***************************************************************
   RivkaT's e-mail address has changed to: rivkat@gmail.com
***************************************************************

Tikkun Olam 8/25 
MustangSally78@juno.com & RivkaT@aol.com

Guildenstern: A third witness, you understand, adds no further dimension but 
only spreads it thinner, and a fourth thinner still, and the more witnesses 
there are the thinner it gets and the more reasonable it becomes until it is 
as thin as reality, the name we give to the common experience . . . . 

When I opened my eyes again I was in Oregon, pulling the car into the lot at 
our motel.  

I managed to park without killing us, even though I wanted to ignore 
everything but the bright young innocent beside me. 

She was adorable -- nefarious planning to the side, I just wanted to eat her 
up, this cute little naf with her easy smile and coed ponytail. I wanted to 
put her in my pocket and take her back with me, a kitten who hadn't yet 
learned about her claws. She was still seething from the sheriff's power play 
and troubled by the missing time, but I'd had a few years to get over it. I 
think she took my relaxed mood as further evidence of my insanity and she 
stomped off to her room.

When the knock finally came on my door, I was shocked to discover that I was 
shaking as hard as Scully would be. She came in and told me she needed me to 
look at something. Given the circumstances, I was appalled that my younger 
self hadn't managed a dirty joke at the time. 

Still, I played the script out. She was terrified, and if I made a move now 
she probably wouldn't even notice, she was so focused on finding out what the 
marks on her back were. I watched as the red terry cloth robe dropped like 
the executioner's guillotine and her tiny round body revealed itself. 
Transfixed, I slid my fingers over the gossamer skin at the small of her 
back, then a few dangerous centimeters downwards, past the waistband of her 
sensible little panties covering that truly remarkable ass. 

Moments later she was shrugging the robe back on and throwing herself into my 
arms. After knowing her for all these years, it was even weirder than it had 
been the first time, as Scully is not known for private displays of 
affection. 

I found myself staring at the ends of her hair as they brushed against her 
shoulders. It was wavy, uncontrolled. In a few months she'd decide it was 
unprofessional. I missed the extra length, though I'd never had the 
opportunity to run my hands through it until the world started to swing 
sideways. I missed the baby fat that had insulated her from some of the 
world's awfulness. To have it back was a gift beyond measure. 

She pulled back, suddenly as self-conscious as a teenager taking her first 
post-gym-class shower. I didn't hear her words but she practically teleported 
into the chair by the door, the rigid, one-person-only chair that she thought 
could protect her from the vulnerability she'd just displayed. 

If I had her now, she could be driven away with ease. They might try again 
with another spy but I'd know better next time and, if my past life 
regressions had any meaning at all, no one else would be able to gain my 
trust. I hadn't wanted her, yet, the first time she dropped her robe for me, 
but now I was hardening and I wanted to begin my intervention into my 
fucked-up timeline. There is a special providence in the fall of a sparrow, I 
thought. If it be not now, yet it will come. 

I'd rather come sooner than later. Moving closer, I knelt so that we were at 
eye level with one another. "What's the matter, Dana?" It was early enough in 
the relationship that she didn't seem surprised that I'd slip into using her 
Christian name. 

She laughed, nervously but without shame. "I suppose I must have convinced 
myself that ... well, that those marks bore some relationship to the marks on 
the victims." 

Yeah, quite a laff riot to imagine that you might be the victim of 
unspeakable experimentation, Scully. This was a woman still inviolate, 
upright as an unplucked daffodil, incapable of imagining her own 
vulnerability. I resented and hated her innocence even as I desperately 
wanted it to last forever. 

I put my hands on the arms of the chair, boxing her in. "Are you sure you're 
all right? Would you like me to take another look?" The tone of my voice was 
unmistakable and she looked up, surprised. Her eyes were still dilated with 
fear and I could feel the raggedness of her breath on my lips. 

"I ... I don't think --" 

"Good," I said and kissed her. Her mouth was still open because she'd been 
planning to blather on and my tongue swept in with the firmness she liked. I 
was kissing Scully again, for the first time. Wasting no time, I put one hand 
on her terry-covered breast and began to push away the heavy fabric, seeking 
her nuclear heat. 

I had the advantage of surprise and she didn't react for what seemed like 
ages, long enough for me to complete a preliminary survey of her mouth and 
bring my other hand to her hot little thoroughbred thigh, soft and a little 
damp against my fingertips. 

And then I was flat on my ass, just in time to avoid what would undoubtedly 
have been a really solid knee in the balls, because Scully'd had the 
generosity to push me over before she went ahead and unmanned me. If I'd 
resisted I'd have been screaming soprano. 

Scully's tiny naked feet were between my legs and I didn't think that was 
wise, so I scuttled back and stood up. I needed some height to have a chance 
of intimidating her. I could play it this way; it would be less pleasant but 
ultimately the goal would be obtained. 

She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and looked at me with the 
clinical gaze she'd used on the orangutan earlier that day/five years ago. 
"Have you ever heard the words 'sexual harassment policy,' Agent Mulder?" 

Well, yes, but I'd already considered that. In 1992 the Bureau was even 
tougher on little girls than it is now, or would be then, or whatever the 
appropriate tense is. "Come on, Agent Scully, you show up in my room in the 
middle of the night in your underwear, what do you expect a normal 
heterosexual male to do about it? And correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't you 
fuck your instructor -- Jack Willis, right? That's not very feminist of you, 
is it? Go ahead, report me, and see which one of us walks away with a 
reprimand. I may be Spooky, but I've still got a dick and that counts for an 
awful lot in J. Edgar's outfit." 

She flushed. She still hadn't learned to control her emotions as well as she 
would, which was a plus with the laughter but an awful disadvantage for 
trying to deal with sneaky ol' me. 

The dark snake in my head (not to mention the one in my pants) wondered if I 
could conjure up the Dana Scully who smoked cigarettes and fucked Ed Jerse. 
She found strong emotions like anger and lust hard to distinguish, I knew, 
and it would be a pity not to take advantage of that at least once before she 
left my life. 

I leaned in closer and I could smell her, shower-fresh. "Your agenda, 
whatever it is, is of no interest to me right now. What I would like to know 
is what your face looks like when you come." 

In the flickering light of the candle, her mouth opened and then shut again, 
taking on the grim straightness early. She stood up and tightened the belt of 
the bathrobe around her waist, no doubt unaware that all she did was outline 
the curves of her still-luscious figure. 

"What you will know is what my back looks like when I go." 

And she did, the door giving a repressive little click behind her. 

Well, what the hell am I supposed to do now, I thought and the world 
dissolved around me. I fell like the poor schmuck in Vertigo, swirling in a 
Technicolor nightmare of LSD fever dreams. 

Blinking, I swam my way up to full consciousness and it was all different. 
Dr. Strauss had disappeared. Instead, hovering over me like an unmarked 
helicopter, Dr. Heitz Werber looked as spooked as I was. 

I looked around the new, improved room. It looked like an expensive hotel 
room, with the remnants of an enormous room service order on the desk below 
the picture window. The blinds were drawn (can't have snipers dropping in, a 
familiar smoke-thickened voice whispered in my head) but it was day. 

On the other bed, Robert Rothstein was splayed like a carelessly thrown 
stuffed animal. His breathing was rapid and shallow. His hands were cuffed 
behind his back. There was a bruise stretching across his cheekbone up to his 
temple, about the size of my open hand. 

"Where's Scully?" 

"Excuse me?" Werber asked, rocking back on his heels. "Mr. Mulder, your 
employers pay me very well, but I seriously doubt they would approve of this 
little frolic and detour." 

Right, no Scully. That's what I'd wanted, and apparently I had it. I scanned 
the room again and saw my laptop plugged into the fancy businessman's 
workstation on the desk. I rose, feeling like my blood hadn't circulated for 
weeks, and staggered over to the laptop. A few clicks and the mating call of 
data, and I was into the Bureau's database. 

This me had his password stored on his computer, which was strange but no 
stranger than my own swiss-cheese brain. 

It took a few seconds to bring up the personnel records. Dana Katherine 
Scully died late July 1993 when a man, later identified as Eugene Victor 
Tooms, entered her apartment and killed her, subsequently extracting her 
liver. 

Tooms? 

TOOMS? 

Compared to all the dangers we'd faced together, all the split-second escapes 
and dicey moments, Tooms was a kindergarten bully. You could have asked me to 
list our hundred most dangerous cases and Tooms would not have made the list. 

But of course we hadn't had a hundred cases together. I had alienated her, no 
pun intended, and we didn't trust one another enough and so she -- 

I lurched like Frankenstein's monster into the bathroom and relieved myself 
of the burden of my last meal. What spewed from my mouth was nothing I 
remembered eating, something greasy and unhealthy that Scully would 
undoubtedly hate. When I'd washed my mouth out from the sink I examined my 
face in the gold-framed mirror. I looked much less concerned than I 
remembered. Driven by the unbearable compulsion to pull the scab off of 
reality and see the bloody truth, I began to unbutton my dress shirt. God, 
the suit was expensive, close to five figures probably, even with Mom's money 
I couldn't afford to dress this well although most people probably couldn't 
tell the difference. 

Underneath the suit I had a smooth, symmetrical chest, unmarred like my face. 
She'd never lived long enough to shoot me. 

I tried to remember Scully's cancer face and there was nothing, only the 
freshness of the Jodie Foster lookalike straight from Quantico with her 
really bad suit. 

The employers to whom Werber had referred did not take direction from Janet 
Reno. 

Shirt flapping like Clark Kent racing to become Superman, I bolted back into 
the main room. "Put me under," I ordered. "I have to go back again." 

