From: Mike Gourdin Date: Thu, 20 Jul 2000 17:44:29 -0600 Subject: Looking Glass 1/4 Source: xff TITLE: "Looking Glass and The Garden of Death." AUTHOR: (MGknight) alias Ghost or Mike G EMAIL ADDRESS: mknight@ix.netcom.com DISTRIBUTION STATEMENT: Anywhere, just let me know. FEEDBACK: All feed back is welcome. SPOILER STATEMENT: Post Requiem, One Breath actually any thing before season 7. RATING: PG 13/ R (violence) CONTENT WARNING: MSR, Skinner/ Scully friendship CLASSIFICATION: X-FILES SUMMARY: After Skinner explicitly told Scully to stay away from this case to find Mulder. He finds himself back forest of Bellefleur, Oregon searching for her. What happens in the woods may change them in ways they could never imagine=8A if they could make it out there alive. THANKS: DISCLAIMER: Mulder and Scully does not belong to me . . . or ever will. They belong to themselves. The effort to breathed life into these characters belongs to Chris Carter, David Duchovny, Gillian Anderson, and the hard working people at 1013. 'Let's pretend there's a way of getting through into it, somehow, Kitty. Let's pretend the glass has got all soft like gauze, so that we can get through. - Lewis Carroll's ' Alice through the Looking Glass Looking Glass and The Garden of Death by Michael Gourdin "Is she here?" I said. The deputy leaped around, his hand ridiculously reaching for his weapon. I quickly stepped forward. Whoa-whoa I said, snatching his weapon before it's leveled, held it up, and 'clunked' it down on the hood of the cruiser, while my other hand pop my wallet from my breast pocket, flipped open my FBI credentials. He got a real good look at my badge. You could just make out his lips mouthing 'Assistant Director Skinner.' "I'm sorry, sir," he tells me, his cheeks burning. "Just little jumpy -- you know people gone missing in these woods." I was not entirely surprise he didn't hear me when my car pulled up. I parked my car across street in an inlet, where the dirt on the embankment had eroded, showing knotted tree roots and cut clay. As I hoist myself from the car all I could hear was his police radio. The police calls were carried high in the tree tops not unlike wild birds in the jungle canopy. The police cruiser passenger tires were parked where the asphalt crumbled. The other two were in the dirt. Its roof lights were not flashing. They seem to sit back and take a spell. The deputy was doing likewise. His head down so all you saw was his bear-hat perched largely on his head, his seat creased into the vehicle's grill. It would be so easily to imagine him walking around earlier with his thumbs in his belt, his chest pumped out, practice drawing his weapon on the empty woodland. The deputy, no longer blushing, re-holstered his weapon and a curious smile form across his lips. "Wow. Are you with them?" The radio squawk: "10-14, DO YOU COPY? " "10-14, HERE." "10-14, WHAT'S YOUR LOCATION?" "INTERVIEWED ONE-ZERO-ZERO-TWO- ZERO, MOVING ON TO ONE ZERO-ZERO- TWO-ONE. STANDBY." "THAT'S AFFIRMATIVE." I guess he couldn't read my expression. If he did he would have know I wasn't. Removing my glasses I rub the redness of my nose. "Is she here?" "I bet you play football when you were in college. Got some fast moves." I didn't answer; however, he got my meaning. "Yea... she's down there." His finger pistol pointed down the path I took a couple days ago. "How long do I have wait here?" I was making my way down the embankment when I called back and told him he could go. I stepped over rocks, fallen trees, and the carpet of pine needles that were wet from this morning's dew. As I traveled down into the woods with the road high up above. Subterranean echoes from the trees made the radio squawks sound wild. The barks of hunting dogs. I actually did played college football. And I did have some fast moves then. It was the least confusing time in my life sandwich between my Vietnam and FBI years -- both opposite and quite remarkable in terms of being tough and disconcerting. My earliest memory of government secrecy came in my first tour of Vietnam. Something you accept in a Cold War society. Secrets have to be kept. Although, I always look upon it as something that goes on the next street down but never in your neighborhood -- by all means -- not in your house. When I was moved to the X-files, it had finally came to my side of the block. I drew a fine line and walked it. Debts were owed on both sides. Even when I ask the man's name who put me here. He pulled his thin lips into a grin, drawled on a cigarette (which was smoke like a joint) and exhaled it in long white-threads, from nose and mouth, crawling up his face. He told me I would do fine and said no more. In 71' I was position just outside of Laos where it drizzles and simmers on a forty-eight hour rotation. Several men were dropped on the 145th infantry just twenty clicks south. What I heard that they look like Wartime Corespondents in their olive uniforms, with their soft, pink hands, small stature and wiry shoulders. They examined several men then gave them something to put in their canteens. What we do know it wasn't the normal iodine pill's use to kill bacteria in the water. Years later, some suspected it was a joint CIA-Army drug research program code-named OFTEN/MK or CHICKWIT. It was a derivative of their failed MK-ULTRA experience in the early fifties. No one knew what happen to the fifteen to twenty men who were involved in the experiment. Some said they change, got lost in the bush, popping all men, women and child they came across. Soon after, the government sent in a platoon of men wearing black uniforms. They went into the bush carrying chrome-bore AK-47's to execute what they constructed. All rumored of course they could be home now drinking a beer watching the first football game of the season. The pine trees stretched up to the morning sun, dwarfing myself, who stood in the empty woods. The air was fresh, startling so. The smell of freshly turned soil and broken pine bark. It's funny how you don't know what clean air smells like until you're a way from the city you spent years in. Ten minutes later, I arrived at a small clearing. I spotted a woman, crouched down, with a thin line furrow across her thoughtful brow. Her copper-wire- hair was pulled back with a hair clip revealing her cheeks. There were two cameras draped over her neck. She brought up the Polaroid to her eye, a white flashed, then the familiar 'whirling' from the charging batteries, the whirling that was heard in the backwoods surrounding the clearing. Not far off high in some tree a squirrel chirps its retaliation. She ran her latex covered fingers over a wide burnt spot on the dirt and pine needles. Like a campfire, but not a campfire, it was too regular, a perfect pie, and the fire marks did not fade from the edges. She took a picture with the other camera -- a SLR 35 millimeter. "Scully," I called. I stepped between the two tall trees and over one lying on its side. The one on the side rotted in bright orange. Taking note she slowly stood up. Although, I thought she might come this way or at least continued to address me, unexpectedly though, she turned, started writing on a small note pad she made appeared from her breast pocket of her jacket. "All right. I'll join you," I mumbled to myself. I wasn't tick, but after coming a long away, I expected at least a little intimidation. Stepping over