From: Anjou <anjou@rocketmail.com>
Date: Sat, 18 Sep 1999 09:39:09 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: Angel
Source: direct

Angel
by Anjou


Title:  Angel
Author:  Anjou  (Anjou@rocketmail.com)
Posting Date: September 1999

Rating:  NC-17 for sexual situations  
Classification:  MSR, Angst, X, AU
Keywords:  None
Archive: Gossamer, Ephemeral, Xemplary; Others please do ask
Spoilers:  slots into the US6 timeline post-One Son, assumes a
general level of knowledge of all preceding action. 
Summary: Immediately after dramatically changing their relationship,
Mulder and Scully are called to attend to a case in California. Third
in a series. "Speechless" is story one, "Perfect" is story two. 
"Angel" begins the same morning as "Perfect." 
Disclaimer:  All X-Files personnel belong to 1013 and Fox.  

Thanks to Miss Moe.
 
As ever, I wrote this story for my sister Suzanne. 

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ 

  Fox Mulder watched his partner's back as she moved through the
airport terminal ahead of him toward baggage claim.  He could have
easily matched her stride through the busy corridor, but felt no urge
to do so, preferring to trail a bit behind her to admire the curve of
her body sheathed in her navy pantsuit.  He was better acquainted
with those curves today than he had been yesterday, a fact that he
was having trouble reconciling with a professional attitude.

  Yesterday, it would have seemed normal for him to walk at her side
or just behind her, the palm of his right hand pressed into the small
of her back, long fingers curling slightly over the rise of her hip
and the indentation of her waist as she moved. It was a part of her
body he had always loved, a voluptuous reminder of her femininity. 
He had always thought of that particular curve as being his.  

  The feel of her white flesh there was burning in his memory now,
but as much as he wanted to put his hand just there and reacquaint
himself with its appealing shape, he was restraining himself. 
Actions that he would have given no thought to last week could have
different consequences associated with them now.  In this new world,
only a few hours old, Mulder was not sure how he was supposed to
behave.  

  Scully, it seemed, was not having the same sort of struggles.  He
regarded her smooth, unruffled exterior as she strode briskly to keep
pace with their Assistant Director, Walter Skinner, who had
accompanied them on this trip.  She moved precisely, efficiently,
through the foot traffic of the airport terminal, none of her
movements or actions betraying the enormous changes that had taken
place between them scant hours before.    

  Very early this morning, he had spanned her waist with his two
hands, his fingertips brushing against each other framing her flesh,
as he had fallen asleep briefly but deeply.  That had been Mulder's
last sensory image before he faded from consciousness; the impossible
smallness of her inside his hands contrasting with the strong sound
of her heart beating beneath his ear as her fingers smoothed his hair
back from his brow.  Words had long since fled him, but as the
exhaustion had overtaken him, he had turned his face to kiss her
breast, acknowledging that she held him in her heart.  

  He had been so sure as he had fallen asleep, sure of what they
were to each other.  Sure of what he was to her.  It was not perfect,
the way he had wanted it to be when they finally came together, but
it would be enough. 

  He had gone to her to explain.  He had gone to her because he
could not allow everything that they had built together to crumble
under the weight of unacknowledged emotions. They had become so
estranged that he had begun to believe that all that they were, all
that he had believed they would become to each other, was being
destroyed.  His only choice was to try and speak the truth for once,
to just lay everything out at her feet.  He had never expected that
they would end the night as lovers, had not planned farther ahead
than the things he would tell her.  But as their conversation had
spun out in the quiet room, he had felt the ennui and despair of the
last few weeks dissipating and he had been compelled to move closer
to her.  After the stony quiet of the past month, she beckoned him
merely by listening to him and he had been compelled to cross the
room to where she sat, fire bright, drawn to be near her.  It could
be perfect, for once.  Just to be near her, to be joined with her
would be an acknowledgment of what they truly were to each other.

  But as he had fallen asleep, the feeling of completion he had, the
feeling of belonging, was overwhelming.  Bliss was never a component
of the life he had lived; contentment an ideal he had never sought. 
He had been given a brief taste of both of these things and
surrendered to the call of sleep, dreaming of more.  

  And awakened alone.  Shortly before the phone had rung, he had
felt himself rising to consciousness, lacking the lullaby of Scully's
heartbeat below his ear.  In the new light of morning, he had found
her standing by the window, arms folded across her chest.  Her
expression, such as it was, had been unreadable to him, and the cold
finger of dread laid itself against his spine as he watched her,
feigning sleep.  Was that one time, that fleeting taste of
perfection, all he was to receive?

  Mulder's feet moved him mechanically to where she stood now, the
focus of all his thoughts, the focus of his life, 3,000 miles from
where they had started this day.  3,000 miles spent in the company of
their unwanted chaperone.  Their cross-country trip had passed in
virtual silence, broken only by the polite necessities involved in
passing files across the aisle where Scully sat next to the imposing
bulk of their supervisor.  Now, Mulder watched Scully listening to
Skinner, her face virtually expressionless in the mid-morning light
of LAX.   

  "There you are, Mulder."  Her voice sounded husky from lack of
sleep.  

  The sunlight shone directly into her eyes and Mulder's breath
caught in his throat at the flash of colour from underneath her
lashes as she looked up at him.  Her lips were still slightly swollen
from their kisses.  As he watched them moving, her face in the
artificially enhanced light of day doubled with its own softer image
from the fainter light this morning.  In his mind's eye, she arched
up against him, her cheeks flushed, the blue of her sensuously lidded
eyes gleaming at him as she rose to meet his kiss.  He closed his own
eyes momentarily as the shock of memory knifed into him poignantly,
not so much sensation as the realization of the intimacy of that one
moment, rippling like a living thing under his skin.  

  "Mulder?"  He opened his eyes.  Scully's lips weren't moving.

  "Mulder."  Skinner's voice sounded irritated.  Mulder shook his
head, trying to clear it, then scrubbed at his forehead, effectively
blocking Scully from his view.

  "Sorry, Sir," he apologized, not looking at Scully.  "I'm a little
out of it this morning."

  "So I noticed," Skinner said tersely.  "I understand that this is
not the kind of case that you want to be awakened on a Saturday
morning to attend to, but I think we all three of us know the
importance of what's happening here."  He paused significantly,
looking from Mulder to Scully.  Now Scully's eyes were fixed on
Mulder, her attention to the conversation fragmented.  He sighed.  At
least he had Mulder's attention this time.  "My question for you,
Mulder, for both of you," he said pointedly, trying to catch Scully's
eye, "is why are these burnings still happening after El Rico?"

  Mulder was shaking his head and shrugging his shoulders before
Skinner had finished.  "We never understood why they were happening
at all, Sir.  Our suppositions in this matter were just that, purely
speculative."  He rubbed the back of his neck unconsciously, then
glanced over at Scully in apology.  She quirked an eyebrow at him and
he turned his attention back to Skinner.  "According to Krycek,
there's a resistance of some sort going on to the colonising force
that the Consortium was collaborating with.  From Agent Scully's," he
hesitated, making a vaguely dismissive gesture with his hand, as
Scully's eyebrow rose higher, "recollections, of which you are aware,
there is some evidence to support that idea, but..." he trailed off.

  "We have no hard evidence as to whether any of those men I saw on
the bridge at the dam where human or not," Scully said firmly, with
an emphasis on the action of the sentence.  "If we ascertain that
this event is the same as the others, as opposed to some kind of
millennial cult activity, perhaps our next concern should be trying
to predict where the next one of these events is going occur."  

  Skinner shrugged elaborately.  "Any idea of how we do that, Agent 
Scully?"

  Scully hesitated, dropping her eyes to the ground.  She tucked a
piece of auburn hair behind her ear, buying time while she considered
Skinner's question.  Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Mulder
swallow again and looked up.  She tracked the movement of the line of
his throat, trying to recall the exact difference between the smooth
texture of his skin there and the rough line of his jaw.  She
suppressed a shiver at the memory of his face pressed against her
breast as he fell asleep, sated and becalmed after they had made
love.

  She could feel the tension in his body, the way he wanted to lean
into her, but was restraining himself.  He seemed distant to her, a
little dazed from last night.  Perhaps he had surprised himself as
much as he had her.  She longed for him to touch her again, to cut
through the nervous energy emanating from both of them.  If they
could just touch, they would both calm down.   But that would not
happen, at least not in front of Skinner.  She would have to wait
until far later, after what would surely be an arduous day until they
could finally be alone.  

  She tried to stifle the frustration that arose with that
realization and focused herself to marshal a response to Skinner's
almost forgotten question.  "I don't have a strategy as yet, but I do
have questions.  These callings, if that's what they are, seem to me
to be unassociated with what happened at El Rico a few weeks ago. 
The others that we have been made aware of all seem to revolve around
abductees.  That was not the case in El Rico, where the burning seems
to have been directed specifically at members of the Consortium.  The
question becomes this: if the Consortium is defeated, burned, why is
it necessary to keep calling those of us who have implants to
immolate us?"

  Skinner winced for the second time in the conversation since
Krycek's name had been mentioned and cursed himself for a fool.  Both
of his agents had seemed distracted and quiet, a fact that he had
decided was part and parcel of their recently strained working
relationship.  Reality was always far more complex than the black and
white world in which Walter Skinner would like to live.  Whatever was
going on between Mulder and Scully right now, a mass burning so close
to the events of El Rico would only serve to heighten Mulder's
paranoia about losing his partner and Scully's fears of loss of
control before losing her life.  The latter was a fear he could
empathize with far more cogently than he wanted. He sighed.  "I was
hoping that you could shed some light on that, Agents," he said
aloud.

 Mulder and Scully shared a long look.  Neither of their expressions
were happy or hopeful. Skinner had the impression that they weren't
hiding information from him, but were as yet unsure of what they
could say. He turned away from them as the luggage began to spiral
out into the terminal area on its conveyor belt. He noticed men he
assumed were local Bureau approaching them from across the crowded 
terminal. 

  "One more thing, Agents," he started, turning back to where Mulder
and Scully were still staring at each other.  Their eyes fell away
from each other sharply as he spoke to them.  Scully's normal colour
seemed a little heightened to Skinner.  "Our level of knowledge about
previous similar events is on a strictly need to know basis while we
are here.  As far as the Los Angeles agents are concerned, we are
here investigating a probable mass suicide with cult implications,
possibly a serial situation.  Do I make myself clear?"  This last was
directed at Mulder.  

  "Crystal," Mulder snapped back.  He didn't even question the
order.

  Skinner was puzzled as to the exact nature of what was going on
between Mulder and Scully but as long as they were focused on the
case, he would not seek an explanation.  Skinner was not a man to
contemplate  the relationship between his agents.  He knew that
theirs was deep and inextricably intertwined, however damaged it may
have been by recent events.  From what he understood of the
Consortium's plans for colonization, however, they didn't have time
for Mulder and Scully to heal their relationship.  He didn't have
time.  He scanned the room again carefully, looking for the hidden
form of Alex Krycek lurking nearby.  It had been weeks since he had
been infected with the nanites and Krycek had yet to contact him and
make a request.  Instead of reassuring him, Krycek's continued
absence had made Skinner more and more tense.  Walter Skinner was not
a patient man.

