From: "Kristel S. Oxley-Johns" <crystalj@ftconnect.com>
Date: Thu, 7 Sep 2000 10:36:53 -0700
Subject: "Hegira" by Kristel S. Oxley-Johns
Source: direct


HEGIRA
Kristel S. Oxley-Johns
Kjohns@chaos.x-philes.com

Rating: PG (Chapter Seven - R)
Classification: XRA
Archive: Yes. (redistribute with permission only)
Spoilers: Anything through "Requiem" is fair game
Keywords: Mulder/Scully Romance
Summary: The knowledge that Samantha Mulder is not actually dead leads 
Mulder and Scully to some truths they never imagined.

DISCLAIMER: Fox Mulder, Dana Scully, et al, and The X-Files do not 
belong to me.  They are the property of Chris Carter, Ten-Thirteen 
Productions, and Fox Broadcasting.  No infringement is intended, no 
money is being made, sic your lawyers on someone else.

FEEDBACK: Yes, please.  Be patient, it may take a while for me to 
respond.  If you would just like to comment, please let me know you do 
not require a response.  Otherwise, I'll feel guilty.  Send to: 
kjohns@chaos.x-philes.com

AUTHOR'S NOTES

HEGIRA (as defined at www.m-w.com):
Etymology: the Hegira, flight of Muhammad from Mecca in 
A.D. 622, from Medieval Latin, from Arabic hijrah, 
literally, flight
Date: 1753
: a journey especially when undertaken to escape from a 
dangerous or undesirable situation : EXODUS 


A NOTE OF IRONY:

Four years ago, when I conceived the idea which this story was loosely 
based upon, it was titled "Requiem."  I had intended to use that title 
up until I learned what the title of the Season Seven finale would be.  
At that time, I realized there were going to be dozens of "Requiem" 
themed fanfics, and I didn't want this story to get lost in the melee.


A FEW THANKS:

Heather:  Thank you for the long confabs over the phone where you 
painstakingly helped me iron out the little details that enabled me to 
mesh my ideas with the established mythology.  Thank you also for the 
title.

Beth:  A better nitpicker and lifelong friend one could never hope to 
find.


Tiff:  Many of your insights into characterization and plot points in 
the early chapters really helped set the framework upon which the story 
was actually built.  Thank you also for the dust jacket and animated gif.
Best of luck with your new baby.

Shelba:  Honorable mention here for my official humor consultant.  
Being somewhat comically impaired myself, most of the banter in the 
story (especially in Chapter Six) was written by Shelba and then very 
generously given to me to work into the story.  Thank you also for all 
the medical advice.

Nancy: Thanks for all the wonderful feedback on Chapter 7.



WARNINGS:

If you're a stickler for mythology canon, be warned that I basically 
push the Big Red Reset Button on "Closure" and resolve the Samantha-arc 
*my* way.  I consider it a public service to right the wrong committed 
in that episode.

If you're of the weepy or sentimental persuasion, grab a box of tissues 
before going into Chapters 9 and 10.  This is your first and only 
warning.



THE TIMELINE:

Chapter One takes place immediately following "Closure."  

Chapters Two through Ten occur immediately after "En Ami."

The Epilogue takes place post-"Requiem," however it is not required to 
read the Epilogue.  You can consider the story resolved in Chapter Ten.


THE RATIONALIZATION:


I was offended by the way the Samantha-arc ended.  It wasn't that she 
was dead, so much as it was the fact that ultimately, her death had no 
meaning.  And after pondering "Closure" for a while, it occurred to me 
that anyone seeing dead children as starlight sprites romping in the 
moonlight has to be on some serious drugs.  And it started me 
thinkin'...



CHAPTER ONE - Succor

It was just before dawn when Mulder finally fell asleep on the sofa.  
Scully watched over him tirelessly, unmindful of the fact that she 
herself had gotten precious little sleep in the last couple days.

The flight back from California had been spent in quiet conversation as 
Mulder had related to her what he had seen in the woods.

"I just wish Harold could have seen what I saw," he had sighed.  "Maybe 
then he could come to terms with his own loss."

The words had twisted their way deep into Scully's chest, leaving an 
empty, raw ache.  Her partner's eyes, for one of the rare moments in 
the seven years they had known each other, had been placid, glowing 
with an inner contentment.  He had finally found an answer he could 
live with.  The sister he had spent his adult life looking for was 
dead.  She had died peacefully and painlessly, saved by a miracle from 
a fate that was incomprehensible in its scope and horror.  Never again 
would Mulder stare at the body of a dead child and see his sister in 
her face.

"It's over, Scully," Mulder had stated when they finally arrived back 
at his apartment.  He flung himself onto the sofa, pinching the bridge 
of his nose as he closed his eyes.  "That's what I wanted, wasn't it?"


She hadn't been able to answer him.  Yes, he'd confided in her that he 
had given up hoping his sister was alive, wishing only to find a final 
resolution to the unanswered question that had dominated the last 
twenty-seven years of his life.  But that didn't mean the loss was any 
less painful.

Tears, unwelcome and impatiently blinked back, pricked her eyelids as 
she studied his sleeping form in the light of the aquarium.  He was so 
very alone, and there was so very little she could do for him now but 
simply be here.


"You're the closest thing I have to family now."

His confession had been devastating.  The confirmation of his sister's 
death, so close on the heels of his mother's apparent suicide, meant he 
had lost his last familial tie.  Truthfully, Mulder had been a de facto 
orphan since the day his sister disappeared and his parents withdrew 
from him and each other and though over the years he had tried to 
pretend it didn't matter to him, Scully knew better.

And on this night of all nights, behind the serenity in his velveteen 
eyes had lurked something darker.  

Fear.

The search for Samantha had consumed him, defined him, for years.  
Without the search, who was he? Did he even know? Scully had read the 
uncertainty in his gaze with an ease developed of seven years of shared 
strife and turmoil.  What could she possibly tell him that would 
reassure Mulder that life went on, that there was still more out there 

for him, when she couldn't even entirely buy that herself?

He could finally pick up the pieces and move on.  She could help him do 
that.  There were more answers out there that they still needed to 
find.  The search for Samantha Mulder, abducted from her home at the 
age of eight, had over the years turned darker, more sinister, more 
treacherous.  It reached beyond the disappearance of a young girl, 
beloved sister and daughter.  Lives had been ruined; lives had been 
lost.  Scully's own life had been placed in danger more times than she 
could possibly recall.  Months had been stolen from her, her life 
threatened by a terminal brain tumor, her ability to conceive children 
destroyed, and perhaps the only child she would ever know had died a 
meaningless death in her arms.

She had her own demons to be exorcised, her own answers yet to be 
found.  Samantha Mulder may have been the start of the quest, but she 
was not the end of it.  Not for Scully, and not for Mulder either, 
really.  But if that were true, why did she feel this nagging sense of 
loss? She had always imagined she would be relieved when Mulder found 
the closure he needed, but instead, disappointment weighed heavily on 
her heart.

When Mulder's forehead had crumpled, Scully had wrapped her arms around 
him from where she sat beside him and pulled him close.  She'd leaned 
against the back of the sofa, pulling him with her, until he rested 
with his head upon her chest.  The sobs she had expected were not 
forthcoming, however.  His body had been tense, his breathing ragged, 
but the devastating display of grief she had anticipated was held in 
check.  She'd held him to her breast, stroking his hair softly, 
allowing him to draw comfort from her as long as he should need it.

And that was how he had fallen into a fitful sleep.  There had been no 
discussion of her going home.  Scully had wordlessly brought up her 
overnight bag from the car and Mulder had wordlessly accepted that she 
would stay with him until his mother's funeral in two days, that she 
wouldn't let him be alone.

It might have been moments or hours later when Scully finally 
disentangled herself and lowered him down onto the sofa.  She covered 
him with a blanket and watched him for a moment.  The distressed lines 
on his face had softened, leaving a look of child-like innocence as he 
slept.  The sight broke her heart all over again.  So much pain for one 
person to bear...She didn't like to consider what might have become of 
Mulder if he'd had to face these last years alone.

Sighing, she reassured herself that he was sleeping soundly and picked 
up her overnight bag, heading for the shower.

As the door closed she leaned wearily against the wall, covering her 
face in her hands.  

Mulder.  Though his mother's suicide had compounded the situation, his 
week's venture had been no different than dozens they had been through 
before.  A little girl disappeared and suddenly it was his sister he 
was searching for, the dividing lines between the past and the present 
blurred beyond recognition.  And now, at long last, he believed he had 
found resolution, but the price had been high.  In order to attain it, 
he'd had to give up hope.

Her science couldn't explain this one.  She couldn't rationalize, 
dissect, or quantify what Mulder had described to her tonight.  Right 
now, she wasn't sure it was all that important whether she could or 
couldn't.  What was important was that his tormented quest, fueled by 
guilt and loss and a desperate need to just understand *why*, had 
reached an end he could live with.  

She allowed herself the moment of personal grief she couldn't display 
before her partner.  She ached with sympathy and the need to comfort 
him.  Every healer's instinct within her screamed to make it better, 
make his pain go away.  Sooner or later, Mulder was bound to have a 
meltdown and she was going to have to be there to pull him through it, 
as she always did.  

An instant of doubt darkened her expression.  Her own grief at this 
most recent turn of events brought up some questions she hadn't been 
prepared for.  Right now she wasn't sure she was equal to the task of 
bearing the weight of his sorrow as well as her own.

Troubled, she disrobed and stepped beneath the soothing spray of the 
shower.


When she emerged from the bathroom in her nightclothes, toweling her 
hair dry, her face was composed.  No hint of her inner turmoil 
remained.  Whatever her own feelings and doubts, Mulder needed her.  
Her duty as his partner, his friend, the woman who loved him, was to 
provide him with the solace he required in times like these.

Scully's head emerged from the folds of the towel to find that his eyes 
were open.

"How long have I been asleep?" He asked groggily.

"Only a couple hours.  You should try to rest some more."

He subsided into a pensive silence, a frown etched on his brow.  In the 
pale pre-dawn light, his face looked stark and white.  A slight sheen 
of perspiration covered his skin and his eyes were glassy.  Scully 
wondered if he'd had a nightmare while she was in the shower.  His hand 
trembled slightly as he reached up to wipe his upper lip.

"Scully...do you believe what I saw?" he asked in the darkness, his 
voice weak, hovering somewhere between worry and defensiveness.  The 
tight, clenching pain in her chest returned with a vengeance.  She 
didn't know when it had happened, but at some point over their years 
together, he had begun caring whether what he believed gelled with what 
her science could explain.  He was certain she was going to reject what 
he had seen.  Perhaps he had a right to be defensive.  She certainly 
had needed to bite her tongue a dozen times while he had shared his 
tale with her earlier.   But she didn't feel she could or should argue 
with him, not this time.

"It doesn't matter what I believe, Mulder," she replied calmly, her 
expression thoughtful.  She seated herself on a chair and began to pull 
a comb through her damp hair.  "If you believe it, then right now 
that's enough for me."

He snorted.  "Seven years, and finally she says it."

"Yeah, well, count your blessings," she replied with a gentle smile.  
"It may be another seven years before you hear it again."

His lips opened in a valiant attempt at a jaunty grin.  "Well, if this 
is my last chance to see you so agreeable, maybe you should join me 
over here?" He slid over to make room on the sofa with a waggle of his 
eyebrows and a half- hearted leer.

"Do I have to get my gun?"

"Ooh, Scully, don't tease."

Chuckling in spite of herself, she shook her head ruefully.   "You're 
delirious.  Get some sleep."

Scully refused to meet his eyes as she finished combing her hair.  She 
knew what she would find there.  It was completely Mulder's style to 
mask his wounds behind teasing innuendo.  But in the face of this most 
recent and devastating tragedy in a life filled with losses, she 
couldn't really convince herself that her complex and mercurial partner 
was actually joking.  Not that he would proposition her in such a 
crass, off-hand manner, but his flirtation held a hint of a plea.

Make it go away.  Make me forget for a while.

Or perhaps it even went deeper than that, the manifestation of a 
phenomenon Scully had witnessed before.  In the face of death arose a 
very vital and primitive instinct to affirm one's own aliveness.  And 
what was more life- affirming than sex, the very heart of the creation 
of life?  She'd lost count of the number of times grief and tragedy had 
led her to a mere moment, the smallest of breaths, from reaching out to 
Mulder and taking him to her and making love to him.  Even if was for 
no other reason than to assure herself she was still alive, that the 
horror of death and loss had not claimed them.

It would be the simplest thing in the world tonight, to offer Mulder 
that physical reassurance in the lack of anything more effective.  She 
could invite him to Sunday dinner at her mother's house, offer him a 
surrogate family, over-rule her brother's blustering protests...

If she but reached out a hand to him, he would come to her.   Scully 
knew he would, would have a million times over in the last seven years.  
She could do it, *wanted* to do it, but she had the frustrating sense 
that it wouldn't be enough.  Comfort sex wasn't her thing and she 
couldn't replace his lost family with a lover.  There was something 
vitally and essentially wrong in the act that prevented it.   They 
couldn't bring this sort of emotional baggage with them when they 
finally made that last step.

They had been migrating in the direction of becoming lovers slowly and 
surely for years, especially since New Years.   All that remained was 
for her to make the final move.   Mulder was waiting for her play; he 
had already made the first overtures.  He had done so on New Year's Eve 
with that sweet, hesitant kiss that had brought back delicious memories 
of junior high school and boys under the bleachers.  He had done so a 
year ago in that moment in a hospital room when, groggy, waterlogged 
and sporting a head injury, he had nonetheless felt compelled to 
declare his love for her.  He had done it two years ago during the 
soul-shaking declaration he had made to her in the hallway outside his 
apartment when she had been ready to turn and walk away from it all 
rather than be forced to work without him.

It was odd and disturbing, Scully thought, how Mulder always seemed to 
make emotional declarations in the moments of great distress.  Love and 
pain were tragically and inextricably intertwined in his perception.  
She couldn't take that final step toward him while there remained even 
a hint of the suffering he had come to expect.

The daunting truth of the matter was that she was his final chance and 
she knew it.  She was the one who had to prove to him that there could 
be love without pain, without loss.   It was an awesome responsibility.

It was only a matter of time, of course, but the timing was never 
right.  This time, in particular, couldn't get any further from right.

A sharp gasp from her partner jerked Scully from her reverie, but 
before she could react, Mulder was bolting from the sofa and into the 
bathroom.  The door slammed shut and seconds later she heard the sound 
of violent retching.   Scully ran to the door and tried the handle to 
find it locked.

"Mulder," she called.  "Mulder, open the door!"

There was no response.  Interminable moments passed until the retching 
stopped.  The toilet was flushed, followed soon by the sound of water 
running in the sink.  Finally, she heard the click of the lock being 
released and pushed open the bathroom door to find her pale and 
trembling partner sliding down the wall until he was seated on the tile 
floor.  His head was thrown back as he gulped huge breaths of air.

"Mulder, here, lay down.  Let me take a look at you."

He shook his head.  "No, no...when I lay down the room starts spinning.  
I'll get sick again."

She took his hand to check his pulse and gasped.  "Oh God, Mulder, 
you're hands are like ice." She tested his forehead.  "You're running a 
fever, a high one.  Your heart-rate and respiration are accelerated."

"I'm cold," he whispered, his teeth chattering.

Scully ran from the room and returned with the blanket she had pulled 
from the sofa.  She wrapped it around him and picked up his hand again 
as it lay listlessly on the floor.   A flash of red caught her eye and 
she turned it over to examine his palm.

"Mulder, what's this?" she asked, indicating a vividly irritated patch 
of skin in the center of his palm.  A brief examination of the back of 
his hand showed the fainter, less severe red bumps of a skin rash.

"I don't know...It's been there since the day before yesterday.  It 
itches."

Suddenly he groaned and scrambled on his hands and knees toward the 
toilet.  Scully clasped him and held him steady as he heaved, the smell 
of bile from a stomach already emptied of its contents wafting through 
the room.  As the spasms subsided, she rose and filled a water-spotted 
glass sitting on the counter from the sink, grabbing some pink bismuth 

liquid from the medicine cabinet before she crouched beside him again.

"Here, drink this," she instructed him, handing him the water before 
she measured the bismuth into the cap on the bottle.  She handed the 
medicine to him and he obediently swallowed it, dropping the plastic 
cup when it was empty and sipping more of the water.  She pulled the 
blanket around him once more and pulled him close.  She wrapped herself 
around him, trying to infuse him with her own heat.

"I started to get the chills," he muttered as he leaned on her 
shoulder, knowing she would want the details of his malady.  "A few 
seconds later, I started to feel ill.  I'm so dizzy..." his voice 
trailed off as he breathed deeply, trying to control waves of nausea.  
He tucked his head down onto his chest then jerked upright as blood 
spewed from his nose onto the blanket in a torrent.  Bright red spots 
blossomed on his wrinkled shirt and her pajama top.

"Oh, God!" Scully whispered, grabbing a towel from the bar on the wall 
and pressing it to his face, holding his head back and the blood began 
to seep through the towel at an alarming rate.

"Mulder, hold on.  Tilt your head back.  I'm going to call an 
ambulance.  I'll be right back."

She sprinted through the apartment into the living room, where she 
grabbed her coat off the rack and carried it with her to the bathroom, 
digging for the cell phone in the pocket as she ran.  Finding it, she 
tossed the coat negligently into the bathtub and dialed 911.  She had 
an emergency dispatcher on the line by the time she knelt beside 
Mulder.


He began coughing and his head fell forward again.  The nosebleed had 
not stopped with tipping his head back.   Instead, the blood had begun 
running down his trachea, choking him.  Flecks of red spittle dotted 
the towel hanging before his face.

"This is Special Agent Dana Scully with the FBI," she spoke into the 
phone.  Mulder's breathing sped up as she spoke and he drew shallow, 
rasping breaths between choking coughs.  "I have an agent down, unknown 
illness.  He's vomiting, and has profuse nasal bleeding.  Pulse is 
rapid, maybe 120 or 140, and he's hyperventilating.  We need an 
ambulance at..."

As she began to give the address, Mulder's eyes rolled back in his head 
and he slumped over, unconscious.  The stained towel tumbled from his 
face and blood began to flow freely from his nostrils.  She grabbed 
another towel to replace the nearly saturated one and finished reciting 
his address.   She lifted an eyelid to find his pupils dilated.  "Oh, 
God, Mulder...come on, stay with me.  What?  No, no...he just lost 
consciousness...yes, of course I'll stay on the line..."