Werber pursed his lips and shook his head. "Mr. Mulder, the drugs are 
dangerous and the technique here only partially understood --" 

"Do you know what happened to the last little man who told me 'no'?" I didn't 
either, but it seemed that Werber was an inventive sort, because he swallowed 
and headed for his medical bag. 

I didn't know if I could go back to the same place twice--make that three 
times, I guess. But I had an unparalleled incentive. I laid back on the bed 
and held my arm out, the tune from 'Back in the Saddle Again' echoing in the 
hollow places in my brain. 

The laptop hummed its electronic siren song, massaging my brainwaves into the 
digital rhythm. Imagining the drugs swirling in my bloodstream, I waited for 
the psychic elevator to drop to the ground floor and take me back to where it 
had all gone wrong. 

 ****

My wrists hurt. That was the first thing I noticed when I woke up again. The 
second thing was that I was lying on a firm mattress looking at bland hotel 
wallpaper, and I still couldn't move my hands. The metal of the handcuffs was 
warm but unyielding. 

My cheekbone ached as if I'd been hit, and I was still hungry and I needed to 
take a piss. I wondered how long it had been since I'd taken my medications. 
Dana would know -- but she wouldn't, not anymore. 

I heard the slaughtered-pig squeal of a modem from behind me, and then a 
man's voice. The voice of the man in the park who'd looked so much like Rex. 
I wanted to ask what was going on, but I was afraid. 

There was a series of thunks and then the slam of a door -- the bathroom 
door, I realized as I heard retching. The other man in the room came over to 
the bed I was on and took my chin in his hand. "You've rejoined us," he said 
jovially. 

"Dr. Werber?" 

"Have we met?" He looked at me the way a science teacher looks at a frog 
who's going to teach the class all about anatomy. 

"What are you doing here?" I asked him.  

"I could ask you the same question, my boy. But I suspect you're the one who 
doesn't belong." 

"What do you mean?" I whined and then he was rising as Rex returned from the 
bathroom and ordered him away. Rex wanted to go under again, and I wanted to 
warn him that my troubles all started when I tried the new therapy, but he 
was vicious enough to Dr. Werber that I didn't want to take the risk.  

I kept quiet as Werber went through the routine. When Rex stopped flailing 
about on the other bed, the doctor came and sat down next to me, his notebook 
out and his pen poised to learn my secrets. "So," he said, "describe for me 
your first contact with me." 

"I'm really hungry," I said. "Do you think I could get something to eat?" 

Werber rolled his eyes. "Yes, but you must answer my questions," he chided. I 
looked around the room as he went to order room service. It was an upscale 
hotel, with solid wood furniture and an enormous television staring 
unblinking at the beds like the eye of Horus. Light outlined the closed 
blinds. I wanted to know where I was and when. But it hardly mattered if my 
family was gone, did it? 

Werber resumed his pose, as if he were my analyst instead of my captor. "Now 
you must cooperate. If you do all will be well." 

I couldn't help but laugh. 

"When have we met before?" he prompted. 

I shrugged. "Around 1990, I think. When I was trying to remember my 
childhood. I was adopted at the age of thirteen, with no memory of anything 
before child services found me. You regressed me, but nothing useful came of 
it." 

"And after that?" 

"I never saw you again until today." I could have explained that I was 
intimately familiar with the apparatus Rex was now using, but for some reason 
I wanted to make Werber work for whatever he got. 

He was opening his mouth as there was a knock on the door. "Room service," 
someone called from the hall. 

I thought, as he went for the door, that in the movies anyone who says "room 
service" never is. 

Since I was now deep in the midst of my own comic book, it made perfect sense 
that the delivery man would shoot Werber -- the silencer sounded like a cough 
-- and step into the room. What was surprising was that the killer was Pyotr. 
This was not a music video and I didn't want any more of my characters to 
come to life. However, no one was asking me. 

"Pyotr?" I asked as he came to get me. He didn't make any attempt to release 
me from the handcuffs. 

"I don't know who that is, buddy, but you're better off with me than with 
them." He hauled me to my feet and began pushing me toward the door, steering 
me around Werber's body. 

"Who are you?" 

"Call me Ishmael -- but Alex is more accurate," he said, green eyes mocking 
me. "I don't know who you are but if you're valuable to them --" he gestured 
with his chin towards Rex, writhing on the bed in drugged agony-- "you're 
valuable to me." 

This man was very like my Pyotr, the quintuple agent. The problem was that in 
my storyline I had yet to figure out whether Pyotr was really on the side of 
good, or of evil. 

Rex moaned and the lights went out in my mind. 

end 8/25

Tikkun Olam 9/25 
MustangSally78@juno.com & RivkaT@aol.com

Guildenstern: A weaker man might be moved to re-examine his faith, if in 
nothing else in at least the law of probability. 


"--sexual harassment policy, Agent Mulder?" Scully's glare coming from her 
freshly minted face was even more painful this time. 

ShitshitSHIT! Not far enough, but it would have to do. I took a deep, 
panicked breath. "Look, I'm sorry, I obviously completely misread the 
situation--" the words were tumbling out of me like hailstones in a storm. "I 
don't work with a partner and I guess I don't really interact with people 
much and you came in like that--" I indicated her bathrobe while stepping 
further away so that she wouldn't see it as another advance. This was a good 
move; Scully flushed and dropped her eyes, castigating herself for her own 
participation in the disaster. "I hope you'll be able to forgive me but of 
course I understand that you may not want to continue --" 

She sucked in a lungful of candle-scented air and raised her head again like 
a hunting dog who's finally found the scent. "That was a test," she accused. 
"One of your spy fantasies about the X Files." 

I winced. I had to make this right. "It was a mistake, Scully, and I am 
sorrier than you can know. Just --just listen to me for a while, okay? It's 
very hard for me to know anyone's motives when it comes to the X Files. And 
I'm not really used to someone even entertaining the possibility that the 
marks on her back might be abduction-related. It, it just didn't compute when 
a skeptical scientist barged in and asked --" 

Scully shook her head, eyes closed in what would become a familiar expression 
of denial. "Can we just forget about that part? I'm aware that it was totally 
unprofessional --" 

"Why don't we just wipe out the past five minutes in their entirety?" It 
seemed like a good compromise to me. Dr. Strauss's method was more certain, 
especially since Scully was not known for her ability to give up a good 
grudge, but a pact to pretend selective amnesia might suffice. 

Scully nodded once, slowly, and then fixed me with a measuring look. You've 
got a second chance, asshole, the look said, now what are you going to do 
about it? 

"I've never really explained to anyone in the Bureau why I wanted the X 
Files," I said, moving away from her and sitting on the floor by the dresser, 
leaning against the cheap pressed wood. I couldn't stand on my own; the 
adrenaline rush felt like going over Niagara Falls without a barrel, only I 
couldn't show my dizziness to Scully because there was no good reason for it. 
Despite my best efforts to keep control as I told my tale of woe, the world 
began to spin around me.  

The plug had been pulled on my consciousness and I swirled down the drain 
with all the rest of the useless, polluted waste. 

The thin glass of reality shattered with a sound of temple bells when I 
finally resurfaced from my mind. Gray eyes, unfamiliar eyes, looking down at 
me in the smooth curves of a woman's skull. I gulped air like a fish who had 
leapt from the tank in a vain attempt to evolve. Something warm and soft was 
wrapped around me and I rubbed crusty eyes and sat up, taking in the Martha 
Stewart in Hell dcor and the rain falling in pine trees outside. A laptop 
hummed on the end table near my head. 

"How long was I --" 

"Little more than an hour. How do you feel?" she asked in a crisp voice. 

"Tired." 

"Well?" her eyes shone with expectancy. 

"I'm not sure what happened," I confessed. "I went back and I think it's all 
right." 

"You either went back or you didn't! Don't jerk me around." 

I grabbed my cellphone from the side of the bed and speed-dialed Scully's 
number. No answer, but it was her recorded icy tones slurring through the air 
to me and I was almost reassured. 

The good doctor -- Dr. Strauss -- was almost bouncing on her heels. Round 
little heels, I was sure. I wondered what it would take to get her on the bed 
with me.  

"You retrieved a memory?" she demanded. 

"Absolutely."  

"I need you to document it. All of it." 

"I can't talk right now. I need to go back to DC. I'll send you an email and 
answer any questions you have then. I'll be back." 

Strauss was pissed, seriously so, but I smiled up at her to soften the blow 
and she wavered. I was in her bed, after all, and I had a return ticket. I 
got up and fought my way back into my wet jacket. Retreating to the far side 
of the room she lit a cigarette with sharp, angry movements.

"You screw me over on this one and I'll hunt you down and shoot you in your 
socks. I need to know if this works!" she bitched as a cloud of smoke drifted 
across her eyes, "This is my whole life's work you're talking about here." 

"I understand, believe me, I do understand." 

Against my better judgement, I leaned over and put my arm around her 
shoulders. Unthinkingly, I brought my face to hers and kissed her, gently at 
first and then hard enough to taste cigarettes and orange juice. She trembled 
underneath me, excited and still angry, torn between wanting me to stay and 
wanting to spit in my face. It was charming. "I'll be back," I repeated after 
I pulled away, and I saw her tap ash onto the floor as I walked out. 

The uncomfortable relationship between intelligent women and their sexuality 
is amusing in the extreme. They pretend that they are more interested in 
intellectual pursuits than sex, and when the baser needs start screaming 
louder than they allow, the poor things go into mental overload. Game over, 
insert quarter (or anything else that works) to play again. I'd been watching 
Scully go through the struggle for years, and I have to admit that I've 
gotten pretty good at capitalizing on it. 