  "Assistant Director Skinner?" The voice was professional and calm,
with a hint of authority.  Was there a note of challenge as well? 
Skinner turned around.

  "Yes," he answered tersely, surveying the man in front of him.

  "SAC Gerard," he said, extending a hand.  Gerard appeared to be in
his early forties.  He was tall, having perhaps an inch or two on
Mulder's height.  Unlike Mulder's, Gerard's carriage was impeccable.
His blond hair was greying at the temples and in the forelock, his
face strong, handsome and aquiline in appearance.  His eyes were an
uncompromising slate grey.  

  Mulder had waited in silent misery as the three agents approached
them.  He had taken an instinctive dislike to Gerard, a man who
radiated a kind of arrogance that he associated with the moneyed
peers of his youth.  There was something odd about him that Mulder
could not put his finger on, although he did not dwell on it.

  He was conscious of Scully's form next to his, of the current that
ran between the two of them, sparking still.  Couldn't she feel it? 
Would she just be able to ignore it?  He sighed softly.  This would
not have been an easy case in the best of circumstances and today? 
Today he was feeling a little fragile.  He observed Gerard as the
introductions were made, watched his eyes and the eyes of the other
agents take a walk over Scully's form when they thought she wasn't
looking.  He felt his spine tightening in anger and he drew himself
up to his full height, while he looked, hard, at the younger agents. 
They both stepped back from their senior agent as they caught a
glimpse of his expression.  

  Mulder turned his gaze back to Gerard who was talking to Scully. 
He wasn't paying attention to the words as much as the scene before
him.  Gerard had stepped into Scully's space, making her look up at
him.  Resolute as ever, Scully did not step back, did not give any
ground.  Gerard was leaning into Scully, his expression one of charm,
the face of a man used to getting what he wanted from women.  Mulder
felt the sting of nails in his palm and realized that he had curled
his right hand into a fist, clenching on itself.  He concentrated on
making his face as impassive as Scully's as she spoke to Gerard, the
curve of her mouth not moving from its set shape as she exchanged a
few inconsequential words with this man.  She glanced at Mulder after
a second, and Mulder realized that she had introduced him to the SAC.
 
  Scully watched as Gerard's eyes flickered coolly over Mulder,
carefully noting the Armani suit and then glancing down to assess the
quality of Mulder's shoes.  Gerard extended a hand efficiently, but
with a dismissive air attached to the customary masculine greeting. 
She stifled the sigh that arose in her chest.  She was so damned
tired of the men in the FBI and their continual posturing, their need
to diminish Mulder's accomplishments and intellect.  Today was not
the day to push Mulder's buttons.  He seemed a little too unsure of
himself in light of the rapidly changed landscape of their
relationship.  This disturbed her more than she liked to admit, even
within the privacy of her own mind.  How could he have been so sure
of himself last night and so uneasy today?  She watched Mulder as
Gerard's predatory gaze moved back to her.  His jaw was set in anger,
his eyes a flat, muddied green.  He was rigid with tension, although
he would not appear that way to anyone but her.  What was going on? 
She began to review the things that he had said to her last night,
looking for clues to his frame of mind.  She frowned to herself
although her expression did not change.  

  "We're curious as to why this mass suicide is getting so much
attention from the Washington office." Gerard was addressing Skinner,
although he was mainly looking at Scully.  He had not spoken to
Mulder at all.

  "Oh, really?"  Skinner queried.  There definitely was challenge in
Gerard's tone.  Skinner did not like the way he looked at Scully or
the way he had blatantly ignored Mulder.  Glass could have been cut
against the set of Skinner's jaw as he bit off his next words
precisely.  "I wasn't aware that I had to satisfy the curiousity of
the local SAC, Agent Gerard, but if you have information about this
case, I'd be happy to take your report now."  The two agents who had
accompanied Gerard into the terminal shifted uneasily. 

  Gerard ceased his examination of Scully to look directly at Walter
Skinner for the first time.  Gerard stared at him for a second, then
smiled thinly, his jaw muscles stretching into the appropriate form
of sociability.  There was no meaning behind the gesture.  The smile
did not reach his eyes and both Mulder and Scully silently noted that
Gerard had no laughlines at eye or mouth. 

  A small snort of surprise left Mulder's mouth, although only
Scully heard it.  Mulder wondered if Gerard ever truly laughed or
smiled, since the expression looked so painfully false and odd. 
Perhaps his frown lines would be more revelatory.

  For her part, Scully was faintly revolted.  She found purely
cosmetic plastic surgery distasteful in general, particularly so when
men utilized it.  She knew this was sexist of her, but so be it. 
Vanity was not an attractive trait and she generally found it to be
indicative of a central kind of shallowness.   

  Skinner's eyes were locked on Gerard's in silent confrontation,
his expression severe, mouth turned down at the corners.  He did not
return Gerard's smile.  The only thing he noticed was the
insincerity.  His mind did a rapid and primal calculus.  'Foe,' he
decided.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ 

  Mulder watched Dana Scully steering the Crown Victoria up the
steep roadway that led to the meadow where the immolation had
occurred. Her red hair was shining in the bright late afternoon
sunlight, the illumination sparking threads of gold to gleam as it
filtered through.  She was ineffably beautiful in a way that she
ignored, challenging observers to see her mind rather than her form. 
She steered their behemoth of a vehicle with the ease borne of years
of boating experience, seemingly unaware of the stunning contrast
between the ungainly box and its petite pilot.

  It was unusual to see Scully behind the wheel with the A.D. in the
back seat, but Skinner had made a point of giving her the keys after
Gerard had said there was room for one more in his car.  He had been
openly staring at Scully while making this dubious offer.  The part
of Mulder's mind that was the investigator had wondered
dispassionately if Gerard was truly interested in Scully, or trying
to see what buttons he could push and get a response.  The
investigator suspected the latter.  Gerard didn't seem like the kind
of man who was truly interested in anything other than his mirror and
his ambition.  Although, the investigator was having a hard time
convincing the man that was also Mulder of this fact.  That man, the
primal man, had devised several painful methods of disabusing Gerard
of any idea of touching Scully.  Ever.  Lucky for Gerard that he had
enough sense of protocol to keep his hands off Scully, even as he had
continued to crowd her.

  Just then, Mulder noticed Scully strain a little to see over the
hood of the car as they began to head off the roadway.  He would not
smile.  Unbidden, the image of an older neighbor of his mother's in
Connecticut rose to his mind.  Mr. DiCara had owned a green grocery
that had become a very successful supermarket chain.  He had retired
a very wealthy man -- a very wealthy, very tiny man, who always drove
an enormous Cadillac or Delta 98, whichever was the biggest model
available that year.  He used to peer through the spokes of the
steering wheel as he drove, craning to see over the dashboard and the
enormous hood encasing the engine.  

  He would not smile.  

  Mulder looked away from his partner as she began to pull down the
rutted secondary roadway.  It was more difficult to steer here,
because of the number of abandoned cars parked on the thin ribbon of
dirt that passed for a thoroughfare.  They were in the foothills of
the National Forest above Santa Barbara, a couple of hours outside of
Los Angeles.  Normally, it would have been a beautiful locale, the
kind of place Mulder could imagine that he and Scully would spend a
day visiting if they were on a vacation together.  He amused himself
by trying to decide if Scully would willingly camp outside if they
were not on a case that required it.  Anything to avoid the thought
of the gruesome reality that awaited them up ahead.   

  "Jesus Christ," Skinner said quietly, but with feeling, from the
backseat.  Mulder caught the flickering grimace that crossed Scully's
face at Skinner's pronouncement.  It vanished as he continued
speaking in his Marine's bark.  "Is this what Gerard was referring to
when he said they had a few plates to run?"  Skinner gestured at the
dozens of abandoned vehicles that surrounded them.  The way ahead was
rapidly becoming impassable.  "We better just back up, park and walk
from here."

  Scully nodded, while Mulder remained silent in the front seat next
to her.  She caught a glimpse of his expression as she turned around
to steer their car into a less congested area.  Mulder's face had
lost the bemused look that it had held for the past few minutes and
had settled into a carefully neutral mask that she recognized.  He
was steeling himself to walk out of the car into the blackened field
that surely awaited them ahead.  Although they could not yet see it,
the sickly sweet smell of burned flesh and charred green living
things full of sap was seeping into the car despite the air
conditioning.  She shuddered, remembrance of one too many similar
scenes assailing her.

  Mulder's eyes shifted to her, although his head did not move. 
Almost involuntarily, his hand slid across the leather silently
toward her then stopped.  Scully knew that he understood what she was
thinking about.  Although she was grateful to know that at least part
of him had responded to that, she needed more.  His elegant hand lay
there on the seat, inches away from her right thigh.  She could
almost feel the gentle press of it, palm down, fingers extended
around her leg. She sighed in frustration.  She felt a little
desperate for his touch right now.  She was focusing on the tension
between the two of them when she should be focused on the case. 
Sometime between LAX and here she had realized that the last time he
had touched her had been this morning when he had kissed her goodbye.
 The tension inside her had risen to unbearable levels since then,
making her question whether or not what she had taken as a simple
kiss goodbye was something more permanent.  She was overcome with an
urge to kiss him right now, however inappropriate the circumstance,
just to reassure herself that he was not withdrawing from her, that
last night had not been a dream.  Skinner was looking at her with a
frown in his brow, facing him as she was at the moment.

  "Everything all right, Agent Scully?" he asked, tone mildly
curious.

  "Fine, sir," she answered quietly, watching where she was settling
the car near a tree.  Mulder moved his hand away from her before she
turned back around on the bench seat, the current that ran between
their bodies when they were close together dissipating as he turned
away from her.  She put the car into park and cut the engine.  "Here
we are."  Silence greeted her.  "I've got eucalyptus in the trunk,"
she said to the car in general.  "I think we're going to need it."  

  "I see Gerard up ahead," Skinner announced.  He opened his door
and began to stride in that direction.  

  Scully paused for a moment before opening her door, turning
briefly to where Mulder had been sitting.  His back was turned toward
her as he opened the car door and stepped out without so much as a
backward glance.  Her hand, which had been extended toward him, hung
in the open air for a few seconds before she turned mutely to her own
door.  Mulder was standing in the road ahead of her, waiting for her,
she supposed.  His hands were on his hips and he was arching
backwards slightly, working the kinks out after their ride.  She
wanted to call to him, to say something, but she didn't know what. 
She busied herself at the trunk, finding the eucalyptus amidst other
forensic essentials in the evidence kit that she always had on hand. 
Mulder appeared at Scully's side silently.  She felt his gaze on her
in the resonant silence.  'Touch me,' she thought.    