 *   *   *   *   *

The sky was entering the early stages of twilight as Mulder awoke.  His 
eyes searched the room, disoriented, until they came to rest on Scully, 
sitting beside the bed, holding his bandaged right hand.  An IV led 
from his other hand to a plastic bag of saline hanging on a hook 
overhead.  The all- too-familiar sounds of a hospital reached him, 
muffled by the closed door.

"So, Scully," he croaked, "Do I know how to show a girl staying over at 
my place a good time, or what?"

He heard her relieved sigh as she looked him over.  "How do you feel?"

"Fine.  What happened?" He asked, licking his parched lips.   Scully 
poured a cup of ice water from the plastic pitcher beside the bed and 
handed it to him.

"You became ill this morning and lost consciousness," she summarized.  
"You were brought here by ambulance."

"Ill from what?" Scully's eyes darkened and she frowned, looking away.

"As far as we can tell," she replied with carefully clinical 
moderation, "the primary culprit was a drug we found in your blood.  An 
hallucinogen, though not one you could buy anywhere on the street.  
It's a designer mix, an elaborate one, formulated to enter the 
bloodstream transdermally, rather than be injected, ingested, or 
inhaled.  The raw patch on your hand appears to be the point of entry."

Startled, Mulder raised his bandaged hand, studying it.

"That alone might not have been enough to cause your illness," Scully 
continued, "but you had taken the Ibuprofen I gave you for a headache 
on the flight home, remember? Ibuprofen is an anti-coagulant and a 
stomach irritant in and of itself.  Combined with the hallucinogen, 
your blood thinned, your BP shot up, and when you began vomiting, the 
blood vessels in your nasal passages ruptured, which is why you began 
hemorrhaging.  We had to insert a Foley catheter and inflate it to stop 
the bleeding..."

"Scully, please..." Mulder groaned, his stomach twisting queasily.  She 
fell silent, looking sheepish, until his squeamish nature was under 
control again.  He frowned thoughtfully at her.  "I take it that's not 
all?"

"No.  To top it all off, you had a mild allergic reaction, which is 
what caused the irritation on your hand." Scully grimaced.  "Seeing 
that gave us a pretty good idea where to begin looking for a cause for 
your illness.  I don't imagine you've noticed it yet, but you have a 
less severe rash over the rest of your body."

"Is *that* what itches?"

"Probably," she replied.  "I would hypothesize that this drug is 
something similar to the drug that was added to your water supply 
several years ago, around the time your father was killed.  The 
previous exposure would have been sufficient to set the stage for an 
histaminic reaction.  Or you simply could have been exposed multiple 
times in the past few days."

"How could I have been exposed? When?" Mulder asked, bewildered.

"Sometime in the last forty-eight hours," Scully scrubbed a hand over 
her face.  "We've been infusing fluids, and it was necessary to replace 
a couple pints of blood, but most of the drug is out of your system by 
now.  By tomorrow it should be completely gone." She paused, sighing.  
Mulder's mind spun as he tried to put together the pieces she had laid 
out for him.

Something was missing, he thought.  There was something Scully was 
hesitating to tell him.  The reluctance in her voice, the way her eyes 
skittered away from his when he sought her gaze...she was holding 
something back.

And then the full implications of what she was telling him settled in.

"So what you're saying," his voice was barely louder than a murmur, "is 
that nothing I have seen in the past forty- eight hours can be 

considered credible."

"I'm sorry, Mulder."

He rubbed his eyes, shutting out sight while he struggled to reconcile 
himself to what she was saying.  He drew a deep breath and slowly 
exhaled it, then repeated the process.

He wanted to ask her if there was a chance she had made a mistake, that 
she might be wrong.  The instinct to reject what she was saying reared 
up in his thoughts like a stallion, huge and blacker than hell.  He 
stared up at the ceiling, counting the tiles as his mind reeled.  His 
free hand opened and closed, twisting brutally in a piece of blanket as 
he grasped desperately for some other explanation.  He gave up; there 
wasn't any other explanation.  Scully wouldn't even be saying this to 
him if she didn't have the science to back it up.

"Harold," he said woodenly.  "Harold Pillar held my right hand.  That 
must have been when..."

"Yes, I believe so," Scully confirmed.  "I can only assume that Pillar 
must have been a plant, for the purpose of confirming Ms.  Tencate's 

story about Walk-ins, to make you believe something similar had 
happened to Samantha."


"Someone to get close to me with a kindred tale of tragedy," Mulder 
muttered.  "Create a situation where physical contact was necessary to 
give me the drug, to make me believe.  But...why do it if it was going 
to result in an illness that made the drug obvious and thus negate all 
I had seen, or thought I had seen?"

"Normally," she answered, "you would never have known.  You had a 
severe reaction no one could possibly have predicted.   If that hadn't 
happened, it would have gone just the way they planned it."

Mulder pulled his hand from hers, staring at the bandage covering the 
raw patch of skin in the middle of his palm.   He could feel his heart 
pounding in his chest, emptiness drowning out the resignation and 
acceptance won so dearly just hours ago.

"Why?" Mulder wasn't sure if he was directing the question to Scully or 
just wondering aloud.  "Why would it be so important to make me believe 
Samantha was dead that they had to go through all this? The obvious 
answer would be that she's still living, wouldn't it?" Mulder reasoned.   
"But if so, if they want to hide that fact, why go to such extreme 
measures that ultimately could give up the game?  After all, I never 
more than half expected her to be alive anyway."

"I don't know, Mulder," Scully sighed, her posture proclaiming her 
weariness.  "I don't have any answers for you."


He could barely make out her silhouette in the twilight- darkened room.  
His jaw clenched and unclenched, his teeth grinding as he fought for 
control.

"Scully," he began, his voice assuming a calm completely at odds with 
the emotions roiling within him.  "If you don't mind, I really need to 
be alone right now."

The tiniest hint of hurt at this rejection flickered behind her eyes, 
but Mulder was beyond concern for whatever she might feel at this 
moment, so long as she got out of the room before he lost it 
completely.  He'd already put her through too much these last few days.

"Are you sure?"

"Yeah.  Go home, get some sleep.  It's a long drive to Connecticut 
tomorrow."

Scully sighed with resignation and stood.  "Okay.  If you need 
anything..."

"I'll call," he assented and stared at the wall as she gathered up her 
coat and walked silently out of the room.

He sat unmoving, frozen in place in the encroaching darkness.  Shadows 
lengthened across the floor from chair and table and IV stand.  A nurse 
arrived to check his vitals, informing him that his dinner would arrive 
shortly, and that if he kept the meal down, they'd remove his IV.   At 
his muttered request, the nurse turned the lights off again as she 
left.  The darkness felt right, the perfect accompaniment to the bleak 
desolation overwhelming his heart.

As the last of the outside light faded, shapes became ghostly and 
unreal.  For nothing, he thought darkly.  It had all been for nothing.  
All he had put himself through, all he had put Scully through.  All for 
nothing.  Again.

He pressed his clenched fists to his face, his whitened knuckles 
digging into his eye sockets as he trembled with futile rage and 
hopeless disappointment.

How many times had Scully danced this particular dance with him? How 
many times had she followed determinedly after him, giving him the 
occasional gentle push to keep him on the right track and pulling him 
back when he teetered on the precipice of danger? How many times had 
she picked up the pieces when he ran into a brick wall and shattered 
all over again?

The pain, the anger, the disappointment...He was so damned tired of it 
all.  He felt the way his father had looked in those moments before an 
assassin's bullet had ended his life.  Hurt, exhausted, old...depleted 
of his last ounce of strength or willpower.

How must Scully feel, then, after years of watching him fall apart and 
helping him pull it all back together? How many times was he going to 
drag her through this same tired and futile routine? 

He shuddered as he recalled the expression on her face while she told 
him the news.  Beneath the hard-won clinical calm had lain pain and 
outrage.  She was hurting for him.   She was hurting *because* of him.  
She loved him enough to ache when he ached.  Had her plea the other day 
for him to stop chasing after Samantha been as much to ease her own 
pain as well as his?

Samantha had been his goal for so long he wasn't sure there was 
anything else.  In times when he had lost his way, lost sight of 
everything, searching for Samantha had brought him back to the 
beginning, where he could begin picking his way through the maze of 
obfuscation and deceit all over again, regaining sight of the prize.

Then Scully had come along and in some incredible way, she had 
transplanted his sister as the most important thing in his life.  Where 
the quest might have destroyed him, Scully strengthened him.  That 
moment seven years ago when he had told her that nothing else but 
finding the truth about Samantha mattered had long since been belied.  
Scully mattered.  She mattered more than anything else in his life.  He 
had discovered for the first time these last few days that he could 
live with never finding Samantha.  He had made peace with the idea.  
But he could never live without Scully.

Scully loved him deeply enough to hurt for him and he loved her too 
much to allow her to continue hurting for him.   Theirs was a 
partnership, a true melding of minds and methods and purposes.  And he 
had jeopardized their solidarity countless times in his blind 
determination to see his quest through.  How could he consider asking 
her to go through this with him again, and again, and again?  There had 
to be an end.

He'd had enough.

Give up the search for Samantha? A distant part of his brain gasped in 
horror.  It was unthinkable.  He shuddered at the thought and clenched 
his fingers in the hair at his temples in helpless fury.  The idea 
didn't even bear consideration.

But it did.  If he continued on this quixotic ride through hell, 
eventually he was going to lose Scully.  He was going to get her killed 
or he was going to drive her off.  He was going to lose the sole 
important thing in his life that was tangible, real, unwavering.

His temples throbbed with pain and twin tears of rage washed down his 
face.  How much had Scully sacrificed for him? Her career? Her 
credibility? Her safety? Her sister? How many times had she crawled 
through the mud and blood and danger beside him, protecting him at the 
risk of her own life, stabilizing him when he lost his balance?

It wasn't worth it.  He couldn't continue doing that to her.  He 
couldn't continue doing that to them.  He could do this.  He could give 
something back.  He could make a sacrifice.  He could let Samantha go 
and be the partner Scully needed.  He could show Scully the same 
dedication and devotion he had bestowed upon his lost sister for years.

He stared at the sliver of light creeping across the black floor of the 
hospital room from the corridor and let resolution settle into his 
heart.  It was finished.  He was done.  

A single moment of mourning for what was lost faded; a single tear of 
sorrow dried and was gone.  

He was ready to move on.

 *   *   *   *   *

At six AM the next morning, Mulder crawled out of the hospital bed and 
padded through the darkened room toward the shower.

He stood for long time under the torrent, leaning heavily against the 
tiled wall, letting the hot water lash him.   Every bone of his body 
hurt, every muscle ached with weariness.  It had been late when he had 
finally drifted into a fitful sleep.  The peace he had found with his 
resolve the night before had darkened in the face of the trial yet to 
come.  He would have to face his mother's funeral tomorrow.  He would 
have to let his mother go with the knowledge in his mind that he was 
never again going to try to bring her daughter home.  He wanted to curl 
up and close his eyes until this had all passed him by.  But he wasn't 
that kind of coward.  He would look at his mother's smiling picture on 
that altar, next to that oh-so tasteful urn, and accept his own mental 
flagellation as his did so.   But it was the last time he ever would.

He stepped out of the bathroom with a towel wrapped around his waist to 
find the lights had been turned on.  Scully sat in the chair she had 
inhabited the night before, flipping through a medical journal.  A pile 
of clothing lay neatly folded on the bed with his travel accessories 
bag perched atop it.  On the bed tray a steaming cup of coffee 
beckoned.

He rolled his eyes in a paroxysm of gratitude at Scully and went for 
the coffee.

"Good morning," she greeted him.  Her voice had not yet lost that 
husky, groggy tone that usually disappeared after her morning cup of 
coffee.  He bit his lip hard.  He would never admit it, but he really 
liked that voice.  "How are you feeling?"

"Better, now that there's caffeine in the room," he responded, sitting 
on the bed and uncapping the coffee cup.   Checking that his towel was 
still securely in place, he took a long sip, breathing a sigh of 
contentment.  "Thank you."

"It's getting late," she hinted, raising a meaningful eyebrow at his 
towel-clad form.  "Clothes are on the bed.   I grabbed your black suit 
for the service tomorrow, and I confirmed our reservations at the motel 
for tonight."

He nodded, his expression falling.  In the ecstasy of that first sip of 
coffee, he had almost, *almost*, forgotten.

"I'll be ready to go in ten," he promised.  Balancing the coffee in one 
hand, he gathered up the clothes and toiletries with the other and went 
back into the bathroom.   He barely kicked the door closed before his 
towel slipped off.

 *  *   *   *   *

 Mulder watched Scully's profile as she merged onto the highway.  Her 
face could have been carved from marble for all the emotion it 
revealed, but her fingers gripped the steering wheel with white-
knuckled intensity.

"You've decided to stop searching for Samantha?" She repeated in 
disbelief.  A long silence filled the space between them as she chewed 

on the corner of her bottom lip in thought.


"You don't mean that," she said at last, with certainty.

"Scully," he kept his voice low, reasonable.  "I do mean it.  I've had 

it.  It's over."

"Why?" The single word was sharp and cold in the darkness of the car.

"Believe me," he muttered, his tone filled with bitter self-mockery, 
"my motives are purely selfish.  I'm tired of being a puppet," he 
recited his prepared argument.  He could never tell Scully he was doing 
this for her.  She would never accept it.  "Every time someone dangles 
the carrot of Samantha in front of me, I go chasing after it and damn 
the consequences.  I'm tired of being a fool."

"You're not a fool, Mulder," she said tiredly.  "So you're just going 
to give it up, just like that?"

"'Just like that?'" He repeated incredulously.  "How many times do I 
have to hit the same brick wall before I'm justified in calling it 
quits? The wall ain't movin', so maybe I should."

Scully scowled, her jaw jutting forward with her tension.   "No, 
Mulder.  You can't do it."

"What?" He stared at her profile, angry and perplexed.   "Scully, 
you've been telling me for years to let it go, and you were right.  
It's time to move on."

"I wasn't right, Mulder.  It would be wrong--"

"Dammit, Scully! Where is this coming from? Why the huge change of 
heart all of a sudden?"

"I was wrong.  I didn't realize that until yesterday morning, when we 
returned from California.  Mulder, in the years I've known you, through 
everything we've experienced, never once had I seen you at peace.  Not 
until yesterday."

"Scully--"

"No, Mulder, listen to me!" She turned her head briefly to glance at 
him.  "I realized something, something I'd never understood before.  
You're never going to be able to move on, *truly* move on, until you 
know, once and for all.   Sure, you can live without knowing, you can 
carry on.  But you'll never know that kind of peace you felt yesterday, 
thinking you had found your answer, if you don't carry this through."

Mulder grimaced.  Damn it, he was doing this for her, because he didn't 
want to drag her through what she'd been through these last few days 
all over again.  He had to end it.  Scully drew a deep breath.  "I'll 
help you.  I realized for the first time that I've never really done 
that before.   I've always tried to convince you to stop.  Maybe if we 
do this together, look for her together, then we'll be more effective.  
I won't be holding you back any longer."

"It's not worth it, Scully," Mulder stated bleakly.  He stared out the 
window at the dark shapes of trees and buildings flashing past in the 
pre-dawn darkness.  A lighted window here, a still-dark one there; 
people awakening to begin their day, or sleeping in late on a Sunday 
morning.  

Not one of them even remotely aware that just a few yards away, a 
tempest raged inside his head.

His attention was drawn back to Scully, whose solemn expression was 
rendered almost ghoulish in the LED lights of the dash.

"I realized something else," she continued as though he hadn't spoken.  
"Something I never knew about myself.  I *want* to find Samantha, 
Mulder.  I want a chance to meet her if I can.  I figure she must be 
pretty special for you to have been as dedicated to her as you have all 
these years.

The bottom of Mulder's gut dropped out, leaving him feeling hollow and 
vaguely nauseated.  He closed his eyes against a burgeoning headache.  
"I'm sorry, Scully," he whispered.   "I wish I could give you that.  
But I can't say I'm willing to go through this all over again.  I've 
had enough.   *We've* had enough."

Scully's nostrils flared with annoyance.  "Don't presume to tell me 
what I have and haven't had enough of, Mulder." She lapsed into a moody 
silence.

Mulder's head fell back against the headrest of the seat.   Unsure of 
what he could possibly say to her, he closed his eyes, retreating from 
her disappointment and censure into the dubious sanctuary of his own 
thoughts.  

Images of Samantha as he remembered her sprang readily to mind.  He had 
vague recollections of his mother's pregnancy, of her letting him lay 
his head on her abdomen and feel the baby kick.  Every time it did, 
he'd gasp in shock and raise wide, wondering eyes to his mother's and 
she would laugh with him, caress his face and hair, tell him all about 
the new baby brother or sister he would be getting soon.  He'd fall 
asleep there, tingling with anticipation, darkened as it was with no 
little insecurity that the new baby would disturb his exalted place in 
his mother's affections.

He'd been bitterly disappointed when the baby arrived.  It was just a 
useless, squirming bundle that smelled funny and made a lot of noise, 
especially when he was trying to sleep.  She had been no fun at all, 
until the day he had reached through the wooden slats of the crib while 
she slept, to touch her tiny hand with its perfect miniature fingers.  
Her fist had closed fiercely around his index finger, filling him with 
wonder that she knew he was there, wanted him to be there.  On that 
day, he had become completely enamored of his little sister.

She soon began crawling around, getting into everything, messing with 
his toys and she'd become a bother again.  Not long after, she was 
toddling, following after him, tripping over her own clumsy feet.  She 
developed an irrational attachment to him, calling him "Fak" and crying 
when he left her behind to go out and play with his friends.  She was 
much happier when he sat on the sofa and read Little Golden Books to 
her.  He eventually began hiding her favorite book du jour when he 
couldn't stand to read it anymore, forcing her to choose another one.

Samantha had experienced a great deal of disappointment and frustration 
learning to ride a two-wheel bike.  Their father had spent endless 
hours with her, holding her upright until she gained momentum and 
letting go only to watch her wobble and fall the second she realized 
she was riding solo.  Then one sunny Saturday morning, when he had 
awakened early to play outdoors, she came out to join him.   Their 
parents were still soundly asleep, but she had dragged her bicycle from 
its position leaning against the side of the house and called out,

"Fox, watch me!"

Then she hopped on the bike and nonchalantly rode it to the end of the 
block with no help at all.  She rode back, but found herself unable to 
stop the bike as easily as she had gotten it started.  He'd had to 
catch her in motion and they'd both landed in a tangle on the dewy 
grass, the bike crashing to the ground next to them.  They had dusted 
themselves off as he soundly chastised Samantha for endangering his 
life (though he hadn't been terribly concerned about hers; he would 
have caught her regardless) and gone inside to tell their parents about 
her success.