Feeling a little bit better, I made my way back to the airport. 

 ****

Mulder called out sick that morning, which was little surprise. I never 
should have gone to his apartment the night before; I should have let him 
sleep. So it was my fault that he was spending the day crashing. It's funny, 
but Mulder practically has a menstrual cycle. Every three or four weeks he 
pushes himself beyond the edge and has to spend a day or so on his sofa 
becoming one with the television remote, like a teenaged girl with cramps. 

But a Mulder-free office is a good place to get work done, so I caught up on 
the classifying, filing, and report-writing he considers below his stature. 
If I had to keep re-filing his case files I was going to demand to be taken 
out to lunch on Secretaries' Day. Sexism isn't dead, it's masquerading as 
erratic behavior. 

When I got back home, my telephone was ringing and I grabbed it even as I was 
stepping over the mail piled up on the mat in front of my door. 

"Scully." 

"Dana, it's Alex. Where were you last night?" 

Quick tip: do not stand up your lover to sleep with your partner, as it tends 
to piss him off. Rule number two, never let one know about the other, as men 
tend to attach entirely too much importance to these things. If Alex knew I 
had slept with Mulder, he would be hurt. On the other hand, should Mulder 
find that I was fucking Alex, he was going to go postal. Mulder hates to 
share his toys, even when he's not using them. I guess he's so used to 
breaking them that he doesn't imagine that they might go on without him. 

The point was, I had forgotten to call Alex and beg off, and now he was 
unhappy. 

I recovered quickly. "Oh damn, I was working. I should have called. You know 
what it's like," I explained as I hobbled across the living room with one 
shoe while Queequeg yipped around my ankles, bugging me for dinner, "is there 
something that I forgot?" 

"Only our anniversary," he purred at me over the line while I organized 
Mighty Dog and a clean dish. 

"How long has it been now? A month?" 

"Come on, Dana," he teased, "three months and four days." 

"You keep track of these things? I'm impressed," I said and spooned meat 
byproducts out for the dog. 

"I was thinking you put on something black and sexy, we have dinner at Bilbo 
Baggins, a walk by the river, a nightcap, and a few hours of sexual 
debauchery in front of the fireplace at my place." 

"Do we have to go to Alexandria? Why can't you come here? There are plenty of 
good places to have dinner in Annapolis." 

"What's in it for me?" he asked, and I could hear the amusement in his voice. 

"I'll let you wear my leopard-print bustier." 

He laughed. 

"I'll be there in half an hour." 

I just had enough time to take Queequeg for a walk so he could pee and sniff 
the pee of other dogs and change the funky sheets on my bed. I lit candles in 
the living room before running into my bedroom to kick my dirty laundry under 
the bed. Then I washed and put on fresh undies and perfume before the 
doorbell rang. Alex was standing there, with his usual grin on his face and 
his usual leather jacket on his back, humor glinting out of his unusual 
green-blue eyes. He was holding a bottle of good Australian Shiraz like it 
was a trophy. 

"Miss me?" he asked and kissed me hard enough to make my knees shake and my 
hands grab at his shoulders for support. 

"Two weeks is a long time," I agreed and let my hands wander over the hard 
muscles of his chest underneath his leather jacket, he handed me the bottle. 

"Two weeks in Brooklyn and I was ready to lose my mind, I couldn't stop 
thinking about you --" his hands closed over my breasts in a meaningful 
squeeze. 

"Forget dinner. But let's get out of the hall," I muttered. "No point in 
entertaining the neighbors." 

Alex slouched in, greeted Queequeg and hung his jacket up on the back of a 
chair before collapsing on the sofa, looking lean and gold in the light from 
the candles. I opened the wine bottle (good boy, he knew how to choose wine 
without screw-caps, unlike my partner) and got two glasses and put them on 
the coffee table. Alex watched me with a lazy, sensual gaze while I knelt 
like a geisha and poured wine. Alex's tidy pointy-nosed profile in the 
candlelight spoke of normality, of warm nights, warm sheets, attention 
focused on me, not the universe in general. Queequeg hopped up on the sofa 
and nuzzled Alex's hand, lapping with his pink tongue. Alex stroked the dog, 
ruffling the cinnamon fur with friendly fingers. Alex liked my dog. He liked 
many things about me. 

"So how's His Spookiness?" he asked. 

"The same, chasing his tail in circles," I said and sipped at the sweetish 
wine. 

"You ought to transfer out before he pulls you down," Alex commented and took 
a deep drink of his own wine. "Organized Crime isn't so bad, I've got a great 
close rate, I work normal hours and I don't get sent out in the field all 
that often. I did my time with Spooky and he's batshit crazy." 

Queequeg yipped playfully and began to gnaw on the leather strap on Alex's 
watch. 

"I don't know about that, Alex, I like the X-Files. I like the challenge, I 
know I'd be bored working in another division." 

"Come on Dana, you know he's no good for you." 

I blinked and the gold lights of the candles danced for a minute. Alex had 
worked with Mulder when I had been abducted. I'd thought he was a little 
prick until he brought me flowers in the hospital when I was recovering from 
the mysterious viral infection. He'd requested a transfer as soon as I was 
back at work. Alex was now in the Organized Crime Unit where the Bureau had 
put his fluency in Russian to work on the Russian Mafia cases. We'd run into 
each other at irregular intervals in the halls of the Hoover Building, then 
he'd paid another sickroom visit when I was undergoing chemo. 

Several months ago, he'd called me at home, out of the blue, and asked me out 
to dinner for something other than hospital food. Since I was angry with 
Mulder at the time I went to dinner with Alex, and I went home with Alex, and 
I went to bed with Alex. That was when I decided I'd been wrong about 
him--Alex wasn't a little prick, nor did he have one. It's not as though 
Mulder and I had any formalized agreement. We were fuck buddies. Fuck buddies 
who would die for each other. That kind of intensity was rough on my nerves 
and on my skin. It was nice to go to dinner, to go to the movies, to have a 
man who would talk about something other than cases, who would open my car 
door for me, and who would pull my chair out for me in restaurants. One who 
was absorbed with me rather than self-absorbed.  

A man who gave me his total attention. 

"Come here," he said. 

I put my glass on the coffee table and went to the sofa. 

His eyes shone up at me. 

"Take off your clothes," he said in a voice of molten lead. 

My hands were shaking while I did so. The scar that Donnie Pfaster gave me 
itched, the way it always does when I get nervous. I know Mulder wishes he'd 
been just a little bit faster but he wasn't and now there's a twisted white 
clothesline bisecting the top of my left breast down to the areola. I managed 
to kill that crazy corpse-fucker on my own, the way I can do everything on my 
own, and it was easily ruled a good shooting. 

Alex doesn't mind about the scar. For him, it just is, like everything else 
about me. He doesn't think it's ugly, like Mulder does -- not that Mulder 
would ever say so, or blame anyone but himself for the scar or for thinking 
that it's ugly. 

And I was so tired of being Mulder's Virgin Queen. If I gave Mulder four silk 
ties he'd think it was a campaign to improve his fashion tastes. Alex bought 
a Catholic schoolgirl's outfit and had me wear it, plaid skirt rolled high 
and no underwear, while I confessed my sins giggling and squirming on his 
knee. Sex with Mulder is serious business.  

Sex with Alex is a roller coaster thrill-kill ride.  

At his command, I preceded him into the bedroom so that he could watch me 
walk. He was still fully clothed as he closed the cuffs carefully around my 
wrists and I could see his desire in his eyes and in his pants.  

"I can do anything I want to you," he breathed. 

I didn't even nod in agreement; that would have risked punishment and I 
didn't want that, not yet. 

I could smell the sweet chemical tang of the leather wristbands and the more 
animal tang of myself. 

****

The flight was rough and the beer was sloshing around in my stomach while the 
plane headed towards home. 

I called the Arlington PD again, from the airport, and asked them to send all 
the unrecycled newspapers from the Rothstein house over to our office. We 
could compare them to the newspapers from our side of the veil and see if 
there were any obvious differences, like Monica's dress being from Express. 

After I threw up in the airport men's room I felt better. 

I flagged down a taxi and gave the driver Scully's address, wondering if she 
was still living there or if that was one of the things that I couldn't 
remember. 

It was raining and the driver sneezed his way through the red lights. 

end 9/25

Tikkun Olam 10/25 
MustangSally78@juno.com & RivkaT@aol.com

Player: Here we see him and the queen give rein to their unbridled passion! 
She little knowing that the man she holds in her arms -- ! 

The bedspread smelled like Downy Mountain Spring and mansweat. Drip by drip, 
drop by drop, Alex's sweat was falling onto my skin, falling where the skin 
was red and hot, the salt stinging like ocean water on sunburn. Each lash of 
the belt made me whimper with need and pain. It was good, good as jalepeno 
peppers, too much salt, alcohol on a cut, pressing on a blister, biting a 
lip. Every time the belt burned across my ass, I pushed my pelvis against the 
mattress, one ratchet away from coming. One flick away from letting my brain 
go up like a gasoline-soaked rag. Me. My arms aching, my teeth slicing into 
the leather filling my mouth, tasting the leather, my aching cunt thick with 
blood, swelling and taking over the entire world. The man was almost 
incidental. The steel of the clamps chewed into my nipples pulled down the 
chains, tight over my belly, tugging electric pulse of metal pleasure into 
the blood-filled folds of my labia.  

So good. 

Burning like life. 

Only in pain and pleasure do you know you are alive. 