  "Scully?" he said, quietly.  The question hung there in the air,
the question mark nearly visible.  "Are you ready?"  

  She turned her head to the left and up to look at him.  The green
of the woods reflected in his eyes, now the colour of leaves in the
afternoon sun light.  For once, Scully gave him the truth in her
answer, an acknowledgment of the change in their circumstances. 
"No," she said, just as solemnly. "I don't want to be here."  

  She could see how startled he was by her honest declaration.  His
eyes widened as he searched hers for the meaning behind the words. 
Slowly, his mouth relaxed.  He nodded at her.  He was pleased that
she had told him the truth.  She felt a twinge of pain as she
realized that he had had no expectation that she would answer him
honestly.  She looked down at her hands holding the bag, feeling
slightly ashamed.  His right hand came down and took the bag away
from her as he closed the trunk.  They stepped away from the car and
she heard him transfer the bag from his right to his left hand just
an instant before she felt the press of his hand against the small of
her back.  Her step faltered for a second as she closed her eyes. 
She fought the sudden swell of tears that rose up in her body at the
familiar, but so longed for, sensation.  She stepped forward and his
hand moved with her, curving a bit over her right hip, his thumb
lying along her waist.  The heat of his skin seeped through the
material right into her bones.   For the first time since she had
risen from their bed this morning and left Mulder alone to sleep, she
felt warm.  

  As they drew abreast of Skinner and Gerard, Mulder's hand drifted
silently away from her body.  She noted that Gerard had noticed their
interaction and she stared at him, willing her eyes to be as cold and
unwelcoming as the Antarctic drifts she and Mulder had blundered
across last summer.  Whatever commentary Gerard might have made went
unsaid.

  The walk up to the meadow was silent.  The dark winter overcoats
of the East Coast agents, ballooning in the breeze, presented a sharp
contrast to the mildness of the California afternoon.

  Mulder counted sixty-seven vehicles on this wooded roadway,
ranging from luxury cars to sport utility vehicles to what he and his
friends used to call shitboxes.  The Consortium, it seemed, did not
use socioeconomic criteria as a selection prerequisite for their
experimental subjects.  Not for the first time, he wondered what the
determining factor was.  It defied reason that it was simply random,
didn't it?  

  The field around them was alive with activity, the grisly
cataloguing of the dead.  Snatches of conversation reached his ears
as he passed by pockets of agents and federal forestry officials,
leaving Skinner and Scully to the niceties of greetings and
introductions.  He was involved, assessing the scene of the crime. 
To any outside observer, Mulder would appear to be intent, focused,
effectively blocking out any and all external stimuli as he moved
through the crime scene.  In actuality, the workings of his mind were
far more complex and elegant.  He was operating in a state of
hyper-awareness, one that noted the play of light through the trees,
the absence of any noise from animals in the woods, the rough
whistling-in-the-graveyard humour of a man working ten feet away from
where he stood now.  His eyes were registering burn patterns, body
positions on the ground and distances between them.

  The brain is a computer, a tool eminently capable of making
infinite inferences based on data presented to it, a fact that Mulder
had understood from early childhood.  Attention to detail was
necessary, but no detail should be overlooked.  As in all
investigations, Mulder opened his mind to all the available
information as he stalked the crime scene, his wool coat flapping
around his long legs.  

  When his sensory survey had been completed in all possible
directions, Mulder's cataloguing of the crime scene began on a
different level.  The medical examiners and the crime scene officers
had been told that they were not allowed to move any body from any
position until the signal was given by Skinner.  Mulder's arrival on
the scene and his solitary technique had caused any number of curious
stares and comments, but as he had moved farther and farther away
from where crime scene photos were being taken and measurements
recorded, they had died down.  He was an oddity perhaps, but he
didn't seem to be enough of one to maintain their attention.  This
was fine with him and would make it easier for him to move onto his
next stage of data collection.

  He began with the bodies of the victims farthest away from the
entrance to the meadow, consciously willing himself not to smell the
high, thin, sickening scent of the charred flesh below him.  He
crouched over the first two bodies, which appeared to be children. 
He blinked sharply, steeling himself, as his hands rummaged in the
capacious pockets of his overcoat.  With one hand he withdrew latex
gloves, snapping them on as efficiently as Scully did in her autopsy
bay.  With the other he palmed a heavy object, his body blocking his
actions from Gerard's long-distance gaze.  Mulder was sure that
Gerard was unaware he realized he was being watched.  He utilized his
natural grace to cover his movements.

  A large tweezer came out of his pocket next, then an array of
evidence bags which he had no intention of using.  While his right
hand made a good show of this flurry of activity, his left hand crept
silently closer to the middle of the neck of the first victim.  Only
Scully would have noted the consternation and dread in his eyes as he
waited silently for a reaction, but she was giving explicit
instructions to the Medical Examiner's staff on body retrieval half a
field away.  His left hand repeated its early motion in a vain
attempt to provoke a different result, but the exercise yielded the
same response.

  There was no pull from the metal that should have been there to
the powerful magnet in Fox Mulder's hand.  

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ 


  Several hours later, Scully entered her motel room, aware of
Mulder's brooding presence in the room next to hers.  He had been
largely silent since their foray into the meadow and determinedly so
throughout a strained dinner with Gerard and the Los Angeles Section
Chief.  His manner had been excruciatingly polite, unusually so for
him.  It was hard to remember sometimes that Mulder's training in the
social niceties of the world had been more extensive and formal than
her own.  His irreverence for such forms was so pronounced that it
was a shock when he utilized them to his own advantage.  He had been
reserved, but charming, when called upon for conversation at their
meal.  Only Scully, and perhaps Skinner, were aware of the underlying
sarcasm in his simple words.  

  They had not really had much of chance to talk about the case, but
Scully knew her partner well enough to know that he was not ready to
do so.  She plopped her suitcase on the bed, moving mechanically
through the rote activities of unpacking.  

  Skinner's room was also next to hers, but unlike Mulder's, had no
connecting door to her own.  She unlocked their connecting door and
waited for Mulder to do the same on his side.  She could sense his
hesitation.  His insecurity about where their relationship was going
after last night was almost palpable.  She had seen him bristle at
Gerard's obvious if not utterly insincere admiration of her although
he had said nothing.  In some ways, she was almost irritated with
him.  Did he think that she would have made love with him after all
these years if it meant nothing?  Did he think that she didn't
remember the things that he had said to her early this morning?  Or
did he just not know how much he meant to her?  These thought
filtered through her mind as she hung her clothes in the too small
motel closet.  She had told him that she loved him.  She had become
his lover. It was time to make him remember that.  It was time to
make him believe. Behind her, she heard the small sound of Mulder
unlocking the door.

  Scully knew she could not heal the wounds of Mulder's childhood or
how the fundament of his understanding of human relationships had
been undermined, but she had to make him believe that she could be
counted upon.  Had they only had more time this morning, before they
had been pulled from their bed, she was sure that this awkwardness
wouldn't have occurred.  

  Or maybe she was just being overly optimistic.  Of all the cases
for them to have been called on, a mass burning, a calling of the
'chosen' had to be the first one to mark this new phase of their
relationship.  Mulder's face had closed in on itself when she had
relayed the message  from Skinner.  He had known it was a case, known
that was why Skinner had called on a Saturday morning at 6:00 a.m.,
but he had been unprepared for the type of case it was.

  Scully had been watching him sleep, standing by the window of her
room.  She had needed to process what had just happened. When he had
shifted in his heavy slumber, she had slipped out of the bed, first
resuming his position in the armchair, then turning to the brightness
of the evolving day, examining the feelings overwhelming her.  It
surprised and saddened Dana Scully to know that it had been so long
since she had been happy that the feeling was not only alien to her,
but also damn near unrecognizable.  

  She was not naive enough to assume that this change in their
relationship would solve all of the problems between them.  They were
now, and had always been, two very different people.  It was their
union that made them strong and Scully wanted to believe that this
new aspect of it would make them even stronger.  Mulder needed to
know that.  Mulder needed to know that she needed him to be strong.  
She finished unpacking the few personal items she had brought with
her, taking the time to make sure that her small jewelry pouch was
securely inside the bottom of a faux shaving cream can.  Any of their
enemies would have easily found it, but the contents were of no
significance to anyone but her.  She kicked her shoes off in the
direction of the closet, then crossed the room barefoot to the
connecting door.  

  Mulder's room was fairly quiet.  The TV set droned softly from its
position opposite the door.  Mulder was sitting on the side of the
bed, his own shoes haphazardly cast aside.  His jacket was draped
over a nearby chair, his tie loosened, but he was hunched over, head
in his hands, elbows braced on knees.  His was hardly the posture of
a man who had gotten his fondest wish the night before.  Scully
picked up the remote control from the nightstand and clicked off the
TV set.  Mulder had said nothing to her, although he was certainly
aware of her presence in front of him.  He started in surprise when
she pulled his collar away from the nape of his neck and pressed a
soft kiss on the skin there.  His hands came to her waist as he sat
up straight, blinking at her in the lamplight.  Scully pressed
herself lightly against the length of his torso, looping her arms
around his neck familiarly and smiling at him.  Mulder looked
stunned.

  "What are you doing, Scully?" he whispered.  He was not at all
displeased, although he wondered momentarily if he had fallen asleep.

  She did not answer, but smoothed the hair back off of his brow,
settling herself against the right side of his body, more leaning on
him than sitting on his lap.  She turned his face toward her.  She
regarded him for a moment, her blue eyes filled with warmth.  Her
fingers caressed his jaw, then moved to circle the small mole on his
right cheek.  She placed a kiss on the worry lines creasing his brow,
then rolled her cheeks one after another against his warm forehead,
the house of the mind she loved so well.  She used her nose to trace
the sockets of his eyes, stopping to kiss the laugh lines that she
saw far too infrequently, promising herself that would no longer
remain true.  

  Mulder made a small sound in his throat as she traced the bridge
of his nose with her own, her touch light and soothing.  Her
movements were slow and hypnotic as she moved down to his mouth,
where she hovered, waiting until he opened his eyes, so close to her
own.  

  Her voice was quiet in the silence of their room when she finally
answered his question.  "I don't like to be interrupted."  She kissed
the curving flesh of his mouth, focusing her attention on the soft
promontory of his lower lip.  Her small, warm hands were rubbing
through his hair, stroking his scalp as she moved away from his
seeking mouth.  She traced his right cheekbone with her nose,
following the arch and downward line to his ear.  Her breath tickled
the tiny hairs inside of it as she traced the ridge of cartilage with
her lips.  Her hands drifted from his scalp to his neck, pausing at
his tie.  As she removed it, she kissed the flesh behind his earlobe.

