The Genesis Project VI 06/10
by aRcaDIaNFall$

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- MULDER POV -

We'd both been nervous as hell our first time together. We'd never had
a honeymoon, and on our wedding night sex had been the last thing on
the minds of either of us, with Josh and Astrid sleeping on the floor
in our bedroom, crawling into he bed between us with every nightmare.
It had been over a week before we'd been able to shift them out, and
even after that we were just busy, trying to sort out work and
childcare for two emotionally-scarred, intellectually-superior
children, too exhausted when we finally got to bed at night to think
any further than sleep.
Skinner had been good back then, letting us leave work at two in the
afternoon to pick the kids up from the daycare centre after Astrid
threw a wooden puzzle at another child and Josh wouldn't stop crying,
but he'd insisted on us taking the out-of-town case the following week.
The kids had spent their first full night sleeping on Scully's lounge
room floor since Jacqueline had been taken, but that was hardly so much
progress that Scully and I felt safe leaving them. Her mom had been
reluctant to take them, too, knowing so little of their past or their
present suffering.
The case itself, however, which turned out to be nothing but a runaway
trying to attract her parents attention, had nevertheless given us the
much-needed opportunity to move our relationship ahead. 

Not sure how we should handle our expenses - the finance department
checked up on everything when it came to us -  we'd gotten two rooms at
a decent-but-within-budget hotel in the area. We'd had no intention of
using both rooms, of course; we'd been sharing a bed for the past two
weeks and I knew neither of us had any desire to sleep alone again, but
we'd decided to keep up appearances, for the time being.
Scully had been reading in bed, the light reflecting off her glasses,
wearing a pair of pajamas I recognised easily by then - 'sensible' Pjs,
though she was just as sexy in them as that red chemise I'd later given
her in an awkward - now amusingly so - attempt at romanticism. Watching
her I had an almost overwhelming desire to make love to her. It wasn't,
by any means, the first time I'd felt that, but never before had I also
had the opportunity. Oddly, it was the first moment when I realised
that being married to Scully meant more than just being able to tell
her that I loved her, but everything else I'd long wanted. It was an
unexpected bonus, of sorts.
I'd climbed onto the bed beside her and kissed her shoulder - three
slow, deliberate kisses. She'd looked at me, bemused, a little
apprehensive, but smiling. In a teasing way she'd taken off her glasses
and closed the book carefully laying then both aside, before returning
her gaze to meet mine demurely. She was trembling, I'd realised as I
reached to take her hands in mine, but I understood. There'd been a
hell of a lot leading up to that moment. 


"Mulder?"

I'd put Erin down for the night and she'd gone to check on Astrid. Now,
twenty minutes later, I'd been waiting for her to return, standing
staring at our bed as if I'd never seen it before. I shook myself.
"Yeah?"

She looked at me curiously, frowning. "What are you doing?"

I shrugged. "Nothing much," I said honestly. "Just thinking...
remembering."

She nodded, looking a little preoccupied, and sighed, folding her arms.
Her hair was falling down before her eyes and I stepped closer to tuck
it back behind her ear. "What's wrong?" I asked gently. "You're worried
about Astrid, aren't you?"

Another sigh. "She's stressing out about her study," she admitted. She
shook herself a little. "Actually, I'm worrying more about Jacqueline."

I had a sudden desire to banish Jacqueline not only from her mind but
from our lives, if only for the moment. "Don't," I said, rubbing her
back lightly, feeling the bumpy outline of her bra under the thin,
tight-fitting sweater. "Tonight is ours." Tonight is ours and you are
mine.

Her frown lifted a little and she smiled, looking at me critically, a
little amused, maybe. 
She glanced around the room. "It's been a long time since we've had our
bedroom to ourselves," she allowed, the smile playing at the corners of
her mouth, the light touching her eyes. 

I moved over to pull the bedroom door firmly closed and then returned
to her, taking her face in my hands, running my thumbs over her face,
over the tiny scars and her beautiful freckles and the patches of dry,
uneven skin. Leaning closer, I kissed her forehead, her eyelids, her
nose, trailing the tip of my tongue along her cheek, gently nipping her
ear. She let out a contented sigh, almost a moan, a purr caught in her
throat, arching her neck as I ran my lips along it, gently pinching the
skin between my teeth. 
"Mmm... God... Mulder, you're spoiling me," she protested huskily,
reaching to cup my cheeks and bring my lips to meet her own. There was
always something unhurried and infintely sensual about our lovemaking,
and I never ceased to wonder how I could have ever seen love and sex as
two entirely different things.
I undressed her slowly, taking in every detail, as I always did, as if
this were our very first time. The slowly fading stains of stretchmarks
on her skin, old bulletwound scars, a day or two's dark stubble under
her arms, traces of cellulite on her milk-white thighs. I could see her
heart fluttering against her ribs as she ran her fingertips over my
bare chest, as her roaming hands helped divest me of my jeans, her
touch the assured one of a physician, the sensuous one of a lover.

"You're so beautiful," I murmured feverishly, kissing her, and then
again and again, as if to take time even to breathe would lose me her
forever.
"I'm so afraid of losing you," I whispered, not realising what I said
til it was out.

Brief consternation crossed Scully's face and she caressed my cheek
lightly. I know you are, her eyes said. She gave me a small smile,
grazing her lips across mine. Her forehead pressed against mine, I felt
the breath of her promise on my face. "I'm not going anywhere."

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- SCULLY POV -

"That's Mr Vanderhout. He lived next door to us when we were kids, til
we moved. He hated us."

"He hated you?" I echoed, trying inconspicuously to roll the cricks out
of my neck. It had only been an hour or so after Mulder and I fell
asleep that Erin woke us, crying, and despite our best intentions she
ended up spending the night sleeping between the two of us, which left
me short of room and sleeping uncomfortably.

"Yes, he hated us," Helena said with conviction. "Sabrina and I." She
seemed less agitated than she had the other day, though she sat
scratching at the interview table, trying to peel off flakes of paint.
I thought maybe that she was still wearing off a sedative, given to her
to keep her calm during transfer from the psychiatric hospital to the
jail where she was being held without bail. Annie Fredricks was being
kept down the hall.

"And did you hate him?" I asked.

"Of course we did. He told Mom and Dad that Sabrina and I broke curfew
and snuck out of the house at n-" She broke off, realisation flooding
her face. "Oh Lord, he's dead, isn't he?"

"He was killed last night," Mulder said briefly.

She let out a babylike whimper. "Oh God... Sabrina did that?"

"They've arrested a young nurse for the crime." Mulder looked at her,
contemplating. "Why do you say Sabrina did it?"

"Because... because..." she faltered, looking confused. "I don't know."

"You have to have some reason why you think that, why you knew he was
dead," Mulder pushed.

"You came in here asking about him," she protested. "I figured he had
to be dead. Maybe you thought I'd killed him too or something ..."

I watched, fascinated, as Mulder shook his head. "No, you know that
Sabrina is responsible for the crime. How do you know that?"

"Sabrina was talking about him the last time I saw her, just after her
first accident, when she was still living with Charlie. She was talking
about neighbours and how awful Mr Vanderhout had been... she sounded so
vicious, like she wanted to kill him."

"And now she has," Mulder observed. 

I wanted to object to that, to remind him that we had no proof, but I
couldn't do it in front of Helena, so I kept silent. 

"Helena, you can tell Agent Scully and I everything, you know that?"

She sniffed self-derisively. "My lawyer doesn't think so," she said
ironically.

"Your lawyer isn't going to find out what's going on here, why all this
is happening to you. We are."

"Helena, is any of the missing time coming back to you?" I asked,
leaning forward. I don't really know what spurred me to act, but I
could see from the way her hands tightened into fists that I was right.

She drew a shaky breath. "I had... a dream," she admitted, starting to
figet. 

"What about?" Mulder prompted. He drew his chair closer to the table.

"I was there, in the prison," Helena said. She was trembling so much I
wondered how she could still speak. "And I was fighting with somebody,
struggling..."

"With Rhonda Tallerty?"

She shook her head. "No."

"Sabrina?" Mulder suggested softly.

She nodded slowly. "Yeah, it was," she admitted. I wonder whether she
would have said her sister's name had Mulder not suggested it. "I
couldn't see her face or anything, but I knew it was her. You just ...
know these things." She smiled wistfully. "They're always trying to
strangle you and borrowing your clothes and... well, you know these
things." She looked up at us, and my heart sank as I thought that she
might ask if either of us had a sibling, if we knew what she meant.

"Go on," I prompted quickly, wanting to prevent any such occurence. 

She glanced at me, a little puzzled, I think, and then across at Mulder
before returning her eyes to the table and continuing. "I was
struggling with Sabrina, and... it was only glimpses, like... It was
like somebody was holding me under water, like I was drowning or
something, and I fought to break the surface and get a glimpse of
daylight. But then I was sucked back down into the darkness. It was...
God, it was scary. I was so scared I was lost, that nobody would ever
find me." She swallowed, brushing at tears. "It was so dark. Not just
black but dark, real dark. I've never been in so much dark..."

I set my teeth, not letting myself shiver at her story, at the thought
of such a world. I glanced at Mulder, who sat staring grimly at Helena,
his eyes dark. No doubt he was feeling the same tingling terror I was
at the tale.


We excused ourselves and went down the hallway to where Annie Fredricks
was being kept. She remembered nothing, still, but Mulder seemed
convinced that she would, as Helena had, and gave her his number,
telling her to ring as soon as she did. It was a less emotional
interview than the previous one had been; Annie had passed the
incredulous, frightened stage, and was now simply angry at her
incarceration and the 'course of injustice' which had led to it.

Our next stop was back at the hospital to check Sabrina's condition and
see what recorded data we could gather from the past few days. We sat
down for a late lunch in the hospital cafeteria, trying to see what
correlations we could find between crime scene data, Sabrina's machine
readouts, and witness and suspect statements.

I put down my pen for a minute to take another bite of my tuna
sandwich, watching as Mulder jotted down figures. He paused, staring at
his page, then hastily searched through the papers to find the report
of the first murder.

I knew he'd found something; I recognised the expression on his face.
"What is it?"

"Helena remembers nothing after about ten fifteen on the Saturday
morning, right? And we know that immediately before that Sabrina had
elevated adrenalin levels and immediately after that her brain waves
flatlined. Yeah?"

"Yeah," I agreed slowly. "And the same thing happened on Monday. Annie
remembers nothing since just before six... Sabrina's EEG flatlined at
five forty-three pm Monday and sprung up again at nine-eighteen am
Tuesday... Mulder, that's not possible. Either the equipment was
malfunctioning when it said that she was braindead or it's
malfunctioning now."

"Just stick with me here, Scully. Please?" I gave him a nod of weary
affirmation, taking another bite of my sandwich. "Okay," he continued.
"Now, we know that the changes in the EEG correspond with Helena and
Annie's experiences in missing time, right?"

"You're not going to tell me aliens are experimenting on this woman's
brain, are you?" I asked suddenly.

Mulder chuckled. "Not quite what I have in mind. We're looking at a
little longer than nine minutes.
"So, let's look at it chronologically. Sabrina has been producing
heightened levels of adrenalin. Helena arrives enters Sabrina's room,
reaching out to take her sister's hand. Immediately two things happen:
Sabrina's brain waves flatline and Helena's memory loss begins. From
witness reports we know that Helena left, pushing past Sabrina's doctor
on her way out, and went to the low-level security prison where Sabrina
was kept, where she asked to see Rhonda Tallerty. Prison staff checked
the surveillance camera that was malfunctioning, by the way; they found
Helena's fingerprints all over it. So she disabled that some time
between arriving at the prison and meeting Tallerty. That's only a
matter of minutes." 

"She must have planned this all beforehand," I mused, but the idea
stuck. That would mean that this memory loss was only a concoction and
I honestly didn't think that was the situation, particularly as it had
happened also to an unconnected individual.

"I don't think so," Mulder frowned.

"Me neither," I admitted. "But go on."

"Well, Helena and Tallerty go out to the exercise yard. Helena produces
a letter opener - which has been identified as being from the private
office of one of the hospital's surgeons - and slashes Tallerty's
throat from ear to ear. She then runs, escaping we don't know how, and
drives back to the hospital. Parking her car in the ambulance bay,
we've got her on surveillance tapes running through and taking an
elevator up to her sister's floor. The security guards, seeing the
blood, think she's a panicking patient and try to stop her. She pulls
away and keeps running. They let her go, but then receieve a call from
the PD switchboard warning them that a killer fititng her description
was seen heading in the direction of the hospital. That's when they
chase after her again and one is knocked out. The other tackles her as
she attempts to get to her sister's bedside. She manages to reach her
comotose, possibly braindead sister, and lets out a cry, collapsing. At
approximately this time Sabrina's vitals and brain activity returned to
normal. Her sister regains consciousness several hours later and
remembers nothing of the missing time except, later, the sensation of
struggling as if being drowned.
"As for Annelize Fredricks, her story is pretty much the same. She
noticed Sabrina's vitals falling and went to investigate. Again, a
bloodtest done an hour earlier indicates heightened adrenalin levels.
On making contact with Sabrina Annie's missing time began and Sabrina's
cerebral activity ceased. Peter Vanderhout was killed just past ten. 
Annie was not only witnessed at the scene of her crime but also left
fingerprints all over the place. She wasn't witnessed re-entering the
hospital the next morning but surveillance cameras have her coming in
the back way. She was in a hurry, by the looks of it. We can narrow
down the time when she returned to Sabrina's hospital room, too - we
were only gone for half an hour. The EEG picks up around twenty past
nine and ten minutes later we return to discover the nurse passed out
on the floor."

He put the papers down, exhaled heavily, and looked at me expectantly.
"Well?"

I shrugged. "A fine summary, but it still doesn't explain what or how
Sabrina is doing these things."