Not long thereafter, around the time Samantha was six, their father had 
started coming home later and later from work, silent, withdrawn, 
cranky.  He drank more and argued more with their mother.  Samantha and 
he had retreated into their own little world and shut out the turmoil 
and confusion the adults were creating.  He would take her to the 
playground and stay there with her for entire afternoons, someplace 
where they didn't have to worry about what was going on at home.  He'd 
push her on the swings, hold her as she crossed the monkey bars, and 
spin her on the merry-go-round.

One day in their back yard, she had fallen off a rope swing and broken 
her collarbone.  He'd only walked away for a moment to watch a game of 
basketball some teenaged boys in the house next door were playing in 
their driveway.  He'd come running at her bloodcurdling screams, his 
heart pounding wildly with fear, while their mother called an 
ambulance.  He'd received a stern scolding from both his parents for 
not watching Samantha and had willingly accepted the month's grounding 
that accompanied it.   Nothing compared to his own remorse over letting 
harm come to his sister.  Samantha had merely smiled at him with sad 
eyes and apologized for getting him into trouble.

Samantha with her arm in a sling...  Samantha flying in the air on a 
swing with her pigtails streaming behind her...  Samantha pulling the 
blankets up over her head when their parents argued downstairs...  
Samantha making an irritated face at him when he teased her...  
Samantha screaming in pain beneath the tree the swing had been tied 
to...  Samantha glowering in exasperation with him over the Stratego 
board...  Samantha crying out to him for help as he watched, useless, 
while she disappeared from his sight for the last time...


Mulder's eyes sprang open as his own violent gasp jerked him out of 
sleep.  His eyes sought Scully to find her still there, exactly where 
she had been when he had drifted off.   He took a deep, steadying 
breath as she glanced over at him.

"Are you all right?" she asked, her voice soft with concern.

"Yeah," he answered, craning his neck to the left and the right to 
stretch muscles gone stiff from sleeping upright.   "Just ducky."


Scully snorted a chuckle and flipped on the turn signal, pulling onto 
an exit ramp.  "We just passed Philadelphia.   It's time for lunch, so 
I thought I'd pull off and stop at a deli.  Want any?"

Mulder's stomach rumbled at the mention of food, and he smiled 
sheepishly.  "Um, that would be a 'yes.'"

Her lips quirked and Mulder felt the tension in his gut ease.  The 
anger of the early morning had blown over and they could pass the rest 
of the trip peacefully.  He wouldn't have to deal with the outraged 
hurt he had seen on Scully's face this morning.

She'd saved his life yesterday...again.  How many times did that make 
now? He'd lost count.  But if he had sent Scully home yesterday 
morning, if she hadn't decided to stay with him, he would have died.  
He owed her something for that, didn't he? Owed it to her not to give 
up on something that had become as important to her as it had once been 
to him.   But he couldn't do it, couldn't expose her or himself that 
way again.  He needed to make a clean break for them both.

This way was better, he told himself firmly.  He could focus more on 
Scully, work better to meet her needs, no longer blinded by his 
obsession.  Maybe for once he could actually consider himself worth her 
irrational devotion to him.


"Stop it, Mulder," Scully's short command interrupted his thoughts.

"What?"

She sighed, giving him a knowing look out of the corner of her eye.  "I 
don't think this weekend is a good time for either of us to be making 
any lasting decisions."

He nodded, conceding the point.  "Yeah, I guess you're right."

"Let's just give it some time and thought, okay?"

"Okay, Scully, sounds good," he answered, mentally rebelling at the 
thought that with time and consideration, he might change his mind.  
Not this time.

"Good," Scully made a turn and slid the car into an empty parking space 
in front of a deli.  "Let's eat."

 *   *   *   *   *

Scully watched the steep steps of the chapel carefully as she and 
Mulder mounted the stairs the following morning.  A thin dusting of 
snow had covered already icy surfaces during the night and patches 
remained on the steps despite the custodian's shovel.

Mulder, not wearing three-inch heels, didn't seem to notice much.

"So my father was a second-generation non-practicing Jew and my mother 
was a first-generation non-practicing Episcopalian," he explained.  
"One of her girlhood friends did most of the legwork for the memorial, 
someone she had met in Sunday school years ago.  Thus, the church."

Scully smiled slightly.  Mulder seemed to feel the need to excuse his 
mother's memorial being held in a church in the face of his own 
religious indifference.

"So, you're a heathen on both sides," she observed in a teasing murmur.

"At least I come by it honestly," his response was low and quiet next 
to her ear, his hand coming to rest at the small of her back as they 
entered the old stone building.   Inside, it was everything a 150-year-
old chapel should be.   Winter light filtered through grandiose stained 
glass windows in warm tones.  Skillful masonry had provided artful 
arches and moldings.  Their footsteps on the marble floor echoed off 
the hard marble and granite walls.  The soft sound of organ music 
wafted from the sanctuary into the vestibule.  Scully sighed in 
pleasure at the beauty.

"It's lovely in here, Mulder.  I'm sure your mother would appreciate 
it."

He nodded silently, coming to a stop in the atrium as he was greeted by 
the minister and his mother's longtime friend, Lacey Winters.  He 

quietly accepted their murmured condolences and introduced Scully to 
them.

"Teena mentioned you to me on several occasions, Ms.  Scully," Mrs.  
Winters said, shaking her hand warmly.  The woman was everything a 
perfectly bred and groomed Martha's Vineyard matron should be.  Those 
had been Mulder's mother's roots and she hadn't moved away from them 
until she had separated from her husband in the mid-1970's.   Sometimes 
Scully had a hard time envisioning her often outrageous partner in such 
conservative surroundings.

"She thought very highly of you," Mrs.  Winters continued, unaware of 
Scully's musings.  "She was glad you were watching out for Fox down 
there in Washington."

Scully inclined her head solemnly.  "I appreciate that, Mrs.  Winters.  
Thank you." The woman released her hand and turned to greet another 
guest and Scully stepped away to rejoin Mulder, who had finished his 
conversation with the minister.

"How are you holding up?" she asked him as he stood dutifully in the 
atrium, accepting the condolences of guests as they began filing in 
from the cold outdoors.

"I can't say I wouldn't rather be somewhere else, but other than that, 
I'm fine," he replied in a hushed murmur.  He greeted another guest 
with grave courtesy, accepted another round of platitudes, and glanced 
at Scully when the guest had walked away.

She patted his shoulder and stood beside him as she was introduced 
repeatedly to longtime, distant acquaintances.   Standing next to 
Mulder as she was, it appeared as though she was a part of the family.  
And she was, she supposed.   Not family to Teena Mulder, but certainly 
to her son, by his own admission.

The number of incoming mourners was tapering off when Scully felt 
Mulder stiffen beside her.  Before she could do more than turn to look 
at him, he was striding rapidly toward the door, his fists clenched at 
his sides.

When the door opened Scully saw what his height advantage had allowed 
him to see first through the small panes of glass in the heavily carved 
wooden panels.  Her eyes widened with alarm as she ran after her 
partner.

"Leave," she heard Mulder's dangerous growl as she caught up with him 
on the slick steps before the church.

"Mulder, calm down..." she cautioned, throwing a glare at the man 
Mulder stood nose to nose with.  The newcomer tossed his cigarette butt 
down and stepped on it.

"I'm perfectly calm, Scully," Mulder responded in a deceptively low 
murmur.

"I am here to pay my respects, Agent Mulder," the man replied in his 
cultured, mellow voice.  Scully imagined the serpent in Eden had spoken 
with such a voice.

"Son of a...!" Mulder lunged at the man and grabbed a handful of his 
collar, belying his claim to calm.  

"Your respects?" her enraged partner sneered.  "Where was your respect 
when you stole Samantha right out of our mother's arms? Where was your 
respect when you had my father gunned down? You don't 'respect' 
anything.  All you know how to do is kill."

Mulder stopped, collecting himself.  He released the man's collar with 
a push, and looked around to make sure no one had seen the display.  
"Go away," he muttered.  "You're not wanted here."

"Your mother once meant a great deal to me," the man replied evenly.  
"I have a right to be here."

"You have no rights here," Mulder snarled, careful to keep his voice 
down.  "My mother is dead, thanks in no small part to what you did to 
our family.  Tell me, how does it feel to be a walking pestilence? To 
destroy everything you touch, or claim to care about?"

The man studied Mulder calmly, unblinking.  "Be careful, Agent 
Mulder...you're about to create a scene," he cautioned, inclining his 
head to a woman making her way up the stairs to the church.

"You have no idea what I'm capable of creating," Mulder seethed.  "If 
you try to walk through those doors, I'll break your neck before you 
make it halfway in.  Don't fuck with me today, old man."

A small cry of amazement sounded behind them, and Scully turned to see 
Lacey Winters flying down the steps in their direction.

"Oh, my goodness!" The woman gasped, her teary eyes wide.   She pushed 
past Mulder and Scully to embrace the man.   "However did you know to 
be here? I tried to reach you, but I didn't know where you had gone!" 
Scully met Mulder's eyes with alarm.  His nostrils flared with 
irritation and he glowered at the man over the elderly woman's head.

"I'm sorry, Lacey dear, but I really can't stay.  I just wanted to stop 
by," the man said kindly to Mrs.  Winters, extricating himself from her 
hug and clasping her hand between both of his.  "I have an important 
meeting in half an hour."

"Are you certain?" she asked, crestfallen.  "You never change, always 
rushing off somewhere, never staying to visit.  You should be ashamed," 
she scolded.  "You didn't even make it to Bill's funeral and now you're 
missing Teena's as well?"

"My apologies," he said, patting the woman's hand fondly and letting 
go.  "It's been wonderful seeing you again, Lacey.  Could I have a 
moment with Fox alone?"

"Oh, of course," Lacey stepped away patting Mulder's arm.   Mulder 
flinched almost imperceptibly from her touch as though it were 
contaminated.  "Fox," she said solemnly, "I'll be back inside when 
you're finished.  You'd best hurry; the service is about to begin."

Mulder waited until the woman was out earshot before turning back to 
the man.

"I'm not staying, Agent Mulder," the man said finally.  "I just want to 
extend my condolences for your loss," he nodded graciously at Mulder.  
Mulder, for his part, looked ready to chew glass.

After a tense, silent moment, Mulder spun and stalked away without 
another word.  Scully cast a venomous glare at the man as he lit 
another cigarette.  "Just leave!" she hissed angrily and followed her 
seething partner back into the church.  She glanced over her shoulder a 
moment later to note with relief that the man had turned away and was 
walking down the stairs.  A stream of cigarette smoke trailed behind 
him.

As they prepared to enter the chapel, she could feel Mulder quivering 
with rage.  She was escorted in beside him, walking slowly down the 
center aisle, looking over the small gathering of mourners.  In the 
rear-most pew, a single woman in a black dress sat alone.  Scully 
wasn't sure why she noticed the woman, except that she wore a black hat 
with a veil.  Though it was still considered proper decorum in New 
England for women to wear hats to church, that sort of dramatic 
headwear might have been appropriate on a widow, but not on a solitary 
young woman in the back pew.

Then they were past the woman and Scully could not continue to study 
the guest without conspicuously craning her neck.   She faced forward 
and continued beside Mulder to the front pew.  Soon the service began.  
She bowed her head for the opening prayer but she found her thoughts 
wandering.

I don't belong here, she thought sadly.  She wasn't here to mourn the 
deceased; she was here for Mulder.  She grieved for him but not with 
him.  She had met Teena Mulder only a handful of times, barely enough 

to form an impression, really.  And each of those occasions had been in 
circumstances where concern for Mulder had been foremost in her 
thoughts.  If she was brutally honest with herself, she had never 
completely overcome an instinctive distaste for a woman who had been so 
caught up in her own grief and loss that she had turned away from a son 
who desperately needed her.

And now that woman was gone and Scully had never had the opportunity to 
know her or get past those perceptions of her.  Even in dying, she had 
abandoned her son, taking her own life with no regard for how it might 
affect him.   Scully was not surprised to notice she was angry for that 
and becoming angrier.  It was an emotion she had experienced many times 
since the day she'd had to tell her partner his mother was dead.  She 
sighed softly and refocused her thoughts on Mulder.

Glancing up at him, she found her partner staring forward, 
expressionless, lost in thoughts of his own.  Occasionally, he would 
pinch the bridge of his nose, or blink rapidly and take a deep breath 
to steady himself once more.  Bidding his final farewell to his last 
link to the childhood he had lost so long ago.

He looked down and met her gaze with glassy eyes.  His hand fumbled 
across the space between them on the pew, taking hers and squeezing 
tightly.  She returned to grip, stroking his fingers soothingly.  He 
held her hand between them, close to his thigh and looked back at the 
minister.

Samantha, Scully thought sadly.  It always came back to Samantha.  
Mulder had been all but destroyed in his early years because of his 
sister's disappearance.  Her recovery had been his personal Grail his 
entire adult life.  But now he was ready to give it up.

Once upon a time, even as recently as last week, she might have been 
glad for that.  When she had first met Mulder, she had felt he would be 
best served by letting go of the past and moving on.  He was a 
brilliant agent, once the Bureau's fair-haired child, but his 
reputation had been quickly tarnished by his ability to embrace extreme 
possibilities.  He'd been written off, tagged with the derisive label 
of "Spooky" and forgotten in his basement room.

Until, that was, he stirred up enough trouble to merit attention, then 
she had been called upon to rein him in.   Instead she had saddled up 
and ridden beside him.  No one had counted on that.  She had given his 
work something it had never had: credibility.  Between the two of them, 
they had turned the punch line of the Bureau into something greater and 

more important than it was ever thought to be.   His work became her 
work, too.  They had pursued it with diligence and determination, 
coming at it from different sides to meet in the middle with enormous 
success.

The price had been high.  It hurt to recall all they had lost upon the 
way, the long nights of pain and despair they had each experienced and 
the loved ones who had been stolen from them.  They had fought their 
way side by side through tempest after tempest, had clung tightly to 
one another when one threatened to be swept away.  And here they were, 
both still standing, and relatively sound and whole.  Bruised, but not 
broken.

At least, they hadn't been.  This time, it seemed Mulder might have 
actually reached that breaking point.  Her mind had gone into a 
tailspin when he had announced he wanted to stop searching for 
Samantha.  Never had she dreamed he might ever consider doing that.  
Never had she dreamed that she would be so adamantly opposed to it.  
She didn't want him to quit.  *She* didn't want to quit.  Too much had 
been taken from them.  If they were to stop trying to claim back what 
little they could, what was left for them?

This weekend's episode had confirmed one thing; there was a strong 
possibility that Samantha was alive.  To give up now would be like 
quitting a race with the finish line just coming into sight.  And that 
was simply not Mulder's way.   To him, the ultimate failure was to not 
try.

Whatever she had said in the car, she had made a decision: she would 
continue to search for Samantha, whether Mulder wanted to or not.  It 
wasn't just his quest anymore and she had no intention of giving it up 

so easily.  She would find Samantha for both Mulder and herself.

She sighed and looked up to realize the pastor was about to give the 
benediction.  The doors at the back of the sanctuary opened and Scully 
turned to see the woman she had espied earlier in the back hurrying out 
of the room.  She had to fight a strong impulse to run after her, to 
see if she could figure out just what it was about the woman that had 
drawn her notice, but she couldn't.  Mulder was still beside her, 
holding her hand like a life-preserver.  Her place was with him until 
this ordeal was finally over.

She bowed her head as the final prayer was spoken, fervently seeking 
blessing on each of them in what was to come.


 *   *   *   *   *

After the short reception at the end of the memorial, she and Mulder 
returned to the hotel they had checked into the previous afternoon.  It 
had been through silent, tacit agreement that they had decided not to 
stay at his mother's house.  Better to be on neutral ground, where the 
ghosts of the past did not inhabit every room and object.  They carried 
enough ghosts with them as it was.

Mulder flung himself down on the bed, covering his face with his hands.  
Her eyes were soft and concerned as she approached slowly, sitting 
beside him, leaning against the headboard, careful not to touch him 
until he invited her to.  After a long, silent moment, he scrubbed his 
hands over his face and brought them down, folding them across his 
chest to study her with bright eyes.

"Well, that's over."

Scully nodded.  "I'm sorry, Mulder," she said softly, "I wish it hadn't 
happened this way.  You and your mother deserved a better chance than 
this."

One corner of his mouth lifted in a half-hearted smile.   "Thanks," he 
replied, rolling to his side and bracing himself on an elbow to face 
her.  "You know," he said after several long, silent moments, "I spend 
so much time remembering the events after everything went bad that I 
forget how much good there was before all that.  I think about the way 
she walked me to school my first day and helped me with my homework 
when Dad worked late.  How she'd sing along with the radio while she 
made dinner...I...I miss that, Scully."

Twin tears splashed onto the pillow beneath his head.  "And I really 
miss that I didn't think of them before now.   Maybe if I had, I 
wouldn't feel like I had lost so much."

He lay there silently for a moment, his jaw clenching spasmodically, 
and then he fell forward, curling his body beside her outstretched legs 
as he laid his head in her lap.

"It's okay," Scully whispered, blinking back her own tears.   She 
stroked his face and hair as he began to shake.  "It's okay...."
 



CHAPTER TWO - Visitation


"Far be it for me to borrow a cliche," Scully commented as she fell 
wearily into a chair, her tone touched with irony, "but I feel so 
used."

Mulder, emerging from the kitchen bearing two mugs of coffee, handed 
one to her and sat on the sofa.  He gave her a wry glance.  "Welcome to 
my life."


Scully huffed a humorless chortle and sipped her coffee, her eyes 
staring past his shoulder at the wall.  A troubled frown still wrinkled 
her brow.

She had appeared at his door early that morning, her eyes filled with 
barely suppressed eagerness.  Mulder had practically had to beat 
Langly, Frohike, and Byers back from the door just to let her enter.  
She hadn't had time to speak to Mulder about where she had been and 
what she had been doing.  She had simply pulled a disk out of her coat 
pocket and asked the Gunmen if they could decode the contents, then 
perched expectantly on the sofa while the boys puttered at their 
computers.  

Mulder had forced himself to check the questions that were roiling 
inside him.  He wasn't sure he trusted himself to speak.  Anger, the 
inevitable by-product of fear, was seeping through his system like a 
slow-working poison.  He wasn't angry with Scully for leaving without 
telling him where she was going or why.  He had done that to her 
countless times and they had both accepted it as something their jobs 
sometimes required.  He was angry for the fear and dread he had felt 
those missing three days.  So he had lurked silently in the archway to 
the living room, distancing himself from her mind and body until he had 
a chance to sort himself out.