  "Did I interrupt you?"  Mulder asked, his voice deepening as his
breath caught.  No one had ever touched him like this.  The sweetness
of it, the tactile reality, brought tears to his eyes.  His hands
were trembling where he pressed them into the declivity of her waist,
as he waited, suspended, for her next kiss, her next caress.

  Scully was kissing her way along the underside of his jaw line,
unbuttoning his shirt as she did so.  She moved down the column of
his throat, outlining the crevasse between his windpipe and the cords
of muscle that his pulse ran along with her nose and mouth.  She
could feel the tremors in his body as she answered her own question
from this morning, remembering the place on his skin where his beard
ended near his Adam's Apple.  She ran her nose back up to the line of
his jaw, kissing him softly along the way.  "No," she murmured,
returning to his mouth to kiss him again before turning his head to
the other side.  She moved to lean against the left side of his body,
pressing her breasts against his shoulder.  Mulder's hands tightened
on her waist, his thumbs looping around to trace half-circles on the
front of her body.  He moaned a little, a low sound from deep in his
chest that she could feel resonating inside herself.  His hands
smoothed up her back, pulling her closer.  "Skinner did."

  She gave the left side of his face and his neck the same unhurried
treatment as Mulder sat there, still except for the trembling rise
and fall of his chest against her.  His shirt hung unbuttoned now. 
Scully ran her hands up his neck into the hair on the back of his
head as she kissed him lightly, then again, then waited.  Mulder
opened his eyes, wondering why she was stopping.

  Scully ran her fingers over his face, outlining his brows and his
eyes this time, kissing first one then the other.  Her blue eyes were
focused on each part of his face that she was touching.  She traced
his nose again with her own, and then hovered over his mouth, lightly
outlining his lips with her fingers, drawing the tension between them
tight.  "Do you know," she began to say huskily, stopping to kiss him
lightly on the subtle notch that ran between his nose and his upper
lip. "Do you know how much I wanted to do this all day long?"  She
leaned up against him more fully and kissed him deeply, parting his
lips.  Her lips were warm and lush, just like he remembered, just
like he had dreamt. 

  Mulder slid his arms around Scully's back and pulled her against
him, returning the kiss with gentle passion.  His hands moved up to
capture her head as he followed her tongue back into her mouth,
sweetly dancing.  He loved kissing her.  He could kiss her forever. 

  Scully moved up onto the bed with him, straddling his hips and
pressing herself down onto him.  Mulder gasped at the contact,
suddenly realizing where they were.  He broke their kiss off,
startled.  "Scully...Skinner is in the next room." His whisper was
urgent.  He was trapping her hips in his hands, trying to keep her
from moving against him by sheer force.

  Scully arched an eyebrow at him in puzzlement.  She ran her hands
over his t-shirt, anticipating the smooth skin of his shoulders. 
"He's two rooms away, Mulder," she said firmly, but in a hushed
voice.  "He clearly said that he would see us in the morning.  I
don't think we have to worry about him bursting through the door." 
Mulder's hands were still clenching her hips.  His eyes were dazed,
but she could see the cascading thoughts behind them, even if she
couldn't read them.  Her brows resolved themselves into a frown.  She
moved her breasts away from his chest, pulling back to look at him as
an unwelcome thought occurred to her.  "Don't you want me?"  She
withdrew from him physically as she spoke, her face mirroring her
fear.

  Mulder started into motion at her words and the expression on her
face.  He released her hips as his arms followed her retreating form
and he pushed himself up and into her in answer.  This time it was
she who trembled in response.  He crossed his arms behind her back
possessively.  He kissed her softly, then more deeply when she moved
back towards him.  "Always, Scully."  Mulder was whispering against
her lips, reddened by their kisses.  "I've always wanted you."  

  Scully kissed him again, then made a frustrated noise when he
broke the kiss. "Then what is going on?" she asked.  

  Mulder went absolutely still underneath her, wondering what he
could say.  'I'm afraid,' ran through his mind over and over, but he
could not say the words, could not frame his fear.  "I just..." he
began to say, then trailed off as Scully kissed his neck, moving back
toward her thwarted seduction.  "I just never pictured this happening
here."  His hands motioned around behind her to the motel room with
its cheap and impersonal furnishings.

  Scully snorted softly in amusement against his throat, pulling
back to look at him in disbelief.  "You never imagined us making love
in a motel room, Mulder?"  Her eyebrows expressed more poignantly
what her voice didn't.  

  Mulder smiled at her sheepishly, then hid his face in the crook of
her neck momentarily.  "I can't say I didn't imagine it, Scully." 
His hands were roving under the back of her jacket, feeling the warm
muscle and skin beneath the silk. "I just never thought that when it
was real, that we would be here."  There was so much more to say, but
Mulder couldn't bring himself to articulate anything else.     

  Scully sat back a little and raised his head up to hers, looking
deeply into his eyes.  They were a solemn blue and silver tonight,
with flecks of green and gold shining in their depths.  "Mulder," she
said, her tone surprised and touched by his admission, "before last
night, I never would have imagined that you were such a romantic." 
There was no teasing in her tone, just warmth.  

  He smiled, shrugging under her hands, relaxing a little more
despite the embarrassment he felt.  She really had no idea just how
true that statement was.  The small smile that she gave him in answer
to his own made him sigh with happiness.  Did she have any notion of
just how lovely she was?  He stared at her, trying to remember if he
had told her so, and she began to blush.  She shifted a little in his
grasp, her movements clamping his eyes shut at the friction.  He
dropped his head to rest at the base of her neck in an attempt to
control himself.

  Scully rubbed her face against the smooth ends of Mulder's haircut
as she whispered to him.  "There's nothing sordid about this, Mulder.
 I don't need roses and champagne and candlelight.  Oh..." He kissed
her clavicles one after the other, then pressed his tongue into the
notch of her throat beneath her cross.  "I just need you," she
breathed, her voice caught in rough sweetness.  His mouth traveled up
the span of her neck and she caught a glimpse of green and blue
before he kissed her, bending her backwards with the force of his
response to her admission.  When the kiss ended, they sat with
foreheads pressed together, breasts rising and falling against each
other.  "I just need you," she whispered against his mouth, pushing
the dress shirt down off his shoulders.  Her hands slipped under his
T-shirt, pushing the cotton up and away.

  He could not resist her.  Her hands smoothed over his skin and he
was suddenly jealous of them and their freedom.  He had to let go of
his firm grasp on her to undress her, stopping to place his mouth and
hands on the skin he uncovered, trying to hold her as close as
possible to him.  But he could not get her close enough, could not
get near enough to her.  When he stood to remove his pants, Scully
shut the bedside lamp off as she discarded her remaining clothes.  He
bent down to kiss her in the near dark, noting the slice of yellowed
light falling on the floor from Scully's erstwhile room and the
moonlight streaming in through the half-closed drapes.  Lit by silver
and gold, they began to merge into each other.  He sat down on the
bed so he could kiss her with ease.  

  Scully reached behind Mulder to pile the pillows from the bed
against the headboard.  "Move back," she said on a sigh, as Mulder's
hands covered her breasts.  She climbed up onto the bed after him,
registering his sharp intake of breath as she straddled him.  His
hands returned to caress the skin of her hips as his head lolled back
against the pillows.

  He watched her with drugged languor from under half-open lids as
she pressed herself into his lap, the heat and hardness of him
burning against her.  The reality of sensation was too sharp for it,
but he felt as if he were dreaming as he watched and felt her moving
over him.  

  "Kiss me," she murmured, rubbing the warm skin of his chest under
her hands, feeling his heartbeat quicken.  She loved the feel of his
taut thigh muscles under her and his stomach muscles in front of her
as he quaked below her.  He lifted his head and kissed her, his hands
sliding up her back to her shoulders then down her arms as they broke
apart again.

  She rose and his hands slid down to rest lightly over hers as she
grasped his aching flesh and positioned him to enter her body.  He
could not help the shiver that ran through his frame as she moved
down and over him.  His hands returned to curl over her hips.  Her
eyes never left his as she drew him into herself determinedly, as if
she wished to absorb him into her very pores.  She sighed, a low,
pleased sound as they connected, and his heartbeat quickened with her
exhale.  Her hands came up to rest on either side of his face as she
settled herself around him and she stroked her fingers across his
lips gently.  "Kiss me," she said, starting to move ever so slightly,
and he did, his hands sliding up her body to capture her head,
enjoying the unusual sensation of being able to look her directly in
the eye.

  "Scully," he breathed, rocking up and into her.  He raised his
knees to get better leverage, surrounding her as she surrounded him
with her body.  "Scully..." His eyes were locked onto hers, the
moonlight sparking the white light like stars in the deep blue of her
iris.  He watched her as they rocked together, their bodies seeking
one another, surging and retreating.  This was beyond simple
pleasure, although the feel of her around him, the feel of her hands
on his body, his hands on her sweet skin was pleasure defined.  He
felt simple and clear.  He felt complete.  He did not want it to end.
 He kissed her throat as she arched away from him, his hands keeping
her from roaming too far from him.  "I love you," he whispered and
her movements intensified around him, her eyes ablaze with light. 
She kissed him hard, then broke away a bit, holding his head in her
hands, keeping their foreheads together as they pressed in and out. 
"Scully, I love you," he said, louder, feeling the wave beginning to
break for him as her body pulled on him, her strong muscles grasping
him, seeming to want to pull him even deeper inside of her.  "Oh,
Scully, Scully."

  He was repeating her name over and over again as they wound down,
the aftershocks rippling through them both.  He was kissing her face,
her neck, her ears, as she leaned back against his upraised legs,
feeling boneless.  His hands had never stopped moving on her skin,
painting her, smoothing her with their touch, stroking her where they
were joined and he did not stop now.  His strong arms pulled her
forward against him, holding her there.  "I love you," he whispered
again.  She smiled against his chest, feeling the quiet bubble of
laughter that rose up inside him when he felt it.  

  "I love you," she said, leaning back and moving her hips slightly.
 His hands immediately slid down her body to still them, his pelvis
tipping up to keep him inside of her, softly pulsing as yet.

  "Don't," he said urgently, and Scully caught the echo of the
unsaid end of that sentence: 'leave me.'  She looked at him and saw
the edge of desperation that he tried to cover.  She ran her hands
over his shoulders soothingly.  He sighed and his fingers came up to
trace the roundness of the top of her breast where it was pushed up
against his chest.  He was still holding her tight.   

  "We'll start to stick together soon, Mulder," she said, her voice
husky and low in the quiet of the room.  He kissed her jawbone just
behind her left ear.

  "That's fine by me," he said, half-seriously, continuing to kiss
her neck and her shoulders.  

  "But kind of difficult to explain to Skinner, don't you think?"
she rejoined.

  He sat up straighter, holding her hips still and looking her in
the eye.  "All right, new rule."

  "New rule?" she said, incredulously.  "You're making up a rule?"

