From: shawntaw@hotmail.com
Date: Tue, 04 Dec 2001 17:23:30 -0000
Subject: xfc: Safe Harbor XI by shawntaw
Source: xfc

Title: Safe Harbor XI
Author: shawntaw
Category: MSR, Mulder/Scully/Skinner friendship, ProfilingMulder
Rating: PG, maybe R
Disclaimer: Well, I invited them over for dinner and begged them to 
let me be their new owner, but they said they were legally bound to 
stay with their current master.  *sigh*  I could have made their 
lives SO much easier and MUCH more interesting.... (hopefully you 
know I'm joking...if not, please see your family practicioner 
immmediately.*L*)  Oh yeah, and I'm not making any money off this gig 
either.  I do it for the love, man. (making peace symbol)

I also don't own any of Charles Dickens' work and am making no money 
off of any references to his literature herein.

I also do not own the U.S. Post Office (duh) or We Deliver (which I 
made up but you never know if it might really exist somewhere).

Summary: As Scully and Skinner start off on a line of investigation 
apparently contrary to Mulder's profile, Mulder is discovering how 
right his profile may be after all...

DEDICATION: To Mimic, who gave me a mint green disc all my own.  That 
really brought a grin to my face.  I hope when you finally read this 
(she's waiting for it to be done first) it will have been worth the 
wait!:)


NOTES: Ok, everyone have their clues all lined up....everyone guessed 
what's coming?....I'll reveal the telling clues in NOTES at the end 
of this part....here goes...

ANOTHER IMPORTANT NOTE: Um, my knowledge of Roman numerals gets kinda 
sketchy after x=10, so I hope I get it right from now on. :)

********************************************************
Mulder stared at the small, familiar-looking woman and felt his mouth 
hanging open.  

He closed it and swallowed as the small woman stepped down a few 
steps toward him.

"Haven't you figured it out yet, AGENT Mulder?" she taunted him in 
her familiar sing-song voice.

*That voice.  Just an octive higher, but the same...*

"Twin sister?" Mulder ventured, not wanting to give voice to his 
actual conclusion.

She laughed and ran a hand through her short hair.

"This is the only thing I regret.  I had beautiful, long hair once," 
she sighed, "but it didn't meet with my father's approval."

"You-you live as a man," Mulder stated.

The profile began to click together in his head, piece by piece.  
Mulder felt that rush to his head he always gets when a profile 
begins to make sense.

"Your father wanted a boy, didn't he?  And he never let you forget 
it.  You tried to be the boy he wanted, didn't you?" 

Mulder was babbling to himself mostly, eyes clouded over as he read 
from the notes in his mind.  He failed to notice the killers 
breathing quicken or her jaw clenching.

"But the more you tried, the more enraged he got.  What? Did he hit 
you? Abuse you?  Call you a weirdo for dressing and acting like a 
guy?"

Mulder snapped to with a shake of his head and focused again on the 
woman standing in front of him, trembling with rage.

"Very good.  Exactly correct," she said to him through her 
teeth, "And you'll be happy to know that your friends are beginning 
to figure it out too.  But they won't be in time for you."

She reached behind her into the waistband of her jeans and pulled out 
a small gun.

"And now you die," she said, firing.

Mulder started to dive but there was nowhere to go; he was trapped.

Pain exploded across his back.

The last thing he heard was the killer's shrill laughter.

*******************************************************

He was floating.

His body was being lifted...dragged?

*Dragged by demons to Hell?*

Mulder was remembering some of Scully's Catholic stories of Heaven 
and Hell.

*So this is it.. Wait, didn't Scully say there'd be a waiting place 
first?*

He was struggling with this weightless reality.  His body felt 
foreign to him and his mind flitted from one thought to another...

*I'm bleeding out*

He had a moment of clarity and the thought made him cry out mentally.

*Scully!*

********************************************************

She rubbed her temples with her fingers, eyes clenched shut.

Skinner watched her out of the corner of his eye, trying not to be 
too obvious about it.

Scully groaned.

"Headache?" Skinner couldn't resist asking as he manuvered the car in 
and out of traffic.

The two were headed for more interviews.

She nodded.

"A migraine, I think," Scully was swallowing convulsively, "I've 
never had one, but its making me nauseous.  I'm sensitive to light.  
And the pain is localized to one side of the head."

She flinched.