He frowned. "All the Betsy Grubb murders could be traced to people who
had visited her in the hospital or even hospital staff, nurses and
x-ray technicians and the like. Betsy's sister apparently looked up the
hospital schedules and visitor's sign-in and discovered that almost all
of the deaths occured within only a few hours of the killer's contact
with Betsy. Two or three in some situations, others longer, five, six,
eight hours - depending on how far away or otherwise inaccessible their
target was." He paused. "They gave us a list of everything Nurse
Fredricks had in her possession when she was arrested, didn't they?"

I didn't know where he was going with that but I nodded, rifling
through the papers to produce the list, reading it aloud.

"Wait, hang on a second," Mulder interrupted. "The movie ticket stub -
do they say what the date on that was?"

I glanced down at the page. "No. Why?"

"I'd like to find out."


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- MULDER POV -

It was just as I thought - Annelize Fredricks left the hospital and
went to see "Setting Free The Bears" at a local cinema. The movie
finished just past nine and she drove from the cinema to the house of
Peter Vanderhout, where she proceeded to shoot him with his own pistol
and fled.

"She went to see a movie." Scully stared at me.

"You'd better believe it."

Her frown didn't change one bit. "Why?"

I grinned at her, knowing that this little matter was almost just as
frustrating a puzzle as Sabrina's means to commit her crime, but a far
more fun little mystery.
"Eleanor Hutton, who was charged with the murder of Betsy Grubb's
ex-husband, also went to see a movie before committing murder. Edward
Sturday, convicted of killing Anna-Marie Westmacott, a colleague of
Grubb's, spent the afternoon taking a leisurely walk in the park before
going on to savagely slaughter his victim. Clarissa Bellman sat in an
icecream parlour reading Gone with the Wind before killing."

Scully frowned. "Okay, so these killers are - what, filling in some
empty time? Is there some reason why they're postponing the killings?
Were they trying to create an alibi, maybe?"

I hadn't thought much about that. But that was how Scully and I worked
- we filled in each other's blanks. "We'll have to look into that."


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- SCULLY POV -

We did look into it, but could find nothing. Only two of the people
convicted for the Grubb-related murders were still incarcerated - the
rest had either been let out on reduced sentences, died, or been
otherwise committed. We didn't waste time trying to track them down -
interviewing them would be useless, we knew. Betsy Grubb's sister,
still trying five years ago to free those wrongly convicted for her
sister's crimes - most of them friends or relations of hers - had
established that time had yielded little more recollection of their
'lost time' than Helena Quaker had already disclosed to us. But we read
up on the police reports, trying to find a connection between the
killers' timeouts. Several had gone to the cinema, two of whom had gone
to see old Clark Gable movies. 

"Popular guy," Mulder had observed dryly, and I'd suppressed a smile.
I'd harboured a secret reverence of the actor ever since my father and
I had watched Gone with the Wind together when I was only a little
girl. It had been one of our favourite movies - it appealed to the
romantic, however well buried under pragmatism and education, within
me. 

Despite this, though, I couldn't see any real explanation or draw any
further correlations, and we left for home, unanimously agreeing to
banish not only it from mind but also Jacqueline's problems.
It was an unremarkable evening. Dinner, and then Astrid disappeared
into her bedroom - we hadn't dared to ask her how the essay had gone -
and I'd sat reading in one of the armchairs, surreptitiously listening
as Josh read aloud to Erin one of the books he'd been given as a prize
at his school's presentation night, Roald Dahl's 'The Witches'. 

I felt a little neglectful as I snuck a glance at him. He was reading
clearly, quietly expressive, grinning to Erin as she gazed up at him
adoringly, eyes wide as if she were absorbing every word. Mulder and I
would have never even thought to give Josh such a book. How was it that
his teacher knew so much more about his reading taste than we did?
Because it was clear that he was revelling in the Dahl. 
That thought triggered a flash of memory. When had I seen Josh reading
a Roald Dahl story before? No time recently, I knew. But nevertheless,
I could almost visualise it, hear a voice reading. Not my voice or
Mulder's or even Astrid or Josh's or Mom's...

Then it came to me. Jacqueline. In the very beginning, when Josh and
Astrid had been camped out on my living room floor and Jacqueline on
the sofa and all of them running for their lives, there had been a
book, Matilda, that she had read to them. That, one night, I had read a
chapter or two of to them.
How long had it been since I'd read aloud to my children?

I put my own book down. "Hey, Joshie, mind if I read for a bit?"

He looked at me, surprised, then smiled shyly, knowingly.

I moved over to the couch beside him, pulling Erin onto my own lap and
letting Josh snuggle up against me as if he were three again, his face
pressed against my upperarm. I called Astrid and she appeared sulkily
in the doorway. "What?"

I patted the empty space beside me on the couch. "Come here and listen
for a while, huh?"

She pouted at me, bad tempered. "I was busy."

"Ripping up study notes doesn't constitute as busy," Mulder quipped,
coming up behind her and grabbing her under the armpits, swinging her
up and carrying her toward us. She was growing steadily but was still
nevertheless a lightweight, small-framed child, and he carried her
easily, dropping her down on the couch beside me. She sprung up again. 
"I said I have other things to do!" she cried, storming out.

I could see disappointment and frustration cross his face and I
shrugged. We should be used to Astrid's tantrums now, though they were
becoming very... adolescent. She was increasingly moody, argumentative
and uncooperative, and we didn't know what to do.

"You come listen," I told Mulder, indicating the couch. He nodded,
stretching out beside me, his feet up on the coffee table, his head on
my shoulder.

I started to read from where Josh had left off and kept going, even as
Erin fell asleep and Mulder playfully blew on my neck, trying to get my
attention. 
"...Then the most astonishing thing happened," I read, my eyes straying
to the doorway where Astrid stood, red-eyed. I casually returned my
gaze to the page and continued, "I saw one lady pushing her fingers
*underneath* the hair on her head, and the hair, *the entire head of
hair* lifted upwards all in one piece, and the hand slid underneath the
hair and went on scratching!" Beside me, Josh giggled. Out of the
corner of my eye I saw Astrid approach. "She was wearing a wig! She was
also wearing gloves! I glanced swiftly around at the rest of the now
seated audience. Every one of them was wearing gloves!" She was
standing only a foot or two away from Mulder, arms crossed defensively,
as if waiting for him to notice her. "My blood turned to ice," I read.
"I began to shake all over. I glanced frantically behind me for a back
door to escape through. There wasn't one." 
At that point, Mulder eased himself more upright and shot out an arm,
grabbing Astrid around the waist and tugging her closer, pulling her
onto his lap. She struggled a little but then drew her legs up under
her, letting Mulder put his arms tightly around her tiny ball-like
form. She gazed up at me through shielded eyes almost fearfully, as if
afraid I was going to yell at her for her behaviour. 
But I wasn't. I knew it was hard for her and that she was trying her
damndest. My yelling at her would only make things worse. She didn't
deserve that.
"I love you," I mouthed to her. "Okay?"

She frowned, as if not letting herself believe what I'd said. But I
knew she had understood. 
"Okay?" I mouthed again.

Still frowning, her eyes still red-rimmed and troubled, she nodded.
"'kay," she whispered.

I turned back to the book and kept reading.

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- JACQUELINE POV -

"Wakey wakey."

I felt a whiskery kiss on my cheek and frowned, opening my eyes slowly.
Grae was sitting on the edge of the bed beside me, staring down at me.
It looked like he hadn't shaved since I'd last seen him. I hated facial
hair.
"Go shave," I muttered, not wanting to face him right then. I still
hadn't sorted things out and his reappearance was the last thing I
needed. I hadn't known when he was coming back, just that he would,
eventually. 

"You went to see Suzie." 

"Yes, I went to visit my sister-in-law," I retorted tightly. "What
about it?"

"Did you talk about me?"

"God, your ego's the size of a small continent!"

His eyes hardened and I squirmed more upright. I felt vulnerable enough
as it was, in pajamas, only barely awake, without having him staring
down on me. 
"Yeah," I admitted coolly. "We talked about you."

He wanted to press me further about it, I could tell, but he didn't.
Instead he stood, taking a step back and tugging back the covers. "I've
got something to show you."

Rebellious anger rose within me and climbed out of bed, pushing past
him and moving over to the dresser. I refused to let him push me around
like that. "I'm going to have a shower. You can show me later."


        - - - - } - - - - } - - @        t h e   x - f i l e s 

- MULDER POV -

"Wanna tell me about the essay today?"

"No."

"What was the question?"

"I don't want to talk about it," she said stubbornly, rolling over and
facing the wall. Pulling the bedcovers straight for her, I heard a
small sniff.

"Want a hug?" I asked, quieter.

More sniffles, and she swung around, looking at me miserably and
bursting into tears. I pulled her against me. Poor little Astrid.

"I'm sorry," she sobbed between hiccups. 

"Oh, Astrid," I murmured, disbelieving. I was aching for her. "You have
nothing to be sorry about."

"But - hic - I do," she protested. She was pressing her face against my
neck and I felt her tears slide down under the collar of my t-shirt. "I
can't handle - hic - things like you and Mommy can."

She was comparing herself to Scully and I? I was shocked. "Kiddo..."

"You and Mommy deal with important stuff like death and shooting people
and catching murderers and you handle it, most of the time. All I have
is stupid school work and I can't handle it!"

"There's a very big difference, Astrid," I said gently. "You're still
only young. I used to have trouble with homework too, you know. Mom
probably did too. It's just normal."

"But I'm not normal!" she protested, anguished. Tears were still
streaming down her face and, absurdly, she kept hiccuping.

"Hush," I murmured, trying to calm her down. I sat her back down on the
edge of her bed and took a small step back so I could look at her.
"Let's see if we can stop the crying, huh? It's only school, Astrid.
You've still got the rest of your life ah-"

"I know it's just school!" she protested tearily, pushing away the
finger I held up to hush her. "I know that, and that's half the problem
because nobody else seems to understand that! I want to do well but
sometimes I just really don't care because it's just too hard and I
don't want to do it but I have to do it because it's part of the stupid
syllabus and -"

"Mulder?"

Scully stood in the doorway, concerned. Have you got this under
control? she asked silently. 
I nodded, shooing her away. No sense in crowding Astrid. 
She nodded slowly, still frowning, and left again. I turned back to
Astrid, whose words had trailed off into sniffs. 

"I'm trying to be strong," she whispered pitifully. "But I can't..."

Hushing her as new sobs errupted, I pulled her into another hug,
stroking her hair. "Believe me, I know how that feels, kiddo."


end pt 6.


The Genesis Project VI (07/10)
by aRcaDIaNFall$

       - - - - } - - - - } - - @        t h e   x - f i l e s 

- JACQUELINE POV -

Kittens. Two little tigerstriped balls of fur, one pouncing on a string
Ebony trailed along the carpet, the other hanging from the tablecloth,
its claw caught. Grae gently reached to disentangle it, holding the
tiny creature cupped in his hands. It stared at me with wide, bright
green eyes.

"What do you think?" Grae grinned at me, holding the kitten up,
gripping it under the arms like a wet baby. It meowed, feet scrabbling
for a foothold, and he held it securely against his chest.

I stared at him, stunned. "Kittens?"

He grinned at me again. "Picked them up at the RSPCA."

"The what?"

"Animal shelter. Cute, aren't they? That one -" He pointed to the
kitten on the floor, now chewing contentedly on the fringe of the rug.
"That's CD."

"CD?" I echoed, my eyes lighting on a stack next to the CD player. 

He shrugged. "Okay, Tiger. I haven't really come up with anything yet."
He held up his kitten again. "This is - What's her name again, Ebs?
...Ebony chose the name," he explained to me.

She stood, careful to avoid the kitten, and picked up a thick old
volume from the dark polished table. It was open and he only glanced at
the page. "Ah, that's right." He grinned at me again. "Matilda!"
Holding the kitten up as he had before, he began to waltz around the
room with her, humming. What the hell was he doing? I wondered,
unamused.

"What are you doing?" I asked impatiently. 

He stopped and looked at me. "Don't tell me you've never heard of
Waltzing Matilda?" 

I stared back at him, and, curiosity temporarily overcoming my anger,
shook my head. 

"Banjo Patterson?"

I shook my head again and he stared at me as if I was crazy. He picked
up the thick volume again, closed it, and tossed it to me. I caught it,
but only just. It was like catching a brick. 
"Have a read."

I readjusted my grip on it and then laid it down on on the chair
against the wall behind me. 
"You should have checked with me first," I said quietly, trying not to
get angry with him. But it was hard. I hated that he didn't consult me
first, that he was deciding not only his future and Ebony's but mine as
well, and not letting me have any say in the matter. I'd known he
didn't have plans of leaving any time soon and this was further proof.
He wasn't going to give Ebony these kittens with plans of taking her
away from them. He had made up his mind that we were going to stay
indefinitely.
That filled me with an overwheming loneliness. God, I missed Fox and
Dana and the kids. I missed my own life, my job, even my apartment. I
was miserable here, there was no denying it. But what could I do about
it? I was trapped. Grae wouldn't give me a divorce, and even if he did,
he wouldn't let me take Ebony away from him. And when he found out
that... No, it was official. I was trapped.
"I should have been consulted," I said again, my voice miraculously
clear and steady, though cold.

"It was a spur of the moment sorta thing," he responded, not even
looking at me, and I wondered if that was some sort of dig as I
remembered telling him the same thing a long time ago, explaining why I
had Dana and Fox and the kids over when we'd organized a date. Was he
honestly dredging that up or was I just being paranoid?