  "Yes," he said resolutely.  He kissed her chin.  "Yes, I am.  Rule
No. 1: We do not talk about Walter Skinner in bed."

  She laughed at him, the sound intimate and low so close to his
ear.  Her breasts were brushing against him as they bounced with her
chuckling and he shivered with pleasure.  He searched his memory, but
this was a new occurrence in his life.  He smiled at her as she
continued to giggle.  

  "Or Kersh, for that matter."  Scully stopped laughing for a
minute.

  "I don't see why we ever have to mention Kersh again," she said
mock seriously. He tried to kiss her laughing mouth, but got mostly
teeth.

  "So be it," Mulder said, kissing her neck to seal the bargain.  He
brought his knees up a little further behind her back, carefully not
disengaging himself from her.  

  This time it was Scully that shivered from the friction.  "How
exactly are you doing that?" she asked him, wiggling a little, while
he yelped and stayed her hips.

  "Mind over matter, Agent Scully, mind over matter." His tone had
that smug, teasing edge that she so often found annoying, but more
often found challenging.  She couldn't resist.  She bore down on him
with her internal muscles, giving him a strong squeeze as he kissed
her neck again.  He shuddered and bit her neck without menace.  "I'm
old, you know.  You might give me a heart attack doing that."  Scully
pulled back a little in his arms to see his face.

  "A heart attack is not what I had in mind to give you, Agent
Mulder."  She kissed him, slipping just the tip of her tongue into
his mouth.  

  He laughed as she drew away from him, "Well, patience is not only
a virtue, it's a necessity in this case." He was looking at her
archly, talking against her lips, little kisses and puffs of air
peppering them as he did so. "Can your gift keep?"

 She laughed into his kisses, then answered him in the same fashion,
"I believe it could be characterized as the gift that keeps on
giving." It was very difficult to kiss him when he kept smiling that
way. She stopped kissing him to smile at him, her arms around his
neck, her body pressed against his long torso. "It's nice to see 
you happy." 

  He stopped laughing.  "Me?" he said.  

  "You," she answered. "You're not a very happy person."

  He snorted in disbelief.  "I'm not a happy person?"  His hands
were running up and down her back slowly.

  "Is there an echo in here?" Scully rejoined.  Their noses were
resting against each other.  She shivered as Mulder's hands stroked
over her lower back.  She could feel him stirring in her body as his
desire reawakened.  He kissed her more deeply this time, his
fingertips drawing patterns on the skin near her tattoo.

  When the kiss ended, Mulder's voice was rough with longing near
her ear.  "Pot," he said softly, "meet kettle."  She snorted with
unladylike abandon.

  "I'm not unhappy, Mulder," she said, as he began to kiss his way
from her ear down her neck.  He harrumphed against her skin, then
moved her chin up with his nose, kissing the soft, sensitive, flesh
that lay hidden there.  "Really..." she insisted, then stopped
speaking as he slid his open mouth down over her esophagus, kissing
her at the base of her throat.  Her breath whistled out of her.

  Her breasts were rising and falling rapidly now with the ascending
beat of her pulse.  Mulder could feel it against his mouth as he
kissed her throat, in the pounding of her heart as he covered her
breast with his hand, inside of her body where he lay waiting still,
only slightly dislodged from her by their increasing ardor. 
"Really?" he said to her, as he bent his head forward, straining a
little to kiss her breast.  

   "Really." Scully emphasized, unsure of what he was truly asking
her.

  He drew back and looked at her, his cat's eyes glowing at her
mysteriously in the reflected gleam of the light from the other room.

  She was drawn to place her hands on either side of his solemn
countenance, reassuring herself and him of the truth of her
statement.  

   "But are you happy, Scully?" he asked quietly, after a minute. 
He drew her close against him, stroking up and down her spine
soothingly with his fingertips.  He was no longer smiling, had not
been for some time.

  "Why would you ask me that Mulder?" she responded.  

  He hesitated, unsure as to how he should answer the question.  He
traced the flesh of her breasts pressed between them, bending down to
kiss her just above her heart again.

  Scully watched him wrestling with whatever was disturbing him and
made a decision.  "All right, Mulder, Rule #2."

  His head snapped up.  "You're making a rule?"  

  "I am," she answered.  "Are you ready?"

  His eyes were worried as he regarded her.  He knew this was not a
silly rule, although he had been serious about the Skinner rule.  "I
don't know."  He dropped his gaze from hers.

  "Rule No. 2: We always tell the whole truth in bed."  She lifted
his chin up to look him in the eye, but he avoided the directness of
her gaze.  He laid his head atop the pillows regarding her from under
his lids with a guarded expression.  "Tell me why, Mulder."  He was
still, the muscles in his abdomen and thighs stretched tight beneath
her, frozen in some kind of agitation she did not understand. 
"Please," she whispered.  

  He closed his eyes against her plea, but spoke anyway, his
response rapping out through clenched teeth.  "Why did you get out of
bed, Scully?"

  "What?" she asked, not comprehending.

  His eyes snapped open.  "This morning," he said clearly, and she
saw that there was anger there, after all.  "I woke up and you were
out of the bed, staring out the window.  You didn't look happy,
Scully."

  She couldn't help herself.  She smiled at him.  

  Mulder felt trapped suddenly in the light of her smile.  Cold and
bitter remembrance washed over him, scenes of professions and
confessions to lovers past that had been twisted back on him and
used.  Weakness exposed through truth, the irony of his life's desire
used to cripple him, as ever.  He hadn't expected that from Scully. 
He felt the lump building in his throat.

  "If you only knew how ironic that statement was, Mulder."  Her
voice was rueful. She looped her arms around his head and began
playing with the hair at the nape of his neck, thinking about how to
phrase this.  Her head dropped down so that she could avoid his 
intense, searching scrutiny.

  "Scully," he said warningly, "tell me what you're talking about."

  She shook her head absently.  "I'm not as good with words as you
are Mulder."  She lowered her head a little more and her forehead
bumped against his chin.  "I'm not as good with emotions as you are,
I think."  Her voice was soft and he had to strain to hear it.  "When
you came over last night, you really surprised me, you know."  She
looked up at him, trying to gauge his reaction to her words.  He
looked confused.  "I wasn't expecting...any of that to happen and I
needed to think about it, to process it."  She laid her hands on his
chest, idly pulling at the hair that grew there.  

  "And..." Mulder said, resisting the urge to scream at her.  He
could see this was difficult for her, but what was she saying
exactly?

  "Just before, Sk..." she cut a glance his way, "the phone rang, I
realized that I was happy."  Her fingers fluttered against his chest
as she shrugged her shoulders.  She looked at Mulder.  He looked
amazed.  "Really, truly happy, Mulder.  And then I felt sad that I
didn't even recognize the emotion while it was happening to me."  She
touched his face.  "I've gotten so divorced from myself that I didn't
even know what I felt until I analyzed it, can you imagine?"  She
smiled at him, but a tear trickled down her cheek as she did so.

  "Scully..." Mulder said quietly.  He could barely hear himself
over the pounding of his own heart.

  "I know," she said, shrugging her shoulders again
self-deprecatingly. "Pretty unbelievable, isn't it?  I have to think
first about how I feel."

  His shaking hand came up and wiped the tear off her face.  "That
was not what I was thinking," he said fiercely.  His other hand came
up to cradle her face.  She brought her own hands up to cover his
wrists.  

  "What were you thinking?" she whispered.  

  He kissed her softly and spoke against her mouth in a whisper. 
"How glad I am that I made you happy for once, Scully."  He kissed
her again, but she broke away from him.

  "Mulder," she said reprovingly, "I made you totally neurotic today
and now you're thanking me?"  

  "I don't care about that," he said, his voice dismissive.  He
kissed the damp trail of her tear then gathered her up against him. 
"I want you to be happy, Scully," he whispered into her hair, kissing
his way down to the knob of her white shoulder as she sighed.  He
rolled his pelvis in a soft thrust, pleased with the small sound he
elicited from her.  He held her hips firmly against his own as he
slid down onto the bed, then rolled them over.     

  Scully lay in a pool of silver in their new position.  The
moonlight framed her white skin in a square of fey light, her red
hair glittering against the darkness of the bedspread.  He watched
her for a moment, the transformation of the woman he had known all of
these years into the woman he had so longed for still new, still raw.
 "Mulder," she said quietly, as the silence grew between them.  Her
small hand, whitened by the gleam of the moon, reached up to his face
and wiped away a tear he hadn't recalled shedding.  "No more tears,
Mulder," she said, drawing him down to cover her.  "We've cried
enough."  

  He kissed her slowly and deeply in response, then drew back up
into the shadows to watch her face as he withdrew from her, then
rejoined her, the act binding him ever more tightly to her, body and
soul. He bent down to kiss the curve of her neck as she arched up
from the bed, then planted his elbows on either side of her head and
focused on her eyes, liquid blue, regarding him.  Her hand reached up
to outline his lips with a finger as she rocked her pelvis against
his, urging him, answering him with her body.  He smiled through his
half-groan at her, watching the curve of her lip turn up wickedly at
him.

  "I want you to be happy," he said to her clearly, before he bent
himself to the task of proving it.  

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ 
     
  The light was grey ahead of him, the ground shrouded in fog.  The
sound of their footsteps was oddly muffled in the quiet woodland
environment, as if nature was holding its breath.  The kind of uneasy
quiet he had felt in the burnt meadow pervaded the atmosphere
here...wherever it was they were.  He was not alone.  He sensed
Scully's presence next to him as they walked cautiously through the
densely wooded area, but he needed to be sure.  He turned and saw
her, her face caught in an expression of concentration.  She looked
at him quizzically, but without real concern.  She patted his arm
reassuringly once, then waved her hand to direct him back to the
forward path they should be taking.  He nodded and turned back to the
task at hand, although he was unsure of exactly what that was.

  How had they gotten here?  He shook his head, trying to clear his
ears of the intermittent buzzing that stymied his thoughts. 
Suddenly, he was alone.  "Scully?" he turned to where she had been,
just seconds before.  Only the swirling mist remained.  "Scully!" he
called, his voice rising in panic.  "Scully!"  He turned completely
around, searching for some sound, some movement that would lead him
back to her.  He heard the rustling of branches nearby and moved in
that direction, stumbling over an unseen gnarled tree root.  A hand
caught him as he began to plunge toward the enveloping fog and
steadied him.  "Scully," he began in a relieved tone, breaking off
when he got a good look at the hand.  He looked up into the face of
Elvis Costello, peering at him from behind the frames of his
oversized Buddy Holly glasses.  "You better watch your step..." Elvis
sang to him, accompanied by the sound of persistent ringing.

  "Scully," he heard her voice say.  It was only moderately
sleep-slurred.  Then she inhaled sharply.  Bad news, he thought,
starting to sit up, but her arm restrained him.  