to her, she looked up form her writing, just too take in where I was, then continued scribbling. "Scully, what are you doing?" "Working, sir." "I see that. Agent Scully, I thought we discuss this. I suggested that you take time off." "I did." She glanced up at me momentarily, turned, walked to the other side of the circle. Was she being defiant? It wouldn't be the first... Or the last, I remind myself. I cocked my head to the side letting the notion tumbled like water over rocks. "Agent Scully?" "Mmm." Her disarming expression was delightful. At first, I wasn't sure if I saw it -- now I was. There was something radiant about her face. Something resolved. When I was fifteen, I took fourteen-year-old Julie Myers to a Carnival. It was our first date. There was the smell of hot, butter popcorn, the sweet honey of cotton candy, and the mutter of the shifting crowd we plowed through. We dated for nine months, but stayed friends years after. When I left for Vietnam, we wrote, but our letters got father apart and more corespondents, until it eventually stopped altogether. Julie and I had just got off the roll-a-coaster -- THE RIDE OF TERROR; the name painted on its white, uneven cut lumber -- the tracks that went ricky-rack as the coaster shot on down one hill, from where we stood, and up next turn. The expression she had was the same as Mulder's partner. It wasn't the smile or perspiration that lit her cheeks and forehead like ripe peaches in late October; it was her eyes -- eyes of discovery. "Scully, has something happen? " Not answering right of way, she continued to work. You could see her working the question in her head. It was like a Red Sox pitcher working the baseball into his leather glove before the throw. "Yes. Yes in away." "I don't understand." "I have story to tell, a long story, and I need some one to listen," she told me. "I hope you could be that person? " "I thought I told you to go home and stay away from this case." Yes, I sounded unfair. However, I have twenty agents under my care. It's my duty to be unfair -- make decisions that save lives and does not put any of them in unnecessary danger. Listen. In my tenure I have lost seven field agents including Mulder. (Yes, Mulder was the only MIA; the rest were KIA). Try standing out on a fresh cut-lawn on a warm, summer's day, lying to rest a fine agent of the Bureau. Their family, anguish, no more than a couple yards away. It never gets easier. It doesn't matter if no one likes me for my decisions. I'm not here to like. I'm here to keep agents alive. Again, Scully never answered me. She continued working. Grudgingly, I said: "Ok, I'm listening." Scully cleared her voice. "Yes I did go home. Yes and I stayed away from the case... well, for the time being. I had no intentions coming here. I had just finished pouring some tea, sat down on the couch, listening to the mantel clock tick. There was a small knot in my stomach. It was like one of those rubber-band-balls that some people at the Bureau keep in their middle desk drawer. The one you stretched, twist, and let snap into place. My mind running like yesterday's movie. It kept playing the past events over and over gain. I wasn't able to stay on the couch, when I lay down in bed, the room felt warm and my arms itch. I turned on my computer to do some writing in my journal, as soon as it came up, I shut it down." "For sitting there alone..." Scully sighs, looks to the tops of the pine trees, "When I was young my dad took the family to St Paul's Cathedral in San Diego. These trees in fact remind me of their fine, tall steeples. Inside, I remember walking down the center marble isle, thinking how stately it looks. Listening to the scuffle of my echoing shoes. There was something imposing about it. The same 'feel' that leads us to lower our voices in such places, something weighted, like large hands resting on your shoulders. Soon after, I left the church. I don't feel that way with all churches, or even that particular church. It was just that day. That's how my apartment was that night. So I didn't stay. Reclaiming my keys from the nightstand, I soon found myself a half-mile down the road at a Seven-n-Eleven. An empty lot with cold lights pouring out on the asphalt. Things seem to work that way that night, all in a blur. At first you're at home and now you're at a twenty-four hour store, walking around its vacant isles." "After circling around I pulled open a glass freezer door and was greeted with multiple shelves gathering foamy ice. I grab the ice-cream-cone on the lower shelf. I didn't know I was craving it until I turned off the car ignition. Setting the cone down, not even thinking, I fidgety drummed the counter as I asked the attendant for a pack of Marlboro Reds. His eyes, giving me the once over, he then reached up and flipped the pack down on the counter top. After his fingers found all the right keys on the register, from my wallet, I slipped him a five. "You see, you remember all the small stuff. I remember holding Mulder in the corridor just like it happen moments ago. He said something to me, I said something to him. Was it days ago -- hours? I can't honestly say. It kind of hangs back on you then it leaps forward and snaps you with a good dose of reality. Slipping him five, he drops a couple coins in my palm and then I went for my purchases -- Smack!" In due time I was able to put words into my mouth. "Your Pregnancy." "The baby," she agreed. A small smile had touched her lips then it was gone. Her eyes had just lightly lit on me. " You see; I didn't even get the right change. I turned, leaving the full pack on the counter top, the man never even utter a single word. He wasn't coy enough to pretend it wasn't there. His small, black eyes kept shifting from my retreating back to the counter. And as soon as I was out the door it went straight into his front pocket. Which is all right, the ice-cream-cone it self went straight into the wastebasket by the door. "You think you got this pain in your belly, you try answering with something you might crave, so be it cigarettes or ice-cream, you're simply wrong. The ache is something no one could replace but what was truly lost. " "Scully, you shouldn't blame yourself." She stepped a round the circle away from me. "I'm not." I waited. "Is this what -- " " -- I wanted to tell you?" she answered for me. She smiled and continued working. "The ice cream tasted good on the lips, however, the hurt was much lower. It slid down my throat like a lead bullet, where it sat there on the bottom of my stomach. So I tossed it into the wastebasket. Just as simply as the cigarettes disappeared into the attendants pocket. I'm sure a half-hour later, he was out back by a tilted, odorous Dumpster and loosely stack milk-crates, making immense use of my purchase. I add another rubber band to my stomach knot. "Between that moment (which I don't know much) I've found myself in front of Mulder's Apartment door. I just stood there. The hallway was dark, except for one light that reached around the corner of the wall to the door, shaped in a spearhead. The keys in my hand, there brass metal softly, clinking together. There was so much behind that door. And I couldn't bring myself to insert the keys to open it. I felt something was in there -- something moving around. Something moving around in my heart." Agent Scully pauses from her writing, doodles