I didn't dare respond, but instead left the room. The urge to cry was
pressing down on me and I shoved it away, letting frustrated anger take
its place. I went outside, finding the basketball and starting to shoot
some hoops. The hoop was over the driveway and the gravel hurt my bare
feet but I didn't give a damn. I was throwing hard, though, and the
ball kept overshooting the ring, bouncing off the garage roof, which
only made me angrier. "Hell!" I shouted, kicking the basketball
angrily, stubbing my toe. I cursed again, watching as it sailed up into
the air, caught in the low branches of one of the large sycamore trees.
Bloody ball.
Enraged enough as I was, finding Grae standing watching me didn't
exactly improve matters.
"What the hell do you want?" I demanded ungraciously.

He took a hesitant step forward, still staring at me curiously. Was
that the first time I'd shown such physical anger in his presence? I
thought maybe it was, and that surprised and chilled me. Was this what
our relationship was doing to me?
"I'd hoped everything was forgiven," he offered quietly.

"It's not," I retorted shortly. "Running away was a stupid way of
trying to solve things."

And I walked away. Bloody husband.

        - - - - } - - - - } - - @        t h e   x - f i l e s 

- MULDER POV -

It may have been an extreme action but we had reached the point where
such action needed to be taken. 
With the aid of Sabrina's husband, brother and mother we pieced
together a list of potential targets, people whom Sabrina was known to
hold grudges against. We knew that we had too little evidence to enlist
protection for these people - there were thirty-five, in all - but we
noted down their phone numbers and addresses in case it was necessary
to notify them.
It was at the hospital end that we took stricter precautions. Visitors
were banned from visiting Sabrina - though there had been few of them
to begin with - and we limited the number of doctors and nurses
attending to her, although that had been a difficult deal to strike,
given the utter skepticism of the hospital staff. Obviously, a request
that the staff be quarantined following their shift would have been
denied, but we managed to reach an agreement that staff would be under
surveillance for six hours following their last contact with Sabrina.
That was a gamble based on the time pattern of the homocides; in the
Grubb case and with the two recent murders, they were all committed
within the first three or four hours following contact.

And Scully and I waited.

        - - - - } - - - - } - - @        t h e   x - f i l e s 

- SCULLY POV -

For the first twenty-six hours everything ran smoothly. It had been
difficult gaining the co-operation of the hospital staff and I think
Mulder and I had both been relieved to have our security measures in
place. But by eleven Friday morning I was wondering for the first time
how much longer we'd have to wait until another crime was attempted -
and, even more so, whether we would last that long.

The doctors were protesting because Sabrina's vitals kept fluctuating
and our restrictions were preventing them from keeping as close watch
on her as they would have liked. The fact that we hadn't yet observed
the staff doing anything more than driving home and going to bed also
contributed toward their growing impatience with us. 
"Is this really necessary?" a nurse had demanded impatiently. "None of
us have gone psycho and killed anybody, and we're not going to."

I'd apologised yet again for the inconvenience and promised that we
were doing our best to ensure it would all be over as soon as humanly
possible, a part of me silently hoping that an attempt would be made
soon for no reason other than it would give us more credibility.

And then I got what I'd wished for.


        - - - - } - - - - } - - @        t h e   x - f i l e s 

- MULDER POV -

Sabrina's EEG flatlined, again, at a quarter to ten. Hannah Feldman had
been murdered at exactly ten fourteen am. We'd requested notification
of any homocides within a hundred mile radius and turned up at the
crime scene, a shopping mall parking lot, just past one.
Crime Scene were still there, along with forensics and the coroner's
van. Quite a crowd had been attracted and we pushed our way through.

The officer in charge greeted us grimly. "Feldman worked in the mall,
at a jewellers. She and a girlfriend were on their way from their cars
to start a shift when a car comes round the corner at eighty miles an
hour, ka-boom into Feldman. And as if that wasn't enough, the guy
backed over her again, breaking every bone in her body. She was DOA at
St Vincents. Her friend got away unharmed and got the license number
for us."

"Have you checked up on it?"

"Doing," he said crisply. "Should have a name and address soon. There's
always a risk that the car was stolen, of course, but I guess we'll
know soon enough."


Scully and I were talking to Feldman's coworker when my celphone rang.
It was Agent Phillips, one of the agents on surveillance, reporting
that Ella Martinez, whose early morning shift at the hospital had
finished at nine-thirty, had collapsed outside the Lincoln Memorial an
hour ago and been raced to the nearest emergency room.

Scully and I glanced at each other sharply, a little confused by this
turn of events. "Let's go."


        - - - - } - - - - } - - @        t h e   x - f i l e s 

- SCULLY POV -

"She just screamed, like somebody had stabbed her or something,"
Phillips recounted, frowning. "Then she just fell down."

"Do you know what time this happened?" Mulder asked. "Ten-twenty?
Ten-thirty?"

Phillips shook his head. "No sir. It was just ten oh-two."

Mulder and I both frowned. "Are you sure?" I asked sharply.

He nodded. "I noted it down, according to my watch."

"May I -?" I gestured and he peeled back his sleeve. I compared the
time on his watch with my own. He was a minute ahead of me. "This
doesn't gain or lose time?" I pressed.

He shook his head. "No, ma'am."

We thanked him and went to check on Martinez. She was still unconscious
but, according to the ER admitting doctor, they had been unable to find
anything wrong with her. He shrugged and suggested that she had fainted
and would come around soon.

Heading back to the office, we went through all our files, trying to
find a link to Hannah Feldman - she hadn't been on our list of
potential victims and there was still the possibility that it was an
unconnected murder attempt, or even an accident. 

On a hunch we went back to the shopping mall to the jewellers where
Feldman had worked. None of the other employees remembered Sabrina ever
coming in, but going through the books we found that thirteen months
ago Sabrina Woodhouse had ordered the purchase and engraving of a gold
bangle. She had been served by another sales assistant, Michelle Leeds,
who had quit three months ago, we were told. "CU - RTP" was scribbled
in large letters across the record.

"What does this mean?" Mulder asked the store manager. 

"Customer unsatisfied - refused to pay." Chelsea, the store manager,
was staring down at the page. "I remember her, now. She put a deposit
down when she ordered the engraving and was supposed to pay the rest
when she came to pick it up."

"But she didn't come pick it up?"

"Michelle rang her several times telling her the bangle was in. When
she eventually turned up to pick it up she refused to pay for it. Said
she'd changed her mind and didn't want it any more. Kicked up a fuss."

Mulder stirred. "Do you know what the engraving was?"

Chelsea produced another volume. "This is where we keep track of all
engravings." She flipped it open expertly, flipped some pages and
skimmed through the entries. "Here - this is it."

"'LAURA'," I read aloud. I turned to Mulder, getting a faint glimmer of
understanding. "That's the name of Sabrina's daughter."

He nodded, his expression giving nothing away. He asked the store
manager, "When Sabrina Woodhouse was contacted about the bangle, would
have you mentioned to her what had been engraved on it?"

"Not unless she asked us." Chelsea shrugged. 

"So you would have just told her -"

"That her engraved bangle was in and she was free to pick it up any
time in the next week or two."

Mulder nodded, thanking her. As we turned to leave, he stopped to ask,
"Just one last thing - Do you happen to know who served Sabrina when
she came to pick up the bangle?"

Chelsea glanced down at the first book. "It was a Thursday, so it would
have been either Alice - she's in retirement, now - or Hannah."

Mulder nodded, and I understood. All the pieces were falling into
place.

        - - - - } - - - - } - - @        t h e   x - f i l e s 

-  JACQUELINE POV -


I'd never realised there were so many stars in the sky. I sat on the
back porch steps, staring out, marvelling at the sheer number, the
complexity and enormity of the world beyond. For such an insignificant
race, we humans were pretty bloody conceited, as Grae would say.

"It's like a blanket knitted by a blind man, huh?" He sat beside me, a
little closer than I really felt comfortable with. I was still... well,
not mad. My anger had long faded into a dismal sort of limbo. But I
wasn't ready to forgive him, not yet. There were feelings I was still
trying to sort out.

"What?"

"The sky is the blanket," he explained. He was in one of his whimsical
moods. "The stars are all the holes. But they're not all even and
symmetrical, they're random and all different sizes."

"Uh huh." I didn't understand what he was talking about, or why he'd
approached me with such an inane topic of conversation.

"Sorry." His voice seemed to get a hard edge to it for a fraction of a
second but he fought it off. "I guess the more romantic thing would
have been to quote poetry; 'And when the stars threw down their spears,
and -'"

"You don't have to romance me," I said, maybe a little quickly. I
wasn't sure why I was being so short with him, especially when he was
trying so hard. And William Blake, too - I loved Blake. But I'd fallen
out of rhythm - I'd forgotten how to talk to him. Not just the days
we'd spent  apart, him running away guiltily to Sydney and leaving us
behind, but the events of the past few  weeks, past month, even. It was
surprising how easy it had been to keep our distance from each other;
we didn't have to try too hard at all. 

"I'm sorry," I said, just as quickly, because I knew I had to get that
in before he got angry. I felt suddenly exhausted, zapped of strength.
It was difficult dealing with Grae even when things were going well.
I slid a hand over onto his knee, giving it a slight squeeze. I didn't
dare look up at him; I was too afraid to find out what he was thinking.
So instead I focused on the stars again, let my mind be wrapped amongst
the black velvet sky and the still coolness of the night, the cicadas
and crickets almost deafening but my ears accustomed enough that they
no longer counted as noise but rather as silence. Like all hot summer
days, it was a relief when the night was cool. The mosquitos were
terrible at night, but it was a small price to pay for the crisp, clean
air and blossom-scented breeze. Two dogs in the distance were howling
to each other but I knew Milo, curled up asleep on the floor in Ebony's
room, where a fan was steadily blowing away, paid less attention to the
noise than I did. Milo was a lazy old dog; he had a beautiful, loyal
nature, but he was lazy.

"It's past midnight. Are you going to come to bed tonight?"

"Maybe," I said honestly. I didn't know yet whether I could put up with
him. Yet his arm, now around me, was so sweetly protective, so gentle
and maybe the littlest bit possessive... It would be nice to sleep in
his embrace tonight, I thought. But I wasn't sure whether I should go
with that feeling or put the question to my head, first. 

He was fidgeting beside me as he waited for elaboration on my answer.
Usually it was pleasant when we sat somewhere together in silence -
sometimes we liked to go down and sit on the roof of the cowshed in the
bottom paddock, watching the last streaks of daylight fading from the
sky as the sun set. His touch around me would be possessive but gently
so, his heartbeat steady as I rested my cheek against his chest. Now he
had none of his usual grim calm. 

"What are you so nervous about?" I wondered. I hadn't really intented
to speak aloud but, my voice soft against the country noises, it didn't
seem to matter.

He shrugged, half looking away. "Hell if I know what you expect of me,
Jacqui. I just don't know how to deal with you and what you expect from
me."

"What do I expect from you?" I asked, frowning. 

He shrugged again, a gesture of defeat and helplessness. "I won't know
all the answers. I won't always know the right thing to say or the
right time to say it."

"I don't expect that from you," I argued gently. 

"But you do," he protested. He pushed my hand off his knee and stood,
moving away from me, swiping at hanging filmy branches from a nearby
tree moodily. "I'm sick of playing this role, of living up to the great
Fox Mulder."

I did a doubletake. "What?"

"Don't give me that crap," he snapped. "I don't begrudge you your
friends, Jacqui, and if you want to idolise Fox Mulder and Dana
Scully... hell, that's fine with me too. But I'm not going to put up
with you thinking of us in terms of them. We're our own people, we have
our own relationship. I refuse to just play... Mulder to your Scully."

I felt a tingling sort of numbness spreading through me and I shrugged
it off, trying to process what he'd said, reconcile with what I knew of
myself. I hated being disected like that, hated not knowing whether he
was right and how I simply hadn't seen it or whether he was wrong. I
had no idea how I was supposed to distinguish the difference. I had no
sense guiding me and I didn't know why not - how, at my age, with
everything that I knew, I still knew so little about myself and my own
intentions. 

"That's not what I want," I said slowly.

He shook his head - still defeated. Then he shrugged. Moving past me,
he kissed his fingers and laid them on my hair. He paused in the
doorway - I could feel the shadow the light behind him threw on me.
"I'm going to bed. The offer still stands."

I nodded, waiting as I felt the shadow lift and heard the screen door
swing closed again on squeaky hinges. I didn't want to think about what
he'd just said but instead turned my thoughts once more to the sky. My
mind replayed his words early, the absurdness of his approach. 

But his departing words kept rebounding in my brain, and I felt a
sudden longing for affection, for kisses and caresses and kind words. I
had sensed from Grae that he was ready to shower me with those things
again if I let him and I thought with sudden hunger that I wanted them.
Nothing more than that. It would be a while til we got to more than
that again. But the thought of making peace appealed to me enormously.
Maybe then I wouldn't feel so terribly lonely.


        - - - - } - - - - } - - @        t h e   x - f i l e s 

- MULDER POV -

Jenny Rae Williams, owner of the small second hand car used to run down
Hannah Feldman, was found in her parked car by cops only five minutes
away from the mall. The vehicle, with massive front end damage
including a shattered windscreen and large red stains and snagged human
hair along the deeply dented front, had been suspicious enough for a
cruising patrol car to investigate. Pulled from the car by one of the
officers, they discovered that Williams had fainted. Reviving, she had
appeared lost and confused. The officers had called in the license
plates and discovered that the same car had been used only five minutes
previously in a hit and run. Williams had been escorted down to the
local precinct awaiting a medical examination. Somehow, we had only
just been informed. Now outside the station, we were in the sunlight
with the case notes spread over the car bonnet, trying to figure things
out before we went to interview her.

"We know that Sabrina's responsible for the hit and run," I thought
aloud. "But there's no link between Jenny Williams and Sabrina."

"There's no way she could have accessed Sabrina's room?" Scully
demurred doubtfully.

I shook my head. "The agents there would have called to let us know."

I could see the case in my mind, like a puzzle with a few crucial
pieces missing. One of them was the link between Sabrina and Jenny
Williams. And that, I thought, was the key piece.