Body weight falling on me, making me cry out as the lovely stabs of 
pain-light fell through me like glass shards. The heat of his body burning my 
skin, searing me. I pressed into the sopping wet bedspread, my legs swimming 
underneath his, rubbing, pinching, making the flare before orgasm implode 
along my thighs. Fingers in my hair, pulling my head back from the bedspread, 
hot breath over my lips stretched open over the gag, fingers pressed into the 
stretched skin and muscle of my throat. 

"Greedy. Not until I let you." 

The green of his irises shone like opals in the candlelight. 

He released my hair and my head fell forward again, I rested my cheek against 
the bedspread and shut my eyes, a narcotic blanket of self-indulgence falling 
over me. Fingers between my thighs, pulling at the chains, pain/cold, 
hot/pleasure, sweet/agony -- and his fingers pressing me open like a 
seashell, fingertips driving into me, nails scraping against my soaking and 
swollen cunt. Jerking against the clips, flicking at my clit and rubbing 
fingers deep inside me, feeling for the mythical spot. My fingers gripped the 
leather straps pulled taut in air, tears cold on my burning face. A hand 
pulling me up on shaking knees, my face still in the bedspread, the chains 
hanging down, pulling at me, my back arched and my stinging ass in the air. 

I was moaning into the gag, sobbing and twisting, my universe contracted into 
just my body in that moment. Me. My body, me and me alone and nothing else 
but me and the fire in my blood. 

Back and forth, back and forth back and forth against the sweet slippery skin 
and my brain flashed white, lash against my ass, fingers on my cunt, rubbing 
my clit, stretching my asshole to the tearing point. I hiccuped against the 
gag, begging, pleading, lash again, lash again, lash again, and webs of 
delight flared like a spark along a fuse.  

Nownownownowohgodpleaseohpleaseohpleaseohplease 

I pulled against the cuffs, fought against the binding, pressing back into 
the hot hard body. I was gone in a black-powder explosion, screaming into the 
leather, echoing in my skull and going on into the center of my solitary 
universe. Screaming, screaming ugly into the black nothingness which 
surrounded me. Consciousness paled in the edges of my mind. 

He caught me before I fell into the bed, held his body against mine while I 
wept, pulling the gag from my mouth, unhooking my wrists, nuzzling my face 
and spreading my tears over our faces. Sweetly, he curled the fingers of my 
hand around the thick shaft of his cock. 

"My turn," he whispered while his eyelashes brushed against my cheek. 

From the very first time, when I growled "I like it rough" into his ear as he 
was stripping me and he believed me, we'd always played at sex like Kasparov 
plays at chess. No mercy. 

Alex understood me. 

I reached for the paddle underneath the bed. 

 **** 

I used my key to get into Scully's apartment, thankful that it still worked, 
and the world wobbled around me. Two glasses of wine on the shiny coffee 
table, the bottle by the lamp next to the sofa. I nearly died of shock when 
the yappy little dog crashed into my shin. I didn't actually kick it as much 
as shove it out of the way with my foot. 

The pace of change was speeding up.  

A low moan issued from the bedroom, Scully in ecstasy; I'd heard it before 
but never from so far away. And not that loud, damnit. Flesh against flesh in 
the only language we could both speak reliably. I had to know who she was 
fucking. She might not be cheating on her Mulder but she was damn well 
cheating on me. 

When I pushed the bedroom door open the only thing I could see was the 
phoenix rising from the fire on Scully's back. The tattoo was enormous, 
burning like an arsonist's wet dream across the flammable parchment of her 
skin. That much rye red, I realized, as the shock settled into my bones, 
would have been enough to trigger hallucinogenic ergotism in all of 
Philadelphia. 

Did she get it because I hated fire? Regardless of her claims, I knew it was 
about me. The phoenix and the worm ourubous were related symbols of rebirth 
and eternity, so this Scully wasn't a complete stranger, only part of one. 
The phoenix danced as she undulated on the man beneath her. I could see his 
legs shake as he thrust into her and she tossed her head back, groaning, her 
long shining hair curtaining the firebird from my sight. She would have seen 
me but her eyes were closed as she urged him on.  

"Oh, yeah, faster, faster, just like that, yeah that's good baby," on and on 
and the jealousy was a tapeworm in my stomach. Not just the sex but that 
she'd be so vocal.  Scully's usually such a martyr in my bed. I have to 
figure out what pleases her with only the faintest of hints from Herself and 
it's more difficult than unscrambling a Rubik's cube and requires far more 
manual dexterity. This man was getting the instruction manual and toll-free 
customer assistance. 

"Come on, give it to me, come on --" she chanted. 

I noted that there were leather bindings attached to the bedposts, unused now 
but I didn't think they were purely decorative, and what looked like a paddle 
lying on the bedspread by Scully's right thigh. A tangled ball of black 
leather and metal was on the floor. I thought I'd seen its cousin advertised 
in the back pages of Celebrity Skin.  

There were times when I would have liked to gag Scully . . . 

"Come on, fuck me, fuck me baby, come on. Harder baby, oh yeah, that's good 
--" 

The man's arms were raised so that he could paw at Scully's breasts. She was 
shuddering around him, still reporting on the sex sensations with the 
intensity of a sportscaster at a playoff game, and she raised herself up with 
her strong little legs so that I could see the man's thick red cock gleaming 
in the candlelight as he pumped into her. 

"Oh yes!" 

Together this time, and her head fell back, her hair flaming down her back, 
like fire, like blood, her eyes clenched shut and her body rigid in climax. 
The back of my throat burned. She was beautiful, primal, and elemental. 
Underneath the man thrust weakly a few more times into her shaking body and 
then stilled. She'd consumed him. I knew. He groaned and trailed off into a 
defeated chuckle. She chortled into his chest and rolled off of him. Pretty 
fucking cute. Her hand trailed tenderly across his face, drawing my attention 
there and that's when I drew my gun. 

"Krycek!" 

I hadn't meant to give him the warning, but I couldn't help it. Krycek, who 
had sold Scully and me for scrap metal, killed my father, killed Scully's 
sister, and was probably responsible for Ebola, Chernobyl and the KISS 
reunion tour, should never have let the fucking distract his attention from 
the door -- it was too dangerous. I wanted to splatter his brains all over 
the headboard so badly that my hand was shaking. I wanted to see his pretty 
little nose smashed against the floor while blood dripped into his open, dead 
eyes. Then I wanted to chop him up into small pieces and boil them in hot 
lead, then I wanted to take the pieces and have them burnt to ash, then I 
wanted to spread the ashes in a septic tank and piss on them. 

Scully's eyes snapped open as I contemplated my favorite serial killer 
fetishistic killing practices. Still panting from her sexual workout, she 
rolled off the bed and jumped to her feet, her face as prim and outraged as 
if I'd interrupted a personal hygiene ritual. 

Jesus Christ, there were silver nipple-clips dripping chains down into the 
flame of her pubic hair, clamped inside her somewhere. 

"Mulder, what are you doing here?" 

"What is he doing here?" I choked. My voice was hoarse with fury. 

Dumb dumb dumb. 

"-- No don't answer that. Why is he doing it here? You know what he is --" I 
was panting worse than I'd been at the end of my morning-long run, five 
pounds of pressure away from blowing him into the next parallel reality. 

Krycek blinked green cat eyes at me and made no move to cover himself, the 
bastard. 

"This isn't really any of your business, Mulder. I know we didn't get along 
before I transferred out of the X Files but there's no need to --" his gaze 
went to Scully and, although I wasn't looking at her, he must have seen 
something quite startling in her face because he started talking to her 
instead. "*Is* it any of his business, Dana?" 

I heard her go to the closet and the rustling suggested she was putting on a 
robe. The subtle chiming of chains roiled along my neural pathways. I was 
trying to figure out whether he might be telling the truth (as well as trying 
to figure out where Scully had those chains clipped). Maybe Krycek had only 
been tangentially involved in the Conspiracy at first, maybe a few small 
changes had taken him out of the game entirely. Scully wouldn't sleep with 
the Krycek I knew and hated. 

Not my Scully. 

Well, I wasn't willing to swear to that anymore. 

My brain felt like a frozen drink, pink and icy and punctured with 
toothpicks. It made me nostalgic for the usual levels of untrustworthiness I 
encountered in my line of work. 

"All right," Krycek said, his voice rising, "I'll ask him. Are you fucking 
her too, Mulder? Can't keep her satisfied?" 

Fucking rat bastard couldn't even keep quiet when I needed to think.  

"Shut up!" I shouted and the gun shook like a green recruit's. 

"Are you sleeping with him, Dana? Dana?!" 

He never did know when to shut up.  

"Shut the fuck up!" I screamed. 

Punch-drunk, I staggered out of the room, ignoring Scully's soft "Mulder?" 

I heard their voices rising and falling in the comforting rhythms of bitter 
argument as I left the room. 

I did kick the dog that ran to greet me, but it didn't make me feel any 
better. 

The drugs from the regression and the alcohol swirled together like a 
tie-dyed Grateful Dead slide show in my brain and I felt the world spin 
around me. Scully would call it my arrogance but it was more than that; I was 
the center of a great turning and I could feel the widening gyre of change 
surging out from me like the tide. 

 ****

"What is it between you and Mulder?" Alex asked. 

It was so long and so complicated that it hurt just to imagine explaining. 

"Don't ask me now," I said and I held out my hands, "I've got to call 
Hunter." 

"You don't need to tell me you're sleeping with him. In my admittedly limited 
experience, a man who waves a gun at a woman's naked lover generally believes 
he has some right to do so." 

"Really. Did you learn that watching Days of Our Lives while you were on 
surveillance detail?" 

