TITLE: Past Imperfect
AUTHOR: Joann Humby

DISTRIBUTION: Gossamer and Xemplary, others please ask.
RATING: R (language, themes)
CLASSIFICATION: X A

SUMMARY:    
The FBI wants Mulder to find out what went wrong with Bill 
Patterson, Bill is keen to talk, but why?
Mulder and Scully consider the people who walk into the abyss and 
the people who they drag down with them. 

Bill Patterson is Mulder's old boss from his time working as a 
profiler in the ISU. When he went off the rails during the 
Mostow/gargoyles case (S3 - Grotesque) it was Mulder who had to 
catch him. 

My thanks to everyone who helped me during the betas of the story. 
Special thanks to DJ and Ann.

Joann - jhumby@iee.org

SPOILERS:
S6 spoilers - including Field Trip and Tithonus. This might have 
happened before Biogenesis!

LEGALLY:
You're right, I don't own them, never have, never will. Their 
souls (and hopefully a percentage of the profits!) belong to DD 
and GA and I've merely borrowed them. This story is mine.

First Published  -  2 September, 1999


==============

PAST IMPERFECT


There was something about Skinner's tone of voice, an off-note 
that made nerve endings misfire. Skinner sounded like a man in 
charge, that wasn't the problem. Mulder's senses shifted to high 
alert, the smell of the anticipated hunt tickling at his nostrils. 
Maybe there was something about the eyes. What could he see?

Skinner obliged by removing his glasses to give Mulder a clearer 
view, then disappointed him by scrunching his eyes tightly for an 
instant and rubbing an index finger across an eyebrow. Mulder sat 
up a little straighter, braced himself to hear another 
convincingly told lie. Scully tensed in sympathy.

Skinner rose and started to prowl. "I'm not sure that it's 
appropriate for me to assign this to you. Given your... history."

Mulder kept purposefully still, despite the frustration that was 
building fast, tried to keep his eyes from tracking his boss's 
every movement, shook his head slightly as Scully looked towards 
him. "If our history means that we have experience, surely that's 
an advantage."

Skinner turned. "It's your history that's at issue here."

"Sir?"

"Bill Patterson."

Mulder swallowed, kept his voice crisp. "Is expected to go before 
a psychiatric review board anytime now."

"You keep in touch?" 

Sure, Mulder nodded in agreement. Sure, a Christmas card every 
year.

"Then you will not be surprised to hear that Dr. Patterson has 
been released into the care of his family."

Before he could stop them, the muscles in Mulder's arm had forced 
his hand into a fist. He quickly ordered it to relax, stared hard 
as his fingers uncurled and made sure that they gave away no 
further information. 

Skinner stopped moving. "He has agreed to be interviewed."

"He suggested me?"

"He felt that you might have a unique insight."

"Did he say why?"

"I would have thought that was obvious. You worked for him. You 
caught him."

Mulder nodded, unwilling to hunt for further parallels between 
Bill Patterson, his ex-boss turned murderer, and himself. "And the 
objectives of the interview?"

"To find out why he snapped. To ensure such a situation never 
happens again."

Mulder's finger tapped restlessly on the arm of the chair. He 
tried to remember how to reply and to guess what words Skinner was 
hoping to hear. He couldn't think of anything, decided to keep 
silent.

Scully's voice broke in. "We'll get onto it right away."

An icebreaker. Mulder noted her arrival in the fray, but saw no 
reason to respond. Her gaze shifted between the two men and Mulder 
could sense her confusion. After all, asking him to interview 
Patterson wasn't an unreasonable request. She had to be wondering 
why there was all this dancing around the issue.

Skinner said the words that Mulder had merely assumed. "He's asked 
that Agent Mulder visit him alone."

Mulder nodded and permitted himself a single glance in Scully's 
direction, acknowledging that her look of disgust was justified 
not merely by the task but by his lack of fight.

Walking slowly from the office, head down, he didn't allow himself 
the luxury of a backward glance towards his boss. The autopilot in 
his brain pushed the basement button on the elevator control panel 
and held the door open until Scully joined him. 

"Care to explain?"

Mulder sighed, uncertain whether the fact that the elevator had no 
other occupants was a blessing or a curse. "It may be nothing."

She caught the bluster of annoyance that she'd been ready to use 
as fuel for her words, and took a tentative deep breath. "What do 
you think is wrong?"

"That's what I'm supposed to find out."

"You can't work with that man."

He shrugged, offered a vaguely sheepish smile in reply. "I did for 
three years, I don't see how a couple more days can hurt."

"He's insane."

"He's fine. There's a certificate signed by a judge and three 
psychiatrists to prove it. Better than I've got."

Scully shook her head, not prepared for that conversation. "When 
are you going to see him?"

"After another coffee." He ignored the idea that a couple of 
Valium might be a better option.

----------

THE PATTERSONS' HOUSE


Bill Patterson looked happy. Fox Mulder tried to paste on a polite 
smile as he accepted the suggestion that he sit down and make 
himself at home. The dark-haired woman, who Mulder recognized as 
Bill's daughter, promised coffee as she left the room.

"Mulder. Good to see you. You've aged."

Mulder found himself smiling for real now and nodded 
appreciatively. "I guess institution food agreed with you, sir. 
You're looking well."

"Fat? I know. Not enough happening to keep me on my toes. Do you 
know how many calories an active brain requires?"

Mulder let his smile fade, spoke gently. "It is good to see you. 
How long have you been home?"

"Long enough. I need a little action, a few mental pushups."

"Is that why you agreed to be interviewed?"

"That's why I asked for you as the interviewer."

Mulder's jaw tightened. He frowned, acknowledging Patterson's 
words as a compliment and sat back, trying to hide in the 
upholstered comfort of the couch. "Fine. Tell me. Why did you kill 
Agent Nemhauser?"

"You know, your interview technique always stank. I hear you're 
chasing Big Foot again."

"You're well informed."

"I had hoped that you would grow out of it. I'm surprised that 
Agent Scully hasn't."

Mulder forced himself not to rise to the bait, kept silent, a 
response born of long habit when faced with Bill Patterson and 
other bullies.

"Still, perhaps it looks good after months of grunt work." 
Patterson shifted forward and searched Mulder's face for a 
reaction. "Such a waste."

"Thank you for bringing us back to Agent Nemhauser."

Patterson frowned, shifted slightly, an admiring "touche" spoken 
by his eyes.

Mulder drank his coffee in silence while his old boss recounted 
the chase for Mostow, the gargoyle killer, the energy that he had 
invested in the hunt and his own personal journey into the 
darkness. Mulder finished his drink, then cleared his throat. 
"I'll look forward to reading all about it in your memoirs. But 
I'm still waiting for an answer."

Patterson turned dark angry eyes back on Mulder and feigned the 
idea that he didn't understand.

"Why did you kill Nemhauser?"

"You never did listen. I lost it. I was out of control."

"You were in control, you didn't kill me. Why Nemhauser?"

"He was getting close."

"So was I."

"Nemhauser was..."

"Not allowed to catch you. Why was I?"

Bill closed his eyes and sank back in his chair. "Who would you 
choose to take you in?"

Mulder accepted the words as another compliment. Swallowed the 
bile that Nemhauser's sudden bloody image provoked in his brain. 
Whispered a silent 'sorry' to a dead colleague.

----------

The lights were already on as Mulder entered his apartment. He 
scanned the room, checking for the correct positioning of the 
telltale markers that he'd left on the doorways. Not quite ready 
just yet for another visit from a wellwisher, or an assassin, or 
whatever Krycek or whoever planned on being next time. There was 
always going to be a next time. Until, of course, he was dead.

He flicked off the lights. Odd reminder of the abnormality of his 
life. Didn't normal people switch lights on when they arrived 
home? No matter. Too many thoughts already racing through his 
brain. Too tired to think about anything except the idea that he 
had to get the job done, failure was not an option. The Bureau 
wouldn't allow it. Patterson wouldn't allow it. Nemhauser wouldn't 
allow it.

With the recordings of the day's interview playing as background 
noise, he dug around for food in the iced-up freezer compartment.

The knock on the door made his muscles tense. He just wished he 
wasn't quite so wired. He decided to call out before he actually 
opened the door in case having his gun in his hand was going to be 
embarrassing. "Yeah?" 

"It's me."

Mulder cleared his throat and opened the door. "You said you were 
going out."

"The recital got cancelled." Scully stepped past him and into the 
room. "I wanted to talk."

Swallowing as he closed the door, he leaned back against it. "I." 
He looked around in confusion, struggling to find a way to say 
that he didn't. "Sure."

The all-business look on her face was replaced by sudden 
uncertainty. "How did the interview go?"

A brief almost smile. "I didn't get the job."

"What happened?"

He stood in silence for an instant, recognizing her rising 
irritation but unable to find the platitudes to soothe it, then 
turned and headed for the welcoming seclusion of the kitchen. 
"Coffee?"

"Sure."

Now that he couldn't actually see her, he tried to talk. "So what 
did you do today?"

"Tell Skinner. Patterson -- it's too personal. He'll see that. Get 
you pulled."

Mulder shook his head at his reflection in the coffee maker. "No. 
Bill will say things to me that he would never say to anyone 
else." 

He turned to find her standing in the doorway, staring. He didn't 
like how loud his heartbeat sounded. Her sigh focused his 
attention and made his skin tingle. He turned away from her and 
back to face the counter before moving the coffee cups into a 
neater line. He heard her slow footsteps, then felt the touch of 
her hand against his arm as she spoke. "That's the problem."

"Unavoidable."

"Let me help."

Her hand tightened on his arm and he shivered a little. He turned 
to face her, looking out somewhere past her head and into the 
night. Leaning forward for an instant, he forgot to think and felt 
his fingers rise towards her hair, then carefully pulled away a 
few inches and looked down at her. Looked at her for the first 
time that evening, first time that day. The curve of his knuckles 
trailing gently over the contours of her shoulder.

The click of the coffeemaker brought him back to attention. "It's 
just an interview. I have interviewed serials before. I had a 
talent for it." Talent spoken as a term of abuse.

"Patterson's different."

"Yes, he's cured, the others will never be."

"He knows how to hurt you."

"Not unique."

-----------
PATTERSON'S HOUSE


Bill's greeting was as warm as a spider's, and Mulder had to catch 
himself to keep his head from dropping to look for sticky gossamer 
webs on the polished wooden floor.

"Did you listen to the tape?"

Mulder smiled at the familiar ground that Patterson had chosen for 
his opening shot. No notes in his notepad and a tape recorder on 
the desk. Sloppy, time-wasting. Mulder nodded.

"And what did you discover?"

Mulder shifted slowly to find the most comfortable pose for the 
chair, allowing his fingers to twine loosely, and his spine to 
engage in a comfortably unwinding stretch before letting his hands 
fall back to relax in his lap. He sat quiet, considering. Watched 
Bill Patterson carefully. Tuned himself into Bill's too regular 
breathing, too alert muscles and recognized Bill's stance for what 
it was: relaxed like the cat watching the mouse that it was 
pretending to free. He watched Bill's eyes brighten as his pupils 
went large and the little nest of lines between eyebrow and eye 
twitched, a movement so slight, so definite, that to Mulder it was 
a red flag.

Mulder's reply was a sigh. "I discovered that you want me to catch 
you again."

Patterson smiled, no longer even pretending relaxation, predator 
awake and easy to see. Delight trickled quiet pleasure from his 
eyes. "I was locked up. Even now, it's close to house arrest. What 
could I have possibly done wrong?"

"You could save time by just telling me."

"Time is something I have in abundance. What about you?"

"Have you ever known me to walk off a job?"

Patterson examined his hands as if considering whether to kept the 
claws sheathed. "I've known when you should have done."

"Then let's go back to basics. Why didn't you to walk off the 
Mostow case?"

"Physician, heal thyself?"

"Only if you don't want to be sick."

Bill pushed forward in his chair, eager. "Yesterday's tapes. What 
suggested a problem?"

Mulder sighed. "Too many hot words." Sat quiet for an instant 
before answering the unspoken supplementary question. "Control."

"Control? Not fair. I've been locked away. You know that feeling. 
The Pinkus case. Straps on your limbs and drugs in your veins and 
no control."

"Irrelevant. You asked me how I know. About you."

"You only got out because Agent Scully signed you out. What did 
she say? Folie a deux, wasn't it?"

Mulder shook his head, soft but definite. The item was not on this 
agenda. "I saw something that I shouldn't have seen."

"But you still looked?"

Mulder's smile was slow, predatory. "You know me, Bill. I always 
look."

------

Dana Scully hit the stop button on the tape recording of 
yesterday's discussions between Mulder and Patterson. She looked 
back at the computer screen. Bill Patterson's ISU had handled 
thousands of cases a year. Even just narrowing it down to those 
cases Mulder that had worked with him didn't help much. So much 
blood.

Mulder had returned from yesterday's session convinced that 
Patterson was still a problem. The idea didn't surprise Scully. 
Patterson was a shrewd enough psychologist to outflank even a team 
of hospital doctors. That was the problem with doctors, they 
always wanted to imagine that their patients could get better. 

The problem with Mulder was rather different. Paranoia and trust 
mixed in equal portions to produce breathtaking leaps of insight 
or equally breathtaking lapses of judgment. She started the tape 
of Mulder's interview playing again and tried to hear the things 
her partner could hear. Shifting her attention from Patterson's 
cases to Patterson's life, she gave the FBI databases another 
search to run.

--------

Mulder pulled up, perfectly placed at the stop light, closed his 
eyes for an instant and took a deep breath. He checked his watch. 
Nine hours as the bug under Patterson's microscope was way too 
long. Wasn't that supposed to be the other way around, wasn't Bill 
meant to be his case study?

No change there then. Maybe he could get Bill, rather than 
Skinner, to sign his expense claim. Complete the circle properly. 
He tried to recall where the time had gone. Eight and three 
quarter hours of cat and mouse and not obvious who was what and 
which was which and fifteen minutes of something real and ten of 
them had been spent eating or cleaning up after a rather excellent 
peach danish. Was that what Skinner had in mind when he talked 
about history?