"Do we know where Jenny Williams was earlier today?" Scully asked
suddenly.

I glanced down at the still-warm copy of woman's statement. "Busking,
and that's *with* a license, apparently. Why?"

"Lately there's been quite a crowd of buskers at the Lincoln Memorial,
especially during lunch hour."

"And that's where Nurse Martinez collapsed," I added slowly, the
fragments crystalizing in my mind.

Scully gripped the iron railing beside her tightly in excitement.
"Mulder, what if this is some sort of a *virus*, something that's
jumping from person to person with a simple contact? It jumped from
Sabrina to her sister, then -"

"Back again when Helena returned to the hospital," I finished. "I think
you're right, Scully; I think this *is* some sort of virus. But it has
intent. It's human."

My mind was flying. A virus with will, intent, intelligence, jumping
from host to host, overtaking them and then leaving them spent and
without memory. A virus committing crimes - perfect crimes for which
others would be punished. Killing in the same relentless, vicious way
Sabrina Woodhouse had during her bank-robbing sprees.

A Sabrina virus.

And then it clicked. Something I'd read a long time ago, only an
obscure little paragraph in a magazine, I didn't even remember which.
Something which had been reported regularly in the 19th century,
following plagues of illnesses where many people had nearly died.
Soul-jumping. A soul that could leave its own living body and overtake
another's. An unanchored soul.

"Helena told us that after Sabrina's first accident that it was as if
only half of Sabrina came back;" I said quietly, "the dangerous side.
What if it came back without the anchors, without whatever it is that
ties us our souls to our bodies?" I frowned. "And it left Jenny
Williams, some time before the police picked her up. We don't know who
it's in, now."

"Mulder, souls aren't rea -" She cut off. "That's frightening," she
admitted.

"Yeah, it is," I agreed. "The question is, how do we catch it?"



I left Scully to interview the officers who had found Jenny Williams
and went to check out the local library, digging out a dozen enormous
history books, trying to find references to unanchored souls.
I found several articles in one of the books, although they were
typically outrageous, tabloid-type articles which gave me little more
information than I already had.
I'd been waiting for a call from Scully, assuming that she would be
finishing before I did, but I ended up calling her to find out where
she was. 

"Hard Eight Cyber Cafe," she told me. I recognised the name - it was
directly across the street from the police precinct.

I turned up there to discover her sitting in front of a computer with
coffee and donuts. I glanced at her screen. It was a search engine
results page, listing all matches for Dana+Scully. Another three of
four windows were open, one of them titled Federal Bureau of
Investigation, another was the White Pages.

"What are you doing?" I asked curiously.

She swung around. "God! Don't scare me like that!" She laughed
sheepishly, closing the windows. "I had some time to burn. Thought I'd
look myself up and see how many people are invading my privacy today."

I stared at her, then indicated the donuts. She laughed again. "So I
got hungry. I just felt like donuts." She went to pay her bill, then
grabbed the car keys from me, climbing into the driver's seat and
revving the motor delightedly. Something had put her in an
extraordinarily good mood. I wondered what.

"What's up, Scully?" I asked curiously, trying to figure out where this
wildness had sprung from. 

She grinned across at me. "Just felt like letting my hair down." As if
to demonstrate she shook her head, her hair bouncing on her shoulders.
It had looked less styled already, as if she'd been combing her fingers
through it. But it was, I conceded, the end of a long day. And it was
Friday. Sometimes Scully and I went a little crazy on Friday nights, if
we had any energy left.

We were stopped at some lights and she took me by surprise, leaning
across and tugging me close to her, kissing me hotly. She grinned as
she pulled away, turning back to face the traffic as the lights changed
again. "Did I surprise you?" she asked, glancing across again, grinning
childishly.

I grinned back, amused, if a little confused. "You always surprise me,
Scully."

        - - - - } - - - - } - - @        t h e   x - f i l e s 

Hook, line and sinker.

        - - - - } - - - - } - - @        t h e   x - f i l e s 

- MULDER POV - 

I got a call from the agent at Sabrina's beside as I stepped in the
front door, informing me that Sabrina had flatined again - not the EEG
but her EKG: her heart. They'd tried unsuccessfully to resusciate her
but failed. She was dead. 
Panic hit me with that. The soul couldn't stay out of its own body for
too long, we knew; that was why after the murders the killers - or
victims, as they really were - always returned to Sabrina, so that she
could regather strength. The drifter's soul weakened as time passed -
already it would be weakened. Without the soul, the body would die, and
without the body, the soul would die. But it would go down fighting.

In 1857 a Dr Leonard Watts had recorded a series of soul-jumps and
noted that when the soul's body died the soul must take absolute
control of the host body to claim it and live in it. Because the host's
soul was whole and the drifter's wasn't, the host soul won out in the
struggle and the drifter's fled to their own body. Wherever Sabrina was
now, it would be a hell of a struggle.

"Scully!" I called. She'd gone to the bedroom, saying something about
wanting a bath. 

I quickly said goodbye to Kathy, who was leaving, and told Astrid and
Josh to order takeout for us all, their choices. That was the usual
Friday treat.

"Hey, Scully? Agent Springer just rang." I stood in the doorway,
watching as she held Erin up above her head, cooing to her. Erin was
whining. "Sabrina Woodhouse flatlined about ten minutes ago. She's
dead."

She swung to look at me sharply. "Dead? Are you sure?"

"They pronounced her." I moved closer, reaching to take Erin from her.
"Hey, monkey. Howya doing?"

"Uh-huh..." Scully had turned to face the bureau and fumbled for
something in the top drawer. I instinctively looked up at her as she
turned back. Maybe I saw the flash of silver reflecting the ceiling
light. 

She was holding a knife...



end pt 7.



The Genesis Project VI (08/10)
by aRcaDIaNFall$

       - - - - } - - - - } - - @        t h e   x - f i l e s 

- SCULLY POV -

Everything came together with frightening clarity. Jenny Rae Williams,
the officer who 'found her unconscious', the same officer who had later
invited Scully to interview Williams with him. Sabrina Woodhouse. My
precious Scully...
And I had Erin in my arms.

"What do you want?" I asked quietly, calmly stalling for time as my
mind worked frantically. How could I exorcise Sabrina's soul without
harming Scully? I couldn't lose Scully. I couldn't do anything to even
risk losing her. The thoughts were overwhelming.

She was gripping the hand of the knife tightly with both hands. It was
from our kitchen, I realised. She'd picked it up and brought it in
here. She'd been holding Erin. Why had she been holding Erin? Would she
have hurt her? Oh Christ...

"What do you want?" I repeated. "Why are you holding that knife on me,
Sabrina?" Then I kicked myself as I realised something - because she
wanted revenge on me. *I* had contributed toward Sabrina's capture.
Without my profile it would have taken them far longer to capture her -
if they'd managed to, at all. 

"I want to see that you go to that dark place with me," she said, and
it was terrible because it was Scully's voice. "I've been there, and I
know that it's twice as bad as hell could ever be. It leaves you
fearless, dry of love, so full of greed and anger and *spite*!" She
spat out the word. She was shaking. 

I shifted Erin to my left arm so that I could reach for my weapon if
necessary, but the thought of that only compounded my dread. I tried to
speak calmly. "Scully, I know you're still in there, and I know you're
stronger than this. I need you to fight it." A spasm of confusion
crossed her face and the hands holding the knife trembled even more
violently. She was twitching, as if she had a nervous tic. "*Fight* it,
Scully," I repeated. Sabrina had been free of her body for hours - she
had to be weakening by now. "I know how strong you are, Scully. And I
know how much you love me, that you don't want to hurt me. Just like I
couldn't bring myself to hurt you when Pusher had me by the balls. You
just need to take control of this."

More twitching, a flash of agony in her eyes that I knew was
all-Scully. Then coldness again. But silent tears flowed down her
cheeks.

"Astrid!" I yelled, not taking my eyes off Scully.

They must have heard the urgency in my tone because not only Astrid but
Josh as well appeared immediately. Neither of them said anything, only
stared wide-eyed and terrified at Scully and the knife she held. 

I thrust Erin into Astrid's arms. "I want you to leave the apartment,"
I told them quietly. "Stay outside until I come and get you, okay?"

Astrid stared at me with the same agony I'd seen in Scully's eyes, that
I felt inside. "Daddy -"

"Go!" I told them sharply, and they obeyed, scuttling out. But they'd
only been gone a second when Josh returned, sidling in watchfully. "I
told you to leave, Josh!" I yelled at him. I couldn't have them in the
way. It was too much as it was. But he seemed to ignore me, his eyes on
Scully as he reached to pick up the celphone that lay on the bedside
table. Hers, just discarded. Then he ran out again. A few seconds later
I heard the front door slam closed after them. Good kids. I felt
sweeping relief that they were safely out of the way. They would be
okay out there. They'd know what to do. They wouldn't have to see what
happened.

I stared at Scully. "Listen Scully, the kids are out of the way. The
kids are safe. It's just us now. We're going to fight this together,
okay? Because I need you. We've both gotta be strong. So put -"

The phone ringing broke the utter concentration I had on her and I
jumped. That split-second was all she needed - she lunged at me, just
as agile as she had always been, but I'd never been afraid of her as I
was now. 

"If I die, you die with me," she said hoarsely, high-kicking me in the
chest, sending me to the ground, and bringing the knife to my throat.
The wind was knocked out of me and my head spun but after a second I
managed to grab her wrists, pulling it back enough that I could breathe
without slitting my throat and struggled to take it from her. Any
chance I'd had of getting my weapon was gone and I was absurdly glad
for it, that I wouldn't be faced with the choice of whether to shoot
her or not. That was a choice I wouldn't be able to make.

"Scully..." I pleaded. "Scully, you have to fight this. Dana...
Sabrina's getting weaker already, I know she is. You've just got to
keep fighting her. She won't have any power. You're going to win this."

She seemed about to crack but then she hissed at me. "No, dammit! I'm
not going to lose..." 

I tried to ignore the other voice, still sounding like Scully, but not
Scully. "Dana, let go of the knife. Let it go."

I winced, holding my breath as she pushed it closer against my throat,
the very tip digging into my throat. Thank God it wasn't razor sharp.
Though being sliced open with a blunt knife would be more painful, I
thought with a shudder.

My own arms were shaking as I tried to push her away. She was so strong
- Scully's strength, and the strength of a mad woman fighting for her
life. "You leave her alone!" I shouted defiantly at Sabrina. "You can't
be her!" That seemed to shake her a little and I managed to wrestle the
knife from her grip, tossing it away from me, toward the door. She went
for my throat then, but she was weakened enough that I pushed her off.
We both jumped up, facing each other like wrestlers. I pulled my gun.
"Stay back!" I warned. "I don't want to hurt you. Scully, fight it!
Just fight it!" I saw the stranger slip from her eyes for a minute and
she let out a frightened, hopeless moan. "Scully, it's all going to be
over soon," I promised, feeling my own strength slip for only a moment
before reasserting itself. "You've just gotta keep fighting. I'm here.
I'm going to stay here til you win." I needed to be there for her, to
give her the same psychological edge over her opponent the home team
got at a game. 

I saw her handcuffs, tossed on the dresser, and started edging toward
them, keeping my distance from her. I reached out to grab them and she
hissed as she saw me, backing toward the door. I wasn't sure if she was
going for the knife or the door but I couldn't afford for her to get to
either. I was getting tired, too. I didn't know if I could wrestle the
knife off her again. I lunged and grabbed her arm and she let out an
angry growl, trying to pull away from me. I snapped the cuff on that
wrist then reached around her for the other hand, yanking it back. But
I didn't cuff that wrist yet. Instead, I shoved her toward the bed,
pushing her down, and straddling her as I cuffed both wrists to the
bedhead. She was writhing under me, like a wild animal. 
"Let me go!" she hissed, trying to kick me. I jumped back, grabbing a
pair of pantyhose from her drawers and getting kicked in the jaw and
chest several times before I managed to tie her feet, only then pulling
off her pointed shoes.

"Scully, you can beat this thing," I whispered, crouching beside the
bed, as close to her as I dared, feeling a little dizzy with the pain
and winded. "You and I are going to fight it, beautiful. We're going to
beat it and get you back, and you'll feel safe again, and we'll all be
safe."

She let out an agonised cry. "Mulder..."

"Yeah, I'm here. I'm here with you. You're not alone, Scully. You're
going to keep fighting this, okay? We're going to keep fighting
together til we win."

"Mulder?!" I heard a voice from out in the living room. "Mulder, where
are you?" It was Skinner.

"We're in here!" I yelled out to him, feeling exhaustion and then panic
because I couldn't afford to be exhausted, I had to keep fighting with
Scully.

"What the hell is going on here?" I glanced across at him as he stood
in the doorway, lips set grimly. 

"We need a priest," I told him shortly. "Now."

We were dealing with evil here, I knew. I wasn't qualified to fight
that alone.

It was an agonising twenty minutes waiting for him to return. Hisses
and cries alterately came from Scully's lips, threats, pleadings for my
help. I could no longer come up with anything more to say than "I love
you, Dana," and I spoke the same four words over and over, unable to
move my mind any further. I was consumed with terror. How much longer
could either of them keep going? Was it a case of whoever gave up first
lost? What would I do if Sabrina managed to conquer Scully completely?
The thought chilled my blood.
"IloveyouDanaIloveyouDanaIloveyouDana..." It was like a prayer to me,
my mantra for this literal battle of wills. It was all I could think. 

"Mulder?" It was Skinner again. I broke off my mantra as I looked at
the priest beside him. A young man with a childishly roundish face,
looking stunned, a little embarrassed, even, as if he had interrupted
some sort of sadistic foreplay.

I stood, my limbs shaking under me. "Have you ever done an exorcism?"

He stared at me, then at Skinner, then back at me. "You're serious?"