The three days she had been gone had been a sojourn in hell for Mulder.  
The moment he had learned the identity of her companion, terror had 
torn at his gut with razor-sharp claws.  The Gunmen had appeared at his 
door with information and then had never left, trying to trace where 
she might have gone, what she might be doing and ultimately producing 
nothing, despite their best efforts.  Tense silence, punctuated only by 
the occasional pacing, the click of a keyboard, had filled the 
apartment.  The Gunmen had studied him warily, as if afraid he might go 
ballistic at any moment.  Until the knock at the door had come...

The disillusionment in Scully's eyes when they were told the disk she 
had brought back was blank had been heart-rending to watch.  Mulder had 
sent the Gunmen home, thanking them for their help, and left to go to 
the building where Scully had met with the smoking man in his office, 
only to find it empty and abandoned.  Mulder had tried to comfort her, 
drawing upon his own vast experience at being duped, but his words had 
rung hollow even in his own ears.  She had seen a man die for that 
disk, she told him.  How could it possibly be that the disk was blank, 
that the man had died for absolutely nothing?

After three interminably long days, Mulder was almost numb from lack of 
sleep, and his muscles had that rubbery feel that came from repeated 
surges of fear-drenched adrenaline.  There was, he mused, something 
almost surreal about the normalcy of just sitting in his living room, 
drinking coffee and trying to figure it all out.

"What I don't understand," Mulder spoke tensely, his anger still 
simmering beneath the surface, mingled with his relief, "is what that 
man could have possibly said to get you to go with him."

"It wasn't what he said, so much as the opportunity he presented," 
Scully explained, sighing.  "C.G.B. Spender has always underestimated 
me.  That's why I was assigned to work with you in the first place.  
And since then, I've never had a chance to go head to head with him.  
You have, but I haven't.  I figured that if he underestimated me that 
completely, maybe I could get him to reveal more than he intended."

Mulder's breath left him in an explosive exhalation.  "Jesus, Scully, 

you've got to know by now that's a good way to wind up dead."

"I didn't think so," Scully reasoned.  "He didn't want me dead; he had 
an angle, something he needed me alive for.  My mistake," she 
confessed, "was in over-estimating myself.  He was so convincing, 

Mulder.  I fell for it!" she wiped a hand down her face, her other fist 
clutching her coffee cup on her knee.  "After the things he showed me, 
he had me.  Hook, line and sinker.  That wasn't how I had intended it 
to go.  I lost sight of my goal, became distracted."

"What were you hoping to find?" Mulder leaned forward, his elbows on 
his knees, studying her intently.

She took a long time to respond, looking away.  "Answers."

"Answers to what?"

"I was curious," she admitted at last.  "He's played such an active 
role in all that has happened to us...I had to know what he was about."  
She sighed, biting her bottom lip.  Her frown indicated disgust at her 
own naivete.  Finally, she turned back to him, her eyes frank.  "I had 
to know why, Mulder.  I had to know why he's the manipulator he is.  I 
don't understand what drives a man like that, to the point where people 
are no more than pieces on his own personal chessboard.  I thought that 
maybe I could get a look inside his head.  Maybe then I could make some 
sense of what happened to me...and what happened to Samantha," she 
placed a slight emphasis on the last word, removing all doubt as to 
what her primary motivation had been.

He drew a deep breath.  "Scully, I thought we decided not to..."

"No, Mulder, you decided, I didn't," she interrupted.  "And frankly 
that's not a decision you have the right to make for me."

"I've let it go," he told her, his eyes troubled.  "We need to put it 
behind us and move on.  We've got other things to focus on."

"I haven't let it go.  I can't.  I won't," she replied.  "Not when I 
know there's still a chance."

"Damn it, Scully!" he exclaimed, his coffee mug slamming onto the table 
before him as he shot to his feet.  "So what do you plan on doing?  
Keep chasing after that son of a bitch until he decides to cut you 
down, on the off chance that he might let something drop?"  He glared 
at her, his hands braced on his hips.  "When did all this happen?  Why 
is this suddenly so important to you?"


Her tone of determined calm only served to infuriate him more.  
"Mulder, I know this is difficult for you.  It's been difficult for me 
too.  But if we let it go now, what have the last seven years been 
about?  Yes, I know I'm coming late to the party, but 
Mulder...Everything that has happened, everything that we have done, 
everything that's been done *to us*...what's it all for?  I don't know 
about you, Mulder, but all that I've been through...it means too much 
to just give it all up."

"It's not worth it, Scully," Mulder faced her, running his fingers 
through his hair, raising it in wild spikes about his head.

"Mulder, I was wrong.  And I'm trying to change that, because I finally 
see how important this is," she stated with a solemn gaze.  "I need to 
see this through.  And maybe I'm being a little presumptuous, but I 
think you do too.  Look at yourself!  In all the years I've known you 
I've never seen you back down from anything.  You ask me 'why now?'  
Maybe that's what I should be asking you."

She paused, her eyes bright with the fervor of her resolution.  She 
strove for a more reasoned tone, leaving Mulder with the unpleasant 
feeling he was being patronized.  "There are so many things that we'll 
never have answers for, Mulder.  If we can find one here, then it's 
worth the chance.  I'm not going to quit.  I *will* do this."

A long, tense silence settled over the apartment as Mulder paced to the 
window and stared out, his expression thunderous. The alley beyond his 
window was gray and deserted except for a stray cat perched on the edge 
of a dumpster.  Mulder felt an odd kinship for the animal's fruitless 
search for food.  Hadn't he done the same thing over the years, diving 
into the government's cesspools in search of something he'd never find?

Worry, rage, fear, gratitude, and affection all whirled within him in a 
maelstrom.  His pulse pounded in his temples as he considered what 

could have happened to Scully this week.  She thought she was doing 
this for him, that he would never be complete without the answers.  But 
she was wrong.  He would never be complete without her, and if they 
kept heading on this course, that was what would end up happening.  How 
could she possibly expect him to keep doing it?

Some part of his brain argued that he owed it to her, for all she had 
been through for him.  He choked the thought brutally.  Damn it, they 
were not keeping score!  They had both made sacrifices, had each put 
themselves on the line for one another.  He was not going to let some 
misplaced sense of obligation pressure him into defying his better 
judgment.  For once, he would stand firm.

At last he turned, his eyes meeting Scully's.  She watched him 
expectantly, as though waiting for him to yield.  God knew he did so 
often enough.  More often than not, she was right.  But not this time.  
She didn't realize he was doing this for her.  He was doing it so 
neither of them would have to spend another weekend as he had spent 
this one.  He wasn't going to back down.  He couldn't.

But he wasn't going to fight with her about it either.  After the panic 
of the weekend, he wasn't sure he trusted himself to handle any sort of 
in-depth discussion well.  Best to let go of it for now.

"I have to go up north again tomorrow to take care of some issues with 
the estate," he said finally, changing the subject.  "I've been putting 
it off for weeks.  Now is probably as good a time as any.  I might be 
gone up to a week.  I'll let Skinner know."


She snorted lightly, turning her head away.  Mulder's eyes narrowed as 
he watched her.  She seemed almost disappointed he wasn't going to 
pursue the argument.  She set her cup of cold coffee on the table and 
rose.  "Then I'd better get home," she replied, her lips pressed 
together.  "I need some sleep."

He followed her to the door, his hand closing firmly over her upper arm 
just before she stepped out.  "Scully, do me a favor?"

"What?"

"Just leave it alone until I get back, would you?"

She shook her head, a brusque, brief movement of negation.  "I can't 
promise that, Mulder.  If I have the chance to get some answers, I'm 
going to take it."


She tugged her arm from his grasp and walked out without another word.

The door closed behind her and Mulder leaned against it, his forehead 
resting on the cool wood.  This was his fault.  He had brought her to 
this point, where the goals that had once been his alone now meant more 
to her than they ever should.  If he hadn't been so fixated on finding 
Samantha all those years, she would never have adopted his crusade as 
her own.  

And Scully was prepared to do it without him.  Despite his best 
intentions, he wasn't sure he could let his partner go in without 
backup.  That wasn't the way they did things.  Scully had followed his 
lead more often than he could remember, supporting him even when she 
had her misgivings.  She might tell him he was out of his fool head in 
private, but they had always counted on one another to present a 
unified front.

He owed it to her to back her play, didn't he?  Wasn't that his duty, 
to cover her back, as it was hers to cover his?  If he didn't go with 
her, could they ever count on one another with that same absolute trust 
they held now, or would there always be a fear between them that they 
couldn't be sure the other would be there when they needed them most?

He squeezed his eyes tightly shut, fighting the urge to chase after 
her, tell her it was all right, that he was in all the way with her. He 
wouldn't, damn it, he *wouldn't*.  There had to be an end -- for both 
of them.

The sound of his fist crashing into the solid wood door exploded in the 
silent apartment.


*     *     *     *     *

Scully tapped her fingers impatiently on the desk as the phone at the 
other end of the line rang in her ear.  After the third ring, a 
breathless female voice answered.  "Hello?"

"Hello, Mrs. Winters?  This is Dana Scully.  We met at Mrs. Mulder's 
memorial."

"Oh, yes, yes!"  The voice took on a cheerful tone that Scully 
suspected was as natural to her as breathing.

"Is this a good time?" she asked.


"Of course, Miss Scully.  What can I do for you?"

"Well, Mrs. Winters, I'm trying to help my partner--um, Fox--find out 
some things about the time preceding his mother's...death," she 
explained, prevaricating only slightly.  "I thought that since you were 
close to Mrs. Mulder, perhaps you might be able to shed some light on 
what happened to her those final weeks."

The woman sighed sadly.  "I wish I could help, dear, but Teena didn't 
speak to me at all for several months before...Well, anyway, she fell 
out of contact.  I never understood why, until I learned how she had 
died.  Now, I wish I had done more, tried to be there more.  I suppose 
everyone who loses someone close to them in such a way feels much the 
same."

Scully bit her lip, thinking of her partner, who needed no prompting to 
assume guilt for all the terrible things of the world.  He hadn't said 
as much, but she could tell the fact that his mother had tried to call 
him twice in the days preceding her suicide and that he had never 
returned her calls, weighed heavily on his conscience.  "Yes, Mrs. 
Winters.  I suppose they would."

A moment of silence passed before Scully spoke again.  "How was she, 

before she fell out of contact with you, Mrs. Winters?"

"Well," the woman paused as she thought for a moment, "I suppose she 
was the same she's always been, at least for the last twenty-seven 
years.  Melancholy at times, but still carrying on.  Of course before, 
well..."

"Before her daughter was taken?" Scully prompted.

"Yes," Mrs. Winters sighed with relief.  "I wasn't sure if you knew, 
and it wasn't really my place, you know.  But since you're already 
aware of what happened, I can tell you that before that, Teena was a 
much different person.  She was always such a happy person, always 
smiling and full of energy.  That changed.  She always seemed to blame 
herself, no matter how hard we tried to make her see there was nothing 
she could have done to prevent such a thing.  She remained quite 
convinced, up through the very end, that it was indeed her fault."


Guilt, apparently, was a Mulder family trait, Scully thought grimly.  
"Do you have any idea why she felt responsible?"

She could hear the elderly woman shrug, the phone scratching and 
rustling against the clothes on Mrs. Winters shoulders.  "Who knows?" 
she replied.  "Perhaps she felt that she and Bill shouldn't have left 
the house that night.  There's no logic for when you're feeling that 
way."

No, there wasn't.  Scully knew that first hand.  "Do you know anyone 
else Mrs. Mulder might have been close to?" She asked.

"No, not really.  Most of our old friends have either moved away or 
passed on by now," Mrs. Winters sighed again.  "The only one I know of 
still remaining is the man you met at her memorial, the tall gentleman 
with the unfortunate smoking habit, but he hasn't been around for 
years."

Scully bared her teeth in a grimace of bitter triumph.  This was it.  
"Oh, yes," she said with false enthusiasm.  "I remember!  
Mr....Mr....his name escapes me."

"Burke, dear, his name is Charles Burke.  He graduated high school with 
Teena.  Aside from myself, I think he's the one who knew Teena the 
longest, even before she met Bill.  He was sort of a beau, you see," 
Mrs. Winters explained conspiratorially.  "He and Bill served together 
in the Army, and Teena met Bill while visiting Charles.  I'm afraid he 
was quite upset when she stopped seeing him to go with Bill, but 
eventually, those things fade, you know, and they all became fast 
friends.  He was like an honorary uncle to Fox and Samantha."

Never underestimate the human need for gossip.  Scully's lips pulled in 
a tight frown.  At least now she had a name.  "I see.  Well, I suppose 
if he's been away for years, he wouldn't be able to shed any light on 
what happened to Mrs. Mulder before she died, would he?"


"No, I'm afraid not, Miss Scully.  I'm sorry, dear, but I really need 
to go.  I am expecting someone to lunch soon."

"Of course, Mrs. Winters.  Thank you for taking the time to talk with 
me," Scully replied.  She made her good-byes and hung up the phone.

Scully rose from her desk and crossed to the other side of the office, 
pacing restlessly.  Her call to Teena Mulder's girlhood friend had been 
a stab in the dark, based on the precept that the smoking man, whom 
they had known only as C.G.B. Spender, was indisputably involved in the 
disappearance of Samantha Mulder.  If Lacey Winters knew him, then 
perhaps she knew something about him that Scully and Mulder had never 
found.

Like his real name, for example.

Spender, Burke, whatever his name, was the key to finding Mulder's 
sister.  Scully was utterly sure of it.  The obvious answer for why he 
would try to con Mulder into believing his sister was dead because the 
re-appearance of Samantha Mulder would reveal information he wanted to 
keep hidden.  Which meant that something they had been doing at that 
time might have brought them closer to finding Samantha.

What might that information have been?

She sighed.  It was only too apparent to her that she was going into 
this whole thing with a severe handicap.  Not only did she lack her 
partner's personal connection to Samantha, she lacked his sense of 
empathy, that indefinable *something* that enabled him to get inside a 
case so easily.  She wasn't going to be able to find Samantha on logic 
and reason alone.  She was going to have to do what Mulder did every 
day.  She had to open herself up to it, embrace it...believe.

It was a daunting prospect.  Did she have that in her? Was her belief 
that she could actually continue the search for Samantha fuelled by 
hubris?

*Help me, Scully* the whisper from the past pleaded in her ear.  It was 
Mulder's gasping voice, as he hunched over a shallow grave in the brush 
next to a large stone with the words "Mad Hat" chalked on it, shoveling 
aside dirt with his bare hands, scraping his fingers on the hard soil 
and sharp rocks.  His face had been twisted in torment and dread, 
knowing there was a chance that the young girl buried there was 
Samantha.  He'd been close to his breaking point, on the edge of 
hysterics.  The plea had been so powerful, so desperate, that despite 
her better judgment, she had gotten down beside him and helped him dig.

She had helped him, yes, but she could now see that she had also 
hindered him. How many times had she told him to stop chasing after his 
sister?  They had worked on dozens of missing children cases in the 
last eight years and each time Mulder had seen his sister's face on the 
child they were searching for, she had called him down, pulled him 
back.  It had torn her apart to see him torture himself by envisioning 
Samantha in each case file.

And now she had to do the very thing she had pleaded with him time and 
again to stop.  She had to take active ownership of the search that 
before she had been only observed from a safe distance.  In this one 
pursuit alone had they never been truly unified.

And if she were to see this through, she would have to open herself up 
to the pain and agony and failure Mulder had experienced so often.  She 
was going to have to love Samantha the way he loved Samantha.  It was 
frightening and exhilarating all at the same time. If she was going to 
do this, this time there was no stopping, no compromising.  She was in 
it all the way, to the end of the line, until she had the answer Mulder 
needed, or knew beyond a doubt that there was no answer to be had.

Setting her chin stubbornly, she stalked back to the desk and sat at 
the computer.  She had a name to go on now, one which could yield more 

information about the man than any of his many aliases they had already 
investigated.  Her fears and doubts were irrelevant.  She had work to 
do.

*     *     *     *     *


Mulder stood in the cold outside the house in Chilmark, lashed by the 
freezing, wet northeastern wind.  How could it possibly be that this 
house had remained untouched by time?  At a distance, it didn't seem to 
have changed in the intervening years.  The yard, which no child had 
played in since Samantha's disappearance, had been mowed and the hedges 
trimmed.  His mother had kept on the caretaker his father had hired 
after moving to West Tisbury.  Certainly neither of them had ever gone 
back to it themselves.

Neither had they sold it.  The Chilmark house, which his mother's 
parents had left her, had remained unoccupied for almost twenty-seven 
years, a shrine to the destruction of their family.  A year and a half 
after Samantha's disappearance, his mother had decided she no longer 
wanted to be near the ghosts inhabiting Martha's Vineyard.  She had 
filed for divorce and moved to Connecticut.  His father had purchased a 
house in West Tisbury and lived there until his death.  But the idea of 

parting with the house in Chilmark never appeared to have been 
discussed by either of them.

And now it was up to him.  Amazingly, he was the inheritor of a virtual 
fortune in real estate.  The two houses on Martha's Vineyard could sell 
quickly and painlessly for a million dollars each.  The house in 
Greenwich would add a little under another million to the pot, and the 
cabin in Rhode Island half a million more.  Firm believers in the value 
of real estate were his parents.  His father had once told him, 
"They're not making any more land, Fox."  He was looking at a rough 
$3.5 million when all was said and done.

He didn't want a fucking dime of it.

He blinked rapidly, surprised by the vehemence of his rage.  The houses 
and the proceeds from the houses couldn't give him what he truly 
wanted.  He wanted his family back.  He wanted his childhood back.  He 
wanted a chance to live without the pain and guilt and regret.  He 
didn't want these damned monuments to what was lost forever.

He squashed the anger.  It was a comforting shield against his fear, 
but he would get through this without the usual histrionics, thank you 

very much.  He had spent the last several days steadily working through 
the contents of the other houses.  Only this one remained.  He couldn't 
avoid it any longer.

Mulder took a deep breath, mentally bracing himself for what was to 
come and strode toward the house.  It was time to get this over with 
and put it behind him forever.