a little, and said: "He said this time they weren't coming back. That's it. I didn't want be left with those memories. Mulder's self-effacing, regretful smile, sitting on the couch leaning forward with his elbows on his knees. Years later, try telling a son or daughter this." When she mention the child I nearly expected her hand would instinctively dropped to her waistline, as often mother's hands do when they speak of there own on coming child, it didn't, no she just kept on writing uninterrupted. Then again, after hearing her partner... her friend, disappear into the sky as something so unexplainable, I couldn't begin to second-guess her emotional state. Thus I let it go at that. "No, I didn't go in -- not then, at least. It was my next visited that I stay... and slept." Her voice trailed off. She sighed. "Instead, I drag my keys back into my coat pocket and walked away." Pocketing her note pad, from yet another pocket she produced a small measuring tape. The one's housewives used for knick-knack-shelves or picture hanging projects around the home. I step foreword and took the metal-tip strip from her hand. She backs up; we step across the girth of the circle and laid it down. She set her rough-tread boot on the tape, produced the notepad again and started scribbling. We lifted up the tape, walked 45 degrees around the circle, and measured another cross section. Then she measured out from the center to the nearest trees. She continued to talk the whole time. "I went home, but not the home you think. I found myself on a dark porch, when the porch light flash on, the door slipped open soon after. My mom had appeared in her robe. Her eyes were barely open, her hand knotted in her collar. I mean, what do moms do when they discovered their professional daughter standing on their doorstep in the early morning? She was scared and agitated, and I don't blame her. She asked me what's wrong. I told her what happen to Mulder. "She gazed through me, as I listened to a dog bark across the street from it's hidden post, behind some unknown house in the dark, before stepping back and letting me in." "We sat on the couch, not talking, she watched me as I look around the old place: the fireplace, dad's favorite chair, and old photos that grew in numbers every year -- photos of Bill, his wife, and their baby. Photos of Charles and his family, my sister and brothers at different ages, Dad, Mom and Dad when they were married; and even photos of me. I felt home sick and misplace. I told her all that has happen (Mulder, not the baby -- I wasn't ready, yet) in the last few days. She touched my arm offering me a bed; I took the couch. "She returned with a spread over one arm, and a pillow tucked in her other. I was already lying on my side, staring straight through the black windows. She covered me. I was twelve again. I felt the cool press of her lips on my forehead. Asking if I need anything else, I shook my head, and the hallway lights went out leaving me with the kitchen's stove light as my only companion. I drifted on and off on the soft sparkle sequences in the tile ceiling. Something Dad installed two years prior to his passing. Dressed in his short- sleeve checker shirt, pencils sticking out his shirt pocket, an antiquated "Poplar mechanics" he splayed open on his workbench, he had put countless hours in on it. Counting them like stars I drifted, thinking of Dad, and sometimes Mom. I thought a lot about Mulder, where he might be. Where I might start looking for him." The measuring-tape, snaking quickly back in its case, startled me. Scully pocketed it and left the clearing. So caught up in her tale, I forgot we stopped working. She picked up a backpack, which was behind a bark- less log perched at precarious angle. She had to lean over it with one foot in the air in order to retrieve it. When she returned, she slipped a case from the bag, open it, and brought out two stopwatches -- one blue the other green. She clicks them simultaneously. Looks around the clearing. And asked me to take the green one over to the log. Offering her incredulous look, I sigh, and did what I was asked. When I returned, she had placed the blue stopwatch at the circle's edge, and was now handing me a hand- held Geiger counter. She told me take five-meter readings fanning out from the equidistant. "After laying there most of the night -- and I say most, because I have no notion if I slept and to the best of my knowledge I didn't," she said to me as I move around the circle herself taking ground samples. "As I laid there I watch the window progressively move from black to cerulean. It worked just like this: You see nothing but darkness... (You're thinking)... you see more of the room... (You're thinking)... now you could see most of the furniture... (You're thinking)... and before you know it you're facing the morning. I pulled myself up on my elbow, thinking, 'How can this be... I only laid down hours ago. "While another voice is tells you, 'Doesn't matter, you mise well get up. You weren't 'really' planning to sleep, were you now.' "Clambering to my feet, in my dress down state, I stretched. When I first lay down I had kicked off my shoes, a half-hour after mom shut her bedroom door, I slipped off my pants and discarded my bra from underneath my shirt, folded them, and climb back underneath the blanket. I thought it would be more comfortable. Folding the blanket, I placed the folded blanket and pillow at the foot of the couch, thinking it would be put to good use again the next night. Then I started coffee brewing, showered, and dressed in some jeans and tee shirt my mom stashed away in a spare room. By this time, the sun had arch the horizon spilling morning light across the couch I laid on. "Digging the yellow pages (worn, torn and doodle on) from under Dads desk, I lugged the thing into the dining-room, flopped it on the table. "With a cup coffee, spewing white threads of steam I started thumbing through the dog-ear pages. Ultimately, I found what I was looking for. But it would be several hours before I would be able to make the call. Never once I lifted the coffee cup to my lips. An hour later, I poured it down the kitchen's disposal. "Stepping from the main room to the kitchen, hearing the soft hiss of Moms shower, I picked up the phone receiver and sat down. I made the appointment for ten this morning. Lucky she had an opening in her schedule. It gave me time to have breakfast with Mom. Although, I admit I only 'clink' the fork around the porcelain plate, leaving the eggs and bacon in a drying state, Mom and I exchanging only a hand full of words. In fact, since she got out of the shower she kept asking me, for half dozen times, if I was alright... and, for a half dozen times, I told her I was fine. Later, my breakfast too joined the fate of my coffee." Scully's narrative abruptly stopped. We work for a while with out saying a word. I think her thoughts needed a break. She was taking the zip-lock bags and placing samples in it -- soil, pine needles, and the bark from the surrounding trees. I started to think about Agent Mulder. The last time I saw him in his office. He was leaning way back in the chair tossing a basketball into the air and catching it. Just watching it spins off his fingertips into the air coming back down. A world spinning through space. He called me 'Walter'. In the seven years I knew him this was