I grabbed his arm, my fingers digging into the soft flesh, and pulled
him closer. "We need prayers. Anything."

He looked at me, frightened, and I pushed him closer. "Just go."

He knelt down, then drew out a rosary with shaking hands, beginning to
mutter a prayer quietly.

"Louder," I yelled at him. "It has to be louder."

I moved quickly around to the other side of the bed, climbing half onto
the bed so my face was only a few inches from Scully's. "We're here for
you, Scully," I whispered. "Me, Skinner, the priest. We're here for
you." She hissed, snapping at me as if trying to bite my ear off, but I
didn't draw back. "I love you Dana," I whispered. "I love you."

It took two and a half more hours, and every minute of that I prayed
would be the last. Sabrina was getting weaker, we could tell, as Scully
started to ramble the prayers with the priest between hisses and
growls. But Sabrina was a fighter and growing more desperate, and it
was a struggle for Scully all the way. She'd been struggling in the
handcuffs and her wrists were rubbed raw and bleeding. I'd held her
wrists, trying to stop her from hurting herself, and felt every shudder
and spasm that wracked her body. Several times I thought we'd won, saw
recognition in Scully's eyes as she muttered, "Mulder..." in a sigh of
relief, but then an eerie, chilling half-laugh, half-sob, that sank our
hopes again, and more struggling.
"Almost there, Scully," I promised, over and over. It was almost as if
we were going through labor together again. "Almost there."

She had been crying steadily for the last half hour, muttering prayers
and my name as she sobbed, then breaking out to shout at us "We're
going to hell! We're all going to hell!" 
I was again muttering my I love you mantra when she let out a scream,
as if somebody had burnt her with a hot poker, and then she'd sunk back
down onto the bed with a shuddery sob, and she was out cold.



I couldn't lift my arm. Only my fingers, stroking her hair obsessively.
I was exhausted from the tussle and Skinner had several times wandered
in, telling me to get some sleep, but I couldn't. I wouldn't be able to
fall asleep til I knew for certain that it was over, and that we had
won.


The priest had left, shaken, probably to go claim himself a hefty dose
of Hail Marys. Skinner hovered in the doorway, watching. Josh had been
sitting in the corner watching ever since Scully had fallen asleep and
he had ventured in. Astrid had come in and tried to talk to me, but I
hadn't been able to find the words or mindpower to explain everything
to her. Not yet. Not when my heart still beat at twice its normal speed
and my brain was numb to all but the question: "Did we win?"

I couldn't be certain. All sense told me that Sabrina had weakened more
and Scully had won, but Sabrina had kept fighting with such desperation
that I couldn't be sure. All I had to substantiate my theory about
Sabrina weakening was a hundred and fifty year old documentation that
might not even be true or accurate. 


I listened to familiar noises out in the kitchen. Astrid heating up a
bottle for Erin, who was whining. Wanting her mother. Astrid put the TV
on, maybe to fill the deathly silence of the house. I could hear
Skinner talking on the phone to the agents who had been at Sabrina's
bedside and relieving the surveillance agents. Our phone rang again and
Astrid answered it, telling Mrs Scully that Scully and I had gone to
bed early, tired. We'd been busy earlier, which was why we hadn't
answered when she'd called. No, everything was okay.

"Mulder?" Her voice was slurred, her eyelids fluttering open. I felt
elation pounding against my ribs but didn't allow myself to rejoice
yet. 

"I'm here, beautiful," I promised her. Energy surged through my limp
body and I moved closer, climbing onto the bed beside her. She was
drowsy and I assured her, "Sleep."

So she slept some more. Reassured, though still irrationally afraid of
getting my hopes up, I felt safe enough to leave her for a minute to
take a leak. Returning, I found her struggling to wake up again.
"Mulder?" There was fear in her voice and I hurried closer.

"I'm here." Climbing up beside her again, I reached up to undo the
handcuffs but then pulled away so I could see her face.

"I'm chained up," she murmured, surprised, as she tried to move her
limbs.

"I couldn't risk it," I admitted. "I didn't want to do that, Scully.
But I didn't have a choice..."

She gave me a wan smile. "It's okay." She drew a shuddery breath. "That
was scary, huh?" 

I smiled gently at the understatement. Beautiful Scully, putting on a
brave front. I could see she was half a second away from tears. Was it
because Skinner was in the doorway and Josh was watching, I wondered.
"Yeah, it was," I agreed. 

As if reading my mind, Josh slid off his chair and passed by us. He
paused, as if wanting to say something, but only stared, his eyes
concerned. He went out and Skinner closed the door after him. There was
only Scully and I left in the room.

"I didn't hurt anybody, did I?" she whispered. I could see terror in
her eyes at the thought. Maybe she remembered holding Erin, I thought. 

I shook my head quickly. "No, you didn't. You scratched me a little but
the others are fine. The kids are fine."

She nodded, letting out a shaky, shuddery sigh. "I don't remember
anything..." she whispered. "I don't remember anything since the police
precinct, just after you left..."

I shook my head, trying to hush her. "Doesn't matter, Scully." I got a
flash of struggling - not my struggle to hold her, but the struggle
that Helena had told us about, the life or death struggle that was like
being drowned. I bit it back in utter horror. 

I reached up and undid the handcuffs, easing her badly chafed wrists
out and bringing them to her sides. Then I untied her ankles, and
scooted up to the head of the bed so I could pull her into my arms,
folding her up on my lap like a ragdoll, rubbing her ankles to restore
circulation, then, very gingerly, her hurt wrists. "You okay?" I dared
to ask. My voice shook.

"I'm okay," she answered quickly. "I'm okay."

"You sure?"

"I'm okay, Mulder. I'm -" She struggled to draw a deep breath, letting
out a choked cry. "...I'm not okay, Mulder," she whispered, sounding
scared, Scully at her most vulnerable.

And she cried. Twisting to wrap her arms around my neck, she pressed
her face against my chest and sobbed. For a moment all I could do was
hold her, hold her so tightly my fingers were numb and I wasn't even
breathing, and then I began to cry too, silently. 

        - - - - } - - - - } - - @        t h e   x - f i l e s 

- JACQUELINE POV -

"Melbourne?"

He grinned at me. "Cricket at the MCG."

"MCG?" I echoed.

"Melbourne Cricket Ground," he explained. "I want to see the match
Wednesday night."

I stared at the kitten pouncing in front of him, watching as he
playfully jangled a string for it. I didn't like the idea of travelling
to another city with him. I was trying to accustom myself to his
country-self at the moment and that was hard enough going as it was.
Damn, I was trying. I couldn't do any more than that. Grae was a
chameleon and I was beginning to hate it. At the beginning it had been
fun; we'd gone into Sydney for New Years Eve, invited onto Grae's
company's private yacht moored in Darling Harbour. Even though it had
been only two days after he'd put his father in the nursing home and
we'd left Ebony behind, for once, with Suzie, the presence of his
friends had cheered Grae up enormously and he'd been kind to me,
generous with affection and compliments. But just as he'd changed
himself to fit with that crowd, he changed for every crowd, and I was
lucky if I was able to keep up. We'd done whatever his mood or buddies
had dictated, pubs and clubs and expensive department stores. There had
been plenty I'd enjoyed - the fancy hotels and the art gallery and
Centerpoint Tower and the monorail. He took me to the Chinese Gardens
in Darling Harbour and was more tender that day than I'd ever known
him. We'd made out in one of the little temples by a waterfall. 
I'd felt close to him then, incredibly close, but only an hour later
I'd been wondering who the man beside me was as he dragged me into a
video arcade and started hassling teenagers to compete against him.

"Well? Jacqui?"

I looked up at him slowly. "I'd rather just stay here," I said
honestly. I had to tread carefully, I knew, or he'd take it as a
personal insult.

"You've been here for a month," he answered incredulously. 

"But *you* haven't," I retorted. 

"You want me to hang around more, is that it?" he asked, sounding more
aggressive.

I held up a hand entreatingly. "Don't get mad."

He looked away, sourly. "I'm not mad."

I didn't bother to dispute that, but instead knelt down in front of
him, picking up and holding the squirming kitten, currently known as
Clover. "We've been doing well," I reminded him. And we had been, since
the night I'd agreed to come to bed. He'd held me that night despite
the searing heat of the house. I'd let him, needing to reassure him
that I was his. 

I licked my lips nervously, letting the struggling kitten go. "Grae?"

"What?"

"You want kids, right?"

He didn't even look at me. "Things are complicated enough, for the time
being," he said brusquely. 

I rose, moving a little closer, wanting to reach out to him but not
knowing how. I was just about to touch his back when a scream cut
through the air.
"Shit," Grae muttered, taking off past me. "That's Ebony."

More shrieking led us to Ebony - she was several meters up one of the
enormous sycamore trees and the whole branch was rocking. It looked
almost as if she was having a fit.

"Shit!!" Grae, panicking, began to climb upward toward her. Reaching
her, he wrapped his arm around her, holding her firmly against his
chest, and began awkwardly to climb back down. Ebony didn't seem to
notice. She just kept screaming.

They reached the ground and Grae, panicking, was holding her in his
arms like a baby. "She's hurt herself. We have to -"

"Put her down," I said, taking charge. On her feet again, Ebony kept
screaming and started flailing, slapping at her arms and legs, crying
hysterically. 

Sounding almost as hysterical, Grae realised, "She's got ants on her...
ants crawling on her."

I knelt in front of her, brushing the tiny creatures off her skinny
legs, grabbing her hands to stop her from hitting me. "It's okay,
sweetie. They're not going to hurt you. I promise."

"It's like she's never seen ants before..." Grae sounded bewildered,
just as shaken as Ebony was.

She was still shrieking although I'd gotten rid of all the ants and I
pulled her against me to hug her. She hated hugs, I knew. She usually
managed to avoid them in the first place, or squirmed out if caught in
one. But she never let me hold her like this before. 

"She must have seen ants before..." Still bewildered, Grae sounded a
little guilty and apologetic as well. "They're everywhere..."

He was right. I couldn't explain it. Maybe it was being so high and
attacked all at once, without us in sight, that had panicked her. She
didn't often do anything outdoors unless we were around to watch. She
was always awaiting instructions, never taking the initiative or being
spontaneous, but needing a schedule. I knew that because I'd grown up
in that sterile environment, too, having to follow orders far stricter
than a parent's would ever be. 

She was still making choked, snuffling noises and I lowered myself to
sit on the grass, drawing her more into my lap, crooning softly to her.
I glanced up at Grae, who was standing with a hand to his head, looking
overwhelmed with guilt.
"Christ, Jacqui, I never knew this would happen..."

"I know you didn't," I assured him. I reached an arm out toward him and
he came to sit on the grass beside me, hesitantly reaching out to
briefly touch Ebony's hair before quickly pulling back again. I put my
arm around his back, accepting him, wanting to be accepted in return.
So are our lives.

        - - - - } - - - - } - - @        t h e   x - f i l e s 

- MULDER POV -

The kids were still up. I didn't even realise how late it was until I
saw that Skinner was asleep, stretched out on the sofa. Astrid and Josh
sat at the kitchen table, Astrid's A+ english essay pushed aside,
picking at a dish of leftovers from the last few nights, feeding
wide-eyed Erin the occasional morsel. They hadn't gotten any dinner
tonight, I realised. I wondered how long they'd stayed out, where
they'd gone. Josh had rung Skinner for us. Smart kid. 

Astrid jumped up when she saw me. "Is Mommy okay now?" she demanded. I
could see the fear in her eyes.

"Mommy's going to be fine," I promised. 

Astrid was almost jumping out of her skin. "I need to see her," she
pleaded, near to tears. "Can we see her, please? I just need to see to
know that she's there and it's her and -"

"Five minutes," I allowed, picking up Erin and putting her in the crib.
"Keep her company while I get her some dinner."


Twelve seventeen, the microwave read before I punched in the time to
boil water for some soup. My own stomach had been rumbling for an hour
or so, since the terror had begun to wear off, and I knew Scully had to
be hungry too. She hadn't had anything since... since the donuts. I
winced as I thought of the donuts. My mind flashed to kissing Scully
and cockily telling her that she kept me guessing and I felt
overwhelming nausea. I made a dash for the bathroom, upending what
little stomach contents I had into the toilet bowl. I felt suddenly
disgusted with myself, as if I'd cheated on Scully, somehow, as if I
should have somehow known.

Cleaning myself off, not taking more than the barest glance in the
mirror, I left the bathroom. Skinner had woken up and was rubbing his
eyes. "You all right, Mulder?" 

Bless the man. He genuinely cared. 

"I'm fine," I said, and it was true. Well, relatively. "You can
probably go home now."

"Sure?"

I nodded. "I'll send the kids to bed soon. Scully's still half asleep."

"And you?"

"I'm fine," I reiterated. I gave him a quick, twisted grin. He knew I
was avoiding the issue. I dropped the grin. "You may well have saved
Agent Scully today, sir," I said quietly. 

He smiled briefly in thanks but shook his head. "No, Scully saved
herself. She might not have done it without you, though."

"All the same," I insisted, "we owe you big time. We've dragged you
into a lot of things over the years and this... this was particularly
terrifying."

He nodded. He knew. "Well," he said, trying to lighten the mood a
little. "It's not every day I get a call from a six year old asking me
to help save his mother's soul."