"Of course, it could be an anurysum," she said matter-of-factly.

The car swerved slightly as Skinner looked at her in alarm.

"Should we get you to a hospital?" He tried to say calmly.

She shook her head.

"But I wouldn't mind if you stopped somewhere so I can pick up 
something for it."

Skinner nearly killed them both crossing traffic to get to the 
turning lane.

A small grocery store stood on the corner ahead.

*******************************************************

He was feeling less and less connected to reality.

Mulder thought he heard the clank of chains and had a fleeting 
thought of Marley's chains.

He wondered how long his were going to be and if he would be able to 
bear the burden.

Mulder formed a mental picture of himself dragging the chains he had 
forged in life through the halls of the J. Edgar Hoover building, 
haunting Scully and Skinner.

And, maybe, not so nicely haunting some other people in that building 
as well.

At that, his mental picture rippled with his slight laughter.

The image continued to ripple...fall apart...change...

It darkened.

He looked down at his hands.  They were too big for his skinny 
wrists.  

Mulder continued to look down.  His feet were encased in old tennis 
shoes.  They too looked huge on the ends of his thin, muscular 
runner's legs.

*But I don't look like this anymore.  Mom was right...I grew into 
them...*

By the side of his feet was a broken lamp.  The pieces were scattered 
away from him by the impact with the floor.

*Oh no...*

But it was too late.  The nightmare continued on its course as though 
happening in real time...

"Fox!" 

His mother stood stunned in the doorway to his father's den.

"What have you done?!"

He knew his mouth was hanging open.

"Mom, I-I just...He's always in here...every since Sam-"

"Don't!" his mother shrieked, "For Goodness sake, Fox, it was only 
last month!  How can you stand there and talk about it so-so calmly?  
What kind of child ARE you?!"

His mother turned and fled down the narrow hallway, a hand over her 
mouth to muffle her sobbing.

"I just wanted to know what he's always doing in here.  And why he 
won't talk to me anymore," Fox said to the empty room.

He knelt down and began to collect the pieces of the lamp broken by 
his pre-adolescent clumsiness.

He threw away the big pieces and swept up the small bits and poured 
them from the dustpan into the garbage as well.

Fox was leaving his father's den when he ran into his father coming 
in.

"Boy, what the devil are you doing in my den?" his father regarded 
him, tight-lipped.

Fox just stood there, head down.

"And what did you do to your mother? What did you say to upset her?"

"I didn't mean to upset her," Fox began explaining, "I just wondered 
what you do in here all the time and then the lamp broke and-"

"The lamp?"

"Yes sir, I broke it."

His father scowled at him and shook his head in disapproval.

"You seem to do a lot of things that you don't MEAN to do.  You know 
what happened to Sam, don't you?"

Fox's eyes widened, "No, sir."

"What happened, boy?  You get mad and hurt her?  Is she-is she buried 
somewhere in the woods?  The backyard?" 

There were hot, angry tears tracking down his father's face.

"NO!" Fox was yelling, "I didn't hurt Sam! I swear!"

He saw his father's hand raise for the blow.  He knew it didn't 
matter what he said anymore.

Fox swallowed his own tears and fear and closed his eyes against the 
inevitable.

"Bill," the familiar voice of his father's co-worker was 
asking, "hurry up and get those papers and lets go."

Fox opened his eyes and saw that the man had restrained his father's 
uplifted arm with his hand.

The two men stared challenge at one another.

Finally, his father seemed to melt.  His jaw was still set in anger, 
but he lowered his hand.

"Sure.  Let me find them and we can get out of here."

He brushed past his son, picked up a manilla folder from his desk, 
and pushed past Fox again on his way out.

He never said a word to his son.

"You're lucky I showed up," the other man gestured to Fox with his 
cigarette and strode away in a haze of smoke.

*******************************************************

The killer dragged Mulder with great effort, inch by inch, toward the 
chains she had set into the wall.

It seemed to take forever, but when she was done, she smiled with 
satisfaction.

She pushed the hair off her sweaty brow and observed his uneasy sleep.

"NO!" Mulder cried out once while she watched him and scared her so 
badly she jumped.

The killer knew he hadn't slept the night before, but had sat up, 
staring into space, presumably thinking about his situation.

She wondered what a combination of tranquilizer and sleep deprivation 
caused a man to dream about.