the first time he called me by my first name. There was a certain amount of guilt tie to it. "What's wrong," Scully asked after seeing my eyes focus past the clearing. I looked at her. At first I said nothing. I hunkered down and picked up a flat rock, gauging its weight in my palm. I threw it away. I told her what I was thinking. "He consider you a close friend, "Scully said, turning back her work. "I know he did his thing, and you had to do yours. Still, he had the highest regard for you." I felt a deep admiration for her. Something breaking free in my chest. Sensing my eyes upon her, where before she was chipping the bark from a tree, she stopped to look back. "What?" "Mulder went through great depths and terrible pains to find you when you went missing," I said flatly. Tighten my jaw, I looked away: "No, I'm sorry, I shouldn't have brought that up." "No...no." She stepped towards me. "I would like to here more?" She was very sympathetic -- unhappy she cause her partner so much distress -- however, she wanted to hear more about this man. I nodded, looking away. When I didn't answered she let it go; knowing it wasn't the right time. She stepped back from the tree. Wiping her hands clean on her jeans she retrieved both stopwatches. Clicks them off the simultaneously. She looked at them and offered it to me. The blue one had nearly a minute and a half deficit. Seeing how incredible this was I have to smile. She returned it. "You said he called you, 'Walter?'" She spoke it cautiously as if she might be presumptuous, which she wasn't. It was odd though to hear her say it. It was like slipping into a new place, where you were no longer boss and subordinate, gap by responsibility; you were just two people sharing a conversation. I nodded to her question. "Walter?" This time she had a question to ask. "Yes." "Have you ever thought about kids?" I paused not looking at her. "No, not lately." Then I said unimportantly. "My wife was stricken with ovarian cancer ten years ago. They had to removed her uterus leaving her barren and childless." Scully told me she was sorry, but I didn't comment back. I thought she might bring up my current association with my wife, but she didn't... And it was just as well. "Have there been times where I gave it thought? Many times." I stopped to look at her. She nodded unsympathetically. She wasn't even looking at me. I sighed. "I take it you and Mulder never discussed this." "I didn't think it was possible -- to get pregnant that is." She did sound astonish in a dull sort of way. Going back to work with out looking at her. "May I ask how long you two...?" At first, I thought she wasn't going to answer. She did though. "Not long," she said sadly. " No -- not long enough. I guess this will have consequences on us working together." I nodded. "Granted, the Bureau has no regulations against Agents dating. However, we do frowned upon partners pursuing this course of action. Not because we're inequitable -- but for your safety and those you serve around you. We can't have agents in the field where their objectivity has been compromise. However, when Mulder does get back. If I see any conduct that can be construe of the nature of your relationship says anything else 'but 'Agents working in the field, I'll have you both in front of my desk before you can say 'censor.' I hope I'm clear on the matter. Other words, Scully, keep it low profile." She gave me a faltering smile, pausing, I continued: "The truth is, I'd suspected it for sometime -- year's, as it may be -- that your relationship was more than, well, let's say, partners. I just never saw it reduce your professionalism. As long as those grounds were never breach I didn't bring it to a head." "Thank-you, Walter." Since we been talking the sky had grew steadily dark, our shadows nearly obliterated. A low rumble moved across the western sky -- a sound of bowling balls -- yet, still at a great distance. We both look up; we knew what was coming. "We should be going," I said, dropping my eyes to hers. She had slipped every thing back into the backpack and was already shouldering it. "Scully, let me -- "No, I got it," she answered me before I finished the question. And she took off in the opposite direction of the road. Looking the way I came, I suddenly felt uneasy, wondering if there was something there, something about to pursue us. I saw Scully waiting for me a head and went to catch up with her, shaking my head. After a moment, after I track up beside Scully, she started talking. "Since the results of my pregnancy two nights ago I have guiltily shove the notion aside. It's like discreetly filing it away; meaning to come back to it... but once the drawer rolls shut, I had hard time digging it out and facing it again. You see I felt a part of my life was over... still, I knew part of my life was just beginning. This was my thinking when I got up yesterday morning -- I needed to make decisions that will effect the baby. And what does it mean to be in my life. "I went to work on it as any investigation that comes across my desk. This might seem cold and analytical, but it was my way of coping, my self-preservation of my child and myself. It's what prompted me to call a doctor to begin with that morning. "The visited only lasted for an hour." I curiously I asked her about her mom. "I told her I would be running some errands, not to worry. I would be back later". "So you saw a doctor," I sated. "OBY-GN to be precisely. Although, I have a doctor through the Bureau's Health Care -- a very good doctor I might add -- I wanted one that had nothing to do with the government. You do understand, don't you. And did I use my own name? No. She knows me as Katherine S. Luder." Noticing that my brow had narrowed on her mild amusement, Scully told me never mind, some day she'll tell me about it. "When I met the doctor, her hands buried in her medical coat, she reminded me so much of my mom. Not that she looked like her -- black, mid forties, with a broad, emerging smile, her many braids tied off in white beads in back -- but her eyes. They were reflective, with deep, knowledgeable darkness behind her silver frame glasses. "Introducing herself as Dr. Rachel Summer, her eyes peering over her frames, she handed me a gown and a nurse led me back to a room. The nurse told me Dr Summer would be there in a minute. The room was a white. It was a lunch box. It had tasteful pictures of different flowers placed at various heights along the walls. It also had a warning poster about smoking. "It shows a purple silhouette of a pregnant woman. She had a lit cigarette with rising con trails. The words, plaster below, SMOKING KILLS. It was the only dark thing in the room. "I moved around the room. It also had prenatal and childcare information packets -- it had different diets, different exercise's, and different 'ways' at having sex. Without warning, I felt like a disability. It's as if you were stricken blind or cripple nine months out your life. Overwhelmed, I had to sit down for a moment. "Almost forgetting, I quickly swapped out of my clothes into the hospital gown. Sat on examining table counting the seconds, looking beaten, much like, Charles, my little brother did as a little leaguer when he lost their first game of the season. "When Rachel stepped in she had me lied down. She idly asked questions and made small talk during the examination. Of course, when you're lying on your back, you're whole body screaming foreign -- the table, the walls, even the little paper roll they pulled out at end of the table, you have the tendency to make conversation in single syllables. However, when I was lying there closing my eyes, a daub of cold jelly stuck to my skin, moving the scope around until she found the spot -- the baby's heart beat, I was totally overwhelmed. My mind stutter. It was in me -- a part of me -- life that I give. I felt my heart flutter like wings of bird. "Dr Rachel Summer made an appointment for next month and told me to bring the father. Then said, again, eyeing me over her frames, 'if he could make it, which I'm sure he will.