From: "Adrian Van Boeyen" Date: Mon, 30 Aug 1999 23:48:06 -0600 Subject: Fw: Foldback by GenieVB (X-Files novel length, Book 3 of 4 in the "PhaHks" series) Source: direct Four hours was about his usual, well, when he was thirty-five, it was his usual hours of sleep any given night. But that wasn't following three days straight waking time and dangerous stress to boot. Back home to DC, he was headed and his time, the flight was inhuman torture. He spent most of it on his knees in the small Attendant's toilet. They'd gently escorted him there after discovering him heaving uncontrollably in the Passenger's Men's Room, there having been, in fact, a substantial line-up of male passenger's all grumbling about the "Occupied Light" which had gone on shortly after take-off and not gone out a good hour into the trip. The Steward had come with her key and opened it to find an unconscious passenger in a dark suit. "Oh, my god!" Two others were called and an announcement made via the Captain if a doctor or nurse was aboard. A medical student answered the call. Successful in rousing the ill man with a cold cloth and smelling salts from a first aid kit, he was thanked. "Will you be all right, sir?" The petite Steward asked. "Yeah. Can't handle flying anymore I guess." The pressure on his insides and the headache that followed that first assent was about the worst physical ten minutes he could recall in the last year. Mulder offered explanations and apologies all around as he was kindly given a pillow for his knees, ice-water for his upset stomach, a paper bag and generally made as comfortable as possible in the tiny Staff washroom for the remainder of the flight. He cabbed it back to his apartment, changed, and drove his own car to work. Enroute he called in to check for news. There was none. "Sir?" Mulder entered Director Skinner's office after seeing the secretary gone, (she knew what weekends were for), and Skinner's door ajar. Skinner looked up. "Mulder?" "Anything?" Skinner shook his head. He looked tired. "No." "Have you been here all weekend?' Mulder asked. "Haven't left. How was Boston?" Skinner was curious about what had been so urgent in Boston. "There was someone I had to see. What is being done about Scully?" Skinner sat back in his high-backed chair. "Everything that can be, Agent Mulder. And there's nothing for you to do here that will make any difference, so why don't you go home?" "Then why are you here? Don't tell me paperwork holds that much fascination." Skinner stood, walking to his wall-length window. "What do you want to know, Mulder? That I can't sleep? I've been sitting here hoping like hell the phone will ring. Anything else you need to know?" Mulder considered. What he'd just heard was about as personal as Skinner ever got. The Director had all but said: "Yes, I'm worried sick about Dana." "I don't think...it was the UnSub who took Scully, I think it was..." "Who?" "The Smoking Man." Skinner didn't get anxious or even annoyed . "Why do you think that?" "I think it has something to do with this case I was involved in, in Canada." "I'm listening." "Scully and Beyer were assigned to investigate the deaths of these children, and these murders. Before the case was even handed to Scully, I stumbled across a similar case on Vancouver Island. Almost the exact same signature. Family murdered by gunshot wounds to the upper spine except for one child dead by an unknown factor." "I know that. Scully brought me up to date on what you said happened out there, as much as she knew." Scully'd been telling Skinner a whole lot it seemed. Mulder felt a terrible sinking and loss. Like someone had just discovered he had a broken foot and taken him out of the race. "I just discovered a second case in Boston. I knew the Boston victim. On Vancouver Island, the only surviving victim was my client." "You've concluded what from this?" "I haven't figured that out yet. But it appears that whoever handed her this case wants her on it but not me." "Mulder, you're not on the case because of your status. You are a limited field agent, you carry no weapon and right now your assignment is in Transcriptions. The fact that you're on probation is why you're not on the God's Children case." "Something's wrong, sir. Don't you question why an inexperienced agent like Beyer was assigned to something this big? Building experience through the ropes is one thing but no one at that level gets cases like these, _I_ never got cases like these, not to begin with." "Things change, Mulder. Beyer put in double-time doing leg work on these DC murders, and he's proved he has insight, he has potential. He was a valuable assistant to the S.A.I.C. when the case was first handed to he Bureau and a hard working partner to Scully." "The case was handed to the Bureau when?" "Eight months ago." "And they figure the murders began when?" "They've strung together more of them, from all over the U.S. It's estimated the murders actually began almost two years ago." "When I was returned. And the cases turned over the Bureau around the time I left GreenLawn." "Haven't you ever heard of coincidence, Mulder?" "I don't believe in that much coincidence." "Mulder-" Skinner heard a cell' phone. It was Mulder's. He pressed "Talk". "Fox Mulder." Skinner sat back down and listened to the one-sided conversation. "What. Who is this? Who the hell are you!? You better not have touched him! You just fucking better not have!" Skinner joined Mulder at his side, heart quickening. He'd never heard Mulder swear before, not gutter-swear. It was foreign to the man. Unnerving. Things _do_ change. "You fucker! If you work for him, that smoking son-of-a- cock, I will kill you first. WHERE'S SCULL-?!" Disconnected from the other end, Mulder swallowed and with shaking finger, pressed another number. "Boston Police Department? This is Agent Fox Mulder, I'm with the F.B.I., I'm inquiring about an Ian M-Moss, I understand-" Mulder stopped and listened to what was said back to him. Skinner watched his red in the face underling pale to a sick shade of green. Saw Mulder replace the cell in the inner suit jacket pocket. His eyes were moist and unblinking. No tears. A mix of horror, grief and fury suffused him. He was on the verge of barely restrained murderous rage. "The UnSub who isn't an UnSub? "They"," he said pointedly, "just killed a friend of mine. Shot him in the back. Through the spine. "Insurance", they said." Skinner looked at the floor. Somewhere in Washington, D.C., the other shoe dropped. "I'm sorry." He shook his head once, hoping if he did, all things he suspected that were building to a curtain about to go up, would collectively throw up their hands and just go away. "_That's_ who I went to Boston to see. A _friend_. His friend was one of the murder victims. The daughter of that friend one of the kids who die without cause. One of "God's Children". I have a hunch, though, that this has very little to do with God." "Are you positive your friend who was killed - Ian? - is connected?" "You really believe in _that_ much coincidence, sir?" "Let's get out of here, go to my place, you can tell me-" Skinner's phone this time. Mulder waited by the door. He wanted to break it down. He wanted to kill someone for Ian. Wanted to hang their head on a stake and dance around it under the moon for Ian. And for Gary. And for the dead kids too. Suddenly Skinner was passed him, wrenching the double doors open. "What?" "Scully! She's been found." *** Scully's last clear memory was the feel of cold, rough concrete and pain. Her next was waking up in a moving vehicle with her eyes covered by some kind of cloth. She felt the sensation of sickness and fear. The fear swelled when the vehicle - she guessed a van because she was sitting more or less upright - came to a rough halt. Arms supported her on either side and hustled her out onto smooth ground, where she stumbled. Her hands, tied behind her, were unfastened. Then she heard the slamming of doors, the sound of the vehicle's engine power up and tires on pavement as it sped away. In one motion, Scully ripped away the blindfold and turned to watch the - she'd guessed correctly - the van speed away, trying to see a plate or any distinguishing features. But there was no plate. The van itself was a polished black with darkened windows. It bore all the hallmarks of a vehicle owned and operated by the CIA, the F.B.I., the N.S.A., or any number of "Bad Boys" clubs with guns and an agenda. She stood slowly and looked around, swaying a bit as her eyes adjusted to seeing in three dimension again. Before this present vision of an empty lot and dilapidated warehouses with broken windows and boarded up entrances, she recalled terrifying darkness and harsh voices speaking threats and violence disguised in "this is for your own good" words. Kindness, mafia style. Words spoken to her about him and for him and because of them both. She frowned and concentrated. But nothing else. Not where she'd been or with who. The assault came to mind. Mulder down, injured, maybe dead. Herself being dragged away. It had been no dream, the biting air told her that. Scully looked around her. It was night (she didn't know how late). A heavy drizzle was falling. Already her hair was sticking to her forehead and she pushed it out of the way with one cold hand. It was chilly here, wherever here was. Scully patted her clothes, they were the same clothes she'd been wearing when - the almost memory refused to take solid shape, no outline she could use to separate it from the frightening twilight that was her mind. Fear actually. But she recalled the subway. Scully searched through her pockets and found them empty. She been left with no ID, no money and no weapon. And no idea where she was. It could be any city but she hoped it was D.C. And what day was it? Shaking she walked toward the only street visible between the lightless buildings. As she made her way out onto the road and then the sidewalk, passing more empty boarded up shops and condemned houses, she imagined that some of the street names sounded familiar. She touched her body, her face and arms. But especially her neck. The terror of her imagination teased her. A nightmare that might have been. Physically she felt okay but she knew that was unsound. The shock she knew she was in would keep her from sensing any real injuries. Scully walked and wrapped her coat about her. But fear kept her from wanting to explore the why's of it for the time being. A few blocks on, she came out of the industrial section she'd awakened in to a neighborhood where the houses, though windows dark, were newer and in relatively good repair. But Scully had no desire to knock on the door of any stranger to summon help. Though surprised at herself for the unrational feeling, she just didn't have the nerve to put herself into the hands of a stranger. She couldn't handle anymore unknowns. Not right now. Finally coming to an all night corner grocery store, she entered and asked the clerk behind the counter to dial 911 for her. Then she took the receiver and spoke to the Emergency Operator herself, giving the woman on the other end her name, F.B.I. badge number and status. Her voice shook badly. Before long, she was sitting in the back seat of a patrol car, sipping on a large hot coffee the officer had got for her from the curious store clerk. The policeman had informed her of her location, she was in D.C., and told her that Director Skinner had been contacted and was on his way. She thanked him. She didn't know how long she'd sat there slipping in and out of focus before a screeching of tires brought her back to the here and now. A door slammed. Running feet. Skinner's voice. "Where is she?" asking loudly of another. Couldn't hear the answer back. A second car had also arrived in the interval with screeching brakes that must have left a half block of rubber behind. And those running feet she recognized. Unmistakable long-legged stride. Skinner's voice: "No, wait! Let him through. Let him go." Her door opened and Mulder was there beside her, looking her up and down; at her face, her hair, her clothes. She drew her eyes away from the swirling patterns in her coffee cup and looked back. She wondered if he felt as bad as he looked, with his double eye-bags, hollow cheeks, swollen right jaw and bruised face. And his expression...pain swelling from underneath, from his own mind and terror for that she might be injured in some way he couldn't see. It transcended the physical hurt visible in his own injuries. In that way, she wondered if he felt as badly as she did. And suddenly, with the knowledge of four days on the missing persons list and what they had instilled in her for those four days; what they had drilled into her brain, the terror over what might happen now numbed her. The coffee remnants cooled. She didn't care how he felt. No - she did but _couldn't_ care. Because of what had been said to her. Because of what they were making her do. She wanted to be selfish and cry into his arms but if it were to somehow end up the last time....Scully just wanted to go home. They had already separated themselves before now. A great love was no more. It hadn't even made it passed the first and biggest hurdle: His quest. And her fear of that quest. "Scully." She heard him say her name as if she were a gift from god finally delivered to him, but