Which gave him nine hours of tape to review. To find out which 
five minutes were worth listening to. Maybe Bill was right, maybe 
he did waste time. The light changed and he pulled forward.

Patterson was always right. Mulder half smiled, recalling it as a 
mantra that he had never quite learned. What was Patterson playing 
at? A game, sure. But for real? Was there a real crime out there, 
a real dragon that Mulder had been primed to slay? Or a double 
bluff? A teaser without a story to back it up.

The apartment was dark as Mulder entered. He groaned at that. Day 
two and Patterson had already started eating away his defenses. He 
tried to think back to the morning. Had he left the living room 
light on or not? His hand drifted to his hip, releasing the gun 
from its holster. Deep breath as he entered the room. Checked it 
carefully. Pronounced it all clear. Switched all the lights on as 
he searched the rest of the apartment, just in case.

-------

Scully had abandoned file reading after a couple of hours and 
decided on a more direct approach. A little trip to meet Karen 
Clark in VICAP. 

Karen was hugging the phone to her ear and scribbling notes on the 
pad in front of her as Scully walked in. She smiled at Scully's 
arrival, waved her to take a seat at the table. ASAC Karen Clark. 
Dana Scully tried to suppress the quick pang that hit her as she 
saw her old Quantico classmate. Had it really been eight years 
since they did the assault course together? Where had it gone?

It was pretty obvious where it had gone for Karen. A ring on her 
finger, a three-year-old in nursery school, a nice office with 
good views from the windows and her name on the door. Scully shook 
her head to bring her attention back to the task at hand.

Clark quickly finished her call. "How's things?"

Scully hesitated and realized just how out of practice she was on 
small talk. "Good. How's the family?"

"Hell on wheels." Clark paused, startled by her colleague's 
suddenly serious expression. When she spoke again, her voice was 
both softer and more business like. "No, they're good. What did 
you want to talk about?"

"You worked for Bill Patterson in the ISU."

"Only on his computerization project. Six months. More than 
enough. Took all the glamour out of profiling." 

"Tell me about him."

Clark shrugged. "Mulder worked with him for longer."

"You were there after he left, before Bill's breakdown."

"Right. I'm with you. Were there any warning signs?" She shrugged 
again. "He was driven, he was a bastard. He could smile while he 
kicked you in the guts. I just assumed that was normal."

-----------

There was just a little apprehension in her movements as she 
waited for Mulder to answer the door. She could hear voices from 
inside, the TV she guessed, but the first voice she heard as 
Mulder opened the door was Bill Patterson's.

"How many have died because you can't face up to responsibility?"

The tape recorder's accusations continued to ring through the 
apartment. Mulder shrugged, smiled and beckoned her into the room. 
He flicked the player off as Patterson started to talk about an 
agent who had died to save Mulder.

"Good day?"

Scully didn't bother to acknowledge the stupid question. She sunk 
directly onto Mulder's couch. "I've been trying to find out more 
about Patterson."

Mulder's eyes flashed a warning before he quickly schooled his 
expression back to unconcerned. "Did you?"

She shook her head. "I had a chat with a friend from Quantico, but 
all that did was make me feel old."

"Sounds like fun."

Scully smiled, struck by the odd domesticity of the conversation, 
raised an eyebrow. "And how was your day, dear?"

"Met a psycho. Couldn't determine where he was keeping the 
bodies."

She nodded towards the tape machine. "He's playing with you."

"I... I don't know what he's doing." He pointed towards the desk 
and headed for the kitchen. "My report's on the printer."

The first paragraph was enough to ruin Dana Scully's evening. 

Mulder returned, a glass of orange juice and an iced tea in hand. 

Scully shook her head as she spoke. "You can't be serious."

"What gave me away? The balloons or the red nose?"

"You're going on record that Patterson is still ill?"

Mulder raised his eyebrows a little at the cautious phrasing, 
nodding slightly as he took the first sip from his drink and 
handed the other one to her. "I'm saying he should still be locked 
up." 

"Against the advice of a panel that knows him, people that have 
spent three years with him? Clinical specialists."

"Against the advice of anyone who would release him, whatever 
their credentials."

She gave a single shake of the head. "This won't go down well at 
the Bureau."

"An example of my 'renowned arrogance'?"

"Patterson still has friends. They'll want evidence."

Mulder frowned as he shook his head. "No, they'll want 
conformance. Evidence might get in the way."

"You're sure he isn't just playing a game?"

He shrugged, didn't reply.

"If you go in without anything more to back you up than gut 
feeling..."

They were quietly spoken words, but at that moment they were like 
waving the red flag in front of the bull. "Do I question your 
ability to do an autopsy?"

Suddenly forced on the defensive, even Scully was shocked to find 
that she was ready to fight. "My work can be verified. This? Three 
independent clinicians with nearly fifty years experience between 
them. And you say they are wrong?"

"You've never found anything that another ME missed?"

"I don't perform an exam if I'm too close."

"And I'm too close to Patterson?"

"Of course. Skinner should never have asked you."

Mulder stopped arguing. They could certainly agree on that.

--------------

Dana Scully had been right about how the Bureau management would 
react to Mulder's report. 

What neither Fox Mulder nor Dana Scully had anticipated was just 
how fast the reaction would be. The report had arrived on 
Skinner's desk at eight. Mulder got invited into the management 
meeting at nine. 

Mulder recognized most of the faces at the table, paying close 
attention to his breathing as he realized that he recognized them 
mostly from disciplinary hearings. Renowned arrogance or not, it 
was difficult for him to shake off the sensation that he was on 
trial again now.

Skinner's opening request sounded a lot like the statement of the 
charges. "You were asked to identify the stressors that led to Dr. 
Patterson's breakdown and to indicate how the Bureau could better 
protect its people. Could you summarize your conclusions?"

Mulder ignored the sudden instinct to declare himself not guilty. 
He flipped to the summary on page seventeen and kept his voice 
even. "He spent too long on a single case. Repeated losses, 
personal and professional, destroyed his ability to distance 
himself from his work."

Assistant Director Cassidy looked pointedly at Skinner, then 
resumed her customary role as chair of the meeting. She glanced 
towards the report. "And you go on to declare that Dr. Patterson 
should be returned to an institution."

"Yes."

"And that you believe that he is already engaged in criminal 
activity."

"Not necessarily. I believe that he is not competent to 
distinguish right and wrong. And that further investigation is 
warranted."

"The man has been declared competent. A lot of people have to be 
wrong to make you right."

Mulder said nothing.

"Why do you suppose they released him? A conspiracy perhaps?"

Mulder tensed a little, resisted the urge to smile at the casual 
insult. "Dr. Patterson is an expert in people manipulation as well 
as a skilled psychologist. He gave them exactly what they needed 
to hear."

"But you are immune?"

"I suspect that he gave me exactly what he wanted me to hear. A 
cry for help."

The others at the table sat back, fidgeting slightly, breathing a 
little heavily, looking too unconcerned.

Cassidy shook her head as she spoke. "Why would Bill Patterson 
look for help from you, Agent Mulder?"

---------

Skinner recalled Mulder to his office three hours later and 
patiently explained how the report would be edited prior to 
release to other parts of the Bureau's management. Lessons would 
be learned. Patterson's tragedy would be a cautionary tale about 
the failure of the Bureau's support systems.

Patterson's descent into hell had been a momentary aberration. 
There was absolutely no reason to besmirch the good name and 
reputation of one of the most successful managers and innovators 
the Bureau had ever had.

Mulder tried not to laugh at the thought of exactly how much 
damage any sort of report from him might do to the reputation of a 
killer whose final victim had been a fellow agent.

Skinner shifted, an uncomfortable fit in his chair. "Section 
Chief... Dr. Patterson has friends."

"Why bother asking me to report if they didn't want to hear it?"

Mulder scarcely heard Skinner's reply. The words were irrelevant. 
The quiet commanding tone in Skinner's voice was utterly at odds 
with the too tidy blink pattern of Skinner's eyes. Skinner had 
been taking lying lessons. Mulder tried to shake the fear from his 
thoughts.

"You leave Patterson alone. Understood?" Mulder took too long to 
reply, so Skinner tried again. "Understood?"

"Understood." 

--------------

The assistant waved Dana Scully directly into Karen Clark's 
office. "Karen said she'd only be a minute."

The windows drew Scully's attention first. A sunny day in the real 
world. She turned towards the bookshelves, not so eclectic as 
those in the X-Files office, these were a blend of computer 
manuals and FBI folders. Her eyes shifted over the personal items 
on the walls and on the desk, the certificates and the 
photographs. 

Karen Clark's smiling arrival in the office caught Dana Scully 
unprepared. Scully quickly turned the desk photo of Karen's family 
back to face the correct direction. Karen spoke first, pointing at 
the picture. "I think you met Nick?"

"Christmas party."

"Yeah. I think that's the last time I went to a party where jello 
and burgers weren't the star attractions. Kim's almost four. I 
guess that makes it five years. Jeez, that makes me feel old."

Dana Scully felt a shiver tickle at her spine. Five years. She had 
already joined Mulder then, but she was still a green kid, green 
enough to go office parties. A year later, she'd lost three months 
of her life and woken up in the hospital. Hadn't felt much like 
partying after that.

"Dana. Are you ok?"

"Yes, sorry. It seems longer ago."

"Or yesterday?"

"Right."

"You wanted to talk?" Karen waited for her old friend's nod of 
agreement. "Let's do it over lunch."

And for once Scully was able to say exactly what she thought 
without censorship or hesitation. "Sounds good."

------------

"Dr. Aston? Special Agent Fox Mulder of the FBI. I'd like to talk 
to you about one of your patients."

It was a few minutes before he put the phone down. He rubbed at 
his ear. It felt numb from the amount of time that he'd spent 
talking into the phone today. Patterson's doctors were 
cooperative, as he had expected. They'd pinned their clinical 
credentials to the flag when they'd given Bill the all clear, but 
that didn't mean they could afford to ignore a direct challenge 
from an FBI profiler and former colleague of their patient. If 
nothing else, they had to listen. If the crap hit the fan, then 
failing to listen would look far worse than merely being wrong.

So far, however, that was all that Mulder was getting, he was 
being politely listened to. He half smiled at that observation. 
Being politely listened to was a definite step up on what most of 
his Bureau colleagues generally offered.

He was going to have to tackle this from a different direction. If 
Patterson was already actively engaged in some kind of criminal 
activity, what would he be doing? All the fun of the background 
check fair, he decided. He started to drag files from the darkest 
depths of the Bureau's databases to be printed out for a little 
night time reading.

He returned from a brief trip to the vending machine to find his 
boss standing at his desk.

Skinner growled the query. "Perhaps you can explain?" He pointed 
to the thick pile of paper in his hand, Bill Patterson's old 
cases, freshly spooled from the printer. He shook his head. "Don't 
say anything. Your work on Patterson is through."

Mulder didn't even try to defend himself.

Skinner stepped up the intensity. "You've ignored my direct order 
to leave Bill Patterson alone. I've had complaints from his 
doctors about harassment."

"May I read the complaints, sir?"

"I persuaded them not to file formal charges. Should I ask them to 
reconsider? It's over."

"I get very caught up in my work."

"You work on assigned cases."

"I'm still the agent of record on the Patterson case."

Skinner froze. "Not anymore."

--------

The call from Skinner's secretary was not a surprise, Scully had 
been half expecting it. It was the tone of Skinner's briskly 
spoken orders, delivered almost the instant she arrived in his 
office, that she found more shocking. "Keep Mulder away from 
Patterson." 

"Sir. Isn't this a matter you should discuss with him?"

"He knows his orders. Your orders are to tell me if he disobeys 
them. Understood?"

"I'm not his keeper."

"But I am your manager. So. You will tell me. Understood?"

"Sir."

Her feet felt a little heavy as she rose to leave. What the hell 
was going on? Skinner ordering them off a case and doing it this 
ferociously? Why?

She arrived back at the basement ready to ask Mulder what he 
thought was driving Skinner's conduct. She shivered against the 
thin tendrils of fear or anger that were coiling in her stomach. 
There was something going on. Not just Patterson having friends. 
Something more. She didn't mean to look angry at Mulder. In fact 
she felt angry with everyone but him. She saw something of the 
same in his response.

Their eyes met, the ice in Dana Scully's blue thawed a little, the 
mist in Mulder's hazel cleared as he flashed a warning in her 
direction before looking away. He sounded embarrassed but 
resigned. "I'm sorry. I can't stay away from Patterson."

She nodded, unperturbed by how easily he'd read her thoughts. 
"What do you think he's up to?"

"Maybe nothing, but I have to be sure."

"I'm under orders to report to Skinner."

Mulder took a deep breath. "It'll be OK. We'll work it out."

She nodded, wanting to believe.

---------

A DC RESTAURANT


Dr. Francine Jacobs, nee Patterson. Mulder ran over her biography 
again. Bill's daughter. Twenty-eight years old now, she was just 
seventeen when Mulder had first met her. He thought back, recalled 
the serious girl with the piercing blue eyes and vicious turn of 
phrase. He could see her father's genes in there somewhere.

Francine smiled at the open appraisal. "You have an awfully direct 
manner at times, Fox. When we met at the house I thought that 
you'd forgotten me. It seems I was mistaken."

"It was a long time ago. You were just a kid."

"I seem to remember Dad saying the same thing about you."

Mulder smiled. "You became a psychiatrist?"

She nodded.

"Then I'll be careful what I say."

"I doubt that. I don't recall Dad ever describing you as careful."

"That's good, because I'm accused of being too careful now."

"Careful? Or just suspicious?" She paused, waiting for Mulder to 
acknowledge her remark, which finally he did with the barest tilt 
of his head. "Dad's doctors called me. Letting me know that you 
were snooping around. We could have spoken at the house, you know. 
I'll be giving him a full report."

"I know that. He's your Dad. But I need to be sure. Is he ok?"

"I'm starting to remember why I had such an awful crush on you. 
You have this way of asking one question with your mouth and 
another with your eyes. It's not that you're lying exactly, it's 
just that the supplementary question looks so much more intriguing 
that the real one."