*What does THIS man dream about?*

********************************************************

Scully stared at the ceiling above her bed and thanked God that her 
migraine had subsided.

The interviews had gone better than expected.

October 20th had shown up in the official files of two of the male 
employees she and Skinner had talked to today.

One male employee of the U.S. Post Office and one male ex-employee of 
We Deliver, a local delivery company.

An anniversary and a birthday.

Was it one of these men?

One had a shaky alibi, at best.  The other had none.  The Post Office 
worker had been "drinking with the guys" when Mulder was abducted.

The other had been "sleeping" in his apartment.

And although by tracking down the paperwork, Scully had been able to 
confirm the use of one company or another by the vitamin company 
during the times of the murders, she had not been able to absolutely 
confirm that either of the employees interviewed today had been the 
person making the deliveries.

Deliveries were made by whomever was available.  And the paper trail 
was not as thorough as it should have been.  
The man at the Post Office had blushed when he discovered that the 
delivery person for many days could not be confirmed.  The lady 
at 'We Deliver' had merely shrugged.

Scully sighed and looked over at Skinner, asleep on the bed beside 
her.

The two of them had spread the folders and photos and notes across 
her bed and ordered a pizza.

They had debated and passed pizza back and forth for hours, shuffling 
and reshuffling their accumulated notes.

Somewhere in the midst of rewriting Mulder's profile, she had noticed 
the rustling of papers beside her had ceased.

Skinner had slumped against the headboard, chin on chest, glasses on 
the end of his nose.

She had reached over to wake him but when he started snoring, decided 
against it.

*Obviously, he needs the sleep*

Scully repressed the sudden chortle that rose in her throat.

It would not be good if Skinner woke up and caught her laughing at 
him.

So, she had leaned back to rest as well and considered the ceiling as 
she mulled over the case.

Which brought her back to the present...

She glanced over at her boss.  Her now fifty-year-old boss.

By the way he talked, she could tell this birthday had hit him hard.

Scully smiled.  She and Mulder cared for the man very much.  She 
wondered if Skinner had any idea.

She scooted up until she was sitting on her feet with her legs folded 
under her and carefully leaned forward to take Skinner's glasses from 
his face.

Scully lifted them carefully, but he scrunched his nose anyway.  He 
reached up and rubbed the bridge of his nose, mumbled "Thanks, 
Sharon" and lay flat on the bed, rolling to his side.

She set them on the nightstand, cleared the folders and assorted 
notes and such off the bed and then sat back down on the bed, leaning 
against the headboard, careful not to disturb Skinner.

Scully settled the notebook containing the revised profile against 
her knees and pulled the pen from behind her ear.  She pushed her own 
glasses up on her nose.

She sighed and tried to make the pillows at her back more comfortable.

For some reason, she felt too uneasy to retire to the other room.  It 
felt safer not to be alone.

She sighed again.

It was going to be long night.

********************************************************

Mulder awoke to the sound of his own cries.

He couldn't remember what he had been dreaming about, but he was 
pretty sure it had something to do with his father because of the 
heavy feeling in his stomach.

Mulder realized he couldn't remember the last time one of his 
nightmares had awoken him on an out-of-town case.

He knew that Scully was the reason for that.

It was still the middle of the night.  He could smell the familiar 
mustiness of the basement through the absolute blackness that 
surrounded him.

The realization that he wasn't dead flooded his senses suddenly.

He sighed heavily.  Maybe he would see Scully again.

*Must have used tranquilizer...If I'd been thinking, I would have 
remembered that she didn't kill the others that way...*

But he knew he'd just been too scared to think at the time.

He tried to sit up only to find that he could hardly move.

Mulder was now restrained to the wall by chains attached to his 
ankles and wrists.

The length of chain allowed him only to sit up and shift a little.

His stomach twinged and his mouth felt gummy.

Hunger.

Thirst.

*And so it begins*

********************************************************

Notes: I would have posted this much sooner, but my server is having 
problems.  Ok, did you see it coming?

The killer is a woman living as a man!!

Hints: The killer mentioned a few stories ago that October 20th was 
her birthday.  The father references were vague, but gave the 
impression of an abusive relationship and refered to the father being 
dissatisfied with having a daughter when he wanted a son.  I refered 
to the "sing-song" voice...the fact 'he' was small and spare...the 
almost haughty feminine attitude of the killer.

What do you think?  So far, so good?

The end is on its way in five or less parts....:)