." She 
stopped, composed herself, then said, "I just like to pretend, 
sometimes. That I'll open the front door and see him again."

"If you ever see him again, what you see won't be your 
Ray," he cautioned her. "He'll look like himself, but he 
won't be."

"If I ever see him again, I won't care," she said, and, despite 
her death wish, he envied the certainty in her voice.

The stars came out, each a little beacon in the dark sky. He 
thought he saw Venus, and Aldebaran - the brightest star in 
Taurus. He could make out the beginning of Orion, the 
hunter, in the west. In the east, Ophiuchus still lurked 
below the horizon, and that thought still made him shiver.

In the yard, in the gathering darkness, William and Stella 
took turns on the tire swing, pretending they were on a 
pirate ship, swinging from the rigging. One pushed while 
the other spun through the air and held on for dear life, 
their laughter like bells. It reminded Mulder of himself and 
Samantha playing, way back when the world was innocent 
and new.

These children - the miracle children of a generation of 
abductees for whom the next experiment might come at any 
time - whatever the cost, he wanted them to always be 
fearless. 

The creature Ray Hoese became still lived, as far as Mulder 
knew, as did Billy Miles. The super-soldiers were undying, 
unstoppable killing machines, and if Scully hadn't 
intervened, Mulder would have become one of them. The 
universe waited for something: a signal, a date - he wasn't 
sure. One day, though, when They realized Mulder had 
eliminated all other options, the super-soldiers might come 
for William again. Or for Scully. Or for Mulder.

The times he'd tried to explain that to Dana, she offered to 
write him a prescription for anti-psychotic medication.

"I hated her," Teresa said, as if telling a secret. "Agent 
Scully. For a long time I hated her: that Agent Scully could 
save you, get you back, but there was no one to save Ray."

Scully hadn't gotten him back, Mulder wanted to tell her. 
Scully hadn't gotten her Mulder back anymore than he'd 
gotten his Scully back. His Scully didn't even come to him 
in dreams anymore; she was gone, the way Teresa's Ray 
Hoese was gone. Like Mulder's sister and father and six 
months of his life, his Scully was something else They had 
taken from him.

He answered instead, "She did everything that she could. 
Everyone did. Some things are just irreparable."

"I know," she said, but her eyes looked lost. 

****

They stayed longer than he intended, and about one minute 
longer than he should have. 

He'd brought a jacket for William, but the night was cool 
and sliding toward cold. In his shirt sleeves, Mulder needed 
to move quickly in order to stay warm. Unfortunately, as 
they walked back to the motel, William found a good stick 
and showed off his pirate moves, stopping to challenge 
every fence post they passed to a duel. If he found a stump 
or a railing, William had to scramble up on it and 
announce, "A second lamp in the belfry burns!" Since their 
trip to Boston in April and a dose of living history, Mulder 
couldn't convince his son Paul Revere was a patriot, not a 
pirate. Either the tri-corner hat and knickers threw him, or, 
like his mother, William had just made up his mind and 
chose to ignore the facts right in front of his eyes.

"Do you like Mrs. Hoese?" William asked, after slaying a 
pine tree.

"I've known her a long time. She's a nice lady. It was nice 
of her to send you all of those things. The clothes, the toys. 
Do you like Stella?"

"Are you going to marry Mrs. Hoese?"

"No," he said in surprise. He put his hands in his pockets. 
"No, I'm not going to marry her."

The moon loomed over the trees, following them curiously.

When William spoke again, the stick became a club, and 
helped an aluminum can keep up with them.

"You just kissed her. On the lips."

Also, like his mother, the kid seldom missed a trick.

"She kissed me," Mulder stipulated. "But she shouldn't 
have, and I won't let her do it again. She's, she's had some 
bad things happen to her, and she's fragile, William. I didn't 
want to hurt her feelings, but I don't want her kissing me, 
either."

"You kissed Miss Stephanie last week. The pretty running 
lady," William observed. "On the lips. For a long time. I 
saw you."

"You did?"

William nodded knowingly. 

Since there didn't seem to be any way to plead innocent, 
Mulder answered, "Mommy runs, too. Just not as far and as 
fast as Miss Stephanie."

"Do you want Scully to kiss you?"

"All this talk of kissing - How many girls have you 
kissed?" he asked, sidestepping the question.

"Two. The same as you."

"Two?" He sounded shocked. "Two? Which two?" he 
demanded. "Barbara Marie? Did you kiss Barbara Marie?"

"I'm not telling. Uncle Frohike says a gentleman doesn't 
tell."

William missed the can with his stick, so Mulder gave it a 
kick to move it along. He considered asking William if 
Mommy had been kissing anyone, but Dana was smart 
enough to remember that their son could see the school 
parking lot from his classroom window.

"Uncle Frohike wants Scully to kiss him," William 
informed him.

Mulder chuckled. "Uncle Frohike wants any woman to kiss 
him," he responded, and thankfully, William declared battle 
on a telephone pole and let the topic drop.

****

On Monday, normally Mulder had William. That wasn't 
carved in stone, though. Often, both of them 'had' William 
at T-Ball or a checkup or something for school. The 
schedule fluctuated when Mulder worked on a case out of 
town, but friction was rare. Dana tolerated Mulder being at 
her apartment, and, in turn, Mulder nodded submissively 
when she droned on about the scientific research on junk 
food and too much TV and neural development - and then 
he got William a DVD and McNuggets on the way home.

If William was happy and healthy, the adults would work it 
out.

"Who says we don't communicate? We don't need 
seminars," he teased Dana a few years ago, and she'd 
looked at him blankly.

Right. 

He could have explained, but then there would have been 
friction.

Several times - Christmas, birthdays - Mulder spent the 
night at Scully's apartment or her mother's house, sleeping 
on the couch. Dana stayed at Mulder's house several days 
last fall, when both Mulder and William had the stomach 
flu. He'd liked having her there again, even with all the 
puking.

"Marry her already," Langly had advised him. "You'd save 
on income taxes, and it's not like you could have any less 
sex."

In February, the mother of all snowstorms had hit DC while 
a serial killer hitchhiked his way across sunny LA, leaving 
a trail of women's bodies behind him. Mulder got William 
and Dana home safely, then waited in vain for a flight out 
of Dulles or BWI. Then he couldn't get a hotel room or get 
home, and finally Dana offered her sofa. He hadn't reached 
her apartment until almost midnight. By that time, he was 
cold, wet, tired, and pissed off at Mother Nature, US 
Airways, and life in general.

Dana had, to his complete surprise and in the nicest way 
imaginable, invited Mulder in and made it better.

In the morning, as all three of them ate organic Cheerios at 
her kitchen table, he'd wondered if that chip in her head 
was trying to get her pregnant again. The snow and ice had 
closed the airports and made the streets impassable. 
Mulder, William, and Dana spent the day making a 
lopsided snow army, eating medium-well toasted 
marshmallows, and defending a pillow fort in case aliens or 
Darth Vader invaded Scully's living room. When William's 
fort included pretend surveillance cameras and motion 
detectors, his mother requested, yet again, that their son 
stop spending so much time with "those Gunmen people."

Mulder read William to sleep while Dana did dishes by 
candlelight. Afterward, all she had to do was take Mulder 
by the hand and say, "Come to bed," and that night was a 
double-feature. Her body constituted the Bermuda Triangle 
for his better judgment and moral resolve. Someone should 
open an X-file. He hadn't gotten much sleep, but he hadn't 
much cared at the time, either.

Sunday BWI opened and he'd been in the air by dawn, 
headed for LA. Dana never acknowledged either night by 
the light of day, and he never decided if she still loved him, 
wanted him, merely wanted to get laid, or if she'd just been 
bored because the cable went out.

Mulder told himself he was too old for this push-me, pull-
me bullshit, and managed to work up a fair amount of self-
righteous annoyance with her - until the previous night in 
Disneyland. But no more. What happened at Disney stayed 
at Disney.

He and Dana had a good working relationship - at Quantico 
and as parents. It was good for Mulder, good for William. 
He and Dana Scully worked well as partners. Including as 
partners in bed.

But the past was water under the bridge. Mulder wouldn't 
risk going down in flames just to scratch an itch.

He told himself that in the bathroom mirror. No more. He'd 
made up his mind and armed himself with cautionary 
figures of speech.

Since the calendar read Monday, William slept in Mulder's 
motel room, sprawled across the bed in his Star Wars 
pajamas. The meeting to go over the case was in Scully's 
room, next door. 

Mulder brushed his teeth because dental hygiene was 
important, and he rinsed off and changed clothes to be 
more comfortable.

He did not shave.

Absolutely not, he told the man in the mirror. Not again.

Even his reflection thought he was full of shit.

****

"Hook me up and turn me on, Doctor Scully," he said when 
she opened the door. He held up the receiver for the old 
baby monitor.

"Gee, you're getting old. I remember being able to charge 
you up and have you go for hours," she said, and then 
added, "Why don't you come in while you think up a 
snappy comeback?"

"You're not funny, Dana." 
 
"I thought I was pretty funny." She gestured to the table 
beside the window. "There's a free outlet there. I had my 
laptop plugged in earlier. Is Will finally asleep?"

"Our little pirate Paul Revere is down for the count."

Mulder plugged in the monitor, then switched it on so he 
could hear William's slow breathing over the soft static.

Dana had changed into pajama bottoms and a loose FBI 
sweatshirt he thought used to be his. She wore her hair 
longer now, and kept it a darker auburn. Tonight, she had it 
twisted up and clipped on top of her head. She'd been 
working. Photos littered her bed, a collage of death. He saw 
her notes on the dresser, and it looked like she'd been 
comparing them with the Oregon and Arizona autopsy 
reports.

"Anything?" he asked hopefully. He sank into a chair. 
"Please, tell me you have something, before I run out of 
clean underwear."

"I've concluded that your assessment of Dr. Nemman is 
correct. He's a Grade A jackass."

"Well, our cases always go better once you start agreeing 
with me, so we'll call that progress." He toed off his 
running shoes. "Did you discover anything about our 
victims?"

"He may be a jackass, but Dr. Nemman's autopsy findings, 
so far, are the same as mine. Each of those bodies should 
still be alive."

"There was no cause of death?" He opened a file. "Really?"

She sat Indian-style on the edge of the bed. "Obviously, 
there was some cause of death. I sent samples back to the 
lab, but it will be a few days. Some tests just take time to 
run. I'm sure there's some toxin-"

"A toxin that kills without harming the body at all? Are you 
sure the victims are really dead?"

She gave him a scornful look. "I just autopsied one of them 
and saw slides of tissue from the others' dissected hearts 
and brains."

"And you find that conclusive?"

Her scornful look became withering. "This was our 
partnership?"

"Not all the time. Sometimes, one of us was in a coma."

He got a smile - the kind that still made his stomach flip-
flop.

Your powers have no effect here, he told her silently.

"As best as I can determine, with the facilities available to 
me in Nowhere, Oregon... There are no contusions or 
edema or needle marks or signs of a struggle," she recited 
clinically. "Nothing unexplained about their internal 
organs. No commonly known poison in their systems. They 
weren't drugged or smothered or garroted with a soft cord 
or drowned. They weren't even dragged through the forest. 
I've reviewed the autopsies on the Arizona victims, too, and 
right now, I can't give you a cause of death for any of them. 
Right now, it looks like those men and women walked into 
the forest or the desert of their own volition, laid down, and 
God turned off their life."

He nodded. "Okay. And either they or God took off their 
clothes."

"Now that's not funny, Mulder."

"I wasn't trying to be funny, Dana."

The look she gave him was prickly.

Rather than debate the point with her, he requested, "Tell 
me what you know about the number seven. Aside from 
being Mickey Mantle's uniform number. I've concluded 
that's not relevant to this case."

"I'm not saying there's no cause of death," she argued.

"Funny, it sounds like that's exactly what you're saying."

She repeated, as if he hadn't heard her the first time, "I'm 
waiting on lab results."

"Fine. If your labs turn up anything, let me know. Almost 
fifteen years now Dana, and if you say there's no cause of 
death, that's what I'm going with."

"Going where?" she shot back angrily. "Into the great 
beyond?  Into 'The Twilight Zone?'"

"Yeah." He paused. "No fang marks, no bite marks?"

"You think vampires are doing this?"

"Traditional sanguinarian vampires? I don't think it's 
likely," he conceded. He propped his feet up on the edge of 
the bed, next to her. "Seven. They found seven bodies in 
Arizona. If it is seven bodies, why seven? The seven deadly 
sins, the seven days of creation. Hindus have the seven 
chakras, Islam has seven levels of heaven. It's highly 
symbolic in the Torah, too. To the Japanese, there are seven 
lucky gods. Pick any culture, any age, and seven will hold 
some special meaning. You couldn't find another number 
that holds so much symbolism."

"Mammals have seven cervical vertebrae. There are the 
seven sisters of the Pleiades," she supplied. "There are 
seven planets visible to the naked eye."

"There are seven days in a week, each named for the seven 
classical planets. Are they all visible right now?"

"All the planets are visible 24 percent of the time from 
somewhere on Earth - but not to the same observer and 
certainly not to the naked eye. The last time all seven were 
visible to a single observer was in 1982."

"Hence, John Belushi's death and that third Rocky movie's 
still-unexplained success."

She shook her head, and a long piece of auburn hair 
escaped the plastic clip. "Doesn't 'The Wrath of Khan' 
redeem that year for you?"

"Not fully," he said blandly. "Nor did 'Blues Brothers 
2000.' What about a planetary alignment? A syzygy?"

She sighed. "I know that there was supposed to be a tight 
seven-planet alignment in 1994, but also that it was the first 
one in 300 years."

There wasn't supposed to be an alignment; there had been. 
He remembered sitting on the hood of their rental car, 
watching as she pointed at the night sky over the Nevada 
Desert. Between two and five hundred billion stars in the 
Milky Way alone, and by chance, the two of them 
happened to live on a Class M planet near one of them. 
That conversation happened right after her first abduction, 
and he remembered thanking whatever god might be out 
there that she'd come back.

He remembered Scully informing him that 'Class M planet' 
was a term from Star Trek, not NASA.

That was a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, he 
reminded himself. He wasn't the droid she was looking for.

"Seven bodies, seven days, all in May," he said aloud, but 
more to himself than her. "May is rebirth, renewal, fertility. 
The seventh month of the calendar with 31 days. The 
seventh child after six daughters will be a werewolf. The 
seventh son of a seventh son will be a healer or a seer. Or a 
vampire, in certain cultures."

"I think it's safe to rule out werewolves and vampires, 
Mulder."

She put her hand on top of his sock-covered foot, resting it 
there affectionately. He could have moved his foot, but he 
didn't.

Of all the random thoughts, Mulder realized he hadn't 
called Stephanie to tell her he couldn't meet her in the 
morning. Usually, on Tuesday morning, he took William to 
school and met Steph for a run, after she dropped off her 
son. They didn't have extra-curricular activities off the field 
- no horizontal ones, at least. Stephanie just ran fast enough 
to keep up with him, had the morning free, and he liked that 
she'd end a ten-mile run with a trip to Dunkin' Donuts. And, 
as William noted, she was easy on the eye. 

Come seven-fifteen AM, Stephanie would be waiting in the 
school parking lot, and Mulder would still be in Oregon.

He looked at his watch. Virginia was on Eastern Standard 
Time. That meant three hours earlier than Oregon; he'd be 
calling Steph at dinner time. He'd send a text. Later. Right 
now, he and Scully were working on a case.

Mulder flipped through the file, comparing pictures of one 
body to the next. Aside from being within a fifty-mile 
radius of each other when they'd died, the victims had no 
common denominator. They hadn't known the same people, 
had the same hobbies, or shared the same vices. They 
hadn't even all been from the same community.

A car pulled into the parking lot, shining its lights into the 
room. He heard the echo of the engine over the baby 
monitor a half-second after the ignition turned off.

"Scientifically, seven is equally significant," Dana told him. 
"Pick a branch. It's a neutral Ph. The atomic number of 
nitrogen. There are seven basic types of viruses. Seven 
units of measurement, seven colors of the rainbow. It's a 
prime number: a Mersenne prime, a double Mersenne 
prime, a Woodall prime, a factorial prime, and a safe prime. 
And a happy prime number," she added.

"What makes it happy?"

"On 'Doctor Who,' the number 379 helped keep them from 
being hurled into a star. That probably made it happy."

Mulder put down the file. "Dana, you're way hotter than 
either of Ayden J's mommies."

Over the monitor, he heard William shift in bed, and both 
of them waited a moment, listening. William was their 
common denominator; if not for their son, Dana wouldn't 
be in Bellefleur right now.  She wouldn't have been part of 
Mulder's life at all, except as an old partner and friend she 
knew she'd had, but didn't remember. 

"We were good together," she said casually. "When we 
were partners."

"We were."

She held his feet to the fire, gave him a place to stand. He'd 
said she completed him, pointed him toward true north; 
she'd said he made her feel like she was perpetually falling.

"Are you staying here tonight?" she asked, toying with the 
sole of his foot. "In case there really is a vampire out 
there?"

"You're scared of vampires?"

"No. But I thought you might be."

Maybe just once more, he told himself. If William didn't 
wake up and the world didn't end.

"Fire," he told her, moving his foot from the rough 
bedspread to her warm lap. "I'm only afraid of fire."

****

If he had it to do over again, he would have kept his mouth 
shut and eaten the burnt bacon.

His X-files partner Scully could order takeout with the 
same skill Julia Child could whip up beef bourguignon, but 
the woman who came back to him could cook.

Technically, they both could cook. Mulder could read 
directions and add water as necessary and bake until golden 
brown. During his various convalescences, she'd made him 
peach pancakes and lasagna and chicken soup, and when 
she stayed home right after William's birth, something 
often simmered on the stove. Clearly, she could cook, but it 
would be more correct to say that Dana Scully 2.0 did 
cook. She could make fancy French pastries and chicken 
cordon bleu and gazpacho and things he'd thought just 
appeared in restaurants.

"It's simple chemistry," she'd inform him.

He gained six pounds that summer on Martha's Vineyard, 
thanks to her simple chemistry.

He'd fed William while she attended Mass, but Mulder's 
breakfast consisted of two cups of coffee. Getting the 
baby's cereal off of Scully's kitchen floor, the high chair, 
the window, the wall, and the two of them was the next 
step, so he and his son took a two-for-one shower. When 
Mulder exited the bathroom in her apartment with William 
and smelled bacon frying, his belly had done a happy little 
flip-flop. Mulder had barely seen her during daylight hours 
in the past week, and a long Sunday brunch sounded 
wonderful.

"You are the reason I'm getting a gut, woman," he accused 
her, carrying William into the kitchen. He'd put on jeans 
and a T-shirt, but no socks. Winter loomed, but the 
apartment was warm, so he left the chub scout in only a 
diaper and a onesie. William had just started walking, so 
padding on the backside was the most important thing.

Mulder didn't ask her about Mass, because then she'd tell 
him about Mass. Scully 2.0 didn't share her predecessor's 
broadmindedness regarding Catholicism. If the church 
doors opened, Dana went, and if Mulder opened his mouth 
about it - even to comment - he courted trouble.

She put her hand on his stomach as he collected a belated 
good-morning kiss. "You can go for a run after breakfast."

He liked watching her in the kitchen; she worked with the 
same precision she did in the lab: slicing and dicing, and 
coming up with something tasty rather than a cause of 
death. That morning, she had French toast going on one 
burner and bacon on the other.

"Do you wanna come?" he asked. He shifted William to his 
other arm and picked through the plate of hot bacon on the 
counter. "Bundle up the baby and take the jogging 
stroller?"

"It's so motivating when you lap me, Mulder."

"If you want lapped, we can stay here and do that after 
breakfast," he teased. "Sex is also aerobic."

"I have a date with Mom at the market. I haven't seen her 
all week."

He'd looked out her kitchen window and didn't comment. 
The November day was cold, with a gray sky and wet 
sidewalks and a steady drizzle raining down on the brown 
piles of leaves.

Finally, he shrugged his shoulder and told her, "Your loss. 
Dana, did you already fry the entire package of bacon?"

"I'm expecting leftovers, if that's what you're asking." She 
turned the first slices of French toast over, and they sizzled 
in the pan.

The empty package in the kitchen trash indicated the bacon 
came from organic, local, happy pigs - right up until 
someone shot them and cured their corpses with applewood 
smoke and sea salt. That sounded delicious, and Mulder 
picked through the pile of bacon again, trying not to burn 
his fingers while he looked for a good slice. She fished the 
last pieces out of the skillet, all of them evenly brown, and 
then moved the skillet off the burner.

"This is all there is?" he asked, trying not to sound 
disappointed. He didn't remember the last time he ate 
bacon, and he'd already dedicated a little pool of slobber in 
his mouth to pricy pig slices.

"What's wrong?"

"It's all really done."

She rested the spatula against the edge of the pan and 
turned her attention toward him. "Is it burnt?"

"No, just done." He picked up a promising piece, noted the 
brown edge, and put it back on the plate with its dark 
brothers and sisters.

"What's wrong with it?"

"I like kind of rare bacon. But I'll eat this," he'd said, trying 
to back-peddle. "It's fine."

"There's no such thing as rare bacon. Who likes 
undercooked bacon?" she wanted to know.

"Me. My father. My grandfather. And there are probably 
three or four others among the six billion people out there. 
Usually, you pull out a few slices for me early on, and then 
fry yours to a crisp. You lecture me about trichinosis, if that 
makes you feel better."

"Since when?"

"Since always," he said before he thought. "You've 
watched me hassle waitresses about this for years. You just 
don't remem-" he started, and then caught himself. 

When he looked up, she watched him with the same 
expression she had when he drove her home from the 
hospital the past spring, after her abduction. The 'who is 
this man' expression.

Dana Scully had the most expressive eyes of any woman in 
the world, and he read fear and anger and hurt in them. He 
stood in her kitchen on a Sunday morning, holding their 
child, and he'd made love to her late last night, and yet she 
didn't know him. She was trying and he was trying, but that 
common bond, forged in fire after years as partners, wasn't 
there.

He kept telling himself that she was still Scully: brilliant, 
loyal, beautiful. Just gentler, less batted around by life. He 
knew she struggled to figure out this life she woke up to, 
without her sister or father and with a baby and an 
apartment and scars she didn't remember. With a man she 
didn't remember - and never would have chosen. 

In truth, he never would have chosen her, either, and he'd 
started feeling like he betrayed Scully every time he 
touched her.

"I didn't know."

"It's just bacon," he assured her.

"I didn't know," she'd repeated.

"It's okay," he said again. "It's just bacon, and I didn't need 
to be eating it anyway."

She went back to overseeing the French toast, and he stood 
there for a while, holding the baby and watching the back 
of her head. He couldn't fix it for her, he couldn't change it 
for her, and he couldn't convince her that it didn't matter. 
He could pretend, but he couldn't convince himself that it 
didn't matter, either.

What they'd had was lost in time, like tears in the rain. And 
in that moment, he'd blown his cover, and she'd known. 

He couldn't be the man she wanted, and he never should 
have tried.

Years later, on a frigid February night - in that same 
apartment and after they'd shared the same bed - she 
confessed that the problem wasn't that she couldn't live 
with him, she couldn't live with perpetually disappointing 
him.

He should have just eaten the burnt bacon.

Instead, he just left.

****

Mulder decided to join a twelve-step program, and step 
number one involved not ending up hip-deep in his former 
partner.

First thing in the morning.

He sighed and curled up to Scully's warm body in the 
darkness. The motel blanket felt as scratchy as the 
bedspread, so he pushed it down and pulled the sheet 
higher. 

This was insanity, but he'd been insane before. Compared 
to being dead or at a Wiggles concert, insanity seemed like 
a cakewalk.

He ran his hand up the slope of her hip, down the valley to 
her waist, and then up and around her shoulders, pulling her 
close. Her eyes were closed, and her face looked flushed in 
the moonlight.

"We can't keep doing this, Dana," he told her quietly.

The old baby monitor crackled like rustling crinoline, and 
her hair felt silky against his bare chest. She was either 
asleep and she hadn't heard him, or she wasn't going to 
answer him. His money would be on the latter.

He exhaled and brought his hand up to her breast, drawing 
lazy circles with his fingertips across her chest. He passed 
his fingers down the side of her right breast, paused, and 
then did it again, a little less lazily.

Mulder propped his head up on one hand, watching her as 
she slept. He slid his fingers down the outer edge of her 
breast again, where the roundness ended and the lymph 
nodes began. He felt something, like a little grape a half-
inch beneath her skin.

"Scully," he said nervously. "Dana, wake up. What is this?"

"My right mammary gland," she mumbled.

"There's a lump, Scully."

"I know," she said, her eyes still closed. "It's okay."

He sat up, his stomach tight. "It's not okay. What do you 
mean you know? Have you seen a doctor?"

"It's benign." 
 
"A benign tumor?"

"A benign cyst. I found it last month. I had a needle biopsy 
and an ultrasound, and it's fine. It should resolve on its 
own. It's highly unlikely surgery will be necessary."

"What kind of surgery?" He'd seen photos of women after 
mastectomies. He remembered her during chemo. She got 
rail thin and so pale that her skin seemed transparent. He 
remembered when dry toast and water could make her 
vomit and the lightest touch to her skin could hurt. 

Damn it, he should have known that chip in her neck had 
acted up. Otherwise she wouldn't be going to bed with him 
again after all these years.

"What kind of surgery?" he demanded again in the 
darkness.

"It's highly unlikely," she explained, sounding annoyed. 
"But if the cyst doesn't resolve and it becomes 
uncomfortable, it can be removed surgically."

"The cyst can be removed or your breast can be removed?"

"The cyst, Mulder."

"They're sure?"

Before she could answer, he heard William stir over the 
baby monitor. William rolled around for a few seconds, 
then it sounded like he got out of bed. 

"Daddy?" a confused voice said over the static.

Mulder found his boxers and blue jeans beside the bed. He 
slid them on, and zipped up as he dashed for the door of 
Scully's motel room.  Behind him, she rooted around in the 
dark as well, looking for her clothes. By the time he 
reached the porch, William opened the door to Mulder's 
room, looking for him.

"I'm over here, buddy," Mulder whispered. "In Mommy's 
room."

William looked at him, bleary-eyed and only partially 
awake.

"Do you need to go to the bathroom?"

"My stomach hurts."

"Where does it hurt?" Scully's voice asked from behind 
Mulder. "Come here, baby; let me see."

William went to her, pulling up his Yoda pajama top to 
show her his belly - or lack thereof. Their roly-poly baby 
and hulk of a toddler sprouted up a couple of years ago, 
steadily gaining inches, though not yet pounds. He had to 
work to push out what stomach he had, but he gave it his 
all.

Mulder followed William inside and closed her door behind 
him, sliding the deadbolt into place.

Dana often forgot two things: first, that their brilliant, 
imaginative son could lie convincingly, and second, that 
being hurt or sick always garnered Dr. Scully's attention. 

She gave William the once-over, checking his forehead and 
throat while Mulder hovered. William rarely got sick, and 
Mulder could have handled this, but there was no use in 
arguing - or even in offering an opinion. Eventually, Dr. 
Scully rooted around in her suitcase and produced a bottle 
of children's Mylanta. Mulder offered a little plastic cup of 
water as a chaser.

"Does anything else hurt?" he asked.

William shook his head, his lower lip still pushed out 
unhappily.

"You wanna go back to sleep?"

The little boy nodded.

Dana tilted her head, wanting William in her bed, so 
Mulder steered him there. After he lay down, Dana pressed 
gently, low on his abdomen, asking if that hurt.

William said it didn't.

Mulder lay down beside him, still in his jeans, and put what 
he hoped was a warm hand on his son's stomach. 

"Better?"

"Um-hum," William mumbled, probably as appeased by 
the attention as the treatment.

Dana lay down on the other side of William, glancing over 
him one more time as he started to fall back to sleep.

"It's all that candy you let him eat," she accused Mulder 
quietly, a few minutes later.

"Right - it's that one miniature candy bar. If he actually has 
a stomachache at all, it couldn't possibly be due to breakfast 
at the airport, lunch on a three-hour flight, two hours in a 
car, or just waking up and finding me not there," Mulder 
shot back in an unhappy whisper. 

"Are you still letting him sleep with you? At home, I 
mean?"

"No," he snapped. "Not since last year, when you took him 
to the Bodies exhibit and he had nightmares for a week."

"Those nightmares couldn't possibly have been attributed to 
you and those Gunmen people letting him watch Star Wars. 
Darth Vader, Mulder? Really? For a five-year-old?"