"Look, Dr. Jacobs."

She waved her hand to stop him. "Patterson. I'm getting a 
divorce."

"Dr. Patterson."

"Francine."

"Francine. I need to get some idea about what he's been doing. 
What he's reading, writing, watching on TV."

"He's writing about my childhood. And yours."

Mulder shook his head, confused.

She raised an eyebrow. "His memoirs. Glory days."

"Do you know which cases?"

"Why don't you ask him, he loves talking to you."

Mulder sipped at the glass of water. He didn't love talking to 
Bill.

------

1986 - QUANTICO 

Fox Mulder was having trouble sitting still even though the 
placement of the telephone for the conference call meant that he 
had no choice. Even if it hadn't, Bill Patterson's glare would 
have made him think twice about moving. 

Bill's words were still ringing in his ears. "You handle it 
yourself. You think the NYPD boys are wrong, you tell them so. 
Tell you what, I'll get it on tape, it'll make a nice team 
training exercise." Mulder was still cringing when the call 
connected. If only it was an exercise. Only two months out of 
basic training. Wasn't he supposed to be in some hick field office 
making the coffee?

Matthew Irving's heavy New York tones boomed through the speakers. 
"You people obviously don't have enough work to do. Thanks for 
your interest. Two weeks ago I might have cared. The case is 
closed."

Mulder tried to keep it professional. "I don't think it is."

"We have the killer."

"All you have is an arrest."

"And a confession. And a plea bargain in progress. What do you 
want? Film of him ripping those kids apart?"

Mulder swallowed. "Your suspect is homeless, he has a mental age 
of nine and he didn't know the victims. The killer has above 
average intelligence, dresses well and knew them both."

"So fucking sure of yourself. Like you'd seen the bodies, visited 
the crime scenes, met the witnesses, interviewed the killer."
 
"I saw the photos, read the reports. It's clear that..."

The solid clunk that stopped Mulder from completing the sentence 
was the sound of Irving hanging up the phone. Mulder leaned 
forward, resting his elbows on the table, hands pointing to the 
heavens in silent prayer.

Bill Patterson moved in, stood too close, crouched so that they 
were head to head. Mulder tried not to react and felt his heart 
add another twenty beats to the 110 it was already running. Bill 
sighed, leaning in closer still, so he could whisper in Mulder's 
ear. "You'll learn."

Mulder didn't flinch, turned cold angry eyes on his boss. "And how 
many will die while I'm learning?"

Bill nodded once, rose back to his full height. "Depends how fast 
you learn." He walked from the room, leaving his youngest agent to 
enjoy its silence.

Mulder closed his eyes and let his face hide in his hands, knowing 
that a killer was free to kill and an innocent man was behind 
bars. He also knew that Bill would still be running the video 
camera on the room. Yet he couldn't help himself, couldn't shut 
down fast enough, couldn't hold it together until he could hide 
properly. Had to content himself with just hiding his face behind 
his hands. 


=====


1999 - MULDER'S APARTMENT

Mulder prowled while Scully sat. "I've got to get more data."

"Mulder, Skinner has already warned you."

"I'll try not to be too obvious. But the computer files. The 
background searches."

"You'll need me." Scully sighed, her or maybe her computer guru 
friend Karen.
   
A wave of a hand as a reply, then a hesitant smile. "Don't get 
caught."

She shook her head but accepted the job. "So what did you find out 
from Patterson's daughter?"

"That she had a crush on me. When she was seventeen."

"Anything else?"

"Aww, you're no fun. You could at least pretend to be jealous."

"Of who?"

Mulder faked a sudden pain. "He's writing his memoirs. Bill 
Patterson's greatest hits."

"That was what you were expecting."

"Yes. And no. According to her, I'm the star of the show."

"Hero or bad guy?"

"To be determined."

----------

THE PATTERSONS' HOME


Francine winked as she welcomed Mulder. "He's been expecting you."

Mulder followed her wave of the arm and walked into the study.

"Mulder. It's been days. I've missed you."

Mulder stopped moving for an instant and allowed a half smile as a 
greeting.

Bill Patterson switched on the video camera. "For your Assistant 
Director. He asked me if I wanted to file harassment charges. I 
told him that I lacked evidence."

Mulder smiled and took his appointed seat, dead center on the 
camera's field of view. "Do you feel that I'm harassing you, sir?"

"Phoning my doctors; suggesting I be returned to a secure unit; 
attempting to use my daughter to spy on me? Coming here without an 
invitation when another agent is assigned to the case. Coming here 
when you've been ordered not to contact me. Sounds incriminating."

"Social call. That's why I didn't offer my credentials to your 
daughter."

"Quite so. So what would you like to discuss? The weather. The 
flowering shrubs of the eastern seaboard."

"Literature. I was just surprised that you aren't using a ghost 
writer for your memoirs."

"Immediacy. Nothing has quite the same punch as the protagonist's 
own words."

"Then why are you including my cases?"

Patterson leaned forward, eyes focused comfortably on Mulder's. 
"Because you would never have the guts."

Mulder decided not to indulge in the stare-off, looked at the 
ceiling instead. "You could be right."

Patterson's smile was genuine. "In that case, I deserve an answer 
to a direct question." Mulder's twitch of a smile in reply was 
taken as agreement. "Why were you more scared of them after we 
caught them?"

Mulder moved his gaze back to Bill's face and allowed his relieved 
expression to admit that the question was unexpectedly easy. "You 
know that. I caught them when I understood them."

They talked until Bill's daughter reminded her father of his 
appointment to meet with his publisher. Patterson came to the door 
to say goodbye and suggested that if Mulder was going to make 
social calls then perhaps he should bring Dana Scully to dinner.

-----------

BUREAU

ASAC Karen Clark was all business, the speech she was making close 
to the ritual of the lecture room. "The database, as you use it, 
is designed for on-line searches. For security reasons, it's not 
bulk downloadable to a PC. But, it's technically easy enough if 
you have the right authority. Just get your AD to sign the request 
and I can get them for you in one batch rather than you having to 
query them one at a time."

Scully nagged at her lip for an instant, trying to find a way to 
ask without asking. "I need them today, I don't think Skinner is 
available. Maybe you could use some administrative reason to get 
them?"

Clark frowned and suddenly noticed that Scully wasn't talking 
business, she was asking a friend for help. She hesitated. 
"I could order a QC test on the files you need. I'd have to get 
approval from my AD first. I can't think of any other."

"No. Sorry, I shouldn't have asked. I don't want to get you into 
trouble. I can find another way."

"I can't afford to step out of line on procedures."

"They keep you safe."

Clark shrugged. "This assignment. It keeps me in the office, in 
DC. My daughter..."

Scully frowned, angry tight lines of frustration constricting her 
throat until she almost couldn't breathe. She'd forced an old 
friend to admit her guilty little secret, her weakness. If only 
she was allowed to have weaknesses. She sighed, she did have a 
weakness, Fox Mulder. Scully forced her mouth to smile. "It's OK, 
Karen. I understand."

They parted as friends, but without a solution.

Find another way. Another way to get Bill Patterson's old case 
files. By the time Mulder's call arrived on her cell phone, Dana 
Scully was exhausted. When he suggested dinner at Bill 
Patterson's, she almost screamed. She didn't. "Fine," she offered, 
in a tight small voice that was anything but fine.

"Are you sure? Another day, maybe?"

"I told you. I'll be there."

-----------

DINNER AT THE PATTERSONS

The car was sanctuary and Mulder was grateful for the comfort of 
waiting inside its metal walls. He really needed to talk to Scully 
before they went in. This dinner, which had felt like a fair price 
for information, was now starting to feel like a walk to the 
executioner's.

"Fox." The rap of knuckles on the roof of the car and the crisp 
voice that accompanied it destroyed the illusion of safety. 

Mulder sighed and opened the window. "Hi. I needed to make a phone 
call, I thought that I'd wait for Scully."

Francine raised an eyebrow. "No need for excuses. Dad thought that 
you would be out here, he didn't want you to get cold."

Embarrassment warred with dark sense of humor for an instant, 
before Mulder smiled and bowed to the inevitable. He followed 
Francine into the house.

Bill gave him a warm welcome. "If you wanted a caucus meeting you 
should have arranged a rendezvous a couple of blocks away."

Mulder acknowledged the wise words with a brief sparkle of his 
eyes and turned at the sound of the doorbell. Francine headed 
quickly to the door, leaving Bill to pour the drinks.

Mulder looked appreciatively at the bottle, "Saint-Emilion." He 
turned his attention back to his own glass, enjoyed the sparkle of 
shiny red against glistening crystal for a moment before sniffing.

"Your expensive European education not entirely wasted, then?"

Mulder didn't answer, too busy trying to tune his ears in to the 
female voices in the hallway.

Scully didn't look at Mulder as she entered the room. A tactical 
error, Mulder noted. Avoiding him only meant that Bill Patterson 
would get the chance to get in between them.

Bill stepped forward. "Dr. Scully. So nice to see you again."

"Good to see you too, sir."

Francine's hand suddenly slipped into place around Mulder's upper 
arm. "Let's go check the food."

Mulder flinched but couldn't really see a way to disagree. 

The table looked perfect, pristine white linen, a soft blend of 
pink and white irises as the centerpiece, shiny black squares of 
plates, glistening crystal glass. An exquisite if eclectic blend. 
Mulder looked at the dark-haired woman at his side and had to 
catch his breath. "Beautiful."

"Thank you," she breathed the words.

Mulder rigged the place settings to sit next to Scully, but she 
still avoided eye contact. The meal moved forward graciously in a 
haze of good aromas and glorious flavors, drifting slowly from the 
mostly inconsequential gossip of the first course into 
conversation. 

While Francine argued with Mulder about the usefulness of  drug 
therapy in the treatment of behaviorally disturbed pre-teens, Bill 
chatted quietly with Scully. Mulder kept trying to listen in on 
the other conversation, but whenever he caught a sentence or two 
of their words it seemed important to let it run uninterrupted. 
Bill was chatting happily about the stress of running a home, a 
family and the ISU. A stress that, as he was carefully explaining 
to Scully, had finally become a sickness.

It was after all why they were here, and if Patterson wanted 
Scully as an audience wasn't that the price they'd agreed to pay? 
She was an experienced agent and the partners could talk about 
everything later. And Francine said something about attention 
deficit and Mulder had to wonder if she was talking about him. He 
continued to eavesdrop as much as he could, but caught only that 
Scully seemed relaxed and that the words seemed benign.

With the coffee, Patterson got down to business. "I'm glad to see 
that you're able to eat normally, Dana. I must admit, I was 
concerned when I heard that you'd been shot. Stomach wounds can be 
awfully difficult."

Scully studied the surface of her coffee, rested her hand on 
Mulder's wrist as she saw his muscles twitch. "Thank you. The meal 
was glorious." She turned towards Francine. "My compliments to the 
chef."

"And, thank you, but Dad's the cook."

"Time on my hands," Bill offered. "I avoided mushrooms, didn't 
want to make Fox feel too paranoid."

Mulder ignored the comment, but wondered who had been feeding 
Patterson with the information. Another little job for tomorrow.

Bill smiled, enjoyed the silent discomfort of his guests for an 
instant, looked down at Mulder and Scully's hands as they rested 
on the table. "Do I hear wedding bells?"

This time it was Scully who flinched and withdrew her hand quickly 
from Mulder's. "We aren't. We work together."

"Then he really has changed his MO?" Patterson waved a cheerfully 
accusing finger at Mulder.

There was a threat in Mulder's voice. "Bill."

Patterson looked only at Scully. "He hasn't told you about them?"

Mulder didn't look at Scully, kept his eyes fixed on Patterson. 
"We work together. That's all."

Patterson sighed. "Agent Scully must be awfully committed to her 
work. To give up so much."

Scully quickly finished her coffee. "I must be going. I'm sorry, 
it's been a long day. Thank you for dinner." She tumbled over the 
words and came close to stumbling over the furniture in her effort 
to get to the door.

Mulder followed his partner, pausing only to glare at his old boss 
and wish Francine a good night.

He caught up with Scully as she was opening the door to her car. 
"Scully?" 

She took a deep breath, trying not to be angry with Mulder or at 
least trying not to sound it. "He's playing with you."

"He's playing with us."

"I won't play."

Mulder felt a sudden shiver that could have been cold, but 
probably wasn't. "We need to talk."

"Tomorrow." 

He raised his hand to plead and started to open his mouth to 
protest.

"Tomorrow," she said again.

---------

SCULLY'S APARTMENT


It was 2 a.m. The clock was convinced about it. 2:01. It taunted 
her with its numbers, and she considered turning it face down and 
blaming its nasty green glow for her insomnia. Why the hell had 
she brushed him off like that? It wouldn't improve any by keeping 
it for tomorrow. For today, she corrected.

It wasn't as if she had to feel guilty about waking him. She gave 
in to the pull of her fingers and hit the speed-dial button.

"Mulder."

Scully almost smiled at the tone of his reply. Wide awake. The 
smile dropped before it had chance to take full form. Had he been 
expecting her call? "It's me," she said at last.

"It's tomorrow then?"

"It's tomorrow."

"Twenty minutes."

"Make it thirty, you don't need a ticket."

Scully put the phone down and set about preparing for visitors. 
Patterson had rattled her in more ways than one tonight. While 
Mulder had been preparing to serve the food with Francine, Bill 
had been asking Scully the story of her life. The thing that had 
disturbed her was that she had actually found herself replying. 
Worse still, she'd almost enjoyed it.

The coffee was nearly ready when she heard the bell ring. "Twenty 
five," she said as she opened the door.

"Compromise."

She could feel the weight of his eyes on her back as she made her 
way to the kitchen. She was grateful when he didn't follow her, 
just politely stopped at her couch in the living room. Another few 
seconds to get her bearings. She needed it.

Mulder smiled at the large mug of coffee. "Planning on a long 
night?"

"Decaf."

Mulder looked dubious about the idea, but took an appreciative sip 
anyway. "We need to talk."