He pushed his way through the gate, which creaked in annoyance at being 
disturbed and closed grudgingly behind him as he stood before the steps 

of the porch, staring up at the front door he had been scolded 
countless times for slamming on his way in or out.  Trying to strangle 
his mounting trepidation before it took root, he lifted one foot and 
placed it gingerly on the bottom step.  The next step was easier to 
make.  And the one after that was easier still.  Soon he was standing 
on the porch, with its peeling white railing and supports.  His heart 
thrummed wildly in his chest, his mind screamed for him to get as far 

away from this place as he possibly could.  His hand reached inexorably 
for the doorknob and inserted the key that had been in his mother's 
possession until her death.

"Hullo!" a voice called from behind him.  Mulder jumped, his heart 
pounding, and spun around to see a friendly-looking gnome of a man 
hurrying toward him up the front walk.

"Mr. Swanson?" Mulder asked as the old man hobbled up the steps.

"Yah," the man replied with a hint of an accent.  Swedish?  Not 
surprising...a great many of the elderly on the East Coast were second 
generation immigrants.  This man had probably made the voyage across 
the Atlantic Ocean with his parents when he was just a child.  "The 
lawyer told me you'd be coming.  You'll be vanting to look around?"

Mulder nodded, studying the caretaker.  His cheerful, wrinkled face 
seemed incongruous with the gloom of the old house.  It seemed that a 
house in this man's hands for the better part of thirty years would 
reflect more of effervescent good humor.  It didn't.

Mulder realized the man was speaking to him and brought his attention 
back to the present.  "I run the heat in the vinter, open it and air it 
out in the nice veather.  I keep yard tended.  I recommend someone to 

come and clean inside, but the Mrs. Mulder, she said no, not necessary.  
So it is not really as nice as you should be seeing."

Mulder waved a dismissing hand.  "No, it doesn't matter.  I just need 
to look around and make sure there's nothing here I want to keep."

"You need me to show you?" he asked kindly.

"No, no," Mulder shook his head, distracted.  "That's okay.  I, uh...I 
think I'll just look around by myself, if you don't mind.  You don't 
need to stay."

The man's head bobbed up and down rapidly.  "Yah, I've got other homes 
I take care of in the vinter," he explained.  "I'll go.  I can check 
back later and help if you need anything."

"Sounds good," Mulder agreed and watched as the old man turned around 
and trotted back down the walk.  Sighing, he looked back at the door, 
reaching for the handle.

The wooden panel was stubborn, swollen with age and humidity.  He hoped 
for a moment that it wasn't going to open.  At the insistence of his 

shoulder, however, it gave way, swinging wide as he stumbled into the 
foyer.

His startled curse bounced off the empty walls and his breath left him 
in a rush, frosting in the air before his face.  The heat was only run 
enough to keep the pipes from freezing and bursting.  Inside, the house 
was cold as a tomb.

The thought was as gruesome as it was appropriate.  Mulder quickly 
dismissed it.

The rooms echoed eerily as he shut the front door behind him.  Dust 
coated every surface.  Layer upon layer of footprints marked a pathway 
from the door, each one left by the caretaker over the years.  This 
house, which had once been filled with so much love and joy, had become 
a palace of sorrow, abandoned in the attempt to leave behind the grief 
that haunted it.  Neither love nor joy had inhabited this house for 
twenty-seven years.

He walked slowly forward, into the main hallway.  To one side, an 
archway led to the dining room and the kitchen beyond that.  To the 
other side, an identical archway led to the family room.  Down the hall 
was the first story bathroom and the bedroom his parents had occupied.  
At the far end of the family room, a stair ascended to the dormer on 
the upper floor, leading to the rooms he and Samantha had inhabited.  
He entered the dining room and made a slow circuit through the rooms.

Dust covers shrouded everything--the dining room table, the small 
chandelier above it, the sofa and chairs in the family room, resembling 
the ghosts he always associated with this house. Oriental rugs had been 
rolled up and left against the walls, leaving the rich hardwood floors 
bare to the ravages of time and neglect.  He felt that if he drew too 
deep a breath, he would drown in dust and decay.

He wasn't sure he could pass through that family room.  It was on that 
floor where he had sat with Samantha playing Stratego when she had been 
taken.  It had been on that floor that he crouched, frozen, unable to 
reach her or save her, helpless while she disappeared into the night.

He put a steadying hand on the wall as his head spun dizzily.  The 
knots in his stomach left him feeling vaguely nauseated.  He closed his 
eyes, willing the memories to be gone, and slowly walked across the 
family room.  Looking neither left nor right, he began to climb the 
stairs.

With each step, the knot of dread in his stomach grew heavier; his 
breath came with more effort and less results.  He felt as though he 
were ascending into the high reaches of the atmosphere, where the air 
was thin and rarified, rather than climbing a simple flight of stairs.  
By the time he reached the top, he was breathless and he clung to the 
balustrade with a white-knuckled grip.

A short hall ended at a small bathroom.  On opposite sides, identical 
solid wood doors faced one another.  He released his grip on the 
banister, barely noticing the gray grime that covered his clammy palm 
and stepped slowly into the hall.  Bracing himself, he went first to 
the room that had been his own private sanctuary.

His initial thought was one of surprise at how low the ceiling was, 
sloping steeply toward the outer wall of the room.  As a child, he had 
only needed to duck starting two feet from the wall.  Now he could 
barely make it into the room before he was in eminent danger of bumping 
his head.  

A model of a space rocket perched like a prize atop a tall chest of 
drawers.  Posters of astronauts and basketball idols disintegrated on 
the walls.  A twin bed, neatly made beneath its dust cloth, sat in the 
corner.  Beneath it was a roll-out trundle where his friends had slept 
when they stayed the night, and where Samantha had lain when she was 
afraid to sleep in her own room.

The feeling of panic ebbed and his breath returned to normal.  In this 
room, he felt safe.  In this room, the demons did not clutch at him so 
fiercely.  He crossed to the bed and sat on the edge, unmindful of the 
dust liberally coating the back of his long black trench coat.

He wasn't sure how long he sat there.  It could have been minutes or 
hours while his heart rate slowed and his fear abated.  Girding 
himself, he stood and walked back out into the hallway, facing the door 
that lay directly across from his.  His hand clutched the crystal knob 

and turned it slowly.  The door slid silently open.

A white wicker bed, its once-pink canopy now a dingy brownish-gray, 
dominated the room, surrounded by a matching nightstand, chest of 
drawers, and desk.  Crayon art hung willy-nilly on the walls, each 
curling and cracking sheet of paper branded with an elaborate "S".  
Here, no footprints marred the layer of dust on the floor.  The room 
had lay virtually undisturbed since they had left this house behind 
them.

A record player sat on the nightstand, with a stack of 45 singles 
beside it.  Samantha had insisted on playing music every moment she 
spent in this room.  She had been gravely disappointed when she had 
been informed that the phonograph would not work if she tried to take 
it outside to listen to while she played, because there would be no 
place to plug it in.  The closet door was open, and Mulder could see 
the neatly organized row of dresses hanging therein.  On the bed, her 
three favorite dolls perched against the headboard, waiting patiently 
for a little girl who would never return.

"Sam..." the whisper transformed into a keening whimper.  Something 
burst within his chest and Mulder slid down the doorframe to the floor, 
sobbing.  He cried until his head ached and his eyes burned, and still 
he hunched there, his arms wrapped around his legs, his head on his 
knees, racked with uncontrollable, gasping shudders.  

How could he so cavalierly dismiss the past when it still had the power 
to shred him so completely?  How could he claim not to care whether he 
ever found Samantha when he sat here, bawling in the doorway to her 
room, unable to enter yet unable to leave, aching with every fiber of 
his being to see her again?  How could he propose to move on like this?

It felt like hours before he moved again, dragging himself upright by 
force of will.

Scully had realized how deeply this cut him long before he had, he 
mused as he closed the door with tender reverence and made his way down 
the stairs and out of the house.  She had known it about him all along.  
Perhaps that was why she was determined to carry on the search for 
Samantha with or without him.  She knew he could not come to her 
complete with this wound unhealed, with these questions unanswered.

He stopped at the curb to look back at the house one last time, for he 
would never come here again.  He would leave instructions for his 
mother's lawyer.  The house and all the furniture would be cleaned and 
sold and perhaps some other family could fill it with love and joy 
again.

He bid the house full of memories his final farewell and walked away.

*     *     *     *     *

The parking ramp was dark and very empty.  She had stayed too late, 
poring over the information she had on the smoking man and Samantha.  
The clerks and administrative staff who were lucky enough to work a 
normal eight-hour day were long gone, and her footsteps echoed across 
the concrete decking of the nearly empty garage as she made her way to 
her car.  Reaching it, she bent to unlock her the door.

A short, startled cry was wrenched from her as suddenly she was jerked 
backward by an arm across her chest.


"Don't make a move!" a familiar voice whispered authoritatively near 
her ear.  "I'm not here to hurt you."

The words didn't register as sheer survival instinct took over.  
Letting her knees buckle beneath her, Scully used her own weight to 
break the grip on her shoulders and as she sank down, delivered a solid 
blow with her elbow to the solar plexus of her attacker.  She spun 
quickly, still crouched low, and jabbed another punch into his abdomen, 
then stood, grabbing his head as he doubled over and pushing it down 
quickly to meet her rapidly rising knee.  A solid and satisfying crunch 
rewarded her efforts.

He was too close to allow her to draw her gun.  She raised her foot to 
push the man away while he was off balance, trying to give herself more 
space.  He caught her foot as it connected with his chest and used it 

to force her backward.  She fell to the decking, grunting as her 
shoulder took the weight of her fall, and tried to roll away.  Before 
she could rise, he had her pinned down with his knee on her chest and 
the hard bone of his forearm across her throat.

"Don't move, Scully," the man warned again, panting with exertion as 
blood seeped from his nose. "Krycek!" She hissed, glaring up at him.  

Her breath came in heavy pants of combined fear and anger.  "You son of 
a bitch!"

"I didn't come here to kill you, Scully, if that's what you're worried 
about," he said, shifting to rest more of his weight on the knee 
holding her down while he wiped at the blood dripping from his nose 
with his hand.


"Oh, of course not," she spat.  "It's not as though you haven't tried 
before."

He rolled his eyes impatiently at her.  "I don't have time for this," 
he whispered urgently.  "I've got a message for you and information you 
need.  I don't really give a shit whether you get it or not, Scully.  I 
was told to come, so I came."

She gave him a withering glare and fell silent, waiting for him to 
speak.

"I'm going to let you up now," he murmured, his face right next to 
hers.  "If you try anything, I'm out of here and you're on your own."

Slowly, he rose, fumbling through the logistics of lifting his weight 

with only one arm without crushing her rib cage.  Scully watched him 
warily as she would a poisonous viper, her eyes snapping with angry 
blue fire.

He disappeared from her field of vision and she sat up.  She began to 
rise when he reappeared, dropping an expensive leather attache case at 
her feet.

"Who's this from?  Burke?  Who's lackey are you today, Krycek?"

"Open it," he commanded tersely.

She studiously ignored the case. "Go back and tell that man that I want 
nothing he has to offer," she stated with barely leashed venom.  "The 
last time he wanted to give me 'information,' I nearly wound up 
floating face down in a lake with a bullet in me.  And in case you 
missed the news flash, I got absolutely nothing for my efforts.  Tell 
that bastard he can go to hell."

"You came home with more than you realize, Scully.  It just wasn't what 
you thought you would receive," Krycek replied cryptically.

She looked away, her jaw clenched stubbornly.  Krycek squatted down 
beside her, getting in her face once more.  "It's in your best interest 
to have this information.  You need to be aware," he paused for effect 
as she raised an inquisitive eyebrow, "that you're in danger.  The man 
who tried to kill you out on that lake worked for someone who would 
like nothing better than to see you dead and out of the way.  That 
someone is still gunning for you.  If you don't keep your head down and 
watch where you step, you're not going to make it through the weekend."

She stared at him coldly and finally rose, pushing him back and lifting 
the case.  She placed it on the trunk of her car and opened it, rifling 
through the contents between cautious glances in his direction.  
Finally realizing what the files inside the case were, she stared at 
him in amazement.  "But these are--"

Ignoring her astonishment, he walked slowly backward, away from her.  
When it was obvious she was not going to stop him, he turned and strode 
away from her, turning back as he reached the end of the row of the 
parking deck.

"If you want more information, Scully, I suggest you look at your own 
memories," he threw back over his shoulder and disappeared around the 
corner.

Unnerved, she snapped the briefcase shut and dropped it in the 
passenger side seat.  Then she slid into the driver's side and inserted 
the key into the ignition with a trembling hand.

*     *     *     *     *

Her heart had almost slowed to its normal pace by the time she had 
reached her apartment and tried to call Mulder.

"Hi, Scully," his voice reached her before she could identify herself, 
confident that she would be the person on the other end of the line.

She couldn't suppress a small smile.  "You'd be really embarrassed 
right now if it was Skinner calling," she admonished him.

"If Skinner has so little to do that he needs to call me on a Friday 
night, the man needs to be put out of his misery," Mulder replied, 
deadpan.

"I don't think you're in a position to talk, Mulder.  When's the last 
time you did something wild and exciting on a Friday night?"

She heard him chuckle over the line.  "Wild and exciting, huh?  It's 
not a long flight back to D.C., Scully.  What exactly are you 
proposing?"


Point, set, and match to Mulder, Scully thought, releasing her breath 
in relief.  She and Mulder were all right again.  They had each had 
time to process what had happened in his apartment that afternoon 
several days ago, and they would find a way to work it out.

Silence settled over the line, until she finally spoke again.  "How are 
you holding up?"

She could hear his snort through the phone.  "I'll be better when I can 
sign everything over to the damn lawyer and get the hell out of here.  
Have I ever mentioned to you how much I always hated this place?"


"I think it might have come up once or twice," she replied wryly.  She 
drew a long breath and said in a rush: "Mulder, I need you to come back 
to D.C."

His voice was sharp and alert as he asked, "What's up?  Is everything 
okay?"

"I don't know, Mulder," she replied with a shaky sigh.  "Something 
happened today.  I, um...I don't think we should discuss it over the 
phone, though."

A brief moment of silence traveled through the line, and then his 
reply.

"I'll be there first thing in the morning."

*     *     *     *     *

It was misting heavily when Scully entered Mulder's apartment building.  
His car was nowhere in evidence yet.  She shook her umbrella and 
collapsed it as she stepped into the elevator for the brief, tense ride 
to the fourth floor.   She didn't allow herself to consider the 
implications of seeking refuge at Mulder's apartment too closely or for 
very long.  All she knew was that she would feel safer there than in 
her own right now.She froze in front of his door, the hair rising on 
the back of her neck, a nervous knot taking twisted shape in her 
stomach.  She stared at the tarnished brass lock to his door, where 
lighter colored scratches around the keyhole had drawn her eye.  She 

ran her finger over the gouges and studied the metal shavings that 
clung to the digit.


Someone had picked Mulder's lock, recently by the looks of it.  It was 
far from being a professional job.  The scratches were the dead 
giveaway of an amateur lock-pick, using makeshift tools.  Her heart 
pounded in her chest and she wondered who had broken in and why.  Was 
the burglar still in there, lying in wait?

With silent caution, Scully set her umbrella on the floor and inserted 
her key.  She drew her gun from its holster at her waist, flipped off 
the safety, and held it up at her side, ready to aim in an instant.

The noise of the tumblers turning inside the lock was absurdly loud in 
the silent hallway, and Scully cringed at the cacophony.  The apartment 
was still mostly dark within.  If someone was in there, they'd get a 
damned good shot at her in silhouette in the doorway long before her 
eyes had a chance to adjust to the dark.  She pushed to door open and 
ducked behind the wall.  No shots came from the darkness inside.

Watching every inch of semi-darkness, Scully stepped through the door 
and shut it behind her, listening for the smallest sound, tensing as it 
closed with a resounding *snick*.  She crouched low in the corner 
behind the door, waiting for her eyes to adjust to the dim light.

Someone was definitely in the apartment, she concluded.  She could hear 
the slightest hint of breathing coming from the living room.  The 
living room was dimly illuminated by Mulder's aquarium, she noted, 
calculating her next move.  Good.  That gave her the advantage of being 
able to see without being seen.


God help me, Mulder, but if it's you in there, I may shoot you anyway.

She peered around the corner and quickly scanned the living room.  Her 
eyes came to rest on the sofa.  In the scant light filtering in through 
the drawn blinds, she could definitely make out a form lying there.  
She frowned, puzzled.  Why would someone pick Mulder's lock just to 
fall asleep on his sofa?  It definitely wasn't Mulder.  She'd seen him 
unconscious a few too many times to be unfamiliar with the way he 
breathed when asleep.  This breathing was shallow, light...a woman's 
breathing.

Confusion wrinkled her forehead for a moment, until her eyes surveyed 
the rest of the room.  On the coffee table, she could see the shape of 
a pistol lying within reach of the slumbering woman's hand.

In the same instant, the person on the sofa jerked awake, her hand 
going for the gun.

"Drop it!" Scully barked, rounding the corner to stand in the far end 
of the living room.  She heard a whimper escape the woman and her hand 
fell away from the pistol.  "I'm a federal agent and I'm armed," she 
announced.  "Don't make any sudden moves!"

"I won't," the woman's voice came quietly, barely more than a whisper.  
She held out her empty hands to the light of the fish tank, 
demonstrating that she was unarmed.

"Okay," Scully breathed.  "I'm going to turn the lights on now.  Stay 
exactly where you are.  If you make a move, I *will* fire."

"I'm not going anywhere," the voice replied.

Scully felt along the wall with her free hand, keeping her gun 
carefully trained on the shadowy figure across the room.  Finally, she 
found the light switch and flipped it on.

She was blinded for a split second by the sudden flood of light, but so 
was the woman on the sofa.  When her eyes focused once more, Scully 
found the intruder exactly as she had been before, her arms out-
stretched, her hands empty, her face turned away.

"Who are you and what are you doing in this apartment?" Scully 
demanded.

The woman turned slowly to face her and Scully's breath left her in a 
rush.  Her legs trembled and threatened to give out.

"Agent Scully?" The intruder queried, appraising her with frank gray-
green eyes.

The face was one she had seen only once in her life, on a body 
retrieved from a freezing river.  That body had dissolved into an 
unrecognizable substance in minutes, but it had been long enough for 
her to know the face to its finest detail.

The woman licked her lips nervously as Scully gaped at her.  "I'm 

Samantha, Fox's sister," the woman explained, obviously unaware that 
her face was burned indelibly in Scully's memory.  "I need your help, 
Agent Scully.  I need to see my brother immediately."