"Plasticized partially-dissected bodies, Dana? Really? For a 
five-year-old?" he argued, imitating her condescending 
whisper. "I like that you think to check our son for 
appendicitis when he has a tummy ache, but you didn't 
think to mention it to me when you found that lump."

She looked at him like he was crazy. "Why would I tell 
you?"

"Because I was there when you had cancer. I loved you and 
I watched you almost die. Just because you don't remember 
doesn't mean it didn't happen."

Dana pulled the covers over William, then adjusted her 
pillow angrily. She'd put on the first thing she found: the 
oversized T-shirt she'd been wearing under his old FBI 
sweatshirt earlier. The T-shirt was ancient, with 'University 
of Oxford' across the front of it.

"Did you take half my wardrobe with you when you left?" 
he asked, still whispering and keeping his hand on 
William's belly. "Virginia isn't a joint property state; I 
know this from experience."

"Neither is Maryland."

"It's so comforting that you thought to check," he shot back. 
This argument was stupid, he knew, and he'd stop arguing 
if he could think of anything else to say to her.

The baby monitor still hissed. The heater beneath her 
window clicked on, exhaling an angry hot breath.

"I didn't leave, Mulder," she told him quietly.

You damn sure did, he accused her silently. You left both 
of us.

"Water under the bridge," he told her aloud. He took a deep 
breath and then exhaled slowly. "I think you should see 
your oncologist. Get checked out."

"I'll see my oncologist in January. Every January."

"Make a special appointment," he urged.

In the light from the parking lot, Mulder saw her eyebrows 
come together at an unhappy angle. "Raise your hand if 
you're a medical doctor and it's your breast."

Only her hand went up, and then returned to rest on 
William's shoulder.

Putting the argument on pause, he requested, "Trade me 
sides; my hand's getting cold." 

Like a Chinese fire drill, he got up and walked around to 
the other side of the bed. Dana maneuvered over William 
and curled up against him, her back to the window. Mulder 
found an extra blanket in the bottom dresser drawer and 
unfolded it over them before he lay down again.

"The lump is benign?" he asked, putting his right hand on 
William's stomach.

Her voice sounded kinder when she answered, "I promise 
you it's benign. A cyst is just fluid, not a tumor. It's not 
cancer."

"Okay," he said.

William kicked the blanket off, rubbed his face with his 
fist, shifted, and then relaxed and slept on between his 
parents.

"It shouldn't have to be so hard, Scully," Mulder said 
tiredly.

To his surprise, she answered, "No, it shouldn't," and then 
he really couldn't think of anything to say to her.

****

Day 2: The same thing we do every Tuesday: try to save 
the world.

****

Someone knocked in asymmetrical stereo, with one sound a 
muffled rapping from the motel room next door, and one an 
angry, slightly delayed pounding of knuckles against wood 
beside his ear. When Mulder opened his eyes, it was dark 
except for the light in the bathroom. The clock on the other 
side of the bed read 5:26AM. 

Scully pushed up on one elbow, her hair wild and matted in 
the back. Her make-up had formed dark smudges around 
her eyes, Bladerunner-esque. She looked like a woman 
satisfied by the night, but markedly displeased with the 
current hour.

William slept between them, radiating warmth but taking 
up an inordinate amount of space for such a little person.

"They've found another body," Mulder guessed as he 
rubbed the sleep - or lack thereof - from his eyes.

She flopped back down and pulled the covers over her bare 
legs. "I'm a medical doctor. It'll be just as dead at seven."

The pounding on the motel room next door resumed, 
accompanied by a man yelling, "Agent Mulder!" every five 
seconds.

Mulder still had on his jeans and T-shirt, and he found his 
fleece pullover shirt on the floor, beneath the bed spread. 
His socks and running shoes had been abducted during the 
night, so he was still barefooted when he jerked open 
Scully's motel room door.

Four FBI agents, two deputies, and Dr. Nemman stood on 
the next stoop.

Mulder stepped closer and partially closed the door, 
blocking their view of the bed. "What's this? A posse?"

"Do we have the wrong room? The clerk said you were in 
10."

"What do you need?" Mulder responded tightly.

"We found another body," a deputy told him, glancing past 
Mulder. "West of town."

Mulder nodded tiredly. He'd thought the Pacific Ocean 
constituted "west of town," but he wasn't quibbling. "Okay. 
Give me twenty minutes."

He closed the door again before they could object.

Dana sighed unhappily, crawled out of bed, and headed for 
the bathroom. She wore only his old Oxford T-shirt and a 
pair of black panties.

"Do you know what I did with my shoes?" he called, and 
heard the shower squeal on in response.

Through the window, Mulder saw the agents and deputies 
leaning on the hoods of their cars, twenty feet away. They 
drank coffee, and two smoked cigarettes, and all seemed to 
be planning to wait there for him.

Mulder had to go next door to get ready, but he preferred 
not to walk out of Scully's room without his shoes. He 
rooted around and finally decided he'd have to open an X-
file on his Nikes.

He picked up William, who was sound asleep and as 
cooperative as an arm-load of assorted-length two-by-fours, 
and carried him next door. Mulder was still shoeless, but at 
least a child constituted plausible deniability.

****

Violet had barely tinged the black sky when they reached 
the line of patrol cars and unmarked fleet sedans along the 
edge of the road. Mulder slowed, looking for a place to 
park. William slept in the back seat. Dana rode shotgun, 
holding a cup of take-out coffee up to her mouth with both 
hands while staring blankly at the windshield. She blew 
across the top of the cup every so often, but he'd yet to see 
her sip it.

Mulder knew better than to talk to her or ask her to share 
the coffee with him until at least a quarter of the cup was 
gone.

He eased the Taurus off the pavement, shifted it into park, 
but left the ignition running to power the heater.

"I'll be back as soon as I can," he promised.

Without speaking, Dana huddled down in the passenger 
seat and continued performing what looked like a precursor 
to fellatio on her coffee cup. He moved to kiss her 
goodbye, but then, when she didn't move toward him, he 
stopped.

"Okay," he said awkwardly, answering some unspoken 
question. "I tossed my carry-on bag in the trunk. If William 
wakes up, there are juice boxes, some trail mix. If things 
get desperate, dig deep and there's a Pirates of the 
Caribbean play set he doesn't know about yet. You have the 
bridge, Mr. Spock."

"Aye-aye, Captain," she mumbled, as he opened the door, 
but then she added, "Mulder-" 

He stopped, one foot on the ground.

She finally took a sip of coffee. "Be careful. You're 
wearing a red shirt, and we know that that means. I'm a 
doctor, not a miracle worker."

He smiled at her, feeling less weary. "I've seen you work 
miracles. When we were partners, you definitely worked a 
few miracles."

"Well, in case I didn't write down the miracle recipe, be 
careful," she answered. 

She gestured for him to go on, so he did, closing the car 
door behind him.

He took a flash light, but so many deputies and agents 
milled around in the fog that he didn't need it. A constant 
stream of people walked beside the road, like dark ants 
hurrying to and from the nest. Someone put a cup of coffee 
in his hand and pointed him toward a path, past the gray 
rocks, and to the cold, bleak shore of the ocean. 

The FBI had the crime scene taped off and lit. A dozen 
people stood around, most muttering and staring at a nude 
body on the sand. The man's skin looked gray, but 
unmarked. He lay with his head toward the surf, his feet 
toward the bluff. A red Irish setter lay about ten feet from 
the body, watching the officers and looking concerned. Its 
tail flicked against the sand as Mulder approached, and it 
raised its head.

"A local found him early this morning," a tall, swarthy FBI 
agent named Martelli told Mulder as he came up beside 
him. "Ralph Roy, 49, of Portland. A successful software 
developer, recently divorced. His brother said he was 
spending the week on the coast, hoping for a nice change of 
scenery."

Mulder looked out across the dark ocean. 

"He rented a house a mile up the beach. My partner's 
checking it out. She's there now."

Mulder tried his coffee, and then nodded, still looking at 
the beach as the sun began to rise. The wind off the ocean 
felt cold and salty, and stung his freshly-shaved jaw. The 
coroner's van waited to transport the body, and every law 
enforcement agent within a one-hundred mile radius had 
congregated on the beach.

"Did the body wash up on the beach, or is this where he 
died?" Mulder asked, his breath forming white clouds. "Or 
do we know, yet?"

"He's above high tide," Agent Martelli answered. 

"But no marks? No footprints except his and the dog's?"

"None that we can see. We haven't moved him, yet. Dr. 
Nemman wanted to, but we were waiting for Dr. Scully."

Mulder sipped and nodded again. He watched the Portland 
FBI agents for a few minutes, and then made a slow lap up 
and down the beach, looking things over. The Irish setter 
followed him, still wagging hopefully, then returned to sit 
near its owner's body.

"Is Dr. Scully on her way, sir?" Agent Martelli asked as 
Mulder returned. "She was one of my instructors at the 
academy. I was hoping to say hello."

"She'll be along."

"Yes, sir."

Mulder turned in a stationary circle, committing the area to 
his memory. The sun rose, burning away the fog. When he 
had to die - again - the stark beach, with the mountains in 
the background and the water eating away at the shore, 
wouldn't be a bad place to do it. It reminded him of the 
beach where he and Samantha used to play, and, in his old 
dreams, where he used to see Scully.

Mulder squatted down, and the dog came to him, lowering 
its head - shy, but friendly. It had gray on its muzzle.

"I've called the local vet," Agent Martelli told Mulder. "The 
brother's coming to get the dog, but I want a vet to check 
her over first, and we'll examine her for trace evidence. 
Maybe she tried to protect Mr. Roy from his attacker. We 
might even get DNA from her mouth or claws."

Mulder nodded. He didn't see any marks on the dog, but 
checking for trace evidence couldn't hurt. He looked at the 
corpse, and then at the dog again. "She can't be walking 
around the crime scene."

"I know, but she hadn't moved until you got here, sir," the 
young agent said, bending down as well. "Mr. Roy's 
brother said he'd had her almost fifteen years. Ginger. She's 
older than his children." He patted her head with his latex-
gloved hand. "Come on, Ginger. Let's put you in a car so 
you'll be warm."

The dog tilted her head and offered her paw.

"He's not coming back, girl," Mulder told her. "It just looks 
like he is. Go with Agent Martelli. Go on," he advised, the 
same advice he'd given himself, over and over.

The young agent snapped his fingers and kissed, and the 
dog reluctantly followed him away from Mr. Roy's body. 
When they reached the bluff, Mulder saw Martelli turn the 
dog over to an equally young female deputy. She fashioned 
a leash out of her belt and led the dog out of sight.

Agent Martelli returned and, uninvited, stood beside 
Mulder. The agent put his hands in his jacket pockets and 
briefly stared at the ocean as if posing for his portrait on a 
coin. While Mulder tried to think, Martelli cleared his 
throat. Then cleared his throat again. 

"What?" Mulder asked finally.

Martelli looked around, as if to make sure everyone else 
was out of earshot, then said sheepishly, "Agent Mulder, I 
wanted to ask- I'm driving from Jefferson Bay every 
morning. That was the closest motel room I could get."

A figure standing in the shadow of the bluff caught 
Mulder's eye, and for an instant he thought he saw Scully. 
The breeze blew her hair, and she watched him with that 
patient, vaguely curious look of hers.

"Agent Mulder," the young man's voice repeated in a 
Brooklyn accent, "I don't mean to get all up in your private 
business, but if you aren't using your motel room... It's a 
long drive from Jefferson Bay at three AM."

Mulder looked again, thinking Dana must want something, 
and surprised she'd leave William rather than just calling 
him. The figure had vanished - lost in a sea of dark blue 
and black and green uniforms.

A flurry of activity and shouting came from on top of the 
bluff, and Mulder saw a dog's auburn head appear. She'd 
escaped the female deputy and come back to keep watch 
over the beach. She refused to budge despite a trio of 
people encouraging her and offering treats. She didn't 
growl or snap, but she didn't move from atop the bluff, 
either. Manhandling her risked hurting her or destroying 
any evidence on her. Mulder had no expertise in dog 
behavior, so he stayed on the shore and watched. After a 
few minutes, the consensus among the deputies appeared to 
be to just let the old dog wait, and that she'd move when 
they moved the body.

On the other side of the bluff, Mulder saw the tall antennas 
from the TV news vans going up, like ships' masts in the 
fog. Fox News and CNN had never met a grisly murder 
case that they didn't like.

"As if God switched off their life," he heard Scully's voice 
say inside his head. As a rule of thumb, everyone died of 
something, even in the X-files. 

Especially in the X-files. And his instinct told him dead-
for-no-reason equaled an X-file.

"Agent Mulder," Agent Martelli tried a third time. "Your 
motel room-"

"I'll keep you posted," Mulder told the agent absently, and 
started back toward the car.

****

Dr. Nemman started down the narrow path as Mulder 
approached the road. Rather than move to one side the 
doctor stayed in the middle, blocking his way. He stood 
close to Mulder's height - heavier and about twenty years 
older - and had the expression of a man perpetually 
displeased with life.

"You leave my daughter alone, hot shot," Dr. Nemman 
greeted him angrily. Two FBI agents and a man in a 
coroner's jacket all turned their head curiously.

"Good morning," Mulder responded, and raised his coffee 
cup.

"You heard me," Dr. Nemman said.

"I heard you," Mulder agreed neutrally. He sidestepped the 
doctor and kept walking.

"Don't think you can come up here and do whatever you 
please. Teresa was a witness in your old investigations, and 
you report to someone at the FBI. Stay away from my 
daughter or you'll wish you had," the doctor threatened.

Mulder put his hand on his hip and, just for spite, let his 
profiler wheels turn, momentarily considering which would 
piss Dr. Nemman off more: feigning interest in Teresa or 
not. 

"Your daughter is a grown woman," Mulder said finally, 
taking the high road.

Dr. Nemman snapped back, "She is fragile."

"Do you think it could be because you treat her like she's 
perpetually fourteen-years old?"

At the end of the line of cars, Dana spotted him and got out 
of the passenger side. William watched curiously from the 
backseat while he sucked a juice box dry.

Dr. Nemman looked at Dana, then at William, and then 
Mulder's bare ring finger as he held his coffee cup. "I see 
your track record for doing right by a woman," the doctor 
said snidely, and then repeated, "You stay away from my 
daughter, hot shot."

A female TV reporter stuck a microphone in Mulder's face. 

He ignored her and kept walking.

****

The steering wheel made for an awkward desk, but he liked 
to write his notes longhand, on a legal tablet, the same way 
he had in 1989. There was something comforting and 
permanent about pen against paper, just like the staccato 
patter of typewriter keys sounded more productive than the 
plastic plink-plink of a computer keyboard.

"Is this important FBI business?" William asked from the 
back, out of his booster seat and leaning forward.

"It is, buddy," Mulder said absently. "This is what Mommy 
and I used to do. We were a team." He wrote down facts, a 
few theories, but mostly just passed time. He couldn't think 
like a killer and entertain a six-year-old at the same time. 
"When I'm out of town, this is what I'm doing. Catching 
bad guys."

Never one to pass up a new vocabulary word, his son 
asked, "Criminals?"

"Criminals," Mulder confirmed. "Criminals are bad guys."

The road was too busy to let William out to run some 
energy off, so except for a trip to pee between the bluffs, 
he'd been cooped up in the Taurus for almost an hour. They 
looked at books and did schoolwork and had a snack, but 
Mulder wished Dana would hurry up. 

"How do you catch criminals?" William wanted to know.

"We tell the other FBI agents who to look for, how to find 
them," Mulder answered carefully. "Mommy and I look at 
what the criminals have done, and we use that information 
to help find them and stop them from doing more bad 
things."

Mulder had seen the coroner's van leave with the body, and 
a man he took to be the local vet come for the dog. A few 
agents remained on the beach, but he didn't know what the 
hell had Dana occupied for so long. She didn't need to 
personally strain the sand; any of the six FBI Agents or 
four deputies on the case could collect evidence and take 
photographs. This was a field investigation, not Quantico. 

"Is this important FBI business like you were doing with 
Scully last night?" William pursued. 

Oh, any minute now, Scully.

Mulder turned to look back at his son. "We were working 
on this case, William," he answered neutrally. 

"Scully said you were doing important FBI business." 
William considered a second, and then, proving his parents 
put the "I" in "FBI," observed, "With your clothes off. Why 
would you take your clothes off to catch criminals, 
Daddy?"

"Ask Mommy," he suggested. "She's a medical doctor." 

"But you had your shirt-" William started.

Mulder handed the iPhone back to William. "Here. See if 
you can download some pirate games, buddy," he 
suggested. 

****

Plenty of people in law enforcement still thought catching 
the bad guys had to involve heated interrogations, a 
stakeout, then a gun and a foot or car chase. That their 
entire career should be one long episode of Miami Vice. 
Those men had little use for behavioral science, even when 
they requested the consultation. They treated Mulder and 
his profilers like cheap, poorly-placed smoke detectors: 
socially necessary, but likely more trouble than they were 
worth. When the case had the locals really stumped, though 
- or really spooked - the FBI profiler moved up a few rungs 
on the ladder of importance.

Mulder asked for more maps, and by the time he reached 
headquarters the Portland FBI agents and the Bellefleur 
deputies found him four: historic, topographic, "Your 
Scenic Drive up the Oregon Coast," and one marking the 
hiking and bike trails. The maps turned out to be 
unnecessary, though. With a sixth crime scene marked on 
the main map and the Post-it flags removed, Mulder saw 
the pattern easily. The bodies formed a ring around 
Bellefleur, with the most recent body nearby, at the coast to 
the west, and the farthest found deep in the woods to the 
east. 

Their killer operated within a set radius. A time constraint, 
perhaps, or only the area very familiar to the killer. A 
newspaper or postal route. Maybe the distance on one tank 
of gas on a four-wheeler or a dirt bike. Mulder didn't see a 
boundary road or trail that a killer might patrol, or any sort 
of topographical barrier, but that perfect circle of crime 
scenes wasn't random.

He looked at the file on the Arizona murders. Only four of 
the victim's bodies had exact locations; large circles 
marked the other three - estimates. Local citizens found 
those bodies - potentially victims one, five, and six - in the 
desert. 

A brother discovered the first victim and buried him in the 
traditional Hopi manner; the brother made no police report 
for a week. Victim Two, the Navajo artist, got reported to 
the local authorities, who'd begun to investigate. Next, a 
Hopi woman's body was discovered, then the backpacker. 
Three dead bodies in the space of a week seemed unusual 
for a town of less than two thousand, and the FBI joined the 
investigation. Only then had the citizens of Oraibi Village 
mentioned the first victim's death. The reports indicated the 
interviewees were uniformly unhelpful in the way only 
small towns could be. When outsiders asked, the locals got 
paranoid and clammed up, refusing to corroborate even 
basic facts. 

Separate but equally panicked and unhelpful local men 
discovered Arizona victims five and six. The men loaded 
the bodies in the back of their pick-up trucks and rushed 
them to town, then claimed they couldn't recall exactly 
where in the desert they found the bodies.
  
As usual, a better initial investigation would have made 
Mulder's job easier. The FBI agents found seven bodies, 
few facts, and a wall of silence in the little village.  The 
deaths stopped, the case went nowhere, and eventually the 
FBI attributed the Oraibi murders to a combination of bad 
luck, exposure, and possibly some new street drug.

Then the first body turned up in Oregon. Then a second and 
a third body. Then the telephone rang in Mulder's hotel 
room at Disneyland.

Mulder found it unlikely that Native American men who'd 
spent their lives in Oraibi Village didn't know every rock 
and bush in the desert around it. Also, a citizen willing to 
report a dead body wanted to be helpful; he just didn't want 
his chop shop or drug lab or porn found when the FBI 
investigated his garage or back forty. He wanted justice - so 
long as no one knew pot plants grew in his basement and he 
still cashed his dead grandma's Social Security checks.

It took a few calls and some digging on the Internet, but 
Mulder found a home address for both of the men who had 
to guess at where they found the bodies in Arizona. If he 
picked the point in their estimated circle farthest from their 
homes and designated it the true crime scene, the seven 
bodies formed an evenly divided ring around Oraibi 
Village. 

Mulder checked the photographs in the file, then, with a 
marker, drew the position of each victim on the Oregon 
map - six little stick people. The bodies were found prone, 
supine, and on their side, but in each case with their feet 
toward Bellefleur, and their heads pointed away. When he 
drew a line connecting their heads, he had a perfect circle.

On his map of Oraibi Village, Arizona, each victim's 
position was the same: feet toward the village, head away 
from it. Given the remoteness of the Native American 
village and the harshness of the desert, Mulder had 
wondered if there were a few undiscovered bodies - 
destroyed by scavengers or just never stumbled upon or 
reported - but seven did seem to be the magic number.

Mulder glanced at William. His son sprawled on the old 
orange sofa across the room, playing on someone's laptop. 
Mulder got SAC Boyle's attention.

"Here," Mulder said. On the map, he pointed to the spot at 
the bottom right of the circle, in the forest outside 
Bellefleur. If someone wanted to divide a 360-degree circle 
with seven bodies, the last one should be there. "Send your 
search teams here."

As everyone else picked up their cell phones or headed for 
their cars, Mulder stayed behind, looking at the map. 
Something felt wrong. Not the circular killing pattern, but 
something. Like he'd finished the jigsaw puzzle to find he 
had an extra piece.

With his finger, he traced the highway out of Bellefleur, 
then the forest road. He followed the trail that led into the 
forest and to the seventh unknown stick-man. 

In May 2000, seven years ago, Mulder vanished from that 
same spot. Mulder and Teresa and Ray Hoese and Billy 
Miles and a dozen other people taken from their families 
and jobs and lives. One way or another, they all came back 
to their personal Hell.

Mulder bet, if he checked the old X-file, the other crime 
scenes were abduction sights, as well.

He didn't know what that meant, which bothered him even 
more. Mulder thought the abductions ended in 2001. He 
thought he'd ended them by destroying the Consortium's 
last hybrid lab. His chest tightened and his heart beat faster.

Outside, excited voices called back and forth. Car doors 
slammed and engines started as the deputies and agents 
headed out to search for the seventh victim.

Still rooted to the floor in front of the map, Mulder shifted 
his arm to feel the reassuring bulge of his holster. He'd left 
his ankle holster at the motel, a mistake he wouldn't make 
again. Not that being armed made a difference. Bullets only 
stopped humans, zombies, and some mutants. He only had 
bullets, though. Bullets and a half-assed profile and seven 
bodies dead for no reason at old abduction sights. And a 
brilliant six-year-old son who rarely got sick. And a 
beautiful former partner with a chip in her neck, a lump in 
her breast, and a gap in her memories.

****

Breasts, boobs, bazongas, tits: whatever the term, Mulder 
qualified as a long-time fan. High beams, low beams, 
melons and bee-stings - God bless the ta-ta's, every one. He 
admired many casually - particularly during bikini or 
sweater season - and devoted himself seriously to a select 
few. He even supported boobies financially; he'd signed up 
for the Susan B. Komen race with Stephanie.

His ta-ta scorecard read 0 for 2 - or 1 for 4, depending on 
whether he counted sets or singles - this morning. Scully's 
right breast had a little lump that, despite her assurances, 
scared the hell out of him. Currently, as he tried to focus 
intently on the face in his webcam window, Agent Reyes 
nursed a child old enough to unbutton her mother's blouse 
and ask for a snack.

"I'm in the deputy sheriffs' office," he told her. In other 
words, a public place. "I have William with me, and our 
motel only has dial-up."

On the computer screen, Agent Reyes' image smiled and 
nodded. 

On the East Coast, clocks read early morning. Working 
from home - which appeared to be Agent Doggett's living 
room - Agent Reyes wore pajama bottoms and a white T-
shirt. When the camera came on, she already had her top up 
and a two-year-old girl attached to her breast.

William lounged on the old sofa in the corner again, 
alternating between working on his schoolwork, texting 
Langly, and bothering Mrs. Bahe. Most of the agents were 
in the field, but a smattering of men typed reports or talked 
on telephones.

"You're in Oregon, Agent Mulder," Agent Reyes said in 
that odd way she had, as if equally likely to be asking a 
question or making a statement. "You're looking well. Are 
you still running?"

"This week - only when pursued."

"Dana e-mailed me that she and William went to Oregon 
with you," she answered. "I'm glad."

Since he wasn't privy to what Dana might have e-mailed 
Agent Reyes, or specifically what made Agent Reyes glad, 
Mulder just answered, "She's finishing up at the morgue."

"How can John and I help?"

You could get a blanket, he did not say. He had no issue 
with breastfeeding - even a preschooler, even in public. His 
issue lay in ignoring 100,000 years of male instinct to look.

"I'd like your thoughts on this case. I'm sending you what 
we have: maps, photos, reports. Seven killings around 
Oraibi Village, Arizona, and at least six around Bellefleur. 
No clear cause of death. One woman and six men in 
Arizona, one woman and five men so far in Oregon. 
There's no obvious connection between the victims. The 
bodies are clearly arranged in a ritualized manner and, in 
Oregon, several were found at known UFO abduction 
sights."

"You think you have an X-file," Agent Reyes said.

"Yes," he answered, a little tightly. That would be the 
reason he asked for her help. He wouldn't contact her if he 
thought he had a hangnail. "The connection is to the 
location of the killings and the number of victims, not to 
the victims themselves."

"Who the victims are is unimportant; it's where the victims 
are."

He nodded. Right. He just said that.

"The Hopi Indians of Oraibi are thought to be the oldest 
community in the continental United States, Agent Mulder, 
yet one that we know very little about. The villagers don't 
allow photos. They have minimal contact with outsiders. 
They avoid modern technology. We don't even know 
exactly how many people live in the village."

"Have there been abductions in Oraibi in the last fifteen 
years?"

"We have no way of knowing," she answered. "I'll do some 
checking, though. I have a few connections."

On the computer screen, John Doggett approached, also in 
pajama bottoms. Doggett carried a coffee mug and a baby 
blanket. Agent Reyes took the mug, but told her partner she 
wasn't cold, thank you, though. 

Doggett's image walked back to the kitchen shaking his 
head.

"Oraibi and Bellefleur are both old, Native American 
settlements," Agent Reyes said, returning her attention to 
the webcam and patting her daughter's back absently. 

"That I know. And I know the number seven has multiple 
significances, as does the circle. Beyond that, I need to do a 
little digging, and I don't have the time or the resources to 
do that here."

"We're happy to help." She paused thoughtfully. "I know 
you have a theory, Agent Mulder."

Mulder shook his head. "Me? I'm just a hired gun for the 
FBI."

A sofa spring squeaked, and he heard William get up and 
walk toward him. "Daddy, Scully's finished with the body," 
the boy said, reading the message on the phone as he 
ambled. "Dr. Nemman is still an asshole. That's a bad word. 
Scully's feeling homa sidal.  Homicidal. Meet her at the 
diner for lunch so she has an ali- an ally buy," William 
finished, still holding the phone as he sat on Mulder's lap. 
"Hello, Miss Reyes. Hello, Faith."

The little girl seemed preoccupied with breakfast, but 
Agent Reyes raised her hand, waving to the camera. "Hello, 
William."

"You have a very nice breast, Miss Reyes," the boy 
informed her, which should have made Mulder prouder 
than it did.

Monica Reyes smiled and said politely, "Thank you, Will."

Mulder got his phone back from William, told Agent Reyes 
he'd check with her later, and quickly shut off the web-cam.

"Alibi," he told William, as he got up from the computer. 
"We have to provide Mommy with lunch and an alibi."

****

As they walked around the corner and down the street to 
the diner, William bounced down the sidewalk like Tigger. 
After two successive nights in which sleep came secondary 
to sex - and the anxious insomnia that inevitably followed - 
Mulder understood why Mother Nature designed humans to 
procreate at twenty rather than at the wrong side of forty. 
The procreation part didn't change all that much, but 
keeping up with those hyperactive little bundles of joy got 
harder as the years passed.

After learning he'd purchased $23.87 worth of new music 
and applications from iTunes that morning and could now 
play Pong, two pirate games, and Alien Shooter on his 
phone, Mulder made a mental note to change that 
password. He checked the rest of his messages as he 
followed William. At 7:20 AM Eastern Standard Time, 
Stephanie texted "r u running late? lol," and sent another 
text ten minutes later: "where r u? worried. call me." She'd 
left voice mail messages, too: at 7:36, and at 7:48 AM.

The day had finally warmed up, and Dana waited for them 
on a bench outside the only restaurant in town that didn't 
have a drive-thru window. She wore clean green scrubs, 
which he seldom saw her in these days. She looked tired 
and frustrated and exactly how she often used to look when 
they were partners.

"Hi," he said. He slid the phone into his pocket, the 
voicemails still waiting and the text messages unreturned. 
He'd call Steph later - apologize, explain what happened. 