"I'm listening."

"Bill Patterson is off his head and wants me as mad as he is."

Scully snorted a gulp of coffee. That wasn't exactly the opening 
line she was expecting.

Mulder nodded apologetically, half smiled, relieved that the 
remark had broken the ice as planned. "What do you want to know?"

She swallowed but didn't speak.

He accepted the ball was still stuck in his court. "My MO?" He sat 
back, closed his eyes for an instant. "Workaholic."

"It's none of my business."

"I'm lazy. Diana was my partner. Convenient, don't you think?"

Diana? Convenient wasn't the word that arrived in Scully's mind. 

Mulder's voice spoiled her daydream. "So was Jeanette."

Jeanette? 

Mulder must have seen the confusion in Scully's eyes. "Jeanette 
was in the ISU. People thought we were married. We were waiting 
for her divorce to come through."

"What happened?"

Mulder shrugged. "Luther Lee Boggs, Monty Props. A couple of 
hundred others."

Scully unfolded her arms, picked up her coffee and studied the 
patterns the steam made. "It's none."

"It's a long time ago. Patterson likes to pick at scabs. That's 
his MO."

"I saw."

Mulder could only watch as she sat, rigid in her chair. Mirror 
image body language, both of them frozen solid, pushed back hard 
into the upholstery, hugging tight to the coffee mugs as if they 
were now the only warmth in the room.


----

MULDER'S APARTMENT

Mulder's eyes were open and directed at the TV humming cheerfully 
in the corner, but they were not processing any of the images. His 
gaze wandered to the window, searching for some daylight. He 
looked back at the clock, stubbornly telling him that dawn was 
still an hour or so away.

So much for that resolution, he decided, disgusted. No more 
running before sun up when his defenses were low and his blood 
sugar was rock bottom. Forget that. Sitting here was making him 
stir crazy, the clamor of voices, the kaleidoscope of incompatible 
thoughts, running far too loud. Ready to run them out of town.

One mile in and the clamor was quieting, two miles in and the 
battle lines were being drawn in black and white and red. It would 
be good to let Scully go, at least to let her go personally if not 
professionally. For once he could try kicking his profile and 
spoiling his MO. It would be good. Morally good. The action of a 
better man. Except.

Except last time he had tried to let her go, she had almost died 
at the hands of a rookie agent, her supposed new partner. Let her 
go? And if he did, would they? Why should they? They had her kids. 
They had a thing in her neck to switch her on or off, or drag her 
to her death.

And this was a dangerous line of thought and not relevant to his 
current problems. And his knees were starting to ache from running 
too hard, too fast, too out of condition. And slumping as he ran, 
he kept on running. 

Running hard, Mulder's eyes followed the hypnotic pattern of 
sidewalk and street clutter of hydrants and lights and stop signs 
and the repetition of brick and doorway and brick and doorway. 
Sniffing in clear cold air as his nose finally cleared and his 
lungs remembered how hot the breaths could be.

The clock in his head wound back, and recalled another time, years 
before. He recalled the files on his desk, the photos decorating 
the walls. He remembered the way Bill Patterson introduced 
Francine, his pride and joy. He remembered leaning over the black 
and white images on the table, staring through the magnifying 
glass and trying desperately to hide the images from the young 
girl in front of him. The girl who looked so like the third 
victim. The girl who Mulder instantly saw dripping blood.

He studied the road, the sidewalk, the garbage cans, the water 
sweeping into the drains, tried to recall when the rain had 
started and couldn't. His ears heard the tide of raindrops and 
punctuating it, the percussion of step, step, step, as his feet 
hit the ground. Memories pulsed in, listing names. Recalling all 
the times when he didn't even know the names of those who had 
died, even when he could recount their scars, describe the 
sequence of injuries, the defense wounds, the posing of the 
corpse, the exact need fulfilled by the death.

There, somewhere in the nameless files, Mulder recalled losing 
something. Not innocence, that had flown long ago. Innocence, like 
childhood, vanished on a lonely night. Not the desire to 
understand - the more he found out, the more he needed to know. 
Not faith, he always had faith that there was more to be done, 
more that he could do.

But he had lost something. A sense of proportion, perhaps. The 
ability to draw the line between work and home, certainly. 
Somehow, they had all become personal and somehow that meant that 
nothing was ever personal again.

And Bill's memoirs were the key to unraveling what he was up to.

------

 
PATTERSON'S HOUSE - 9A.M.

Francine smiled breezily as she opened the door. "Fox. We can't go 
on meeting like this."

"Is he in?"

"No, really. We can't go on meeting like this."

Bill's voice thundered through from the living room. "Agent 
Mulder?"

Francine shrugged. "Don't say that I didn't warn you."

Mulder walked into the living room and met the expectant gaze of 
Bill Patterson and Assistant Director Jana Cassidy. He stopped as 
if he'd stumbled into a wall but recovered his poise to offer a 
generalized, "good morning," to the room. Turned to Bill, "I'm 
sorry, I didn't know that you had a visitor, I'll call some other 
time."

"If you think that's necessary, Agent Mulder."

"Just Mulder, I'm not working, Bill."

"In that case, maybe Francine will arrange a more appropriate 
time, Fox."

Mulder took a deep breath and smiled a polite goodbye.

Francine raised an eyebrow as he headed for the front door.

He shrugged. "Your warning was too subtle."

"Dad told her to park inside the garage, he sensed you coming. 
Does he have a position finder on your car?"

"Doesn't need one."

There was a giggle in her reply. "Of course. Knows your MO?"

Mulder said nothing, left quietly.

When he arrived back two hours later, the garage door was open, so 
he could check the cars. Bill Patterson welcomed him. "Sorry about 
that. I couldn't resist. It was such a treat to see her face. 
Don't you think?"

"I know you're bored, but that was just low."

"You seemed bored too."

"I'm on the fast track to the unemployment line. Maybe I'll get 
into writing. Got any good subjects?"

"Women?"

Mulder suppressed the groan. "Why did you start that on that stuff 
with Scully?"

"Do you remember when I gave you Francine to play with?"

Mulder swallowed, flinching back from Patterson's sudden 
intensity, then recovering. "I remember your wife's death." 

Patterson's gaze wavered for an instant. "Do you know why I gave 
you Frankie?"

Gave? Mulder's eyes shifted to watch Patterson's. A recollection 
of a day in the ISU office, and Bill hauling his grieving daughter 
past everyone's desks before dumping her unceremoniously in his 
secretary's chair. His secretary followed him into the office to 
work through the day's mail. Mulder remembered dragging his eyes 
away from the 8x10 black and white photo of victim number 3 and 
seeing the living, breathing, crying teenager who looked so like 
her. Except in some of the pictures of victim 3 that he had seen, 
she was still alive and smiling.

He remembered not being able to tear his eyes away from the dark-
haired girl, even though he knew it was wrong to stare at 
another's grief. He recalled how many hours it felt like, and the 
five minutes it actually took for him to file away the photos, get 
to his feet and to persuade her to come with him for coffee in the 
cafeteria.

"I didn't know you gave her to me."

"Sure you did. I left her in your line of sight. None of the women 
were in the office that day. Who else was going to approach her?"

"Female substitute. Should I be insulted or flattered?"

"Oh no, it had to be a man, a young one. She was going to fall in 
love, I was just making sure it wasn't with some kid with acne and 
a routine for dealing with tearful girls at parties."

"Nice comparison, I'm definitely flattered. I never."

"Made a move on her? I'd have been surprised if you had. But she 
was fixated on you for months and that was enough. You know what 
you taught her?"

Mulder shook his head and kept his eyes averted, not wanting to 
know.

Bill's voice fell to a whisper, seductive and rich. "That death 
isn't always the worst thing."

The drive from Bill Patterson's house to the Hoover Building was 
slow, but not slow enough to let Mulder get his thoughts straight. 
The story unraveled in his mind without revealing anything 
tangible. There was just nothing to get his teeth into. No victims 
to study. No crime scenes to pace. Just a vague but certain dread 
that Patterson was creating nightmares somewhere out there.

Death isn't always the worst thing. There was, Mulder knew, 
something in Bill's words. They had been chosen deliberately, they 
had to be the next clue. The problem was, of course, that while 
searching Bureau databases for sudden deaths was one thing, 
searching it for people not dying was a rather different matter.

----------

1987 - Florida

Mulder was in no mood for the Florida heat or for the lecture he 
received from Mitch Samuels as soon as he walked through the doors 
of the police chief's office. Samuels' brief diatribe pronounced 
Washington the wellspring of the nation's liberal ills; the FBI as 
its strong-arm boys; and Fox Mulder as the personal embodiment of 
the kind of weak-kneed desk jockeys who thought they knew 
something because they'd read a book about it.

Mulder waited patiently for the tsunami to blow itself out before 
offering the mildest of token replies. "I'm here to help, sir. 
I've seen this cult in Georgia, they need sensitive handling."

"You think I'm insensitive, Agent?"

Mulder shook his head, more mystified that anything else. "The 
symbols and procedures they use in the rituals are drawn from 
Celtic mythology with a dose of Satanism they got out of the 
Readers Digest thrown in."

The police chief threw up his hands in disgust. He exchanged 
knowing glances with his officers, making sure they knew exactly 
what he had to put up with. "Excuse me. I've got to go talk to 
some freaks about a missing kid."

Mulder recognized the story. The young woman who had been the 
group's first local recruit since they relocated to the town a few 
months earlier. "She isn't a kid. Not by any legal definition."

"She got pregnant by one of those people."

"They don't use drugs or physical intimidation. The ceremonies 
are, in principle, consensual."

"In principle? You call a kid parading around naked then getting 
fucked by a gang of weirdos consensual."

"Legally."

"Don't lecture me on the law, son."

Mulder ignored the absence of an invitation to visit the cult's 
headquarters and just tagged along as part of Mitch Samuels' 
entourage.

Samuels didn't bother hiding his irritation. He checked Mulder out 
on their arrival at the farm buildings that now housed the cult, 
head to toe inspection, a slow sneering sweep of angry eyes. Then 
a sudden smile and a happy voice. "Hey, I thought you guys had a 
dress code?"

Mulder winced at the pettiness, then offered a brief humorless 
smile of acknowledgment and straightened his tie. He dutifully 
returned to the ferociously air-conditioned car and slipped back 
into his currently, nicely-chilled suit jacket. For an instant, it 
was a pleasure under the baking of the noon sun. He smiled at 
Samuels and waved a hand to suggest that they continue with the 
visit. Another minute or so and he'd be boiling, but there was no 
harm in playing it cool.

It took him most of Friday in research but by Saturday morning, 
Mulder had completed his homework. He'd been keen to interpret the 
symbols he'd spotted on one of the posters lining the walls of the 
cult's office. It told the faithful that it was time to fight to 
defend the faith and vanquish their foes in a cleansing tide. 
Their most serious foes, ironically enough, were another group 
that had once been a faction of their own organization. Exactly 
what Mulder had anticipated, precisely the reason Mulder had come 
down here in person. 

The job of clearing out the infidels that Mulder had suspected in 
Georgia was going to be repeated here. Cleansing fire, that was 
how they described the arson attack that had left five dead in 
Georgia. Suspicion had at first fallen on the local youths who had 
previously thrown bricks at the windows and beaten up lone 
examples of the group. It was only the cleansing fire symbols that 
the local police had referred to the Bureau for comment that had 
made Mulder believe anything different.

It was going to happen soon. Today maybe. By the time Mulder 
reached the station, the chief had already gone on his fishing 
trip and wasn't due back until Monday. "Who's in charge?"

The honor fell to the man normally fourth in line. As it turned 
out, "in charge" was a bit of a misnomer. He didn't feel able to 
order anything, not even a surveillance team. That would need 
overtime and unless it was on his list, he didn't have the 
authority. The officer ran through the printed list of crimes, 
waving them under Mulder's nose. "See here, Agent Moulder. Doesn't 
mention somebody maybe thinking about doing something."

In the end, Mulder had found something that was within the remit 
of the acting chief. A speedboat and a driver could accompany the 
agent to find Mitch Samuels and then he could argue the case 
directly with him. Mulder signed the paperwork to indemnify the 
local PD. In black and white, the FBI took full responsibility for 
gas, accidental damage to the boat and for pissing off the police 
chief.

Mitch Samuels was not pleased to see the FBI agent and let him 
know it as soon as he got within shouting distance. Mulder did his 
best to ignore him until they were close enough to talk. Samuels 
quickly boarded the police boat, keen to ensure that the agent 
didn't desecrate the sanctity of his boat, bad enough that he'd 
already contaminated the serenity of the fishing spot.

"You waste my week, now you come out here to wreck my day off."

"Two days, sir. They told me you wouldn't be back until Monday."

"Don't tell me how many days off I'm entitled to, boy. I was 
putting in the hours while you were still in diapers."

"I'm here because the officer you left in charge doesn't have the 
authority to act on your behalf."

"He's got everything he needs, he knows the rules. I wrote them 
down so's there'd be no mistake."

"I think that we may have a massacre on our hands if we wait until 
Monday."

"Of those freaks we met Thursday?"

"Yes, sir."

"At least they're keeping it in the family. Let me know if there's 
a crime committed."

"Please." Mulder already knew he was fighting a losing battle. 
Begging now. "You know yourself. There are kids there. Pregnant 
women."

"Pregnant, by their own folly. You heard that slut."

"We can't just ignore." 

"There's that we again. You want to do something, you do it." 
Samuels started to walk away, scowling.

"Sir." Mulder reached out a hand to touch Samuels' shoulder.

Samuels swiveled back to face Mulder. "Keep your fucking paws off 
me."

Mulder raised his hands in a gesture of surrender. "We can't 
ignore.."

"Try me," offered Samuels, turning again, heading back across the 
link to his own boat.

Mulder stepped forward to follow him. Samuels heard the footsteps 
behind, spun around angrily, rocked unsteadily as the two boats 
shifted slightly against the sudden movements. And hit the water 
with a solid splash.

Mulder was on the next flight home.

In Bureau mythology, it would be remembered as the day that Spooky 
tried to drown a police chief.