  "Yes, Sir.  Agent Mulder?"  Her eyes were wide and dark in her
sharply awakened face.  "Just a minute, sir.  I'll get him for you." 
She laid the phone down on the nightstand.  It was 5 o'clock in the
morning, he noted grimly.  What was it with Skinner and early morning
phone calls?  He was now two for two.  These thoughts were flying
through his head as he watched Scully turn back to him.

  "Shit," Mulder mouthed at her.  She nodded, watching his
half-asleep eyes pinwheel desperately.  "1,2,3" she counted off with
her fingers, as he nodded.  With the experience of years of
partnership, they rolled and got out of bed on the same side
together, trying to move exactly in cadence to minimize the noise. 
They had gotten a lot better at that synchronized, rhythmic moving
thing in the last 24 hours, he thought with a small inward leer.  He
waited until she lifted a foot, then slid his own across the
carpeting, trying to skate silently in her wake.  From this vantage
point, he was getting his first real view of her tattoo and he leaned
forward and squinted to peer at it.  This was so bizarre.

  Scully turned around and shot him a glance at the exact moment a
chuckle threatened to burble up from him.  She clamped her hand over
his mouth and that was how they took the last three steps into
Scully's room -- stark naked, Mulder with his hands around Scully's
waist, his feet under hers, her hand stopping him from making any
noise as she twisted around to watch him.  He was practically
convulsing by the time they got to the bedside.  

  "Mulder," Scully said kindly, but briskly.  She pushed him to sit
down on the bed and the bedsprings complyied by simulating the noise
he would make if he had just turned over.  She kept her hand over his
mouth, watching his green eyes dance with laughter over it.  He
pulled her close into his body.  "Mulder," she said again, a little
louder.

  "Mmph..." he managed to say when she let go of his mouth.  She
kissed him lightly, then tried to break away from him as he sucked in
a shocked breath.  "Scully?" he said, trying to sound surprised,
which wasn't difficult under the circumstances.  "No fair," he
mouthed at her.  He pulled her down to sit on his lap. 

  "Yeah, Mulder, it's me."

  "What's up?" he said blithely, poking her thigh with what was up. 
Had to put on a good show, right?  Skinner might be able to hear the
conversation from his room on the other side of the wall.

  Scully narrowed her eyes at him, trying to pull away. She wished
for the millionth time that she didn't blush so easily.   "Skinner's
on the phone for you," she answered, trying to peel his hands off of
her.  

  "Oh," Mulder said lightly, holding her with one arm while he
picked up the bedside table phone.  He wondered if Scully was
ticklish.  She jumped when he ran his fingers deliberately up the
side of her body.

  "Not that phone," she said in a strained voice, her eyes shooting
darts at him, "the one in the other room."

  "Oh," he said again, then kissed her swiftly before letting her
go.  He jumped out of the way as she swung at him, moving into the
next room.  "Hello, Sir," he said conversationally as he picked up
the receiver, only to have to cover the mouthpiece as Scully suddenly
pinched his ass.  "What can I do for you this morning?" he said
through clenched teeth.

  Scully waved at him from a safe distance away in her room before
heading for the bathroom.  

  "30 minutes should be fine, Sir." 

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ 
  
  Skinner hesitated before knocking on the door of the room next to
his.  He was reasonably certain that this was Mulder's room, but he
had clearly made the wrong choice earlier this morning on the phone. 
He didn't want to take the chance of disturbing a half-dressed Agent
Scully, although a half-dressed Mulder would certainly be no
consolation prize.  Chiding himself for his foolishness, he knocked
briskly on the door, remembering too late quite how early it was
still here on the West Coast.  

  In the bathroom, Scully was putting the finishing touches on her
hair. Hearing the knock, she gave her hair one last spray and crossed
the room, stuffing her small feet in the shoes she had discarded by
the closet the night before.  She winced as she stepped back into
them.  Since her recovery from the shooting of two months ago, she
found that her calf muscles and feet were less willing to be squeezed
into her ultra-high heels every day.  She wasn't wearing these all
day at the morgue.  She would never tell Mulder, but she missed her
comfortable, utilitarian Doc Martens.  If only they weren't so damned
ugly.  No one would notice them under the cover of sterile booties in
the autopsy bay.  She had already packed them in the large bag she
was taking with her.  As she passed the discreetly rumpled bed, she
picked up her long navy jacket.  She opened the door to the Assistant
Director saying calmly, "Sir."  She pretended not to notice his
perplexed expression as she turned away from him, pulling the jacket
onto her right shoulder.  "Good Morning."

  "Good Morning, Agent Scully," Skinner said.  Had he mixed up the
phone numbers?  He drifted over to the bedside table and noted the
number.  No.  "Where is Agent Mulder?"  His gaze drifted to the
dented pillow on the bed.  It contained a few short brown hairs, but
far too few to Skinner's liking. He ran his hand grimly over his own
shiny pate.   

  "He should be ready any minute now," Scully replied quite calmly. 
She noted Skinner's observations of the room, but made no commentary.
 Mulder chose that moment to burst through the connecting door.  He
was still tieless and shoeless, his damp hair sticking up in six
different directions.  He was brushing his teeth and reading a file
at the same time.  

  "Scully," he said thickly.  She was pulling the small jewelry sack
out of the bottom of the fake shaving cream can.  "The table in that
room is Pennsylvania and the second bed is El Rico.  Morning, Sir,"
he said to Skinner.  His mouth was ringed with toothpaste and he went
into Scully's bathroom to spit, rinsing his mouth out and leaving the
toothbrush in there.  "This table is going to the rumored sites from
Europe and elsewhere.  This empty bed will be L.A.  OK?"  He stood
behind her briefly and regarded them in the mirror as she put her
earrings in. She nodded at his reflection.  He turned to their boss. 
"What did you want to talk to me about?" he said.

  Skinner hesitated for a second and Scully crossed the room to the
bathroom to put the can back on the shelf by the shower.  She stopped
at the mirror to put on lipstick.  She could hear Skinner talking. 
Poor man, they were confusing the hell out of him purposefully.  She
hung Mulder's toothbrush up in the holder as she listened.  

  "You were exceptionally quiet at dinner last night, Agent Mulder. 
I understand your reticence to speak about this matter in front of
Gerard, but I was curious to hear what your initial thoughts were." 
He waited for a response.  

  Mulder regarded Skinner silently for a beat, standing with hands
on his hips, the folder resting on his flank.  "Why are you here,
Sir?" he asked bluntly.  Skinner's face showed a small ripple of
surprise at the impertinent question.  In the bathroom doorway,
across the distance of the two double beds, Scully appeared and
leaned against the doorjamb.  She crossed her arms in front of
herself and her grave blue eyes were levelly watching Skinner.  "I am
not being disrespectful here," Mulder said, quietly, "but I am
curious.  We both are.  In more than seven years of traveling this
country together, this is the first time you've ever accompanied
Scully and me on a case."

  Skinner nodded, feeling suddenly tired and old.  "I know," he said
shortly.  "The truth," he began, not looking at Mulder, "the search
for the truth, has suddenly become more personal to me over the past
few weeks."  He looked up at Mulder and the air between them became a
little more charged.  "I believe that I now have a vested interest in
knowing what's going on."  

  Mulder stared at him for a long moment, his hazel eyes searching
Skinner's dark brown ones, then nodded slowly in slight acceptance
and turned to look at Scully.  Her expression was far more difficult
to read than Mulder's, as per usual.  She and Mulder communicated
silently for a moment.  Skinner was unsure of whether or not he had
passed their litmus test.

  "The fact of the matter is that I don't have a working theory
right now," Mulder said quietly.  "This is the data collection stage
for us.  Experience has taught us both that it's best to just let the
data accumulate and note patterns.  Any theory that gets formulated
will present itself at the right time."

  "That's all?" Skinner asked.  His tone indicated how inadequate he
felt this answer was.

  Mulder shrugged and held his hands out straight from his sides. 
"Welcome to the X-Files, Sir.  We don't have precedents for a lot of
our cases and it pays to be open to all possibilities."

  "Or at least the ones that can be proven to be possible," Scully
said from the bathroom door.  "This case seems to me, despite
everything, a very cut and dried case of mass murder.  Mass murder
for unknown reasons, but murder just the same."  She crossed the
room.  "I need to get down to the morgue."  She checked the contents
of her unusually padded forensic sample case again.  Mulder
purposefully did not turn around and look at what she was doing; he
didn't want Skinner to notice the case and ask questions.

  Scully tried to make her motions appear nonchalant. She was well
aware of what he had not told Skinner, but nothing in her movements
betrayed it to their boss.  It was a fine line that they were
walking.    Experience had taught them that trust was a commodity
that could be bought and sold, sometimes for the best of reasons,
sometimes for the simplest.  Until Skinner's motivations were clearly
understood, he was on a need-to-know basis.  Gone were the days when
Mulder and Scully would be the pipeline of information or the means
of discovery for the Consortium or any of their pawns.  "Where'd you
hide my laptop, Mulder?" she asked without rancor.  

  "On the other sleeping bed," he said.  She nodded and moved into
the other room.  "Are you coming to the field office with me, Sir?"
Mulder said to Skinner, following Scully.  As she packed the laptop
into its case, Mulder found a tie and put his shoes on, sitting next
to the cluttered tabletop that had been designated Pennsylvania. 
Open file folders and photographs had been splayed out in a pattern
that was incomprehensible to Skinner.  It was probable that it was
only relevant to Mulder.  The other bed had a stack of folders on it
as well, although their contents were not yet distributed into a
pattern.

  "Yes," Skinner answered, casting a surreptitious glance at the
slept in bed in this room.  A lone red hair shone on the bottom sheet
just below the dented pillow.  He frowned in confusion.  Mulder's
clothes were in this room; Scully's were in the other.  But they
appeared to have slept in each other's beds, alone.  Was this an
elaborate scheme?

  Scully held up her cell phone to Mulder and waved it.  "Charger?"
she said.  

  "By Europe," he answered.  "Can you grab me my other battery?  It
should be done."  She nodded and moved through the door again.  

  Whatever it was that they were doing here, it had a definitive
rhythm and tone, one of long use.  Mulder and Scully had spent years
in the field together.  It was going to take Skinner longer than
twenty-four hours to figure out their system.  He shrugged it off.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

  In the quiet of the early morning morgue, Dana Scully mentally
prepared herself for the challenge of the day ahead.  Like many of
the older medical examiner's facilities that she had used, the
'Women's Locker Room' here was a converted janitor's room.  The
industrial drain had been converted to a shower and a stall had been
built around the toilet.  All in all, it was a thoroughly unlovely
but utilitarian set-up.  It certainly beat many of the morgues she
had worked in, where she had been literally forced to change into
scrubs in a closet or a supply room.  She locked the door to avoid
untoward surprises and tried to find a relatively sanitary surface on
which to place her things as she changed.  She had left her cup of
coffee outside of this room, on the counter of the main autopsy bay
adjacent to this bathroom.   She hoped that it would cool off some
while she changed.  She wondered why it was that coffee vendors found
it necessary to serve their coffee scalding hot.  Hadn't the lawsuits
taught them anything? 