arriving too late to save his soul. In his voice she heard joy also, because she was whole and alive. And, too, shock and fear at her disheveled appearance. There were questions there, in his voice. Questions for which she had no answers. For him or anyone. She thought she should lift up her chin, show him she was all right, assure him that everything would be okay. But his eyes were an agony of emotions that she had neither the leave nor strength to deal with. Her energy was cold now and drained like her empty cup. Like they both were. She had difficulty looking at him. Had heard too many frightening words regarding him. Now Scully heard his anguish when he'd said her name, and she could feel his physical pain. And his aching for her now, when it was too late. "I guess you're not up to talking right away." Was all he said, accurately reading her state of mind. She sank her gaze back into the safety of her cup. The warm liquid had provided her with a degree of physical comfort and had asked nothing back. She said into her cup, "I need to speak to Walter." Knowing it would cut him to his center. Wound him deeper than any knife that had scarred him. He jerked as if bitten. His eyes were black misery. Scully saw. It would have been less cruel to have slashed him through the heart. Mulder had caught and understood the abruptness of the movement, her look away; the unspoken message that said to leave her be. By his stiffening, Scully knew how deeply she had hurt him and it grieved her. But her goal was paramount. If by denying him physical contact or verbal communication hurt him, she would mourn for it, for him, for them, but the vitalness of being silent was so much greater. Mulder broke through as far as briefly resting his hand on her shoulder. That contact, electrified with longing and sorrow, made it so much more difficult to say the six words she next said to him. "I need to speak to Walter now." He left the car. The pressure of his touch remained. She was grateful to him for that one touch despite her trauma. And his. Even though she'd been unable to acknowledge it, that lingering contact was a life line that she would hold onto: his life. Mulder continuing. His contact was one she would use as a bridge to comfort. She hoped that, if the time came and she was free to seek more of it, he might be there and still want it. There, alive. Willing to provide it. Then the fear, the terror, the horrible thing she was having to do, things she'd been trying to beat into submission found their freedom. She wept silently. "How is she?" Skinner asked Mulder who'd only been inside the police cruiser for seconds really. Mulder didn't answer but continued walking passed him. Skinner followed Mulder's hasty retreat back to his own vehicle. Mulder's long legs were eating up the yards and he did not slow at his superior's question. "Agent Mulder?" Skinner grabbed one shoulder and spun the agent around to face him. "I asked you a question. _How_ is Scully?" Skinner saw naked pain in Mulder's eyes. Naked soul. "You'll have to tell me, sir. She's asking for you." Shredded heart. Shrouded spirit. He was forfeiting. As there really was nothing else to pass between them, Mulder got into his car and drove away. Skinner watched after for a moment and then climbed into the patrol car. *** Next Day. Dana Scully's Apartment: //Fifteen years ago, veiled in the guise of scientific analysis, they'd assigned her to the X-Files and to Agent Mulder - as a spy. To observe, assist where possible as a medical pathologist and scientist in order to validate the work. Or to expose it as a collection of falsehoods. The assignment was to bring to light the mythology of the X-Files, things not based in facts or proved science, and the questionable use of Bureau funds in financing it. To debunk it. Mulder's world of the paranormal, unexplainable through any known scientific means. Becoming a supporter of it and of Agent Mulder. His advocate. They had not counted on the moral convictions of their chosen pawn. Her desire to ferret out truth. She would not be their tool. Now the X-Files were gone, Mulder's passion drained from his sick soul like dirty water from a sink. Still they sought to hurt him. Still, they wanted a betrayer....// Dana Scully ceased her narrative. Recording it in third person was a cheat. It was unfair to him and a weakling's way of hiding from the truth. She placed her fingers on the keyboard and continued. //Now, fifteen years later, that is precisely what I am, a liar. Albeit unwillingly. It is a most terrible and heartbreaking path to walk but absolutely necessary. One that, had I not taken it, would have brought serious, even deadly, consequences. I fear it will be a lonely road. I can speak of it to no one. Neither can I reconcile my conscience to it. I allow them to use me. I live what I can only described as a daily moral rape of my very being. To have accepted this journey has meant that the very foundation of my relationship with Mulder is now based upon a lie. To refuse would have meant his certain death and perhaps my own as well. They convinced me of the truth of this. They, who seek to destroy or control any they perceive to be either a detriment or asset to their "Work"; their Agenda. Which agenda remains obscured in deceit and fear. And for which the sacrifices made seem to me to be incomprehensible. Unconscionable. What secret project is this that it would call for such heinous crimes as these men have committed? Acts of terrorism against their underlings and the citizens of their own nation? What Agenda (which they have time and again excused as vital to the survival of our very way of life) is accomplished through manipulations and cold-blooded murder? It is one that continues insatiable despite the sacrifices made paying homage to it. How many deaths is too many? Who is anyone to judge that the lives of the murdered were worth it? Who will answer for the families that have been destroyed? Who will speak for their lost wives, husbands, sons and daughters? Sisters? What about Mulder's losses and his enduring, deeply-rooted pain? And what of my own anguishes? How have I remained in one piece knowing what I know? Somehow I have kept my body and soul together. And somehow I will continue to. But there are days when it feels so heavy on my shoulders that I just want to run away. Leave this burden behind. But I can't. I've - we've - come too far. Too much has been compromised and I want to see some of that paid back. The innocent deserve their compensation. And my need to protect him is greater than my need to escape. Yet how much more grief can I watch him endure and bear it? What more pain will be added before this journey has played out? To my mind only for the salvation of all souls on the earth could such sacrifices be justified. And even then I harbor doubts. What benefit to be whole in body but empty in spirit? But I can't answer that. I don't know all the answers but I do know that if it is in my ability to save just one soul, I will. I must. His. I find I talk to myself a lot. I've been keeping a journal too. Perhaps for my own sanity I suppose. But, too, so that if I should fail and the unthinkable occurs, that the facts should become known. Not for revenge but for human dignity. Mulder's wrongful death, if that is what destiny has decided, must be made to count for something. Justice must be served. That he stood to expose truths when so many took refuge in lies must be made known and remembered. And I hope the same for myself. I am writing in past tense, speaking of destiny as if all things have been written and are unchangeable but I don't believe that. I believe destiny can be changed. It must.// *** Preliminary Inquiry: Member of Board: "Agent Scully, upon listening to and reading Agent Mulder's account of the events on the night in question, do you concur with his conclusions?" Scully: A plunge into fire. "No, sir. I don't. I saw no second suspect." Member of Board: "Are you certain of that, Agent Scully?" Scully: "Though I am not advocating any duplicity on Agent Mulder's part,.." (Redeem him as far as possible) "..I feel I must emphasize that I was aware of only one suspect in that subway station." Member of Board: "So it shall be noted here." Scully: "However, neither am I supporting the contention that Agent Mulder had anything to do with the death of Agent Morgan Beyer-" Member of Board: "-Do you have any speculations, then, on how Agent Beyer came to be murdered?" Scully: "Not as yet. But I assert that Agent Mulder could not have participated in such an act. It is not in his nature." Member of Board: "In your opinion." Scully: "Yes, in my opinion." Member of Board: "We are left back where we began, then, with two conflicting accounts. How do we reconcile them? Agent Scully? Agent Mulder?" Scully: "I can't." (Keep Mulder occupied. Keep him safe. Keep him tangled up in anything other than-) Member of Board: "Agent Mulder, you've been very quiet. Do you have nothing to add to this discussion?" Mulder: "I don't...dispute what Agent Scully said she saw. But as to what _I_ saw and experienced, what I witnessed,...I have told the truth. I can't prove it. And...I don't know how to make sense of it. I don't know what else to say." Member of Board: "Then, barring any further additions or addendum's to either of your reports, the Full Board Inquiry will go ahead as scheduled. There will be a full investigation of Agent Mulder's actions on the night in question. All records regarding the "God's Children Case" and Agent Beyer and Agent Scully's assignments to that case will be reviewed. In addition, all records relating to Agent Mulder's psychiatric therapy over the last two years will be by court order, opened and examined by a practicing psychiatrist appointed by this Board for that purpose. This Preliminary Inquiry is adjourned." Scully felt sick to her stomach. Mulder's treatment? His private sessions, exposed to all the world? Him stared at and clucked about? It would bury him for good as an Agent in the Bureau. No pride left, no hope for promotion. Destruction. May as well let "Them" kill him instead. It would be quicker. Less cruel. Four Days Later. Fox Mulder's Apartment: It could hardly be termed an apartment. COMpartment Mulder had thought. But he'd given it's choice little thought and it didn't matter. It was a place to be. He slept, showered and went to the toilet here. That was about all. It was the only place he could find inside a day after leaving Scully's place. Packing had been a snap. He only owned two suites, a couple pairs of jeans, a few T-shirts, sweaters and the usual underwear, socks... Three or four decent ties. Some things did change and even improve. A bigger television. No couch but a single roll away and a "TV" tray for a coffee table. His suites hung in the main closet and the rest sat in a box underneath. Except for the dirty stuff which he'd taken to lazily tossing behind the door. He didn't really give a shit since it was just him and he wasn't out to make it into a real home. No place in his memory had ever felt like a home. Except for Scully's place. Cozy and bright and full of nice smelling things. And maybe for mom and dad's old house way back when he and Samantha were little kids. Hardly more than babies. The last innocent time. A few years in the sun. His chest grew tight. He caught himself thinking about Scully. It did that when he thought about her. It hurt. The way dying must hurt. Kinda like that. He hadn't seen or spoken to her in a week. When ever he picked up the phone to dial her number, there was the fear Skinner might answer. That would be a last stroke of the lash. He could imagine it, in his worst nightmare, dialing the number, hearing it ring and her answer out of breath: "Scully?" "Uh, yeah, hey can I call you back, Walter and I, we were just..." He would never call back, the, after that. Ever. For as long as he so-called "lived". Better not phone her. * Dana Scully's Apartment. Same Time: //I am drowning in it. What is happening. My destiny has been removed from my hands and placed elsewhere. But my choices have been made without my consent. And now his as well. How can I do this? How will I look at myself, live with myself? I feel like I have been disembodied. My will, eviscerated. My purpose, a strangers. One week can change your life so that you become unbalanced, afraid. Ten years can alter it so it is unrecognizable. I'm wondering if I'll be able to navigate through another day away from him. As long as we remain estranged, he is safe. I hope. He doesn't call...// Scully paused in her typing and looked at her phone, willing it to ring. It had consistently refused her. She resumed. //...Every memory I have with him now is cherished beyond belief and filed away in my memory in such *detail*. I recall his every word, every expression, every movement now as if a film were running in my head. I hold his scent and taste his voice. I am acutely aware of him to the tiniest degree. I haven't seen him for days. I've never been able to visualize things in this way until now. But I guess it's because now I so badly need to. Just in case. I have such a need to see him. I want to see him even for a few minutes every day. But I can't...