William got a kiss, but - potentially because of the long 
table of deputies and FBI agents having lunch inside - 
Mulder only got a tight smile.

"Do you have anything?"

"Nothing except sore feet and a giant headache," she 
answered wearily. "Their medical examiner wanted to 
argue with me about using the Rokitansky method and then 
about leaving the aortic arch intact. He calls me 'missy.' It's 
unwise to argue with me or call me 'missy' when I'm 
holding a scalpel."

Mulder nodded sympathetically. "He calls me 'hotshot,' and 
you should see what happens when Dr. Nemman thinks 
you're dating his daughter."

"Why in the world would he think that?"

"A series of unfortunate miscommunications." 

He opened the door for them, and William scampered 
inside.

She paused, looked up, and informed him, "As the woman 
who carried your son, I hereby invoke my right to have 
you, the ISU Golden Boy, help me hide Dr. Nemman's 
murdered body and to testify under oath to my temporary 
insanity, if need be."

"Have you already killed him? Allegedly?" he asked, as he 
continued holding open the door for her.

"I thought I'd eat first, so I have sufficient energy to 
bludgeon."

"I'll buy you pie," he promised.

She sighed and walked under his arm, into the noisy little 
diner. The deputies and agents had saved seats for them at 
the table.

"We're on FBI time," she reminded him. "You are not 
buying me anything."

"Fine," Mulder conceded. "My ISU budget will buy you 
pie."

She turned, standing so close to him that he could have 
kissed her. "I want apple pie a la mode, Golden Boy. Then, 
we park William safely in front of Discovery Kids and go 
bludgeon."

"I still love you," he answered. 

The noise from the diners and waitresses chatting, the old 
cash register working, and the plates clinking suddenly 
faded away. 

She looked up at him, her lips parted in surprise.

He swallowed and added, "I do."

"Come on," their son's voice insisted, and William's hand 
tugged at his. "Daddy, I'm humongously starved."

The din of the crowded diner returned, and William 
dragged both of them toward the table. The agents William 
met earlier greeted him with waves and hugs. Mulder and 
Dana took their seats, pulling an extra chair to the end of 
the long table for William.

Mulder went through the motions, both glad he'd said it and 
wishing he could take it back.

They focused on William to avoid looking at each other. 
Mulder unwrapped William's napkin from the flatware 
while she searched her bag for hand sanitizer. When the 
little bell on the diner door jingled, Mulder saw her 
expression change and her lips move silently, forming a 
very bad word.

"There is no escape," she muttered.

He looked over his shoulder and saw Dr. Nemman coming 
in.

Luckily, the only space available was at the other end of the 
table, ten feet from them. Dr. Nemman got wedged in 
between two deputies, looking as unhappy about that as he 
did about everything else.

A waitress came over, folded back her order pad to a fresh 
sheet, and started with Dr. Nemman's order.

"After dessert, you hold him, I'll hit him," Mulder promised 
quietly.

"I wanna hit him," she said irritably, as she gave William 
the hand sanitizer and then picked up her own menu.

"Fine," he conceded.

"We don't solve problems with violence," William 
reminded them, reciting one of his school's prosocial bon 
mots.

Right. All we need is love, Mulder thought. Love, a way to 
fight the future, and a way to change the past.
 
****

Sometimes she did seem to have ice in her veins. Mulder 
didn't think he could kill a man in cold blood, but he knew, 
with the right provocation, Dana Scully could. In fact, he'd 
witnessed her shoot Donnie Pfaster, and then he'd lied for 
her under oath. Not that she remembered either.

As everyone finished lunch and trickled back to 
headquarters, a forest service SUV had pulled up in front of 
the diner. The forest ranger rolled down his window and, a 
little excited, announced to the FBI agents and half of 
Bellefleur that a seventh body had been found exactly 
where Mulder predicted it would be. That meant Scully was 
headed back to the morgue.

"No," she'd said coolly, leaving no room for debate. She 
had no intention of doing another autopsy with Dr. 
Nemman. On Dr. Nemman, perhaps, but not with him.

Mulder thought a moment, drawing on those "effective 
leadership" seminars Skinner made him attend after the 
Folgers/Maxwell House Coffee Debacle in 2003, during 
which the schism in the ISU almost came to blows under 
Mulder's supervision.

The medical examiner was a pain in the butt, but 
historically a competent one - and Scully had dealt with 
him before. An FBI agent's job often involved stepping on 
local toes. Tread lightly but, if necessary, remind the locals 
that they requested the FBI's expertise. As a pretty female 
forensic pathologist, she'd dealt with worse in some of the 
backwaters they traveled to over the years. The good old 
boys who thought they personified Sonny Crockett also 
thought "misogyny" was a good name for a stripper. 
Scully's techniques varied from "kill 'em with kindness" to 
"make their balls shrivel," but she always handled it. One 
way or another, by the time he and Scully finished their 
investigation, she'd convinced the local thorn in her side 
she could manage a badge and a brain at the same time - 
which couldn't always be said for those men.

Agent Scully handled it, Mulder realized. With years of 
experience as a female field agent - hired when the FBI was 
still largely a boys' club - she handled it without a second 
thought. If she needed Mulder in the morgue, she wanted 
either to show him something or to draft him as muscle to 
move a three-hundred and fifty pounder.  His Scully was a 
self-rescuing model.

Dr. Dana Scully was an instructor at Quantico - used to 
being queen of the autopsy bay and with the full weight of 
the FBI's new Equal Employment policy behind her. She 
had no memory of ever doing field work, which explained 
her foot-dragging at the beach that morning.
 
Pulling rank, Mulder put Dr. Nemman in the SUV to go 
back to the crime scene with the forest ranger. Dr. Nemman 
could make his observations of the body there, and Dr. 
Scully would conduct the autopsy alone. That left Mulder 
stuck dealing with a pissed off medical examiner, but that 
seemed easier than burying a body for Dana and simpler 
than committing perjury again.

He wasn't treating her like a child, he assured himself.

"Last one," he promised, as she rolled her neck tiredly. 
"You'll have the morgue all to yourself, I promise."

"You're certain? Seven victims?" Dana asked him.

He nodded.

"How are you certain?"

"Eight, nine, and ten divide evenly into 360, but seven 
doesn't. That's probably another thing that makes seven 
happy."

Everyone else headed to their cars or back to the sheriff's 
headquarters. William swung from a lamppost, Gene Kelly-
style, watching for Red coats and pirates.

"What if you're wrong?"

"When am I ever wrong, G-woman?" he countered, then 
added, "About dead people?"

She nodded, but it seemed noncommittal. "What about 
Will? I can't do an autopsy with him there. He'll insist on 
helping."

"If you'll take him for a few hours, I'll follow the ME's van 
back to town, and we'll swap: a child for a corpse."

"I think you're getting the better end of that deal," she told 
him.

"I think you're right," Mulder agreed. "His spelling and 
math are supposed to be done, but I haven't checked them."

To him, everything seemed settled, but she lingered. So he 
lingered with her as the crowd dispersed. 

"This crime scene, Mulder - it's the clearing in the forest 
where you disappeared in May 2000," she said finally. "I 
asked Monica to e-mail me Deputy Director Skinner's old 
report. Seven years ago... It's exactly the same coordinates."

"They don't want me," he assured her, though he wasn't 
certain of that. "Besides, let's hear your spiel on the 
scientific impossibility of alien visitation and how the 
abduction experience is just a psychological defense 
mechanism. I like it when you lecture me on psychology. I 
won't even get out the old slides of my body after my six-
month 'defense mechanism.'"

"Why is it the same location, Mulder?" 

"I'm working on that."

Her hand slid into his. "You had nightmares last night."

"You had two orgasms," he deflected. "That's not a fair 
trade."

"Go back to the station. You don't have to go into the 
forest."  

"You believe there's nothing paranormal in the forest. 
Decades of mysterious disappearances, and now victims 
dead for no reason," he said, "that's all perfectly 
scientifically explicable. Why shouldn't I go into the 
forest?"

"You're here to do a profile. Just write a profile for them. 
You write profiles from photographs and crime reports all 
the time. There's nothing you're going to see at that crime 
scene that you don't already know. What are you doing?"

"You had no reason to come to Oregon with me. William's 
missing school. You're missing teaching your classes. The 
body from this morning - I could have it in your autopsy 
bay at Quantico right now," he reminded her. "I'm doing 
my job. I'm catching the bad guys, saving the world. What 
are you doing here?"

She didn't answer.

"I will see you later," he promised. "I will. You just worry 
about yourself and the chub scout."

Agent Martelli's fleet sedan pulled up, with a place for 
Mulder in the back seat. As Mulder got in, and as Scully 
and William walked away, he heard William inform her, 
"You were holding Mulder's hand, Mommy. I saw you. Is 
Mulder your boyfriend?"

Mulder grinned, exhaled, put his seatbelt on, and signaled 
for Agent Martelli to drive. 

****

Agent Martelli's partner reminded Mulder of Halle Berry, 
though of more exotic ethnic ancestry. He'd heard a deputy 
address her as "Agent Smithson," but Agent Martelli called 
her "Chelle,'' when he thought no one else was listening.

Mulder occupied himself during the long drive to the crime 
scene by observing the two of them, trying to decide the 
status of their romantic relationship. It could be under 
development, ongoing, or a thing of the past. The FBI 
frowned on senior agents fraternizing with junior agents or 
supervisors sleeping with secretaries, but federal employees 
of the same pay grade fell in and out of love as often as the 
rest of the world. Mulder found himself thinking idly, these 
two kids would make pretty babies, and then declared 
himself officially old.

He watched the tall trees blur past outside the car for a 
while. His mind wandered to Scully's smile, then to 
William's little toes, then the Red Sox - any nice thought to 
fill his head.

The time on his wristwatch matched the digital display on 
the car's dashboard. Mulder checked his watch casually at 
first, but then more frequently as the trees grew denser and 
the oncoming traffic sparser. If he covered his wristwatch 
with his other hand and breathed quietly, Mulder both felt 
and heard the soft ticking. It comforted him. He'd picked up 
the trick from one of the abductee message boards a few 
years ago. It was silly, and the kind of thing he didn't tell 
the Bureau shrink. Still, as long as the ticking continued 
and his watch matched the clock, he felt somewhat safe. If 
They came for him, his time would fall out of joint. He 
couldn't stop Them from taking him, but at least he'd know 
when They came.

Mulder took his wristwatch off and held it. He watched and 
felt the seconds fall into minutes in synch with the fleet 
sedan's dashboard and the rest of the universe.

"Agent Mulder," a woman's voice said. He looked up, 
expecting Scully.

Agent Smithson had turned sideways in the passenger seat 
and looked back at him with her big, dark eyes.

"May I ask you a personal question?"

"Chelle-" her partner started, but she shushed him.

"Between the media and all of us, every motel room is full 
for sixty miles around," she said. "If yours becomes 
available, would you please let me know?"

Mulder leaned forward. "Where are you staying now?"

She hesitated, then confessed, "On the pull-out sofa in 
Agent Martelli's room in Jefferson Bay. I know I'm not 
supposed to be there, but the motel had one room and I lost 
the coin toss. The choice was the sofa, the car, or bunk with 
The Italian Stallion, here. Let me tell you, Allen Martelli 
snores like a congested bull."

"You have bottles and tubes and makeup everywhere," 
Agent Martelli asserted. "For such a beautiful woman, it 
takes you a long time and a lot of shit to get ready in the 
morning."

"Oh, which of us has three different bottles of Axe body 
wash in the shower?"

"It's shower gel, my mother buys it for me, and it gets rid of 
eau de corpse," Martelli argued. "I already asked Agent 
Mulder about his room. I got first dibs."

Despite his regret at children saddled with the last name 
'Martelli-Smithson,' as a hopeless romantic, Mulder felt 
obligated to do his part.

"You asked first, Martelli, but you actually have a room," 
Mulder finally answered. "Agent Smithson is homeless. 
She's sleeping on your sofa. You aren't being very 
chivalrous."

"She can have my room," Martelli promised. He slowed the 
sedan, watching for a turnoff onto an unpaved forest road. 
"Chivalry is dead; I read it in Esquire. It's been replaced by 
the Wonderbra and the double standard."

"A little chivalry combined with a lot of respect might get 
you a long way," Mulder advised, and sat back without 
answering the original question.

He looked out the car window again, at the bright green 
trees in the afternoon sun. Everything felt familiar to him. It 
was the one-way road less traveled by that had made all the 
difference.

Despite the watch in his hand, he felt his heart beating 
faster, a Pavlovian response. As many times as he assured 
himself the forest held only a dead body, that wasn't quite 
true. His theory still had more loose ends than a prison 
shower, but Mulder knew one thing: whatever caused the 
deaths - and for whatever purpose - the perpetrator was 
higher on the food chain than homo sapiens.

As they got closer, the fear faded to background noise and a 
new sensation began. He felt a gentle tug at his mind, 
calling to him like a siren. He recognized the feeling. He 
and three other fathers took William's Indian Guides troop 
to Shenandoah National Park last month. The outing 
involved a muddy day of refereeing fights and kissing 
scrapes and putting out flaming marshmallow torches more 
than it involved exposing the boys to nature. On the drive 
home, while William and his friend slept in the back seat, 
Mulder felt that same visceral pull as he approached 
Skyland Mountain. The higher he climbed on the quiet 
road, the stronger the pull became until he stopped the 
vehicle and got out, away from the boys, just in case. 

The Grand Cherokee's big engine hadn't stalled. His watch 
hadn't stopped. Nothing appeared in the cold sky. No 
spacecraft, no lights, no bounty hunters or shape-shifters or 
other abductees. Just Mulder standing alone beside the road 
in the dark, holding his Sig Sauer and looking up at the 
stars as if a pistol would help in a fight against the entire 
universe.

If he had spray paint, he would have marked that spot on 
Skyland Mountain. That had to be what drew abductees 
over the years. It was an intersection between one universe 
and the next, like Stonehenge and Nazca. Like the Chacoan 
roads of the southwestern desert and the Mystic Pizza Hut 
of Kansas. As an abductee, now Mulder felt it, too.

Recognizing the sensation didn't make it any less terrifying. 

The fleet sedan stopped, so Mulder put his watch on and 
followed Agents Smithson and Martelli down the path 
through the woods. They continued to bicker about 
something, but he'd stopped listening. 

He and Skinner followed the same trail in 2000. A half-
mile later, Mulder arrived at the same clearing, now roped 
off with police tape. The pull didn't change. It didn't grow 
stronger, but it didn't weaken, either. He didn't feel the 
same powerlessness he had when the ship took him, but he 
felt a hint of it.

That hint brought the metallic, peppery taste of adrenalin to 
his mouth.

Breathe, he told himself. Think. Do your job. It's just a 
forest.

The SAC chucked Mulder on the shoulder, saying he 
earned that "Spooky" nickname for knowing where the 
body would be found. Mulder flinched at the touch.

At the crime scene, the deputies and forest rangers and 
agents performed a time-honored law enforcement 
tradition: stand around and stare at the body and mutter. 
Only the photographers, the CSI team, and Dr. Nemman 
actually did anything.

This time, the victim was tall and slim. A deputy said he 
worked as a surveyor for a local logging operation. The 
nude body lay on his side as if sleeping. If Mulder 
calculated correctly, the man's feet pointed toward 
Bellefleur.

When Mulder looked at the victim's peaceful face, for a 
millisecond he saw his own features, slack and blue-gray 
with death. Rows of wounds marked his cheeks and a 
jagged hole bisected his wrist. Then the vision stopped. The 
corpse transformed back into a blond-haired man with a big 
tribal tattoo on his shoulder and a pale line where he'd worn 
a wedding band.

Mulder turned around, walking quickly and blindly down 
the path back to the cars. He wanted to get back to William, 
and he wanted to get back to Scully, and he wanted to put 
some space between him and that clearing. She was right; 
seeing the body didn't tell him anything he didn't already 
know.

They'd get on a plane tonight, and he'd write the profile 
from Quantico. The killings were ritualized and 
paranormal. And over, for the year. He'd figure out the rest 
of the details from home.
 
The edges of his vision seemed to shimmer and distort. He 
felt the magnetic pull of the clearing behind him.

Maybe he'd been wrong. Maybe They were coming for him 
again. Or for Scully. Or for William. Maybe the extra 
puzzle piece had nothing to do with a paranormal serial 
killer and everything to do with a smoke screen for more 
abductions. 

Mulder walked away faster, then started to jog. Behind 
him, above him, all around him, as much as he tried not to, 
he imagined the vast, silent presence of the spaceship. He 
checked his watch, but he had no other clock to compare it 
to. The watch hadn't stopped, but there seemed to be too 
much time between ticks.

The trees grew denser, shadowy. He looked up, trying to 
see the UFO. The sun's rays shone down through the 
branches, reaching out their long fingers for him.

Mulder stopped, looking around him. He'd stumbled off the 
path and didn't see any trail leading back to it. 

Stay calm, he reminded himself as his heart beat double-
time inside his chest. He wasn't lost in the wilderness; in 
fact, he couldn't be far from the forest road. He couldn't see 
or hear them, but a dozen people must be within fifty yards 
of him. He was having a panic attack; breathe and it would 
pass.

Nothing would take him. Nothing would pin him down and 
cut into his body and take what wasn't theirs. The pull he 
felt came from the place in the forest, not a spaceship 
hovering above it.

Breathe, he kept repeating as his lungs constricted and 
every instinct told him to run.

"It's okay," Scully's voice called. When he looked, he saw 
her at the top of the ridge. She wore dark pants and a 
windbreaker with a light blue blouse beneath it. She'd 
pulled her hair back, and her face seemed rounder. She 
looked like the Scully who accompanied him on that first 
trip to Bellefleur years ago. "It's okay, Mulder. Over here."

He saw her: his Scully, waiting in a pleat in space-time. His 
world narrowed to one long green path with her at the end 
of it. He'd find her, save her, and they could start over 
again.

"This way," she said, gesturing for him to come to her.

He did, dodging low branches, his shoes slip-sliding on the 
hillside and making it difficult to get any traction. He fell, 
caught himself on a rock outcropping, and scrambled up 
again. When he reached the top and stopped to get his 
bearings, she was gone. 

And he'd known that she would be.

Mulder bent over, his hands braced on his legs, trembling. 
He felt as if someone had sucker-punched him. He'd 
courted this torment: going to Oregon again, going to bed 
with her again, acting like they were the people they used 
to be. And he did it for nothing. In six years, she'd never 
had one hint of a recovered memory. She wasn't his Scully.

But Goddamn it, she looked like her. She smelled like her 
and moved like her and thought like her and laughed like 
her. And he still loved her. He just told her that.

"And I love you," Scully's voice said from beside him. 

He felt a hand on his arm, a gentle, comforting touch he'd 
know anywhere. Her touch flowed over him, warm foam 
against his skin and company for his lonely soul.

"Don't," he told her hoarsely. "You aren't real."

The hand left him, and footsteps moved away through the 
brush. "Using our old slide projector and basic super-string 
theory, I could easily prove that I am," her voice said. 
"Come on, Mulder; let's get you back to the car." 

He opened his eyes, then, feeling better, straightened up, 
blinking at the sunlight. Mulder stood at the edge of a 
narrow dirt road bisecting the forest. He saw two FBI fleet 
sedans and a patrol car parked in the curve a hundred yards 
away. 

"Agent Mulder, are you trying to get back to the car?" a 
female deputy asked, her hands in the pockets of her green 
jacket. "Easy to get turned around out here, isn't it?"

He looked at her stupidly. She'd led the dog from the beach 
that morning. The Native American deputy was a young, 
rather plain-looking woman, but she seemed competent at 
her job. He didn't know her name, but he knew she wasn't 
Scully.

When he looked behind him, he was on a path - just not the 
one he'd followed into the forest.

"If you're with the first bunch of agents who arrived, you're 
just ahead," the deputy told him, pointing toward the cars. 
"If you just got here, you're parked farther up, at the trail 
head. The car's there; you just can't see it from here."

Across the road, among the tall trees, just for an instant he 
saw Scully watching him. His Scully. Just standing, 
watching, waiting for him, like she had in a hundred 
dreams. Then she vanished again, and he saw only the 
forest.

He felt her presence. It was a beacon in the darkness, a 
place to stand while he moved the world. 

He wasn't hallucinating or deluding himself or whatever 
rational medical argument Scully would make. 

She was there; he'd stake his life on it.

"Agent Mulder, are you all right?" the female deputy asked.

He nodded and turned toward the sedans. 

The first news crew had arrived, and a group of people 
watched as the coroner loaded the body into a black van. 
Separate from everyone else, Smithson and Martelli leaned 
against their car. Agent Martelli held a lit cigarette.

"Chelle, when you said 'personal' I thought you were going 
to ask him about Dr. Scully and get both of us suspended," 
Martelli's deep voice said as Mulder approached behind 
them. "I knew she had a son; I just didn't know it was by 
him."

"'By him?' No one says 'by him' anymore. Did they defrost 
you from the 1970's?" she answered sarcastically, and then 
added, "She has a son 'with him.' Handsome little guy. 
Didn't you know Agent Mulder and Dr. Scully used to be 
partners on the X-files?"

"Really?" Agent Martelli took a drag from his cigarette and 
passed it to her. "That paranormal, UFO crap? I thought 
she'd always been the hot instructor at Quantico and he ran 
the ISU." He paused. "Why two motel rooms, then? The 
kid's too little to stay by himself. Maybe an on-again, off-
again thing?"

Mulder saw the cigarette pass between them once more. 
"The way I heard it, they are no longer a thing. She got 
pregnant and he left," Smithson answered. "End of their 
time on the X-files. Deputy Director Skinner was involved 
in the mix, somehow."

Mulder stopped, standing a car-length behind them, still 
unnoticed. 

"It looked like a thing to me this morning. Obviously, 
Agent Mulder came back," Martelli asserted, and took his 
turn on the cigarette. "He's not some deadbeat. You can't 
blame a guy for reacting badly to news like that, at first."

"Sure I can," she said tightly.

"Are we going to fight about this again? Do all roads lead 
back to you? If you'd wanted to have it, you could have had 
it. Everything would have been fine. I told you that."

"I couldn't be pregnant at the academy," Smithson shot 
back. "I don't see why I should have to give up my career, 
my dream, to have your baby."

"Which you did not," he snapped. "You never even 
bothered to stop smoking. I drove you there, I paid, I 
waited, and I drove you home. Happiest day of my life, 
Michelle, let me tell you."

"Give me the goddamn cigarette, Allen," she demanded.

"Hello," Mulder said.

The two young agents whirled around, their mouths open 
and their body language shouting 'caught.'

Mulder felt oddly calm, certain, like a ship's captain sure of 
his course. The pressure inside his head lingered, but it 
didn't frighten him like it had earlier. 

"Hi," said Martelli, recovering faster. "Hello, Agent 
Mulder. We didn't hear you come up behind us. How long 
have you been standing there? We, we-"

"We're the social outcasts' club," Smithson said, showing 
him her cigarette. Her voice sounded calm, but her hand 
shook. "Indulging our addiction makes us the FBI's most 
unwanted."

"Oh, you two can't even fathom 'FBI's most unwanted,'" 
Mulder responded idly. He noticed his left palm stung. He 
looked down to see an ugly gash in it, probably not 
bleeding because of all the dirt and crud packed into it.

"We wondered where you'd gone," Agent Smithson said. 
She shifted her feet and managed a pretty smile Mulder 
read as thirty degrees off from genuine. "We saw you leave 
the crime scene, but you weren't at the road."

"I took a detour," Mulder answered, and examined his hand 
again. His loafers were muddy, and he had a grass stain on 
the cuff of his last clean dress shirt. He saw a big splotch of 
blood on the leg of his pants, where he'd rested his palm 
earlier.

"When we were at the academy, we developed the half-
cigarette rule," Smithson told him. "We each smoke half, so 
maybe we'll only end up with half-lung cancer. Agent 
Mulder, we were just talking. I don't know what you heard, 
but we didn't mean any-"

"I know," Mulder said, interrupting her awkward apology. 
"But when you talk, leave out that part about Deputy 
Director Skinner. He was AD Skinner back then, and he 
was our friend. He still is our friend."
 
"Yes sir," they answered in unison.

"If you two are just waiting on me, you can head back to 
town and I'll ride in the ME's van. I'm going to the morgue 
to pick up my son, anyway. Go check out our newest 
victim's life. Ask his wife and co-workers if he ever talked 
about any of that UFO paranormal crap."

Smithson stubbed out her cigarette, and both of them 
nodded quickly. Martelli opened the passenger side door 
for Smithson, and she seemed surprised.

As Martelli walked around to the other side of the car, 
Mulder told him, "You may find all roads do lead back to 
her. If they do, take the hint. And stop letting your mother 
buy your toiletries."

Agent Martelli nodded earnestly.

****

"Whoa," Mulder told the eager morgue attendants as they 
started to unload the body from the van. He'd rather not 
have to explain a body bag on a stretcher to William. "Give 
me a minute, fellas."

Dana had things under control. One of the morgue's double 
doors opened. She emerged, still in her scrubs and already 
wearing latex gloves. 

Mulder stood beside the van, looking at her. She was in full 
pathologist mode, ready to collect evidence and correlate 
facts. She was sixty-two inches of reason primed to get to 
the bottom of things with a Stryker saw and a medical 
degree.

The year might have changed, but she remained the 
scientist and he remained the believer. She was the horizon 
to his sky.

"I was trying to watch for you while I worked on my 
notes," she said apologetically. She opened the other door 
at the top of the ramp and locked it in place. "The lack of 
windows and the presence of a six-year-old created 
impediments to that, though. He won't stay in the office; he 
wants to play hide-and-seek. I have a full house in there. 
Do you know how many inappropriate hiding places there 
are for a child in a full morgue?"

The late afternoon sun made her hair glisten, and Mulder 
felt that flutter again, like little warm butterfly wings inside 
his abdomen. Scully would have some rational explanation 
for it: pair bonding and limbic memories and oxytocin and 
vasopressin.

He had a different word for it.

"How was your trip to the forest?"

I came back, he wanted to tell her. This time, I came back.

"Mulder?"

"Hi," he said finally.

"Hi," she echoed brusquely, then noticed the wad of 
napkins that he held against his palm. "What happened to 
your hand?"

"I fell."

"I looked through your medical records recently. You have 
a rather adversarial relationship with gravity, Agent 
Mulder."

The butterflies in his belly fluttered harder. If a storm hit 
Brazil two weeks from now, he could be held responsible.

"What I said earlier," Mulder said. "That still holds."

"Will! Come on. Daddy's here," she called into the morgue, 
then reminded Mulder, "Earlier, you said you'd buy me 
apple pie."

"They don't have apple pie at the diner today. Would you 
settle for a consolation prize? A little less than the brass 
ring?"

She raised her eyebrows hopefully. "Pumpkin pie?"

Before he could respond, William bounded out wearing 
blue latex gloves and a face shield. 

"I was in Davy Jones' locker."

"I'm afraid to ask," Mulder said, and leaned against the side 
of the medical examiner's black van. The attendants looked 
impatient. He let them wait. "But I am glad you used 
universal precautions."

"I saw a brain," William reported happily. 

"Was it real? Was it human?" he asked.

"Allegedly," William said. "Scully wouldn't let me touch 
it."

The edges of her mouth turned up - a smile only detectable 
by a trained observer. 

"He is our son," Mulder reminded her.

****

At the sheriff's headquarters, Mrs. Bahe had five telephone 
messages from Diane - his secretary at the ISU - which 
Mulder stuffed into his pocket to join the receipt from 
lunch and a good rock William found. 

He had e-mail messages from his profilers checking in, and 
the usual FBI bureaucratic bullshit. He read the reports and 
answered questions from his men - and women, he had two 
female profilers now - but the FBI memos got printed out 
and crammed in his briefcase to be reviewed sometime 
between later and never. If it was important and push came 
to shove, either Diane would take care of it or Skinner 
knew where he lived.

The FBI got as much benefit from sending Mulder to those 
"effective leadership" seminars as it did from sending him 
to the teamwork and communication seminars, years ago.

Mulder kept finding himself standing in front of the map on 
the wall, looking at the ring he drew and the seven little 
stick people. Seven didn't divide evenly into a three 
hundred and sixty degree circle. He'd seen ritualized body 
arrangement many times: a trio of crucifixions, a pair of 
lovers, even deaths arranged to recreate an entire Sunday 
school class, once. If the human mind could dream it up, it 
could twist it into something evil that ended up on his desk.