  Scully hung her suit up carefully and covered it with a dry
cleaner's bag she had brought with her, then sat down to tie her
shoes.  A smile crossed her face as she did so.  Memories of Mulder
caressing her feet as he put her shoes on and took them off during
her long convalescence rose up every time she saw them.  He had taken
such good care of her after she had been shot.  It was hard to
imagine that anything could have separated them after that
experience, but Diana had.  Scully laced up her left shoe and
wondered how true that was after all.  Had it truly been Diana that
had separated them or had she allowed Diana to exploit her jealousy,
her insecurities?  It irked her to believe that she had allowed
herself to be manipulated by that woman.  She looked down to find her
hands unconsciously caressing the leather of the shoes that Mulder
had given her.  How many women would have considered a pair of
butt-ugly shoes to be a romantic declaration?  She should have seen
them for what they were: proof of his consideration of her needs. 
She hadn't originally.  She had allowed Diana to get the better of
her too many times.  It would not happen again.  She stood, pulling
herself up to her full height, stretching her spine as she reached
for the ceiling.  She ran through a series of exercises to center
herself in her body before she began the grim procedures that awaited
her.  She needed to be strong, spiritually as well as physically, to
withstand what she was about to experience.

  Many people who assumed they knew something about Dana Scully
would be surprised if they could be privy to her thoughts at times
like this. When she approached the autopsy bay, what she saw lying
there on the slab was not a body.  It was a person.  Despite the
objectivity she had acquired over years of doing this work, on this
fact she was very clear.  She rejected utterly the notion that had
been suggested firmly to her and her classmates through medical
school and forensic training in residency.  This was not a body, not
a thing, but a human being.  Even before she was exposed to the
dehumanizing evil that was the Consortium, to the objectifying
insanity that was the mind of a serial killer or any murderer, she
knew that seeing another human being as a thing was wrong.  It was
part of the madness that allowed crimes like this one to flourish. 
It allowed the belief that fueled the mass experimentation of the
Consortium: that the lives of the select few were worth the deaths
and mutilations of the many.  All people were equal at their most
intrinsic level.  And these bodies?  These bodies in the other room
were people, individuals who had suffered what she considered to be
the ultimate injustice.  For them, for the dreams unrealized and the
loves they left behind, she toiled.

  In her heart of hearts, Dana Scully saw little difference between
her role as an FBI field agent and as a pathologist.  When she
changed into her scrubs in these small rooms, she was exchanging one
set of weapons for another.  In this arena, her weapons were her
scalpel and her science. As always, it was her intellect that was the
source of all her tools.  As a Catholic, she did believe that there
would be ultimate justice beyond the pale of this life, but as a
human, she believed that she had been given a unique gift to ensure
that justice could be served in the earthly realm.  She firmly
believed that one was not only given burdens but gifts in this
lifetime.  Part of the job of living morally was to determine what
your gifts were and to apply them for the greater good of humanity. 
It was this simple belief that fueled her purpose.

  As she prepared herself for what would be an undoubtedly grueling
day, she felt more alive in her skin than she had for years, possibly
ever.  As she stretched and bent her body, she felt the satisfying
soreness that was the result of her new relationship with Mulder. 
Those aches and pains were welcome, the happy result of a desire that
she had long feared would consume her whole.  She had never been so
glad to be wrong in her life.  For she had not been consumed,
although she was not the same person that she had been little more
than a day ago.  She felt sure now, sure of her place in Mulder's
life, in his heart.  There had always been something quietly radiant
in the way Mulder would look at her with love, the way his voice said
her last name with a tone like a caress in the inflection of it.  It
had been a promise all the years that they had spent together, a
promise that she had felt would never be realized after the harsh
words of the last month.  At the Gunmen's, she had felt the hope that
she had held onto resolutely, despite all of their travails, die
within her.  Mulder did not love her the way she thought he did.  She
had nurtured the belief that she occupied a place of primacy in his
heart, but saw, in his cold and childish refutation of her proof of
Diana's complicity, that she was wrong.  In her anger and pain, she
had never stopped to consider what the circumstantial evidence of
Diana's duplicity would mean to him.  Only now, in the light of the
things that he had said to her the night before last was she really
beginning to comprehend how few allies there had been in Mulder's
life.  

  If she was brutally frank with herself, Scully had to admit that
she had liked the romantic image of the position she occupied in
Mulder's life, that of sole female companion and partner.  She had
wanted to believe that she had always been the only woman for Mulder,
even as she would have railed at him for harboring such a jealous and
limiting belief about herself.  She would have found it insufferably
possessive of him, obsessively so.  At the same time, she had always
loathed being confronted with the possibility of other women in
Mulder's life.

  She wondered if he understood this fact about her, if he
comprehended how insane the idea of Diana had made her over these
past months.  Looking back now from the perspective of being Mulder's
lover, she could see how easily Diana had exploited both her jealousy
and Mulder's insecurity over his position in her life.

  The last thought jarred her still, even as she acknowledged its
truth.  She was culpable here.  Diana could not have exploited that
which did not exist.  Scully had been egotistical and presumptuous
about Mulder's feelings, masking her own from him for years.  She had
depended on the fact that he was in love with her, even as she held
him at arm's length by keeping the barriers up.  She had been equally
sure that Mulder knew how much she loved him, but after yesterday she
had to wonder how much she had truly managed to keep hidden from him.

  The image of Mulder's expression when she touched him last night
was fresh in her memory.  His face had been full of wonder and
surprise.  She had seen the tears standing in his eyes as she traced
the features in his beloved visage, felt the trembling in his hands. 
It had not been just desire that had caused it.  Ultimately, there
was a kind of amazed joy in Mulder that it was she who was touching
him this way.  Mulder's very reaction to her told her that no woman's
touch had ever conveyed the love hers did.  Despite her essentially
jealous nature, this fact did not please her.  If anything, it made
her hate Diana Fowley, and any other woman who had ever touched
Mulder, all the more.  They had used him, either for his beauty or
for other more nefarious reasons, but they hadn't loved him.  It made
her ache to know that she was the first woman to really love him,
just as he was.  She had wanted to be preeminent, but she had not
thought about that in terms of the isolation that it meant Mulder had
suffered.  She had a lot to make up for, both for her own sake and
for his.

  As she crossed into the autopsy bay, she heard echoes of the
things that Mulder had said to her over the course of the past day. 
He wanted her to be happy, had wanted their lives to be perfect. 
What did that mean exactly?  She took a sip of her coffee as she
pondered this, her eyes scanning the long list of people to be
autopsied today.  

  "Gruesome, isn't it?" a voice at her elbow said cheerfully.  

  Scully didn't jump at its proximity.  She had been aware of the
fact that the Assistant M.E. was nearby from the minute he entered
the room.  He had been flirting with her at the crime scene
yesterday.  She nodded and took another swig.  "Good morning," she
said quietly, her voice still a little husky from disuse as she
looked up at Mark Sanderson.

  "Good Morning to you," he said enthusiastically.  Scully swallowed
her smile.  God help them, but Californians were a cheerful lot,
generally speaking.  'Sandy' as he was known, had a mass of unruly
brown curls atop his head.  In his mid-forties, his face clearly
showed the marks of a life spent in the sun and his friendly brown
eyes were lined with laughter freely given.  His scrubs were standard
blue, but his autopsy bay clogs had a psychedelic pattern scored into
the leather.  He was hardly the standard issue coroner.  "Did you
have a good sleep?"  He leaned in a little as he asked.

  Scully did raise a brow at this inquiry and his posture, but she 
dropped her head so that it was not so visible to Sandy.  She nodded.
 "Yes, I did, thanks.  How are we going to proceed here this
morning?"  

  She raised her head and straightened up so that her posture was not
relaxed at all.  Mentally, she shook her head.  She hadn't been asked
out on a date in more than a year, couldn't think offhand of the last
time an attractive man other than Mulder had hit on her, but within
hours of sleeping with Mulder she was attracting them from all over. 
She must be exuding some sort of sexually satisfied pheromone or
radiating her desire for Mulder.  Nothing, after all, succeeds like
success.  In the animal kingdom the most attractive female was the
one that was ready for copulation.  Her mouth turned down into a
small frown.  That was kind of an icky thought.  She forced herself
to pay attention to Sandy and tried to project the idea that she was
involved in a committed relationship at him.   

  "Well, I thought we'd do what you suggested yesterday and begin by
taking X-rays of all of the corpses so we can get dental
verification, then move onto the forensic exams.  Truthfully, I can't
see why we're doing this.  It's obvious what they all died from and
it wasn't smoke inhalation, as per usual."  He laughed a little,
waiting for Scully to make some commentary.  She turned a corner of
her mouth up at him, not wanting to encourage this particular line of
conversation.

  "I know, Sandy," she began, "but for the sake of their
families..."   

  "Oh, I know," he said earnestly, shaking his curly brown head at
her, "but it's just so hard some days to come into work and deal with
stuff like this, don't you think?  I mean, it's hard to feel sorry
for the adults -- they chose to get involved with a cult, on some
level, but the kids..." he shuddered.  "Just awful, don't you think?"
 
  She nodded and turned her back to him to put down her coffee. 
Some things still cut too close to the bone.  "Let's get to it," she
said, beginning to move out into the bay.  "I'm going to start by
making cursory physical exams for gross distinguishing features. 
What time is the X-ray tech getting here?"   

  "Oh, hey," Sandy said, catching hold of her arm, "you don't have
to do that.  Let the residents take care of that kind of stuff."

  Scully smiled briefly.  It was important that she be able to
retrieve as many of the implants as possible before the X-rays
detected them.  "I don't mind, Sandy," she said, pitching her voice
low and resisting the urge to grit her teeth and yank her arm away
from him.  "We have a lot of work to do and I'm only here for the
next couple of days."  

  "I know," Sandy said, a little ruefully, "I was kind of hoping we
would have a chance to hang out, get to know each other a little
better."  He smiled at her, sincere in his admiration of her.

  Scully smiled a little as she extracted his hand from her skin. 
She would be nice, although she hated it when strangers touched her. 
"Oh," she began, putting a tone of regret in her voice, "that's
really nice of you, Sandy, and I appreciate it, but I'm afraid that's
just not possible.  I'm not available."

  Sandy's features drooped a little as he shrugged his shoulders,
"Well, you can't blame a guy for trying.  Since you don't wear any
rings, I just thought maybe.  But I should have known that a
beautiful woman like you wouldn't be alone."  He smiled sadly. "I
hope he," a question mark crossed his face as he regarded Scully,
"your friend, realizes how lucky they are..."