// The phone rang. Scully stopped typing. Stopped breathing and reached out to pick it up, both praying it was him and afraid that it was. Taking a deep breath, she picked up the receiver. Fox Mulder's Apartment, Same Time: He reached for the phone again. So afraid his heart was going to stop in his chest if a male voice answered. Pressed the pre-programmed number. Seems he was always calling her when he was in the lowest places. Three rings. "Scully." She said. She sounded...okay. "Scully." Say it all and don't let her speak or you'll never find your way outside that door again. They'll find you here in a month, curled up like human jerky. "Scully. Don't say anything. Okay, I just want you to listen to me. Just listen." She said nothing. "I,...I'm sorry. I love you so much but, I'm scared it would destroy you. I'm sorry I can't be what you need. I'm sorry I've spent all these years chasing after this fucking "thing" that's going to ruin me. Well, it already has, but I shouldn't have dragged you along. I've hurt you. I never wanted to. But I can't live with a shitload of lies, I can't happily accept what these people do and I know that part about me has fucked up my life. And yours too. I'm sorry about all of it. About going away, about you losing everything you had and nothing to show for it. I can't hurt you anymore. I hope you can forgive me. They've closed the Allenby case, well I told you that already. And I've been forbidden to look any further into the God's Children case. I don't know what I'm going to do now. I don't know if I'll stay with the Bureau..." He stopped. That part was easy. The rest he'd have to get passed the huge swelling in his throat and the shriveled lump in his thorax. "I hope he gives you everything you deserve. I'll...I'll miss you, I'll think about you everyday..." That's it. Couldn't say anymore. It had been a lame attempt anyway, to find peace with any of it. "Bye, Scully." He replaced the receiver. Dana Scully's Apartment, Same Time: Scully heard. Listened, like he asked. And by the end of his quiet, narrative that begged her forgiveness and wished her well without him forever, she found herself unable to breath. She listened, the phone pressed painfully into her ear until pressure reminded her to get some oxygen. But all she managed was one ragged gulp, mouth away from the receiver so he wouldn't hear her fall apart. The rest of the conversation she spent with a hand clasped over her mouth forcing the words she wanted to say back- back-back-back... And tears draining from her. When he finished, she dropped the receiver to the floor and watched it's downward flight. Conversation over as so much else was. It actually cracked when it hit. She hated them with a hatred she never thought possible. The way Mulder must hate them for taking away everything he had starting when he twelve, the sweet time where he played after school games and understood nothing evil. The why's, the wherefore's... He'd been such a cute, thin, introspective kid. Nothing hinting at the handsome, amazing, fighting man he'd turned out to be. But _this_, this ending...it can't be! Destiny couldn't be this fucked. * The knocking was insistent and roused him from what proved to be restless and harmful dreams filled with blurs and shapeless faces all talking at once- saying things, shouting at him. Accusing hands grabbed him, yanked his hair. Stitches popped, blood ran. Teeth chattered and clicked like hail against a window; the devouring of him... The door rattled on its hinges. Whoever it was, they were putting their fist into it. Still, it took Mulder another full minute to come fully awake and get from his bed to the door. Fucking Meds. Not checking the keyhole, he swung it open to have Scully walk in without being asked. "Mulder - we need to talk." Door still open, "Scully? - Are you -what about?" He shut it. "About me. And you." Mulder followed her slowly into his living room like he was the wary guest and she the hurried Hostess. She seemed tired and anxious. "What's going on?" Scully looked, not directly at him, but slightly off to one side, addressing the coffee table. It eased her a little to lesson the contact when speaking half-truths, her half-truths. Mulder had not violated that commandment. But she had to salvage this. Them. Fix it, somehow. Keep him safe but fix it. "You did nothing wrong, Mulder and you're beating yourself for it." "I let them take you." She swallowed and forged ahead, still shifting her eyes from Mulder to the coffee table to the wall. Voluntary blindness. "No you didn't. You couldn't have done anything." "Scully, I was there, I couldn't fire my weapon. If I had, you wouldn't have been-." Gently, "I did this to you." "No. You didn't." She sat on his bed. It was not like when he sat there, a thumping and sagging. With Scully, the perching of her slight build was as insubstantial as a cat. She left room for him. He sat obediently. "Mulder. I owe you an apology." He blinked. "What for?" "For not trusting you. For not supporting you in this. Even for not believing you at first, about Vancouver Island." "It's not the first time we've been at odds, Scully. It doesn't matter." "Yes, it does." She tucked one leg under her in a very feline manner and sat sideways, facing him. "Something happened to you in that subway station. And to me. At first I thought that somehow, you froze. That through shock or the stress of the situation, you were paralyzed and unable to act." Mulder's eyes never wavered. It always made telling him anything, especially potentially hurtful things, so much more difficult. That straight on stare of his, eyes expecting nothing but truth. "And... I thought that...your explanation was a way to ...explain-" Those eyes quickly got the point. "-Explain it away? Cover my ass. Cover my craziness?" Scully sighed and rested her forehead in one hand, rubbing it. "I didn't know what else to think." "That hurts." Scully felt a sinkhole give under her heart and it dropped out of reach. The pain that had come through in those three words. "Instead of thinking that I'd lie to protect myself after watching you get-" he bit off the rest and instead said: "But I understand, Scully." An up-to-now unspoken fear had been kept hidden, and she had just cracked it wide open. She knew they had to breath it in, endure the stink of it and then exhale it away forever. "I thought you, if no one else, at least you would trust me far enough to know what I am incapable of." His voice grew very soft. The words lumped up in his throat, aching. "I've learned to count on you to believe me, at least believe that I'm telling you the truth, Scully. I can't tell you how it cuts when you don't." This was much harder than she'd imagined. It's because Mulder wasn't yelling. She knew Mulder's yelling, knew it very well. He'd yell, she'd yell back. They were like a couple of civilized gorillas beating their chests and tossing things about. "DAMN-IT-SCU-LEY!", "DAMN-IT-MUL-DER!" Thumpa-thumpa-thump! Most of the time things were resolved, sometimes not. But at least his yelling was simple and plain, leaving no question for her about how to proceed. But this quiet restraint and the aching eyes. It was worse. "Mulder, I was wrong about what happened down there. I'm sorry I was that far wrong. I did see movement, I did see something, I'm just not sure what." He winced. Now that the floor was hers, she stretched it. "Aren't you even going to ask me what changed my mind?" "I guess something did." "Listen to me, Mulder. Something's going on. I didn't think so before. But I do now." "That's-" Mulder leaned his face closer to her and she resisted pulling back. This was also a thing Mulder did. When he got mad, he mostly yelled, When he felt sorry, he did this. At least to her. She recalled one other time he'd used it. Coupled with a touch to her face, a lifting of her chin with terribly gentle fingers, she'd clung to him and sobbed like a terrified child. Which is just about how she felt at that moment, having just been saved in the nick of time from being shorn of her red locks and de-fingernailed. Mulder had held her until she'd calmed down, embarrassed. He could be such an obnoxious male at times. He could be such a perfect and welcomed gentleman. Like now. Like a fine tool. Mulder could go on the sweet offensive and get her defenses down or perform a saintly deed, doing it naturally and without calculation. His voice was low and sympathetic but not patronizing. "I want to believe that's true, more than anything..but-." She exposed the palm of a hand in appeal, "You were hurt , Mulder. Look at you. You'd suffered a head injury. You had a concussion and blood loss. The doctor who treated you said you came into emergency with blood all over your face. Look, what matters is that I've rectified my own report to include my convictions about the events of that night. Skinner has not recommended any disciplinary action against you. There is going to be no Board of Inquiry into the death of Beyer or the violations of your probation." "Just tell me one thing." She was tired now. "What?" "Just tell me honestly if you're saying this only to protect me. I'm not talking about your doubts about me, just your own story. Are you altering your claims about what you saw and experienced so I won't be put under the microscope?" "Absolutely not. I don't know what happened to me that night, not for sure. Something happened to both of us, we were attacked by the UnSub. You were attacked by an accomplice, that's the only way to explain what happened." "But that's where we disagree." "What do you mean?" "You believe you were attacked by the Spree Killer or two of his group, that's what the press thinks, that's what the police and the F.B.I. think, but I think something more is going on here. Someone attacked me, but you were called to that subway for a reason other than just the God's Children case, or at least something connected to it, something obscure, that we're not seeing yet." "Are you one hundred percent certain of that, Mulder?" "No. But I'm pretty damn sure. And I know one thing. Something stopped me from firing my gun. You understand? Something big and powerful stood near me, blocking my way and cracking my skull and I couldn't stop it." "Something or someone?" "I don't know for sure but it may be something we've seen before." Scully looked away and shook her head, sighing. "If it had been just me, Scully." he volunteered, "if it had been some inner weakness or fear because of my incarceration or my PTSD or these goddamn meds', if I'd froze up and that was the reason you got kidnapped-" Scully stared at him. "-I don't think I could have lived with it." Her touching of his hands broke something in him or maybe healed it. But he froze now, just looking at them. Unwilling, she wondered, to believe she was real. "And I couldn't-" He bit his last words off. Pleading, "Tell me!" "If something happened to you...again...I wouldn't want to live." //"You made me a whole person."// She came back to that so often it had become a mantra for when she doubted his feelings or her own. Before she had stepped into his basement office and into his life - what had he considered himself to be? "Mulder..." The inflection was no different than if she'd said: "Mine.". He was hers. Her body tingled with it, her heart affirmed it, her mind pronounced it. He was hers. "I almost lost you Scully." "No, no, you didn't. Really,..." "Did they hurt you? Do you remember what happened?" She had always told him the truth, even if it wasn't what he wanted to hear. Because to disappoint those eyes would be a hard proposition. She forced the last bit out. "No. I'm fine. Believe me, I'm okay." She lied. A little. Still. His life might depend on it. He suddenly gripped her in a hug so tight, she wondered if they would melt together from its heat. Then he was falling to the carpet, not letting go and she went with him on his journey of self-punishment and hate for his perceived wrongs and failure to save her from powers greater than himself. "Scully, Scully,..God. Oh, God.. I almost lost you. God..." She didn't let go either. Not a finger. "Shhhh, it's okay. I'm here. Everything's fine, everything's okay. He was buried in her or she in him. It birthed the same creation: Together. Whole. "They have to pay." Scully realized him the slightest bit. "No, no they don't, they didn't touch me." "I have to do something, I have to do something - anything - to erase this last week from your life. I c-can't stand that this happened to you. I can't stand this one. Not this one, not this time." "I don't want you to go after some kind of retribution for me. All I want is for you to come home. Come home to my apartment, Mulder. Please? If you want to, we can talk about it there." Stall, stall, stall... "I can't just let this go,...they took you." It was the worst thing they could have done to raise his sense of justice and they had failed to remember that little fact. "They hurt you." That was the fuel on his fire. Merely his suspicion that they had touched her in any way, even to take her in the first place, was enough to make him lose rational thought. In the past, even when he was calm and calculating his own move against them, his mind was an explosion of hatred, rebellion, retribution and disbelief. He was a good man, the best kind of man. When the innocent suffered, he hurt. When what he cared about hurt, he suffered near utter