After Skinner left I mixed the soup and made some toast, all the time
pondering Skinner's words. How had Josh known what was going on? We
hadn't told him the details of the case except what he'd heard in our
office that Sunday and the only time I'd had case notes out had been in
the bedroom. How had he known what had happened to Scully?
Carrying a tray into our bedroom, I discovered not only Scully asleep
but Astrid and Josh as well, one on either side of her. I put the tray
down on the dresser, noticing as I did a glint of gold on the floor.
Scully's crucifix necklace - she must have taken it off before, and it
had slipped from the dressing table. 
Slipping it into my pocket for the moment, I went and picked up Josh,
carrying him into his room and tucking him into bed, then Astrid.
Neither of them stirred.
Returning to our room, I gently put it around Scully's neck. I forced
myself to down the two pieces of toast and some soup and then changed
into pajamas. Scully was curled up, still in the day's pants and long
sleeved sweater, her jacket discarded before our confrontation, but I
left her that way, not wanting to disturb her. I lay down beside her
carefully, sliding an arm around her, kissing the back of her neck,
wishing I could wake her just to be reassured she would be fine. But I
let her sleep.
Feeling concern and weariness etched into every feature, every limb
heavy with exhaustion, I lay and waited for my heartrate to return to
normal.


end pt 8.


The Genesis Project VI (09/10)
by aRcaDIaNFall$


        - - - - } - - - - } - - @        t h e   x - f i l e s 

- JACQUELINE POV -

I had a grandfather. It was a strange concept to me, because I'd never,
ever thought of him that way, but Roger's father, still very much alive
and living in a retirement condo in Florida, was the one and only
senior family member I had. 
I'd hired the LC Guggenheim private detection firm - the same people
who had long ago found Dana and Fox for me - to investigate for me in
the US, compensation for my own inability to act in the country. Wade
Moss had been the only name on my list not already investigated by
myself or Dana and Fox half a dozen times previously and I wondered why
I hadn't thought til now to ask him.

I waited impatiently as the fax machine churned and beeped, spitting
out pages one by one. Pushing aside the cover page, I grabbed the first
one and began with trepidation to read the transcript. 


It was another window into my past - from an entirely different angle.
Wade Moss remembered meeting Cate for the very first time - she'd been
young but a very, very mature young lady for her age, with a lot of
qualifications, so Roger had proudly boasted to his dad. She'd been
working in the field for years. She'd worked with him and then
continued to after they'd married. They'd been expecting a child but it
had been stillborn, and they couldn't have any more. They'd kept in
touch for four more years, though correspondance had dwindled down to
little more than Christmas cards and order-by-mail birthday presents.
And then Roger and Cate Moss had moved away and stopped writing.

I put the interview transcript down, feeling depressed, and went to get
myself a Coke. Returning to the living room, I found Grae sitting where
I had sat, my faxed papers on his knee.

"It says here," he read coldly, "that Cate and Roger Moss, your
*parents*, were childless in 1980." He looked up at me expectantly.

"It's wrong," I said, trying to keep my cool.

He shook his head, rising. "No, it's right. So the question is, who the
hell are you, Jacqueline?"

I kept my mouth shut. 

He approached me angrily. "You owe me an answer! What is it, huh?
What's the connection with Ebony? Is she your *daughter*, maybe? Huh?!"


I was stunned by that suggestion. "Don't be ridiculous!" I shot back.
"I was only eleven when-" Oh damn. And I'd fallen into his trap. Stupid
of me. How could I have been so stupid?

"Eleven when *what*, Jacqui?"

"When she was born," I finished. My throat had gone dry and it hurt to
swallow. "I'm only twenty, okay, Grae? I lied about my age. So what?"

"You lied to *me*!" he yelled, jabbing himself in the chest. "Don't you
understand, Jacqui? I just need you to understand. We're husband and
wife and you're still lying to me!"

"Stop yelling at me!" I yelled at him.

"Stop lying to me!" he yelled back. He quietened down a little. "Tell
me everything, Jacqui. Just tell me everything, and be honest."

I dropped down into the other armchair, putting my head in my hands.
"I'm just the same as Astrid and Josh and Ebony," I admitted, my voice
muffled. "I was created by Cate and Roger as part of the project. Dana
and Fox... 'liberated' me." I shook my head in derision. I was getting,
maybe, a little hysterical, but this had to be done. I couldn't hold
out any longer. "Dana and Fox have known all along. They've been
helping me, as much as I could..."

"Why didn't you tell me?" His voice grated. "You promised me, Jacqui.
You promised you wouldn't hold anything back and now -"

"I couldn't tell everyone!" I protested.

"I'm not 'everyone'!" he retorted. "I'm your bloody husband, Jacqui."

I stared at him defiantly. "I watched how differently you treated Josh
and Astrid after you discovered how they were created. I didn't want
you to treat me differently. I am who I am. My past shouldn't change
that."

He had buried his head in his hands and I was surprised to hear a quiet
snuffling sound. He lifted his head a little and I discovered, stunned,
that he was crying. "I just needed you to tell me that, Jacqui. All
along, you just needed to stop lying and tell me the truth... But you
just kept lying."

I felt an awful churning in my stomach as the truth sank in. "You knew
all along, didn't you?" I whispered in utter disbelief. "You knew the
truth, somehow. You knew that I was lying."

And that was why he'd gotten so mad every time I told another lie. God,
what a fool I'd been. What fools we'd both been. 

"I didn't know you knew," I said helplessly, in some pathetic attempt
at apology.

He stared at me sadly. No more anger, for the time being, and this was
tenfold worse.  "That doesn't make it right."

And maybe, I thought, I had been wrong when I told Suzie that Grae had
met his match in me. Because, in all truth, I had met my match in Grae.


        - - - - } - - - - } - - @        t h e   x - f i l e s 

- SCULLY POV -

I was alone when I woke up. It was still dark, only a quarter to four
in the morning, my alarm clock told me, but I was alone, and God, that
was the scariest thing. Where was Mulder?
Almost jumping out of bed I went in search of him and found him out in
the living room, sitting on the couch in the dark. He was barely a
shadow. I switched on the lamp next to the couch and stood a foot in
front of him, panic declining. I crossed my arms.

"Can't sleep?" I queried, though it was a stupid question. I sighed,
still feeling shaky and feeling tears pressing down on me. I dropped
down on the couch beside him, drawing the rug around my shoulders,
hugging myself as I studied his face. "You're still afraid," I observed
unhappily. There was a tightness in my chest where fear wanted to be
but I fought it back, feeling tears rising up in my throat.

He reached out a hand and grabbed a corner of the rug, pulling it
around himself as well. "I'm always afraid," he said simply.

Concerned, feeling guilty, somehow responsible for his pain, I reached
to caress his beautifully sculpted face with my fingertips. 

"I hate what can happen to us," he murmured unhappily, his lips moving
under my fingertips. "I hate how close we're always coming to losing
each other. Not just this time but so many other times as well... every
time we've had a gun pointed at us or you've been taken and I've only
just got there in time, that two more seconds and -" He pulled away,
shaking his head. There was so much pain in his eyes. Too much. I had
no power to take it away.

He pushed away from the couch and started pacing unhappily. "There's
been too much death in our lives, Scully. Too much death and to many
times when our lives have been risked. I hate that."

"There's nothing we can do about that, Mulder," I told him gently. "It
comes with the territory. And as much as we may hate the fact, it comes
with *our* territory..." A gust of wind, either evoked by my own mind
or from an open window, made me shiver and I bit back a cry. I hugged
the rug closer around me, feeling myself begin to tremble.
"You know, Mulder," I admitted shakily. My voice was little more than a
whisper, and I wondered whether I should be telling him. I knew it
would only make him feel worse. 
"I'm not afraid of death, or whatever comes after this life... But I am
afraid of that dark place." Another sob came and I couldn't hold it
back. I'd lied to Mulder - I did remember some of the time I'd lost. I
remembered all too well that terrible coldness, the dark.
I looked up at Mulder, pleading for comfort through my clouding eyes,
and he didn't disappoint, returning to the couch and drawing my weak,
shaking body into his arms. Warm, strong Mulder.

"I love you, Dana," he murmured into my hair, and I reached out to put
my arms around him squeezing him to tightly I wondered if he could
still breathe. 
His terrible ordeal was over, and he needed the comfort badly. But I
had only fragments of it, and an overwhelming emptiness, an enormous
gap in my consciousness just as terrible as my abduction. I didn't want
to find what had been lost, but I knew it would come back to me, as I
slept, as I worked, as I tucked my kids into bed. It always would.


        - - - - } - - - - } - - @        t h e   x - f i l e s 

- MULDER POV -

There was paperwork to be done at work but I didn't want to leave
Scully. I didn't want her home alone with Erin. There was still doubt
in my mind, a niggling fear that maybe Sabrina wasn't really gone, only
lying dormant. Somehow. I couldn't confess that to Scully, though, so
I'd merely announced to her when she woke at ten-thirty the next
morning that Skinner had agreed that we could tidy up the loose ends
when we were ready. After what he'd seen, I knew he wouldn't have
denied the request.

I don't know, though, whether any of that really mattered to Scully.
Last night somehow I had been the needy one, the one having an enormous
amount of difficulty coping with what had transpired. But now, I
thought, something had happened to trigger Scully's suppressed memories
of the event. There was a hauntedness in her eyes that hadn't been
there last night.

"What are you remembering?" I probed gently.

She shook her head, lips pressed together tightly. "It's over, Mulder."

But it wasn't over for Scully, I realised. It was only just beginning.
"Tell me what you're remembering," I prompted, more urgently.

She looked at me with pained eyes, then looked away. She shook her head
again. "Just let me have a shower first. Then I'll.. tell you."


It was only a short shower - I thought that maybe she was afraid to be
alone with her thoughts for too long. She seemed even quieter, still as
she watched me cook her some toast and pour her some orange juice. She
thanked me quietly, sipping the juice, not touching the toast.

I'd given up really waiting for her to talk to me when she spoke up. "I
kept screaming for you."

The pain in my gut was almost like a physical blow. I couldn't hear
this, I thought suddenly. I couldn't hear what she was going through,
that she had dealt with something a hundred times worse than I had. I
wouldn't sleep in weeks. But I forced myself to stay, let her go on.

"You were there," she recalled shakily. She was trembling so much that
I thought she would drop her glass of juice. Delayed shock. I gently
reached to take it from her, clasping her hands in mine. Her fingers
closed over mine. "But you were too far away from me," she continued
quietly. "It was like I was being held down, away from you, and I kept
reaching up, trying to reach you, screaming for you, but something kept
pushing me back. The dark..." 

I released her hands and moved swiftly around the kitchen counter,
putting my arms around her from behind, rubbing her arms in an attempt
to stop her almost violent trembling. Her skin was cold and I grabbed
the rug from the couch to put it around her shoulders. 

"You know when you can't sleep, when you lie awake and every second
you're just praying for sleep, and you think you've lay awake for hour
and hours on end - it seems like an eternity - but then you see the
clock and realise it's only been ten minutes? Or you look at the clock
one minute and it's midnight and the next it's three am and you don't
remember anything between? That was what it was like. But instead of
trying to sleep I was trying to reach you, trying for an eternity ...
but I couldn't."

"But you did," I whispered fiercely. "You did, Scully. That's how
you're here with me, now."

She shook her head. "But I'm still cold, Mulder," she whispered,
panicky, tears in her voice. "I'm still so scared of that dark place."
She slid off the barstool, almost collapsing but for my grip on her
arm, and practically fell against me, blinded by tears. 

Still trembling, her skin ice cold, her face white, almost gray, I made
a decision, getting a grip on her and lifting her up into my arms. "I'm
taking you back to bed, Scully."

But her response was immediate. "Don't, Mulder. ...I can't be in our
room, not at the moment." She stared at me with wide eyes, pleading
through her tears, and I nodded, instead carefully laying her down on
the couch. She rolled onto her side, drawing herself up into fetal
position, and I tucked the rug around her, kneeling beside her to
stroke her ashen face. Her hair was startlingly, almost obscenely red
in contrast. 

"See if you can get some more sleep," I urged gently, my hand rubbing
her form through the blanket, trying to stop her from shaking.

She shook her head. "No, I can't. I'll - ... I need something else to
think about, Mulder."

"Sure," I agreed softly. I understood. She was only taking up half the
couch and I sat beside her, reaching to take her hand. She clutched it
between hers tightly, her nails digging into my palm.
"Have I ever told you about the time I almost caught bigfoot?"

I got the ghost of a smile. "Mulder, you've never caught bigfoot."

"I said *almost*," I teased, oh-so gently. "Are you going to let me
tell the story or what?"

Another tiny smile. "Go on."

I launched into the story. She knew I was only making it up as I went
along, but it was taking her mind off the previous night's events, at
least, and making her laugh, however shakily, in the bargain. By the
time I introduced the three Elvis-impersonating chupacabras into the
story she had fallen asleep. 


It was Saturday but the kids hadn't wanted to go rockclimbing. I'd
wanted them out of the house for the morning, at least, and sent them
out with Kathy and Erin. Kathy had promised to keep them occupied as
long as she could, but it was just before midday when they returned
home. 

After their late night both Josh and Astrid seemed to be in bad moods.
I imagined that they'd made things as difficult as humanly possible for
Kathy. Neither of them had wanted to go anywhere and she would have
been the target of Astrid's anger, in particular.
I let Kathy off to have the rest of her weekend and told the kids to
make themselves some lunch, but they both sat on the coffee table
staring at Scully.

Astrid jumped up, facing me accusingly. "She looks pale."

"She's still tired," I answered, trying to be gentle because I knew it
was only her fiercely protective nature, but wondering if I could stand
a whole afternoon of it.
"She's been through a lot."

Erin, in her crib, was crying out for attention and I told Astrid, "You
look after Erin for the moment, huh? See if she's hungry."

She shook her head. "She's been like that all morning. She wants
Mommy."

Josh slid off the coffee table and I thought for a minute that he was
going to get Erin, but instead he left the room. Reluctant to stray
more than just a few feet from my sleeping Scully, I went to pick Erin
up, returning to drop down in an armchair and flipping open a picture
book to read to her. But she wasn't interested. Putting her down on the
rug I gave her a cracker, watching as she greedily devoured it. 