Only two of the cult's members died in the fire that occurred the 
following Friday. Samuels used Mulder's explanation of the wall 
posters to get a search warrant. It was enough to give him the 
evidence to get a conviction.



-----

1999 - BUREAU

Dana Scully sifted through the morning mail, dutifully logging the 
schedule of new meetings into her diary and filing the new 
standing orders on expense payments into her bureaucracy folder. 
She slipped the unmarked CD that had arrived in the Rolling Stones 
case into the disk drive. 

Not the Rolling Stones. All Mulder's cases from when he worked 
with Patterson. The summary pages from all Patterson's other 
cases.

Hell. Scully sighed. Had Karen put this together for her? Where to 
start? Thousands of cases. A needle in a haystack and she didn't 
even know if it was a needle that she was looking for. At least it 
meant that they could study it off-line without the threat of an 
irate Skinner suddenly demanding explanations on every computer 
access they made. She quickly put the disk back in its box.

The door opened and Mulder trudged into the office. Scully scanned 
his face for new information but the first thing she saw was 
exhaustion, his expression a darker mirror of her own. "Rough 
night?"

He shrugged, slipping his suit jacket off in a continuation of the 
same movement. "I think Patterson's doing more than just playing." 
He scarcely paused for breath before asking the question. "What's 
worse than death?"

Scully leaned back, momentarily fazed by the out-of-the-blue 
words. She shook her head and refocused. "Losing someone?"

Mulder shrugged again and turned his full attention to the 
computer screen. What was worse than death? What would Bill 
Patterson think was worse? Losing a wife, a lover, a child? Surely 
too obvious, too crude for Bill's needs. Even so, he ran a couple 
of queries on sudden deaths in the DC area, on the off chance of 
finding a name that rang alarm bells. He wasn't sufficiently 
surprised even to be disappointed when it came up blank.

Losing your mind, your job, your reputation? Mulder felt a certain 
warmth in the idea, a certain empathy with the motives. Who then? 
And how?

After half an hour trying to concentrate on her own work Scully 
couldn't stand the silence. "What are you doing?"

Her partner sat up sharply, as if startled by the reminder that he 
wasn't alone. "Bill's teaser."

"You've been back to see him? I thought you were at Quantico this 
morning."

"He told me that Francine had learned it from me."

"It?"

"That there are worse things than death."

The phone rang and Mulder picked it up. Skinner didn't sound 
pleased.

AD Cassidy's phone call to Skinner had left him very little room 
for maneuver. Mulder offered only token objections. It took less 
than twenty minutes for Mulder to conclude his business in 
Skinner's office and return to the basement to collect his coat. 
Mulder's official work today had started late and was going to 
finish early.

Scully sounded suspicious rather than surprised. "It just seems 
too convenient."

Mulder nodded vaguely. "Five days suspension isn't my usual 
definition of convenient."

She tried again. "It's as if Skinner has given you a clear run at 
Patterson."

"Make hay while the sun shines?"

Her eyebrows rose. "How about, giving you enough rope to hang 
yourself?"

She handed him the unmarked CD in its Stones disguise. He tilted 
his head to ask what he was looking at. Scully pointed towards the 
PC. "Your ISU cases. Summaries of all Bill's other cases. Maybe 
it'll ring some bells."

He turned the disk in his hand, looking for some inspiration as to 
where it had come from. "How?"

"Hear no evil, see no evil. I don't know who it's from. I don't 
really want to."

Mulder put the CD into his pocket.

Scully watched as he packed his briefcase. "I'll see you tonight."

He tried to stall. "Maybe we should tread a little carefully."

"That's exactly my point."

Half smiling, he accepted her complaint. "Let's make it tomorrow."

She blocked her first response and agreed to compromise. "Ok. 
Tomorrow at seven."

Scully stayed late at work that night, only leaving when she 
finally concluded that she had achieved as much as she was likely 
to do for the day. She knew that if she stayed much later, then 
all her instincts would start screaming that there was no harm in 
grabbing a take-out and driving over to Mulder's. Her brain knew 
better, they'd made a deal and she had to stick to it. 

She pulled her things together and drove to her own home.

Wandering around her apartment, she tried to come up with 
something to do. It wasn't that she didn't have a long list of 
chores and pleasures, personal and professional, that could easily 
fill every waking moment. It was just that it was hard to focus on 
any one thing when her mind was half way across town, locked 
squarely on her partner.

Her eyes drifted over to the telephone again, but couldn't induce 
it to ring. She could, of course, call him. Mulder wouldn't be 
offended. But nor was it likely that he would have changed his 
mind about talking. And right now, even a polite brush-off from 
him would just be rubbing a little extra salt into the wound. 

Some things are worse than death. Really? Mulder had taught 
Francine that? Francine had been just a kid when Mulder knew her. 
What the hell was that supposed to mean? She closed her eyes, 
decided that such speculation was not only purposeless, it was 
dangerous. She'd ask him about it. Tomorrow.

Things worse than death? Should be easy to know. It wasn't as if 
she lacked experience in the matter. She knew how much she needed 
life, yet there were things that made her pause. Things that if 
she could only change them. Except she couldn't change them. 
Whatever she did. Dead babies didn't come back. Chips in the neck 
shouldn't be removed, not unless she planned to let them win. She 
stopped. Another road too dark to travel. No point going there.

Her thoughts flew back across town. Mulder, she knew, would see 
the dark roads and feel obliged to start walking. Maybe that was 
the real difference between them. In the end, she would stop in 
the twilight to get her bearings, whereas he would keep on going 
until he reached the precipice. Maybe he sensed her presence, 
hoped that she would be around holding the ropes if he tumbled 
over. Maybe he just couldn't help himself, he would have to go 
there, safety line or not.

Was that how it felt? Compelled to walk into the dark just to 
follow the path to its logical conclusion? Or its illogical one.

As for his MO, as Bill had so cynically described it. Lazy, so he 
slept with his partners? She sighed a little at that. Not lazy. 
Invested so deeply in his work that he couldn't look outside its 
boundaries. Where did that leave her? She stood up and walked into 
the kitchen and decided to study the contents of her refrigerator, 
suddenly angry with herself for no particular reason. It left her 
where it always did. Doing an important job with a man she valued. 
Period.

----------

The next morning, Scully thought that she had arrived at work 
obscenely early. But she scarcely had chance to take her coat off 
when the phone rang and Skinner called her to a meeting upstairs. 
He had found her a job to do. San Diego. Internal audit and 
assessment of failures in the evidence handling processes of the 
field office. It was not her territory, not technically, not 
geographically. She pointed that out to her AD.

His answer was less than satisfactory. "Then it will be useful 
experience."

She considered continuing the argument, but Skinner waved a hand 
as a caution. "I believe you have family there? Perhaps the break 
will be good for you."

Hardly. Since Bill's baby had arrived, Scully's mother had been 
spending more and more time out west. She didn't need another 
reminder of where the center of the Scully universe now rested. 
She offered a farewell nod in her boss's general direction, 
sensing that the argument had been lost before she'd even reached 
the office.

Of course, her mother was delighted to hear the news. In fact, she 
was delighted enough to bring her next visit to San Diego forward 
a week or two, to join Dana on hers.

Mulder was less delighted. Scully was guiltily relieved to hear 
disappointment in his voice when she explained what had happened. 
She wanted to tell him to take care, but it sounded trite when she 
rehearsed the words. Instead she had to content herself with a 
reminder to him to phone her at regular intervals.

-------

1988 - LAS VEGAS

Gordon Hayes didn't bother to conceal his amusement. "And what do 
you expect to find?"

Mulder shrugged, lacking both the energy and the enthusiasm for 
yet another argument. He'd had a hat-full of them this week. He 
coughed again and tried not to let the single attempt to clear his 
throat develop into a full blown coughing fit. He failed, mumbled 
angry curses between peals of painful, hacking noise. His 
colleagues looked away and pretended to be fully occupied with 
other matters. 

Digging through his pockets, he eventually found a relatively 
clean kleenex to hold over his mouth, then stared in disbelief at 
the amount of green sludge he'd managed to dredge up from his 
lungs this time. So it was bronchitis, so what? He'd just have to 
quit smoking. Again.

He straightened slowly as the coughing finally subsided. Every 
time it happened, it felt like he was being knifed, hot and 
painful stabbing, then just sore, like someone had kicked him. 
Fortunately, so far, it always stopped before he actually passed 
out. Pleurisy? He considered the point. He'd check in with the 
doctor tomorrow. Maybe he needed a bigger dose of antibiotics.

Hayes playfully motioned that he was considering slapping Mulder 
on the back. The look he got from another agent suggested the FBI 
might consider deadly force justified if he so much as touched 
Mulder. Mulder suddenly recognized that he was again the star 
attraction and then realized that someone had probably asked him a 
question.

The detective repeated the query. "We've been over this place a 
dozen times. It's been over a month. We've had storms. What do you 
expect to find?"

This time, Mulder avoided shrugging or doing anything else that 
might tax his hyper-sensitive ribs. He decided that he didn't 
trust his voice either. Finally waved a hand as a dismissive 
"dunno."

He searched his jacket for the photos he'd brought, shuffling with 
embarrassment as he realized they'd been stored with used tissues. 
Wiping them off and straightening them as surreptitiously as he 
could, he tried to find the exact angle they were taken from.

Hayes grinned. "Want me to get you an evidence bag to store them 
in? I ought to warn you, if you find any tissue samples, it'll be 
your DNA I run for a match."

The ISU's most notorious asset turned slowly and lifted his head 
to study the tops of the palms, immediately realized his mistake 
as another round of coughing started. This time, when the shudders 
stopped he accepted the open door of the Bureau fleet car as the 
gates of paradise and slumped into the back seat. 

Agent Dawes drove him back to the hotel and called out a doctor to 
check him over. 

When the doctor finally left, Mulder frowned at Dawes. "I didn't 
catch what he said."

"You were too busy coughing your guts up."

Mulder frowned again; he was waiting for information, not a 
commentary.

Dawes held up his hands in surrender. "Pleurisy. Bigger 
antibiotics. Bed rest. You'll have pneumonia if you don't play 
ball."

"That a threat?"

"Advice."

"I'll take it under advisement."

"The antibiotics?"

"I'd never make it to the pharmacy."

Dawes smiled. "Sorry, I didn't mean. You get some rest, I'll 
shop."

When Dawes returned an hour later with pills, an economy size pack 
of kleenex and a couple of bottles of gatorade, the revised 
profile was already on the computer disk.

Mulder opened an eye to acknowledge Dawes' sigh of disapproval. 
"Get it circulated. Tonight."

"It's already 7 O'clock."

Mulder pushed his shivering right hand under the comforter. "Yeah, 
I know, we may already be too late."

By seven the following morning, everyone knew that they had been 
too late. 

The mixed team from the Bureau and PD shuffled restlessly to keep 
alert in the dawn chill. The marker tapes edging the site were 
spinning and swaying, singing in the wind. The spiraling shapes 
gave the place an incongruously festive air, reminded Mulder of a 
kids' sports day.

The body had not yet been moved. The ME hadn't even noticed the 
young Fed with his trenchcoat pulled tightly across his chest. 
When the ME asked who the big deal was that he was supposed to be 
reporting to, both the local police and the FBI agents pointed at 
Mulder. But it seemed so unlikely that he still felt obliged to 
check with a couple of others.

Gordon Hayes decided to lead the ME directly to his target. Mulder 
was leaning against the car and trying to move as little as 
possible. "Hey, Fox. The ME thinks you should be fetching the 
coffee for the grown-ups."

Mulder didn't look up, didn't move. He spoke cautiously, knowing 
that it was now only a matter of time before he lost his voice. 
"With or without sputum?"

The ME started to talk. "Agent Fox."

Hayes groaned, Mulder didn't bother to make a correction.

The ME looked puzzled, maybe he'd had the name right first time, 
no matter. "The woman died here, at least six hours ago, maybe as 
long ago as twelve. First impression, she may have died of 
exposure."

Mulder's voice was crackly and faint. "She was alive for hours 
after she was dumped here?"

"It's a possibility. I may have more after the full post mortem."

"Thanks."

The ME went back to supervise the body's removal.

Hayes moved to tap Mulder on his shoulder to get his attention, 
thought better of it when he saw the expression on the face of the 
agent who had been acting as Mulder's chauffeur. Bodyguard. 
Whatever. Spoke instead. "Mulder, how did you know he was going to 
change his MO?"

"Guessed."

"Got any guesses where he's hiding?"

Mulder slowly shook his head, then looked up, his voice suddenly 
panicked and insistent. "Shit. Don't move the body."

"Huh?"

While Hayes was still thinking about it, the agent who'd had the 
job of following Mulder around for the last week walked briskly 
across the site and began whispering orders. The ME stopped the 
team who were already halfway through loading the corpse into the 
body bag.

Mulder tried to form a coherent statement. "He's here. Close the 
site."

This time it was Hayes who understood and bounced into action. 
Instructions quickly relayed not to let any cars in or out of the 
area and to start checking out rooftops. Not that they stood much 
chance with the latter request, the perimeter was just too big and 
the sheer number of buildings potentially in binocular range of 
the site would make it virtually impossible to spot anyone who 
didn't want to be seen.

When Hayes returned, it was to find Mulder back in the car, his 
head pillowed against the frame of the window. "Mulder."

Mulder turned towards Hayes, but had trouble focusing, whispered. 
"Sorry. I should have known. That's why he chose this place. So he 
could watch us." Then the coughing started again.

Hayes heard the voice and it sounded so weak, not just with 
illness but with a tiredness and disappointment that overwhelmed. 
Hayes ran back to the crew, suddenly determined that they were not 
going to lose again. If not just for the sake of the victims, then 
also for the sake of the man in the car.

As Hayes had anticipated, the UNSUB had slipped away, presumably 
on foot. As Hayes hadn't even dared allow himself to hope, the 
man's car registration had been recorded by one of the team at the 
site. In the end it had just been a matter of honest police work. 
Door knocking, background checks. No profiling miracle required.