destruction. Oh, Christ, please, no. "Yes you _can_. You will, Mulder. If you value me, you will leave it alone." He got to his feet. "I can't just sit around, Scully! When they took Samantha, they set me on this course. I want an explanation. I want an apology. I wanted my sister back! And now I can't have her. Now the very least I will accept is answers. I need those answers, Scully. _An_ answer. One! Is that so much to ask? After all they've done? They owe me and they owe you!" "I don't want you to collect on my debts for me! I don't want you thinking you can just decide for me what should be. You do not have the right, Mulder." You. Do. Not. Have. The. Right. "Maybe I don't. After all these years, I thought I had you. Looks like I don't have even that." "What are you talking about?" "You're sleeping with Walter Skinner, aren't you?" "What? Is that what you think?" Mulder looked crushed. "I'm sorry, Scully, I just get that feeling." "Mulder, Skinner and I are friends. We...talk." He need never know anything else. I've punished myself enough for that. I won't punish him with it. He gestured back and forth between them, "Why don't _we_ "talk"?" Thrust. "We do. We talk about aliens and Black Oil, abductions and shadowy conspiracies and invasion from above. But sometimes that's not what I want to talk about. Sometimes I'd like to hear other things from you. How many years have we known each other and I don't even know your favorite color. What's your favorite color, Fox Mulder?" Parry. "What are you trying to say to me, Scully? If you have something to say, let's hear it, I'm all ears." "Someday, I may want to leave all this behind. In fact, I'm sure of it. But I don't think you ever will." "Because they shouldn't get away with this." "Did you ever stop to think that maybe your shadowy conspirators are just a group of old men in gray suits trying to invent history for their own selfish agenda. And even if there are alien invaders readying to take over the planet, do you really believe that those old men, that anyone - that you - can stop it?" "I have to try. They have to answer for what they've done, Samantha, my father, Melissa, your cancer...my abduction, where does it end? When will it be too much to ignore?!" "Don't fight my battles for me, Mulder. I have my own faith and it's not in-" "Me?" "I was going to say it's not immutable. Even truth wavers. Mulder, Years ago you said your faith was in the truth. But what if there is no one truth? What if there's just a life-long struggle with an uncertain end?" "I can't believe that. I also can't believe you're saying this. You sound like you want curl up and forget all of it." "And what if I did? Maybe you just might have to accept that you can't change the past or set the future or even alter it. You're only one man, Mulder. I don't want to lose you. You have all this "hope". But for me, for years, _you've_ been my hope. That's all." "If that's true, then why won't you help me?" "Because I want you to live and I'm afraid that if you leave here tonight, you won't be alive tomorrow. And if you go and my worst fear is realized, Mulder, I need to know that I did not lend a hand in supporting _that_ future because I'd have to live with that and I can't." "So, that's it? We're,...we're finally finished?" She stared in shock. "I didn't say that." "But that's what you meant, Scully. "You didn't hear me, did you?" "Yes I did." He turned on his heel, his eyes locating the exit to an agony he could not grant another second of life. "Mulder, please..." He didn't respond but stood, rubbed a hand across his dark, cropped hair, waiting. Deciding. Then Scully watched in shock and fear as he snatched up his car keys and gun. His answer was a shutting door. Scully let out the breath of fire she'd been holding in. Had he stayed it would have consumed her. Scorched her brain and burned her up. But it was no better breathing in the chills of the apartment air, made cold by the leaving of him. Nothing she said or did made a difference. He would seek until it killed him or until they tired of him and put him to death. Faith or no. Willingness or not, she could not allow that to happen. As always, his death would be hers. She gathered her coat, gun and keys and followed him. It would be difficult. Shooting him again would not be well received, Scully didn't think. But if she had to... *** ** Mulder, wearing dark clothes, eased himself through brush and trees until he could see the dim lights from the small windows. It had taken him the better part of the day driving to reach Augusta and another two hours of hiking to get this far. Night was falling again, and if he had to check each and every dwelling, it would take the better part of it. If he was wrong, it didn't matter. There were other places and he'd go to those places until he found him. And answers. This was the fourth property he'd visited and the second he'd found to be occupied. Now the fatigue he'd been brushing off for a day and a half was making its presence known. His muscles were cramping and uncramping, and his water bottle, the only other item he'd brought with him other than his weapon and some spare clips, was empty. Not eating for days had been stupid but since his stomach had been unable to handle anything solid anyway, so what? This was a expansive two story log house with a car port addition. Within a dark, expensive looking sedan was parked. He was still about one hundred, fifty yards away so he could see no movement from within. "Fox Mulder is here." Weathered hands brought a spoonful of peas up to weathered lips on a haggard face. But it was illusion, that he appeared old and weak. Some had believed him worn-out, dated and it had been their folly. Fools who believed the structure unsound and so had failed to look inside. Stupid, dead fools. The haggard face looked keenly at his ageless, expressionless companion. "Where?" "Near the end of the foot path." "Make certain he gets no closer." With a nod, he rose and exited the cabin. Scully drove and as she fought the wheel on the hilly, tree lined roads, wondered what it was she would do when or if she located her partner. Just how was she going to stop him? Other than him being physically bigger, stronger and faster, he probably wouldn't listen either. So she would have to - what? - shoot him? Been there. Done that. She didn't think he'd let it pass with a thank you this time. The Lone GunMen had been most helpful. Of course they knew where Mulder was going. They'd given him the address. Hinting that they just may have sent him off to his certain death and they'd confessed like wayward altar boys. A tow-truck with its lights flashing and hauling a jeep, passed her going the other way. She had an idea. Fiddling with her cellular phone with one hand and driving with the other, she dialed. *Hope somebody is working late.* ** She took in a great breath, held it for a few seconds, then let it out. It didn't calm her really, so she walked through the metal door, down to the last cell on the right and sat in the chair the Deputy had provided for her. But the man in black lying on the one bunk didn't look at her. He continued to stare at the ceiling. She cleared her throat. "Mulder?" For a response, he set his lips and closed his eyes on her. Scully needed to be strong for what she was about to do and for what she had just done to him. She had to be strong, just that. As always. But she knew he didn't see any of that. He didn't want to see her. Scully could see, in every tense muscle in his body, his disbelief. His fury. "Mulder, I had to do it." All she got in return was a short, ironic one-syllibilled laugh. An angry bark. *Well, this is pretty much what you expected, isn't it?* But she tried again. "Mulder, I know you don't understand - " He sat up like a jack-in-the-box, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees, looking at her like she was the one behind the bars and it was, not a jail, but a nut house. ""Understand"?? You had me arrested!" "Yes, I had you arrested, but there's a reason." "Really? - no kidding?? Explain why at first, you don't want any part of this, then you come all the way up here to have me Arr.Es.Ted??" He leaped up and paced. "What is there for me to understand?" "I was afraid for you." "I never went there to kill anyone, if that's what you were thinking. I was going to question him, Scully. QUESTION! If he didn't answer me, _then_ I was going to kill him!" "If you were only going to question, why was it necessary to sneak around in the bushes like a cat burglar? Why not just walk right up to the door?" Scully was babbling and she knew it. She wanted to avoid, avert or delay what she had come here to do. *Coward! Just say what you have to say! Do what you MUST!* Mulder grabbed the sides of his head in mock confusion. He spread his arms. "In case you haven't been paying attention, Cancer-Man and I aren't exactly on the best of terms. I didn't know which place was his or even if any of them were. Now I guess I'll never know. I thought you knew me better than that. What the hell has gotten into you?" He was as angry at her as she'd ever seen him. But it didn't matter. It didn't matter if he punished her with silence for months or never confided in her again. As long as he believed what she was about to tell him. She covered her eyes with one hand and rested there for a moment. She looked up as she heard the creak of the cot springs. Mulder was resting up against the wall with his knees bent and feet on the bed but at least he was facing her. "Why did you stop me?" She heard the mistrust in the words and in his tone. The tone she had heard years ago when, convinced she was part of a hidden agenda, he'd questioned her motive behind her being partnered with him. "I told you. Because I was afraid-" He stood up again, furious now. "Do you believe that bullshit that's coming out of your mouth?!" Walking away from her to the farthest wall of his cell. "I can't believe what I'm hearing, Scully. Why are you LYING to me?!" "You have to trust me. Please. We've been together for too long for-" "No, I don't HAVE to do anything. I don't have to believe you or trust you!" She swallowed, trying to rid her throat of the lump that was getting bigger and bigger. She walked to the bars and clutched them, trying to still the shaking in her hands. "Mulder. I have something to tell y-" "Why should I listen? How many other lies have you told me-" "MULDER! Will you stop playing the martyr? Listen to me. Just shut-up, sit down and listen! Please!" He leaned against the stained back wall and crossed his arms, defiantly not sitting down. She closed her eyes. *Make it a good lie, Scully. A big lie. A convincing lie.* "In my report, I said that I didn't know what happened to me during those four days? Well, I told you some things..." She recalled the white room and the voice speaking of Mulder's extermination as if he were no more needed or missed in the world than a single housefly all ready dead. Her hands shook and she clasped them together to hide it. "I came here to tell you that something terrible happened during those four days. Something terrible happened to me. I can't, I'm not prepared to talk about it yet." She couldn't look at him, but she couldn't disguise the strain in her voice or the pain on her features. "But I know, it's going to affect me for the rest of my life. I know that someday I'll have to f-figure it out." Her throat choked and she found herself trembling from it all. >From the horrible memories of that black room, from the voices. >From what the voices had said, those terrible things they had said. And she'd believed them. Absolutely. Without the tiniest doubt she knew how serious they had been. And were. "You of all people should be able to understand that." She looked at Mulder briefly. At his waiting expression. *He's waiting for me to prove my trustworthiness. What right do they have to manipulate people like this, to make me - MAKE ME - do this to him? What right do they have to grant life and death? What right!?* Mulder uncrossed his arms and walked nearer. Soon he was right opposite her, only the bars between them. He'd momentarily forgotten about himself and his own problems. "And I know, I mean, I don't think-" She could not stop the one or two tears that swelled in her eyes and dripped over. She could not hide the fear for him from him. But how would he interpret it? She wanted to tell him everything and have her heart beat inside her chest as it used to; without the way between them being lies and things hidden. The words came back clear as ice: //"We are in expectations of things, Doctor Scully. We have been aware of Fox Mulder's work against the evil for many years. And of the children. Until now, Mulder has never overstepped what we have been shown is his destiny. He has been granted a measure of tolerance, because what he has done means something to us. But that is now being tried by him. He must cease to peer into this now. The children must not be violated." "Why do you have to speak in riddles? If it's so important that Mulder be kept off this case, why give it to me?" She didn't want to ask" Why not just kill him?" She did not want them postulating it as the easier solution. For him, to protect him, to keep him living on this earth, she would do anything. Anything they asked of her. Anything at all. "And what if I can't stop him, what if he won't listen to me?" "No one is non-expendable, even among ourselves. No one is beyond sacrifice for the eventualities that are soon to arrive. I feel I must emphasize the certainty of Mulder's elimination should you fail. No prophet is greater than the work."