She was so big, I realised suddenly. Still a small, waiflike child, but
so much bigger than the newborn I saw in my mind, with a puckered
little elfin face and those impossibly tiny hands, each with its own
perfect nail, gripping on to me trustingly. She was growing up under
our noses, more strong-willed, more capable. Soon she'd be taking her
first step, saying her first word, and then soon enough she'd be
running around with Josh and Astrid and arguing with us every step of
the way. 

"Can't forget her vaccination," Scully said. I glanced across at her to
find her watching me, her bright eyes burning like embers in her
still-ashen face, the blanket pulled high up to her neck. I wondered
how long she'd been awake. "Her vaccination shot," she repeated. 
"We've got an appointment for tomorrow."

I nodded. "We'll remember." I picked Erin up and held her out for
Scully to take. 

She looked at me with something akin to panic in her eyes. "I don't
think I should-"

Ignoring her protests, I lifted Erin up, sitting her on the couch
beside Scully, who had rolled onto her back. She immediately clambered
up onto Scully's covered form. Scully pushed the blanket away to free
her arms and lifted Erin, pulling her closer. "Hello, my sweetie," she
said gently. 
She glanced across at me, trepidation in her eyes, and I nodded
reassuringly. 

"You know that she trusts you."

Colour seemed to return to Scully's cheeks as she played with Erin and
by dinner time she insisted she was well enough to join us eating at
the table. The kids were clingy - they always were after something
traumatic happened to one of us - and sat with us as we watched TV,
fighting over being next to Scully.

It was only just nine when I noticed Scully starting to fall asleep. I
sent the kids off to bed and lifted her up, despite her sleepy
protests, carrying her into the bedroom. The windows had been open all
afternoon and the sweaty denseness of the room had gone. Once again, it
was simply our bedroom. 
On Scully's pillow, however, was an envelope, with "Mommy and Daddy"
printed neatly on the front in Josh's handwriting.

"What is it?" I asked curiously, watching as Scully, yawning, opened
the envelope and unfolded two sheets of plain paper. She skimmed
through one page, flipped over and skimmed through the other. Finally,
she looked up at me. "Poems," she said quietly, clearly touched.

I climbed onto the bed beside her, resting my chin on her shoulder. I'd
been expecting childish little rhymes, I had to admit, and was stunned
when I began to read.

It took me a while to grasp it but the first poem was about Astrid and
Josh's relationship. It had changed gradually over the past four years
- it was only as he described it that I realised how differently they
interacted now. The poem was only short but the last verse in
particular caught my eye -

'Puzzle pieces pulled apart
And a shadow come unsewn
Once existing as one voice
We've come into our own.'

"You think Josh wrote this himself?" Scully wondered aloud,
incredulous.

I myself was equally awed. This was a completely different league to
the stories and plays I'd read in the past. Could Josh have written it
by himself? Common sense said no, that even with his intellect and
control of language it was something at least five years down the
track. He was only *six*, after all. What did six year olds know about
alliteration and symbolism and rhyming couplets?
And yet...
"Yeah, I think he did," I said softly. Josh had given us no indication
otherwise, and he would have. That was how Josh worked. And there was
something very Josh about the poem, too. Somehow, no matter what style
he wrote or painted or drew in, Josh always managed to add his own
personal touch, something familiar if you knew to look.

"That's amazing," she murmured under her breath. "Wow..."

She flipped over to the second page, another poem neatly written out by
Josh. He must have copied these from his notebooks, I surmised. The
paper was the higher-quality stuff the kids put through the printer for
assignments. It was impeccably neat, but the way the light reflected
off the page I could see indentations of writing, as if he'd written
the poems out several times until they were perfectly neat. 

The second poem was longer than the first and startlingly personal. I
hadn't realised that Josh knew us so keenly. This was a window into his
mind and I was stunned. Were these all the things Josh wanted to tell
us as he sat quietly minding his own business? There was no economy in
his language now, for certain.

'Fear is an intimate 
and most oft-calling acquaintance
who turns up uninvited, sometimes 
bringing with him Death and Pain.

I have watched you struggle
with these unwelcome foes,
Seen the toll it takes 
and felt the aftershocks.

I know that it's not a simple life
that you lead, that shapes you,
and shapes the way I grow,
but that it is the life you choose

And my respect for that, for you,
is learned from what I see
when Fear and Death and Pain 
are battled;

A strength unmeasurable in 
any conventional form
but love and loyalty that goes
beyond this worldly realm.

You may stumble on your way in 
search of justice
but I won't kick you while you're down
because I know you try

so hard and won't give up.
And that is why I remain with you
though Pain and Fear may burst
in at any moment;

Because you are my strong fortress.
You teach me loyalty and trust
And that I am loved.
And that's what really counts.'


Scully exhaled, putting the page down as she finished rereading.
"Whoa," she breathed. "Wow."

"Deep for a six year old," I remarked, just as stunned as she was.
"Could he have written this?"

"He must have. Unless Astrid helped."

But Astrid hadn't helped. We both knew that. They would have been
thrust into our faces the second the ink was dry if Astrid had had any
part in writing them.

"That's incredible," Scully muttered. "He's *six*, Mulder! How can he
be writing something like that?"

I shook my head. I didn't have an explanation for it. What an
incredible little mind. And only *six*. He still had a lot of growing
up to do. He was still learning. What sort of poetry would he be
writing in two, five, ten years time? Would he let us read it?

Scully yawned and I took the pages from her grip, putting them down on
the bedside table, and lifted back the covers for her to climb into
bed. "You don't have to do that," she murmured, climbing in and letting
me draw the covers up around her.

"Yeah, I do." I grinned at her. I loved this woman so much. "It's in
that love-honour-and-obey contract I signed."

She smiled, eyelids fluttering, and then yawned again. 
"What are you thinking, Mulder?" she murmured with sleepy curiosity.

"How much I love you," I answered honestly. I grinned.

"God, Mulder, that's so cheesy." She chuckled, snuggling down
contentedly. "I love cheesy." She reached out a lazy arm to pat the bed
beside her. "You need sleep too."

"Soon," I promised. "I've just got to check the kids and get changed."

She nodded. "I'll wait for you," she murmured, eyes fluttering closed
and staying closed.

"Okay," I agreed softly, reaching to turn out the lamp. By the time I
reached the doorway she had slipped into sleep, her breathing steady
and relaxed. 
We'd returned to stable ground. Now we just had to watch out steps.


end pt 9.



The Genesis Project VI (10/10)
by aRcaDIaNFall$

        - - - - } - - - - } - - @        t h e   x - f i l e s 

- JACQUELINE POV -

"Are we almost there?"

He glanced across at me and grinned. "You're sounding like a whiney
little kid, Jacqui."

"I have a right to whine," I protested, playful. He'd been in a good
mood since he woke up and I was liking it, but still wary of pushing
boundaries. "You won't tell me where we're going or why we had to leave
Ebony with your sister."

"We need some time alone," he explained gently. "*That's* why we left
Ebony with Suzie." 

I couldn't disagree with that. The last twenty minutes he'd been
talking about how Ebony had been getting in the way of our
relationship, how she was a distraction for both of us, that we weren't
focusing on each other. That was the purpose of taking me - and only me
- out for the day.
 "Okay, so where are we going?" I tried again.

He was holding back deliberately, teasing me. "I'll tell you soon." He
grinned to himself, staring at the road ahead. I didn't know enough of
the area's geography to know where we were going, though I hardly
thought it was a tourist hotspot. The road we were travelling on was
tarred but unsealed, giving way on either side to gravel and then the
earth and dying grass and property fences. There was a horse stud
approaching on the right, a vineyard on the -

"Are we going to a vineyard?" I asked suddenly, staring at him,
starting to panic.

He grinned across at me. "Got it in one. One of the Hunter Valley's
finest. You've got to try their reds."

I winced internally, giving him a quick, forced smile as my mind
flailed for a solution. 
"I don't want you getting drunk," I demurred.

He laughed. "You've never done wine-tasting before, have you? You don't
even swallow," he explained. "Just taste and spit it out again." 

I didn't even need to feign a look of distaste - it sounded pretty
disgusting. "I'd rather not."

"Okay," he agreed easily. He seemed to find my childishness more
amusing than ever. Was it because I'd dropped the pretence? "We'll just
get a bottle of wine with lunch. If you never drink another drop of
wine again, you've got to try one of their reds. Seriously."

God, this was just getting worse, and I was painting myself into a
corner. But would a glass of wine really cause any damage? I wasn't
sure. I didn't know what risks, if any, I was running...

"Sure," I agreed. I kept silent the rest of the way.

We went on a quick guided tour of the vineyard. Grae wouldn't do the
wine-tasting without me - as he reminded me, this day out was a day to
be together - and so we sat down together for an early lunch. I knew
Grae could tell I was nervous as we ordered lunch and he picked the
wine, but he didn't know what I was nervous about. He didn't ask,
either. Maybe he was just assuming it was the date-like quality of the
meal. It had been a long time that he and I had been on a date, it
seemed. 
I'd made a decision, but when Grae reached out for his wine glass I
found myself unable to do the same. Alcohol had a unusual effect on me,
reacting to the chemicals in my blood. Who knew what that would do to
the baby?

He looked at me quizzically. "A toast?"

I shook my head, reaching instead for the glass of water and taking a
sip, frantically trying to find a coherent thought over my madly
beating heart.

He put his wine glass down slowly, still staring at me. "What's wrong?"

I shook my head again, a little confused. "I'm okay. It's nothing. You
go ahead."

He indicated my wine glass. "You don't want it?"

I shook my head. 

He frowned at me. "Why didn't you say something? This stuff isn't
cheap, you know."

"I'm sorry," I muttered. It was hardly as if he couldn't afford it,
though. "You have mine, too. I'll drive us back."

"You didn't even try it," he pressed. He held his own glass out to me.
"Have a sip."

A sip would hardly do any harm, logic told, but I still couldn't bring
myself to. It was a psychological block. Pregnant women don't drink
alcohol.
I nudged the glass back toward him. "I'm fine, thanks."

He pt the glass down slowly and sat back, staring at me. "What the hell
is going on, Jacqui?" he asked. His voice was quiet but I wasn't
deceived. He was getting mad. "What are you doing?"

"I don't want to drink, that's all," I said defensively. 

"Why not?"

Hell if I'm going to answer that, I thought. I just couldn't bear the
thought of telling him. It was illogical, but I was afraid of what his
reaction could be. Afraid what he'd tell me to do.

"What are you hiding now?" he demanded. I wondered with further panic
if somehow he'd accessed my file at the local doctor's surgery. He had
found out everything else about me, somehow. If he'd sneaked a peak at
my file he would know full well -

"Are you pregnant?" No deceptively quiet questions now. He yelled it at
me as if we were twenty feet apart, not two.

I stared at him, flushing in embarrassment, guilt and fear. Then I
dropped my eyes to the dish of fruit salad in front of me. "I wanted to
tell you," I said quietly. I was shaking a little and my voice
trembled. "I just didn't know -"

"Cut the crap," he said roughly. He pushed his chair back from the
table violently, shaking his head. "That's just great, Jacqueline.
That's just perfect."

And I was in for it now, I knew.

"Shit!" he yelled at me. "Our relationship wouldn't be such a mess if
Ebony hadn't gotten in the way, and now you want to bring more kids
into the mess! Sure, *great* idea!!" His sarcasm wasn't exactly easy to
miss.

"I didn't plan this," I shouted back at him.

He shook a finger at me. "Oh, but you did, I bet you did. The only
reason you *married* me was for kids, Jacqueline."

"That's not true!" I protested. I hated, hated with all my heart, how
things could get so utterly out of control, how somehow I was always
struggling to defend myself against him and ended up only deeper in
trouble.

"What is it, then? Are you sleeping around?!"

Indescribable rage hit me at that accusation. Who the hell was he? 
What the *hell* made him think he had the right to accuse me of that??

"Go to hell!" I yelled at him. And God, that felt both wonderful and
awful at the same time. 

Already feeling tears prickling at my eyes, I stood, grabbing my
shoulderbag, and started to walk away. We were sitting on the terrace
with a panoramic view of the vineyard but I ran away from it, into the
main building. There were more cafe tables spread out but it was such a
beautiful day that everybody was sitting outside. But there were half a
dozen waiters pushing together tables as if in preparation of a banquet
and I pushed my way past them, seeing through my tears only blurry
black and white forms moving as they started to set the tables,
silverware flashing in their hands. The occasional startled, curious
face, but they only hesitated a second before moving aside tactfully so
I could pass. 

I got out through the front entrance, planning to just wait near the
car til we'd both coolled off, or even til I felt calm enough to call
for a taxi, but when I reached the road and saw how it stretched ahead
of me, nothing but road and grass and land, I couldn't stop. I kept
running, my sandals slipping at little as I veered off the tarred road
onto gravel, the dry grass whipping at my legs, my bag thumping against
my side. It was a mild day, as summer days went, but only a minute
running, no, probably less, and I was overheated. I was out of breath,
too, crying and now starting to hiccup, which only made me cry more. Oh
God...

I slowed to a stop and dropped down in the middle of the road, drawing
my knees up and putting my head between them, feeling a little
nauseous. It wasn't a feeling I was familiar with and I didn't know how
to deal with it, so I just kept my head down, my arms around my balled
form, and cried. I had been wrong. Grae wasn't the emotional
six-car-pile-up; I was. And it wasn't just the hormones or the strain
of lying to him - it was that and more. It was being in a strange
country and barely knowing my husband. It was having a mute daughter
and a baby growing inside me, and not really knowing how or why or what
the hell I was doing.

I don't know how long I sat there in the sun, smack-bang in the middle
of the road, feeling lost and sorry for myself. Maybe fifteen, twenty
minutes - I was beyond keeping track of time. I was tired, emotionally
drained, unable to cope any more with lies and confessions, Grae's
tender affection and his abuse. 

I sensed him coming ten, maybe fifteen seconds before he spoke up. I
kept my back turned.