At least that was how he phrased it to Mulder when he visited the 
agent in the hospital a few days later.

Mulder was sitting up in bed surrounded by paperwork. With the 
fluid drained from around his lungs, a few days worth of 
antibiotics in his system and a couple of days sleep, he was 
feeling remarkably fit. He smiled. "Then how come you're here?"

Hayes nodded, happy to get caught. "To say thanks."

-------

1999 - A DC BAR

Francine Patterson waited patiently for Fox Mulder to get to the 
point. She knew that, if she waited long enough, he would. After 
all, she was a psychologist, skilled in drawing people out and in 
allowing them space. Wasn't that what people did with foxes? Let 
them run, then hunt them down. She sighed, disturbed by the 
flippancy of her thoughts. 

"Fox. Do you like my father?"

Her quarry's mouth shivered slightly. Frankie took a deep breath, 
that one flash of exposure had paid for her hours of effort on the 
man. She continued to monitor him carefully.

Mulder looked around the almost deserted bar as if checking for 
hidden cameras before supplying a single shift of the head that 
might have been agreement. 

Frankie smiled, there was always plenty of time. She nudged 
forward with another question. "Why are you afraid of him?"

"He's the road I refuse to walk."

"Refuse?"

"Have you read his memoirs?"

"Of course."

"Then tell me. What's worse than death?"

She let her smile widen. "You tell me."

Mulder nodded, a brief cough of angry laughter rose in his throat. 
Francine watched happily as he let tiredness and frustration get 
the better of him. He paid the tab without checking for even 
formal agreement from her. His voice was ice cold when he turned 
back to question her. "Who's feeding Bill information?" She gave 
him no reaction. "Scully being shot was general knowledge. That 
fungus wasn't. Who? AD Cassidy?" 

"Dad always said you let your feelings get the better of you 
during interrogations."

"He's right. Tell him." He froze for an instant, took an extra 
breath. "Just tell him, I won't follow him."

------

When Scully phoned Mulder that night she was surprised to find 
that he was actually home. "Enjoying your vacation?"

Mulder groaned theatrically. "Everything I could have hoped for. 
How's exile?"

Scully studied the pale walls of the hotel room. "I'm an outsider, 
doing a performance review. What do you think? Almost makes me 
feel sorry for OPR."

"Almost. When are you coming home?" 

Her fingers tensed around the phone, this was the conversation she 
didn't want to have. "It's Tara's birthday on Saturday. Mom wants 
me to stay the weekend."

She noted the delay before his reply, she noted that his tone of 
voice gave nothing away. "See you next week then."

"What's happening, have you found out anything about Patterson?"

She could hear Mulder smiling. "I'm not allowed to go near him."

"But?"

"Madness could be worse than death. Maybe. Don't you think?"

"Mulder?"

"It's OK. I told Francine, there are some places I just won't 
follow him."

Scully felt the shiver storm gather at the base of her spine and 
hoped that Mulder was telling the truth. There were times when her 
sanity was the only thing she had left. She reminded him to stay 
in touch.

-----------

Mulder was uncomfortable even typing in the question. Senior law 
enforcement personnel and recent psychiatric admissions. It would 
only be by luck if he got anything this way. Standard press 
services only in the search because he couldn't risk trying to use 
Bureau resources.

Hours later and he still didn't know the magic words. If asked, he 
would have readily admitted that he had no idea where he was going 
with the search, but right now there was no one to ask him the 
question. Each query came up blank or offered tens of thousands of 
hits, either way useless. Nonetheless, after each query he tried 
again. 

Hours later and he was looking at an article about an NYPD 
detective.

The name was familiar. Matthew Irving. The man who had let two 
kids die because he was so sure of himself he couldn't be bothered 
to read a profile written by some fresh-faced college kid out at 
Quantico. Mulder frowned at the cruelty of his memory. Irving was 
just another over-worked, over-stressed man trying to do his job. 
Mistakes were the nature of the human condition. Mulder could 
relate to that. 

Of course, Mulder wasn't a fresh-faced college kid these days. And 
Spooky had taken over writing profiles a long time ago and spared 
the college kid further discomfort.

According to the article, Irving had been leading a homicide team 
investigating the deaths of young women. He'd been found in bed 
with the latest victim, her blood coloring his body. His tie had 
squeezed the last breaths of life from her throat.

Mulder drove up to the city and decided to sleep in his car so he 
could be the first visitor to the station when the detectives 
started to arrive in the morning. 

First port of call at dawn on the next day was the pool favored by 
the agents from the FBI field office. Not that he planned on going 
swimming. He groaned as he checked his reflection in the washroom 
mirror. There was something painfully familiar about this process. 
A brief shower and shave in the changing rooms and he slipped into 
the right suit. He checked his reflection again. Master of 
disguise.

It worked like clockwork. The station was just waking up as Mulder 
went in and asked for Mike Gregg.

Gregg took only seconds to come bounding down the steps. "If it 
isn't my favorite tight-assed Fed."

Mulder groaned slightly as he rose to greet him. "And a very good 
morning to you too, Inspector Gregg."

Gregg grinned. "Shit, 'good morning,' don't say they've replaced 
you with a real one. What you doing here? This is homicide. I 
thought you'd quit this stuff." He held his hand up as if taking 
an oath. "There's been no little green men seen within two light 
years of the precinct."

Mulder stiffened a little and wondered why he suddenly felt 
nervous about how loud Gregg was talking. "Can we speak in 
private?"

"Sure." Gregg moved in closer to Mulder and pointed him towards 
the offices, he turned the volume down so only Mulder could hear. 
"What's up?"

"Matthew Irving."

"Ahh. You've just heard?"

Mulder nodded and Gregg pushed open the door to an empty interview 
room, he let Mulder enter first. Gregg stopped at the doorway. 
"I'll get breakfast."

Mulder scowled as Gregg walked away, irritated that he'd given the 
detective the upper hand and the time to compose himself. Still, 
food was food. And Mike Gregg was not the enemy. Maybe getting 
composed was the right thing to do. He experimented with the idea.

When Gregg returned a few minutes later, it was with two plastic 
cups of coffee and a paper bag of donuts. 

Mulder analyzed his breakfast. "Really, Mike, you shouldn't have."

Gregg swirled the plastic cup and tried to stir in the sugar. He 
helped it along with the half-eaten pencil he found in his pocket. 
"Whatever you might think, Matt was one of the good guys."

"I'm not here to gloat. Tell me what happened."

Gregg offered the pencil to Mulder. "How is this Bureau business?"

Mulder shook his head. "It isn't. It's personal."

Gregg blinked approval and swirled the cup again. "A couple of 
girls got killed, ODs. First off, we're thinking accident. Then 
pimp trouble. Then we got another one and we're thinking badly cut 
batch. You know."

Mulder nodded, the city's PD had enough problems without going 
looking for it.

"Matt Irving got the job of warning the ladies, a quiet word."

"But?"

"He came back ranting about serial killers, some psycho on the 
loose. Stressors, signature, escalation, the whole nine fucking 
yards." Gregg stopped talking and stared at Mulder, looking for 
clues. Found none. "Could have been one of you fuckers talking. No 
offense."

"None taken. Then what?"

"He takes up with one of the girls. Next thing, she's dead, her 
girlfriend is dialing 911 and Matt's in bed with a corpse."

"Any chance he was framed?"

Gregg laughed. "You been reading the funny pages again? He 
strangled her, his tie. After he'd cut her. His prints on the 
knife. I've seen him, he doesn't even know his own name."

"May I see the report?"

"If this isn't Bureau..."

"It isn't and you're under no obligation."

"Then what the fuck do you need the report for?"

"Old times' sake?"

"You're not working and you're not here to gloat?"

Mulder kept his eyes fixed on Gregg's. "Playing a hunch. Any drugs 
found?"

Gregg sighed, starting to feel his resistance fail. "In both of 
them. His prints on the packaging. I could get in so much shit for 
this."

"It'll be worth it. I can read them here, you don't need to make 
copies."

Gregg shook his head. "Shit." He turned and walked to the door.

This time Mulder was right behind him. "And I'll go get us some 
real breakfast, that deli still open?"

"Typical Fibbie, underworked and overpaid."

Mulder just smiled.

--------

Asking for Mike Gregg by name and more miraculously actually 
finding him had bypassed all the usual protocols at the police 
department. While getting into the police station without waving 
his FBI badge had caused Mulder little trouble, the Highview 
Secure Psychiatric Unit was a rather different matter. 

Mulder scratched at his memory to see if he knew any of the 
doctors here, but came up blank. He studied the staff list for 
clues. Dr. Martin Jacobs. Francine had married a Martin Jacobs. 
Maybe?

Nothing ventured, nothing gained. He decided to ignore the 
warnings he'd been given about harassing the Pattersons or their 
doctors. After all, even if it was the right Jacobs, this guy 
wasn't actually either a Patterson or one of his doctors. He got 
the extension number from the reception desk. "Dr. Jacobs. I'm a 
friend of Francine's."

"So?"

The one word reply played back through Mulder's head at least a 
dozen times before Mulder was confident that he'd extracted every 
available nuance. "I'm concerned about her. I wonder if we could 
talk."

"She's not my..." Jacobs paused, the sigh wasn't quite audible 
down the line but Mulder could sense its presence. "Come on up."

The receptionist gave him a visitor's badge and a security officer 
to show him the way. Mulder walked carefully, determined not to 
let the oppressive white glow of the tiled walls or the acrid 
antiseptic smells get under his skin. The nasty blend of hospital 
and prison that always made his muscles twitch was doing him no 
favors this time. 

He forced himself to ask the guard for a detour and a stop at the 
men's room. The guard nodded knowingly as Mulder came back out 
into the corridor. "Your first visit? Gets to you at first."

Mulder nodded, not wanting to argue. At first had nothing to do 
with it. It got worse every time.

Martin Jacobs looked too old to be Francine Patterson's husband, 
or even soon to be ex-husband. "You have me at a disadvantage. 
Mr?"

"Mulder. Fox Mulder." 

Mulder didn't like the flicker of recognition that shifted across 
Jacobs' face. "FBI?"

"I'm here in a personal capacity."

"You arrested Bill Patterson."

Mulder nodded, unsure whether this would be seen as a good thing 
or not.

"What's this about Francine?"

"Her father may be involving her in criminal activity."

Jacobs shook his head and looked dispassionately across the desk. 
"He's been involving her in criminal activity since she was a 
child. Used to take her to the office with him. When her mother 
died, he treated the place like his baby-sitting circle. Or is 
that not what you meant?"

Mulder swallowed, irritated by the sensation of being assessed by 
Jacobs. "Bill's out, but he's... He may be still dangerous."

"He wouldn't hurt her."

"Not deliberately."

"You think he's using her in some way?"

"Possibly to get revenge on other people."

Jacobs leaned forward. "Such as?"

"There's a new patient here, NYPD, Matthew Irving."

"I don't think there's much Irving left to take revenge on." The 
doctor waved his hand, a carefully dismissive gesture. "I'm just 
guessing. I'm not his doctor."

"Could you introduce me to his doctor?"

"The Bureau has no jurisdiction here. Even if they did."

Mulder didn't argue and suddenly didn't feel any need to know more 
about Matthew Irving or his doctor. "You're right, sir. I'm sorry 
to have disturbed you."

Jacobs swallowed, hesitating for an instant before responding. 
"Keep an eye on Frankie."

They said polite goodbyes while they waited for the guard to 
return.

When Mulder left the building he was still trying to figure out if 
the suggestion to keep an eye on Francine was a request or a 
warning.

---------

SAN DIEGO

It was a good time of the year to be alive. Spring in the air and 
summer arriving, great for kids growing up, plenty of time for a 
long walk along the beach, searching for shells. Maggie Scully was 
ready to drink in the feeling. Dana had been cancer-free for over 
a year and at last she felt safe to take pleasure in her recovery. 
She wanted to celebrate the first steps of her grandson. His birth 
had occurred in the shadow of a death, it had been hard to 
celebrate then, but there were so many more milestones to enjoy. 

A chance to start again.
 
It was close to eight by the time Dana arrived. She'd phoned ahead 
to tell them not to wait for her to show up for dinner. Even so, 
it had felt like an awfully long wait, more than long enough for 
the sick feeling to return to the pit of her mother's stomach. 
Maggie Scully tensed as she opened the door, automatically 
scanning her daughter's expression for some new horror story.

"I'm fine, Mom. Working late. I wanted to mop up the paperwork 
before I left."

Her mother breathed again and drew her into the house with a hug. 
Dana spotted Bill standing by the living room door and smiled. She 
was going to make this work. Bill tried to force a smile of reply.

Maggie, having finally convinced herself that her daughter was 
home and in one piece, headed towards the kitchen asking Dana for 
food and drink orders as she went.

Bill walked smartly across the hallway grabbing his sister's 
suitcase from the doorstep. "Bill, that's not necessary."

He smiled. "I know. You're perfectly capable of handling it. I 
want to help." He led the way up the stairs brushing Scully's 
protests aside as he went.

Dana decided to give in gracefully. "How's Tara? How's Matthew?"

"Just great." He waited as she opened the door to her bedroom 
and followed her inside, depositing the suitcase on the chair 
before turning to face her. "And how are you?"

Scully couldn't look him in the eye, couldn't bring herself to 
look at that earnest expression he would doubtless be wearing. She 
had promised herself that this would be a weekend for her mother. 
Reconciliation. Hope. If she looked at Bill she was going to get 
angry, she kept her eyes averted. "I'm fine, Bill."

"Sure. You always are. Just another bout of hospital. Same old, 
same old." 

It was not really a question. Dana shivered a little, she hadn't 
discussed the shooting with Bill, she hadn't talked about getting 
hospitalized by a damned fungus. Mom had told Bill. Lucky that she 
didn't know the rest of it. "I'm fine now."

"Sure. Fine." A pause for breath. "Why do you do this to 
yourself? I don't get it. After all you've been through, don't you 
know how precious life is?"

Dana saw the escape route and took it. "I save lives, Bill. It's 
my job."