Take seven random people, no known abductees. Switch 
off their life at - for the sake of argument - old UFO 
abduction sites, and have their bodies form a circle. Over 
seven days. Every May.

Seven bodies in seven days for seven years ended with May 
2012. 

That couldn't be a good thing.

Why, though? That was the toehold he couldn't get. If a 
psychic vampire wanted to feed off the victims' life force, 
why the circle? Why the pattern? What did it signify to the 
creature creating it?

"Is he sleeping?" William's voice asked, sounding 
uncertain.

When Mulder looked down, William was studying the 
crime scene photo in his father's hand. Mulder held a 
photograph of the second Oregon victim, the body only a 
few hours dead. The picture belonged in the file; no photos 
of bodies decorated the wall in the sheriffs' headquarters. 
The agents taped up maps and lists, but not the victims' 
images.  

Mulder reached down, picked up his son, and set him on 
his hip. The boy understood that Mommy and Daddy 
helped catch the bad guys and keep everyone safe; the 
details - those could wait a few more years.

If that date - May 2012 - the end of the Mayan calendar - 
was significant, William would be eleven. Almost eleven 
and a half. 

"He's sleeping," Mulder assured him.

Whether William thought he was Paul Revere or Jack 
Sparrow or Luke Skywalker or The Tribble Whisperer, 
Mulder wanted his son to be fearless. Mulder had stayed 
with the FBI to ensure that fearlessness, and he stayed up 
late on the nights Dana had William, checking the same 
abductee message boards Teresa Hoese read. He came 
across an occasional crackpot or blurry photograph, but, for 
years, no abduction reports he gave credence to. 

He intended to see that it stayed that way.

He wanted to check that the Arizona bodies had indeed 
stayed dead. Mulder wanted to search for other cities with 
multiple unexplained deaths or missing persons in the 
spring. There might be clusters where some bodies 
remained undiscovered, or perhaps corpses found after too 
long to determine a cause or exact date or location of death. 
He needed to spend some time in a library, and, frankly, he 
needed to thumb through his old X-files.

William had drained the iPhone of its life-force, so, one-
handed, Mulder typed an e-mail to Agent Reyes on the 
deputy's computer.  'Read psychic vampire file,' he typed, 
and hit send.

Langly once told Mulder callously that he couldn't save the 
world while wearing a Snugli, which hadn't proved true. 
Running out of clean socks and boxers hindered the world-
saving, though. 

He'd fought solo a long time - long enough to learn having 
an ally helped. He didn't mind having a partner who was a 
crack shot, good with facts and figures and head wounds, 
and who could say "I would like to post Agent Mulder's 
bail" in four languages. And if she smelled like William's 
shampoo and rain and amber, that earned mad bonus 
points.

"Let's get out of here and go do something nice for 
Mommy," Mulder suggested to his son.

****

A little boy could amuse himself quite well with a 
playground, a flashlight, and a stick. William battled 
pirates, dragons, Sith lords, Red coats, and whatever he 
thought hid in a little tree beside the slide. Mulder just had 
to sit and supervise, which, being a federal employee, he 
was adept at.

William's bedtime passed without even a wave.

Night arrived at the motel before Dana. She parked her 
rental in front of her room, got out, and stretched tiredly. 

William came running from the jungle gym, down the 
sidewalk, and, brandishing his stick, challenged her to a 
duel.

She raised her hands immediately. "I surrender," Mulder 
heard her say, as he got up and followed William. 

"We take no prisoners." William pointed his stick at a 
concrete bar at the end of an empty parking space. "Give us 
treasure or walk the plank."

She stepped up onto the low bar, feigning fear. Despite his 
weariness, Mulder smiled as he watched them play. Being 
Dana Scully, the bookshelves at her apartment held every 
parenting book on Amazon.com, and she over-achieved at 
motherhood like she did at everything else - with a heavy 
dose of hippy-dippy that he felt was Agent Reyes' 
influence. Beyond the organic oatmeal, though, and 
carefully chosen educational toys and - God help their son - 
kid yoga classes, she liked William. She sparkled when she 
was with him, and Mulder loved her for that, for loving a 
child she'd only woken up to.

"I can't swim," she protested. "There are sharks in these 
waters. You wouldn't execute an unarmed FBI doctor, 
would you?" She eased her way down the "plank" and 
closer to their son. "What kind of mean pirate are you, 
Captain Will Scully?"

William lowered his stick, uncertain. Before he knew it, 
she'd disarmed him expertly. As the stick hit the pavement, 
her arms went around him and she blew raspberries into his 
neck. William laughed and squirmed until she kissed his 
cheek and let him go. Then he made for the safe haven of 
the motel office's porch.

"This means war," he yelled at her, spotlighting her with 
Mulder's flashlight. "To arms! Prepare the cannons!"

"I am the Dread Pirate Mommy," Dana called back. 
"Prepare for your bedtime."

There was giggling from the shrubs.

"I surrender, FBI woman," Mulder told her, ambling over. 
He leaned down, kissed her, then whispered. "Prepare to be 
boarded."

"You look like I feel," she informed him. "How's your 
hand?"

"It hurts. I don't think it needs stitches, though. It's not 
bleeding anymore."

"Did you have someone look at it?"

"I'm hoping to do that now," he said.

She unlocked her motel room door and then switched on 
the light. "Did you do my laundry?" she asked. He saw her 
look at the stack of folded clothes on the dresser. "Will's 
laundry?"

"I found a Laundromat and a dry cleaner," he answered. "I 
did everyone's laundry."

"How did you get into my room?"

"I held up my badge and said 'I'm the Dread Pirate Mulder. 
Let me in the FBI doctor-woman's room so I can get her 
panties.'"

"Thank you. And thank God you only use your powers for 
the good of mankind."

"That, and to obtain panties."

William, realizing he waged a one-sided pirate war, came 
bouncing over. She told him to bounce right on into the 
bathroom and brush his teeth.

"Anything?" Mulder asked, sinking into a chair with a 
groan.

She sniffed uncertainly, and then looked around her room. 
"What is that smell? It's not bad, it's just... What is that?"

"I don't smell anything," he lied. "Tell me about our 
seventh victim, the late Mr. Weaver."

"Mr. Weaver had a small, undiagnosed aortic aneurysm. He 
smoked and drank far more than he told his wife and his 
doctor he did. He died about six hours before his body was 
discovered, and he'd eaten a bean burrito last night. Aside 
from that, I'm still-"

"Waiting on lab results," he finished for her.

"You rush a miracle worker, you get rotten miracles," she 
reminded him as she took off her tennis shoes. "I swear it 
smells like my grandmother's kitchen in here. What did you 
come up with?"

"The seven bodies are arranged as spokes of a circle or a 
medicine wheel. Native American medicine wheels are 
traditionally imperfect as a sort of gateway to enter them. 
Since a circle can't be divided equally by seven, it remains 
imperfect. Both cities once had large Native American 
settlements. Circles are considered protective, mystical. 
They might be markers or signals."

"So ritualistic murders. Did you contact-"

"I've talked with Agent Reyes," he told her. 

Dana wiggled her toes, then got up, found a pair of pajamas 
for William and for her, and disappeared around the corner 
to the bathroom. A moment later, Mulder heard the shower 
running and her voice talking with their son. When she 
returned, she'd taken off her makeup, put on cotton 
pajamas, and left her feet bare.

"He's not washing," Mulder told her. "He's in there 
splashing around and singing and pouring shampoo down 
the drain."

"I don't care. It's the motel's shampoo, and if you want him 
washed, you can go wash him."

"I'd planned to wait until he collapsed and then put him to 
bed dirty," Mulder admitted. "Do you remember having 
Agent Martelli in class at Quantico?"

"I do. He and Agent Smithson were in the same class. 
Martelli needed to study more and chase women less."

"He thinks you're hot."

"I rest my case," she said, coming over to him. "Let's see 
your war wound."

She moved the floor lamp closer, and he held his palm up 
for her. He'd washed it off and wrapped it up, but her 
expression indicated he hadn't done a very good job. 

"How did you do this?"

"I fell and tried to catch myself. I thought I saw something 
in the forest this afternoon, and I was chasing after it. Then 
gravity kicked in. My old nemesis."

She searched her suitcase, coming up with gauze and tape, 
and then got her instrument kit from her purse. Mulder 
couldn't get a full-size tube of toothpaste through airport 
security, but she could probably carry-on bone shears and a 
suture kit.

"What did you see in the woods?" she asked, taking his 
hand.

He shrugged. "You know me. It's not what I saw; it's what I 
thought I saw."

"You were okay today? Going back to the forest?"

"Define 'okay,'" he challenged tiredly. "I have to slip the 
Bureau shrink a Benjamin every so often so I can stay on 
the FBI payroll. Like 'happy,' 'okay' is a very tentative 
state."

She asked irritably, "You're not going to answer me, are 
you?"

"Are you going to look at my hand or what?"

She sighed and tilted his palm toward the light. "You have 
debris deep in the wound, and it's already infected. I'll clean 
it up and apply some Bacitracin, but I want to look at it 
again in the morning." She moved his hand to the lamp 
again. 

He tried to hold steady, but either he wasn't or she still 
couldn't see because she suggested, "Sit on the bed and put 
your hand on the night stand," she suggested.

"As you wish," he said, getting up wearily and doing as 
instructed.

The shower squeaked off, and William emerged in his 
underwear, having forgotten both to dry himself off and to 
put on his pajamas. William got a kiss from Scully, and 
then snuggled, damp, under the covers on the other side of 
Mulder. William watched his mother, seeming eager, and 
Mulder knew the boy had remembered their "good secret." 

Dana looked at William, and then turned her head to see 
what their son was looking at.

"Mulder..." she said slowly, curiously, as she finally 
noticed the white bakery box on her nightstand, "did you 
and Will get me a present?"

"Where did that come from?" Mulder said, feigning 
puzzlement. 

"Mulder bought it," William announced, finally 
unburdening himself. "It's a good secret, not a bad secret."

She opened the top of the box. "I thought the diner only had 
lemon pie today. Where did you get a pumpkin pie?"

"I held up my badge and said 'I'm the Dread Pirate Mulder. 
Give me a pumpkin pie. And panties.'"

Scully appraised the pie appreciatively, and then closed the 
top again. Mulder laid his injured hand on the nightstand, 
beside the flimsy cardboard box. He toyed with William's 
wet curls and avoided looking at his palm because it made 
him queasy.

"You kissed my mommy," William said knowingly. "I saw 
you."

"I may have, buddy," Mulder mumbled.

Usually they read: endless repetitions of "The Midnight 
Ride of Paul Revere" and "Treasure Island" as of late, until 
he could do it from memory. Or Star Wars. Or Jules Verne. 
The books were in Mulder's motel room, so unless 
someone fetched them telekinetically, tonight's bedtime 
was going to be story-less.

The heater beneath the window switched on and off as she 
worked on his hand, William's eyes drooped lower and 
lower, and Mulder heard the laugh track of the television 
show on in the motel room next to Scully's. 

She poked something that smarted. Mulder jumped.

"Sorry," she said.

"Don't hurt my daddy," William requested sleepily. 

"I'm trying not to, baby. Mommy's tired and better with 
patients who don't feel pain," she muttered to herself.

"It's okay," Mulder assured her. Leaning his head back 
against the wall, he closed his eyes. William felt warm and 
heavy against him, and he let himself rest, not asleep but 
not awake, either. He drifted peacefully, thankfully 
between the two.

When he opened his eyes a gauze bandage covered his 
palm and the cut hurt less. Dana locked her motel room 
door.

"What happened, Mister Prepare to be Boarded?" she 
teased him quietly.

"Rain check," he mumbled. He kicked off his shoes and 
slid lower in the bed, still in his jeans and a fleece pullover, 
both now Downy fresh. "I beg of you, don't make me 
move."

He didn't want to be alone. He'd spent most nights of his 
life alone, but he didn't want this one to be one of them. He 
wanted to put his arms around Scully's body and have her 
steady him.

The lamp on the nightstand clicked off, and the bed shifted 
as she climbed in on the other side. Mulder rolled onto his 
side and adjusted his pillow. She and William were under 
the covers. He lay on top of them, but Mulder lacked the 
energy to remedy that.

"Did you two have a good day?" she asked.

"We worked on the case, washed clothes, played in the 
park, and requisitioned a pie. And he got to see Agent 
Reyes' breast."

"How was that?"

"Very nice," he answered. "But one of us told her so."

"He didn't."

"He did," Mulder assured her.

She laughed, making the bed jiggle. She pointed an 
accusing finger at him. "Those are your genetics coming 
out, not mine."

"That's just having a Y chromosome," he told her. "So 
yeah, I guess those are my genetics."

In the moonlight, the gold glistened in her hair, just as it did 
in William's. 

"Let's have another one," he said softly, on impulse.

She stopped stroking William's shoulder. "Do you mean 
have another child?"

"Yeah." He'd never considered the possibility before, but 
once he said it- "Yes," he repeated. "Let's have another 
baby."

She raised her head, looking at him. "Mulder, I, I, I can't. 
There are no ova."

"We could use donor ova. They can even put your DNA 
into a donor egg. I read about it on the Internet."

"First, I'm not sure that's legal, and second, using donor ova 
costs a fortune. I'm forty-three years old. You're crazy."

"I'm not worried about the cost," he countered. "There's a 
pregnant woman at my gym who must be fifty. If that lump 
in your breast is nothing... You're healthy, I'm healthy. 
Why couldn't we?"

"We aren't married."

"We weren't married when we tried in vitro. We weren't 
married when we had William. We aren't married now. We 
are good together, and I, I, I think having another baby 
would be nice. Having a baby that both of us-"

"Both of us wanted," she finished for him.

"Both of us planned," he corrected. "All I'm saying is if you 
want another baby - with me - let's do it before it's too late."

She paused. "We're not talking about my biological clock, 
are we?"

"Not entirely, no."

She shifted, curling up to William. "I don't know, Mulder. 
Let me think about it."

He closed his eyes, letting the subject drop. 

She had no issue with going to bed with him. She hadn't 
left skid marks when he told her he still loved her. If she'd 
been the one asking the question - did he want to have 
another child with her - he wouldn't have needed time to 
think about it, though.

****

Day 3:  Everything is wrong with your universe. Do not 
attempt to adjust the picture.

****

In his dream, he stood at his bedroom window, watching 
the night sky. 

It was his old apartment, and his old life. Early Y2K 
marked the last time he'd left Penthouse and Playboy beside 
his bed. After that, Scully visited often enough that he put 
the porn away, changed the towels and sheets, and put the 
toilet paper on the dispenser. His apartment went 
unoccupied for a long stretch due to his death, and then 
again after William's birth, when Mulder stayed with 
Scully. Mulder and William lived there briefly in spring 
2001, but then moved back to Scully's apartment upon her 
return. From there, after a couple of years, he'd moved to 
the house.

Mulder spent from May 2000 to August 2002 paying rent 
to store his books, fish, and sofa, but if porn lay out in the 
open, that meant winter, 2000.

When he glanced away from the dark window and saw the 
woman in his bed, he knew the exact date. March 23, 2000. 
Some days seemed to clone themselves and repeat forever - 
coffee, shower, commute, monsters, mutants, conspiracies, 
commute, sleep - but a few nights happened only once in a 
lifetime. That night was one of them.

"Mulder? Are you okay?" came Scully's voice from behind 
him.

He couldn't think of anything better, so he'd said, "I thought 
you were sleeping."
 
He heard the mattress move as she shifted. "I was."

Her clothes lay on the floor, but he'd put his shorts on when 
he got up earlier. Mulder glanced down, realizing the 
absurdity of his modesty. Besides that she was a medical 
doctor who'd seen him undressed on multiple occasions, if 
he had any secrets before, he didn't now.

They were adults, he'd told himself. They'd even had sex 
before, though the encounter in January had been... It was 
horrible. His memory of that night remained nightmarishly 
surreal. Stark and hellish and appropriate for the day his 
mother took her own life. He'd been as inconsiderate of a 
woman as possible without breaking any laws, and he still 
wished Scully had just rubbed his back to make him feel 
better. After - there'd been as much 'before' as it took to 
unzip - she got up from his living room floor, got dressed, 
told him he didn't need to apologize, and never mentioned 
it again. 

He'd wanted to apologize, though. Over and over and over. 
He wanted to crawl under the rug and hide until the 
Gunmen created a new identity for him in a third-world 
country. Mulder remembered her politely making him hot 
tea and giving him some pills she found in his medicine 
cabinet, as if he'd just thrown up in her car rather than 
ejaculated inside her body. As he finally started to fall 
asleep, she sat beside him on his bed, holding his hand like 
he was a child. He'd wanted to be closer, but he asked 
permission before he touched her again. When she came to 
him, Mulder put his arms around her, even a leg over hers 
so he surrounded her and she centered him. "Sorry," he 
remembered whispering to her, as the sedatives began to 
take hold. "Sorry, sorry, sorry."

She'd just told him to sleep.

A thousand things in his life, he'd like to take back. Their 
first time, the night after his mother's suicide, was one of 
them. Mulder had desperately hoped that this night - or the 
day that followed - wouldn't be another.

His bedroom TV had still been on, repeating the 
NordicTrack infomercial ad infinitum. He remembered 
noticing that the air had cooled, roughening and raising the 
hair on his arms and chest. He felt the damp late-winter 
cold pressing through the window. His bedroom smelled of 
old books and dress shirts fresh from the cleaners and of 
her. 

"Are you okay?" he asked. He crawled back onto his bed 
and lay down beside her. "That was..." He hunted for the 
right word. Colliding like two storms, she'd left marks on 
him and likely vice versa. That didn't worry him, though. 
He meant 'okay' in the 'being in bed with me' sense. "That 
was passionate," he said finally.

"Everything about you is passionate, Mulder. There is no 
half-way. Not with your work, not with your life. Love isn't 
any different."

"Is that what this is?" He kissed her lips, still not certain it 
was acceptable to do that. "Love?"

"Love is a biochemical response in the lower brain to 
produce bonding, to create familial units, to carry on the 
species." She lectured, a tell-tale sign she wasn't okay at all. 
"We're genetically programmed to secrete endorphins in 
situations where social bonding decreases anxiety and 
increases our sense of safety."

"Is that what we're doing?" he asked. "Creating a familial 
unit?"

"No," she answered softly, sounding sad.

"I'm sorry," he said quickly. He kissed the ridgeline of her 
shoulder. "That's not what I meant. You know... You know 
how much I wanted a baby for you. I mean, come 
tomorrow morning, do you want me to make a place in the 
medicine cabinet for your toothbrush? Assign you a coffee 
mug? Put you on my Blockbuster card? Renew my 
membership with MUFON and NICAP at the family rate? 
Or is it just tonight?"

Her fingers moved through his hair, then slid down his 
neck and chest. "Tonight isn't over."

"Scully, technically I'm the senior agent. If I walk into the 
Hoover Building and announce that I love you and I want 
to spend the rest of my life with you, Walter Skinner may 
say 'congratulations,' shed a few private tears, and assign 
one of us somewhere besides the X-files. If Skinner doesn't 
separate us, someone above him will. I'm giving them the 
perfect excuse. All our work, all we've worked for, it goes 
away."

"You're being paranoid."

"I'm Fox Mulder; of course I'm being paranoid. Baby, I just 
want you to be sure you want to be with me." He 
swallowed and added, "Because I want to be with you."

In response, she seduced him, and damn it - maybe they 
taught it in medical school - she did it very well. He'd never 
mastered turning down a smart, beautiful woman who 
offered him the opportunity to self-destruct, and that went 
double for Scully. When she touched him, his lower brain 
secreted methamphetamine, and reason rapidly went by the 
wayside. 

"Scully," he repeated hoarsely. She hadn't said she was 
okay and she hadn't said she loved him. She didn't do 
anything casually, let alone go to bed with him. "Don't."

Her mouth left his. She moved back to a polite post-coital 
distance, but her hand lingered on his chest.

She looked up at him with blue eyes that he could fall into, 
the same way he could let himself fall into her again. And 
again. Until reality caught up with them and the heavens 
came crashing down.

"You want two shelves in the medicine cabinet?" he 
offered. 

She didn't answer. 

His alarm clock read 4:43 AM. The night neared its natural 
end.

He saw her glance past him, at her crumpled skirt and 
sweater on the floor near the doorway. She could be 
dressed in two minutes, home in thirty. They could add this 
night to the list of things they didn't talk about.

"Don't," he repeated. "Stay tonight. Like we're normal 
people. Two normal people who don't have the whole 
universe against us."

She traced an invisible circle on his left pectoral muscle 
with her finger. "The universe is ever-expanding and quite 
possibly infinite in volume. Scientifically, the whole 
universe can't possibly be against us right now."

"That's comforting," he told her. "That of all the life-forms 
among five billion trillion stars, something out there is 
bound to be rooting for us."

She sighed as she rolled over - indicating he'd muddied 
space-time theory with romantic idealism - but stayed in his 
bed, indicating she'd let him slide this once.

He kissed the side of her neck twice, then her earlobe, 
punctuating a paragraph of promises he didn't have words 
for. It would be okay: them, tonight, tomorrow morning. 
The world didn't end because they'd kissed, and the planet 
would continue to turn if they were lovers. Or something. 
Some status that regularly involved two wine glasses at 
dinner and two coffee mugs at breakfast.

She looked ethereally lovely: pale skin, glistening hair, and 
the outline of her against the darkness of his bedroom 
window, with the light from the television playing over her. 
"You look like the moon goddess," he whispered to her. He 
pulled her to him and curled up behind her, the way normal 
lovers did. "What are you doing down here, toying with the 
mortals?"

"Diana and Phoebe were moon goddesses," she informed 
him, but he didn't hear malice in her words. "Dana was an 
Irish goddess. A warrior goddess with legendary sexual 
prowess."

"I stand corrected."

"You stand at attention," she observed.

He shifted his hips back. "Sorry."

She laughed softly and moved so he pressed against her 
again, causing another warm flood of sensation in his groin. 
He kissed her cheek, her earlobe again, and her neck, 
making a trail with his lips. He put his hand on her waist, 
pulling her close, and felt her inhale as his erection pressed 
hard against her bare bottom. Her hair tickled his throat. 
She put her hand over his, interlocking their fingers. 

"Tell me what happens next," he whispered to her. "After 
tonight. Not the next twenty years - just tomorrow morning, 
so I can make sure to have clean coffee mugs."

She didn't respond. When he opened his eyes, he saw her 
watching the window. The sky above Alexandria was vast 
and black, sprinkled with stars. Mulder saw Orion to the 
south, clear and bright in the darkness. 

"I don't know," she answered finally, and he sensed she told 
the truth. 

"Okay," he said softly. "That's okay."

"There's Sirius," she said, raising her arm and pointing to a 
star that watched them. "The brightest star in the sky. 
Twenty-three times brighter than the sun. Sirius was 
Orion's hunting dog, and the Egyptians used it to predict 
when the Nile would flood." She moved her hand as she 
showed him, "Sirius, Betelgeuse, and Canis Minor. The 
winter triangle."

She'd shown him those stars before. He knew it, and she 
knew it. 

No one spoke for several seconds.

"I don't know what comes next," she repeated, and she 
hadn't been talking about the sky.

"You asked if I love you, and you know that I do," he told 
her. "Body and soul, till death us do part. Give me a tall 
ship, and you're the star I steer by. But if you don't love me- 
Or if you don't love me like I love you... I'm not going to 
forget, but I won't mention tonight again."

"Of course I love you," she'd whispered back.

He'd put his hand over hers again and, with his mouth, 
retraced the salty path down her shoulder. 

"Then love me," he dared her, and she had.

The March air felt cool, but she was warm, and places 
inside her were warmer still. He'd relaxed that night, 
believing her. The second time, on the cusp of the new 
millennium, he'd let Scully love him.

All the doctor's appointments and modern fertility science 
failed, but sometime between midnight and dawn, she got 
her miracle. They created William. The old fashioned way: 
when a man loved a woman. Scully discovered her 
pregnancy in a timely manner. For Mulder, his abduction 
and subsequent death delayed the news until just before his 
son's birth. 

That next morning he'd woken up alone, and the pillows 
had smelled of her.

****

In retrospect, the question he should have asked that night 
was "Do you want to love me?" 

Any doctor knew that emotion didn't equal volition, and 
love didn't equal intent. She'd follow him into Hell, ready 
to rescue him from demons with a first aid kit and a pistol, 
but she wouldn't let herself love him. Not really. She 
viewed watching his back as obligatory, but loving him as 
reckless. Being his partner could get her killed, but loving 
him could get her hurt.

In fact, in his darker moments, Mulder thought loving him 
had gotten Dana Scully very little except hurt. 

In the end, she loved him out of obligation, and he was 
selfish enough and lonely enough to let her. Again and 
again and again, like eventually he'd find something to 
rhyme with orange - when nothing rhymed with orange.

"Mulder," the same voice said from the motel bed behind 
him. "Are you okay?"

He stood at the window of her motel room, still dressed, 
looking out at the rain drumming against the black parking 
lot. The wet playground swings swayed in the darkness as 
if occupied by children's ghosts, and a lone pair of 
headlights traveled down the main road through Bellefleur. 
If she'd asked what he watched for, he couldn't have told 
her because he didn't know. 

Something. He sensed something watching back from the 
shadows.

He heard her get up, cover William, and then come to him. 
Her hand touched his hip in the casually intimate gesture of 
an old lover. "Did you have another nightmare?" she asked.

"I lied to you," he told her, still watching the wet night. 
"MUFON doesn't have family membership rates, and 
there's no fee to join NICAP. They give you the coffee mug 
when you buy books and videos."

"Move on?"

"MUFON."

"Mulder, I don't know what you're talking about."

"I know," he said quietly. "It was a long time ago, but I still 
wanted to tell you."

"Okay." Her hand moved over his back, rubbing, as if 
trying to comfort him. "A long time ago - why did you lie 
to me?"

"Because I loved you more than you loved me. Or at least, 
in a different way than you loved me," he confessed. 
"Because I was afraid. You didn't get your baby and you 
didn't get your white picket fence, and I didn't think... I 
didn't think what I could give you was enough. Not in the 
long run. Turned out, I was right."

"Being in Bellefleur again - it must bring back all those 
memories of when you and I were partners. Before you 
were abducted."

Dana's bedside manner best suited the dead, but he nodded 
anyway. "The last time we were here, we didn't know yet, 
but you were pregnant. If I had come back sooner, if I'd 
known where I fit in to your life... I hate that you needed 
me and I wasn't there. Even after I came back, I still wasn't 
there."

"I'm a grown woman, Mulder. And you've always been 
there when we needed you," she assured him.

He shook his head. "No, I wasn't. You wanted me to be 
happy about the baby - or at least happy for you - but I 
wasn't. I thought the consortium or that chip somehow 
caused your pregnancy, or the doctors tampered with the 
baby." He paused, and then confessed, "I thought I'd lose 
you to the baby. I couldn't feel anything, let alone happy. I 
just wanted it all to go away. I wanted to be you and me 
again: solving cases, arguing, making up, making love. 
Mulder and Scully. Except I was dead and you were putting 
up Pooh wallpaper in your nursery."

She just listened, which surprised him. Dana seldom let 
him tell her things not documented by files or photographs. 
If she couldn't corroborate his story, he didn't get to tell it.

"I thought, when you gave birth, that I got there too late or 
he was some freak-show genetic nightmare," he said, 
barely whispering. "That, either way, he was dead. I 
wouldn't hold him, I wouldn't look at him. Ask Agent 
Reyes. It isn't in her report, but she'll tell you. I felt so 
scared for you, angry for you - that you wanted this baby so 
much and how dare They fuck with you and your dreams 
and your body again. How dare They. If They'd just left 
you alone, left me alone, we would have been fine. I 
remember holding you in the helicopter on the way to the 
hospital and thinking 'At least it's over.'"

"You always cast yourself in the worst possible light. I've 
read those reports. You should have been on medical leave 
and psychotropic medication, not working for the FBI. Not 
trying to take care of us." Her hand moved beneath the 
fabric of his shirt, still caressing his back. "How could I not 
have realized that?"

"You did realize that," he told her. "I thought I had you 
fooled, though. I bought a Volvo, learned how to change a 
diaper. I even got myself fired from the FBI. No more X-
files. No more Agent Mulder. If I was dead inside, it didn't 
matter who the hell I was on the outside, so why not be the 
man you needed? That you wanted? I tried, Scully, but you 
knew me. Fortunately. Unfortunately. Whatever. You be 
the judge."

"Do you think that I don't know you now?"

"I think-" he started, turning to face her. "I don't know," he 
said honestly. 