"You really shouldn't be sitting in the sun." There was a gentleness in
his voice, but it was caught, trapped between distrust and guilt, maybe
confusion too. 
I continued to ignore him but he crept up beside me, squatting down a
foot or so away, passing his tongue nervously over his lips. "You're
really pregnant?"

Why would I make something like that up?

"With *my* baby?"

I lifted my head slowly to look at him, anger surging through me. "I
hate that you're even asking that."

"I'm sorry." He spoke the words as if they were in another language,
all jolted. His eyes were on my face, searching, as if trying to
discern whether I was finally, being completely honest with him. I
didn't know if he'd believe me or not, fearing for a split second that
he wouldn't, that he'd rage at me again. But instead his face crumpled.
"I'm sorry, Jacqui," he said again, but this time there was a stunned
sort of grief in the way he spoke. "I'm so sorry I doubted you."
Crawling a little closer to me on his knees he reached to hug me. I let
him, feeling his kisses on my hair. He was laughing a little, and
crying I thought, too. But his tears, unlike mine, were tears of joy.
He drew back, his hands on my cheeks, so uncommonly gentle. "I'm sorry
I shouted, darling. You know I want this child." He leaned to kiss my
cheeks, as if trying to kiss away the tears, but I couldn't stop.

"I can't go on dealing with your mood swings any more," I sobbed. "I
can't deal with your suspicion and distrust... You can trust me, Grae,
when it counts." I looked at him, pleading. "I was stupid and I lied. I
thought I was protecting you somehow, or protecting me. But you've got
to trust me. I can't live with you if you don't trust me."

"Hush, darling," he murmured. He produced a clean, folded handkerchief,
gently wiping away my tears, pressing it into my hand. Drawing back a
little, he drew a deep breath. "I can try, Jacqui. That's all I can
promise. But, honestly, I don't know what you're doing. I don't you
really know, either. That's very dangerous, I know."

I'd almost managed to stop my tears but that just got me started again.
That sort of criticism was the last thing I needed right then.

He reached out to touch my upper arm, gently. "C'mon. I'll give you a
piggyback ride back to the car."

I let him, gripping around his neck as he trudged with me back down the
road to the car, feeling like a lost child in a very alien adult world.

        - - - - } - - - - } - - @        t h e   x - f i l e s 

- SCULLY POV -

"I've got something for you." 

I muted the TV and pushed aside the packet of dried apricots I was
slowly eating my way through to make room on the coffeetable for the
stack of papers he held. He dumped them and I picked up the top set of
stapled-pages. It was a report summing up the events of our case. But
Mulder eased it from my hand. "Not those. This." He produced a slim CD
case. "Just out on DVD. I thought you might want to see it."

I took it from him. "Gone With The Wind," I read, delighted.

He grinned, pleased with my reaction. "Well go on, put it on."

I obliged, moving back onto the couch and burrowing back into my
indented couch. Although physically I'd been feeling strong enough, I
was still feeling mentally lethargic, restricting myself to minimal
function, somehow still not trusting myself to do anything more than
keep quietly out of everybody's way. I didn't want to risk somehow
endangering those around me. Even though Erin and I had been constant
companions, particularly when Mulder was out, I kept feeling twinges of
apprehension and fear, of guilt, almost. I no longer took for granted
my own will, but instead lived every hour wondering when it would
happen again, to me or to somebody I loved, and again, I would have no
control over it. And because of that, I stayed locked up in my fear.
Medical diagnosis would have been low-grade depression.


I picked up the remote but didn't press 'play' yet. Watching as Mulder
moved the pile of papers to the kitchen table and then rifled through
them, splitting them into separate piles and spreading them across the
table, I ventured, "You coming?"

He shook his head. "I've still got one more report to write." 

"I thought you handed the reports in this morning." The second Sunday
morning in a row Mulder had spent at work. But a lot had happened in
that one week. I wondered suddenly what this meant to Helena Quaker and
Annie Fredricks. Would they still be convicted of the crimes they had
committed? I couldn't see any way we could prevent that. And my life
could have just as easily fallen apart as theirs did. 

Sitting at the table, tapping his pen nervously, he glanced across at
me. "I hadn't written one about Friday night's incident, yet," he
admitted quietly. "Skinner thought one should go in the case file, just
for future reference."

"Oh." Watching as he chewed on his pen, I offered slowly, "If you wait
til tomorrow I'll help you write it. Add in what I can remember, get as
full a picture as we can."

He frowned, his beautiful eyes concerned. "Are you sure you want to do
that, Scully?"

"I need to," I said with certainty. I needed to truly deal with what
had happened so that I could get on with things. I couldn't live the
rest of my life with this fear and insecurity. That wasn't me.
"If," I added, giving him a small smile, "You come watch the movie with
me now."

He smiled. Only a tentative, haunted smile, like mine, but a smile, one
that promised comfort. "Sure. If you'll stop hogging the couch."

"I'm not hogging the couch!" I protested, heartened by his playfulness.

"Well, then stop hogging the blanket," he teased, grabbing me around my
waist and pulling me closer, drawing the blanket around our form. We
fought playfully over the remote, and some of the tension in my spilled
out as giggles. Only Mulder could make me laugh like that, and I loved
it when he did. 
He managed to wrangle the remote from me, holding it up, away from the
reach of my shorter arms. "No fair!" I protested, still giggling. I was
almost hysterical, I thought. I should calm down.

Mulder seemed to sense that too, pressing 'play' on the remote and
tossing it down on the coffee table. He wrapped his arms around me
again, so indescribably, deliciously comfortable, and drew the blanket
around us as we settled down, spooned on our sides, our legs
intertwined. Forget Clark Gable, I thought. There was nobody in the
world that was able to make me feel better like Mulder could, nobody
else whose arms I'd rather be lying in. And somehow, being in his arms,
it was impossible to feel anything but loved, even uplifted.

We stopped the movie halfway through for a bathroom break and as we
were settling back down again Mulder murmured into my ear, "You know,
it's our twelfth anniversary tomorrow."

I chuckled. "Doesn't feel like we've been married that long, does it?"

"The anniversary of our partnership," he explained.

I turned to stare at him. March 6th - the date we'd gotten married in
the registry office. The anniversary of the date we'd first met in
Mulder's office.

"Wow," I realised softly. "I never even thought about that."

"Me neither. Not til I was going through some old files." He grinned.
"Pretty cool, huh?"

"Yeah." I shook my head, still amazed. There was something incredible
about that, something that spoke of more than just man-made choices, as
if the decision I had reached early that morning had been not entirely
my own, but that there had been another force at work. Whatever the
case, it had been one of the smartest decisions I'd ever made. How
could I have ever lived without such constant strength beside me? Would
we have lasted this far?

We returned to the movie but had been watching for only twenty minutes
when Mom dropped the kids home. She'd taken them to morning mass with
her and, I gathered from the large McDonalds soda cups Josh and Astrid
held, stopped for lunch on the way back. I'd rung her this morning,
telling her as simply as I could what had happened, and I thought maybe
she was keeping the kids occupied longer just to ease the stress in my
life, to help me carry my load. 

"I was going to take them out to see a movie but Astrid insisted on
coming back here," she explained. 

I understood perfectly. Astrid was still watching me like a hawk. But I
was thankful for it, and thankful that Mom was there to help. At one
point I'd almost isolated her, I knew - my world had grown so small to
include only Mulder and myself. But now, with the kids, I knew how
important it was to have the connection to her. I was expanding my
world again, slowly.

She left and we put the movie back on. Brushing aside Mulder's piles of
reports, Astrid settled down at the kitchen table and began to work on
some math. Josh had been almost avoiding us since leaving us his poems
and now he sat quietly playing with Erin. On seeing what we were
watching, he moved closer with her, still keeping his distance from us.
I didn't say anything, but only hoped the short note we'd left on his
pillow would be enough reassurance for him.
"Dearest Josh -
We loved your poems very much. You are very talented and we'll always
be proud of you. 
Keep writing, no matter what.
Love, Mom and Dad."

Mom and Dad. I sighed in contentment as I stretched out in Mulder's
arms, loving that. Had I ever felt quite so completed by Mulder? At
that moment, all I could think was that I loved him entirely, loved
that he was my lover, my husband, my best friend, my partner, Dad to my
Mom. 
Maybe I needed scares like this just to remind myself of how incredibly
lucky I was.

The phone rang just as Scarlett O'Hara rose up to proclaim the movie's
final line.
"Jacqueline or my Mom?" I thought aloud.

We often played these guessing games - and we were usually right.

Mulder, his arms encircling me, reached across my stomach to peel back
his sleeve and look at his watch. "Jacqueline," he declared sagely.

We grinned at each other. "Why are we so cynical?" I wondered, amused.

"You fell in love with cynical." Flashing me a grin, he released me,
giving me a gentle shove. "Go check. We're going double or nothing."

Shaking my head in amusement, I picked up the receiver. "Hello?"

"Dana, it's me."

Why hadn't she rung on the videophone, I wondered. I always felt
somehow reassured when I saw Jacqueline's face, as if I would have
bruises as proof of his abuses. 

"How are you doing?"

"Better," I allowed. 

"Better?" she echoed. "What happened?"

The fact that Jacqueline hadn't known seemed incomprehensible to me.
Jacqueline had always known what was going on. Now she was far away,
way out of the loop.

"There was just... a case. It got personal." I didn't want to elaborate
further. "When are you guys coming back?"

Hesitation. "I don't know if we will at all. For a while, I mean. We're
content here, you know?"

That rung very, very false to my ears. "Jacqui -"

"No, Dana, you have to understand," she interrupted me. "Things are
better, really. I've told him the truth about some things. Everything,
really. He knows about my parents."

"He knows you killed your parents?" I repeated disbelievingly.

"He looked me up, Dana. I don't know how. But he knew everything...
he'd known all along. And when he confronted me with it, I had to tell
him the truth."

It still sounded suspicious. 

Her voice dropped a notch. "We talked last night, Dana. I mean,
*really* talked, for the first time since before Ebony came. He was so
wonderful to me."

I didn't know how to respond to that. To be honest, I'd been
manipulated and lied to too many times to take something like that at
face value. But what other choice did I have?
"Just ..." I sighed. I could hear the hope in her voice and I couldn't
bring myself to dash it on just suspicion. "Just take care of
yourself."

"I'm doing that," she promised me. "And I'm keeping busy, Dana. I'm
still researching Roger and Cate. Grae's working, too - he's helping
out on some project in the city a couple of days mid-week. We're
building a life here."

"But you don't want to stay there," I protested, confused. She'd told
me dozens of times that she wanted to come home.

Pause. "I don't know, Dana. I'm happy here. I'm making friends." 

A sudden thought occurred to me - was one of the reasons I wanted her
to come home simply that I missed having her around? Not only there to
take the kids of our hands when we needed it, but also as a friend?
But I managed to put a note of encouragement in my voice as I told her,
"That's good, Jacqui."

"I'd never realized how important honesty is in a relationship," she
admitted, tone lowered a little, self-conscious. "Pretty stupid of me.
I should have known by watching you and Fox, how important it was.
Truth... and trust... Grae and I kinda lost that. I can't believe after
seeing how you and Fox *built* your relationship on those things, I
could just let them slip away in mine, but they did."

"You're only young," I reminded her, touched but a little concerned
that she was seeing her relationship in terms of Mulder's and mine.
Mulder and I had a very unusual relationship, a very different formula.
"You're still coming into your own."

"Yeah, I know," she agreed wistfully. "I know." Her voice picked up a
little. "The kids around?"

I passed the phone off to Josh and joined Mulder in the kitchen,
sliding my arms around his waist in an affectionate greeting. 

"How are you doin'?" he asked softly, tilting my chin up.

"I'll be okay," I told him, and I knew that was true. "I am okay," I
added, and that was true too. Somehow, during the movie, that tightness
within my chest had loosened. Lying in Mulder's arms, my fear had been
cast out by the warm security I felt. It was impossible to stay afraid
after spending so long feeling so loved. Not thatI felt entirely over
what had happened - I probably never would be. But I no longer felt so
overwhelmingly unable to cope with it, and the relief from that was
enormous.

"Sure?" he queried.

"Sure," I promised him. 

He smiled, sliding his hands to my waist and lifting me up onto the
edge of the kitchen counter. I put my arms around his neck and drew him
closer, planting a kiss on his nose. I've had a love-hate relationship
with Mulder's nose for a long time. 
He chuckled and leaned closer. I kissed those velvety lips of his and
he returned the kisses, his mouth warm on mine, his body warm against
mine. Was two in the afternoon too early to hit the bedroom, I
wondered, feeling myself about to melt into puddle in his arms.

"Twelve years together and still sexy," he murmured, his lips moving
along my neck.

I laughed, feeling utterly joyous, utterly aroused, and utterly safe.
"Absolutely," I agreed, gently nipping his lower lip while my hands
slid over his as he caressed my face.

"Mommmmm! Dad!" Astrid, still sitting trying to study at the kitchen
table behind us, groaned with all the eye-rolling of an embarrassed
teen. "Take it in the bedroom!"

"Gladly," Mulder murmured, sweeping me up off the kitchen counter. I
giggled. He was the only one who could make me so giggly.

Jacqueline was right - Mulder and I had built our relationship on
truthfulness and trust. But there was more than that; there was such an
incredible amount of respect, of equality, and there was blood and
sweat and tears, too many long nights spent in fear and agony. This
last incident had just been another pothole in the road, another
impossible case we'd somehow managed to survive, another choice made
that led to us being together right there and then. 

And it couldn't have been a more perfect place to be.

"Twelve years and you're still the most important person in my life,"
he murmured.

I smiled at him. "Twelve years and still counting."


fin.



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: VISIT aRcaDIaNFall$' X-FILES FANFIC :
http://www.geocities.com/arcadianfalls/