// Thinking them over and over gave her the force of will she needed.* Just lie. LIE LIKE HELL!* "Mulder, I don't think I can deal with it on my own." He frowned and shook his head the tiniest bit, puzzled. "But you won't be, Scully." Before her distress, his anger had dissipated. "I've always been there. I always will be if you need me, you know that, no matter who you're...in love with." She wanted to reach through the bars of his cell and strangle and kiss him all at once. Why couldn't he believe I love him? Why can't he just accept that it is true? Why can't that be enough? "No you won't Mulder. You'll be off running someone down, someone without a name or face, someone who you think or hope or wish will make everything right. Whether it's an alien or a ghost or something else because of memories from when you were twelve; or my abduction, or my cancer, or your abduction, putting your life on the line; chasing down shadows, trying to fix the whole, rotten world..." "Is that what you think I'm trying to do?" "I- no. No. I know you have to keep looking for answers. I have no right to ask you not to. I've come to understand that it's what keeps you going." "I thought it's what you wanted, too. And you're an F.B.I. Agent, Scully, you know the risks of the job. We both do." "Yes, reasonable risk. Justified dangers." "It goes beyond that sometimes and you know it, Scully. Nothing's changed." Mulder put one hand on the bars. "I just don't get where you're coming from. What are you trying to say to me? Are you asking me to give this up for my own good? So I'll be safe and warm? I just can't do that..._nothing_...I'm not that person..." "I'm saying I need you here - alive. I'm saying that if I'm going to survive what's happened to me, then I need YOU." "I'm responsible for what happened to you. Do you think I'd just pull out?" "No. You're not responsible. Goddman it, stop trying to shoulder the blame for everything that happens around you. I'm saying this out of motives purely personal and selfish. There is no accusation or blame or implied repayment." "You're asking me to give up the search because...y-you want me to play it safe because you need me?" Mulder spoke the words carefully. Scully had always been so strong but his voice had always turned that strength to dust. Because of her love for him, it was happening again. Yes, I still love you and I want them to die for making me risk what we have - for making me destroy it!! She wanted to scream. Mulder quietly probing for the truth, his hazel eyes keenly searching hers, as always. She could see he was asking himself: what happened to her during those four days? What was going on? Really? Scully was suddenly trembling from head to foot. *I should have known that I couldn't pull it off.* Lying was not in her nature. Lying to Mulder was simply impossible. They'd developed a relationship that had also become a life and death friendship and now a love so strong it scared her. Nothing was ever half way with Mulder. The bond had its strength in trust: I trust you with my life and you can trust me with yours. Unspoken but unbreakable. She decided to speak as much truth as she possibly dared. "Mulder, have I ever imposed upon you? Over these years and years have I asked anything unreasonable of you? Begged for anything?" Mulder was listening intently now, whatever passions had brought him there, had suddenly become far less important than that Scully was falling apart in front of him. "No. Never. You never have." "Well, I am asking you now. I need you to give up on this. Leave "them" alone. Leave the Smoking Man be. For my benefit alone. For my sake." Scully's plea rocked him to his foundation. "Oh my god, Scully...?" He felt weak. What had happened to her? "For my sake"?? Was her life in danger still? How? Why? But all he could say was, "I'm so sorry I couldn't stop them." "It wasn't your fault, Mulder." He curled his large hands around her ridiculously tiny ones. "I don't know if I can do what you're asking. I don't know if I can make that promise." Scully had thought she'd succeeded. Now her face lost all color. She actually felt so weak, she couldn't stand anymore. She slowly crouched down until she could sit on the floor, legs crossed. Both hands were clasping the bars that that unfeelingly separated them, held Mulder away from her. Too far away. She leaned her head against their coldness. Mulder, standing there strong and alive, was as good as dead. They would kill him. She didn't know what else to say or do. She'd failed and because of that, one day, he just wouldn't be there. One day soon, they'd assured. Mulder crouched down also and reached through the bars to cradle her head in his hands. She cried that way for a minute. Then looked at his eyes. *He's looking at me like I'm sick. He thinks I've gone insane. Maybe I have.* For a crazy second, she felt like laughing. If the hopeless agony hadn't overpowered it, she would have. But instead she grabbed his hands and squeezed them as tightly as she could. "Please." It was all she had left to say anyway. Mulder buried his face in her lemon-scented hair. He felt her trembling through his hands that would not let go. What had they done to her? "They got to you didn't they?" Whispering, helpless to conceal either the truth from him or the consequences were she to reveal it, "I can't...I can't do what they want, I can't...hurt you, Mulder. But they'll kill you.." "They're using you to stop me. They asked you to stop me." She nodded. Felt overwhelming joy/nausea/fright. He kissed her forehead. "It's okay, it's okay." Gently, he tilted her face up toward him with two fingers under her chin. She'd never said so, but she liked it when he did that. He was the only one in her life who did it now. "All right." He said. She questioned him with her eyes. He continued. "I mean, I'll give it up, I won't go after Cancer Man. For you. For now. If it's that important." _YOU_ are that important. Her lip quivered and she tried to smile for him, but instead began crying. It was visible a gratitude and a secret relief. And a terrible burden of guilt that she knew she would carry from that time forward until the day she could speak the truth to him. And nothing but the truth. She cried for a few minutes as he held her head and pressed his face into her hair. He knew that whatever it was that had happened to her, he would not, could not let it destroy her. He'd do whatever thing was necessary, whatever it took, to ensure her safety. He'd comply. Scully felt his strong, beautiful hands against her head and relished in their presence. In their life that would remain. She said a silent prayer: I've just done an unforgivable thing, I've lied to your face. And, even worse, I have added myself to your burdens. In order for you to continue living. To keep you safe. Forgive me. "If it'll help you." Mulder was saying. " But you have to promise me you'll come to me when you are ready to-" "Yes." she said before he could say more. A supplication: Mulder, I am so sorry for what I've done. I am sorry because I've lied to you once more. Now I AM part of an agenda. Caught and unwilling. But if lies will keep you alive- "Now will you do something for me?" -I'll learn to tell them well. "What?" "Arrange for bail so I can get out of here?" Scully smiled. "Yes." *** Scully brought Mulder home and, after much coaxing, had him agree to stay one day and one night in the hospital to replace his body fluids, sadly depleted after his week-long self-neglect. Once tucked in the hated bed, he'd succumbed to sleep. That afternoon, Scully returned to Augusta. *** "Dana Scully is here." "Leave her be. Let her come." *** "Why?" Scully stood in the center of a mountain cabin kitchen, staring at the gnarled face of a man she'd hoped never to lay eyes on again. But here he was. After years of having almost encounters, after the hurts done by his hand to her partner (yes! - working together or not, she still thought of him that way and more) and his family, here he was - the old Grim Reaper with a tube up his nose. His lungs must be diseased, his tobacco sticks finally having done their own evil. Good! "Why what?" "Why Samantha? Why his father? Why all these lies and pain on him?" Scully said a silent curse and blessing for The Lone Gunmen. She'd followed Mulder yesterday because of what they'd said to her when she was gone, in that blinded white/black place. She'd followed him because she didn't want him to die. "Answer me!" Came here alone. Didn't care if they shot her. "I haven't done a thing to Agent Mulder. Not recently at least." Liar! "This has already put Mulder back in the hospital once. He's on the verge of another nervous breakdown because of Samantha's murder. She was the last of his family." She thought she saw something flicker in the old, rheumy eyes. "If you are here to accuse me of Samantha Mueller's murder, you've made a useless trip." "Look." She decided to beg since anger was doing little. Threats would be as pointless. "I've done what you asked. I kept him away. But I need something to give to him. I'm asking this for me. Is there something I can do for you so you will leave him alone?" "I've asked nothing of you. There's nothing anyone can do for me, Agent Scully. You don't believe me, I realize, but I've done nothing to Fox." She was startled at his use of Mulder's first name. "Mulder, he's...tired. I'm tired. He won't interfere anymore. He'll listen to me. I promise you that. I'm begging you." "Agent Scully, I am old and ill and the game is almost over. I won't see the end of it." "But you want to see the end of Mulder." "I never wanted that, but I'm only one man. I couldn't prevent everything." "How did you know Teena Mulder?" Bubbling oxygen interwove with words, "A somewhat personal question. I knew Teena when I was a young man, and Bill Mulder, too, of course. And Fox. A life-time ago, now." "Did you know her in the biblical sense?" "Impertinence will get you no-" "Are you Mulder's biological father?!" "I don't know. Teena kept some things very much to herself. She didn't want to hurt her son. I have no intentions of harming him either. If Fox is ill, perhaps you'd best serve him by attending to him in the hospital. And if you're suspecting my former colleagues of collusion against him, somehow I don't think leaving him alone and unguarded was a sound decision. Besides, others seem to have taken more of an interest in him these days." Cryptic, double-talking bullshitter! Scully wanted to throttle the old son-of-a-bitch. If it weren't for the Ugly Giant standing behind her, she would have shot him. Maybe. Scully felt her resolve almost give way. She did not want to give that old prick the satisfaction of seeing her cry. Of knowing he had once again beaten Mulder down and, in consequence, her. She turned to leave. "Agent Scully." She didn't face him again. "What?" Contempt rang out. "If I could help Mulder, I would." "Why didn't you get a cure for your own cancer?" She wanted to hurt him and it was the only thing she could think of. "Possibly, I could have. But nothing cures old age." "I'm glad you're dying. This time, in your case, justice will be meted out." "I sent Mulder the anonymous tip." "You?!" "I was hoping he would find out, somehow, who murdered Samantha." Seems even devils can love. "We don't know who." "That's unfortunate news...I tried to pay one debt at least. Perhaps it isn't enough. Perhaps it's too late for me." Scully paused, the smallest shout of triumph sang in her at his illness and his suffering. And that the Real Grim Reaper makes no distinctions. "Absolution? That would be more than you deserve." He sat staring after her, even after the big door had been shut and bolted once again. Approximately five hundred toxic agents. That's what he'd sucked into his lungs and exhaled. Suck in. Exhale. Suck. Blow. For years until they reduced him to their level. Cancer Man, for the sobriquet fit perfectly now, certainly knew that every cigarette had steadily reduced his life expectancy by fifteen minutes. The millions of teeny death particles had done their work with all the same efficiency that he had done his. But he hadn't minded back then. His Helper spoke: "These others are interfering in the Work. Destroying our placements. They work for a different future." "Their work doesn't concern me." he was saying to his younger and much healthier companion standing before him in the kitchen cabin, "The Associates and I want to know why the children are dying." "We will find out." "I'm sure you will." Cancer Man's face was one that had undoubtedly begun youthful and strong but had, as the years passed, fallen down his cheeks. It now seemed in a state of perpetual motion, giving the illusion of sliding off the bones. The younger, healthier, more massive man nodded. "Who do you believe they are?" "New players. Someone who shouldn't be interfering. Now, with your able assistance, we must interfere with them. Before they destroy all of our Watchers." "What if they are more powerful? Will we be able-?" His