=B9 "And it=B9s not what you think. It was as if she 'knew=B9 that he wasn't one of those fathers who took off but something happen to him. It was as if she 'knew=B9 he would also be home before the baby=B9s birth. Was I that transparent I told myself. I know that small exchange of words is very little to go on. More speculation than not. What ever it was I felt one of those rubber bands come loose. It made it easier for me to later talk. "She slipped a slender, dark hand from her white medical coat and shook my hand. I thank her again for seeing my on such short notice. "At my parents home, Mom and I were back on the couch again. Her eyes were inquisitive. "'Does he know,' she asked me. "I told her I found out after he was taken. My mom hesitated. "'You're not happy?' she said. My voice emotional, I told her 'Yes... ' Then 'No'. I don't know. 'It's just I'm not so sure anymore.' I knew then what was haunting me since I visited Mulder's door the night before. So I said it. 'I don't know if Mulder would want this. It's not like this was planned -- something I took account for.'" "'You don't know that for sure,' she argued with me. Her voice was unhappy and sympathetic. "'He told me they were being adducted and this time they weren't coming back. He knew this. When he left, I think, well... he knew this would happen. Mom, I don't know if I could do this alone... or even if I want to. It's just that I have this barren feeling he's not coming back.' "'Don't say that,' she said, her voice stinging. 'He never gave up on you -- even when I did seven years ago, your sister and even your brothers that were away. He never did. He was against the engraving of your head stone, saying 'it was too soon.' He even refused to stand there and watch while we pulled the plug on your life support. Oh, hon... he loved you for a very long time. And I know he's going to love this baby.' "Mom held me. The build up for last two days unexpectedly poured out and I let it. You see... Moms' have a way of making things better. Making you feel young and still your daughter. "I was back at Mulder's place again. Strange how easy it was to open the door -- the key turned, the door whined open -- not like last night; where there seemed an unnatural force holding me at bay. Strange how daylight and a good cry could changed ones perspective of the situation. It didn't stop me of course from feeling drained. "Hurriedly, I shut the door and stepped over to the center of the room. It wasn't so bad. Mid-day light poured through the window lighting all corners of the room. The rubber band knot in my stomach -- even though it's still there -- had unraveled two more bands. The room essence was of Mulder, which accounted for some of my rubber-band knots, and made my arms itch with nerves. First thing I did was feed the fish -- well, the three that remain -- then looked around the apartment." "Opening the window, fresh air swept into the apartment flushing out the emptiness. I went over and sat on the couch. Exhaustion that's been running me down since last night and all this morning finally caught up with me. "Lying down, I watched the soft shadows of the drapes shuffled in the breeze. I wasn't even aware I slept until I awoke -- until I propped myself up and noticed the shadows leaning further to the other side of the room. When I had sat down earlier, I was able to see the recesses of the kitchen, now that has all but faded. And, only after I awoke that I realized I dreamt -- and that it was real -- and Mulder was there. What I do know is that I no longer could stand still and do nothing." "Wait. You said, Mulder?" I stepped forward, pushed through a long pine tree branch, held it for Scully. She ducked her small frame under it and then took the lead once more. I let go and followed. We continued to follow the uneven terrain as thunder filled the sky -- the smell of electricity charge the air. "Yes, and I will get to that," she said patiently. "When I got home, I packed, made reservation, and five hours later I've found myself in Oregon. No longer having any law enforcement in Bellefleur, I borrowed a deputy from the next town over. When we drove through town, we spotted two HUM-V's near town center, a Military transport, and a CIA fleet sedan at one of the houses. I know they had finished a missing person's investigation two days earlier. So whatever was happening here was completely new. Of course, the deputy I was with was intrigue. He wanted to stop and ask questions. Instead, I instructed him to drive straight through. Arriving, I told him to wait at the car if he did that at all." I told her I let him go. She nodded. "Well, this is where you found me." We approached a ridge where the side of the hill broke free. In the basin, a river carves its' way at the root like a flat black snake slicing through the quieted, tall-meadow grass of late summer. Frosted pines the size of toothpicks climbed the adjacent ridge. The dark clouds continued to move in, it's ceiling low. A blue fork flicker-flashed across the dark sky splitting it to the earth soon followed by a low mutter. We followed the ridge over broken trees and around cragged brush as high as my shoulder. Some with thorns clawed desperately at our clothing. "Ok, Scully, is this what you want to tell me?" I finally had to ask. "No, not particularly this, but its was very significant you heard the entire tale. I think you will understand. It happen when I lay down in Mulder's apartment. I was lying back watching the curtains swayed in and out from the open window, the whispering of the breeze, the sound of its secrets. It was like time was unwinding like a clock spring or watching the sounds from the fridge dance before you. I started to dream. "I was walking along a beach perpendicular to a vast ocean. My toes pressing into the wet sand. The scouring of the surf was booming, voluptuous. The surf was white as bleach salt pouring over its crests. It wasn't the blue sky you find in Bahamas or Miami, but a white sky; a sky you find in late October the morning before the sun burnt off the haze. In fact, it wasn't entirely strange to find Mulder there. "He sat indian-style facing the surf, clear as you and I standing here, Walter, I assure you. "Walking up to him I knelt down. My toes digging into the soft wet sand. I was trembling. Not be cause I was cold because I never thought I'd see him again. That=B9s when he touched my belly. It was funny. I was pregnant -- I mean 'not' just pregnant -- my belly was swollen up as large as a basketball. There he was, making circular motion on the sides of it. It was gentle, caring. It just felt wonderful to have his hands on me." When she said those