Whatever Bill planned to say next was lost when their mother's 
voice reached them from the open doorway. "Dana. Your food's 
ready."

"Thanks, Mom." She made her way quickly past her brother and 
into the warmth of the kitchen.

Tara joined them soon after. 

Scully smiled. "You look great. How's Matthew?"

"In bed. Sorry you didn't get to see him. He'll be up at first 
light, so you'll get more than enough of him tomorrow."

Dana discussed the price and design of children's shoes with her 
sister-in-law and mother, and debated the merits of broccoli and 
spinach as vitamin sources for young children and big brothers. 
When Bill tried to get into the conversation she made a quick yawn 
of an excuse to go to bed.

She was not a child; she made her own choices. So why did she feel 
compelled to justify herself to Bill? Her thoughts rumbled over 
well-trodden ground before forcing her into an admission.

When Mulder was at her side, her efforts didn't seem futile and 
her sacrifices didn't seem pointless. With Mulder at the other 
side of a continent, explaining that she was giving up her life to 
keep people like them safe in theirs sounded pretentious and more 
than a little naive. 

After all, her father had been a career Navy man. Bill had served 
his country for years. The Scullys understood sacrifice and duty. 
Yet, they hadn't faced the number of defeats that she had. They 
hadn't given up health, home, family and love for the greater 
good.

She could hear the quiet rhythm of her father's words. 'My life 
felt as if it had been the length of one breath, one heartbeat. I 
never knew how much I loved my daughter until I could never tell 
her. At that moment, I would have traded every medal, every 
commendation, every promotion for... one more second with you.'

The pain welled in her soul as she remembered words that were 
never actually spoken. A vision of her father had told her his 
tale. How could she compete with her father? Even he couldn't have 
it all.

She read until sleep closed her eyes. 

And suddenly she was in that place again. The place with gleaming 
walls and bright lights and the incessant hum of machinery and 
alarms and horrors and pain, such pain. And she opened her mouth 
to scream but the sound wouldn't come. And then she saw him. She 
had to trust someone, she trusted him. But he shouldn't be here, 
not here. That he was here, made it so much worse.

She closed her eyes and wished him gone. But he remained, there 
and real and the most terrible secret of all.

She woke up damp with sweat and shivering with fear. 

Bad enough that her brain had insisted on playing her its favorite 
nightmare. Throwing Mulder into the mix and giving him a leading 
role was impossible. Was that every night this week now?

She just hoped that no one in the house had heard. She headed to 
the bathroom and splashed cold water onto tearstained cheeks, 
studying her face's puffy lines and red-rimmed eyes. Heading for 
her bag, she decided that a sleeping pill was probably the lesser 
of several evils. Facing the worst, she wondered if she'd ever be 
able to tell Mulder about the nightmares. Maybe she could ask him 
why suddenly her dreams had become so real that they didn't feel 
like dreams any more. Perhaps she could ask him why suddenly they 
felt like memories.

Of course, she couldn't tell him. If she told him, she'd have to 
tell him that he, her partner and best friend, was now the 
centerpiece of her worst nightmares.

Inevitably, Dana Scully was asleep when her cell phone rang. She 
pulled her head woozily off the pillows. Who the hell would call 
at this time of the day? She looked at the bedside table, 9 a.m. 
So it would be pushing lunchtime back in DC. She looked at the 
windows and noted the thickness of the dark curtains. Slow 
progress as she found her jacket and pulled the phone from its 
pocket. "Scully."

"Sorry. Did I wake you?"

"Yes."

The line remained quiet for a few seconds. "It's not important. I 
was just checking in."

Mulder and the X-Files had kept her awake all night, now he'd 
woken her up. "I'm with my family."

"Ok."

It wasn't until after he'd hung up that she noticed how abrupt her 
words had been or how awkwardly he had replied.

-----

Mulder stared at the phone as if it were a snake that had only 
just stopped hissing. The call had not gone to plan. Perhaps that 
was because there hadn't been a plan, just a vague hope that 
talking to Scully would bump him back on track.

Before Scully, BS he noted, deciding that was appropriate somehow. 
Before Scully had come along he'd had to do that job for himself. 
He just hoped he could remember how.

He was out of the door and into his car before the phone had the 
chance to cool down.

The mind was such a fragile thing. Such complex machinery deserved 
careful handling. Of course, it didn't always get it. Fortunately, 
it was amazing how robust brains seemed to be. It always impressed 
him that when it mattered, people could turn out to be such 
resilient things.

Take memory for instance. He'd always admired the way it could 
store tragedy and triumph in excruciating detail and then 
conveniently push them out of the way so they didn't block the 
view. Yet, it held them all there. Waiting in their neat little 
files, looking for the trigger word or smell or emotion to bring 
them back to the surface.

There were whole days when he didn't think of Samantha, when he 
could look at Scully without thinking of chips and cancer. Those 
were the days when he wasn't sure if he should cheer and declare 
his unhealthy preoccupations cured or should bang his head against 
the wall to remind himself that he was an insensitive bastard and 
that some things were supposed to hurt. 

He turned into the neatly groomed driveway, carefully locked the 
car door as he got out, and straightened his shirt cuffs while he 
waited for someone to respond to the doorbell. It was Bill 
Patterson who appeared. "I thought you'd forgotten where I lived."

As if. Mulder offered a courteous half smile. "Can we talk?"

"Of course. Let's take a stroll." Bill quickly pulled on a pair of 
outdoor shoes and a jacket while Mulder fidgeted impatiently on 
the doorstep. 

Bill stepped out. "Daylight! Can you imagine how good it feels to 
just be able to walk out into the fresh air? No begging for 
permission. No waiting your turn. Do you know how hard it is to be 
monitored 24 hours a day? Watched every minute. In your bed. In 
the bathroom." He gave a sudden chuckle. "I was forgetting. Course 
you do. How long did they have that video rig to spy on your 
apartment?"

Mulder ignored the question and allowed himself only the briefest 
shudder to acknowledge another direct hit. "I went to New York."

"And saw Francine's ex."

"Did he call Francine?" Not that it mattered much, it would just 
be useful to know a little more about the net of people who were 
keeping Patterson updated.

"Doesn't really matter, does it? Were you surprised about Irving?"

"We're in a high stress job."

"Ironic, though. Down to earth, pragmatic man like that. Who'd 
have thought it? Now, you on the other hand..."

Mulder almost laughed, but lacked the energy as well as the good 
humor. "Why are you doing it?"

"It?"

"Irving. I've collected some other names too, Gordon Hayes in 
Nevada, Mitch Samuels in Florida, others. I have no doubt that 
when I follow them up, I'll see the same story."

"And you believe that I'm somehow responsible?"

Mulder listened to their footsteps echoing against the concrete 
and marveled at the lack of other noise. There was just the soft 
hum of city traffic deep in the background and the slap of their 
feet here. Now that Bill had stopped talking it reminded Mulder of 
a sensory deprivation chamber. Made him think of being buried 
alive. "Tell me that you aren't."

"I haven't been in New York in four years, I haven't seen Irving 
in longer. How can I be involved?"

"Tell me you aren't."

Bill rounded the corner and strode purposefully into the welcoming 
noise of the bar. "You could use a drink."

Mulder followed his old boss without comment.

Bill snarled. "It's interesting. Most men fantasize more with a 
little alcohol inside them. You always got somehow more sober. One 
might almost say, more normal."

"Alcohol is a depressant. It damps down brain function, 
suppressing inhibition as a side effect."

The order, that Patterson had apparently placed using only hand 
signals, arrived almost instantly. Patterson picked up his glass, 
clunked it against Mulder's. "Just a beer. I'm assuming you 
haven't eaten yet."

"My MO?

Bill smiled. "What did you learn from your latest round of 
hallucinations?" Bill's expression shifted slowly to a frown, 
irritated by Mulder's failure to respond instantly. He intensified 
the interrogation, leaned forward suddenly, butting into Mulder's 
space. "A man-eating fungus, wasn't it? The reports don't give 
much detail."

"The reports are factual."

"How did you get out, Mulder?" 

"A search team found us."

"What did you do to get out?"

"I talked to Scully."

"She was hallucinating too. How did you know to keep kicking 
against it?"

"You can't just recognize a drug trip and wish it away. We knew it 
was a delusion."

"How did you test your theory?"

"I shot Assistant Director Skinner."

Patterson laughed, delighted at Mulder's reply. "Acting out your 
fantasies to test a theory. I love the way your mind works. You 
know. If they lock YOU up, you'll never get out."


-----------

Mulder let the splashes of color in his fish tank fill his brain. 
Fins and scales and flashes of gold and silver, tiny perfection, 
the world was a beautiful place. Their movements reminded him only 
of life, precious and pure, untainted by memories. At least that 
was what they said, fish didn't remember things.

Eels could swim from the Sargasso Sea to the River Thames. Salmon 
could return from the oceans and find the stream where they'd 
hatched. But they didn't operate on memory, at least not in the 
human sense. They were driven by some imprinted necessity coming 
from deep inside. Maybe that was a human thing too. Even without 
memories, there were still things that drove and defined who we 
were.

His thoughts flew to Matthew Irving. What drove and defined him 
now? Nothing, according to Martin Jacobs. Nothing, according to 
Mike Gregg. A blank where the man should be. Mulder wondered if 
fish went mad.

--------

Avoiding being left alone with her brother had become Dana 
Scully's primary objective for the day. Playing at Aunt Dana with 
Matthew and trailing her mother had whiled away a couple of hours. 
She was settling back to enjoy the ride and had almost decided 
that it really wasn't so hard to take pleasure in just being alive 
with people she loved.

The phone call broke the spell, she heard it ring. Bill's sullen 
expression told her who was calling. Scully straightened her 
shoulders and moved swiftly to the phone.

"Yes, Mulder. What is it?"

"I'm sorry. I wanted to check up on someone, I wondered if you."

"What's the problem?"

It was a few seconds before Mulder replied, guilty and hesitant. 
"Nothing. I can phone."

She tried to soften her tone. "Someone in San Diego?"

"Las Vegas."

She looked at her watch. "Las Vegas?"

"I can do it by phone."

"Give me the details." 

Mulder quickly briefed her on Gordon Hayes. The detective's steady 
rise to glory in the Vegas PD and the sudden murderous urge that 
had seen him execute the prisoner he was interrogating.

They finished the call.

Scully took a deep breath, straightened her shoulders and turned 
to face the confrontation that she'd been trying to avoid. "It's 
my job, Bill. I'm good at it. It's worth something."

"More than us?"

She let her foot paw briefly at the ground before turning a cool 
gaze on her brother. "I hope you don't mean that I have to 
choose?"

"We'd never make you choose. But what about you, Dana? Aren't you 
worth something?"

"Don't tell me how to run my life."

He stepped forward, moving to stand in front of her. Reached out a 
hand to hers. "I won't. Just so long as you really are making the 
choices."

She nodded, the twitch in the muscles of her mouth threatening to 
pull tears from her eyes. She sniffed back the emotion, touched 
his arm briefly and headed quickly upstairs to her room. Took a 
quick decision. Once she had done her packing, she would fly to 
Las Vegas immediately and then directly back to DC.

Choices. Choices. Where had all her choices gone? Since Blevins 
sent her to the basement had she had any choice? Pulled or pushed 
but it seemed like a long time since she'd been able to run 
freely. 

Why was that? The little voice nagged at her as she pulled 
together her things. Curiosity had swept her in, loyalty had held 
her in place and Mulder had bound her by a thousand threads. It 
would be wrong to blame him and she had no desire to abdicate 
responsibility. After all, he hadn't given her cancer. He hadn't 
stolen her babies. He hadn't put this beacon in her neck. Well, 
not the first time anyway. She slammed down the lid of the 
suitcase.

--------

Special Agent Dawes was the Bureau's profile coordinator for the 
area. Scully was grateful to him for giving up a chunk of his 
Saturday and she was even more impressed that he'd chosen to help 
out by meeting her at the airport.

According to Agent Dawes, Gordon Hayes' sudden spectacular descent 
into insanity was not, in retrospect, such a surprise. A recent 
rough divorce; a major defeat over access to his kids; overlooked 
in the promotion stakes due to how easy he was to anger. It was 
not a pretty picture.

20/20 hindsight had a habit of solving all complicated problems. 
His colleagues could have, should have seen it coming. They 
certainly shouldn't have let him work on a case revolving around a 
dead kid who looked quite so much like the detective's own 
estranged son. They should have followed their own procedures and 
checked him for weapons before allowing him into the interrogation 
room. Fifteen years working homicide or not, the safeguards were 
there for a reason.

Scully decided she needed to get him past the hindsight and the 
rationalization. She tried a bit of name-dropping. She knew that 
Dawes had worked with Mulder, after all it was his name that had 
got Dawes involved so quickly and so enthusiastically. "Did you 
ever work with Bill Patterson? Did Hayes?"

Dawes nodded. "Spooky's your partner, right?"

She nodded, didn't bother to argue with the nickname.

"Hayes. Hayes didn't have a lot of time for profilers, ranked them 
somewhere between tarot card readers and astrologers. First case I 
met him, he was giving Mulder a really hard time. Really hard. 
Second case, he was giving Patterson a hard time for losing 
Mulder."

"Losing?"

"Mulder had quit, walked out. Gone off to chase flying saucers. 
Hayes figured that Mulder would have got the perp after two 
bodies, not six. He could have been right."

Scully swallowed her first response and tried not to let the words 
get under her skin. 

--------

DC

By the time she finally reached her apartment it was past midnight 
and Dana Scully was ready to drop. She didn't actually notice that 
Mulder's car was in the parking lot until he got out and offered 
to help with the luggage.

"I'm perfectly capable."

"But tired."

She looked pointedly at her watch then at Mulder. "Good work, 
Sherlock." She allowed him to grab her suitcase and then locked 
the car.

"I wasn't really thinking about the time until I got here, and it 
seemed silly to drive all the way over and then not even wait to 
say hi."

"Hi."

Scully unlocked the door to her apartment and Mulder pushed it 
open. "Can we do this tomorrow?"

He agreed, but only in principle. "Just one question."