*     *     *     *     *

Mulder's hands gripped the steering wheel tightly as he navigated his 
way through the alleys and avenues of Washington's seedier side.  He 
chewed on his lip as his troubled thoughts replayed his most recent 
conversation with Scully.

He had left New England as soon as he could pack the belongings he 

wanted to bring back with him into the trunk of his car.  The rest 
would go into storage until he figured out what he wanted to do with it 
all.  It was well after midnight when he finally had gotten on the 
road.  At two o'clock, he had been stopped by two colossally ill timed 
flat tires and a cell-phone that took a swan dive into a mud puddle.

By the time he had called Scully from a pay phone outside of town, 
intending to ask her to meet him for breakfast, it was hours past the 
time he had intended to be back in D.C.

He hadn't been at all prepared for the way she had answered her phone.

"Scully."  Her voice had been tight, nervous.

"Hey, Scully, it's me."

"Mulder?" A pause. "Where are you?"

"It's a long and tragic tale of two tires, starring one waterlogged 
cell phone.  Believe me, Scully, you want to hear it less than I want 
to tell it," he had replied with a sigh.

"Sounds fascinating." This time her tone was casual, and only an 
undercurrent of tension remained.  "Why don't you regale me with it 
over coffee at Bernadino's?"

That stopped him in his tracks.  Bernadino's was a code they had 
arranged years ago for situations when they needed to meet in complete 
secrecy.  They had never actually used it before.  "Wouldn't that be a 
little crowded?"  Mulder had finally asked tentatively.

It was the proscribed response, to confirm that they were actually 
speaking to each other.  Mulder didn't even like to remember the 
incident that precipitated the introduction of that little clause.  The 
knowledge of the way she had been attacked, thrown across a room and 
kidnapped by an alien bounty hunter wearing his face was hard for him 

to deal with.

"No one makes a Mexican mocha like they do, Mulder.  I'll meet you 
there in twenty minutes?"

"Better make it thirty." I'll be there after you.

"Done." She disconnected before he had a chance to say anything else, 
and would be incommunicado until they met at the pre-arranged location.  

Her cell phone would be left behind to avoid anyone tracing the signal.

Still troubled, Mulder pulled into an alley behind a dingy all-night 
Mexican diner.  He could see Scully standing against the wall, watching 
his approach cautiously. He parallel parked behind her car and emerged 
to greet her.

"What's this all about, Scully?" He asked, taking in the tense lines 
around her mouth.

"I went to your place this morning, to wait for you to arrive," she 
explained.  His eyebrows lifted slightly, but he refrained from 
comment.  "When I got there, I found the lock had been picked.  Someone 
had broken in."

Mulder groaned, his heart sinking.  "Scully, if you tell me I'm going 
to spend the rest of the weekend cleaning a ransacked apartment, I'm 
going to cry."

She shook her head.  "No, it wasn't ransacked.  The person who had 
broken in was still inside, waiting for you."

His heart skipped a beat.  "Are you okay?  Did they go for you 
instead?"

"No, Mulder...I'm fine," she replied firmly, squeezing her eyes shut 
with a look of frustration.  "Look, I'm not saying this well.  The 
person who was inside...Mulder, she says she's Samantha."

Mulder froze, feeling his extremities go numb.  His mind shut down for 
an instant as he absorbed her words.

Scully sighed.  "She said she needed to see you, that it was urgent."

"It's not her, Scully.  It can't be."

"I don't know, Mulder," she shook her head in defeat.  "I'm not 
qualified to make that call."

He didn't answer, but studied her earnest, concerned face.  This 
couldn't be possible...it wasn't happening.

"We should go inside," Scully said finally.  "She's waiting for us."

She was right.  He drew a deep breath and released it slowly.  "Then 
let's go," he muttered and turned on his heel, preceding her into the 
diner.

She looked exactly the same as he remembered, he thought, studying the 
woman from the doorway.  Exactly the same as those other women, one of 
whom had claimed to be Samantha.  Exactly the same as the woman he had 
seen in another diner late at night, the one who had come in the 
company of the smoking man.  The one who had left and never contacted 
him again, the one who Cassandra Spender had told him was not his 
sister.

Her eyes, so familiar to him, widened when she looked up to see him 
there staring at her.  "Fox," she breathed in a voice that had haunted 
his dreams for years.  Her shoulders slumped with relief.

Only Scully's tug on his arm prompted him to move, to sit in the booth 
before he drew unwarranted notice.  Scully sat beside him, opposite the 
woman who wore his sister's face.

"Who are you?" he demanded, careful to keep his voice low.  He felt 
Scully's sharp glance bore holes in his profile, but his attention was 
focused on the stranger seated on the other side of the table.

Her familiar brow wrinkled in consternation.  "What are you talking 
about?"

"How do I know you're Samantha?  You're not the first person who has 
come along claiming to be her."

She shook her head.  "I don't understand... Fox, what are you saying?  
We met, just a couple years ago, in that diner, don't you remember?"

"I was told later on that the person I met that night wasn't my 
sister," Mulder stated.

The woman looked away, blinking back tears.  Her shoulders slumped as 
she shook her head slowly back and forth in confusion.  She leaned 
forward, bracing herself with an elbow on the table, rubbing her face 
wearily.  "Fox, I don't know what you want me to say.  I don't know 
what's happened to you all these years.  I didn't even know you were 
alive until that night.  I'm sorry.  I know it must have hurt you when 
I didn't try to contact you after that, but I was scared."

Mulder groped for a response, helpless as ever in the face of a tearful 
plea.  

As always, it was Scully who came to his rescue. "Mulder," she said 
softly from his side, "we can verify her identity later.  For now, 
let's hear what she has to say."

She turned her attention back to the woman across the table.  "You said 
you were afraid.  Why?"

Mulder took a steadying breath, silently thanking Scully for her 

rational presence.

"Things have happened since I saw you last, Fox.  Things I don't know 
how to explain," the woman stammered.  "I remembered a little bit about 
the time I was taken away before I encountered you, but 
afterwards...more memories came back.  Then these men...they started 
following me.  They seemed to be there every time I turned around," the 
woman's voice grew louder, her words coming faster, with more fear.  
"Then one day, I was walking to my car in a parking ramp and one of 
them cornered me.  He warned me to forget I ever met my brother, or 
there would be severe consequences.

"Even though I had been warned, I couldn't let go of the fact that you 
were alive.  I began to spend a lot of time online, looking for 
information.  It wasn't hard to find.  That's how I learned you were in 
the FBI.  You two are almost legendary in some crowds."

Mulder winced.  He had a fairly good idea which crowds those were.  
MUFON, NICAP, others.  The crackpot groups no one believed.

"That's how I learned you believed I had been abducted by aliens," she 
continued tremulously.  "I'm still not sure what I think of that idea 
myself, but I did begin to remember things I had put behind me about 
the time after I was taken from home.  I began to ask questions.  I had 
to know--I even found your home address.  Then I received another 
warning, this one more...forceful.  I began to be suspicious of 
everything...I couldn't even go to the police because I wasn't sure I 
could trust them.  So I tried to forget, like they told me to.  I tried 
to let it go and forget I ever met you."

Her eyes began to water and tears rolled down her cheeks as she 
continued.  "Then a couple months ago, I went to the library and looked 
in the Greenwich Sunday paper, like I have every week since I met you 
and you told me our mother was alive.  I saw Mom's obituary there.  I 
spent two days crying, unable to believe that I had let a few threats 
stop me from seeing her when I had the chance.  So I sent my kids to 
stay with their father and I went to the service."

"You were there?" Mulder asked in disbelief.

"Yes," she nodded.  "I sat in the back, with my face hidden.  I left 
before the service was over."

"It's true, Mulder," Scully spoke from beside him, touching his arm.  
"I saw her, or at least, I saw a woman in a veil in the back of the 
church.  I didn't put it together until today."

Samantha bit her lip, hesitating before she continued her story.  "I 
tried to be careful, not to let anyone know where I had gone, but 
somehow these men, whoever they are, found out.  I began to see them 
parked in the street across from my house.  One time, someone tried to 
run me off the road.  And then one day," her voice broke as she began 
crying again, "I saw one of the men talking with Danny!  That's, um, 
that's my son," she explained, sniffling.  "Whatever the man said, it 
upset him so badly he wouldn't even speak of it.  He began to have 
nightmares.  So I thought that if I could draw their attention away 
from my family...I didn't know what else to do," she cried, "but put as 
much distance between myself and my kids as possible so that whatever 
happened to me, at least my children would be safe."

She broke off, wiping frantically at her eyes, trying to regain 
control. Her rapid, hitching breaths slowed, and she continued more 
calmly.  "I sent them to stay with their father again and I came here.  
I had to be careful, because there were times I was sure they were 
about to find me.  But I had to get to you.  I thought if anyone could 
help me, Fox, it would be you.  Because you know the truth."

The truth?  Mulder shook his in sad irony.  He knew nothing of the 
sort.

"Who knows where you've gone?" he asked finally.

"No one," she answered.  "I told my ex-husband that I had some 
important business I needed to take care of and that I wasn't sure how 
long it would be until I returned.  He's the only person I spoke with 
and honestly, things are uncomfortable enough between us that he 
wouldn't be inclined to care much what I do."  She released a 
shuddering breath.  "I'm scared, Fox.  I don't know what would happen 
if they found me now."

He sought Scully's eyes like a lifeline, seeking her guidance.  He 
desperately wanted to simply reject this woman's claims out of hand and 
protect himself, but he couldn't do it.  It was too big a risk to take.

"We should take her someplace safe, someplace out of the way," Scully 
murmured.  "I don't think we can consider either of our apartments 
secure, and a federal safe house is not entirely impenetrable either."

"There's a place in Baltimore Frohike told me about," he replied.  "He 
knows the manager."

He rose from the booth and threw a bill on the table to cover the 
coffees.  "Let's go."

They stepped outside into the dreary mist and returned to their cars.  
"Go ahead and get in," Scully instructed the other woman.  "I'll be 
there in a minute."

When she was out of hearing range, Scully touched him lightly on the 
arm.  "You okay?" she asked softly.

"Yeah," he sighed.  "I don't know.  I'll figure it out later.  Gimme a 
while to process, okay?"

"Sure," Scully agreed.  He gave her the name of the Baltimore hotel 
they were to go to, and she left.  The woman in the passenger seat 
turned her head to stare at him as they drove away.  They disappeared 
from the alley, leaving him standing alone in the drizzle.

He couldn't think--his mind was shrouded in a fog of weariness and 
confusion.  After his conversation with Scully the previous evening, he 
had packed up everything he needed to bring with him from his parents' 
homes and driven all night to reach her.  Right now he just wanted to 

lay his head down and get some rest.  He did not want to proceed to the 
hotel where some stranger claiming to be his sister awaited.  He didn't 
want to face her, knowing that if she was Samantha, he had given up on 
her.

Releasing a long, weary breath, he unlocked his car and drove away.



END OF CHAPTER TWO

NOTE:  There was some discrepancy as to when Bill Mulder and CSM first 
got involved in the Project.  In "Apocrypha" it seemed they were firmly 
entrenched in it in the mid-1950s, but in "Musings of a CSM" CSM didn't 
get involved until 1963, the year Kennedy was assassinated.

Being the author, I reserve the right to pick and chose which facts 
suit my purposes when what is considered "canon" contradicts itself.  
And I feel that in the mid-1950s, even if they were born in the '30s, 
CSM and Bill Mulder would have been 20-something, which seems *awfully* 
young for the kind of responsibility they were being given.  So even 
though I pretty much thumb my nose at any other material established in 
"Musings," I did chose to use their time-frame for when CSM got 
involved in the Project.

CHAPTER THREE - Revelation


Mulder glanced cautiously over at the woman on the sofa.  She had not 
moved nor spoken for over an hour, since Scully had left after 
retrieving a sample of her blood.  She sat still, unconsciously rubbing 
the bandage on her arm and staring into space.  He poured a cup of 
coffee from the miniature pot supplied in the hotel room and offered it 
to her.  She accepted without comment.

Several times he opened his mouth to speak, then closed it again, 
unsure of what to say.  He had so many questions he needed to ask her, 

but no clear idea of where to begin.  What had she been doing all these 
years?  What were her children like?  What were her interests, her 
likes and dislikes?  What had she studied in school?  Where did she 
work?

He couldn't bring himself to ask her any of these things, though.  
Instead, he stared out the window in silent, awkward concentration.  It 
was a small consolation that the woman across the room appeared to be 
experiencing the same discomfort.  From time to time, he would hear her 
draw a breath as if in preparation to say something, then release it in 

a frustrated sigh.

If he were honest with himself, he could admit to a deeper motivation 
for his reluctance to open communications with her.  He could not shake 
the sense of wariness that had lead him to cease searching for her, the 
hesitation to open himself up once more to possible heartbreak.  To 
open himself and Scully up to more of the danger and frustration that 
always seemed to accompany his search for his sister.  Until he knew 
for certain that she was who she claimed to be, he wasn't sure he 
*could* reach out to her.  Doing so would only mean it would hurt all 
that much more when the disappointment came.

*     *     *     *     *

Their arrival at the hotel had been tense and charged.  Mulder had 
asked to speak with the manager, dropped Frohike's name, and gotten 
them checked into a suite with very little difficulty.  The hotel was 
one of those residence-type places that catered to traveling business 
people, which meant they had a kitchenette as well as a separate 
bedroom off the main area.

"Mulder?" 

Scully's voice touched the back of his thoughts as he stared unseeing 
out the window of the second-floor hotel room.  Their guest had headed 
for the restroom the moment they arrived, leaving them alone in the 
main room.  The morning's clouds had broken apart just after noon to 
reveal a crystalline blue spring sky.  He leaned his forehead against 
the glass, letting the chilly surface soothe him, closing his eyes 
against the light.

"Are you all right?" She asked with gentle concern.

"I don't know," he replied, leaning into the curtains against the 
window.  "I don't know how to feel about this."

"Do you think it's her?" Scully pitched her voice low.

"I don't know," Mulder repeated, his tone rife with frustration, 
shrugging helplessly.

He paced away from the window and flung himself into a chair.

"I can't help but ponder the irony," he told Scully, a self-mocking 
smile twisting his lips.  "I've spent my whole life looking for my 
sister, but whenever someone shows up with her face, I can't trust 
her."

"Mulder--"

"Maybe it would be different if I had actually found her," he added, 
frowning.  "Maybe then I could believe it."  He scrubbed his hands 
wearily over his face.

Scully, ever the voice of reason, pointed out that they couldn't make 
any assumptions.  "If we do that, we're likely to miss something.  And 
if what she says is true, that could be disastrous."

Mulder concurred unhappily, his fingers worrying a loose string in the 
upholstery on the arm of his chair.  "But if what she's saying isn't 
true, we could be placing ourselves in jeopardy," he muttered, chewing 
the inside of his cheek.


Scully's bright head nodded in reluctant agreement.  She had a valid 
point, but so did he.  There wasn't going to be a happy medium here.  
And their choice was already made by virtue of the simple fact that it 
was their job to protect those who couldn't protect themselves, even at 
personal risk.

"We should get a blood sample," Scully proposed, "and get the rest of 
her story.  If something doesn't gel, it should become apparent pretty 
quickly."

It was at that unfortunate moment that their guest chose to emerge from 
the restroom.

"What do you want to know?" She asked harshly from the doorway, 
startling them both.  Mulder stood, feeling himself stiffening, his 
posture defensive, when just seconds before he had been relatively 
relaxed.  He was appalled to realize he had actually taken a step back.

The woman claiming to be Samantha shook her head with bitter irony, her 
eyes focusing on Scully.  "I'm supposed to feel safe with you, but you 
don't believe me enough to accept who I am without a blood sample, 
right?" Her eyes darted accusingly in Mulder's direction as well, 
before returning to Scully.  "Well, here's one for you...how do I know 
I can trust *you*?  I don't know you, Agent Scully.  I took an enormous 
leap of faith going anywhere with you this morning, based only on what 
a group of UFO fanatics had to say about the work you do with my 
brother."

Mulder watched her blink back tears angrily as she faced them, her 
hands on her hips.  "Fox, of all the times...of all the times I've 
imagined what it would be like to finally find you again...this isn't 
anything like I thought it would be.  I feel as though I'm being 
punished for something I never did."  She pressed her lips tightly 
together for a moment, then she looked down at the floor, her 
expression defeated.  "Maybe that shouldn't surprise me as much as it 
does."

Damn, Mulder thought tiredly.  This was not the most auspicious of 
beginnings.  He particularly didn't care for the way she was glaring at 
Scully.

He drew a calming breath, trying to sound more rational than he felt.  
"Samantha--" the name fell off his tongue awkwardly, uncomfortably, "--
I'm sorry if this offends you, or hurts you, but you have to understand 
that Agent Scully and I have to protect ourselves.  The unfortunate 
fact is that we have very good reason to be leery.  What's more--" he 
drew another breath, "--if you cooperate with us, it could also end up 
helping us help you with your problem.  While we know about the 
abductions and the conspiracy around them, we have yet to find the hard 
and damning proof needed to see those responsible held accountable.  If 
we find that, we may be able to put an end to the threats you're 
receiving."

"If I'm telling the truth, you mean?"  She didn't wait for an answer.  
"Fine, you can have your blood sample, Agent Scully.  Just say when.  
Now, what else do you want from me?"

Mulder explained to her that they needed to know what she remembered, 
what had happened to her since she was eight years old.  She eyed them 
both with a sort of sad resentment until he finished speaking."First I 
want to know what you meant when you said there had been other people 
claiming to be me," she demanded.  "I think if my word is going to be 
doubted, I at least have the right to know why."

Mulder sighed and began to explain about the alien/human hybrids they 
had encountered, cloned of Samantha's genetic material.

By the time he was finished, she was staring at him in surprise, her 
eyes darting to Scully.  "You're not serious..."

Mulder didn't answer, and Scully sat back without protesting.  They 
each had their own separate theories on what exactly they had seen, but 
it wasn't a good time to go into it all.

Silence settled among them as Samantha digested what she had been told.  
After a moment, Mulder spoke again.

"Can you tell us what you remember?" he prompted, bringing them back to 
their original topic.

Falteringly, she began to speak, starting from the time she had come to 
live with her foster parents at the age of fourteen.

"I don't remember what happened before then.  I felt like I was running 
away, but I didn't know from what.  I had been ill for several weeks, 
they told me, after coming to live with them.  The doctor said that my 
prolonged illness might have induced amnesia.  There was also the 
possibility of psychological trauma.  I suffered anxiety attacks for 
many years after that time."