things you would figure it would be embarrassing to me, too personal, but it wasn't, really. I was intrigue. Then I felt something sink in me. I asked: "Are -- are you saying he's dead?" Silent for a moment we stop walking. She turned towards me. For a moment, the woods were quite. Then a spike, flickering flash appeared above us chased by a large clap of thunder. It limped away to the eastern sky. The breeze was picking up its pace. "No -- that just it. He wasn't -- he isn't -- here I was in front of him. I pulled my legs underneath me and sat down indian-style just as he did. He wasn't smiling to say but smiling on the inside. You know how sometimes you turn your thoughts inward. That=B9s what he was doing. I remember the cowlick of his hair just flipping back... then down, back... then down. Reaching up feeling those soft strands in my fingers." Scully turned away and I let her. Her voice was tranquil when she began again. "He knew how distressed I been lately. When my eyes lowered with guilt. He lifted my chin. Brushed the back of his hand against my cheek. He pulled me into his embrace. Fiercely, he held on to me. Since then I knew it. It still makes my legs week thinking about it." "About what?" "Walter -- please." She said it as if she was saying don't push me. "What then?" "That he's always been here." Disbelief rose to my face no different than the blush on the officer face earlier. I fought a terrific urge not to spiral my head around looking for her lost partner. She saw it and took it in stride, her voice all business like. "Remember when I told you about the cigarettes, walking out leaving them? I could now recall it in detail: That slowed look the attendant gave me. Him wetting his lips. The cigarettes dropping to the counter, covering the newspaper-clippings of 'Today's Specials' and '1/2 Prices' under a plated glass. It was after the register popped open and after I fingered a five from my wallet. There was more going on in the store then a heavy dose of reality. You see I 'was' reaching for the cigarettes. And I must of have some strange look in my eyes, my head tilted. The man had swiveled his head around to get a good look at what I saw. Of course, there was no one there. Well, about this time, my hand had stopped right before it got to the cigarettes. It was like some ones hand lightly touched it. It was comforting but determined. Then, another hand touched me around the waist, guiding me away from the counter. This wasn't the last time, either. "When I arrived at Mulder's door I felt it there too: The back of a hand brushing down my cheek. Well, that's what it felt like. This was after I felt the pinprick of tears. I wasn't even aware of my feelings then. The tremendous lost and the inability to do anything about it. Seconds later, I pocketed the keys, and fled into the night -- fled, but not in a run. "At the doctors office when I was lying there closing my eyes, I must have drifted. I saw Mulder there, smiling, a sarcastic remark building up behind his eyes about the Stirrups. I told him not to say it. Startled, he opens his mouth and closes it. I felt his hand slid into mine and I woke... The doctor was moving the scope around through the cold jelly, finding the baby's heartbeat. My heart fluttering. Not only for the baby but the memory that continued to touch me." It began to rain. It was slow at first and broken up in lengths. There was an enormous sound of plopping on our coats, the surrounding leaves dripping, thunder rumbling. Scully's hair darkened and had even begun to crinkle. Not knowing how to broach this I took it carefully and said, "Scully this is good and all but have you every try to rationalize it, your emotional state, wanting to see Mulder. It may be clouding your judgment." "You don't believe me." She bobbed her head looking away. I didn't answer her. "I want to show you something." She walks up to me and stood on her toes. Wraps her hands around my neck and pulls my face down to her neck. I resisted, I wasn't sure what she meant at first, feeling a little uneasy. However, slowly getting the message... I leaned in, and inhale. I smell her low perfume and her clean scrubbed skin, the rain that ran down her neck, but there was more: the scent of split wood... not that, though. It came to me. It was that of fresh broken seeds, sunflower seeds, the ones that come from immense, yellow flowers as large as my head, place along white picket fences. There was more -- the smell of antiquated books stacked with deckled-edge pages, a clutter sound of a closing file cabinet, a cool, dusty solitude -- it was the smell of Mulder and Scully's office. And there was a scene of Mulder smiling at me, talking with me, the many memories flooding back. I was seeing the two agents together -- the depth for one another, their sacrifice, their love. After all that swirling, I was left with two words. Help her. I pulled away. It was so over whelming I had to hunch over. My flat palm resting against a tree, its bark dark from rain, my pale fingers wet. "Jesus, Scully. How do you explain this?" "The nearest I can figure is when I had that dream, granted, since, I believe some of it has faded. Not that I can entirely explain it" -- she looks down briefly as her hand rest easily against her waist " -- but I think it's something Mulder and I have in common. "It's just not that, either. There were other times. I have a memory of Mulder staring out the window on =8CSky Line Mountain=B9 in some type of tourist shop, I believe. He was staring into the blackness. It was as if I had laid beyond that pane of glass simply as a reflection, leaving him greatly saddened, only to awake to a nickel-plated drill spiraling down on my face, which quickly faded to white. There was the dream I had a Mulder coming out the darkness. Saying something about the bridge that spans two worlds and about returning to fight. He was lost in New Mexico at the time. It was after the boxcar explosion, after I thought he was lost. I'm not saying it's all like this." Scully paused. She used both hands to sweep her wet hair behind her ears. Her hair that was no longer the color copper but that of the rain streak tree bark. "Do you know Lewis Carroll's ' Alice Through the Looking Glass?'" "I'm not following," honestly I said. "Have you ever got up in the morning, looked in the mirror, felt something odd, reached out and touched it to see if the other person might be real? Or place your hand on the mirror, like plated glass, your reflection was pushing back. And let's say your reflection, stepped aside, and allow you to push on through. This is what it felt like. That Mulder and I are on two sides of the mirror looking in." "Our saying Mulder's not on this world?" She didn't answer me but kept pushing her legs up the trail. "He told you something, didn't he?" "Yes," she said. "As I told you before: We were sitting across from each other -- as if in our own powwow -- his arms folded around me. Holding me close. His neck smelled of ocean salt and body lotion. He said something to me. Then it all evaporated and I was left lying on the couch, listening to the breeze, it's secrets. It said we'll find each other." We walk for a little with out word. Our track was swinging back towards the road. Two ships swinging home to port. I didn't know I was going to say it until my mouth open. My eyes remain alert still scanning