She raised an eyebrow to indicate that she accepted his terms, but 
doubted his honesty.

Mulder recognized the look. "Is Gordon Hayes insane?"

"Apparently. And according to Agent Dawes it was no sudden thing."

"Dawes wouldn't know which way was up, unless it had an arrow 
printed on it."

"Goodnight, Mulder."

He hesitated, looking at her as if he didn't quite believe that he 
really had to go or at least as if he couldn't think of any place 
to go. Then he remembered the deal, he lifted his hands in a 
gesture of surrender and headed out of the door. "Night."

Scully looked at her suitcase and considered unpacking. Hadn't she 
thought that she was dog tired? She sang softly to herself as she 
ran the bath water. First things first.

---------

Mulder turned the ignition key. In the history of their 
partnership, visiting Dana Scully tonight had to rate as one of 
his dumber actions. He'd dragged her away from a quiet weekend 
with her family to insist that she meet urgently with an agent who 
was the sort of charming, well-intentioned know-it-all who 
actually knew nothing. To make matters worse, he'd actually waited 
on her doorstep to tell her as much.

He tapped some numbers on his cell phone.

Francine's voice was dreamily seductive but not at all sleepy. 
"Hi, Fox."

"Can we meet?"

"Name a place."

Half an hour later and he was watching Francine Patterson walk 
through the door of the bar that he had recently visited with her 
father. 

"I hope that you haven't asked me here just to talk about Dad."

Mulder took the attack with as much grace as he could muster. 
"Actually I wanted to talk about you." Dark eyelashes stirred and 
she leaned her head to show that she was listening. Mulder ordered 
the drinks and bought himself time to rephrase his questions so 
that the focus really fell on her. "When we met. After your Mom 
died. Why did he bring you to the office?"

She smiled. "To meet you, of course."

"Why?"

"He was worried some creep would take advantage of me. He was 
worried that you would run off with some woman and decide to get a 
life."

"Two birds with one stone. Mr. Efficiency."

"It worked."

Mulder accepted that, fidgeted, looking for the ideal placement 
for his glass on the table. "Why were you interested in me?"

"You didn't ignore me, you didn't look embarrassed when I cried. I 
thought you understood me, maybe even liked me. I was very naive."

"Naive?"

"I looked like one of those dead bodies that you and Dad loved so 
much. Better than therapy. You couldn't save them, so you got to 
save me. You dissected me, to see how I worked. You thought I was 
one of them."

Mulder slouched, rested his elbow on the table, letting his hand 
take some of the weight of holding up his head. "You were you. 
That was enough."

"I could never be enough. I was alive. You used me as a lab rat. 
Did you even notice that I had fallen in love with you?"

His fingers shifted to rest against the edge of his mouth.

She shook her head, frustration driving her voice past its usual 
clinical detachment. She sounded hard now, commanding, more like 
her Dad. "Of course not. You were too busy. Getting the shit 
kicked out of you by Dad and the rest of them. You took what you 
wanted from me. Then you filed me under boss's daughter and 
recovering victim. You wanted to play big brother and no matter 
what I did, you kept me neatly pigeon-holed in my safe little 
box."

"You were a kid."

The tiny pulse of argument from Mulder was enough to force her 
anger above boiling point. "I didn't say you should have fucked 
me. Being noticed would have been fine."

He stared at the surface of his drink and studied the motion of 
the ice in the glass. 

Francine downed her vodka in one swift gulp. "Dad used to say that 
you had no idea where you stopped and the victims started. I 
didn't know what he meant until I grew up."

Mulder kept his eyes down and his mouth shut.

"You could live with them because they were dead and the dead 
don't feel anything." She rose to her feet, triumphant. "That's 
your real MO." 

Francine had left the bar before Mulder looked up from his drink. 
His ears buzzed, replaying her remarks on high echo to try and get 
every phrase, every pause, every variation in tone locked tight in 
his memory.

The hum of the bar became more insistent, starting to drown out 
the total recall. It descended, trapping him, like the swarming of 
a million bees. Some inner sense told him that really he should be 
crying now for things lost and things that he would never be. He 
touched his face, stone dry. As was to be expected. Then he saw 
it, the only emotion he recognized as real. At least this was 
true, he hated Bill fucking Patterson.


-------

Scully looked at the clock. Pushing one and she ought to be tired, 
yet she wasn't. Not tired enough to want to sleep. Too much flying 
and too rough a week and last night's sleeping pill. Her body 
seemed to have lost the habit of knowing how to stop when her 
brain ran out of steam.

What the hell. She contemplated a run. But some combination of how 
nice the bath had made her skin feel, and how uncomfortable 
jogging shoes sounded, and the fact that FBI agent or not, after 
midnight wasn't a good time to be out running, stopped her from 
following it up.

She switched on the TV and tried to stop.

How many had died because of the X-Files? Their personal roll call 
of losses was bad enough. Family, colleagues, contacts, other 
people had paid in blood for their crusade. And how many had they 
saved? If the balance sheet was drawn up today, how much 
difference had they actually made?

If she factored in the deaths that might have been prevented if 
Mulder had stayed in the mainstream? And if she had? 

Unknown quantities against the possibility that they had to save 
the world. Really? She was going to save the world from a threat 
that she couldn't even define. Her partner was going to convince 
the planet to fight some alien Armageddon? Seven years and he 
still hadn't even convinced her.

It was too big. If the menace was real, it was too big. If it 
wasn't real then they weren't just wasting their lives and evading 
their real responsibilities. All this sacrifice and it could never 
be enough. All this sacrifice and they weren't even capable of 
saving themselves.

It crowded in, tingling at her senses. Electric sparks of doubt 
under her fingernails. Breathless, nameless fear constricting her 
chest.

So she stopped.

Sluicing down a sleeping pill with a glass of water, she lay back 
in her bed and waited for sleep to come. She hoped for delivery to 
a safe quiet place where peace would hold her close.

The numbers on the clock's face edged forward, excruciatingly 
slowly, but forward. She drifted down, let the pill take her 
under.

The lights were so bright here. The cacophony of noise so loud. 
And Mulder's voice so out of place. The scream stuck in her 
throat, strangling her. She heard his voice again.

Then she discovered that she could scream after all.

-----

MULDER'S APARTMENT

There was just too much data. There were thousands of cases. Even 
if Mulder narrowed it to the ones he'd worked with Patterson it 
was still hundreds. If he factored in the consulting work, then it 
just reminded him of how grateful he was when he'd walked out of 
the ISU.

If he was working the case officially then he could take a shot at 
Skinner and get someone to give him access to the Bureau's list of 
medical retirements and long term disability claims. Do some kind 
of cross-reference. Doing things unofficially using on-line 
newspapers was just a lucky dip. It was amazing that he'd found 
any names that he recognized. Or maybe it wasn't. Maybe with 
hundreds of cases, you meet thousands of people and maybe the 
stats say you should expect trouble.

He stopped, squeezed his eyes tight shut to try and clear his 
thoughts, then took a deep breath and held it for a few seconds. 
He waited until he could feel the frustration die down to 
something more manageable. He needed to calm down enough so that 
he could free himself, shake things up and start again. He looked 
at the clock. Eight a.m. on a Sunday was not a good time to phone 
his partner. There were some mistakes that he didn't need to make. 

The computer flicked up the results of yet another keyword search 
on the CD-ROM that Scully had supplied. Mulder reread the name of 
the file at the top. Alan Kurzman, destroyer of five teenage 
girls, including one who looked awfully like Francine Patterson.

The Kurzman file. The Moon Killer, as the team had called him. The 
file nagged at him, it had been doing that for a while now. It 
kept forcing its way out of the pile, it demanded attention and 
Mulder knew it. Yet something kept holding him back. He listened 
to his breathing, forced himself to look at the photographs and 
tried to let it trip the memories that he knew were still seared 
in his brain. They refused to come. He remembered the facts of the 
case, he recognized the names of the investigating team, he 
recalled the smile that Kurzman wore as he charmed everyone he 
met. But it wasn't enough, he needed to remember the rest. He 
needed the things that weren't contained in the words of the file.

Sighing as he refilled the coffeemaker, he wondered what the hell 
his problem was. He rubbed wearily at the back of his neck and 
stretched his head upwards to look at the ceiling. If he looked 
really carefully he could see the telltale change in the matte 
surface of the paint up there, the dime-sized patch that covered 
the old location of a surveillance camera.

Why the fuck hadn't he moved out of here? He forced his eyes to 
focus properly and made his brain do the same thing. Why move? If 
not here, then where? Where the hell could you go to get away from 
those people and their video cameras and their bugs? Nowhere. So 
why bother moving?

Grateful that he'd resolved that particular quandary, he dug 
through the cupboards and the refrigerator in search of food. He 
was unimpressed by the selection of tuna, stale crackers and odd 
things that visitors had left behind. 

Why the hell did he have a jar of Marmite anyway? He opened the 
lid and wondered what it could be made of that wouldn't have grown 
mold by now. He dipped a tentative finger into the brown sludge, 
sniffed and licked. The jar fitted better in the trash than in the 
cupboard. He recalled an Oxford friend describing it as an 
acquired taste. 

Shaking his head at the displacement activities that had 
apparently taken over from research, he decided that it was an 
omen. He bowed to the inevitable and went shopping. 

Fed and watered, he checked his watch. Almost ten. Maybe he could 
risk calling Scully. About? He winced at the sudden attack of 
conscience and left the phone alone.

Unable to come up with any more tasks, he settled down in front of 
the computer screen again. The Kurzman case. Why the hesitation? 
Blood sugar back up to a fully functional level, he admitted that 
he knew exactly why. Francine Patterson. Cursing himself for 
cowardice, he wondered why this hadn't been the first file he had 
read when he realized that Bill was up to something. Or at least 
when he'd started to suspect that Francine was the catalyst, Bill 
had 'given her' to him. Cowardice, he decided again, happy to pin 
a name on it at least.

Diana Fowley's name sprang out from the mass of words on the page. 
Angry now as well as contrite, Mulder realized what else he'd 
conveniently forgotten. He'd met her for the first time during the 
Kurzman case. So much for Patterson's clever plan to keep him away 
from women who might make him run away to get a life. Not that he 
had found himself a life when he ran away with Fowley. Not that it 
was instant either. Fowley didn't become a lover or a partner 
until a few months later.

He picked up the phone and dialed, drummed his fingers anxiously 
against the plastic as he waited for her to reply. "Diana. It's 
me. Can we talk?"

There were a few seconds of silence before Fowley finally replied. 
"Where?"

Mulder analyzed the pause and decided that Diana was surprised to 
hear from him. He hadn't spoken to her since he'd almost handed 
her a death sentence by directing her to El Rico Airbase. She was 
lucky to be alive and he hadn't even called her to say that he was 
relieved. No wonder she was surprised to hear his voice. 

"My apartment? I wanted to talk to you about an old case. Not an 
X-File. Alan Kurzman. Killed teenage girls. You were working in 
the LA office." 

He stopped talking, embarrassed by the too-fast attempt to 
emphasize that this was nothing personal and nothing to do with 
aliens or charred corpses. Couldn't he have even managed a 'hello, 
how are you,' before making it clear that this was just business? 
Apparently not. More cowardice.

She was only a little slow to reply. "I'll be right there."

He put the phone down carefully. At least, now that he'd shopped, 
he could offer her something to eat. He decided to do a little 
cleaning while he waited for her. He stopped, still vaguely 
ashamed that he couldn't concentrate on the Kurzman case, then 
decided to forgive himself. There was no point pretending that he 
was going to suddenly get some flash of insight in the next few 
minutes that would get him over the hump. Whereas, he could at 
least vacuum the place and straighten the kitchen.

She was true to her word; the dishes weren't even dry by the time 
Diana Fowley rang the doorbell.

Mulder didn't try to disguise his nerves as he opened the door. 
When he failed to move aside to let her in, she prodded him gently 
on the shoulder and he took an apologetic step back.

"You're looking," he hesitated, scrambled through his head for 
smalltalk words, "well."

"You too. I was surprised to get your call. I thought you were 
avoiding me."

"Look. About El Rico. I had no idea what was going down there. 
Just what that smoking bastard had told me. I never dreamed..."

"No doubt that went for all the others who showed up too. No one 
volunteers for cremation." 

He shivered, oddly relieved to see her, suddenly elated to be off 
the hook. "At least, not while they're alive."

She smiled. "You're a sick man, Fox."

"Sorry." He froze, suddenly getting the idea that she was 
absolutely right in her assessment and then just as quickly 
brushing the thought away. "Do you remember the Kurzman case?" 

She shook her head. "You don't waste time, do you." She headed for 
the couch and made herself comfortable.

Mulder followed her in, sheepish now. "Coffee?"

"I prefer strong, black."

"Are we still talking about coffee?"

And she laughed, remembering a young Fox Mulder and a particular 
light in his eyes, windows on the soul. And he laughed, 
remembering how easy it was to laugh.

The laughter and the flash of good memories soon died away as they 
started to go through the photographs of Kurzman's young victims.

Diana's jaw tightened as she recognized the California teenagers, 
tired frown lines worked their way across her forehead. She 
swallowed and pushed her hair back over her ear, her lips tense as 
she worked her way back through the years. 

Mulder watched her and saw the memories start to race across her 
face. He sank down into the cushions and allowed his thoughts to 
do the same.

1989 was a year of changes. Looking back, Mulder knew that he'd 
lost Jeanette long before she walked out of the door early that 
year. When he'd started having the panic attacks after the 
screaming nightmares, she had wanted to help. He hadn't allowed 
her to, he hadn't been able to trust her enough not to tell 
Patterson or someone even more dangerous.

The odd thing about Diana was that he had trusted her almost 
instantly. Not her judgment, not her opinions, not even her 
methods, but her. Possibly because her ideas were even weirder 
than his. There was no way she could shop him to the Bureau's 
psychiatric services team or even make fun of him in front of 
colleagues. After all, he had plenty of ammunition about her.

They talked as they flicked between pictures until finally Mulder 
found that he could remember the Kurzman case.

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