"What is it that you want me to know? That you're brilliant 
and imperfect? Relentless? That you've spent decades 
inside the minds of monsters, and it shows, sometimes? 
That you believe in the paranormal and justice with the 
same white-hot passion that you have for the people you 
love? That you have strange friends and stranger ideas and 
you keep rancid goats in the lunchroom refrigerator at the 
ISU? Six years, Mulder. Most marriages don't last that 
long. Two years of living together and a child by you - 
what is it about you that you think I don't know?"

"That you can't ever fathom how much I love you," he 
managed, and that summed it up. She could explain the 
neuro-chemical equation for love - she could probably even 
quantify it and put it on a slide - but she could never fully 
comprehend the improbable journey that led to it. Long 
before she and William had been a 'we,' there had been a 
'she' - his partner, his ally, his friend - and that's who he'd 
loved. "You love me because I'm your son's father. You 
love me out of obligation. Fascination, maybe. Sometimes 
for nocturnal recreation," he said, smirking half-heartedly. 
"But I love you because, somewhere along the line, it 
stopped being a choice."

"Incorrect, Agent Mulder," she whispered.

"How is it incorrect? You inherited a life you never 
envisioned without any of the memories or emotions that 
go with it."

"I've inherited cars without instruction manuals," she 
countered. 

"This isn't your father's Oldsmobile. That woman a couple 
years ago who admitted to loving her husband more than 
her children? Reverse the sexes and that would have been 
me. If you hadn't been abducted... At first, I loved William 
as part of you. If it's possible to love someone for someone 
else's sake, that's what I did. You and I had eight years 
together, and society expected me to love the baby more 
just because he looked like me?"

"You feel guilty that you loved me more than you loved our 
child? A child that - except for disdaining the USDA food 
pyramid guidelines and any scientific research on parenting 
- you are wonderful with? Fox Mulder, your neurotic is 
bottomless."

"It is," he agreed. 

Her warm hand settled on the small of his back, toying with 
the waist of his jeans and the boxer shorts beneath them. 
"You think, because I don't remember Duane Barry or 
Robert Modell or Donnie Pfaster, that I can't possibly know 
you or care about you? For the ISU's Golden Boy, you're 
remarkably myopic when you want to be."

He nodded, unsure of the reason for her accusation but 
willing to concede she was probably right. "I am."

She assured him in a low, lover's voice, "I know you, 
Mulder."

He turned to face her, his hands resting on her waist. 
"Which begs the second question..." he whispered back.

She had to tiptoe to kiss him, and she did. She put her arms 
around his neck and pulled him close. Everyday worries - 
from the paranormal serial killer to the next morning to the 
end of the world - fell away.

"Then say it," he requested. She said it a few months ago - 
or something like it - and he wanted to hear it again. He 
wanted some assurance that all the pain, all the fear, all the 
nightmares, had some purpose. He came back for love of 
her, when staying dead seemed easier. "I love you. Scully, 
I..."

"You know that I do," she whispered, balm to all the things 
wrong in his world. 

Those endorphins kicked in. Like any junkie falling off the 
wagon, when he fell, he fell hard. He stopped watching the 
rainy darkness, stopped thinking about the case and the 
shadows. He stopped thinking at all. A summer storm of 
soft skin and feminine scents and silky hair surrounded 
him. Passion rolled in, beautiful and dangerous and 
intoxicating.

William slept in the bed, which left the bathroom, Mulder's 
motel room, and the cars. In their haste, the vanity in the 
bathroom won out, with the door locked, her leg around his 
hip, and his sore hand braced against the mirror. In the hot, 
hushed melee of things, Mulder probably whispered that he 
loved her. And that he wanted to marry her. And to have 
that baby. A child was impossible that night, he knew, but 
it had been impossible that March night seven years ago, 
too.

****

Since he didn't know his ring tone that week, Mulder 
scrambled out of bed in his boxers and T-shirt, found the 
rest of his clothes, and started patting down his pockets in 
the darkness.

The phone continued ringing.

As a highly-trained investigator and the ISU's Golden Boy, 
he ruled out the motel telephone by knocking it off the 
dresser and onto his bare foot.

Without opening her eyes, Dana retrieved her cell phone 
from the nightstand. She silenced the ringing, put it to her 
ear, and mumbled an unhappy, "Hello."

She listened, and then sat up, pushing her hair back from 
her face. "This is William Scully's mother."

The bedside clock said just before six AM, and William 
slept beside her.

Mulder sat down on the edge of the bed. When he rubbed 
his eyes, his hands smelled of her. 

The palm of his left hand throbbed and smarted.

"Will's not at school because he's out of town with me," 
Dana told the caller, sounding irritated. "Who is this again? 
How did you get this number?"

William's teacher had faxed and e-mailed his assignments, 
so Miss Janet already had his work for today. They'd 
anticipated William would miss some school with the trip 
to Disneyland, so he had all his little books and workbooks 
with him.

Mulder gave her a "what's happening" gesture.

"His father is out of town on a case. He's doing a profile in 
Oregon. No, there's nothing wrong. I don't know why he's 
not answering his phone." Scully listened another moment, 
and then said tightly, "I'm sure he meant to call you back. 
Sometimes, Mulder gets caught up in the moment. He's 
fine. In fact, he's right here."

She held the cell phone out to him and said coolly, "It's 
Stephanie Something. Apparently, you stood her up 
yesterday and you haven't called her back or answered her 
text messages. When you didn't take William to school this 
morning, she found my number on the PTA list and wanted 
to check that you haven't met with some horrible fate."

He held up his good hand for the phone, glad that Stephanie 
had almost certainly hung up already, mortified.

"Steph?" he said, but the line was dead.

Scully stalked to the bathroom, and she had the door closed 
by the time Mulder caught up with her. 

"She's my running partner," he told the door. "I forgot to 
call her."

He heard the toilet flush and then the shower curtain rustle 
angrily.

Mulder started to explain further, but stopped, his face hot. 
Scully had done this with Phoebe and with Diana; she'd 
acted like a jealous schoolgirl while simultaneously 
disavowing any romantic interest in him. Until four days 
ago, she insisted he "deserved someone who loved him for 
who he was" - and said that wasn't her. That made him a 
free agent, and he shouldn't need to apologize when he 
hadn't done anything wrong. 

He hadn't slept with Stephanie, but so what if he had. So 
what if he'd been screwing all of Alexandria for the last 
three years instead of home, alone, watching porn and the 
Sci-Fi channel. He didn't have a fresh tattoo. 

When Dana Scully got a tattoo - or joined the FBI or did 
anything she viewed as rebellious - she proved her 
independence. Proved it to her father. To Daniel Waterston. 
To Mulder. To all the men she viewed as father-like 
authority figures. That she wasn't the good little girl who 
followed all the rules. That she could be bad. And she 
chose to be bad with a man who, in the end, punished her 
rebellion physically or mentally in some way. 

Including Mulder.

He wished he wasn't a profiler, and that he didn't think so 
much, sometimes.

"My hand hurts," he said, addressing the doorknob. He only 
told her that because she'd wanted to look at the cut in the 
morning. On the East Coast, it was morning. He pulled the 
gauze bandage back, checked, and told her, "I think it's 
infected."

"Then you should see a doctor," her voice said angrily, and 
the shower faucet squealed on.

He found his cell phone in his coat pocket, dead as a 
doornail.

The only charger he had plugged into the car, so Mulder sat 
in the parking lot and stared resentfully at her motel room 
door. As soon as the iPhone had a little juice, it informed 
him that Steph had left him three anxious messages and 
Agent Reyes called twice. Mulder's secretary would very 
much like a few minutes of his time, and William's app and 
music expenditures had begun to cut into his inheritance.

Scully was the one being unreasonable, he assured himself 
as the rain beat down on the car's metal roof. She could 
have just politely taken a message; she acted like a child by 
handing him the phone. Mulder felt he should get more 
leeway for having a pretty running partner concerned for 
his well-being.

William broadcast news better than Paul Revere. His son 
probably went home from school last week and informed 
Dana that "Mulder kissed Miss Stephanie in the parking 
lot," triggering Dana's abrupt decision to resume having 
Mulder warm her bed. Or, until Mulder was available, to 
have some other man visit and then to commemorate the 
occasion with another fucking tattoo. 

Seven years ago, Daniel Waterston's reappearance 
precipitated William's conception, and there'd been 
something about her wanting a desk before that.

Mulder knew he'd reached the point where reason fell 
victim to anxiety and a bruised ego, but that didn't mean he 
could do anything about it except pout and lick his wounds.

Eventually, he gave some thought to being adult and trying 
to see things her way, but then decided not to bother. It was 
Wednesday. She had William. It was Mulder's turn to save 
the world.

Mulder put his elbow on the driver's-side door and started 
to rest his head against his hand until he remembered that it 
hurt.

He didn't think he could single-handedly save the world.

His skin smelled of her, and he still didn't see a light on in 
her motel room. She was still in the shower. If he'd go back 
inside - apologize, explain - she wouldn't even know he'd 
ever left.

He'd let the phone charge a little more, he decided.

When the light beside her bed did come on at six-thirty, 
Mulder decided he'd head to the sheriff's headquarters first 
- get a jump on his day. 

He'd see her later, and they'd talk then.

****

Mulder spent the morning at a doctor's office having dirt 
and splinters dug out of his palm, and then he waited at the 
pharmacy to get antibiotics, which made his stomach hurt. 
He'd also bought condoms which, one way or another, he 
planned on using in the near future. 

Alone, if he had to. 

Just to show that he still knew how they worked.

Mulder's phone was completely charged and completely 
silent. 

He didn't know whether he wanted to talk to her or not, so 
he'd called the next inexplicable woman he could think of.

"Six men, one woman," Agent Reyes' voice said over the 
iPhone's speaker. "They could represent the seven 
traditional Babylonian gods. The ancient Babylonians used 
a base-sixty number system: sixty seconds in a minute, 
sixty minutes in an hour. Three hundred and sixty degrees 
in a circle and days in a year. That's all Babylonian."

Mulder rested his arm on the desk in the sheriffs' 
headquarters and his chin miserably on his arm. The 
numbing medicine the doctor shot into his palm had worn 
off, and it throbbed again. The rest of his problems were 
somatic - just a plethora of reasons to call Scully.

The deputies thought assigning him a desk might help him 
with his profile. No, assigning him a clue might help his 
profile. 

"Why recreate that, though?" he asked the phone. "If this is 
some sort of ancient psychic-vampire, why create a pattern 
that would make an obsessive-compulsive vampire crazy? 
You can't divide a circle evenly by seven. Could it be a 
trap? A way to contain a vampire rather than something 
created by one?"

"The seventh glyph in the Mayan system corresponds with 
creation," she told him, which was interesting. "It's also the 
last glyph on their calendar. 2012."

"Another early settlement," he commented. "Another 
civilization with legends of abductions, and a culture which 
has largely disappeared or been absorbed in modern times. 
Scully went over the mathematical and scientific 
implications of the number seven, but she missed the 
Mayan glyph." 

He heard five seconds of silence. "I've been noticing 
something, Agent Mulder," she said, then paused again. "In 
working on this case with you, talking with you, I've 
noticed something."

"What?"

"You're saying 'Scully.' You said William was with 'Scully' 
today and that 'Scully' had done the last two autopsies. You 
usually make a distinction between the woman who was 
your partner and the woman who is William's mother. 
You're not doing that now."

He raised his head. "I'm sorry. I thought I dialed the X-files 
office," he said sarcastically. "Did they put me through to 
the Bureau shrink by mistake?"

"I've just noticed," Agent Reyes repeated, as if she and 
Dana didn't have their cyber-heads together whispering. 
"The Mayan beliefs don't fit with a UFO abduction scenario 
any more than the Hopi or Navajo legends do, Agent 
Mulder," she said, switching gears again. "There are stories 
of alien visitors, yes, but not abductions."

Mulder nodded at the phone.

"I'm still working on the tribe in Arizona. I should have 
some answers for you by tomorrow."

"If my math's right, you have a year. Every May. From now 
until the end of the world or I figure it out." He looked 
down at his bandaged hand, and then asked in a softer 
voice, "Why is Dana here?"

There was another pause. "You'd have to ask her," she said, 
and a silence followed. Agent Reyes' cadence was hard 
enough to follow in person, but with only sound he couldn't 
tell if she'd finished speaking or not. "Being in Bellefleur 
again - she knows it's not easy for you."

"I keep seeing her," he told the phone, quietly enough that 
the deputies and agents couldn't overhear. "Not just 
flashbacks, and not just dreams, though I've been dreaming 
about her, too. My old dreams. I mean I look up in broad 
daylight and see her. Corporeal. My Scully. I can feel it 
when she touches me."

Anyone else would have checked him for a head injury, but 
Agent Reyes asked, "Are you sure it's her doppelganger or 
psychic projection and not a super-soldier?"

"Whatever I'm seeing, it hasn't tried to kill me yet."

"Well, that's good," she said optimistically.

****

His head hurt from lack of sleep, and his stomach churned 
together the antibiotics with a take-out turkey sandwich and 
coffee that someone brought him. Despite a day of hiding 
out in the deputies' bunker-like headquarters, he still didn't 
have a helpful profile of the killer, paranormal or not. The 
local law enforcement agents kept congratulating him for 
knowing where the seventh body would be found, as if that 
was an accomplishment. 

Being able to send the seventh victim home to his wife - to 
drink and smoke too much, and to, at sixty, suddenly drop 
dead from an aneurysm no one knew he had - that would 
have been something to congratulate him on.

"I can either talk to you here at the sheriffs' office or make 
a trip to the public library," Mulder explained tiredly to the 
web-cam. The little town of Bellefleur still thought of the 
Internet as new-fangled. "Everything else is dial-up."

Like a sullen child, Langly's image had his arms folded 
across his chest and his lips sealed in an unhappy line.

Frohike leaned toward the camera and told Mulder 
confidentially, "He's not comfortable speaking in front of 
all the fuzz." His unshaven face moved left, then right. "Is 
Dr. Scully with you?"

Mulder sat back from the computer on his loaner desk. "I'm 
working. I'm in Oregon. Why would Scully be with me?"

The Gunmen's faces looked uncomfortably, collectively 
guilty. 

"Stop hacking into her e-mail account, Frohike," Mulder 
warned. "I mean it. She's already plotting one man's murder 
this week. Possibly two men right now."

"She had some nice things to say to Agent Reyes about 
you," Frohike offered. "She-"

Byers gave Frohike a nudge, and Frohike shut up. "You 
said you called in regard to a case. What can we do for you, 
Mulder?"

"You can stop hacking into her e-mail. That's the FBI 
computer system; you're impersonating a federal agent."

"I read," Frohike asserted. "I did not hack. I am a 
gentleman." 

"Langly?" Mulder said.

Langly shrugged one shoulder irritably.

"The Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled that privacy is a 
fundamental human right. For everyone," Mulder reminded 
him. "Even at Dragon-Con. Even fellatio from a pre-op 
transsexual dressed as Kara Thrace."

Langly stood up, his chair squealing backward, told Mulder 
to go frack himself, and stalked off with his face flushed. 
Mixing alcohol with Ecstasy was always ill-advised, and 
doing it at a convention of Sci-Fi geeks... A man could 
mistake not only his partner's gender, but species and 
genre.

Frohike's image watched Langly leave, then moved toward 
the computer and said in a low voice, "We agreed to never 
speak of that again."

"We also agreed you boys would stop hacking into her e-
mail." He considered a second, then leaned closer to the 
webcam. "Are you hacking into my e-mail, too?"

"That guy at Dragon-Con made a pretty hot Starbuck," 
Melvin Frohike responded. "And your electric bill is due."

Mulder leaned back, mimicking Langly's earlier displeased 
posture. "Steal yourself some premium cable, already, or 
get that new Netflix thing. Subscribe to Readers Digest for 
all I care, but stay out of her e-mail or I'm letting Dana 
Scully deal with you. Scully could kick Kara Thrace's ass 
one-handed, let alone yours, Melvin."

Frohike hunkered down to ponder the pros and cons of that 
ass-kicking, his brow furrowed with effort. He didn't seem 
entirely dissuaded.

"We've been following your investigation," Byers said, 
again trying to redirect the conversation. "Clearly, these 
killings suggest a well-coordinated government cover-up."

Mulder raised his eyebrows. "In what way?" The Gunmen 
thought everything suggested a government cover-up. Last 
month, Byers had explained to him the government 
conspiracy behind the Happy Meal. "A cover-up of what?"

"That's what we're trying to figure out," Byers assured him.

"Thank God; the country can relax." He'd hoped for 
something a little more helpful. "Hell, I can go home."

Langly's red face suddenly reappeared in front of the 
camera lens at the Gunmen's headquarters. "You said it in 
front of the fuzz!" he yelled, and then stalked off again.

"He's going to be like this for days," Frohike grumbled.

Byers cleared his throat. "So what can we do for you, 
Mulder?" he said a third time. "I can't remember the last 
time you contacted us about a case."

"I need you to cross-reference your abduction database 
with May death records. I'm looking for overlap between 
the coordinates of an abduction and the coordinates of a 
human death - particularly an unexplained or oddly 
explained death. Actually, I'm looking for any pattern. 
Clusters are good, but anything unusual that you see... It's 
pretty wide open at this point."

Byers looked instantly intrigued. "Abductees?"

Mulder shook his head. "No. No dead abductees."

"Super-soldiers?" Byers guessed next.

Mulder looked at the camera tiredly. His hand ached and 
his forehead hurt and someone had bored a hole into his 
sternum with a dull drill bit. "Can you get me a map of any 
anomalies from your database?"

"We aren't keeping a database of abductees, Agent 
Mulder," Byers said in the same way normal people said "I 
don't know how that cocaine got in my vehicle, officer."
 
"Fine. Whatever. Can you pull some numbers for me from 
that database that you don't keep?"

"It'll take some time," Byers responded, and crossed his 
arms thoughtfully. "We'll contact you. Don't use this 
connection again."

"Fine," Mulder muttered.

Frohike leaned in again, as if that offered some privacy. 
"So how is the little family trip to the beautiful Pacific 
northwest going? Could there be a re-kindling?"

"You mean some romance in between the flashbacks and 
the corpses and the six-year-old?" he answered 
sarcastically.

"Nothing?" Frohike looked disappointed. "You gotta put 
the moves on."

Mulder held up his hand, showing them the bandage. "My 
only move is falling. On a side note - and not related to 
Scully - William and I did get to see a practically topless 
FBI agent breast-feeding a Kindergartener yesterday."

Behind Byers and Frohike, Langly stalked past again, still 
flushed. He paused long enough to yell at the computer 
screen, "In front of the frackin' fuzz!" 

Ignoring Langly, Frohike leaned close to the camera and 
asked earnestly, "How was it?"

****

Mulder had suspected Dana's hyper-focus derived from, for 
once, not being the biggest scandal in the Scully clan. In 
2001, Brother Charlie shipped out with a wife, a three-year-
old daughter, and new baby girl at home in Norfolk - in 
addition to his ex-wife and three teenage boys in 
Harrisburg - and returned a year later with a new wife and 
another new baby girl.

Turned out, Brother Bill hadn't cornered the marked on 
asshole in the Scully family. Brother Charlie was just an 
ass of a different color. Trying to fill his father's shoes 
without ever growing into them, Bill put his back into 
being judgmental and over-bearing. Swell guys like Charlie 
gave your sister crabs and habitually misplaced their 
wallets when it was their turn to pick up the tab.

In 2002, Maggie Scully designated a week in July and 
rented a big beach house on the Outer Banks of North 
Carolina. The family get-together was not to be missed. 

"No canceling, Mulder," Dana told him about five billion 
times. "No cases, no consults, no calls, no excuses. This is 
my family. We'll make some new memories."

Mulder didn't see anything wrong with their old memories - 
except that she didn't remember them.

When he mailed the check for their share of the beach 
house, it was for double the correct amount. Charlie was 
short on cash that month, and if Mulder and Dana didn't 
make up for it, Mrs. Scully would pay the thousand bucks 
herself and not tell anyone.

Like his initial reaction to John Doggett, Mulder disliked 
Charles Scully before even meeting him, just based on the 
facts of the case.

After the five billion and first lecture the night before about 
how important this family beach trip was, Mulder reminded 
Dana that his elderly aunts in Boston were his only living 
family. While a global conspiracy had centered on his late 
parents and sister, his mother's family's biggest concern 
was Mulder reproducing with a shiksa. And having his son 
christened - one of Mulder's this-is- what-Scully-would-
have-wanted decisions made during her abduction, and at 
her mother's urging. His aunts raised their eyebrows, but 
sent William savings bonds for Hanukah and again for 
Christmas so they covered all the bases. Unlike Mrs. 
Scully, they didn't try to call William 'Billy.' Unlike 
Brother Bill, they didn't refer to Mulder as 'that son of a 
bitch who knocked Dana up,' and unlike Brother Charlie, 
Mulder's relatives paid their own way.

Needless to say, Mulder had spent the night before staying 
on his side of Scully's bed, cuddling with his self-
righteousness. 

No big change there.

When he brought their toddler to sleep with them, Dana 
said that promoted poor sleep hygiene and helicopter 
parenting. Mulder's sleep hygiene remained iffy, but the 
chub scout slept like a log. Mulder didn't know anything 
about 'helicopter parenting' - nor did he care - as long his 
helicopter was Airwolf.

They'd picked Mrs. Scully up at seven AM in Baltimore. 
Dana and her mother spent the ten hour drive dissecting 
Brother Charlie's life and planning for any possible 
contingency with New Wife - still sight unseen. Old Wife 
and Old-Old Wife weren't coming or bringing their 
children, which Mrs. Scully bemoaned from Arlington to 
Richmond, Virginia. New Wife had a teenage son from a 
previous relationship, and Dana's mother pronounced the 
word 'relationship' the same way she did when she talked 
about William.

William was her daughter's son from her 'relationship' with 
her former partner.

Who drove the car. 

And heard them talking.

Mrs. Scully and William sat in the back seat of the Volvo, 
with William in a car seat and Mrs. Scully manning the 
family vacation-planning ready room. The toddler's 
expression, when Mulder glanced in the rear view mirror, 
was 'help me, Daddy.'

Mulder's Blackberry in his pocket, set to vibrate, went off 
every ten minutes after Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. Each 
time it buzzed, Dana looked at him and silently dared him 
to answer it. He'd overseen the ISU for three weeks and 
gone through two secretaries already. In addition to the 
profiles he needed to generate, Mulder just inherited a 
backlog of files that the Syndicate would have envied. He 
had new profilers to mentor and old profilers to keep an eye 
on, and anything that wasn't anyone else's job suddenly 
became his job.

And Dana wanted to go to the beach. 

Traffic crept along in the one lane, bumper to bumper, for 
miles until it vanished into the horizon. The driver of a red 
minivan in front of him liked to slam on his brakes for no 
reason Mulder could discern. They were within running 
distance of the beach house, according to the map. Mulder 
wanted to get out of the car, take his son, and run. This 
wasn't him, this wasn't his life, and he couldn't stand 
another minute of it, let alone five solid days.

He had his pistol in the trunk. Five days of this family 
togetherness and he'd have to shoot someone or something.

He'd start by killing the idiot driver of the minivan.

Mulder must have looked agitated, because Dana took his 
hand and rested their interlaced fingers on the center 
console. Her touch didn't soothe him like it had a decade 
ago, but it helped. He exhaled, tried to relax, and stopped 
plotting homicide. If she wanted this, he could do it.

"Have you and Fox thought of getting married?" Mrs. 
Scully asked, leaning forward. 

"We haven't talked about it lately," Dana answered 
evasively, which was true - lately being defined as since 
before the baby was born and within any time period she 
remembered.

"William's getting older..." Mrs. Scully said, sounding as 
neutral as Switzerland yet as judgmental as possible. "He's 
going to start asking questions." She paused, refilled her 
maternal guilt dispenser, and asked, "Fox, are you still 
staying with Dana?"

Mrs. Scully noted that fine point frequently: Mulder didn't 
live with her daughter; he stayed with her daughter, like 
he'd been down on his luck for the last eighteen months. 
None of this living-in-sin nonsense. They needed to get 
married, learn to hate each other, and get divorced - the 
way nice people like Brother Charlie did.

Mrs. Scully knew Mulder lived with Dana because he'd 
answered the phone last night at ten when she called, and 
also at six that morning when she called.

"I still have my apartment in Alexandria." A second later, 
he added, "The lease is up at the end of this month."

"Have you two thought of buying a house?"

"We looked at one a few weeks ago," Mulder answered.

"Which one?" Dana asked, as Mulder's pocket buzzed 
again.

"Assistant Director Cavender's house. The two-story with 
the big yard and the garage. We drove past it on the way to 
look at that hippy-dippy preschool for the chub scout."

She nodded that she remembered. "That was a nice house."

"Do you want me to talk to AD Cavender?" Mulder asked.

"Okay," she'd answered casually.

That seemed to satisfy Mrs. Scully for the moment: that he 
wouldn't let her daughter and grandson be homeless. She 
went back to having silly one-sided conversations with 
William, who - while perfectly capable of speaking - 
regarded his grandmother with a silent, skeptical look he'd 
inherited from his mother.

"We had a nice time on Martha's Vineyard," Dana 
reminded Mulder quietly. "Relax. It will be okay."

He nodded and moved their joined hands from the console 
to his thigh. "The Outer Banks is one of the most haunted 
places in the United States. The lost colony? Blackbeard's 
ghost? The Brown Mountain lights - we never did figure 
those out. Do you think we could sneak off for an afternoon 
and investigate?"

She squeezed his hand and reminded him, "This is a family 
trip."

"You are my family," he answered. 

If he took a week off, he wanted to spend it with her. Poke 
around Roanoke Island and listen to the old pirate and 
ghost stories. Take William to the beach. Watch the stars 
and let her tell him about the night sky. Listen to her lecture 
him about physics and E=MC2 when he mentioned alien 
visitation. Make pasta for three, pour wine for two, and try 
out the hot tub after the baby was asleep. See if they could 
remember how to be lovers, not merely roommates with a 
toddler in common.

His Scully would have been up for a few pirate legends, 
and maybe even some pirate rum. She would have 
investigated just so she could keep an eye on him and spout 
Scientific Reason 101.

Mulder tried not to think like that, to stay focused on what 
was important. In the back of his mind, though, the bad 
thoughts lingered; he loved a woman who no longer existed 
while living with a woman who looked like her. He didn't 
even dream of His Scully anymore. He dreamed of hooks 
and saw blades and UFOs silently stalking him and his son 
in the darkness.

"Mulder, it will be okay," she'd assured him again, and then 
asked, "What are the Brown Mountain lights?"

Traffic hadn't moved in ten minutes. Ten hours, ten years, 
and they remained in the car, trying to get somewhere 
while the entire world got in their way.

"Just a story," he remembered telling her, because it made 
his heart hurt to try to explain.

****

"Agent Mulder," a young woman's voice said, and a hand 
touched his shoulder. "Sir?"

He blinked his eyes and shook his head to clear it. He'd 
given up on the case momentarily, leaned back in the chair, 
and decided to rest his eyes for a second. According to the 
clock on the wall, almost an hour had passed.

The female deputy stood beside his desk, her expression 
hesitant. "Oh, I hate to wake you."

Mulder rolled his neck and stretched his arms up, trying to 
work out the kinks. His chest still hurt, but not as badly as 
earlier. His face felt stubbly, and yesterday's shower had 
worn off. Going back to his motel room admitted defeat, 
and besides, he was working on the case. 

Or something. 

He'd reached the "Damn it Indy, where doesn't it hurt?" 
stage.

George Lucas had a new movie coming out, which - 
Internet rumor had it - featured a graying Indiana Jones still 
kicking ass and, after all the drama, ending up with Marion. 
If Indy and Marion could manage a happy ending despite 
Nazi scientists and evil cults and aliens, how hard could it 
be? 

Maybe he needed the bullwhip and the fedora, though 
Mulder thought a baseball cap and a pistol should be 
equally effective.

His shoulder. If Dana needed a place to kiss, the old scar on 
his shoulder didn't hurt at the moment, and it was fairly 
clean.

She'd forwarded her preliminary autopsy findings to him, 
the SAC, and the Assistant Director. Mulder's phone hadn't 
rung, though he'd worn the battery down checking to make 
sure he actually had it turned on. Probably due to sleep 
deprivation, he was doing a Lady Macbeth; he smelled her 
on his skin, on his clothes. 

He was not calling her. 

Under no circumstances was he calling her.

"Dr. Scully asked me to give you this," the deputy said, and 
Mulder blinked at her again, looking to see what she held. 