His hot angry breath ruffled the hair on the top of my head as he stared down 
at me. I hoped it hurt his neck. "Intimidation via size, that's so mature," I 
commented in my most judgmental, patronizing tone. Really, the boys did 
better in high school. 

The light flickered in his eyes, rebooting. 

"You can fuck up your career, his career, and mine for that matter," he said. 

If anyone in the Bureau found out, we were going to have another domestic 
incident worse than what Patricia Cornwall did. I didn't need Alex to tell me 
that. 

But he did have the most astounding ass, and watching it disappear into a 
pair of jeans just made me more depressed. Shirtless, he approached me again, 
bringing my face up for a kiss. "Lose the geek." 

I felt the familiar personal and professional Celebrity Deathmatch start in 
my head.  

Alex was right. 

And yet -- 

Was it just another tactic? Mulder wasn't the only canny male I knew. 

I stiffened and backed away, realizing that in running from Mulder I had been 
trying to build myself a better one, someone to hurt me in exactly the ways I 
required without engendering any obligation on my own part. Maybe Alex was a 
different person when he wasn't with me. I wasn't even sure if I wanted to 
know. And I didn't have the time, not while Mulder was out there making 
trouble. 

"I can't do that now," I told him. "I think you should go." 

Alex stormed out of the bedroom, leaving his toys. I followed because I 
wanted both of them to exit my apartment alive. Alex snarled at Mulder, just 
like Queequeg was doing from the relative safety of the kitchen. "Haven't you 
ruined enough of her life already? Now you have to do it twenty-four/seven?" 

"Alex, I don't need you --" 

He spun on me, and I was surprised to see that tears were leaking down his 
cheeks. "No, I guess you don't." 

"That's not what I --" 

"Just get out, Krycek, we've got things to discuss." Mulder's imperial 
command, delivered in his hoarse, smug voice, made me so mad that I was 
almost glad that Alex reacted badly. 

"Usually," he said, stalking up to Mulder, "I don't hit drunks, but I'm gonna 
make an exception for you." 

"Yeah, hurting the helpless always did turn you on," Mulder sneered and 
shoved Alex preemptively. Alex shoved back and Mulder stumbled towards my 
couch. "You like having someone to tie up, Alex? Trust games reassure you of 
your manhood?" They were poking each other in the chest like roosters gearing 
up for combat. "Or do you just want something I've got as a displacement of 
your homosexual desires? Don't think I didn't see the way you watched my ass 
--" 

Alex drove both fists into Mulder's stomach.  

"You are a fucking headcase!" he panted and I almost nodded in agreement as 
Mulder gagged and sagged into my cushions.  

"What you want is your business, Dana," he turned to me and his eyes were 
still shining, "but the woman I know respects herself more than to want 
this," he waved disgustedly at the man moaning on the couch and kicking the 
wine glasses off the table. 

On that note, he got his jacket and left. 

As Alex slammed the front door, Mulder recovered enough to rise and move to 
the center of the room. He stood there like a slightly off-balance coatrack, 
wobbling on my rug. 

"Scully---" he whined in his please-Mommy-take-care-of-me voice.

"I'm calling Hunter," I told Mulder. "You can't do this. The last time 
embarrassed me and it embarrassed her, and this is worse." 

"Hunter, what Hunter?" he said in a bare voice. 

"Your wife?" I prodded, tugging the bathrobe more tightly around my body. 

"Diana?" he asked, twitching with drunken horror. 

"No. Hunter Matheson-Mulder. Your wife." 

The hyphenated Queen of the Universe. 

"Oh Jesus, " Mulder collapsed into the couch and laughed softly to himself, 
"Hunter? What kind of a name is that?" 

Oh just your average too much money New England family name - like FOX.

"Your wife's name?" 

"I don't have a wife." 

This was bad, this was the apex of badness and would go down in my personal 
list of the worst delusions of Mulderdom.  

Sighing, I stalked past Mulder and hit the speed dial. 

"Mmmh?" 

"Hunter, it's Dana Scully." 

"Fox's not here," she grumbled in a sleep-thickened voice. 

"No he's here, at my apartment. Can you come get him?" 

"Oh fuck," she groaned and I could hear the background yammering of the TV 
silenced, "Are there police? Or is he just drunk?" 

"Drunk." 

"Then I won't put on a bra." 

This was starting to be a habit. He'd been shit-faced the last time he showed 
up at my apartment in the middle of the night, as if I were his ex-wife and 
he'd forgotten that we got divorced in the depths of his alcoholic haze. It 
said bad things about Mulder that he'd come to me for comfort before he'd go 
home to his wife. Bad things, but nothing I didn't already know when he was 
sober. 

Across the line, I heard her quick, angry sigh. 

"Half an hour," thankfully, she didn't finish the sentence with some 
suggestion that we clean and dress ourselves. 

I fed Mulder glass after glass of water while we waited for Hunter. I refused 
to talk to him and all he did was look up at me with soulful eyes. It was too 
bad Queequeg hated him so much, as he could have used the acting lessons from 
Mulder. Mulder watched me as if he was a judge at the Nuremberg trials, 
trying to understand why I could have done what I did. 

Not that it was any of his damn business. I'd kept up my side of the bargain 
and hadn't laid a finger on him since the society wedding where I ended up 
sitting at the table with the rest of the miscellaneous singles while Mulder 
and Hunter were fawned over by the best and the brightest of DC society. They 
looked like a perfume ad; Hunter was the most beautiful blonde antelope that 
I had ever seen in captivity. She was sloe-eyed and pouty-lipped with legs 
longer than the printout on my cell phone bill. Did I hate her? You bet your 
ass I did. I hated her for her long legs, her green-gold eyes, her trust 
fund, and the fact that she was going to pull Mulder into a rose-covered 
cottage while I was still paying monthly rent that didn't include electric. I 
hated her magnetic personality that made it easy to understand why Mulder 
would choose her.  

The hell of it was, I still wanted her to like me, with all the desperation 
of the fat girl in high school staring wistfully at the most popular 
cheerleader. When we first met she took my hands in hers and smiled as if she 
were really glad to have me around. I felt a rush of some warmth as if my 
nervous system had forgotten that I was only meeting her because Mulder was 
going to marry her. Her initial enthusiasm for me faded, I think, as the 
months went on and Mulder did not pull away from me as much as she'd have 
liked, but I still wanted the endorsement of her smile when she saw me. I 
wanted her self-confidence, her height, her whipcrack sense of humor, her 
money, but I would, pathetically, have settled for her approval. Or her 
husband. 

With him on my couch it was hard not to remember the night before the 
wedding. He ditched the bachelor party at ten and showed up at my apartment, 
tie askew and eyes alight with the passion he usually reserved for alien 
hunts. 

Five times, a personal record for both of us, I'm sure. The last time hurt, 
really hurt, and I can't imagine he enjoyed it either. We were bleeding the 
poison out of our systems. As dawn crept up on us like a stalker, we grew 
still, ceasing our struggles against whatever it was we'd been fighting. 
Limbs tangled like the Hydra's heads, we lay together and I thought about my 
nice flowered dress hanging in my closet like a suicide. Despite the fact 
that I was Mulder's closest friend in the world, Hunter had insisted that 
only her friends and family could be bridesmaids, and Mulder didn't fight it 
because he thought I wouldn't want the "honor" anyway. I supposed that the 
right place for me would have been "best woman," but that was a little too 
ironic even for Mulder. He was right, but at that moment it still stung. 

"Should I do this?" he asked, his voice dim in the gray room. 

In all those alternate universes, I wonder if there's a Dana Scully who 
managed to say the words that slowly decayed in my throat. Maybe "please 
don't" was too difficult a phrase. Maybe if I'd just tried for "no." 

"You've been planning it for months," I said instead, which was a lie because 
no one with a Y chromosome had been allowed to influence the plans, but it 
passed easily through the heavily guarded gates of my mouth. It did the trick 
because he left and I ended up sitting at the table at that deadly reception, 
my thighs aching, skin chafed, and leftover semen leaking into a panty shield 
while I smiled at the other pathetic dateless people. 

I left the reception after Ted Kennedy made a pass at me at the bar. I guess 
it was a good thing that Clinton wasn't there or I might have gotten a 
presidential porking in the coatroom. I did, however, end up with cystitis - 
while Mulder and Hunter went on their honeymoon in Paris.

It was for the best, because things were too intense between us with just the 
work. Mulder needed more care and feeding than I could provide. And if it 
meant that he drank a little harder than I remembered, still he had someone 
in the middle of the night who had no demons to interfere with the exorcism 
of his own. 

Hunter came, her face smooth as vanilla yogurt, her blonde hair pulled back 
in a sloppy ponytail.  

Her legs were as elegantly long and curved as Japanese swords in her black 
Donna Karan leggings and an oversized gray t-shirt, which was so wrinkled as 
to be unrecognizable as a garment. 

"Well," she said, and yawned as if her jaws would split, "here we go again. 
This is turning out to be a baaaad habit, sweetie." High cheekbones, low, 
gravelly contralto voice, skin like pearls and eyes like emeralds and amber: 
she was everything I dreamed of being back in high school when I still read 
Harlequins. 

Mulder looked at her like a man who's been in the desert too long and isn't 
sure if the bottle of Evian in front of him is the real thing or another 
hallucination. 

"We're going to have to get you a name tag. With a 'if found please return 
to' on it," she tugged on his sleeve and Mulder rose like a somnambulist, "Or 
maybe Dana should stop putting out a bowl of milk for you." 