the woods. "Are you able to see Mulder, let's say, as I see you?" She considered my words. By this time I was huffing it. Scully was fairing less. "Not in the way you and I understand. It's more of impression" "You do see him?" She closed her eyes in pained, her lips were pressed into a fine line, then open them. She told me no. "No?" "It's dark. He's crying -- it's what has been done to him." She had swung back to me when she spoke this. Her eyes lit with rage. Her lips turned down unforgiving. A tear form in the corner of her eye where sometime sits the nose-pad of her glasses. It just sat there; got fat, and raced down the side of her nose. With the patch of her fingers she swiped it away. She looked at her fingers offhandedly before dropping it to her side. She looked skyward, spun around as if she failed to comprehend it all, as if all did not make sense... and continued to walk up the path. I caught up to her and she spoke to me. Her walked remain machinelike as she stepped over brush. "There's more." Her voice was dark -- dark like the sky above us, like the feeling I felt every since we left the clearing. "He told me Krycek tried to kill CB Spender." "Cancer man?" She nodded. "'Try', you said." "Yes. He still alive though. He's devising his vengeance, and like black fur-mated-wolves fighting over a small carcass, they're busy with their own little war not looking our way. It won't last. We're in great danger and Mulder knows this. Not now but soon -- soon 'They'll' come sniffing around our way." You see. The moment I stepped off the road into the woods fear has been slowly seeping in. It's not that I'm easily scared. I have heard the pop-pop-pop from distant gunfire and turn and, find a buddy that I share a beer with the night before, lying there bubbling blood from his chest. Or seen a massive amount of dirt and clumps that are thrown in the air, only to discovered that some unknown private, after tripping a landmine, has been rip in two. Remember what I said about 'decisions'. I'm not saying she didn't feel the same things I did, I'm just saying her obsession (and maybe that's too strong of a word) to find her partner might leave her, let=B9s say, blind to the possible dangers that our lurking. Then there's the dream, of course. It's always the same. It was after I had heard stories about the fail experiment, during my stint outside of Laos. After the exposed men got lost in the bush. I dreamt that I was on the 'Ho Chi Minh Trail' with men from my platoon. We staggered up the trail in the dark. Then the men were gone. I was alone. Arriving in a clearing -- a clearing made by the moon, a silver dime set on a jeweler's velvet, which sat at its highest point in the sky -- I found the bodies of my buddies. As I stepped carefully over each one -- John, Mikey, Duck, Spence and so on -- embracing my M-16 to my breast as a dying child. I survey what I seen, a garden of death, as rich, rising floral of copper settled into my nostrils. The blood under the moon appeared as black as school ink. Their eyes and mouths were black holes. Their faces pulled tight over their skulls in a soundless scream. And the last soldier, as I stopped many yards away, his back was arch over a mound, his eyes catching moonlight. His body was doing a gig. A boot leg shimming up and down over the dead under growth. I heard the flapping of mouths and the clucking of teeth on bones. I realize something was into him. Three or four shapes were hunch over, their heads up into the chest cavity. When they heard my boot mulch the ground, they stood up, no different than South African Meerkat's popping their heads up in the air for a near by lion, (one, two, four at a time.) I took an unsettling step back. Their moon-rim shot eyes turned to me, blinking. They stood on fine, lupine legs, the deep arch of their thighs, their long lean bodies, and a long fluffy tail hung between their legs. They stood three and half feet in height total. Of the four them, two wore Cantonese straw-hats. I took another step back. One of them stepped froward, in an unnaturally human gait, into the clearing. It wasn't any VC I knew my mind weakly told me then I noticed its clothes. It wore mans torn shirt. It had American sergeant stripes. Quickly backing out of there in walks and hops, I turned, and was greeted by a figure half my height, standing on two rear paws, its tail sweeping across the jungle floor. Even with its narrow fox like snout, its eyes -- it's human eyes, white rim and dark center, the likes of 'Buckwheat' eyes-in-dark-parody from the 'Little Rascal' -- it looks to my left and then, with appalling, human awareness, at me. With it's M-16 in hand -- in paw I should say -- it unloads on to me a dazzling white. I would awake then in a cold, deep sweat, in my black bedroom, I would even hear the quick thump-thump of a tail on the padded carpet floor, only to slow into a sweep, then evaporate all together. I don't dream this much anymore. Only when the season comes around -- the season's been ripe. And a ripe season it has been. It was the dream that spurred me to locate Agent Scully, to call her mother (who only would confirmed Scully left town for a couple days) and -- as Scully said - - to lead me here. When she told me what took place between Cancer Man and Krycek; knowing when Mulder said 'soon,' it could very well mean not in days but hours or even minutes; knowing also the men who were investigating this town could be here now. My discontent for the situation grew and I had to ask. "What you're saying is true -- if you knew about this. Why are we here? What possible information could you gain by coming here?" We were crossing between two high shrubs. Abruptly, a great deluge opens up from the sky. It was heard in the woods first then everywhere. To make ourselves heard we had to shout. "Evidence -- evidence what has happen to me. What has happen to Mulder." "Why now? Why risk your life if you knew 'They' were here?" "Do you think any of this would be here in 24 hours?" Scully swings her arm out in a grand gesture. She aims it at the crash sight. "This entire area will be sanitize. After that it will be like nothing happened." "If they caught us here we would be like nothing happened. Mulder's gone Agent Scully. Gathering this evidence will not change one iota of that fact." "No -- no it won't. However, it would serve to remind us that we should always be on our guard or it will happen again. If you had a son or daughter would you like them to be kept safe?" She saw my hesitation. "You think it's easy. I'm an unwed, FBI Agent in my first trimester with child. Worst, fathered by my own partner. A partner I have very little knowledge of what has happen, and the only evidence I'm able to find is here. My mom was right about one thing. He never gave up on me. I can't give up on him sir -- not now -- this evidence may not mean anything, but it's all I have." She wavered for a moment as the rain continued to plop uneventfully down on our coats. Water dripped from her hair as if it was a soaked-wet-bath-towel. Water slipped down the top my head into my collar. I looked over Scully's shoulder where a man in a yellow slicker approach, another man approached us from the right. Their slickers were open showing their suites. The rain had already began to slow. Scully and I quickly eyed each other before confronting our new