They communicated by messenger now. How mature. 
Pretty soon there would be lawyers and mediators, and 
they'd be screaming at each other over who got William on 
Christmas day and who got Christmas Eve - all because he 
lacked a fedora and a bullwhip.

The young Native American deputy held out a dinky plastic 
spork.

"I don't know," she said in response to his puzzlement. "Dr. 
Scully just said to give it to you."

He took it. "Where is she?"

"Outside."

The headquarters had cleared out for the day. The sun had 
started sliding behind the trees when he stepped outside, 
dutifully bringing his spork and his resolve not to 
apologize. Or fight with her. Or call her. Or sleep with her 
again. Or, if he did, he'd use a condom and ask about that 
tattoo - unless she wanted a baby, in which case he wanted 
to get married.

Like the inside of his mouth after his catnap, Mulder's 
resolve was a little fuzzy.

Dana sat on a park bench in the square near the drug store, 
facing away from him. William played on the grass among 
the trees.

"Wanna fork, G-woman?" he asked sarcastically, coming 
up behind her.

She turned her head, looking back at him, and held up her 
own fork. "You came prepared."

"If I came prepared, we wouldn't be parents," he answered, 
then wished he could take that back. "What is he doing?" 

William squatted at the base of a maple tree. He held up a 
sunflower seed, watching the high branches expectantly. 
He laid the seed down and backed away, waiting. Behind 
him, beneath the neighboring birch tree, a trio of squirrels 
ate the seeds he'd left there.

"He wants a pet squirrel," Dana said. "He's trying to lure 
one down. We're raising the next Crocodile Hunter."

"I don't mean to be insensitive, but having watched hour 
upon hour of Animal Planet with him, I think one 
Crocodile Hunter was plenty for this millennia. Maybe for 
this epoch. Let's hope for Jane Goodall. Desmond Morris."

When William noticed he had the wrong tree, he left a few 
seeds as bait at the maple and moved to the birch tree. The 
squirrels sounded the alarm and scrambled for the top 
branches. They jumped over to the maple tree, and then 
silently ventured down to eat the fresh sunflower seeds as 
William waited beneath the birch.

"How long has he been at this?"

"About ten minutes. I admire his commitment, though not 
his strategy." Dana gestured for Mulder to sit down on the 
bench. "Like you, there is no reasoning with him."

The pumpkin pie beside her had a neat little wedge 
missing, and then fork marks indicating she and William 
had just decided to eat it out of the aluminum pan.

"It worries me that a Jack Russell terrier could figure out 
that the squirrels have the upper hand here, but our uber-
child can't," he told her. "How did we get a son who loves 
animals?"

"I like animals," she asserted. "You said I had a dog. You 
have fish. All with an unusually high attrition rate," she 
conceded.

"In case he actually catches a slow, stupid one - he's up to 
date on his shots, right?"

She nodded. "He is, and I just put Frontline on the back of 
his neck, so your little Desmond is also protected from 
fleas and ticks."

He chuckled and relaxed a little.

William switched trees again, and noticing Mulder, called, 
"Mulder, Mommy said I can have one if I can catch one."

"Where are you going to keep him?" Mulder called back.

Dana cleared her throat and pointed her fork at the empty 
cardboard box beside her feet. "Your son has a plan. Not a 
good plan, but a plan."

"Scully said Squirrelly can live at your house," William 
told him.

Mulder gave her an annoyed look, and in return, she 
offered him the pumpkin pie.

"You've changed the bandage on your hand," she noticed. 
"That's not the way I wrapped it."

"The doctor did it this morning."

"Did he-"

"He put in four stitches and gave me horse pills," he 
answered. "I'm supposed to follow-up with my regular 
doctor."

"I'm your regular doctor. When was the last time you saw 
anyone but me?"

"Socially or medically?" he quipped, and got a little smile. 
He draped his arm along the back of the bench, almost but 
not quite around her shoulders, and carved a bite of 
pumpkin flesh out of the pie pan.

William came over for a bite of pie, encouraging kisses 
from each of them, and to get the box so he could show 
Squirrelly his potential home. Behind the trees, the setting 
sun glowed orange and purple and crimson through the 
clouds.

"Your friend Stephanie called me again," Dana said once 
their son was out of earshot. "She wanted to apologize if 
she intruded or gave me the wrong idea." She paused, and 
then added, "I thought that was nice of her."

"She is really nice. Funny. Smart," he offered tentatively. 
"Her son's in fifth grade. He plays basketball. She's a 
research chemist, I think, and she can run like the wind."

"She said she worried because it wasn't like you not to call, 
so I assume this is a recent thing."

"I don't know that it's a thing." Mulder paused, but then 
admitted, "I don't know that it's not, either."

"Does William know?" 

"Yes," he answered. "But there's not much to know. She's a 
friend. She's a tall, pretty friend, but that's all. I like her, but 
we're not picking out china patterns."

"You're a grown man, and I overreacted," she said, 
sounding as if she'd rehearsed that sentence a hundred 
times that day. "I'm sorry."

"I am and you did," he agreed. 

Their son modified his strategy. With the bag of seeds on 
the ground in front of him, William tried to balance on one 
foot while his hands stretched up to the sky, like branches.

"Now he's a tree," Mulder observed, glad to have 
something else to talk about. "Think the squirrels are 
fooled?"

"How do you know that's the Tree Pose?" Dana wanted to 
know. "When I told you they offered yoga classes just for 
runners, you made fun of me. Did you go?"

"No. God, no. Rule thirty-four."

"You think you're invincible?" she guessed.

"Yoga porn. It was on sale. I found out why."

"Yoga porn won't help you relax your shoulder muscles 
when you run," she lectured. "Or improve your flexibility 
or prevent muscle injuries. You aren't a teenager anymore, 
and balanced movement and range of motion is important. 
Ask Stephanie to go with you."

He knew two things: first, that last sentence was the most 
hollowly polite suggestion in history, and second, he'd very 
much like her to choose a different topic. 

"I'll live dangerously," he said finally. 

"Fine," she said, then sighed. "The agents said you were at 
the station today, working, but I didn't see a profile from 
you in my e-mail. Are you still formulating?"

"No, I've formulated." He moved his sore hand so it 
touched her shoulder as he got a second bite of pie. 
"Remember how I said we weren't looking for a vampire? 
Scully, we're looking for a vampire."

"A vampire?" she said incredulously.

"A psychic vampire of some sort. Not the sparkly kind; 
those are just fiction. Trust me, real vampires do not 
sparkle. They do, however, bite."

"I'm ordering you a head CT."

"Name one reason why this killer can't be a psychic 
vampire?" he challenged. 

"Because they don't exist," she supplied in that same 
scornful tone. 

"Of course they exist. You said it: 'God turned off their 
life.' Since I can't get a search warrant for The Great 
Beyond, a psychic vampire is my working hypothesis."

"A vampire?" she repeated. "You can't be serious."

"Raise your hand if you spent ten years as senior agent of 
the X-files unit, and you are the current head spook of the 
spooky services department."

Only his hand went up.

She turned toward him, plastic fork in mid-air and that 
skeptical crease between her eyebrows. "Special Agent 
Spooky, over Labor Day weekend you thought a lizard man 
was loose in rural Georgia. You called me at four in the 
morning and woke me out of a sound sleep to ask about the 
correspondence between human years and lizard years. I 
thought you were drunk, at first. Why in the world would I 
know that?"

"First, when my profile caught the killer, he had lizard 
scales tattooed all over his body. He'd had cosmetic dental 
work to simulate lizard teeth. He operated under the 
delusion that he was a reptile. If that's not a Lizard Man, I 
don't know what is," he said, trying to sound assertive 
rather than defensive. "Second-"

"Why was there no mention of any Lizard Man case in the 
media? I even checked Google and 'The Weekly World 
Informer.' No Lizard Man in Georgia last summer."

"Second," he continued, "Why wouldn't I call you? You 
knew the correspondence between dog and human years off 
the top of your head."

"When?" she wanted to know, and then guessed, "That 
dog-faced deputy sheriff sideshow case in Florida?" 

He hesitated. "No. A long time ago. I gave you an Apollo 
11 mission key-ring for your birthday, and said I celebrated 
once every seven years, like dog years. The key-ring meant 
so much to you that you gave it to Agent Doggett," he 
added.

"Why would I give a gift from you to Agent Doggett?"

"Beats the hell out of me," he said tightly. "I told myself 
you were pregnant and hormonal."

She shook her head. "Well, I don't remember that, but if 
you think this case is an X-file, it is Agent Doggett's 
province now."

"The hell it is," he shot back. "Agent Doggett's never seen 
vampirism, and I have. Several times. It's my case."

"It's not your case. You're a profiler," she said, sounding 
progressively angrier. "Arguably the best profiler the FBI 
has ever had. What happened to flying to Oregon, writing 
them a profile, and going home? Now you want to pretend 
you're a field agent and go chasing through the woods after 
a vampire?"

"A psychic vampire. I'm here, and I'm damn sure not 
calling in John Doggett to swagger around and find 
nothing."

"I don't understand why you dislike Agent Doggett so 
much, Mulder. He's an excellent FBI agent. Because of a 
key-chain? Because he was my partner for a few months? 
Or because you think his actions caused me to be 
abducted?"

"Because he sits in my chair and answers my phone," he 
snapped.

That furrow between her brows went from disbelieving to 
indignant. "Is that what you're so angry at me about? That 
you don't get to wave your badge at the sky and chase 
UFOs and Bigfoot anymore? Because of Will?"

"I'm not the one who left," he argued. "You don't even 
remember, so don't presume to tell me what I'm angry 
about. I came back because of you and William. I didn't put 
a gun to my head because of you and William. I lost my 
best friend, my lover, my partner, and my soul mate. I got a 
son with a different last name than mine and a woman who 
doesn't remember loving me or having him. So no, losing 
the X-files is not what I'm angry at you about." 

He knew he should stop talking. He should get his temper 
in check, but she'd hit a nerve and he didn't. 

"He's my son. Mine!" he barked at her. "If you didn't want 
to tell anyone - fine. It's your body, and I know I wasn't 
there - but John Doggett doesn't get to fuss over you and 
pretend."

"You're crazy!" she yelled back. "What the hell are you 
talking about?"

"You think losing the X-files compares to losing you? You 
think doing the right thing was hard when I did it for you? 
You're the one who's crazy, Scully." 

"Excuse me for letting you down," she snapped.

"You know, the first time I fell in love with you, you'd 
managed to work through your daddy issues," he 
responded. And that, as he would have predicted, was the 
final straw.

She flung the pie across the park. The bright aluminum 
shell and wobbling trajectory looked like a 1950's science 
fiction movie. As the pie saucer crashed to the ground, 
Scully stood up and told him to go to hell. According to 
her, Mulder was self-absorbed and cynical and paranoid. In 
turn, he called her a petty, controlling, masochistic bitch 
who, as usual, didn't know what the hell she was talking 
about.

Between the trees, William stood wide-eyed and watched 
them, now in Cowering Child Pose. The yelling ended 
instantly, but silent accusatory looks continued to be traded.

"Come on, baby," Dana ordered tersely, as she stared 
daggers into Mulder. "We're going back to the motel."

"I wanna catch a squirrel," William answered, his lower lip 
quivering. "I made a habitat."

"We'll try to catch a squirrel at home. Our neighborhood 
has lots of squirrels."

The boy looked to Mulder for back-up, but all Mulder 
managed around the lump in his throat was, "Go with your 
mother," sounding exactly like his own father had.

Once Dana and William disappeared from sight, the trio of 
squirrels came over to examine the pie ruins.

"Here," he told one of the squirrels, and pointed to his not-
sore shoulder. "It doesn't hurt here."

A little tree rat twitched its nose at him uncertainly, then 
went back to picking through the pumpkin rubble. Mulder 
just slouched on the park bench, his arms crossed, watching 
the sun set.

He'd gotten two bites of the pie; no wonder he felt cheated. 

****

He'd sit on the park bench until he froze to death. He'd 
commit suicide via exposure on an early May night in 
Oregon, just to show Scully he could commit to something.

The sky had darkened to the color of a bad bruise. As the 
first stars emerged, his temper cooled along with the 
evening. His plastic spork lay on the grass nearby, and the 
empty pie pan a couple feet beyond that. The squirrels had 
picked over the rubble and returned to the treetops, where 
they chattered down at him judgmentally.

He saw Gemini in the heavens. Orion. A red dot that might 
be Mercury or Mars. "The heartless voids and immensities 
of the universe." That was Melville. Mulder never thought 
of Melville that he didn't think of Scully, and of her 
likening him to Ahab - always chasing the white whale. 

She didn't want to spend her life falling, and he didn't want 
to spend his life behind a picket fence. He couldn't be the 
man she wanted, but she didn't know him well enough to 
stop him from trying.

She'd taught him the skies, and how to have faith, and how 
to love more than he'd dreamed he ever could. 

"There was a storm for every calm," Melville wrote. A 
horizon for every sky. An FBI-designated Yin to his Yang.

He wanted what he supposed all men wanted: a woman's 
soft hands and strong love. To save the world. Maybe to 
have a beer after his son's baseball game. Simple things. 
Normal things.

It shouldn't be so hard.

In the shadows across the park, he noticed a figure 
watching him. He saw a small, auburn-haired woman in a 
long skirt and a bulky cardigan sweater that kind of 
wrapped around her. He'd seen her on the beach. In the 
forest. In his dreams. 

She didn't approach or speak or raise her hand. She just 
watched him from among the trees. He stared back from 
the park bench, afraid to move and break the gossamer 
thread connecting his world and hers. Eventually, the 
darkness gathered and she faded into the night, but he still 
felt her presence the way he felt the pull of the tide or the 
full moon.

The worst way to miss a woman was being near her, yet 
never touching her.  

She was real, he told himself. He wasn't hallucinating or 
deluding himself. 

She was there, he told himself, and either he had to find 
her, or let her go, or go crazy.

****

"I don't wanna fight with you," he said as soon as she 
picked up her cell phone, before she even had a chance to 
say hello. Mulder traced the rough, lopsided heart scratched 
into the wooden bar and told her, "I hate fighting with you. 
My parents fought all the time, and I'm not gonna fight 
with you."

"Where are you, Mulder? It's almost midnight." Her voice 
sounded concerned, and he liked hearing her sound 
concerned. "Have you been drinking?"

"Oh, I have. Turns out, Bellefleur has a bar. They sell Bud 
and Bud Light. FBI agents who can't solve cases drink half-
price."

His last sentence earned a sarcastic cheer from the half-
dozen agents crowded into the corner booth. Agent 
Smithson worked on her third beer, Agent Martelli held his 
fourth, and Martelli's hand rested on her knee beneath the 
table. Across the room, a CNN cameraman put the moves 
on the Fox News microphone woman, while the female 
deputy sat alone at the other end of the bar, getting up only 
to feed quarters to the jukebox. Tom Petty had just finished 
"Don't Come Around Here No More," and The Eagles 
eased into "Desperado."

"Who-rah," Mulder agreed. "I got an e-mail. You and me: 
Homeland Security's concluded we're only a danger to each 
other. Also, the Gunmen didn't find shit in their database 
that I don't already know. Nada. Bupkis. I'm telling you, it's 
not paranoia when the entire universe really is out to get 
me."

"Are you driving?"

"It doesn't matter. Scully, don't ever think that I don't... 
Never. William and I wouldn't be here if it weren't for 
you."

"I'm putting Will in the car and I'm coming to get you. I'll 
be there in ten minutes. Just sit tight."

"You don't know where I am, and the whole town isn't ten 
blocks wide. I'm gonna walk. I just wanted to talk to you. 
Hear your voice. I like your voice."

"You're drunk. There is a killer out there. I'm coming to get 
you," she insisted, and he heard clothing rustle. "I'm getting 
dressed right now."

He drained his beer bottle and lined it up alongside its 
empty brothers on the bar before he told her, "I love you. 
You, right now. As is. No take-backs. No exclusionary 
clauses or fine print. The rest of what I said - just water 
under the bridge and insecure bullshit. You've never 
disappointed anyone, let alone me."

"Ten minutes," she assured him, and car keys jingled. "Stay 
put. Don't let the vampire get you."

"Psychic vampire," he corrected. He slid off the barstool 
and went to the front door of the little bar. "Don't wake 
William."

"I'm not leaving him at the motel."

As he left the bar, he asked, "Dana, what are you wearing?"

A few seconds of silence elapsed. "Exactly how much have 
you had to drink?"

Outside, Mulder leaned against the signpost in front of the 
bar. "If you're dressed, go out on the porch."

In the distance, he saw her motel room door open and the 
warm yellow light pool out into the darkness. 

"Look left, across the playground and the parking lot," he 
instructed. "See the sign for the car lot? See the streetlight 
just past it?" 

"Okay," she answered uncertainly. "I see the streetlight."

"Keep looking." 

The bar's name was Fay's Tavern, but Fay must have fallen 
on hard times. The parking lot needed the potholes filled, 
the men's room needed condemned, and most of the letters 
in the neon sign out front had burned out, leaving only 'Fa 
T e.' 

At Quantico, they called that sort of thing a clue.

"What am I even looking for?" her voice asked.

Mulder turned his phone around and waved it back and 
forth so she could see the lit screen. "Come walk me home, 
Agent Scully."

He saw her put a hand on her hip. "I think you can make 
it."

He signaled with the phone for her to come to him.

When she arrived a moment later, she wore his FBI 
sweatshirt and carried the receiver for the old baby monitor. 
When he did laundry yesterday, he returned the sweatshirt 
to her room, along with his raggedy Oxford T-shirt. If she 
wanted to wear them, he wanted her to have them.

A thought occurred to him, in his intoxicated brain. In high 
school, a girl wearing a guy's clothes meant something. It 
meant the adolescent version of "I want to have your baby," 
and the physical demonstration of "My limbic system loves 
you, too."

The I in FBI, and all that.

"Sorry," he told her again, this time face to face. When she 
didn't slap him, he put his forearms on her shoulders and 
told her hair, "Sorry, sorry, sorry."

"It's okay," she assured him, in the same voice she used to 
soothe William. She looked up at him, and then traced her 
fingertips down his face. She didn't say it, but he knew 
what she was thinking. When he hadn't shaved, the old 
scars on his cheeks still showed. 

She stepped back. "Come on."

Inside, on the juke box, Willie Nelson started singing 
"Always on My Mind" in his worn, raspy voice. "You have 
to dance with me," he insisted.

"No, I don't. You're drunk, and it's the middle of the night, 
and it's cold. Let's go, Mulder."

"I'm not that drunk, it's not that cold, and you're that 
beautiful. I want you to dance with me."

"I'm not dancing with you," she said irritably. 

"It's my birthday. You hafta dance with me."

"It's not your birthday."

He reached for her hand, drawing her to him as she 
insisted, "I'm not in a dancing mood, Mulder. All I want is 
to make sure you don't get attacked by a vampire or trip 
over something and incur a traumatic brain injury."

"A psychic vampire," he reminded her yet again, and put 
his sore hand on her waist. 

She didn't pull away.

Swaying in time to the music, he leaned down, rested his 
scruffy jaw against her head, and whispered to her, "I hate 
being in this fucking town again. Whoever said a man has 
to face his demons, he hasn't met my demons. This isn't 
getting back on the horse; this is going back to the mouth of 
Hell. All I want to do is run."

"I know," she answered, still not quite dancing with him 
but not fleeing the scene, either.

"Whatever possessed you to come with me, thank you."

"Do you think I'd let you come back here alone?"

He considered a moment, then told her, "No," and lowered 
his mouth to hers. He kissed her beneath the streetlamp like 
they had all the time in the world. The baby monitor purred 
quiet static, a child's breathing, and the news program that 
must be on in her motel room. "You smell nice," he told 
her, the master of drunken eloquence. "Like... Like rain."

"You smell like a homeless alcoholic."

"I've had a rough week," he answered, and kissed her again. 

Dancing - at least the part that involved moving his feet - 
had been momentarily forgotten. 

"Who knew saving the world would be the easy part?" he 
whispered to her. "Nazis, cults, aliens: it doesn't look so 
tough in the movies."

"We didn't save the world," the voice of reason reminded 
him.

"We did," he promised her. "You and me, we saved the 
world in spades. We just couldn't save us from each other."

She stepped back, keeping hold of his hand. "Come on, 
Mulder. You can sleep it off on the sofa in my room."

"Song's not over yet," he reminded her, and pulled her back 
to him.

She sighed, but didn't resist. 

The pavement was uneven, and bats swooped around the 
streetlight, chasing insects. The faint smell of urine drifted 
from behind the bar, but the moon loomed huge and yellow 
overhead, nearly full. William slept, the stars watched, and 
the jukebox inside moved on to Eric Clapton in his post-
Cream, early Dereck and the Dominos days.

Remembering that he had invited her to dance, Mulder 
stepped back and pushed her away, then twirled her back, 
putting his arm around her when she returned. He saw a 
tired smile that indicated his life was no longer in imminent 
peril.

"Have we danced before?"

"Maybe one or ten times," he admitted. 

"Was the ambience this nice?"

"This might actually be a step up. Romance is tough with a 
child, a psychic vampire on the loose, a shit-load of 
emotional baggage, and a looming apocalypse. Especially 
on an FBI budget. Do you know the amount of paperwork 
involved in requisitioning an out-of-season pie?"

"Do you know a twelfth-century Persian poem inspired this 
song? The poem's about a historical prince in love with 
another man's wife. Layla and the Madman," she informed 
him. "Layla dies and Prince Majnun goes insane before 
dying himself. In some versions, he goes insane, kills her, 
then kills himself. It's a love story."

"Not one with a happy ending."

She reminded him pragmatically, "Not every love story has 
a happy ending. That doesn't mean it isn't a great story."

He tilted his head thoughtfully, and his skull felt slightly 
too heavy for the muscles supporting it. She'd told him that 
before, but he'd learned something else from her: believing 
something didn't make it true. This time, Scully had it 
wrong. Good love stories always had happy endings.

"What, Mulder?" she wanted to know.

He kissed her, and, still swaying more or less in time to the 
music, promised, "In the end - of the day, of the world - for 
me, there's only ever gonna be you. All roads lead back to 
you." 

"You're drunk," she reminded him. 

"You're beautiful," he countered, and kept dancing. 

****

Day 4: I, for one, do not welcome our new gray-skinned 
overlords.

****

He seemed forever awake as the rest of the world slept.  
Everyone else dreamed of innocent, fanciful things, but 
Mulder watched the darkness and wrestled the sharp-
toothed, long-clawed monsters that lurked in nightmares 
and shadows. 

They'd write it on his tombstone in the near future. When 
UFO's blocked out the stars and heavens rained brimstone 
and black oil, his epitaph would be, 'I told you something 
was out there, Scully.'

In the dark motel room, she and William slept in a silent 
huddle beneath the bed covers, while Mulder sprawled on 
the sofa unceremoniously. His back and neck hurt and his 
temples pulsed warningly. His mouth tasted of soured 
brewer's yeast and three-week-dead woodland creature.

Scully had been right. He did smell like a homeless 
alcoholic.

In the public interest - and since the public footed the bill 
for a motel room he'd yet to spend a night in - he stumbled 
next door to shower and shave. He found a clean pair of 
shorts, and then a clean T-shirt with a pair of lacy black 
panties Velcro-ed to it by static cling. Mulder put the T-
shirt on and stuffed the panties in his carry-on bag. He 
made a half-hearted mental note to return them to Scully 
later.

His teeth ached when he brushed them. The middle-aged 
man in the mirror squinted back at him uncomfortably, 
flinching at the anemic bathroom light.

He looked closer, confirming that his reflection didn't have 
spikes through its wrists or hooks in its jaws. Since he 
wasn't dead, Mulder chased two Tylenol with three little 
plastic cups of water and went on with his life. 

He rewrapped his hand and found a pair of loose running 
pants. Instead of running, though, he returned to the 
neighboring motel room, ostensibly to see if Scully might 
be awake at 5:22 AM. 

To see if she might want to get coffee, discuss the case. 

To see if she might want to discuss the two of them. 

William opened his eyes and sat up as he entered. Mulder 
pointed the boy toward the bathroom to make sure he didn't 
pee in a corner or closet. Scully sat up as well, blinking at 
him and not really awake, either. She wore those cotton 
pajamas again - the ones from Disneyland so prim they 
were sexy.

"Bathroom," he told her quietly. He switched on the 
television as he passed it, turning the volume low. "I got 
him; you don't need to get up. Go back to sleep." 

She blinked and then sighed in what might have been 
resignation as she lay back down. "How do you feel?" she 
asked softly.

"Comparatively, I've felt worse. Objectively, like I'm not a 
teenager anymore."

"Fluids," she suggested. "Acetaminophen."

"I have things under control." 

He sat down on her bed to wait for William.

"Rest," she mumbled. 

His pillow and blanket lay on the sofa, but it seemed 
foolish to waste a king-sized bed and a warm Scully.

"Okay," he agreed, and curled up behind her. 

The toilet never flushed, but the mattress dipped as William 
returned. Mulder reached over to tousle the boy's hair, and 
then kissed Scully's cheek. 

If their son asked why his parents were spooned up in bed 
together, the answer would be 'important FBI business,' and 
said business would occupy them until at least 7:30 AM. 
Possibly, 8:00.

Through Scully's pajama top, Mulder traced the outer edge 
of her breast with his fingertips. He located the little lump, 
but he couldn't tell if it had grown or shrunk in four days - 
and he didn't even know if it should shrink that quickly. 

He'd realized years ago, before William began to crawl, 
that he could raise their son alone if he had to. If Scully 
didn't return. He never envisioned himself as a father - or 
felt any need to become one - but the day-to-day care 
wasn't that hard. Feed the baby, bathe the baby, protect the 
baby, and do not barter the baby to a shadowy syndicate to 
be used as a lab rat. Rinse and repeat as needed.

Fatherhood was messy and time-consuming, often 
undignified and mired in mundane details, but the same 
could be said for some of his old assignments. He'd take an 
afternoon of "Meerkat Manor" over marathon wire taps any 
day, and choose a three-hundredth bedtime rereading of 
Paul Revere over telephone background checks.

When he looked at William and saw Scully - His Scully - 
or when Mulder looked at the sky and knew what the future 
held, then it got hard.

Their son learned easily and stayed remarkably healthy. 
Teachers noticed; doctors commented. William walked 
early, talked early, even for the son of a woman who 
rewrote Einstein. Perhaps William guessed his last birthday 
gift by chance. Sometimes, he announced Mulder's 
thoughts aloud. William didn't get sick when every other 
kid in his preschool came down with strep. The boy was 
observant and intuitive, and perhaps he'd sailed through the 
first six years of his life without an earache or a sore throat 
by dumb luck. 

A little shiver of fear still ran though Mulder. He wanted 
his son to be normal. William deserved to be normal, but 
whether he was or not... Even without Scully, Mulder could 
protect William from the entire universe - or die trying to 
protect him.

He couldn't bear to lose Scully. Not again. Not now.

He could be alone. 

He could be afraid. Being afraid was better than being 
dead, but being empty wasn't. 

Even a thousand miles away, even if she wanted nothing to 
do with him, even if she didn't remember him, he needed 
her. Scully was the nightlight to his nightmare monsters, 
and he needed to know her light still burned.

Bringing his hand higher, Mulder combed his fingers 
through her long hair. The strands felt like raw silk. On the 
back of her neck, at the base of her hairline, he felt a bump 
the size of a lowercase letter O. 

"Shrapnel," she called it these days, but he'd convinced her 
to leave it alone. When they lived together, he'd check that 
tiny bump every so often: when he kissed her neck or 
rubbed her shoulders or as she slept. If the raised point was 
Braille, it would symbolize life.

When he put his hand on her waist, his thumb touched the 
snake tattoo on her back and his fingertips reached the new 
butterfly on her abdomen. Mulder wanted to know, but yet 
he didn't. He'd almost rather declare a tabula rasa and move 
on - if that was the case - and try not to think about 
anything that came before.

Because that had worked out so well for them in the past.

Scully's eyes remained closed, but her hand came up and 
covered his. Her gesture indicated that if he wanted to stay 
in bed with her, he couldn't be neurotic until dawn.

Mulder relaxed and committed himself to holding her and 
dozing to the cable news. 

William slept soundly and radiated warmth. 

The bedside clock said 5:43, then 5:59, and then 6:07, and 
each corresponded to a wonderful time to be in a 
comfortable bed.

At 6:13, he heard footsteps outside, and then a soft but 
rapid tapping on the door of the neighboring motel room.

"No," Dana said tonelessly, as if he'd just asked her the 
stupidest question imaginable. "For the love of God."

"They can't have found another body," he muttered. "They 
must have the wrong room."