  Scully smiled at him.  He was nice, even if he wasn't Mulder. 
"He," she said firmly. "And it's my job to make him realize that." 
She moved away from him to the largest autopsy bay.  "I'll be taking
some tissue samples of the burns to return to the lab in Washington. 
We have some concerns that this tool that they are using for the
burning seems to be unknown."

  Sandy was all business now.  "Yeah, I noticed that.  Massive
tissue damage and very high heat over a short period of time.  Are
you telling me there is no accelerant being used here?"

  "Unknown," said Scully.  "I have seen cases where it turned out
there was an accelerant that came from a combination of sources.  For
evidentiary purposes, we will be the independent testing source for
your labs."  

  "Good enough," Sandy said briskly.  "Let me know what you need. 
I'll be in the office.  My paperwork beckons."

  Alone at last, Scully opened the first of far too many drawers and
began the arduous process of cataloguing the dead.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

  In the slightly stuffy interior of the interrogation room, Mulder
read the contents of the folders stacked before him.  He was not
surprised at all by what he was reading.  Each of these folders had
the very simple records of the choice selection of the dead: DMV
records, some birth records, some criminal records.  An astonishing
majority had had contact with mental health organizations and many
were on medication for control of delusional behaviour.  There were
few marriage certificates and absolutely no listing of surviving
dependent children.  Mulder wondered what had been done to the men
that they had not produced progeny either.  

  He flipped the folder onto a pile on the table. These were the
typical records of abductees that he had seen over and over again. 
Digging into their backgrounds would reveal memberships in groups
like MUFON and NICAP in some cases, the joining of religious
organizations in others.  Individuals who had been taken and
remembered their experiences spent a great deal of time looking for a
place they could be accepted or a methodology that would explain what
had happened to them.  For some there was a downward spiral into
paranoia, for some there was validation in knowing that they were
believed and for the rest, there was respite in the belief that there
was a plan, that after this life was over, there would be a just
reward.  

  Mulder was sure that these folders would correlate to the bodies
in which Scully would find implants.  For the sake of Gerard, who was
observing him through the one-way mirror, he read through all of the
folders one by one as he decimated the bag of sunflower seeds he had
brought with him from D.C.  He had to hand it to Gerard -- subtlety
was not his strong suit.  When Mulder had commented that the folders
handed to him seemed too few, Gerard had told him blandly that they
were still working on the others, but that only a scant half dozen
were missing.  He had stifled an urge to laugh in the other man's
face.  It was clear to him that Gerard's true employers were not the
Federal Government.

  That was probably the only thing that Mulder had in common with
Gerard.  Fox Mulder didn't truly believe he worked for the government
either, despite his I.D.  He considered himself a servant of the
truth and of the people that empowered the federalty to govern in
their best interest.  He was certain that concept was alien to Gerard
and the men of his ilk -- if Gerard was a man, which was not yet
proven.

  It didn't really matter.  What was clear was that Gerard had
either not read Mulder's file or that he had disbelieved it.  There
had been sixty-seven cars at the site that were not bureau or
California state issue.  Mulder had been handed forty-eight folders
this morning when he checked in at the field office and had been
brought six more over the course of the time that he pretended to
read these folders.  That brought the total of abductees to
fifty-four.  But Scully had eighty-eight bodies in the morgue for
autopsy.  

  At no other scene where there had been an immolation had abductees
arrived in pairs or threesomes, with the solitary exception of El
Rico.  There, where some of the members of the Consortium had burned,
there had been an occasional implant found in some of the women and
children post-mortem.  These were the relics of the 'bargain' struck
by their fathers, but it was the exception not the rule.  At El Rico,
the number of cars was far lower than the number of bodies.

  Gerard must believe him to be either very stupid or very
unobservant.  None of the more high-end vehicles that he had seen
were listed in the DMV records he had perused.  To screw with
Gerard's head, he was sorting the folders in a random order on the
tabletop.  He was sure they would be disturbed when he got up to get
coffee, but the order was as meaningless as the files he was reading.
 It didn't matter.  He had memorized all of the license plates. 
Assuming that any e-mail from this building would be as trapped as
the phone calls, he had shipped the list to the Gunmen last night
while Scully slept.  The Gunmen were continuously upgrading Scully's
laptop so that it was fireproof to hacking assaults.  Her wireless
modem was scrambled and encrypted so extensively that Gerard's
cohorts were probably still searching for the transmission.

  Mulder stood up and stretched, walking over to the window to look
out at the bland California day.  He wondered how Scully was doing,
sure that his thoughts in this regard would give his visage the kind
of contemplative expression that would drive Gerard nuts. She would
never say so, but being so close to so many of those implants made
her very nervous.  She was still, and always would be, suspicious of
the technology that sustained her.  At what cost, he wondered.  If
the chip was a kind of neural receiver and tracking device, wasn't it
also possible that it was a transmitter as well?  Just how much
information did they know about Scully, about him?  If the bearer of
the chip died, was it deactivated by the lack of electrical impulse? 
Could its secrets still be downloaded?  Mulder hoped that Scully
would be able to collect as many of the implants as possible so they
could ship them to the Gunmen for study.  As much as the three men
were nervous about having such dangerous items in their possession,
their curiousity outweighed their paranoia in this situation.  It had
taken them more than a year to construct what they hoped was a
dampening case that the implants could be transported in without
being detected by the Colonists.

  Or the Rebels.  Mulder rubbed his chin and pretended to re-read
the file he picked up from the tabletop.  Was Gerard a member of the
Resistance?  The Rebels were a puzzlement to Mulder.  Why were they
so dead set on stopping the production of the hybrid?  Were they
enslaved by the Colonists?  Would they be extinguished if the
Colonists found superior slaves?  Or were they merely the competition
for the Colonists, another kind of voracious race come to dominate,
rape and plunder their world?  Mulder had no answers to any of the
questions that rumbled through his consciousness.  It seemed to him
that murdering the minions of the Consortium, as well as the
abductees, was overkill.  He feared for Scully, controlling a shiver
as he remembered the predatory gleam in Gerard's eye when he looked
at her.  Clarity beckoned him sharply.  He had been wrong to see
anything in Gerard's overtures to Scully beyond its application to
this case.  Gerard, if he was a member of the Resistance, saw Scully
as an abductee and therefore as the enemy.  He slapped down the file
folder and left the room, suddenly concerned that Scully was alone
and without a weapon in the morgue, surrounded by the handiwork of
the men for whom Gerard could be working.  As he opened the door into
the hallway, he noticed that the doorway to the adjacent room was
ajar.  He hurried over to it.  An agent in there looked at him rather
sheepishly. 

  "Hey," Mulder said sharply, completely ignoring the other man's
discomfort, "where's Gerard?"  The agent hesitated and Mulder
squelched the urge to shoot him.  "Agent," he said curtly, trying to
imitate Skinner, "I do not have time for this.  Where is the SAC?"  

  The Agent hesitated an instant longer, straightening in fear when
a soft voice came over Mulder's left shoulder.  "I suggest you answer
Agent Mulder's question before he asks a third time."  Skinner's
voice brooked no argument.  

  "He said he was going to the morgue," the Agent responded swiftly,
practically saluting.  

  Mulder wheeled and began running down the hallway.  

  "Mulder!" Skinner yelled, as he disappeared into the bullpen. 
"What's going on here?  Ah, shit.  Bring my car around immediately,"
he barked at the stricken Agent.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ 
  
  Scully was studying the X-rays of one of the dead, comparing the
dental X-rays of Molly McAfee with the dental X-rays of Jane Doe No.
26 when Gerard walked up behind her.  She wondered if he realized
that his aftershave was overpowering rather than seductive.

  "Agent Scully," he said, intruding on her personal space, "your
report?"

  "Excuse me?"  Scully answered coldly, turning around to face him. 
She folded her arms across her chest and stuck out her elbows,
extending the pocket of space around herself.  

  "Your preliminary findings," Gerard responded impatiently. "What
are they?"

  Scully stared at him without responding.  

  "Agent," he said menacingly, "are you defying me?"

  Scully let out a small sound that might have been a disgusted
snort.  In the back of the room, Sandy and another of the coroners
entered quietly.  

  "Agent Gerard," Scully answered, "I have nothing to report."  She
paused.  "Preliminary or otherwise."  She turned back to her X-ray
examination.

  "I don't believe you," he said, "and I will not be left out of the
loop on this investigation.  This is my town.  I want a full
recitation of the facts as they stand now."

  Scully turned and looked back at him.  "As it stands now, we have
eighty-eight dead humans."  She said this quite deliberately.  "Of
these humans, fifty-six were female, with as many as a dozen of those
being juvenile.  Of the remaining thirty-two males, only six were
juvenile."  She stopped speaking.

  "And?" Gerard asked impatiently.  

  Scully stared at him.  "And what, Agent Gerard?  We have not
confirmed any identities at this time and cause of death, while
supposed, has not been documented as of yet by the Medical Examiners
here."

  Gerard stepped in closer.  "What about your findings?"  

  Scully did not even bat an eye.  "I am working in collaboration
with the Medical Examiners here and, as such, am not prepared to
present any findings until our work is done."  She stepped in a
little closer herself, pushing back against Gerard.  "That is the
fact of the matter and not only do I resent your intrusion into what
is a long and meticulous process, I find myself more than a little
curious at your consistent insertion of yourself into the
investigation.  What exactly is it that you are looking to find,
Agent Gerard?"

  "Your questions are insubordinate, Agent Scully."  Gerard snapped
back.  "I am the SAC on this case, not Agent Mulder and certainly not
you."

  "Oh, really?"  Scully said.  "I believe there is another SAC
assigned to this case and it is to him, and him alone, that I will
'give a full recitation of the facts'."  She produced her cell phone
from her back pocket.  "Why don't I give A.D. Skinner a call and find
out what his point of view on who the SAC on this case is?"  For a
moment, she thought Gerard was going for the phone.

  "Agent Scully, are you all right?"  Sandy interjected from across
the room.   

  "I'm fine, Sandy," Scully answered, her eyes never wavering from
Gerard's.  "Agent Gerard is on his way out."  Gerard blinked at her
words, then spun on his heel and slammed out of the autopsy bay. 
Scully turned back to the X-rays, only to have Sandy come across the
bay immediately.

  "Are you sure you're all right, Dana?"  Sandy said worriedly.  He
put a hand on her shoulder, just as Mulder burst in through the back
door.  She nodded at him.

  "Mulder," she said, looking over Sandy's shoulder, "we have to
talk."

  "Where's Gerard?" he said raising his eyebrows at the tableau in
front of him.  His right arm was bowed out at the side, his hand
resting on the butt of his gun.  

  "You just missed him," she said.

  "He was extremely rude to Agent Scully," Sandy said, turning to
face Mulder.  He was earnest even in anger.  "Very disrespectful."

  Mulder's face showed a certain amount of bemused surprise at this
recitation, but any commentary he might have made was cut off by the
hasty arrival of the A.D.

  "Agents," he growled, curtly. "What in the hell is going on here?"