unblinking eyes and square-block jaw showed nary a feeling. "The power is the Work and the rules and you know the first rule? The first rule is that all other rules change if the situation warrants it. Besides," he wheezed, "there is no other power. You're proof of that." *** DANA SCULLY'S APARTMENT: Scully was trying to deflect another disaster, Mulder- style. Home for a day and a half. He wanted in on the investigation. Behind Skinner's back would be just fine. "Scully, I stopped my pursuit of the Smoking man, now I want to go back to work. Let's approach Skinner and-" "What if they go after you?" "I'm suppose to stop working too? I can't do that. I can't just around here and watch people die, knowing what I know, that the Black Oil is involved.." "They might interpret your interest in these cases as a threat to him and make a move on you. We discussed this." "We didn't discuss _this_; hiding away, doing nothing. I'm leaving the Smoking Man alone, I've stopped chasing my own personal answers, that should be enough for _Them_." "What if it isn't?" "I can't just sit around and hope everything works out, Scully-" "Are you going to save the world, Mulder?" "Why the hell not? Somebody has to try at least, why the hell not me!?" "After everything you've been through, after everything we've seen? These people can't be touched. Mulder, you're a fly on a monster. You walk up to them and you disappear, they sneeze and you're gone. You were gone! They made it happen. They made you disappear!" He moved to leave and she knew it was his way of closing his ears to truth. He would foolishly go through that door and vanish again. Mulder would be no more. They would see to it. "Nooooo! No-Don't-you-dare-walk-out-that-door!" He stopped.... "...Until you listen to me!" ...just short of an final exit out of her life, his back to her, stiff and ready to leap. Scully planted her feet between him and her door. "I don't believe it. You're going. You're just going to _go_, like always. Despite the danger to yourself and to your career. Your future. You'll risk it all to be right. And not even for a SURE right. A MAYBE right." "You think my career means more to me than you and what they did? And what they're still doing to others? I'm so sick of lies. I can't live with them anymore. I can't turn my head away and shrug!" "Not even if it means losing me?" "You've got him. You don't need me, Scully." She stared at him. He still did not know. Did not see. He was still blind to her. Still in darkness in himself. His words tiny. Almost too small to hear. Difficult to believe. Then he said: "Maybe I am crazy. But an answer, at least it's something. It's all I have left." She wanted to slug him and drive him straight out of his dense walk in the lonely night. "Goddamnit, Mulder. Why does everything have to be all or nothing with you? You have this huge mountain of guilt riding around on your shoulders and you expect others to share it with you, to pay for all their mistakes with the same self-destructive fury. Well, I don't! And I won't!" "Scully-" He started, his pride enforced stiffness having been worn down somewhat by her honesty. She was right, it just hurt to be reminded of it. "Be quiet and listen for a change! You're angry, Mulder. You're angry at the world. You're angry with yourself, with your vulnerableness. Well, if you love me as you have said, then you _are_ vulnerable. Because love _is_ vulnerable. It's risky, it means being exposed and having to trust! And it means maybe getting hurt too." She paused for breath and continued more calmly. "So, if you're willing, you can be vulnerable with me, in fact, I require it. And this guilt and disappointment you have with your own failure to "save the universe", this guilt that daily consumes you pisses me off, do you know that?" Her voice rose again. "And do you know why? Because it degrades a man I happen to love, a man I consider not a disappointment and not a failure. That negative attitude lends no credit to my value of you and that pisses me off too! How many times do we have to go over it?! We say it and say it and nothing changes. You make me insane. So you're a little screwed up. Who isn't?! What I have to offer isn't purer than pure, it's normal, everyday feelings. I mean what the hell are you waiting for: The Magic Bus of Love to pull up and make a delivery?! Here I am, Mulder, take me or leave me, but will you STOP waiting. whatever it is, it comes from here." She thumped her chest with her finger. "And god knows it can come from inside you, because it's in there. I've seen it. Will you just accept it, please? Because this enormous self-depreciation in which you constantly indulge pisses me off!" Scully was standing an inch from him, making sure her words hit home, aiming them right at him so he couldn't possibly duck. Her eyes suddenly bugged as though an unexpected light surfaced. "YOU piss me off, Mulder!" She stuck a finger in his face. Scully was breathing hard and then, when his face and countenance started their crumbling at her words, she reached up to repair any lasting damage by taking his face in her palms, gently so it would not break him. Mulder trusted enough to look back at her and there, instead of righteous anger, was tender feeling in forgiving eyes and a wetness that ran to her chin. She bit her lip and spoke: "Y-you piss me o-o-f-f-f-f..." Scully drew him to her mouth and drank from the water she'd been thirsting for. Drank deeply. The journey had been long and the liquid fought for with body and soul, so it was sweeter than any. Scully let the next leg take it's own course as she continued to kiss and kiss him, soon backing him against her kitchen counter and with arms encircling his neck, guided him to the floor. Quickly she shed his coat. The buttons on his shirt fell way under her fingers, the garment sliding off to end up down around his wrists and bunched around his backside. Swiftly, his jeans were opened and being pulled away from his hips, his underwear coming off with them. "Scully..." He whispered and she could hear the quiver under the breathless way he said her name. "I-I'm n-not..sure I'm ready for this.." But his respiration's were quick and light and his skin had flushed to a beautiful hue. It spurred her on. "That's a risk you'll just have to take..." WATER: Scully explored his mouth and lips and tongue with her own, not wanting to end the first contact. But other journeys were there, too, waiting for her. She kissed throat and he leaned his head back to accommodate her. She sucked on nipple and applied tiny bites to muscles, and tongue to chest and stomach hair. His flesh would drive her insane. She would get lost in it - she was certain - in his sex. Scully heard the words well learned and ingrained in her medical mind. She kissed them, sucked them on her way south, down, down, down to his most perfect portion: The orbicular and the risorius. The stern-o-cleid-o-massss-toooooid. Trapezius. Deltoid. Pectorals. Anterior se-e-e-erraaaaatussssss... The tight, rolling, obliques. The looooong adductors. The witch doctor in her smiled secretly and nipped at it; the notorious sotoriussssssss... The words, so lovely in themselves were woefully inadequate to describe the harmonious coming together of all his parts into the pagan beautiful flesh of his writhing, consumable body. Finely crafted. Finally achieved. An icon molded to be worshipped with hands, teeth and tongue. Finally, her goal reached and lips and mouth sought out curls and silky tautness of what had been denied to her for too long. She hesitated, drinking in his nakedness. The exposed and beautiful head, divested of its sheath when he was a babe, now a man's and offered to her. His rosy, tender bud atop the long, stiffened root. She took his ridged penis in and rolled and sucked it, with eyes wantonly gazing up to watch his sweet trembling, his lower lip disappearing and reappearing, bitten and pinched under teeth in his desperate struggle. She watched as he split in half, part afraid but part surrendering to her touch that felt soooo good. His brows drew together in default; succumbed; eyes shut; begging for more and for mercy as well. "Just feel my lips, Mulder, just feel my mouth on you..." Mulder. Suddenly belonged. So completely to her. Sliding full length to the floor, he was wholly vulnerable as he had never before been to anything or anyone. Trusting her. He declared all to her through sighs and soft moans so she would not betray his trust and they would complete the journey together. Scully sucked in the feel of him and tasted the scent of him until she was moist for wanting him. But she did not want to top this first hill until he lay back in peace from it. Watching him gasp as she sucked him was food from the gods. Soon she would have their drink as well. Quicker, more insistent she became and, eyes shut in disbelief of what he was feeling, his head whipped back and forth in the instinct to free himself from the sexual enslavement. But, he was caught. Yet, he was willing. That anything should taste as good or be as perfect as he, was a mystery she didn't care to uncover. His spasms and moans came often, pleasing her. He had leaned up during his months on the Island and his stomach was fine and flat. The whole of his body, beautiful in it's center shape of skin over rippling muscle, was her landscape. He would raise his head from her kitchen floor with eyes dilated in sweet shock for what she was doing. His silent gratitude was a gift to her - as was his perfection. Her love for him made him that. She would conquer his center and his circumference, his end and his beginning. Her offering. Scully massaged, ever-so-gently, his testicles in a warm hand. He spoke to her in the language of carnal surrender - in moans she had never heard. His need, his trust and his want, his helpless state in her presence, made her wetter and wanting more from him. Her embracing of his most secret parts: Was the Hope she had spoken of. Fox Mulder. Her's now, and hers alone. He sat up and laced new-born fingers through her hair. "Mulder, no..." She placed a hand against his warm and weeping flesh, pushing him once more to the floor. "No, baby," she whispered, "lie down, lie back down sweetheart,..." Mulder descended once more, but his fingers splayed on the cool tile, trying to find grips there rather than give in to instinct by taking her head between his hands and shoving himself into her. Scully worked him until her jaw ached. Mulder moaned and tried not to accelerate the process but allow her total will. She quickened, wanting him to feel her swallow him down. And then his offering was given; his innermost life offered up. His deepest gift and most honest agreement. He came and arched up, grabbing her hair, thrusting into her, crying out. Scully's heart smiled. It was okay - that last. She had gladly let him make the final ruling. He was a man and, in this instance, impossible for him not to have done. In physical automation his brain left the earth for those seconds, and he fucked her mouth until he was empty. She swallowed, the more for him to be part of her. That, after all, had been her goal. For a few seconds Mulder stayed that way, hands in her hair, head on her shoulder, arched over her like Greek Erotica until finally he lay back in delicious fatigue. Afterward, Scully lay on top of him for a moment while his breathing calmed and his mind returned from that ethereal place she'd sent it. She didn't want to talk, just smell him and kiss his face and wait for his trembling to stop. Finally, words seemed appropriate. "...And I love you, Mulder. Don't you know that yet?" EARTH AND FIRE: When he was able to stand, he took her by the hand and lead her into her bedroom with the neat-cornered bed. He began unbuttoning her blouse and didn't seem to mind that she helped. His fingers, shaking, fumbled a bit and she smiled up at him. Mulder is naked in my bedroom, she told herself over and over. Mulder's nude and he's taking off my clothes and he's going to fuck me. He's going to shove his already hard cock inside me and come! She was flushed with heat in her face and in her vagina. She herself would come _instantly_. He was slow with the funny clasps on her slacks. They were fancy little hooks all the way up one side. She took control and undid them expertly, her passions for him running so wildly through her head, she all but tore the pants from her body, shimmying out of them and slipping her damp panties off in one quick motion. Then she took his shoulders, maneuvered him around so he was against the bed and pushed. He fell back, bouncing, his long, hard and inviting looking penis bobbing. It was asking for her and she accepted. Scully slipped herself over him, delighted in the long moan it elicited from his mouth. She began rocking. He filled her completely. He was hard and so very, very hot, she wondered if she'd live through it. Her chest was a bubble of thrill and sex-drive and she moved him every which way, wanting to fuck him until it killed her, until she exploded with orgasm. Before she knew it, they were coming together. She wanted every last drop and squeezed and tilted until she'd gathered it. I'm going to carry Mulder's living cum around in me all day tomorrow. I'll think of it there and remember who put it there. I'll remember and know that _he_ filled me up. Mulder's sex had just decorated her insides and it was hot liquid gold! The thought was like floating in the ocean. "Ooooohhh my GOD!, Mulder, I _fucking_ love your cock!" A bit crude, perhaps, but it was only the truth. Nothing spurious here. No platitudes need arise when faced with the male sex that was alive in Fox Mulder. SKY: Mulder did not let her separate from him but rolled her over and kept himself tucked away inside. Looking at her from almost the level of her own skin but an inch were the eyes that saw within. She could not lie to their demand for truth. Not for long, certainly. Neither could she turn from the face of a boy who had grown up, became her partner, then her best friend, then her confidant and protector until, one day, he was not merely a person, but a man under her gaze. A male. Something more had conceived. Before her each day as he walked into their office or to her apartment on those rare occasions he allowed himself to invade her privacy that much, someone new was there. He had seemed to revere her hideaway, a thing he felt the need to protect because it was part of her. Protect even from himself. His emptiness had been so great yet he had asked so little of her, as if his needs were inconsequential compared to her peace. One day, partner and friend, the next a man. The opposite sex. Suddenly, that day, bursting forth from her female mind, came the realization that her affection and care for him was mingling with desire and lust. He was on her mind constantly. A creature for whom she already had such affection that the next step suddenly seeming logical and correct. Not acted upon, however. She, too, felt the need to protect. To keep him from harm or hurt, even unintentional. She did not know how he saw her then. Suspicions were not foundation enough upon which to lay out her heart. But her eyes saw clearly what her heart questioned. He had risked all for her. Would willingly destroy himself to save her. Years ago he had done so and done so again. A day arrived where she learned the certainty of it. Awakening on a plateau of freezing ice and snow, his face was the shining angel of the Old Testaments, his embrace the burning bush that warmed her in that place yet both embodied in simply a man. Who had looked to the sky and laughed! Then dropped his head to the surface of the Antarctic, satisfied with his visions and that they contained both the wonder of the sky and the life in her that would remain. Her heart beat only for him from that moment forward. She would have told him then had he not gone into pre-death slumber. Gathering as much of him in her arms as possible, she had lifted him from that almost death and infused her life-will into him as she did the warmth of her body. He came for me. Here. He came alone. Wounded, he still came. Would have willingly died just in trying. He'd become more to her, then, than anything else in life. Partner, friend,...then man, sexual male, other half, perfect mate, second-soul... Loving human being whom she loved.... Mulder kissed her, tasting all with his tongue and open mouth. Lovely, open lips. He was hardening again and moving around in her, she could feel him swell and push out at her depths until stuffed with his penis. Then he moved, everywhere, all-over in every direction at once! And his lips sucked tit and tummy skin and neck and face and mouth until she might drown in him. His cock squeezing in and out of her, his hips pumping up and down. And all she could think about was it was her old partner fucking her brains out! It was Mulder. Spooky. The cute genius who'd looked at her through those old glasses making her heart flip just once. The guy who had covered up his nervousness and anxiety when he saw that his new partner and spy was a petite, pretty little thing. Nerves he covered over with cockiness that was so put-on, it was sexy. He'd teased her and had somehow managed not to be an asshole about it. Fox Mulder, bringing her a sports video. Placing her gold cross and chain in her hand with a shy grin and then slipping out her hospital room door as if scared to betray how terribly her disappearance had affected him. Mulder, who'd thanked her for taking care of him when he was sick from poisoned water. Who thanked her because she had tended his poison-induced fevers across four states and three days of driving. Fox, who had come to her out of the fire, in a dream, to assure her that he was alive and would come back to her. Mulder, who had wept profusely at her bedside as she lay dying of cancer and blood-loss. Fox Mulder, her partner, who had said she made him whole... ..fucked her and never let his eyes leave her face as he filled her with cum. She wrapped her legs around his hips and pulled him in, wanting more. He gave more, until he was dry. His eyes were large, black holes and she looked deeply, as always. Reflected in each eye of Azure and Hazel, was the other's. He collapsed on her softness, weak with having emptied into her. "Black." He said in her ear. She stroked his back with finger tips, up and then down. "What?" "My favorite color," he panted quietly, "is black." Afterward, Scully wanted to shower. Not him - she loved his after-sex smell. A new and powerful odor. She wanted herself and the room filled with it. When she moved to rise from the bed... "No" He pleaded. "No." And drew her to him under the sheets, wrapping him legs around her, and resting his face between her underarm and breast to hibernate in her smell of sex and perfume. She saw his eyes flicker closed and felt his breath calm into the deep rhythms of sleep. ** TRUST: She was showering and the sound of the spray and the heated mist reached him from the open bathroom door. It was like waking next to a tropical waterfall. He could see Scully's feminine form soap itself down and he quietly padded to the curtain, watching her touch her own body until he could no longer endure being denied that action. Mulder pulled back the curtain and stepped in with her. "I want to do that." Taking the soap from her hand, he lathered her back, his hand reaching around to soap her breasts that tightened at their tips under his touch. He slipped the slivered bar in between her legs and lovingly used his fingers to spread the silky cleansing agent into every canal and canyon. He let the soap drop, lathering her sex with tactile fingers. She moaned and it was the sound they both wanted. He was hard, ready to speak back. "Bend over, Scully." And she complied, turning up that golden bottom to him eagerly. Mulder shoved himself deeply inside. She hadn't douched yet and was lubricated for him. He penetrated as far as nature allowed and then pulled away but never exiting. Tight, hot, wet Scully smothered his cock and it was as near to heaven as he would ever get in this life. Her moans of pleasure mingled into a music with his and he thrust harder. Lifting her slight mass in his arms, one perfect thigh under each forearm, he pressed himself against her and she against the shower wall, shoving his cock in and out. She had nothing to grip, no control over what happened to her body under his greater strength but was letting him do his desire. "Mulder-r-r-r-AH!" Liking it! Moaning for more. He had spread and taken her in a way he had secretly imagined over and over for years. He was fucking Dana Scully and she wanted it! He pounded her box that ached for him until his mind joined the flight of the shower drops and scattered into mist. BELIEVE THE TRUTH: He soaped her down again and then she did the same for him. Then he wrapped her in a towel, carried her to the bed. She knew what he wanted, what he couldn't get enough of and let the towel fall away, laying back for him on the bed, ready for him. Always, she would be ready. Wanting him. _Wanting_ him. Mulder didn't do anything for a moment but look at her. Memorizing the swell of her tits with their pink nipples pinched tight in lust while he watched. The slight curve of her tummy, a perfect pillow for his hips. His eyes plunged down to her waiting femaleness, fur glistening with need. Mulder gently raise each of her legs, his hands on the backs of her thighs, pushing upward until full view of pussy and vagina were exhibited. He stayed that way, looking at her. He wondered if there could ever be anything more beautiful in the world than this: Scully naked beneath him. Carpet and clit' created just for him by the talented God whom she worshipped. When he licked his lips, she sucked in air at the meaning. It was the only thing he was hungry for. The only food for years that would fill him without any kind of hurt but for the pain of that it would never be enough. All of Scully was his. His to kiss and lick, smell and touch, kneed and fuck forever. Mulder took her tiny member, the female hint of the male, between his lips in a pout and sucked ever-so-gently, teasing, tickling, until she was writhing under him and around him, her legs shuddering in sex-trembles. He licked and then kissed it over and over, teeny touches and she cried: "Mulder, oh god, Mulder, oh, fuck, oh _FUCK_!". He used two fingers to stroke her in and out until she was begging him. Begging to feel him again. "Do you want me, Scully? Do you want me to fuck your pussy? Suck your tits? Suck your cunt? Do you want me? I want you to _want_ me." "YES!" She cried. Whimpered, "y-e-s-s-s-s, so bad, so bad..., fuck me, please, baby-Fox-sweety-Mulder-doll, I wanna feeeeel you,.. you're perfect-perfect, you're so perfect, fuck me forever...Pe-r-r-r...f-e-ct.." Mulder moved himself into position and he was inside, thrusting and jerking up and down on top of her. Felt her clench around him and then let him go, again and again, her hips rising up to meet him each time. He rode her like that, pumping furiously until he came with a cry and she was overflowing with it. She kissed him hard on the lips as her insides spasmed and clutched him, caught him and would not let go. He collapsed, burying his face in the hollow of her shoulder, confessing slavery to his priestess: "I love you, Scully. I love you so much. I would die if I lost you, I was dying, I was...don't let anyone else touch you anymore, I don't want anyone touching like this, Just-me-just-me, _me_, please, only me..." He would kill them if they did. If they hurt her again. If they took her and made her hurt or cry or frightened her. If anything tainted of their moral disease ever burrowed into her beautiful-like-the-sun- is-beautiful body, mind, brain, soul and life again, causing her to cease and leave him, he would kill them all and then kill himself. "Anything you want. Anything, Mulder, anything..." She kissed his mouth to seal it. "...anything in this world. Nothing can touch us now..." She kissed him, held him, absorbed him into her - until now - piteously soul-less being. "...nothing." **** One more thing. Fox Mulder turned it over in his mind as he entered the elevator. Each floor added one or two riders until eight or nine had crowded him to the back. Just one more thing would make his life paradise. No, paradise had arrived in his life two nights ago. It had come to him when he'd been stepping out her door ready to face hell because he wanted them to pay for bringing a taste of it to her. He knew what it was like to be blind and terrified. Promise to her or no promise, he could not sit by. Scully'd lived a white/black hurting place for the second time because of them and to a lesser degree, because of him. And that was unacceptable. He could not let it pass. She deserved better than what he had brought her for the years since their awkward beginning in a chilly basement office cluttered as it had been with ideals and determinations. She deserved so much more that what he could give now. He'd felt his heart atrophy at the knowledge of the other who had held that future for her in his outstretched hand. The best man would have her and she would be safe. But she - Scully - had prevented his leaving and made him believe in something good again. She had showed him her heart and taken his, in it's presence and physical representation - convincingly. Doctor-Agent Dana Katherine Scully loved him. Was in love _with_ him. She'd said it before. More than once. Hearing it and nodding and brain choosing correct words to speak back had not made his heart believe it though. Brain and heart disputed the meaning and had done so since the beginning. Now there was agreement. The questioning had ceased. Only one more thing would make the paradise warmer. Today, that very morning, she'd brought that to him as well: Scully sat down with him in his cubicle on a chair she dragged over from the next "slot" - his word for the one place in the Bureau he could call his own. "It's not just you, Mulder." She continued, knowing he would not understand her meaning. "These murders, the Allenby's, Ian, Samantha, they're not because of some taint of death you carry or a dark conspiracy involving only you." Mulder listened closely, knowing from experience that she was not counseling, but was building up to some new revelation. "These strange deaths of children, these killings, they're happening all over the world. Before Beyer died, he'd been gathering information, had a half dozen law enforcement agencies searching world data basis for similar deaths; similar unsolved cases; similar signatures at the