After a moment of knocking, a breathless woman's voice 
started calling, "Special Agent Mulder? Special Agent 
Mulder? Are you awake, Agent Mulder?"

Dana sighed in frustration. "I'm going to start putting you 
out at dusk with the recycling."

Mulder rolled out of bed with a groan and opened Scully's 
motel room door.

Teresa Hoese stood on the next doorstep, wearing a 
bathrobe over her pajamas. Her black hair looked tousled, 
her face flushed, and her brown eyes seemed too bright and 
too wide.

"Teresa?" he said in disbelief.

"I had to see you," she whispered urgently, coming over to 
Scully's door and hovering nervously near him.

"No. Wrong," he told her immediately, regretting those 
final two beers and that those two Tylenol hadn't been extra 
strength. "No seeing me. Me is off the market."

Behind him, Dana's voice repeated, "For the love of God," 
in that same flat tone, and then muttered "Special Agent 
Romeo" as she headed to the bathroom.

"She's Dr. Nemman's daughter. Teresa Nemman Hoese," 
Mulder called over his shoulder.

Scully's lack of a response from the bathroom likely 
indicated her lack of caring.

"I saw him, Agent Mulder," Teresa insisted. "He's here. No 
one believes me, but I saw him."

"Who did you see?"

"Ray. I saw him," she said, still trying to catch her breath. 
"I got up to let the cat in, and he was there. In the yard. My 
Ray."

"Where is he now? Did he try to harm you?" Mulder asked 
her, and then called, "Scully, hurry it up in there."

"No. No, he wouldn't try to hurt me. He, he, he talked with 
me. Kissed me. I showed him pictures of Stella. He's my 
Ray, Agent Mulder. He's at the house with Stella."

Mulder gestured for Teresa to come into Scully's room, and 
then guided her into a chair and switched on the lamp 
beside the door. 

Teresa was in an anxious disarray, making too many 
unnecessary movements. She plucked at her sleeve, 
adjusted her robe, and looked around the room, her eyes 
flitting from thing to thing. When she noticed William 
sleeping, she smiled and said absently, "Your handsome 
son, Agent Mulder."

"Teresa, listen to me," Mulder said, getting her attention 
again. "Are you certain? Did Ray seem different to you in 
any way?"

"No," she said, shaking her head. "It was like no time had 
passed at all. Ray's there, and he's real, but I, I know he 
shouldn't be. I know that."

"Did you see a ship?" he tried. "Can you feel Them calling 
you?"

"No," she repeated with the same urgency. "No ship. I feel 
the same thing I always feel in Bellefleur: the forest. You 
said those weren't dead abductees in the forest. What's 
happening, Agent Mulder?"

"I don't know. You, you just stay here for a second. Stay 
with Agent Scully." Mulder could save the world while 
raising a son, but it was hard to do it shoeless and unarmed. 
"I'll be right back."

Teresa nodded obediently.

"Scully, she's staying here," he called to the bathroom.

Dana appeared dressed in a sweater and jeans, brushing her 
hair, and with an expression indicating she was just fucking 
thrilled about that. Her wrath seemed to stem from the early 
hour and the lack of caffeine, however. She appeared in 
agreement that if Teresa had intended a pre-dawn bootie 
call, it turned out to be the worst one in history.

By the time Mulder found his fleece pullover and socks, 
jumped into a pair of jeans, and located his shoes and 
holsters, a patrol car had appeared in the parking lot. Its 
lights flashed blue and red but the siren was off.

Dr. Nemman's Jeep pulled up behind the patrol car. The 
doctor got out, looking as if he also dressed hurriedly. Like 
Teresa, his body language indicated the excitement had 
been going on for some time, and Mulder had entered the 
fray late in the game.

"She's here. She's okay," Mulder assured her disheveled 
father and the deputy. "Just let me talk to her."

"You stay out of this, hot shot," Dr. Nemman yelled, loudly 
enough that two motel room windows lit up. "She's off her 
medication again and running around like a crazy woman."

Scully gave Teresa the medical once-over as Mulder 
returned to her motel room. Teresa obediently followed 
Dana's penlight with her eyes, and then told Scully the 
president and how many fingers she held up. 

William woke up and watched curiously from the bed. 

So far during Take Your Child to Work Week, their son 
had learned that Mommy and Daddy bickered a lot, held 
hands sometimes, slept together, and strange people 
showed up at their door at all hours. Mommy worked in a 
building with operating tables, no patients, and people-
sized refrigerators. Daddy read files, fell down, and had 
women kiss him against his will.

Mulder didn't bother closing the motel room door so Dr. 
Nemman wouldn't have to bother pounding on it.

"As far as I can see, she's physically okay," Scully told 
Mulder. "This is Deputy Ray Hoese who she thinks she 
saw? He was abducted from Bellefleur at the same time as 
you and Teresa Nemman and Billy Miles. Wasn't Ray 
Hoese declared dead?"

"Being declared dead can be less permanent in certain zip 
codes."

"That's ridiculous, Mulder."

"Wanna see my death certificate with your signature on it?" 
he challenged, and then returned his attention to Teresa.

"I can't leave my daughter," Teresa told him, starting to get 
upset. "I can't go with him. I can't."

"Does Ray want you to go with him?" Mulder tried gently. 
He squatted down so they were eye to eye.

"He, he wants to be with me," she answered, as if 
struggling to put it into words. "No, I don't have to go with 
him. He's not going to take me or anything."

Mulder nodded. He'd gotten the same impression each time 
he'd seen His Scully. She was a beacon for his soul, but not 
a tether or a trap. He'd felt drawn to her, but also free to go.

"When was the last time you took your pills, Teresa?" Dr. 
Nemman's voice demanded from the doorway. 

A middle-aged deputy stood behind him, looking 
embarrassed. Outside, the patrol car's lights still flashed, 
and three Portland field agents, SAC Boyle, and the motel 
owner wandered over to Scully's room in their robes and 
pajamas to investigate. 

One of the agents waved sleepily at William. William 
snaked a hand out from beneath the blankets to wave back. 

"You can't just go running off in the middle of the night," 
Dr. Nemman said, lecturing her. "You can't leave Stella."

"I take my pills. Ray is with Stella," she told her father, 
sounding childlike. 

"Ray is dead," Dr. Nemman snapped, and she started to cry. 

"Back off," Mulder suggested irritably. "You aren't helping 
your daughter right now, and you're sure as hell not helping 
me figure out what's happening. Teresa-"

"She's already told me, Agent Mulder. She woke up and her 
husband was in the front yard. There was a sweet reunion 
and he wanted to see photographs of her daughter. He's 
with Stella right now and they're playing hide and seek. 
When I wouldn't believe Teresa, she came running over 
here to tell you, so thank you for encouraging her delusion. 
How did you show Ray pictures of Stella?" he asked Teresa 
tersely. "We don't keep photos on the front porch."

"There was one on the table beside the front door," she said 
shakily. "I opened the door, reached in, and got it to show 
him. He said she was beautiful and then he wanted to see 
Stella for real."

A thought occurred to Mulder - one that made him glad 
William lay eight feet away, safe and sound. Like William, 
both of Stella's parents were abductees. He'd never checked 
Teresa Nemman's OB/GYN records to be certain, but he 
knew how a woman looked when she held a baby that 
doctors told her she'd never be able to have. "Where are 
Ray and Stella now, Teresa?" he asked slowly.

"He won't hurt her," she answered. "He would never hurt 
me or her." She took Mulder's hand as if desperate to 
anchor herself and to have someone believe her. "They're 
playing. They just have to get to know each other again."

"Agent Mulder," Dr. Nemman said flatly. "Look outside."

Mulder glanced through the doorway. Dawn had arrived. In 
the back seat of Dr. Nemman's ancient Jeep sat a girl 
wrapped in a blanket and watching through the window 
with huge brown eyes.

"I picked Stella up out of bed, sound asleep, twenty 
minutes ago, and brought her with me when Teresa ran off. 
No one was in our yard or our house tonight, and my late 
son-in-law is certainly not with his daughter as we speak. 
Teresa needs to be in the hospital," he said, for the first 
time not sounding like a pompous ass. "Honey, you need to 
be where they can help you."

"I want to see Ray!" she yelled, her face flushed and her 
fingers tight against Mulder's palm.

"Daddy?" William said uncertainly, and sat up in the bed.

"It's okay, buddy," Mulder said. He raised his bandaged 
hand in a 'calm down' gesture as Scully went to sit with 
their son.

"They will lock you up again if you don't stop this 
nonsense," her father said. "Please, honey."

"Then they'd better lock me up again, too," Mulder said 
quietly, and gave her hand a supportive squeeze.

****

After some negotiations, insults and pleading from Dr. 
Nemman, and tears from his daughter, they agreed that 
Teresa would go home. She'd take some medication that 
met with Scully's approval, and get some sleep. She'd see 
her own doctor as soon as possible, who would make the 
final decision about the mental hospital.

"If he was my father, I'd probably be psychotic, too," 
Scully muttered as soon as their motel room cleared out. 

William had been soothed back to sleep, and the sun still 
lingered near the horizon. The early news predicted a 
beautiful day, but Mulder had heard that tripe before. The 
TV weathermen never factored in the alien Armageddon or 
Hurricane Scully.

"Start talking, Agent Mulder," Dana ordered quietly, as she 
covered William with the blanket. "What's happening?"

Mulder sat in the chair and propped his feet up on the edge 
of the bed. "Once upon a time there lived a boy named 
'Fox' whose sister was taken as part of a conspiracy to resist 
humanity's enslavement by alien life-"

"I've read the files; fast forward to present day. Are you 
having the same hallucination as Teresa Hoese? Because 
that's what it sounded like you told her ten minutes ago."

"Am I seeing Ray Hoese? No."

"But you are having hallucinations. Flashbacks?" she 
guessed.

He shook his head. "They aren't flashbacks."

"What are you seeing?"

"Who do you think I'm seeing?" he asked.

"Your sister?"

He shook his head again and pointed at her.

"Me?"

He nodded.

"You're seeing me?" she repeated, then considered for a 
few seconds. "Are you seeing me in danger? Being 
abducted?"

"No. I told you, it's not a flashback."

She came to examine him, running her fingers through his 
hair to check for injuries, and then looked closely at his 
eyes. "Are you dizzy? Confused? Experiencing any other 
unusual sensations?"

"I kinda gotta pee, and I like it when you lean over and I 
can see down your sweater."

Sounding frustrated, she said, "Teresa Hoese is clearly 
disturbed, but you're just brilliant and idiosyncratic - not 
clinically insane. I know you don't need me lecturing you 
on psychology, but you're not sleeping and you're having 
nightmares. Drinking last night: that's not like you. You're 
anxious, irritable. You won't talk about anything that has to 
do with your abduction. You know what that math adds up 
to, and now you're hallucinating. Why are you being so 
casual about this?"

"Idiosyncratic. That's got to be some mad Scrabble points," 
he quipped.

Her brows met at a dangerous angle.

He exhaled and said, "I dreamed of you during your 
abduction. I told you that."

She nodded that she remembered.

"I can't compare those dreams to anything else I've 
experienced - and that's saying something. You seemed to 
know how much I needed your strength, your comfort, to 
keep going. You knew my desperation and despair in 
searching for you. You know I felt terrified trying to take 
care of William alone. In those dreams, what I needed, you 
gave, and vice versa."

He paused and waited for her to say how self-serving he 
sounded, but Scully said nothing.

"During my abduction, you dreamed of me," he continued. 
"I think the same thing happened. I couldn't bear the 
horrors happening to me, so I found a bridge in time and 
space - a dream - and my consciousness went to be with 
yours. You said you even saw me a few times when you 
were awake. When the dreams and the visions stopped, you 
said you knew I'd died. When my dreams of you stopped..." 
He hesitated, and then just said, "This isn't that different. 
Teresa Hoese needs to see Ray, and so he comes to her. 
This week, I've needed to see you."

She folded her arms and said, "The neuroscience of dreams 
is still poorly understood - how the brainstem and the 
frontal lobe interact during REM - but the lucid dreaming 
you're describing has been scientifically validated. During 
periods of extreme stress or fatigue, people can have 
benevolent hallucinations. They can sense a presence or see 
apparitions of loved ones. Deja-vu, doppelgangers, astral 
projection: all that paranormal phenomena you adore is 
merely dopaminergic activity in the mesolimbic pathway.

"How about, it's your soul comforting mine?" 

"My soul is currently in use," she informed him. "How 
about, it's a hallucination, and I want to know why you 
didn't tell anyone? They're finding bodies at abduction 
sites. At your abduction site. Even I looked at that man's 
corpse yesterday and thought of you. Something about his 
hands reminded me if yours. Your hands are always warm, 
and it bothered me that his were cold. Being in Bellefleur 
bothers me, yet you just keep shrugging and wisecracking 
while you self-destruct."

"You believe in ensoulment," he pointed out. "In the pre- 
and post-existence of the human soul: that the essence of 
who we are exists before our first breath and after our last. 
You believe in the mystical hand of God. In the power of 
prayer. You believe our son was a miracle."

"I've seen the doctor's reports-" she started to say.

"So have I. I'm not arguing our miracle, just the narrowness 
with which you want to define it at the moment. What 
makes us human, Scully? Self-aware? Different from the 
other animals? What is that spark that gives us life and 
links us to each other? Where does it come from, and where 
does it go when we die? What is that twenty-one grams?"

"First, that 'twenty-one grams' nonsense has absolutely no 
scientific validity-"

He cut her off again. "If God can touch your soul, heal your 
body, create a life, and if you can pray for my soul, why 
can't your soul reach through a wormhole in time and space 
to comfort mine?"

"Because it can't," she said, staring at him in disbelief. 
"This is what I put up with for eight years? It's like trying 
to reason with an omniscient, somewhat megalomaniacal 
fog."

He grinned at her. "Sexy, isn't it?"

"I'm thinking of a different word," she assured him. 

Her motel room phone range. The sound woke William 
again and made Scully check the clock and then say 
another one of those bad words. 

Mulder raised his hands, protesting his innocence. Unless 
the call came from The Great Beyond - or Great Britain - 
the caller was not a woman he'd been romantically 
entangled with recently. And he defined 'recently' as since 
O.J Simpson's murder trial in LA and the Branch Davidian 
fiasco in Waco.

She rolled her eyes and picked up the receiver. She listened 
a moment, and then promised, "I will tell him."

"The deputy accompanied Teresa safely home," Mulder 
supplied for her. "He checked, and there was indeed a 
framed portrait of Stella Hoese left on Dr. Nemman's front 
porch."

"Which proves what?" she wanted to know. "That she's 
telling the truth about her hallucinations?"

"That, at least to that point, Teresa was interacting with her 
reality. Her husband was on her father's porch early this 
morning, asking Teresa about their daughter. She opened 
the door and got that picture to show him."

"Or she's psychotic," Scully replied scornfully. 

"If Teresa saw a psychic vampire, he couldn't have entered 
her house uninvited," Mulder told her as he lay down 
beside William. "Vampires, ghosts, demons, witches: it's an 
ancient rule for all of them."

"Solely for the sake of argument, and overlooking the 
invalidity of this 'ancient rule' business you've apparently 
culled from Bela Lugosi movies and the Sookie Stackhouse 
novels-"

"Agent Reyes says it's the rule on Buffy the Vampire 
Slayer, too."

"If she thought she was talking to her husband, why 
couldn't Teresa Hoese have said, 'Ray, come upstairs and 
see Stella'? Wouldn't that have counted as an invitation? I 
don't see why it's significant to you that the facts supporting 
her actions - her interactions with a hallucination, I might 
add - are limited to the front porch."

"Because it's not her house," Mulder said simply, and 
earned an expression so icy it could liquefy nitrogen.

"Are you and Scully fighting?" William wanted to know.

Mulder raised his head and kissed the delicate pink curve of 
his son's ear. "No, buddy. Daddy's trying to save the world 
while Mommy's monologuing 'The Skeptic's Handbook.' 
Situation normal."

"Oh. Okay," William answered, and relaxed again. 

Mulder moved so William's head fitted neatly beneath his 
chin as they watched the pretty television newscaster 
together.

Dana stood beside the dresser with her arms crossed. 
Mulder knew she was re-supplying her mental arsenal of 
obscure scientific facts and vowel-less big words. As soon 
as she settled on a strategy, he'd get carpet-bombed with 
reason, but it would take her a moment. 

Her flummoxed expression made him grin, but experience 
made him wise enough to keep his head down. The only 
reason he had her going in circles was because he 
remembered their years as partners and she didn't. If she'd 
stop debating the paranormal with him and just hold his 
feet to the fire of science, he'd be in her arena. She'd 
combine those degrees in physics and medicine with that 
800 Verbal SAT score and linguistically kick his ass in no 
time. Then his only defense would be to ditch her or kiss 
her.

He'd tell her that, but it might be seen as treating her like a 
child.

"Paternal," he said aloud. 

"What?"

"Paternal," Mulder repeated, and then added, "The crime 
scenes: they remind me of children who were victims of 
their parents," he said. He chose his words carefully since 
William was listening. "He feels paternal."

She nodded, understanding. 

Parents who killed their own children - in a fit of rage, to 
cover up abuse, and even while psychotic - often placed the 
child's body someplace safe and covered it with a blanket, 
as if the child only slept. Sometimes they dressed the child, 
or left a stuffed animal or favorite toy. Serial killers or 
pedophiles kidnapped children and just dumped the body 
when they finished with it, but a child's corpse found 
wrapped in a warm blanket and tucked away someplace 
safe... Some little part of a parent's brain still acted on that 
instinct to protect their child, even when they'd just 
murdered it. 

"He just peacefully turned off their life," he said to himself. 
"Whatever did that - he also cared for them. He tried to 
watch over them, even to help them as best as he could."

"He didn't care enough for them to let them remain alive," 
Scully argued.

"A valid point," he agreed. "A god or a demigod would 
think of humans as their children. As would an angel. A 
genetic mutant. Any sort of superior being."

"Your benevolent psychic vampire is now also a mutant 
demigod?"

"No," he said in false disgust. "That will never fit on a tab 
in the filing cabinet. 'Preternatural fortuitousness' barely fits 
in tiny little type."

"You couldn't have labeled it 'oddly lucky'?"

"I could have. You labeled it, Scully."

He heard a frustrated sigh. 

"Are you fighting now?" William piped up.

"No, now we're bantering." Mulder rolled over and sat up, 
then gave her his most impish grin. "You want to go solve a 
case together, Agent Scully?"

"I'm no longer Agent Scully." She leaned back against the 
dresser.

"Sure you are."

"I was thinking more of driving to the airport and getting 
on a plane so our son can attend school one day this week, 
and I can do what the Bureau actually pays me to do-"

"Be head counselor at Camp Notta-A-Lotta Fun?" Mulder 
asked.

"And I would like for you to come with me," she 
continued. "You're worrying me, Mulder."

"One last time," he urged. "First time, last time, just so you 
can say you remember it. You want to keep an eye on me, 
and you have the rest of your life to teach new agents the 
Y-incision and to look everywhere for track marks."

She still had her arms crossed, but, as usual, her resolve 
started to fade like the morning mist. 

"Let's go figure out what happened to these people, and 
why their bodies are at abduction sites. Try to stop a 
benevolent, psychic, demigod vampire - or something that 
will fit better on a file tab. We might even save the world."

"Okay," she acquiesced. 

"Except the world's gotta wait while I pee," he said, and 
headed for the bathroom.

"My hero," she called after him. 

****

The marquee of the local Baptist church listed the services 
for the first Bellefleur victim at 10 AM, and the second 
victim at 4 PM. 

A few news crews gathered near the morgue, but most had 
set up shop on the sidewalk outside the sheriff's office. The 
SAC stood in front of the reporters' cameras, at the center 
of a feeding frenzy, but seemed to be holding his own as 
Mulder drove past.

No SAC or Assistant Director wanted to admit to the 
reporter's microphones that the FBI just didn't know. While 
the man in front of the cameras hedged and repeated pat 
phrases, agents got sent out to re-interview the families and 
re-check the crime scenes. Visit their homes and 
workplaces, talk to their friends and co-workers. Find a 
clue, find a connection. Records came in by the box load 
and gigabyte, and were painstakingly reviewed, line by 
line. In the deputies' headquarters, all the agents bent over 
stacks of papers or laptops, following the order to "find 
something."

Their heads popped up as Mulder entered, and six sets of 
eyes followed him. It felt heavy: the weight of those 
desperate looks. It always seemed less like a job, more like 
a personal mission when small towns started burying their 
dead.

"I just assured CNN that the FBI has our lead profiler on 
this case, along with a top forensic pathologist from 
Quantico and a team of our best hung-over, sleep-deprived, 
romantically entangled agents," SAC Boyle told Mulder 
and Scully when he returned inside, after the briefing. He 
ran his fingers through his short hair tiredly. "Is there 
anything else I can tell them? Or tell my agents?"

Oblivious to the tension in the room, William neatly 
dissected Mulder's phone from his father's pocket and 
headed for the old orange couch. Dana had filled William's 
Mickey backpack with healthy snacks and schoolwork and 
educational toys and library books. William used his 
backpack as a pillow while he played Pong on the iPhone.

"You mean like who, what, where, why and how?" Mulder 
asked.

The SAC nodded. "Yeah, something useful like that."

"Seven is the magic number," Mulder said.

"There won't be any more killings in Bellefleur? You're 
sure?"

"That might be the one thing I'm sure of." He paused, 
looked at the weary agents again, and then added, "Give me 
a few hours."

It was barely eight AM, but the desk assigned to Mulder 
had stacks of reports on it. He saw transcripts of interviews 
and information about the victims that had come in since 
yesterday. Reports on trace evidence, including fibers and 
DNA collected from the sixth victim's dog and from each 
victim. Soil from their shoes and analyses of their hair. 
There were copies of Scully's preliminary autopsy reports, 
and, a moment later, a cup of coffee courtesy of her.

Along with a second steaming Styrofoam cup and her 
laptop, she held a thick fax from Quantico. 

"Nothing, is there?" he said over his coffee cup, looking up 
at her from the old desk chair. That's what his loaner desk 
held: a big, scientific pile of nothing.

"Nothing so far," she corrected. "I'm waiting on the histo-
pathologies and multiple toxicology reports."

"Those tissue samples are going to tell you their hearts 
stopped. If they tell you why they stopped, you - Dana 
Scully - will have found evidence of God."

"I'd settle for finding a massive overdose of caffeine. A 
lethal injection of insulin into the navel. Something like 
potassium chloride. Succinylcholine," she said. "Digitalis - 
that's an easy one to put in food. Ricin toxicity; as few as 
eight castor beans can be fatal. Maybe exposure to smoke 
from burning cerbera odollam, the Indian suicide tree."

"Dr. Scully, remind me never to piss you off."

"Why?" she asked, but he couldn't tell if she was being 
sarcastic or not when she blinked those blue eyes at him.

He thumbed through the first stack of reports while 
covertly watching her review the lab results. 

As soon as they solved this case, they could go home. Go 
on. Figure out what came next and who got which shelf in 
the medicine cabinet. See if she might be agreeable to 
being one of those conventional families where everyone 
lived together and had the same last name.

He didn't think that last name thing would fly. He'd end up 
being Mr. Dr. Scully before Dana become Mrs. Special 
Agent Mulder. Those little rebellions were important to 
her: shunning big box stores, parking where her FBI permit 
let her, getting a tattoo, sleeping with men who were bad 
for her. Scully just liked to show the world occasionally 
that she was in control and she had fire beneath that cool 
exterior.

On impulse, he got up and, ten years after her initial 
request, offered the battered office chair to her. "Here. You 
have the computer; you get the desk."

"Thank you," she said easily, sitting down. "Where are you 
going to work?"

"I'll improvise." 

Mulder carried one of the VFW's metal chairs over and 
unfolded it so he sat across from her. 

"Let's see how it goes if we do it this way."

She opened her laptop, turned to check on William, and 
then took a sip from her coffee cup. "I'm almost afraid to 
ask, but how did it go when we did it some other way?"

"Remember what you said about me being remarkably 
myopic?"

"Really? That badly?"

****

Freshly shaved and wearing a suit and tie, Agent Doggett's 
face appeared on the screen of Scully's laptop. Over the 
little speakers, his voice said, "Agent Mulder, Agent 
Scully. Good morning." He grinned and added, "Just like 
old times."

Mulder expected Agent Reyes, but Doggett sat behind the 
desk in the X-files office, starched and pressed at 7:30 AM 
on the East Coast. When William was two-going-on-three, 
Mulder usually made it to work twenty minutes late, with 
jelly on his tie, and wadded tissues and something made by 
Fisher-Price in his pocket. Agent Doggett looking ready for 
a dress inspection meant another reason for Mulder to 
dislike him.

"Hello, Will," Doggett said.

William must have hoped for Agent Reyes too - or at least 
her breast - because, on Mulder's lap and without looking 
up from Mulder's phone, William waved one hand and 
mumbled, "Hello, Mr. Doggett."

"Monica wants me to tell you-" Doggett looked down at his 
notes and read stiltedly, "The ancient Sumerians and 
Babylonians spoke of the Anunnaki, which were a group of 
deities who came to Earth possessing great knowledge of 
the stars and who could fly in their aircrafts. These beings 
are described as not being truly alive, but appearing so." He 
looked up. "She's on her way to the office right now, but I 
hope that makes some kind of sense to you, Mulder."

Mulder nodded. It did. 

"Ancient astronauts," he told the webcam. "Alien beings 
that visited prehistoric Earth. Their advanced technology 
and culture is the basis for many world religions. The 
Nazca lines, the Giza pyramids, Stonehenge, Machu 
Picchu, Chichen Itza, Tikal: all have been attributed to an 
alien mother culture. Panspermia. The aliens are often 
depicted in prehistoric drawings and carvings."

Agent Doggett nodded as if he might have heard of that, 
but before he could speak, Scully informed them, "That's 
completely untrue. There's no scientific evidence to support 
any of that."

"Carl Sagan felt panspermia was possible," Mulder 
reminded her. "The Bible refers to the aliens as children of 
fallen angels. They're called 'the watchers' who rebelled 
against Heaven in the Gnostic gospels. What is Genesis 
except an account of an ancient alien being creating life in 
the void? That's the definition of panspermia. Scully, are 
you rewriting Carl Sagan and God now?"

"Yep. Just like old times," Doggett repeated.

Scully didn't answer at all.

"I'm also supposed to tell you that the-" Agent Doggett 
consulted his notes again. "The Pacific Coast Athabaskan 
language of the indigenous people of Oregon - which is 
now extinct - was related to the Uto-Aztecan language 
spoken by the Hopi tribe of Oraibi, Arizona. Agent Scully, 
this reads like something you'd write."

"Navajo is a Southern Athabaskan language," Scully said. 
"Aztec is Uto-Aztecan. Linguists have tried to trace the 
migration of indigenous peoples across the Bering Strait 
and down the Americas through the evolution and 
commonalities between their languages. There are cultures 
thousands of miles apart that speak languages with 
common roots, yet Hopi and Navajo - in close proximity - 
are highly dissimilar. The linguistic links and divergences 
can also indicate established trade routes or lost cultures. 
The Incans were said to speak a secret language different 
from the Proto-Quechua languages around them, yet 
modern linguists have no idea what that language was or 
why the Inca would have spoken it."

Mulder leaned sideways, as if retrieving something from 
the next desk. Out of view of the webcam, he mouthed at 
her, "Way hotter than Ayden J's mommies."
 
He put his arm around William and told Agent Doggett, 
"So Agent Reyes believes this could be an ancient alien - 
the basis for one of the seven Sumerian and Babylonian 
gods - that's been hop-scotching around the Americas since 
prehistoric times?"

"Agent Reyes believes a lot of things, Mulder," Doggett 
responded in the same skeptical tone Scully was so fond of. 
"I can tell you she was on the telephone most of yesterday, 
trying to get information about abductions among the 
Oraibi, and she didn't get very far. Not even talking to the 
local P.D. It was like talking to one of those UFO cults, 
which tells me they got something to hide."

"It would also have been like talking to the good people of 
Bellefleur in 1992," Mulder said, then glanced down and 
nodded in approval as William showed him the phone's 
screen. They'd instituted an 'ask before downloading' rule. 
"Medicine wheels would be common to both cultures," he 
continued. "How closely is Mayan related to the Hopi 
dialect?"

That seventh Mayan glyph kept floating to the front of 
Mulder's mind.  Seven bodies in a circle, one circle every 
year until the colonists returned in 2012 - a date that 
signaled creation and the end of the world.

"I'll ask her to check and get back with you," Doggett 
promised.

William slid down. He took the phone with him and headed 
for the front of the little building. 