"That's not what happened, Hunter," I said, my patience frayed beyond repair. 
"I'm the one who was disturbed. " 

"Fox is disturbed. Like we didn't know this already," she wrapped an arm 
around his waist and began steering him towards the door, "Please don't puke 
in the car, I just had it detailed." 

Why would a woman who could have anyone marry a man like Mulder? Admittedly 
he had nice packaging and the sex was great, but flipping over the stone of 
his mind revealed far more frightening things than tropical centipedes. 

Nonetheless, he followed her like a child going for his first day of school, 
looking back at me as if to ask me to save him from his fate. I wasn't going 
to hug him good-bye and tell him to be a good boy. 

Queequeg hopped into my lap when I sat down on the sofa, which seemed to be 
shaking underneath me. Hot pink tongue lapped over my face, paws scratched at 
my skin through my bathrobe and he wiggled and whined for my attention, not 
unlike Mulder. Queegueg, however, had a leash. I tangled my fingers in his 
fur and determined that I was not going to look at the door. 

After awhile, I considered calling Alex's cell. He might come back but he 
would certainly demand penance. The physical I could deal with. What if he 
asked me for some kind of commitment to stave off the Mulderdemons? I gave it 
up as a bad idea and drank the rest of the wine. Thus, I woke up with a 
headache and eyes swollen from frustration. Thank God for icepacks and 
Tylenol. 

end 10/25

Tikkun Olam 11/25 
MustangSally78@juno.com & RivkaT@aol.com

Guildenstern: We can move, of course, change direction, rattle about, but our 
movement is contained within a larger one that carries us along as inexorably 
as the wind and current.... 

 

Me and the wife in the car. Can you believe it? Mr. and Mrs. --

"Fox Mulder," Hunter said as we pulled away from Scully's apartment, "please 
don't air our dirty laundry in public by showing up at Dana's house and 
making it crystal clear to her that you'd rather be with her than me." 

"Can dirty laundry be crystal clear?" Obviously I wasn't yet drunk enough for 
this universe. I could drink a swimming pool of vodka and not be drunk 
enough, "You're mixing metaphors." 

"Please, professor, spare me the grammar lesson." 

Hunter snickered and stomped on the gas, which made my stomach lurch like the 
actors on Star Trek when a photon torpedo hit. She was a gazelle with 
fabulous legs. I'd do her, no doubt, but -- marry her? I looked down at my 
left hand and was not terribly surprised to find a ring. I wish I'd noticed 
when it reappeared. Had Dr. Strauss noticed? How gauche not to take it off 
during adulterous overtures. 

Something about being with Hunter was bringing the congested-sinuses feeling 
back, and I couldn't feel my hands or the cold against my face when I pressed 
my cheek against the window glass. My proximity-blurred reflection looked 
dim-wittedly back at me and I had a sudden memory of Hunter driving us the 
last time this happened, her so angry that she couldn't even speak.  And I 
sat there reliving what Scully had looked like when she came in my arms, as 
uncomprehending that I'd done wrong as any puppy having his nose rubbed in 
his own mess. Later she'd -- the memory fuzzed out like poor TV reception. 

Why did I have doubled memories of some things and not of others? I could 
remember my wife but not my rearranged apartment. It was a puzzlement fit for 
a drunken sod like me. 

We made the rest of the drive home in silence, her fuming and me trying not 
to throw up all over my unfamiliar car -- a Volvo, a beige one. Home turned 
out to be an expensive condo in Georgetown. She let me bumble around until I 
found my furniture in a small bedroom in the back of the condo. Thank God for 
the couch, more constant than my own self. It didn't smell as much like 
jacking off as was its wont, but it felt just right when I brought a bottle 
of Cuervo Gold over and sat down. 

I opened the bottle and she hovered in the doorway. Her mouth thinned out and 
the hands, naturally went to her hips. Is that gesture imprinted in the 
X-chromosome or is it one of the things that little girls learn at slumber 
parties? 

"Do you even know what I've gone through for you? The sacrifices I've made--" 

"What, throwing over JFK Jr. for me?" I don't know how I knew that. "I'm 
flattered." It was expensive hooch and hardly hurt going down. 

"I walked through hell to get you," she said, and I could hear the conviction 
in her voice even as I remembered a chance meeting at the Senator's. Her 
pursuit had been dedicated but I couldn't recall much sacrifice.  "You have 
no idea. None at all. And I didn't do it for the pleasure of getting your 
skinny ass out of another woman's apartment in the middle of the night." 

Hunter ripped the rubberband thingy out of her hair. "I don't know what you 
want from me. When you spend three weeks on the road on a case, I don't 
complain. When you work all night and never call me to tell me where you are, 
I stay calm. Those things I can accept, but I am not going to be hauling you 
home from Annapolis every weekend." 

I could hear her willing me to respond. 

"This isn't easy for me to say, Hunter--but I'm not entirely sure why I 
married you." 

"Well, Fox, I thought you liked being brought down by the hounds," she said 
with a leaden glare and slammed the door shut behind her. 

When she left the heavy constipated feeling in my head lifted some and the 
alcohol eased my hurts. After I was slightly better lubricated, I called out 
sick -- again -- leaving voice mail for Skinner like the coward that I am and 
sent Scully e-mail at her FBI address. 

Times like these I really understood what Dad saw in the bottle. Nothing. He 
didn't see anything, even when there was something to see, and that was such 
a relief. Hangovers, addiction, humiliation in front of friends, liver 
damage, all that is a reasonable price to pay for the rare privilege of not 
caring about what you've done and what you will do still. 

I drank and surfed channels. I was sure that there had only been three 
Charlie's Angels before. And now there were four. Where had the 
African-American one come from? I was pretty sure that there hadn't been a 
African-American one when the show had been on the first time. 

Somehow, this was even more frightening than Scully fucking Alex Krycek -- an 
extra Angel. Aaron Spelling was less likely to suffer an emotional meltdown 
and manifest inner conflict by the creation of another Angel in re-runs than 
Scully. Suffer an emotional meltdown, that is. I can't see her having 
anything to do with Charlie's Angels, including having one spring full-formed 
from her head like Athena. But I could see her with Alex Krycek's cock 
impaling her. In fact that was all I could see, every time that I blinked. 

I was the one suffering an emotional meltdown, right there underneath the 
evil Indian blanket on the sofa which wasn't where it was supposed to be. 

 ****

Where did Pyotr/Alex go? 

I had new clothes on and I was outside. There were no marks on my wrists. 
Well, aside from the old ones, that is -- no sign I'd been in handcuffs. But 
I'd felt the welts before. 

My mind was falling apart like a peeling sunburn, layers rubbing away and I 
didn't know what would be left in the end. 

I still had enough money for McDonald's. I knew it had to be morning because 
there's no breakfast food after eleven and they still let me have a McGuffin. 
When did they change the name? I try not to watch the TV or go outside much; 
it's easier for me that way. But Dana liked egg and cheese biscuits with a 
chocolate shake, I remembered. I think I cried as I paid, but the 
semi-educable teenager behind the counter didn't notice. 

I should just go to the police, I kept telling myself. 

But I didn't do it. I couldn't have killed them. Why would I have done that?  
I had hallucinations more regularly than many people had bowel movements.  
Probably I'd come home to find them dead and the horror had sent me running 
into the locked closets of my mind, blaming myself in the most direct way 
possible by dreaming that I'd killed them.  Symbolism, it had to be symbolism.

I bought another paper and there was no mention of the deaths in the front or 
the Metro section. That surprised me because the untimely death of white 
folks usually merits some ink in the Post. 

I remembered the buzzing in my head in the days before my family died. It was 
like someone was always in the background, talking to me, but it wasn't like 
the voices from my past, the ones the drugs had buried down deep in the 
foundations of my soul. These didn't say recognizable words. It was more like 
overhearing voices in another room so that you know someone's there but not 
what the topic of conversation is. It felt like one of those voices was mine. 

Maybe those strange men had been right about the computer chip. They 
contacted me and swore up and down that it was a government mind control 
plot. It sounded like a paranoid's fantasy suitable for a three-issue 
storyline in the comic. I was dying. They didn't seem to understand that I 
was dying and that I had a family to live for. The government could have made 
me moonlight as a soldier flying an unmarked helicopter and I would have 
considered it a fair trade. 

My doctor said those weirdoes had gotten my name by breaking into the 
hospital's secure database, and that the FBI was going to take care of them. 
Computer crime endangers everyone. I shrugged it off because by then the 
tumor was already shrinking. 

Now I wanted to believe that there was an explanation that didn't have to do 
with my biological demons. Dana and I almost didn't have any children because 
we were worried about their genetic legacies. But she convinced herself that 
my problems had been caused mostly by environmental trauma. The success of 
the drugs was more proof, to her, that science was enabling us to control the 
conditions of our own existence. If our children were particularly sensitive 
to traumatic conditions like whatever put all the scars on my body and the 
healed fractures in my bones, then we would just have to keep them safe. And 
she did. Until three nights ago, anyway. 

I walked on blistered feet, drawn like Odysseus with the Siren's song 
threading its way into the hollow spaces between my neurons. After a while, 
the dark rose up to meet me, the sky stained sapphire in that beautiful way 
of Washington springs, almost as if the world were a good place.  I didn't 
know where I was going but if I stopped moving I wouldn't start again. I 
waited for the light to take me away from all the pain. 

 ****

"Fox? Wake up!" 

Five more minutes, Mom. 

Time for school.  

Don't wanna go to school I forgot my homewor--

"Open your eyes you worthless sack of shit." 