crime scenes." She scooted her chair in closer and leaned into him, her face to his. "Dead children, Mulder with no determinable cause of death, all between the ages of 7 to 14. Unexplained deaths, hundreds of them. And if we include third world countries where data is sketchy? Maybe thousands." Mulder shook his head but not in disbelief. "Hundreds? I don't understand. If that's true, there was no single UnSub or even a single group. The call to me, the case itself?" "All exactly what you thought they were. Somebody wanted me on this case. But for some reason, not you." "What else do you have?" "Not much. Autopsy findings, Interviews that tell us little. But something terrible is happening, I can't begin to guess what and it's not only occurring in North American. All we do know is people are dying. Bizarre crime scenes being discovered where the parents or guardians, baby-sitters - whoever - and the children are murdered all the same way. But also at each crime scene, one other child is also found mysteriously dead. I've asked Director Skinner to assign another agent to me as an assistant on this case. THIS..." She held up her thick file folder like a flag, "is an X-File. Our office may have burned, Mulder, but the X-Files are alive and well and this is the scariest one I've ever seen, how about you?" "Ditto." Scully looked into tired but happier hazel eyes and debated whether to tell him the rest of what had been eating at her. She opened the honey jar, now out comes the stinger. Do and die. Together. Whole. But then, too, must the whole truth be. "Confession time." she said. Mulder sat forward a bit. She had his complete attention. "First, I love you more than anything in this screwed up world. And if you don't believe that after the things about me that I'm about to tell you, then speaking truth between us means zilch. And it means I'll have to punch your lights out. Okay?" "I won't presume to argue with _that_." She took a deep breath. This was going to hit him like a truck. "First of all, I lied to you. I slept with Walter Skinner during the time you and I were _not_ together." His eyes dropped and by that she knew it hurt him but he said nothing. After a moment, he looked back up. Nodded. It was forgiven and done. One down. "The men who took me told me that if I didn't stop you from interfering in their "expectations of things", they would stop you. I took that to mean they would kill you. And forgive me, Mulder but that is simply not an option in my life any longer. Tying you up wasn't practical, so we, meaning Skinner and I, consulted together. I falsified my initial report about what happened in the subway station so the blame would fall on you and you would lose your credibility and the resources to pursue the Smoking Man and your answers. If you think I was content with what I did, how I tried to save you, think again." "Later, when you were in jail, I told you a half truth, to try and save you once more. Again at your apartment, I lied. But nothing worked Mulder. You're unstoppable. You're like a tsunami once you set your mind to something. That scares the hell out of me, you know." Mulder was listening. He was not looking at her and his parlor was alternating from pink to white, but he was shutting up. "Not even the threat that you might lose me or that it could destroy me - not even actually losing me - stopped you and that scares me even more." He swallowed once. Twice. "But I realized it's because you didn't really believe that I loved you anyway." Scully searched for his eyes. "Do you now?" He nodded but did not give her his eyes. "Don't be ashamed, Mulder, it happens to the best of us." Smiled. She was satisfied to see his lip twitch at least. "So I'm not perfect. Am I? I've done some pretty awful things that I'm not proud of. But I've forgiven myself the only way I really could. I reminded myself, about a thousand times, that you were the reason. Behind my motivations was you. Keeping you. I hope you can forgive me. I hope that above all else." She waited anxiously as he scratched his eyebrow and fiddled with his pencil. Finally looking at her with eyes swimming in water. "Of course. Your the only thing I want above all else." He believed. He believes I love him, she thought. Finally. Thank-you Universe! Scully let her body collapse with relief. "I'm not perfect either, Scully." He had something to say as well. She listened. It wasn't easy to do. Actually, it was damn hard because of what he might say. "When you were...gone, I went to see a friend.,..." He paused. The 'fessing business was tough. "I was dying, Scully. I thought you were dead. And if your weren't dead, I thought..." She knew. He thought it was Her and Skinner; Walt' n' Dana. Skinner and Scully and zip for Mulder. "I was going out, really "out", and he helped me figure it out, understand - helped me see a few things. Nothing "happened". But if he hadn't been there, I might have I don't know what I might have done actually." He stared hard at her, "They killed him you know." Scully took his shaking hand. Squeezed it with her own on the tiny desk between them. "I'm so sorry. But I'm so glad he was there. I'm glad, Mulder. Do you hate me for being with Walter." "No." He didn't really hate Skinner either. "No. Di-did you,...w-was he... was he..?" "Not _bad_." Her lips twisted and pursed teasingly. "But, Mulder, I have to tell you: first they broke the mold. Then they made _you_." He blushed to his roots. Time to change the subject, she thought. "There's something else I didn't tell you. Something I remember from when they took me. They spoke about you. A lot. About your searching into the case. But more than that, they said they'd been aware - and I quote: "of you and of the children for some time". They said the children "must not be violated"." Scully could see his eyes light up like two tiny suns. "It's those kids, Mulder. The kids are the key to all this. Don't ask me how, I can't begin to understand why or even the manner in which they're being killed. But that's where this investigation needs to look for those answers. the ones to those questions you keep asking. Something's killing these children and we have to find out how and who. Even if it means risking agents. Hundreds of children and their families. Maybe more. It shouldn't be." Mulder agreed with an emphatic nod. He asked: "So who's the lucky slob?" Meaning whatever new partner she was soon due. "Well, he's not my type but he shows promise." Despondent, "Yeah?" Annoyed too. "Yeah. Skinner told me to go and bring my new partner..." Mulder winced "...up to date on all of this." Scully leaned in and quickly kissed his lips. "So, whadda ya' say, Partner, care to read it?" Mulder had stared like a shocked fool and then his face split into a grin that made Scully stagger. Once or twice she'd seen that. Maybe not even. Mulder had kissed her back, feeling light headed. Even the nausea that kicked in from the excitement didn't bother him. And it wasn't just because he was back on the job as something more resembling a real agent, it was because he was there with Scully. And he was there with a Scully who held an X-File in her tiny, delicate but incredibly powerful hand. Because she worked those hands through problems and kneaded them out. Because she took shit and spun it into gold. She just made things happen. She'd made him happen. And them. Mulder indulged a loving look at his redheaded partner: She had to be a witch! ** Skinner waited patiently along with half a dozen employees who, when their look brushed passed his, smiled or nodded. No-one ignored an opportunity to say good-day to the Director himself. Ass-kissing at it's most refined. -Ding!- The elevator doors opened and instead of a steady stream of humans filing out, they were huddled around in a circle within, looking down on something he could not see. Sentences were being spoken: "Hey? Are you okay?", "Can you get up?", "Maybe we should we call an ambulance?" Skinner pushed his way through the crowd when he recognized the voice of the one who answered: "No. No, I'm fine. Just got a bit dizzy, that's all." Skinner looked down between stranger's shoulder's to see Mulder sitting on his ass in the middle of the onlookers. "Agent Mulder? What happened?" He offered his hand and Mulder gratefully accepted, letting Skinner pull him to his feet. "Nothing. I just got dizzy. Working too hard I guess." Skinner saw the dismissive look in Mulder's eyes, the non-concern with himself. "I think you should go to a doctor." "No, really, sir. I'm fine now." Skinner saw stain on the back of Mulder's collar. "Come out here, turn around." Mulder was puzzled but decided it was best to obey the Director. Skinner's finger was touching his collar and neck. "There's blood on your shirt, Mulder. Did you hit your head when you fainted?" "I didn't faint, I got dizzy." But he did feel a small bump on the back of his head. "But, yeah, I must have whacked my skull on the handrail in there." "Well, that calls for a trip to emergency." Mulder knew that under his current status, medical concerns were top of the list on things to "watch for". He nodded. "I'll drive over there after work." "You'll cab it and you'll go now. This happened at work so it's legit and you're covered for it." Mulder sighed. He was so sick of people watching out for him, but arguing with Skinner would just get him a reprimand and his position in the Bureau was shaky enough already. He nodded again, heading for the front desk. **** "Oh, Mulder..." Dana Scully muttered as she walked into Mercy Emergency and asked the admitting nurse where she might find the annoyance in question. Checking her screen, "Oh, yes. He was taken up to X-Ray. Looks like he got a bump in the head when he,...wait, um who are you?" "I'm his doctor. Doctor Scully." She may as well be. "Oh, sorry. Um, he sort of passed out in an elevator. They think he might have a very mild concussion, but the Resident wasn't worried." "Thanks." Scully made her way to X-Ray, by now familiar with every closet and stairwell in the much availed-upon facility since life began with a man named Mulder. Typically, he'd pushed himself too hard again. He was still on two medications. But at forty-seven years of age, he was a middle aged dog trying to be a young pup. Scully smiled. Although, at that, two days ago, he had succeeded _very_ well. Stepping off the elevator, she all but ran down Doctor Dethe'. Pronounced "Deeethe", "with a long "e"", Doc' had emphasized previously to Mulder who had, in Mulder-humor-fashion, called him "Death". Doc had not been amused at, Scully was sure, the play on his name that he had patiently endure probably a thousand times before. "Doctor Dethe'!" (long "e") she said, "Excuse me." "Doctor Scully? You'd be looking for Mister Mulder?" "Yes. Another one for his collection." She joked, knowing the Doc' wouldn't get it. "Another bump." "Yes." Dethe' was nothing if not humorless. He seemed grim, but he was a damn fine doctor. In other words, he'd handled Mulder before. "Would you care to examine the X-Ray?" Scully, surprised, nodded. "Sure. When is he being released?" Dethe' showed her into a small slide room and clipped the films of Mulder's skull on the Back-Lit. Scully crossed her arms, getting comfortable and had a look. Dethe' was busy clipping up the C-Scan's they'd also taken. "Doctor Scully. Would you mind telling me what this man's doing running around the streets when it's clear he should be-" He turned around to finish his question and discovered the room empty but for himself. * Scully walked fast. Faster. Down one hallway and another, looking, searching, seeking, needing... She saw a door that appeared like it might contain emptiness on the other side. Yanking it open, she ducked in. Not empty. Janitor room. Shelves piled with chemical cleaners. Disinfectant. Half full jugs of wax stripper. An orange mop-bucket on wheels. Wooden mop, handle thrusting nearly to the low ceiling, nestled in it. Scully pulled the light cord, it tickled her face like a cob web, and closing the door to the hall from where eyes might see in and wonder at her implosion. Because there was nothing else to prevent her decent she grabbed hold of the mop handle and hung on, until the floor moved up to meet her. She sucked up deciliters of the mildewed and confining air of the closet while staring into the face of a monster who had leaped out at her from the X-Ray Back-Lit and followed her here. The monster she had been fearing had shown itself. It had come from the darkness into the light, opening it's great mouth to pronounce its directive upon her. Gasping for air, her eyes absorbed water-soaked cotton mop string floating on the surface of dirty bucket water - rotting from bleach and wear. She added tears to it's poisonous chemical mix. And bile. And when Scully steeled herself to look at that monster who was also a demon head-on with her burning eyes peering down that bottomless maw, what she saw looking back. Was Emily. END. But it's not over!!!!!! Continued in "DIVINITIES" (Book Four). Coming End March '99 ***** "We shall foldback unto ourselves. Returning to that which sent us forth. The Divine. The Unblemished Way. We shall become as children with no memories." Excerpt from: A Composite of Scripture In the Manner of Songs" GVB. :-) GenieVB genyah@hotmail.com or Avan@home.com