"Agent Mulder believes the killer feels parental toward his 
victims," Scully told the computer screen as Mulder looked 
back at the camera. "Protective." 

"That doesn't make any sense. Parents kill in fits of rage or 
to hide abuse. When a child becomes inconvenient or the 
parent becomes psychotic," Doggett argued. "Nothing 
you've sent us suggests that's what's happening here."

"That's what I told him," her voice answered, but Mulder 
was watching William again.

His son had enlisted the longsuffering Mrs. Bahe as an 
accomplice. Mulder's phone, with the screen now 
alternating between bright white and black, sat propped up 
against a plant on the sill of the front window. William and 
the secretary conferred, and she got a candle from her desk. 
She lit it, and then helped William, very carefully, to carry 
it to the window and place it beside the flashing phone.

Mulder got up. He forgot about the video conference call 
and instead focused on William and the flickering little 
candle.

The British were coming, and a second lamp in the belfry 
burned.

William's imagination could be cause for a little concern 
when Daddy had made a few trips to the nut hut and God 
spoke to Mommy sometimes, but at least the boy was never 
bored. To William, the British ships arrived and were set 
upon by pirate patriots. Keira Knightly, Legalos, and Willy 
Wonka defended the colonies, alongside Paul Revere and 
George Washington. 

Probably because William watched it from six inches away 
and sucked up all the oxygen, the candle guttered out. Mrs. 
Bahe relit it, making sure to send the correct signal.

One if by land, two if by sea. 

Seven if by UFO.

The ships weren't coming; the ships were coming back. The 
colonists had visited the colonies plenty of times before.

Mulder rolled his left shoulder. The scar had ached on 
Monday, and on and off since February. Stephanie's sports 
medicine guy said Mulder tensed the muscles when he ran, 
and Scully said the same thing. Stretch more, relax, and put 
heat on it. Alternatively, get a different job, a different 
destiny, and be twenty-six again.

There hadn't been a twinge since he'd left the forest 
Tuesday.

Take the weight, the power, the voltage, the light - 
whatever - of seven human souls, arrange them in a 
mathematical anomaly, and then switch them off. That had 
to be a noticeable beacon. Not an invitation, though. He 
didn't know the invasion date, but he knew it was already 
set. This constituted either a 'circle the wagons' or a 'get me 
the hell out of Dodge' signal. Either way, Mulder knew 
who'd sent it.

"Mulder," Scully said from behind him, sounding annoyed.

"I'm guessin' we're done here," Agent Doggett's voice said 
slowly, over the computer speakers. "Agent Mulder?"

Mulder glanced back. Agent Doggett's computer image 
looked perplexed, and Scully had that expression she got 
when someone mentioned cold fusion or psychic surgery.

"It looks like it," she said unhappily. 

Once the web camera was off, Scully walked toward him. 
"I'm sensing you've had an epiphany. Or developed a 
seizure disorder. Is our suspect now an ancient Babylonian 
space vampire?"

"Sumerian, not Babylonian, Scully. Big difference."

She leaned against a desk and deadpanned in perfect Bill 
Murray style, "I think we'd better split up. We can do more 
damage that way."

"Way hotter than either of Ayden J's mommies," he 
repeated, and then asked, "Scully, remember when you said 
this wasn't a psychic vampire?"

"Yes," she agreed hesitantly.

"You were completely right. It's not vampirism at all."

"Thank God," she said, sounding relieved.

"It's an alien."

"Please tell me you mean 'alien' in the 'doesn't have a green 
card' sense of the word."

"An ancient alien astronaut. Or perhaps the last surviving 
clone of the original ancient alien astronaut. You don't get 
spaceships buried under a hundred feet of ice at the South 
Pole unless they were there before the great flood." Mulder 
picked up his car keys. "I'm going to go question my 
suspect."

"You're going to go what?" 

****

"Parents of the year. Is there some ceremony we attend or 
do they just mail the award to us?" Scully asked as she rode 
shotgun in Mulder's rental Taurus on the way out of lovely 
downtown Bellefleur. 

They'd left William at the sheriffs' headquarters, happily 
eating a jelly doughnut, watching for Red coats, and 
playing with fire. Mrs. Bahe volunteered to supervise him, 
and she'd already shown him the secret candy drawer in her 
desk. Thanks to Uncles Frohike and Langly, William knew 
how to watch "Stargate" in a series of five-minute clips on 
You-Tube, much to his mother's chagrin. Now Agent 
Martelli had promised to teach him how to battle with a 
double-bladed light saber like the Sith Lords, or as Martelli 
put it, "throw down old-school, Brooklyn-Jedi style."

If the aliens didn't destroy Earth, Mulder thought the next 
generation of FBI Agents might.

"The chub scout is fine. I lived on Twinkies, hot dogs, 
soda, and 'Star Trek' - and absolutely no parental 
supervision - for months at a time as a teenager," Mulder 
assured her.

"That's not a ringing endorsement."

"They let me into Oxford."

"You, twelve saints, Bill Clinton, and Hugh Grant: there's 
always the outlier," she countered, but then said seriously, 
"What are we doing, Mulder? Tell me... something. 
Convince me something rational is happening inside your 
head, because I'm considering having you committed."

"Jeremiah Smith."

It took her a moment before she recited, "The alleged 
shape-shifting healer? One of five men you believed to be 
clones working against the consortium? You think this 
killer is the demigod Michael Lee Milton of the Church of 
the 13th Sign believed himself to be?"

"Except this is the real deal. Your own reports indicate you 
witnessed Teresa Hoese's healing, and believed a Jeremiah 
Smith attempted to find and heal my body in Montana 
before he was abducted by a UFO."

"We're driving into the forest on a quest to question the real 
Ophiuchus?"

"It's likely the Ophiuchus healer legend is based on the 
original Jeremiah Smith, just as other ancient peoples tried 
to explain their contact with aliens through religion. 
Traveling to and from Heaven, Gods intermingling their 
genetics with humans, the great flood, and a select group of 
humans saved from a coming apocalypse by fire: those 
themes aren't unique to Catholic mythology, Scully."

She'd folded her arms across her chest about the time he'd 
said "through religion," and her body language became 
increasingly defensive. 

"I'm trying not to be offended, here," she insisted, though 
she didn't seem to be trying very hard.

"I'm not trying to offend you. I'm just pointing out that 
there are commonalities to most world religions, and I'm 
certainly not the first person to notice that. How did all 
those cultures, with no contact between them, develop 
similar beliefs sets?"

She raised her eyebrows. "Perhaps because those beliefs are 
based on fact. On a divine creator God."

"Exactly," he answered. "Divine creator gods in a 
spaceship. Gray gods with Black Oil and an ancient 
language and symbols, and plans to come back and 
colonize the planet one day in the very near future. To fight 
back, our government has colluded with these aliens while 
secretly kidnapping and experimenting on its citizens for 
decades. They've taken you, taken me, tampered with your 
pregnancy - trying to create a vaccine or a hybrid or a child 
immune to the alien virus."

She re-folded her arms across her chest, and a chilly silence 
descended on the car. Those little rebellions of hers - for 
the moment, one of them was not shunning Catholicism. 

He'd never understood how she could reconcile heavenly 
apparitions, but not run-of-the-mill ghosts or omens. Dana 
believed in divine incarnation, but not that an extra-
terrestrial being could assume the form of a man. When 
Mulder mentioned something paranormal, she immediately 
dismissed it as paranoia or shell-shock. She believed in 
everything except him, and what he'd spent fifteen years 
working to accomplish. She'd seen ghosts and aliens and a 
plethora of paranormal with her own eyes; Mulder couldn't 
help that she didn't remember it.

He heard an unhappy sigh from the passenger seat, 
indicating she felt an apology was in order.

"You asked me about my profile," he reminded her. "I was 
just answering your question. Yes, our suspect is an ancient 
healer, or perhaps a clone of that healer. I'm sorry if I 
sounded glib."

"No, you're not," she shot back.

It was his turn to sigh. 

They reached the outskirts of town, and he put his foot 
down on the gas pedal. The tall trees blurred past on either 
side of the road.

"To someone who doesn't understand it, science and 
advanced technology appears magical, just as what FBI 
profilers do seems like mind-reading," she said a few miles 
later. "What you can do seems doubly so, Mulder. It makes 
people feel like they're always naked before you, but it isn't 
magical. It's a brilliant mind correlating good observations 
and probability theory and sometimes a big leap of faith, 
but it's based on facts. Do you have one fact to support this 
theory of yours?"

Mulder reached across his chest and offered his bandaged 
left hand to her. "I cut it open falling on a rock and got 
blood on my slacks, but it wasn't bleeding when I came out 
of the woods. It had partially healed. The doctor had to cut 
to get the dirt out, and then put in stitches."

"The wound began to clot," she supplied.

"No, I saw what I thought was you in the forest, you 
touched me, and my hand began to heal. But then I told you 
to stop, and the healing stopped. How else do you explain 
crud being buried beneath enough skin to require a scalpel 
and four stitches?"

"The angle of the fall. A projectile can penetrate-"

"You saw the wound, Doubting Thomas," he said, 
interrupting her.

"Glib," she reminded him, then she wanted to know, "What 
do you mean you saw what you thought was me? I thought 
your soul saw mine?"

"Sometimes it is," he assured her as he drove. "I'm sure of 
that. But sometimes it's the same thing Teresa Hoese saw. 
It's an ancient alien creature that cares for and wants to heal 
humans, but it doesn't quite understand us. Jeremiah Smith 
is immortal; that's how his mind works. If I accidentally 
killed William's class hamster, why wouldn't I replace it 
without him knowing? I'm his father, I don't want him to be 
upset, and he'd never know the difference. That's all 
Smith's doing. He's trying to help."

"He's trying to help by killing fourteen people?" she 
demanded.

"Well, I don't know that he's killing them permanently - but 
yes: what I saw in the forest is the same creature that turned 
off our victim's lives. Created a mathematical anomaly. 
Sent a signal."

"Mulder, you're acting insane."

"No, really I'm not," he assured her. "I've let people drill 
holes in my skull and shoot me full of hallucinogens. I've 
slept with an honest-to-goodness vampire. I've been on a 
ship captured by Nazis in 1939, done couples counseling 
with the ghosts of Christmas past, and once accidentally 
had a female genie wipe out the entire population of the 
planet for a few minutes. Accidentally," he repeated for 
emphasis. "Trust me, this is not me acting insane."

"I want you to stop the car," she insisted. "Stop the car and 
listen to me. This is PTSD. You're hallucinating. This is 
exactly what Deputy Director Skinner and Monica worried 
would happen if you came back here. The Deputy Director 
didn't want to send you, but there was no one else."

He didn't stop the car, but he lightened his foot so the 
speedometer dropped to a more reasonable speed.

"There's no mythical alien in the forest," she continued. 
"Perhaps there's a serial killer mimicking one and using 
some toxin I haven't yet found, but that's all it is. If you 
want to go back to the place where you were abducted, then 
we'll go. I'll go with you. But all you're going to find is a 
clearing. You're not going to find some ancient healer and 
you're not going to find me. You didn't see my soul in the 
forest. I am right here. The same relentlessness you had 
with finding your sister, now it's with finding me. Her. 
Your old partner. Except I am your old partner."

He swallowed before he asked, "Is that why you came to 
Oregon with me? Because Skinner told you to?"

Special Agent Mulder, please report to the Department of 
Wishful Thinking in the land of Let's Pretend. Agent Scully 
will be waiting.

"No one told me to. I came to Oregon with you because 
innocent people are dying here-"

"Innocent people are dying everywhere," he snapped at her. 
"I have a backlog of monsters. I have psychotics and 
psychopaths and pedophiles and a guy on Rhode Island 
who preserves dead preschoolers' bodies and then has tea 
with them every day at four."

"Mulder-" she started soothingly.

"What? This is my job, and you've never volunteered to 
come along before. The first question of profiling is always 
why here, why now? What is it you want?"

"I want you to pull over and stop the car," she repeated. "I 
want you to listen to me."

"I am listening to you. So I'm to understand this is charity 
work, Saint Scully, rather than official FBI business?"

"What are you talking about?"

Mulder felt his stomach tightening and his face getting hot. 
"My money was on you coming back to Bellefleur to try to 
remember. Those daddy issues are like my father's blue 
chip stocks: always a good bet. But you're right; sometimes 
I am way off the mark."

She stared at him with her mouth open.

"Everything? All of it?" he wanted to know. "From the 
moment Skinner called me at Disney? Everything?"

"Everything what?"

"You. Me. Here. Last night. The night before that. The 
night before that - sex like that deserves a page in the 
history books. Were you just making it better?"

"Of course I'm trying to make it better, Mulder," she said, 
her voice getting loud. "I came with you because innocent 
people are dying, and because being here is like going back 
to the mouth of Hell for you. That's what you told me last 
night. You never talk about your abduction. I don't know if 
you think I'm too fragile or I won't understand or you just 
can't talk about it, but... You weren't the only one who 
came back to a child and a life you didn't anticipate. You 
told me years ago that you wanted me to have the time to 
heal that you didn't get. You gave me that time, but I can 
see your scars, Mulder. I've heard you have nightmares. 
You still have them. In February, at my apartment, and this 
week: you're still having nightmares."

"How does that justify you inviting me back into your bed? 
Now or in February? How does that add up?" he yelled 
back. "I have never been dishonest with you, and when it 
comes to us, that's all you've ever been with me. You want 
facts? Here's a fact: friends do not fuck it better."

He teetered close to an adolescent "you said you loved me" 
tirade, so he gritted his teeth and kept his mouth shut. If 
he'd known the sex was on the barter system, she could 
have skipped the dancing and the pillow talk about love and 
another baby - and he could have skipped making sure she 
came.

His knuckles looked blotchy-white on the steering wheel 
and he felt her eyes boring into him.

"You think that's what I'm doing?" she said finally, coolly.

"That's what you just said you were doing," he answered 
tightly.

"Is that easier for you to believe than it being real? You're 
going to make sure you push me away before I can hurt you 
or leave you?"

"Do not play head games with the head spook of the 
spooky services unit," he warned. "You think you feel 
naked before me now? I know you better than you know 
you."

"So that's a 'yes'?" she asked, and he refused to answer her.

****

The drive to the forest had seemed shorter with Agents 
Smithson and Martelli flirting. Even with Skinner 
grumping in the passenger seat seven years ago, it hadn't 
seemed like that long a trip. As Mulder silently tried not to 
throttle the love of his life, the distance from downtown 
Bellefleur to the mouth of Hell seemed to distort the space-
time continuum.

He parked at the trail head, got out of the car, slammed the 
door, and started down the familiar path without checking 
whether she was following him or not. As pissed off as he 
was - and as she was - Mulder knew she'd be behind him. 
He knew her, and he knew she wouldn't let him go alone. 

He walked quickly enough that she had to trot to keep up, 
just to show he didn't need her. 

When he thought of what she'd said about him leaving 
people before they could leave him, he slowed down a 
little. Not enough to be a comfortable pace for her, but 
enough that he didn't leave her a hundred yards behind.

He felt it as he neared the clearing: the pull of the forest. He 
felt a little part of all things at once. The sensation flowed 
through him and around him like a living, breathing thing, 
as vivid as it was frightening.

He wanted to ask Dana if she felt it, but he wasn't speaking 
to her. How charitable of her, he repeated to himself, 
though he knew she didn't remember that awful first time 
they had sex, and therefore didn't know why he was so 
angry. 

"Yes, I want to have another child," she announced out of 
the blue.

That brought Mulder to a halt at the edge of the clearing. In 
a movie soundtrack, a Mahler symphony would have 
played with dum-da-dum-dum kettle drums followed by 
frantic violins.

Birds didn't even chirp.

"You what?" he said, turning back to stare at her.

The forest behind her was cool and shadowy, and it became 
surreally still.

"I want to have another child," she repeated as she caught 
her breath. Her face had flushed, and her hair curled in the 
damp woods. She looked tousled and ethereally imperfect, 
and, as furious as he felt, she still made his breath catch in 
his throat.

"Then why didn't you just say that?" he demanded.

"No, Mulder. I told you there are no ova. I'll have to use 
donor ova and do in vitro. That's about thirty-thousand 
dollars for the ova, plus ten thousand or more for every IVF 
attempt."

"You've checked this out?" She sounded like she'd checked 
it out if she could quote the price list to him.

"I'm a medical doctor. Don't forget, I'm not twenty-eight 
anymore, either; the success rate plummets as women age. 
We're talking about hundreds of thousands of dollars, and I, 
I, I can't do that."

Still restless, he ran his fingers through his hair, and then 
shrugged. He had Bill Mulder's blood money, and aside 
from funding William's education and iTunes budget, 
Mulder didn't know what else he planned to do with it.

"I told you I don't care about the cost, but if we're going to 
have another baby, I, I want to get married. Live together. 
Something. I just... You said we were good together; I think 
we still are good together." He stopped, realizing how 
practical and ineloquent and hopelessly unromantic he 
sounded. "In case that message got missed in the bathroom 
counter melee the other night."

She took his hand. Her palm felt warm and moist and small 
against his, but something he couldn't put a finger on felt 
wrong. 

"Mulder, I do want a child. For me. I love Will, and I want 
another child like him. Your intellect, your passion, your 
courage. I want you to donate, but..." 

She looked away, focusing on a random tree instead of him. 

"But you want me to do it anonymously," he finished for 
her. 

Scully studied the tree and nodded.

In his imaginary soundtrack, the violins worked themselves 
into a frenzy again.

Mulder's stomach started to quake. "You want me to pay 
for you to conceive a child that I would watch you raise and 
that I would have no right to?" he asked slowly, trying to 
keep his voice from breaking. Most things sounded less 
awful out loud, but that sounded worse.

"You'd always be there as my friend, and if we needed 
you," she said quickly. "You're Will's father."

"I'd be this baby's father, too." He let go of her hand and 
shook his head. "God, Scully - I don't know if I can do 
that."

"You can," she urged. "Mulder, don't say 'no.'"

He put his hands on his hips. "What am I supposed to tell 
this child? Or William? I take one kid to watch the World 
Series, and not the other? One child goes to visit my aunts 
in Boston, but not the other? That's despicable. What if 
something would happen to you again? Have you thought 
about that? I could back-peddle on establishing paternity 
with William, but I can't do that with in vitro. Not in your 
scenario. And I know it's selfish, but I don't want to watch 
you on that roller coaster every month. It's horrible. Every 
time it doesn't work, it's horrible, and there's never a damn 
thing I can do about it."

She opened her mouth, but he cut her off before she could 
speak.

"Don't promise me it won't be like that, because you don't 
remember what it was like. I wanted to just buy you a baby 
from China or Russia and get you to stop those doctor's 
appointments," he told her. 

"Mulder-" was all she had time to say as he paused for 
breath.

"I can't promise someone won't try to tamper with this 
pregnancy, too," he continued, his words tumbling like 
storm clouds. "I want to think I stopped their work, but I 
don't have any proof. I can't promise I'll be able to keep you 
safe. If this child turns out to be their messiah, I can't 
promise to keep it safe, either - not and remain Mr. Hand's 
Off Anonymous. You aren't my partner anymore, you aren't 
my lover anymore, but if I'm protecting your hypothetical 
child with my life, then obviously your child is my child. 
The super-soldiers are going to realize that. They're 
invincible; they're not stupid. But if I do nothing to protect 
you and Little Hypothetical... Scully, baby, this is a terrible 
idea."

"Mulder, don't say 'no.'"

"What are you thinking?" he wanted to know. "If you want-
" He started to tell her to pick some other guy, but decided 
he didn't like that scenario either. "God, Scully," he 
repeated, glancing up at the cloudless blue sky above them. 
"Are you sure that's what you want? You and I might 
qualify as a romantic Superfund site, but I think we do 
pretty well together with William."

"Of course I want my child to know who his or her father 
is. Eventually. Once she's old enough to understand. Not on 
paper, but if she would ever need a kidney or bone 
marrow..."

She still looked up at him with those hopeful blue eyes, but 
a little bullshit detector, precisely calibrated after a decade 
and a half, began to chime in the depths of his brain.

"How about a college fund while I'm at it?" he offered 
sarcastically.

"Or that." Then, realizing the jig was up, her demeanor 
changed and she told him, "My final in vitro attempt - I 
paid for it in cash, according to the clinic's records. I'd 
borrowed from my retirement savings and paid for the 
previous IVF attempts by check, but the final one... There 
was one more frozen embryo, and I paid the clinic in cash. 
Yet, when I checked my old bank records, I didn't 
withdraw that much cash from anywhere."

"Maybe the in vitro fairy donated it."

"I think it came from you," she said. "Untraceably, I bet. 
After watching me on that roller coaster for months, using 
your genetics to try to conceive a child you didn't want. 
You paid for me to try one last time, even when I'm sure I 
told you implanting a single embryo in a woman my age, 
with the technology at that time, was almost certainly 
futile."

"So Dana, you're thinking of transferring to the FBI's 
forensic accounting department?" he quipped. "So what? It 
was a long time ago, and God only knows what that doctor 
actually did - if he did anything at all. Do you have a point, 
or is the point still just 'screw with Mulder'?"

"If I wanted a child - and I'm not saying I don't want 
another child with you, Mulder - but if I wanted one with 
the ludicrous constraints I just set forth, you'd agree." 

He started to protest that he wouldn't have, but stopped as 
she took his bandaged hand again. He'd have been lying, 
anyway. 

Jesus Christ, there should be some sort of charity telethon 
for people as screwed up as they were. Like "We are the 
World" but for romantically entangled, middle-aged alien 
abductee, former partners.

"Some of the things I've read about you doing for me, I 
can't fathom," she continued. "Going to Antarctica to 
rescue me after I was stung by a viral bee? I still think that's 
a typo. Our files are about alien abductions and demons and 
genetic mutants and things that defy scientific explanation. 
But you paying for me to try IVF one last time, even when 
it was the last thing you wanted back then? That's the man I 
know. That's the man I woke up to. You'd walk through fire 
for me, so don't think there's anything I wouldn't do for 
you."

He considered that for a few seconds. "Including going to 
bed with me if I'm having a bad day?"

"Mulder... I'm a grown woman. It might lack definition and 
long-term planning, but don't suggest I'm not acting of my 
own volition. When I say I love you, don't dismiss it as me 
not knowing what I'm talking about or who I'm loving."

"That would be treating you like a child."

She tapped her nose with her forefinger. 

"Let's go back to Bellefleur, Mulder. Get Will. Let you get 
some sleep while I make airline reservations. There's 
nothing else we can offer to this investigation, and there's 
nothing in this forest. I want to look at your hand again. I'm 
wondering if you have a low-grade fever, and that's 
affecting your judgment. When we get home, I want you to 
talk with the bureau psychiatrist. Really talk to him, not just 
B.S. him. I think it will help. Will you do that?"

"Scully," he said as something moved in his peripheral 
vision. 

He turned his head, watching it.

"What?" she said, still holding his hand.

"I want you to meet my sister. Will you do that?"

"Your sister's dead."

"That would be what I find unusual about this situation, as 
well," he agreed as he turned.

A young woman with long, dark hair stood on the other 
side of the clearing, her clothing and uncomfortable 
demeanor similar to Teresa Hoese's. Everything else about 
her seemed to flinch, but her face glowed as if she'd waited 
years to see him and he finally found her.

Instead of his heart leaping, his molars clinched. 

"You aren't helping us," Mulder told it. "I know you've 
seen us taken and tortured - even killed - but pretending to 
be the people we've loved and lost - that doesn't help us 
heal or make us feel better. It holds us back. Humans need 
to grieve, to move on."

Scully looked back and forth between Mulder and the 
shape-shifter. He'd shown her photographs of Samantha, 
but as a little girl; she would have no idea what Sam might 
look like as an adult.

The shape-shifter's smile dimmed a little. "Fox, you have to 
help me," it said in his sister's voice.

"I'll help you, but I'm not going to let you kill innocent 
people. They have families, friends. Even if you resurrect 
them, you can't replace the time they've missed. The lives 
you give back to them, they're nightmarish. Humans aren't 
supposed to come back from the dead. This isn't a 
victimless crime, and you cannot play God."

"I want to go home, Fox."

"Then you're going to have to find some other way to send 
a signal. You need an intersection of ley lines and I know 
where those are. You need a site where an ancient 
civilization once existed, and I know where those are. If I 
don't stop you now, when you show up next May, we're 
going to be there waiting for you."

"Where will I be next year?"

"Kansas," he guessed. "Chichen Itza? Stonehenge? It 
doesn't matter. The FBI will have all the bases covered, and 
as soon as your first victim shows up, we'll loose the dogs."

The shape-shifter smiled, and it wasn't Sam's smile. 

A wet chill trickled down Mulder's spine. Every Jeremiah 
Smith he'd ever seen was completely convincing as the 
person it impersonated. The movements, the facial 
expressions, even the texture of the hair and scent of the 
skin: they were all perfect.

He had seen another creature that could shape-shift and 
tended to be less precise. He'd also encountered 
unstoppable killing machines that looked like the people 
they used to be. Those machines had come for Scully and 
Her Baby before.

Please don't let her be pregnant, if I die, was his first 
thought.

His second thought was, Please let it be the bounty hunter, 
and not a super-soldier who used to be Sam. 
After this long battling with monsters, Mulder took his little 
victories where he could get them.

He felt the same odd sense of calm that he had that night 
six years ago, at the Omega Center. A switch flicked from 
'rational human' to 'no more,' and he'd rather die than let 
this monster take him. Or take Scully again. Or take 
William. Or one more human being.

He was so tired of being afraid of what lay behind the stars.

"Dana, get out of here," he said in a low voice as he un-
holstered his service weapon and handed it back to her. 

He felt the weight of the SIG leave his hand as she took it. 

"Mulder, what are you doing?" she asked with trepidation. 

"Get to William. Keep him safe," he ordered. "Call Skinner 
and tell him what I told you, even the parts you think are 
crazy. He'll know what to do." 

He bent down, getting the Walther pistol out of his ankle 
holster without taking his eyes off the shape-shifter. 

"I'm not leaving the clearing, so if anything comes after 
you, it's not me," he continued. "My plan is that he isn't 
leaving either, but in case that doesn't work out... No matter 
who it looks like, shoot it in the back of the neck and get 
away. Don't miss. Now run," he said. 

He knew Scully thought PTSD or a death wish had kicked 
in; he almost heard her mind racing. Actually, dying was 
the thing he wanted least to do at that moment. He felt 
tired, and he wanted to go home. To live. Earn a woman's 
soft hands and strong love. Have another baby, maybe, or 
at least have fun trying. Have a beer after their son's 
baseball game. See how things turned out on "Battlestar 
Galactica," run that race to raise money for breast cancer 
research, and try to save the world. He felt the life force 
flowing in the clearing, and he just wanted to be part of it.

When Dana didn't move, he barked at her, "Run!"

"Mulder, whoever she is, I have her."

"It isn't a 'her,' Scully," he insisted, keeping his pistol 
trained on the alien. "If he's a bounty hunter, I can't kill him 
from this angle; I can only wound him. If he's a super-
soldier, I can't do more than slow him down. If he wanted 
me to bring you to an abduction site or to him, I've just 
done it. Now run!"

He heard her take a step back, then two, but then she 
stopped. 

"Run!" he yelled at her again. "Get to a phone and call 
Skinner."

"Lower your weapon," Dana yelled back. "She's unarmed. 
Mulder lower you weapon and hand it back to me. Listen to 
me! Your judgment is impaired. Don't do this!"

The creature's face changed, morphing from Samantha 
Mulder into Melissa Scully.

"Dana," it had time to say in Melissa's voice, before Mulder 
took two rapid steps forward and fired three shots into the 
base of its throat. He hoped to get lucky and get a bullet to 
go all the way through.

The peppery smell of gunpowder assaulted his mouth and 
nose. He heard Scully screaming at him, pleading for him 
to stop shooting. 

Bounty hunter, he thought, relieved as it started to bleed 
green. A bounty hunter he could slow down enough for 
Scully to get away, and she'd treated him for exposure to its 
toxic blood before. He just hoped she'd written down the 
miracle recipe.

The creature's face changed again, and this time it 
impersonated Scully. His Scully, from when he'd danced 
with her in the Mystic Pizza Hut and kissed her on New 
Years Eve and told her they had all the time in the world. 

He put another few bullets into its throat before it could 
speak. He believed in freedom of expression - it could be 
anyone else it wanted, but it couldn't be his Scully.

His eyes and lungs burned, and he squinted, trying to see. 
Mulder felt strong hands grab the front of his shirt. He was 
weightless, like he had been when the ship took him years 
ago, and then God just turned off his life.

****