guest, sighed, dropping our eyes. For a terrible instant I hated her and she saw it. Her expression was a mixture of apology and anger. It's not that I hated her -- it's just that I hated the situation we're in. It wasn't for my life, but for her and the child she carries. More over, for letting Mulder down a second time. Help her, he said. Well, that quickly ended. At least I was relieved that the deputy had earlier left. In his eagerness he would have spilled the whole beans and, instead of talking it up with his friends from his unit at some local pub, his body would have been added to our count. Other words, he didn't have to share our fait. The approaching men had on sunglasses, each with police radios, and one wore a thin, press tie a southern Minster might wear on a hot, Sunday morning, preaching rudely to his congregation. It had a gold tiepin, shaped like a horseshoe with diamond studs. The other man was talking into his handset when they came to a halt. He looked like a Roy Schneider with auburn hair. Knowing that I had my weapon holstered over my shoulder, I try to make myself as thin as possible so it wouldn't bulge against my jacket. I also assume Scully had hers under her jacket as well. "Can I help you?" said the Minster. I wavered for a second. "Actually, we just stopped to take in the view of the woods here, is there a problem?" Pausing, he seemed to study us -- study our clothes -- he then finally spoke. "There was a kidnapping in these woods a few nights ago." Scully had pulled from her hair her clip, slipped it into her pack she had unshoulder and sat to the ground, and retrieved a small hand towel. She scoured the ends of her hair not loosing her faint smile. The rain had nearly stopped. The voices from their radio came in stereo and actually sounded more real than ours. Handing me the towel, she retrieved a brush, and started pulling it through the underneath portion of her hair, while the whole time we spoke to them. "You're kidding," I said patting the towel over my head. "Does anyone know anything?" "We're still investigating." "FBI Agents?" Scully said, stifling a mild excitement in her voice, favoring me with a smile. The two men exchange looks. "Yes -- yes we are." The Minster eyes rested on the pack where the samples were kept. If they find the samples, the photos or our weapons -- for a moment I was sure one of them would -- they would lead us in the woods the way we came, have us lay face down in a green patch. Smelling ivy and wet dirt. And you would hear two distinct shots rocketed across the ridge. Months later, it would be Mulder identifying our remains, and depending on our decay, discovering he would have been a father. "Have you seen anything?" No, I'm afraid not," I said, giving a deliberate glance around our position. "Can=B9t say that I have." "You from around here," he asked. "Driving through actually, "said Scully. "We're from back east -- you?" He dowdily shook his head. Like his head was set on castanets. His hands hung in front as if in prayer. "From New Mexico -- Roswell to be precise." He smiled openly. "Don't believe what you hear." "Taking pictures?" Roy said to Mulder's partner taking time out from his radio. Clearing her throat candidly she spoke: "Yes, there's a small waterfalls back this way." She gestured with the brush in hand and looking back. Two lifted their heads in same direction .Of course; you couldn't see anything or, for that matter, hear anything. The men exchange looks. "I'm a doctor, could I be a aid to you?" Scully offered, putting away the brush, the men not even looking at the pack anymore. "We could stay and be an assistance in case you find them. They might need medical treatment." They study us again. Waiting. We listened to the remainder of the droplets fall from the surrounding trees. Ever two seconds we stand here our chances of getting away are cut in half. The Minster was noting our path. He opens his mouth to speak when his partner spoke up. "We found it!" Roy gives the degrees and heading. The Minster notes our path. He looks the way we came and, to the far right of us, where UFO had been. "I think we'll be fine on our own." He smiled at us. It was more of a grimace under his tinted glasses -- a snarl. "You have nice visited to Oregon. It's wonderful state what I've heard." To my astonishment we were at the end of the woods, where it rose up and encountered the asphalt. We only had to travel about twenty more yards. A Private stutter-step down the incline and started pulling yellow tape around the near by trees, blocking off the section leading in to the woods. We climb back up on the road as a HUM-V pulls up; men jump out, clapping their boots on the wet asphalt. The sky was sunless and the men were shadowless. Crossing the street it rose in me with a dull clarity. Like something climbing out of the darkness. This was too easy -- some how they knew. And they were letting us waltzed out of here. What are you up to Alex, I thought. It was ensue quickly by this: If they knew... could Scully's warning from Mulder not be true? The premonition was only a wishful thinking on her part? She never actually talked to him -- and I only imagine him? There were a lot of ifs and maybes there. In fact, since the experience has occurred Mulder's presence had faded from my memory. It was like waking from a perplexing dream and by the time you reached the shower it all but dissolved down the drain. You could recall small elements in a misplaced manner, however you don't know what all was the fuss. What was still clear to my memory is that Mulder is still lost to us. For all I know he could be dead. And that made me sad -- and very sad for Scully. Of course, I would never tell her this. We casually head for the car. Walked over the red X that Mulder painted seven years earlier. Asphalt was wet from the ending rain. "Where to?" I asked her as she walked around to the passenger side. "Breakfast, Sir." I stared at her. Sir, I thought to myself. Somewhere along our track back, we lost something, we slipped back into our customary rolls. It made me melancholy but I felt all right about it. It seem proper that something need to be taken back. I will still help her though, it may not been a promise to Mulder -- perhaps it's a promise to myself -- either way I'll keep it. Scully then tells me she hasn't eaten in two days. It something she should change. I agreed, nodding, looking back. Another HUM-V pulled up and they went over the side. "What are you looking at?" "The man who went down in the woods today, Agent Scully." She nodded. And she thought she knew the answer. She didn't. We both climbed into the car, turning the ignition, and as I turned into the road I looked at them guarding the path. Their eyes like wet marbles under their Kevlar Ballistic Helmets. I thought I was transform when I saw the Mulder=B9s adduction. Truthfully, it was like going through the twelve step program but no one told you been drinking. I thought all I have to do was get down off the fence. It's one thing in contrast to say you're off -- it's another thing all together to get down and put it all on the line, to do something about it. That=B9s why Scully told me the whole story. It wasn't about changes her body was going through, or changes in her heart, or change from skeptic to believer. It wasn't about change -- it's about how it was never meant to be easy.