The light was not my friend when I looked through the cage of my fingers. I 
think I did the best double-take of my life. The woman that stood before me 
almost made me swallow my Adam's apple. It took a few moments to identify the 
lethal blonde as Hunter Matheson--and suddenly I could see why this 
particular Mulder had chosen to marry her. Black silk carved her skin from a 
glacier. The red slash of her mouth cut through to my skeleton and ground my 
bones between her lips.  

"Hunter?" I choked. 

She smiled with her cold mouth and the lash caught me across the side of the 
face, making my skin sing with pain and blacking the vision in my right eye. 
Stunned with the blow and the booze I slid off the sofa, rolling into the 
carpet and flopped there like a landed fish. Strong fingers pulling at my 
shirt and undershirt, ripping at my belt and clamping down on my wrists while 
the old wool of the rug pressed into my nose and eyes, scratching at the sore 
skin on my face and my blind eye. I kicked as I drowned, as the leather of my 
own belt cinched around my wrists and the leg of the sofa. 

All I could see from that angle with my one good eye was her shapely ankles, 
wrapped in black strings of sandals, high on heels, bare skin shining white. 

I've had a gun muzzle held to my head often enough and the sensation is 
unmistakable. 

"You were serious about that Scully thing weren't you?" 

"Shut up," she instructed. 

Beltless, my trousers didn't put up much of a fight when she dragged them 
down my legs, nor did my boxers and the rug burnt against the baby skin of my 
frightened cock. 

"Don't do this-" I pleaded with the rug, with the dirt under the sofa. 

In the carpet, my mouth opened and shut like a guppy's. 

Down the shivering skin cover of my spine went the gun, making each vertebra 
cringe with fear as I cataloged the paralysis from each point should she 
choose to pull the trigger, full Christopher Reeve quadriplegic breathing 
with a machine, Jill Killmont quadriplegic, paraplegic . . . When the gun 
kissed the base of my spine where ass and back meet in a Bermuda triangle of 
nerves something clicked in my head with the finality of a ammunition 
cartridge slapped into a gun. 

Whatever dark version of me had inhabited this life before I had gate-crashed 
had a slightly more creative sex life than I did. 

Hunter was breathing with the telltale hitch of lust. 

I'd known for a long time that Scully and I had personal sexual profiles that 
were somewhat incompatible because they were mirror images. Scully defined 
closet sub, and I should have known that she might go somewhere else to get 
that if she couldn't trust me with it. Like Krycek. As for me, I couldn't 
advertise my preferences more if I actually dangled a bandana from the back 
pocket of my Levis. Hunter, either of her own volition or by my otherself's 
urging, liked the game.  

The thought or the Scotch made me vaguely nauseous.  

When the blow crashed down across my ass I was grateful. I deserved it. 

Worthless, useless, crazy, loser, geek, Spooky, fanatic . . . 

Each word cracked through my head as she cracked away at my body. 

The phoenix rising from the fire on Scully's back, burning like an arsonist's 
wet dream. 

Against the carpet, my cock rubbed and hardened when I shut my eyes as the 
leather bit into my wrists. Somewhere among the changes I had acquired a 
vastly increased tolerance for alcohol, along with a wife. I wondered if the 
two changes were related. 

Behind me, Hunter was beginning to gasp with exertion and the sides of her 
feet grazed my calves as she stood over me. Reaching up, my fingers touched 
the warm hardness of the leather strap holding me prisoner. Cracking of the 
lash over my back and ass pulled me away from my brain to a place where only 
body and skin existed. 

I was moaning into the carpet. This is what I'd searched the video stores and 
the net for, freedom from the overpowering weight of my thoughts and 
feelings. In the real world I could never trust anyone else to help me. 
Except Scully, only Scully did not want to go down into the dungeon inside my 
skull. If I could trust Scully then this other me could have chosen to trust 
Hunter instead --

The phoenix danced as she undulated on the man beneath her. I could see his 
legs shake as he thrust into her and she tossed her head back, groaning, her 
long shining hair curtaining the firebird from my sight. 

Weak, helpless disappointment, always letting her down . . . 

Cold and liquid slick between my asscheeks, pressed inside my tight body with 
cold, strong fingers and the shock of the hardness stuffed inside made me cry 
out. Deeper, wider, spreading me until I felt impaled with a redwood tree, 
staked to the floor below like a vampire caught in a coffin. Hunter's hair 
brushed my shoulders as she settled over me, her thighs cold as a dead 
woman's against mine. Moving, rocking, her breasts brushing the stinging skin 
of my back, she fucked me like a man, one end of the Siamese Twin dildo 
shoved into my ass and the other slid up into her cunt. The raw silk of her 
public hair grazed my hot and frayed ass, making me move underneath her on 
the waves of pleasure and pain. 

The lash writhed against my shoulders, her nails latched in the muscles of my 
back and pain tears burned my eyes. 

"Come on, fuck me, fuck me baby, come on. Harder baby, oh yeah, that's good 
--" 

God, that was me. 

Hunter was moaning as she fucked me, making sure that each stroke was angled 
for her pleasure, not caring that she tore into me all the while. Breathing 
turned ragged and she clutched at me, grinding her pelvis down into the tight 
and frightened muscles of my ass, breaking me, crushing me while she groaned 
with selfish pleasure. If I could only reach my cock, two or three quick 
strokes and I'd come all over myself like a teenager, without finesse or 
skill. 

Gun-dropping, evidence-losing, insane bastard . . . 

Scully --

Jerking, crying out in the unmistakable triumph of hard-won climax, Hunter 
clenched above me, her fists driving down into my ribcage and she beat a 
samba beat of her pleasure into my body. My breath fled my lungs like smoke 
after a window is opened and lights danced in the corners of my vision. 
Underneath, my cock was screaming for release. My brain was just screaming. 

She raised herself up with her strong little legs so that I could see the 
man's thick red cock gleaming in the candlelight as he pumped into her. Long 
and thick. 

Hunter ordered me to eat her and I did, her ass cradled in my forearms, 
pinning my bound hands underneath her hard white body. Cold she was, even 
with the heat of my mouth and she wailed when she came. I rubbed my aching, 
swollen cock against the carpet as she worked the dildo in and out of my ass 
until I was a mass of enervated jelly. Finally, she rolled me over like a 
baby too young to crawl, straddled my hips and lowered herself onto me, the 
cold, tight embrace of her cunt making me cry out with relief even as the 
dildo underneath me stabbed into my bowels. I barely moved inside her when 
the avalanche of my cold comfort climax dragged me down the treacherous side 
of the slope and onto the jagged rocks beneath. 

Dweeb, slut, freak, pathological incompetent, asking for it . . . 

Scully- 

"I love yo---" 

"I love you," she gasped into my lips. 

I passed out.  

Waking up in a smooth tangle of female arms and legs, smelling sex and sweet 
sweat, it doesn't get any better than that. Maple-syrup sunshine oozed over 
my deliciously tired body and I grunted in piglike pleasure, snufflling 
happily into the fall of blonde silk hair on the pillow next to me. Hunter's 
warm chuckle made me open my eyes to see her smiling narcotically at me. 

"What?" I mumbled. 

"You look like you're about sixteen years old when you're asleep. Sixteen and 
sooooo innocent." 

Wrapping tightly around my skin, she pressed cool lips to my forehead and I 
shut my eyes again. 

"Innocent until proven guilty." 

"Come on sleepyhead," her fingers ruffled my hair, "let's grab some coffee 
and a quick run before we go out." 

"Skip the run? I had enough of a workout last night." 

"Old man," she teased and took her smooth limbs away from me. 

"Older men are sexy, older women are yesterday's news," I warned her.  

Even with forty staring us in the face, other parts of my anatomy were 
sixteen that morning. Long, cool, and sleek she stretched underneath me and 
her skin was like a balm on mine. I pressed her into the sheets and lazily 
lapped at her lips, throat, and nipples while I stroked in and out of her, 
frissions of snowflake pleasure moving from my cock, through my nerves and 
into my brain. She shivered in her climax and I was rushed away in a cold 
breeze. Later there was Jamaican Blue Mountain Roast coffee in bed and the 
Washington Post with her doing the crossword on my back while I read the 
Style section with my head hanging down off the bed. The clock on the bedside 
table moved languidly towards nine and Hunter finally peeled herself away 
from me. 

"You should get to work, go out on a grace note. Mom and Daddy want us for 
cocktails." 

"Call and cancel," I sighed. 

"Fox, you know Daddy wants to talk about the job." 

Job? The disk drive was empty and all I got was an error message when I tried 
to figure out what she was talking about. I should know. 

"Right," I stalled. 

Hunter continued as she went into the bathroom, dropping her black silk 
nightgown to the floor, giving me a long look at the graceful line of her 
spine, the fall of blonde hair around her shoulders, and the dimples in her 
tight little ass. 

"We did agree that it's time for you to leave the Bureau, and working at 
Matheson is the perfect segue. Regular hours, less travel, and we can even 
move out of the city." 

"We could," I agreed and grabbed at my bathrobe lying over the chair near the 
window. Toweling enfolded me and I stepped over the debris of the paper on 
the floor, "maybe we could get a dog and I could learn to walk it." 

"Don't get ahead of yourself," she chuckled and I realized that it was going 
to be a close thing if I could walk. 

Twanging in uncomfortable places, I rose and joined her in the shower. Last 
night and the morning had left me limp as overcooked ziti and I washed her as 
chastely as a hospital nurse. 

Thin lines of blood swirled down the drain like crimson threads from my 
unraveling heart. 

When I had dressed, using the tie Hunter thoughtfully left on the bed for me, 
I went to the study where my letter of resignation awaited only signature and 
delivery. 