That would make sense, Mulder thought, if it was true that she had run 
away from where she had lived, or been held, on April Air Force Base in 
California.

She nodded. "I started to feel safe again," she continued, "to the 
point that I could begin to rebuild my life, until they took me to meet 
this man. They told me he was my father and I remembered him.  The 
moment I saw him, he was the most familiar thing in the world to me.  
And then I remembered you, Fox, and our parents, but not as much as I 
did him.  Back before I was taken, we used to call him Uncle Charlie."

"*Uncle* Charlie?"  Mulder stared at her, perplexed.


"You don't remember him?  He used to hang around with our family a lot 
when we were kids.  He said that was so he could be near us without 
revealing he was actually my father."

"No, I don't."  He glanced over at Scully.  "Think it's another alias?"

"No," Scully replied, shaking her head.  "I didn't have a chance to 
tell you, but I did some digging and found his full name.  Charles 
Geoffrey Burke."

"Hitler, Stalin, Manson, Burke..." Mulder chanted the names like a 
bitter litany.

One side of Scully's mouth lifted in acknowledgment and he turned his 
attention back to Samantha.

"What do you remember about the places and the people before your 
foster parents?"  Mulder asked.  "Where were you taken?  What did you 
see there?"


Her tale was identical to many they had heard before, filled with vague 
recollections of cold, white places or dark, terrifying rooms with 
strange shapes and tormentors she couldn't see.

"Mainly, I just remember the pain.  The tests.  I remember being 
treated like I was nothing but a cadaver to be dissected, and being 
helpless to stop them, or even protest.  I don't remember any aliens 
specifically, but in retrospect, I would guess that some of the 
technology I saw wasn't manufactured in Taiwan."

"Do you remember...that man, your father, being a part of that time?"

"No," she shook her head in denial.  "I had no idea he might have been 
involved until after I met you and you told me he had been lying to me.  
When I met him, when I was a teenager, he told me that I had been 
injured severely and had been very ill for several years.  He told me 
that you and our parents were gone, that he would take care of me, and 
that I must always trust him, no matter what anyone might say.  And so 
when he brought me to you and you said he had been lying all along...I 
didn't want to believe it."

Mulder frowned at the memory of the night he had met a woman he had 
believed to he his sister in an out of the way diner.  She had left him 
and never contacted him again.

"Fox, I'm sorry," the woman across from him said softly.  "I wanted to 
call you, I did, but he had told me you were in danger.  He told me 
that if I got involved with you, I might jeopardize myself or my 
family.  It didn't occur to me much later that he might have lied about 
that too, and by the time it did, the threats had started."

She pushed her hair back behind her ears and looked away, her hands 
fidgeting restlessly in her lap.  Her hostility of a while ago had 
faded, and all of a sudden, she simply looked defeated.  Mulder felt 
his heart clench in response.  Something within him, more likely than 
not relating directly to his sister's abduction, had a very difficult 
time dealing with women in need or distress in a detached manner.  The 
urge to offer comfort and protection and reassurance was simply too 
strong within him.  He was scared, so very scared of this woman, but 
her despair undermined his ability to separate himself from her.

She sighed, looking up at them with a weary expression.  "I'm tired," 
she murmured.  "Is there anything else you need from me?"

Scully looked back, studying the woman, though not without some 
sympathy.  "Actually, I do," she replied.  Mulder bit his lip, knowing 
what was coming next.  "If you don't mind, I need to take a look at the 
back of your neck."

She wanted to know why, and Mulder explained patiently about the 
implants commonly found in people who had been abducted.  Sighing, she 
leaned forward and allowed Scully to inspect her neck, and she looked 
at Mulder over Samantha's head and nodded solemnly.

"What do you see?" A hint of hysteria colored the woman's tone.  "Is 
something there?"

Mulder's grimace conveyed his reply.  Scully returned to her own chair, 
rubbing her hands unconsciously on her thighs.

"Can you remove it?"  Samantha's hand flew to the back of her neck, 
nervously touching the spot Scully had examined.

"No!" He and Scully spoke at the same time with identical expressions 
of alarm.

They rushed to explain to her the possible repercussions of removing 
the implant, the possible development of a terminal illness.  Samantha 
had fallen into a troubled silence when they were finished, and Scully 
had risen to leave.  She would need supplies to take the blood sample 
from Samantha.  She would retrieve what was needed, return to take the 
sample, and then head into the Bureau labs.  

Mulder rose and walked with her to the door, his hand resting 
intimately between her shoulder blades, touching her for no other 
reason than to comfort himself in the midst of his confusion.  Scully 
pulled her coat out of the closet and reached into the pocket to 
withdraw a small pistol.  "She had this in your apartment when I found 
her.  I think you should keep it...just in case."

He nodded and set the gun on the top shelf of the closet before 
stepping out into the hallway with her, closing the door gently behind 
them.  "How did you learn Cancerman's real name?" He asked.

"I spoke to Lacey Winters," she replied, "I thought I might be able to 
get more information on how far back she went with Spender...I mean 
Burke."

"Did you?"

She nodded.  "Um hmm.  Your mother went to high school with him."

"Frohike's going to be crushed," Mulder murmured.  "He thought the man 
grew up in the mid-west."

"Frohike also said that he pulled the trigger on JFK, so what did you 
expect?" she retorted.  She stroked his arm soothingly, her eyes 
concerned.  "Are you sure you can handle this, Mulder?"

"Yeah, yeah," he muttered.  "It's just disturbing.  I mean, how could I 
not remember that man being a part of our lives?  I thought it was only 
my memories of Samantha's disappearance that were gone, but now..."

She gave him a small smile, her eyes soft and sympathetic.  "We'll 
figure it out," she reassured him, reaching out to cup his jaw.  Her 
hand fell away and she pulled herself up, resuming her brisk demeanor.  
"Look, I've got to get going.  I'll be back when I can."

She had turned from Mulder's disconsolate expression and walked 
purposefully down the corridor.  Mulder watched her leave, his eyes 
troubled.  Only after she was gone did he remember he hadn't asked her 
why she had requested he come home the previous night.  Sighing, he 

turned back and unlocked the door with his key-card, entering the room 
where the stranger who claimed to be his sister awaited.

*     *     *     *     *

Mulder was startled out of his reverie when Samantha finally moved, 
rising and crossing to the closet where she had hung her coat when they 
had arrived.  He watched with interest as she fumbled in the pocket and 
pulled out a brown prescription bottle.  She took a pill from it and 
left the bottle on the counter, returning to her seat and swallowing 
the pill with a mouthful of coffee.

"Epilepsy," she told him, meeting his questioning stare.  "It's pretty 
minor, for the most part, and easily controlled with medication.  Once 
or twice, I've had a couple of bad seizures, but I haven't had one 
since...autumn of 1994, I believe.  Every time I stop the medication, 
though, they come back.  I'm going to need to eat soon.  I have to 
follow a pretty careful diet and eating schedule to avoid precipitating 
seizures and that's been hard to do since I ran away."

"I can run out and grab us something," he offered.  "I think it would 
be best for you to lay low, stay out of sight."


He walked to the closet and pulled out the pistol he had placed on the 
top shelf.  His own weapon was in his ankle holster.

"I'm going to give this back to you," he told her, holding it toward 
her by the barrel.  "If anyone walks through that door that's not me or 
Scully, don't take any chances.  Get out if you can, shoot if you must, 
got it?"


She nodded solemnly, her eyes wide.  He tried to give her a reassuring 
smile, which came out as an awkward grimace.  Then he turned and left 
before she could say anything else.

When he returned, she had taken the seat by the window, the pistol 
lying in her lap.  Her head leaned against the drapes, her eyes closed.  
She jerked upright as he opened the door, grasping instinctively for 
the pistol, which skittered out of her lap.  Mulder's relief that he 
had left the safety on the thing was short lived as, for the first time 
since she had arrived that morning, he actually looked at her and saw 
*her*.

That clenching sensation in his chest came back full force as he saw 
the dark rings around her eyes, the hollows of her cheeks, the way her 
breath came rapid and shallow and her eyes darted around the room in 
panic as she attempted to calm herself.  She hadn't been lying when she 
told him she hadn't slept in months, nor when she had told them she was 
afraid.  He doubted anyone was so good an actress as to simulate the 
fear he had seen on her face before she had realized he was the 
intruder.  He felt a softening within him, the hard walls he had 
constructed against her becoming just a little weaker than they had 
been moments before.

"I, uh...I got some food," he told her needlessly, setting the bag of 
submarine sandwiches on the counter as she stooped to retrieve the gun 
she had dropped.  She set it carefully on the coffee table and crossed 
the room to study the food he had brought.

"Thank you," she replied as she crossed the room to join him.  "I 
didn't stop for food much.  I felt I had to keep moving, or whoever was 
following me might catch up."

"We'll be safe here, I think," he reassured her.  "At least for a few 

days."

She nodded, her movements rushed and urgent as she unwrapped the 
sandwich and bit into it.  She opened one of the 20-oz. bottles of 
water he had grabbed and took a long gulp.  Sighing happily, she took 
her sandwich and beverage over to the sofa.

Mulder ate more slowly, watching her surreptitiously in the awkward 
silence.  Her attention was focused completely on the food, sparing him 
the necessity of speaking until their meal was over.

"So, Fox," she said conversationally, finishing the last of her 
sandwich, "are you planning to simply not speak to me until we find out 
how to stop the threats?  That could get rather awkward, don't you 
think?"  She gave him a shrewd glance.  For the first time he realized 
he recognized that expression as one their mother had often assessed 
them with.

"Sorry," he muttered, staring at a stain on the rug next to his chair.  
"I guess I'm still trying to get used to what's happened.  Give me some 
time."


"You're not even interested in what has happened in my life all these 
years?  I'm certainly interested in yours."

He shook his head.  "No, no...it's not like that.  It's just--" he 
paused, grimacing and angry with himself.  How did he go about gently 
explaining that he had written her off?  "Shortly after Mom died, 
someone tried to convince me to stop looking for you by making me 
believe you were dead.  I was nearly killed in the process.  If Scully 
hadn't been there, I would have died.  After that, I had to give some 
serious thought to the question of whether or not continuing my search 
was worth the risks to me...and to Scully."

"And what did you decide?"

He took a deep breath and forced himself to look her in the eyes.  
"That I wasn't going to jeopardize Scully or myself anymore, even if it 
meant giving up the search."

Stunned, she blew out her breath in a shaky exhalation.  "I see."

"I'm sorry, Samantha." For the first time, he found himself about to 
call her by his sister's name without thinking that it might be a lie.  

Perhaps it didn't matter who this woman was, so long as he made the 
confession.

Visibly disturbed, she gathered up their wrappers and napkins and 
walked into the kitchenette to dispose of them.  Then she walked toward 
the bedroom, announcing her intention to get some sleep.  In the 
doorway, she paused, looking back at him.  "Do you think we'll be all 
right?" she asked uncertainly.

"We'll take care of you, Samantha," he replied with equal gravity.  "I 
promise."

She nodded once, a short, jerky movement of acknowledgement, which in 
no way negated the worry in her eyes, and turned from him to disappear 
in the bedroom.

Mulder decided to take advantage of her absence to get some of the 
sleep he had missed the night before.  But despite his exhaustion, 
sleep was not soon in coming.  He lay on the sofa, staring at the 
ceiling, his thoughts spinning.  He hadn't had a moment alone to 
consider all that had happened in the last eight hours.  He'd been 
running on sheer gut reaction from the moment that he had entered that 
Mexican diner and saw her there.  Sometimes he envied Scully's ability 
to think rationally in the midst of chaos.

If Scully's test determined that the woman sleeping in the other room 
was Samantha, it was going to open up a whole can of worms he hadn't 
ever considered.  He had always thought that when he found her, he 
would be rescuing her, that once he found her, she would be safe.  For 
some reason, the idea that he might have to go on the lam to protect 
her had never occurred to him.  That wasn't what was supposed to happen 
in his little happy-ever-after fantasy.

The fact that he had given up on her was now a source of deep remorse 
for him. The guilt of being unable to act the night she had been taken 
from him had haunted him his entire life.  The guilt of the knowledge 
that he had *refused* to act while she might still be alive was 
something he wasn't sure he'd be able to bear.

He realized with some irony that looking for Samantha all these years 
had been the easy part.  Figuring out what to do with her once she was 
found was not nearly so simple.  Typical, he thought with a snort.


His thoughts turned inevitably to Scully, wondering what she was doing, 
what she was finding.  They were quite often required to work 
separately, to cover more ground than they could together, and they 
accepted that fact as part of what made them a team, a crucial element 
to why they worked so well together in the first place.  But to sit 
here, essentially useless, while Scully was out finding the answers was 
not something he accepted easily or gracefully.  

The arrival of Samantha had changed the way they were forced to 
operate, however.  As long as she remained in danger, either Scully or 
himself would remain grounded out of necessity, meeting the 
requirements of protecting her.  And it was logical that he should be 
that person.  She was, or might possibly be, his sister and he should 
welcome the opportunity to connect with her once more.  And perhaps he 
would, in a day, or a week, when the doubts had been laid to rest and 
the discomfort between he and Samantha abated.  But not now, not when 
she still made him so uneasy.

Troubled, he finally surrendered to the persistent heaviness of his 
eyelids and drifted into sleep.

*     *     *     *     *

Scully pulled out of the parking ramp to the J. Edgar Hoover building 
just as the sun was preparing to set.  Luckily it was a Saturday and 

she would not have to contend with commuter traffic on the way back to 
Baltimore.

Samantha's blood, which had thankfully been the normal red of a healthy 
human being, had turned up nothing alarming in her preliminary tests.  
The DNA test would take a while longer, but at this point Scully could 
find nothing unusual, and though far from conclusive, the woman did 
have the same blood-type as Mulder.

She anxiously scanned her rear-view mirror for any indication that she 
was being followed.  Taking a circuitous route, she returned first to 
her apartment to gather what would be needed for an overnight stay at 
the hotel.  Luckily, Mulder still had his travel bag from his trip 
north, so she wouldn't have to make a trip to his place.

She watched her mirror the entire drive, with no hint of a tail.  
Pulling onto the off-ramp, she headed for the Asian take-out restaurant 
she had called an order in to before leaving.  It wasn't in the best of 
neighborhoods, but she had been there once before and it did boast the 
best spring-rolls she had ever found.  Parking the car, she went inside 

to collect her food, passing a group of raucous youths loitering by the 
pay phone.  She emerged from the dive with a paper bag in each hand and 
set one on the hood of her car while she fumbled in her purse for her 
keys.

A car came careening around the corner, drawing her immediate 
attention.  It rode low to the ground with detailing in the shape of 
flames down the sides.  The darkly tinted window in the back of the 
passenger side rolled down and something shiny and black emerged.

"Get down!!!" She shouted at the teenagers hanging out nearby.  Scully 
dove for the ground, at the same time going for her weapon while the 
bullets started to fly.

It was over in an instant...a torrent of bullets accompanied by the 
shattering of windows and the ultra-sonic whine of ricocheting 
projectiles that stopped as abruptly as it had started, with the car 
screeching out of sight.  With her pulse drumming deafeningly in her 
ears, Scully rose to her knees, anxiously surveying the scene.

She had fortunately warned the teens in time.  Two were hit, but 
neither mortally.  The windows of the take-out joint had seen better 
days, but the only real casualty on the scene was her bags of food.

By the time the police arrived, Scully was already using towels 
obtained from the restaurant to tend to the two wounded boys.  She was 
grateful for the activity.  It kept her mind off what had nearly 
happened.  A full dozen bullet-holes riddled the wall she had been 
standing near before she saw the car come around the corner.

Numbly, she went through the standard routine of giving them her 
statement, telling them what she had seen and what details she could 
make out.  No, she didn't catch the license plate.  No, she couldn't 
see their faces.  It was well past sundown by the time she had 
finished, sitting in a booth across from the patrolman, with a small 
cup of tea before her.

"You need to get your head checked out," he commented, closing his 
pocket-sized notepad.  "Want me to call the paramedics or give you a 
lift to Emergency?"

"Hmm?" Distracted, Scully lifted her fingers to touch her scalp just 
above her temple and to her surprise felt the sting of salty skin 
against a fresh wound.  Her fingertips came away with brown flecks of 
dried blood on them.  Feeling slightly nauseous, she shook her head.  
"No, thanks, that's all right.  I've got a first aid kit in my car.  
It's just a scratch."

"You got lucky.  Gang related crime in this neighborhood has been on 
the rise for months."

"At least no one got killed," she murmured.  "I'd better get going.  
I've got people expecting me."

The restaurant was closed now, so there would be no food to replace 
what she had picked up earlier, she thought with a grimace.  She should 
just go back to the hotel and send Mulder out for something.  Or maybe 
order a pizza delivered...She was so hungry her hands were shaking.

Oh, God.  Her breath left her in a rush as she sat behind the steering 
wheel of her car, which had miraculously escaped unscathed.  Krycek's 
warning from the night before came back to haunt her.

*If you don't keep your head down and your eyes open, you're not going 
to make it through the weekend...*

It didn't mean anything, she thought firmly.  This shooting was a 
pretty open and shut case of gang violence.  The kids loitering outside 
the restaurant had been wearing colors and drive-by shootings were the 
calling card of the ever-more violent street gangs.  There was no 
reason to think it was anything other than pure coincidence.

Except the concentration of fire right where you were standing, Dana, 
she reminded herself.  Except for the fact that you were warned just 
twenty-four hours ago and are even now in possession of some extremely 
sensitive files.

Angrily, she started the car and sped from the parking lot before she 
had a chance to think about the ramifications too deeply.

*     *     *     *     *

At Scully's quiet request, Mulder opened the door and stood aside to 
allow her to enter.  She plodded into the suite with the leather 
attache case in one hand, an overnight bag thrown over her shoulder, 
and a gym-bag in the other hand.  Weighted down, she nudged her way 
past him to drop the two bags in the luggage nook, where his own travel 
case had already taken up residence.  She set the briefcase on the 
utilitarian writing desk against one wall and finally turned to face 
him.

"Jesus, Scully, what happened to you?" he asked, alarm ripping through 
his body.

"Just a friendly run-in with the neighborhood gang-bangers," she 
muttered, dropping into a chair.  "Order us a pizza, Mulder, would you?  
I'm starved and our take-out fell victim to random street violence."

He nodded, filling a glass of water in the small kitchenette area on 
one end of the main room and bringing it to Scully.  Using an assumed 
name, he then proceeded to order a pizza delivered to their room, half 
sausage and cheese, the other half pepperoni, onions and mushrooms.  
When he had finished, he looked back over at Scully to see her sitting 
still, her eyes half-closed.  As he approached, they opened the rest of 
the way.

"She asleep?" Scully asked, her voice tired.  He reached her chair and 
lifted her chin to take a good look at the gash on her temple.  It was 
covered in a great deal of dried blood, making an accurate assessment 

difficult.  He produced a wet cloth from the kitchenette and began to 
dab at it while Scully sat pliant under his ministrations.

"Yeah, she's been passed out for hours," he murmured.  "What happened?"

He listened carefully as she ran down the details of the drive-by 
shooting quickly and dispassionately.  A strong remnant of unease 
lingered in her eyes, a tiny frown drawing her finely arched brows 
together.

"Where's your first aid kit?" He asked when she had finished her 
recitation.  She hesitated and Mulder prepared himself for an argument 
over who got to disinfect and slap a bandage on her wound.  After a 
moment, though, she informed him that she had taken it out of her trunk 
and put it in the gym-bag she had brought.  Then she sat obediently 
still as he swabbed at the cut with alcohol, only a soft hiss escaping 
her lips at the first contact.  As he worked, Scully gestured to the 
attache case on the desk.

"Guess who gave me that?"

"Is it safe to assume it wasn't the Easter Bunny?"


"Krycek," she answered, her voice flat.  "He accosted me in the parking 
ramp last night."

"Krycek?" Mulder froze in the act of opening an adhesive bandage and 
stared at her with alarm.  Then he nodded in sudden understanding.  
"That's why you called me."

"He was sent to give me the files in that case.  Mulder," the gravity 
of Scully's tone drew his immediate and undivided attention, "they're 
Operation Paperclip files."

Mulder's breath left him in a rush.  He quickly completed his task of 
affixing the bandage to her temple to cross the room to open the 
briefcase and study the stack of files within.  "Your file is in here, 
Scully.  And Samantha's."

She nodded.  "And Betsy Hagopian's.  I've got the boys working on 
putting together any information they can dig up on everyone in there. 
With the exception of the file with my name on it, they all contain 
forms filled out when the subjects were children.  Samantha's file has 
forms dated during the mid-1970s, the timeframe of her abduction.  Age 
and sex vary from subject to subject.  The only other commonality I 
could find was that they were all treated as teenagers and young adults 
for anxiety, depression, and epilepsy."

"Max Fenig had epilepsy," Mulder stated, flipping absently through each 
file while he listened to her.  He was not the medical doctor and the 
amount of information he could glean from them was extremely limited.  
"So does Samantha."

"So I saw."

"But that's not a factor in all abductions," he pointed out.  "You're 
not epileptic."


"About seventy-five percent of epileptic seizures start in childhood," 
Scully replied.  "Three-quarters of all cases are idiomatic.  In 1996, 
researchers at Stanford discovered a link between specific types of 
epilepsy and certain genes.  But all told, only about twenty-eight 
percent of cases can be linked to a specific trauma or cause."

"Personally, I can't think of many things more traumatic than being 
abducted, Scully," Mulder said with a hint of irony.  "Do you think 
there's a correlation between child abductees and the subsequent 
development of epilepsy?"

"Well, we have no proof, but the fact that we were given these 
particular files seems suggestive," she answered thoughtfully.


"Why include your file?"

Scully shrugged.  "If I had to guess, I'd say it was to get my 
attention."

"Any idea why--?"

"None whatsoever."

Further conversation was disrupted by the arrival of their pizza.  
Mulder paid cash and tipped the driver generously.  Only a moment 
later, a yawning Samantha emerged from the bedroom, looking decidedly 

rumpled.

"Just in time," Mulder greeted her.  "Sausage or pepperoni?"

"Sausage," Samantha mumbled, rubbing her eyes.  Mulder nodded, meeting 
Scully's eyes in a significant glance.  The sausage was his part of the 
pizza, the pepperoni Scully's.  "Good evening, Agent Scully."

"Hello." He watched as Scully greeted Samantha with friendly reserve.  
Samantha's initial hostility toward her seemed to have abated this 
morning as she learned the depth and complexity of the issues they were 
dealing with, but she still regarded Scully with wary caution.  She 
wasn't much warmer to him yet either, Mulder thought wryly.  
Apparently, however, Scully had come to the same conclusion he had, 
that Samantha was going to need to trust them if they were to protect 
her, and so a gesture of goodwill seemed in order.  Which Scully made.

"I saw you didn't have any bags with you, Samantha, so I brought you 
some of my sister's clothes.  You're too tall for any of mine."

"Clean clothes?"  Any remaining reticence Samantha might have held 
toward Scully dissolved as she looked up from her pizza with 
undisguised pleasure.  "Oh, thank God.  Are you sure your sister won't 
mind?"

Scully cut her eyes briefly to Mulder, meeting his uncomfortable gaze 
before she answered.  

"My sister died four years ago," she replied softly.  "She was murdered 
by the same man we suspect killed your father.  I just never got around 
to giving some of her things to the thrift store."

"Oh."  Samantha blinked, stunned for a moment.  "I'm very sorry, Agent 
Scully.  I appreciate you allowing me to use her clothes."  She set her 
half-full plate on the coffee table and rose.  "I'll take care of the 
dishes," she offered, "so you can work on whatever you need to."

"Thank you, Samantha," Mulder murmured, allowing her to take his plate.  
She carried the dishes to the kitchenette and Mulder looked at Scully 
with concern.  "I'm sorry, Scully."

"Mulder, there's nothing to apologize for," she said calmly.  "I'm 
okay."

Sure there was something to apologize for.  Like that fact that if it 
weren't for Scully's involvement with him, Melissa might be alive and 
well today.  But he couldn't tell Scully that.  She would never allow 
him to accept the blame he knew was his.

Mulder leaned forward, narrowing the distance between them where they 
sat in their separate chairs and reached out, brushing a strand of hair 
back from her face.  His eyes flicked to the bandage on her forehead 
again.  "That was close," he whispered.

"Yeah," she replied.  "I know.  That's the second time a bullet's 
grazed my scalp."

"Really?  When was the other?"

"In your apartment, just before I shot you and took you to New Mexico."

He whistled, using levity to offset the chill fear that settled into 
his heart.  When he spoke, however, his voice was tight with the 
effort.  "Damn.  Living on the edge a little, aren't you?"

"Better hope the law of averages continues to be kind." Scully rose 
from her chair in an abrupt motion.  "I'm going to go take a shower," 
she announced, and grabbed her overnight bag and disappeared into the 
bathroom before he could say anything more.

Only when she had made it into the bathroom with the door shut firmly 
behind her did he lift a hand before his face, watching it shake.

*     *     *     *     *

"Agent Scully?" Samantha's voice broke hesitantly into her thoughts and 
she pulled herself out of her reverie to look up at the woman, who 
stood before her chair gnawing nervously on her bottom lip.  After 
Scully had emerged from the shower, Mulder had gone to the market to 

pick up some staples for them, so they would not be forced to survive 
on take-out until they could leave this place.  But not, however, 
before Samantha had extracted from him a promise to bring back a pint 
of Ben & Jerry's S'mores ice cream.

His absence meant that Scully and Samantha were left alone together in 
awkward silence.

"I, um...I just wanted to apologize for my behavior this morning," 
Samantha said as Scully waited for her to continue.  "It made me angry 
to hear I was being doubted after I had gone through so much to be 
here, but I was wrong.  I should have recognized that you and Fox were 
only trying to protect yourselves.  I came to you seeking protection, 
but I never realized that in doing so, I would be bringing my own 
danger to you."

"Samantha," the name felt odd and uncomfortable on her tongue, given 
the presence of her doubts, but Scully had to call her by some name, 
and the name of Mulder's sister was the only acceptable option for the 
time being.  "It's nothing personal, I promise you.  It's not even 
necessarily that I believe you might be deceiving us.  It could very 
well be that you aren't in control of what you are doing."

"The implant?" Samantha's hand reached up to rub the back of her neck, 
and Scully realized she had unconsciously done the same thing.

"Possibly," Scully answered, forcing herself to lower her hand.  She 
drew a deep breath and proceeded calmly, "I think you should be aware 
that I have one as well.  There has been at least one occasion where I 
have ended up doing something I would never consciously decide to do 
and didn't remember actually doing afterwards.  We don't completely 
understand what the implants are for and at this point, it would be 
foolish to underestimate what they are capable of.  When we tried to 
analyze mine, we ended up burning it out in the attempt, which limited 
how much data we could derive from it."

"You were abducted?"  Samantha's eyes widened with surprise and she 
sank down onto the sofa.

Scully nodded.  "Six years ago, about a year after I started working 
with Mulder.  I was missing for three months and shortly after I 
returned, I found the implant and had it removed."

"But you said if you removed them, you could die..." Samantha sat on 
the chair beside her, twisting a dishtowel in her hands.

"Yes, I know.  We didn't realize that at first.  The moment I saw it 
was there, I had it taken out.  Less than two years later, I developed 
a terminal brain tumor that only went into remission when another chip 
was implanted in my neck.  If we had been even a week later in 
discovering that, I would, in all likelihood, have been dead."

Samantha released a shaky breath.  "Well, if I wasn't afraid before, I 
certainly am now," she said.  "The idea that I might someday be 
compelled to do something without even knowing it...God, I'm not sure 
I'll ever be able to feel safe again."

Scully nodded in understanding.  "I know.  It's an idea that takes some 
adapting to."

Samantha lapsed into a troubled silence, and Scully closed her eyes 
against the persistent headache she'd had since she left the scene of 
the shooting that evening.  She was stunned to realize that, despite 
her reservations, she was already beginning to soften toward the woman 
claiming to be Mulder's sister.  There was something engaging about 
her; the fear and need for reassurance constantly lingering in her eyes 
brought forth every protective instinct Scully possessed and at this 
point, she herself was too emotionally involved with the search for 
Samantha Mulder to be immune to that.

She wanted this too badly, she realized with chagrin.  When she had 
taken Mulder's quest upon herself, she had assumed the same 
vulnerability he faced every day.  She had known that would have to be 
the case, thought she had prepared herself for it, but now...

There was only one option, then, she thought grimly.  She could not 
allow this to end badly.  The stakes were too high, the risks too 
great, for her to fail where Samantha was concerned.  It was the only 
way she could protect Mulder now.  The only way she could protect 

herself.

Mulder arrived just in time to rescue her from her own troubling 
ruminations.  He carried two grocery bags with him, setting them on the 
counter while Samantha, with a small sound of delight, began rooting 
through them for her ice cream.

"Anyone want any?" She offered with a winsome smile.


It was tempting, but Scully declined once she decided her stomach, 
abused as it was between the tension of the day and the greasy dinner, 
wasn't going to tolerate much more maltreatment.  Instead, she enjoyed 
the pleasure vicariously as Samantha indulged.

"My kids got me hooked on this stuff," she explained to Mulder while he 
put away the rest of the groceries, among which were generous 
quantities of fruit and some relatively fresh bagels.

Good boy, Scully thought with a secretive smile.

Once he completed his task, he settled on a chair across from Scully 
with a hardbound book in his lap.  She looked at it curiously.  "What 
are you reading?"

"Some journals my mother kept," he replied.  "I found them in a couple 
boxes in the attic of the Greenwich house.  After you told me about 
Cancerman going to school with my mother, I figured maybe they might 
give me some more insight into his involvement with our family.  Maybe 
I can find out what she wanted to tell me before she died.  Who knows?  
Maybe there won't be anything, but it's worth a shot."

"I remember," Samantha said wonderingly, approaching them.  "Mom taught 
me to keep a journal as soon as I could write."

Mulder nodded at her.  "You two used to sit down together every evening 
and make your entries together.  Actually, speaking of journals--"

He rose from his chair and crossed to the coat closet, removing from 
the pocket of his trench coat a small book.  Scully recognized it 
immediately.  She didn't believe it had left Mulder's possession for a 
moment since he had found it two months ago.  "Do you recognize this?"

He handed it to Samantha and she opened it, perusing the pages. "I 
don't think so..." she answered, frowning in concentration.  Her head 
lifted suddenly, her face full of surprise.  "This is my handwriting!" 
she gasped.  "I wrote this?"

He nodded.  "The date would indicate that you were fourteen at the 
time.  I wasn't sure if the book was genuine or not, though."

"I don't remember having a diary like this," she told him.  "But it 
must be mine.  This is definitely my penmanship."  She paused, stroking 
the cover.  "Where did you find it?"

"In a house on an Air Force base in California," he answered, watching 
her expression as she flipped through the pages, not reading, but 
scanning each as if unsure they were real.  "It could still be a 
forgery."

"But maybe not, right?"

"Right."

"Do you mind if I keep this, read it?  Maybe it might help me 
remember..." her voice trailed off uncertainly, her eyes worried and 
unsure.

"Yeah, go ahead," he said, shrugging awkwardly.  "It's um, your diary, 
I guess."

She nodded distractedly, turning to the first entry, her lips moving 
silently as she read.  Only moments later, she excused herself to take 
a bath, taking the journal with her.  Mulder stared thoughtfully after 
her, pinching his bottom lip.

"I'll make us some tea," he announced finally, rising in one fluid 
movement from where he had crouched on the floor while he gave Samantha 
the diary.  He banged around the kitchenette for a moment before 
producing a kettle from one of the lower cabinets.  He filled it with 
water and set it on the electric burner on the small stove, then 
returned to the living room, taking up a chair beside her as she 
scrutinized him.

"How are you holding up?" She asked finally.

"Good," he said, exhaling loudly.  "Better than I expected really.  I 
mean, I know I shouldn't get my hopes up, but the more I'm around her, 
the more familiar she seems to me."

"How so?"

"She's got a lot of my mom's mannerisms...gestures, facial expressions, 
chocolate addiction...learned behaviors children pick up from their 
parents in their earliest formative years," he explained, shrugging.  
"I don't know...maybe I'm just seeing what I want to see."


"There's nothing wrong with hoping, Mulder," Scully said soothingly.  
"I just think maybe we should be prepared for what it could mean for 
us, whether she turns out to be your sister or not.  Either way, there 
are going to be some big decisions that need to be made."

"I know...I know," Mulder nodded, biting his lip distractedly.  She 
watched his profile as his gaze wandered off into space for a long 
moment.  He stood abruptly and returned to the kitchenette, where the 
water he had set on the stove was beginning to boil.  Silently, Scully 
observed as he made two cups of tea, leaving the water to simmer in 
case Samantha should also want one, and brought them back to the sofa.

"For what it's worth," she began, gratefully accepting the mug he 
handed her, "my preliminary tests turned up nothing unusual in 
Samantha's blood-work.  She's even got your blood type.  We'll have a 
better picture of things when the DNA analysis gets back, but so far it 
looks pretty good."

Scully took a cautious sip and set her cup on the coffee table to allow 
it to cool.  Rising, she wove around the coffee and chairs to cross to 
the closet where a spare blanket and pillow were piled onto the top 
shelf.  Standing on tiptoe, she pulled them down, nearly toppling them 
over on her head before she managed to catch them.

Should've had Mulder do it, she thought wryly.  No doubt he considered 
it to be more than his life was worth to make the offer himself.

She blushed slightly as she heard him laugh softly behind her.  "You 
could've just asked, Scully," he taunted.

"If this is leading up to a little feet joke, Mulder, I'd advise you to 
start running now."  She cast him a narrow-eyed look of warning and he 

subsided, raising his hands in a warding-off gesture before him.

Tucking the pillow and blanket under one arm, she used her free hand to 
roughly tousle his hair as she passed by him once more.  He gave her a 
sly grin and unfolded his lean form, rising from the chair with feline 
grace.  He leaned over her shoulder as she spread the blanket out on 
the sofa.  "Can I read you a bedtime story?" he murmured close to her 
ear.  Too close.  A shiver slid over her skin and she closed her eyes 
and took a calming breath before turning to meet his twinkling eyes, 
her face mere inches from his.

"Which will it be, Mulder?" She intentionally dropped her voice to a 
husky murmur.  "Daniel Defoe or John Cleland?"

"D.H. Lawrence?" he supplied hopefully, but the teasing sparkle in his 
eyes had transformed into something a little less comfortable, and 
Scully licked her lips nervously.  His full lower lip was dangerously 
accessible, stationed just a little beneath his chin as she was.  
Something wild and reckless took off within her brain.  Maybe it was 
simply survivor's euphoria after her brush with death this evening, but 
at this very moment, she didn't much care for the carefully abided-by 
boundaries they had set for themselves.

He started it, by God, so why shouldn't she see how far he was willing 
to go with it?

Awareness of their surroundings and circumstances fled, if only for an 
instant.  It seemed such instants were the stuff their lives were made 
of, to be taken advantage of when they occurred.  She met his gaze 
steadily, cocking an eyebrow, daring him.


Come on, Mulder.  Show me what you're made of.  Are you all talk?

Her eyes silently challenged him as her hand slid up his neck to the 
side of his face, cupping his cheek.  Her thumb glided gently over his 
bottom lip.

He stared at her, transfixed, his eyes darkening to the warmest, 
richest brown.  His lips parted ever so slightly, kissing the pad of 
her thumb as she watched, mesmerized by the action.  She couldn't be 
certain, but she thought she felt the tip of his tongue touch her 
finger.  His breath warmed her skin as he rested his lips against the 
digit.

A hot knot of desire took up residence in the pit of Scully's stomach 
and she stared at him breathlessly, a little startled by the intensity 
of her own reaction.

A splash from the bathroom broke the spell and reality slowly settled 
back in.  Mulder's hand covered hers and pulled it away from his face, 
his fingers folding over hers as he held it up between them.  Her face 
flushed slightly with embarrassment at allowing herself to get carried 
away while they had other considerations.

"I've got guard duty," he said finally, his voice pitched much lower 
than his usual baritone as he released her hand.  He cleared his throat 
and backed away, but not before she had a pretty good idea of what her 
eyes might find if she chose to look down at that moment.  But his eyes 
had settled on her neck, and Scully realized he could see her pulse 
throbbing in the artery there.  Just inches lower, more blatant proof 
of her arousal strained against her blouse.


Good.  There was no misunderstanding here, then.  They both knew where 
the other stood.

Mulder picked up his mug and carried it to a chair on the other side of 
the room, near the window, as she turned back to finish preparing her 
bed on the sofa.  They fell silent, the charged tension of the moment 
still vibrating through the room.  When Scully looked over her shoulder 
at him, it was to find him watching her, his face mirroring her every 
thought.

It was a long, long time before she fell asleep.