Hunter was right, the quest had been as barren as Scully for more than a 
year, and though chasing Bigfoot was interesting I wasn't getting any 
younger. It was time to build a legacy, to do work that had more than local 
significance. Last night was proof enough, if I needed it, that Scully was 
part of my past, and not a part I could reminisce fondly about. Scully didn't 
need me anymore, she had Krycek now. 

The room smelled reassuringly of sex and Hunter's perfume, and when I left it 
I felt exposed. I wanted to return to her cool caging arms. Her punishments, 
unlike the rest of my pains, were certain and they had a point. 

end 11/25

Tikkun Olam 12/25 
MustangSally78@juno.com & RivkaT@aol.com

Player: Why, we grow rusty and you catch us at the very point of decadence -- 
by this time tomorrow we might have forgotten everything we ever knew. That's 
a thought, isn't it? We'd be back where we started --improvising. 


"I understand that Agent Mulder was unable to make the meeting with the 
Arlington Police." 

The absolute last thing that I wanted to do was listen to Skinner bitch about 
Mulder letting him down again. At this point in time, Skinner and I could sit 
around and whine like two husband-sharing trailer trash bimbos on Jerry 
Springer. Actually, Skinner managed to take everything Mulder did so 
personally that I had to wonder if there weren't more covert feelings than 
strict professionalism.  I could easily imagine Skinner bending Mulder over 
the big desk in the AD's office and teaching him what it was really like to 
get fucked over by a superior. And Mulder would like it. 

Who ever knew with Mulder, anyway? 

You could say the same about me. My ass was still sore from last night. 

"Agent Scully?" Skinner prompted, bringing me back to big, bald reality. 

I grabbed onto my professionalism and stiffened in my suede pumps. "Yes sir, 
I was surprised myself. When I spoke to him shortly before the meeting he was 
going to attend." 

Right in front of the coffee maker was probably not the most professional 
location to have a conversation about Mulder. 

"Do you have any idea what might be behind Agent Mulder's sudden outbreak of 
sick days?" 

PMS was not the right answer. Nor would it be a good idea to remind Skinner 
that Mulder was about as dependable as a two-dollar watch. Mulder is great at 
making me feel needed and he introduced me to an important quest, but he's 
not very trustworthy. I've known that since day two on the X Files when he 
made a pass at me and then backpedaled like Clinton on gays in the military. 
Being with him is like channel-surfing with satellite TV.  There are far too 
many B-movies playing in his head.  Instead of saying this, I punted. "The 
Rothstein case seems to have hit a personal note with him. The removal of the 
bodies might have exacerbated an already delicate situation." 

"Keep him under control, Agent Scully. I don't have the time or the patience 
to deal with one of Mulder's flights of fantasy right now." 

Neither did I, but since when did my needs ever matter? 

"Yes sir." 

"And track down those bodies, we don't want to be responsible for losing 
bodies. It does not reflect well on the Bureau." 

I slunk downstairs, feeling as if my tail had been stepped on. 

I don't usually snoop in Mulder's desk, but the letter was half-opened on top 
of the files for the exsanguination case I was looking for. If he was going 
to leave it out in the open, he must have intended me to read it. The 
laser-printed words jumped in time with my pulse. 

I hereby tender my resignation to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. 

I told myself that I wasn't surprised or disappointed. The Rothstein case had 
piqued his interest, but as usual these days it was a mere flare in the 
darkened forest canopy of his mind. I could accept Hunter's theft of Mulder's 
body, but I didn't know how to deal with the theft of his soul. How dare he 
be happy enough to stop looking for answers? I felt isolation wrapping me 
like a mummy in our basement tomb, and Lara Croft with her big breasts and 
Barbie legs had stolen my treasure, leaving me embalmed, unable even to rot. 
I wanted a curse to bring me back to life and send me tottering after her. I 
wouldn't scare her to death; I'd just use my gun. 

He hadn't yet signed the letter. 

I waited like a cat at a mousehole until he returned to the office, bearing 
two cups of coffee as if to add to the bitterness of the moment. 

"So," I said as I accepted the cup and felt my hand began to burn, "I see 
she's convinced you it's time to move on." 

"Scully," he said helplessly. No, he had plenty of help. 

"I thank you for your recommendation that I be given my choice of new 
assignments. It does surprise me that you would assume that the X Files would 
no longer hold my interest simply because they lost yours." 

He gulped coffee and stared at the floor. I had been denied so much that I 
refused to be denied this fight. 

"Did you expect me to say that I couldn't do this without you?" and my voice 
was jacked up to a volume not often heard in the dark recesses of the 
basement. 

"No, I . . ." 

"Did you expect that your waning interest in the paranormal and 
conspiratorial would negate my desire to discover what has been done to me, 
why Melissa died, why Emily died?" 

He blinked each time I slapped him with a name, and I could see his eyes 
glisten as he struggled against further reaction. 

"I don't know what's happening to me," he said raggedly. "When I'm with her . 
. . I have a different life. My life makes sense. But now . . . I'm not sure 
what I want." 

I put my coffee on the desk and stepped closer to him, and he bent towards me 
like a flower in the wind. "Are you sure you don't know?" In the boudoir 
dimness of the basement his pupils were black holes, the center of his own 
private galaxy and I the loneliest cosmonaut. He was breathing in quick Morse 
Code gulps and I could feel the room heat up. 

"Don't quit," I told him, bringing my hand up to brush my fingertips against 
his cheek. He shuddered as if I had clawed him but we never touched that way, 
the damage we did one another was more easily concealed. 

"Do you want me to stay?" 

So that was the asking price. I could have fucked him on the desk more 
easily. I hadn't been able to choke out the words the night before his 
wedding--and now he was asking me to stop him again. I dropped my hand and 
entwined our fingers, almost shivering with the chill from his body.  

"I want to work with you. I believe that we have the opportunity to find the 
truth, truth no one else may be capable of finding." I squeezed and his hand 
clamped mine like a vise. "We are stronger together, Mulder. I want you to be 
happy, but I believe that leaving the X Files is not a path that will 
ultimately provide you with satisfaction." 

He pulled me into his arms and I stroked my hands along the strong muscles of 
his back as he pressed me into himself. With my head tucked under his chin, 
he surrounded me like an envelope around a love letter. Or a letterbomb, 
primed to destroy anyone who would separate us. 

"Hunter's going to be mad," he mused. 

"What does that mean to you?" I asked, hating the uncertainty in my voice, 
glad that I could muffle the question against his expensive wool jacket. His 
hands traced runes of binding on my back. 

"Not enough," he whispered and kissed the top of my head where my hair 
parted, my forehead, the skin in the orbit of my eye, the bridge of my nose, 
my other eyelid, sliding his lips across my cheekbone, my lips parting as the 
air in my lungs caught fire -- 

Coughing, I doubled over. It was the smoke I'd inhaled in the Rothstein fire, 
another crime to add to the Conspiracy's list. Mulder released me and stepped 
back as I composed myself. 

"So," he said with a sick little smile. 

"So," I replied, straightening my unmussed jacket. "I, uh, I think the DNA 
results from the Rothsteins should be back, we'll be able to check for 
abnormalities like branched DNA." 

"Why don't you go to the lab?" he suggested. "I've got . . . a call to make." 

The smile I gave him in return hurt, but it was good pain. 

 ****

I don't like lying to Scully, but it' something that I've gotten good at over 
the years.

"Agent Mulder, according to my calendar it isn't April Fool's Day." 

The letter of resignation was most definitely not trembling in Skinner's 
hand. I shrugged. 

"It's no joke, that is my resignation, effective immediately." 

"Has something happened that I'm not aware of?" His tone indicated that he 
would not be surprised if the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the KGB and 
Hamas stormed into his office with warrants for my arrest and/or execution. 

"It's a purely personal decision." 

"I can't accept it at face value." 

Considering the fact that Skinner had stuck his muscular neck out for me on 
more than one occasion, it would have been remiss of me not to offer at least 
a token explanation. 

"Since 1992, on a weekly basis, Scully and I fly into some misbegotten town 
in the middle of nowhere, rent a Taurus or, when we're lucky, an Intrigue, 
drive around at night, run around in the dark, annoy the locals, stay in 
substandard hotels. Then we run around in the dark some more with 
flashlights, make cellphone calls, and leave without becoming any more 
enlightened than when we came." 

The sunlight flickered off his glasses in lieu of a change in expression.  

"I took the consultant position so I can go home every night and be with my 
wife." 

A stray muscle twitched over the pristine collar of his shirt. 

"Domesticity," he said. 

What? Did I expect him to understand? No. All it left me with was feeling 
foolish for telling the truth, as if anyone really gave a flying fuck about 
the truth. I should have pointed out that I was going to be making about 
twice his pay scale at Matheson and in the private sector there were rarely 
pay freezes. FBI agents aren't doing the job for the money, since we're paid 
on the same government scale as the guys who mop the floor in the Capitol 
Building. Skinner had handed his ass over to Uncle Sam when he was a kid 
Marine in the Mekong Delta and took Holy Orders to serve the US of A. What 
did he get? Shot nearly to death, a busted marriage, and an apartment in 
Crystal City. Fuck it. Not me. 

Marrying Hunter was the smartest thing that I ever did. 

"Anyway, I can give you two weeks and --" 

"Security will help you empty out your desk and move personal items to your 
car." 

Translation -- they were going to make sure that I didn't take any sensitive 
information with me, and then escort my punk ass out of the building. 
Standard Operating Procedure. 

"Right." 

The strange underwater feeling filled my head again as I slouched to the 
door. 

"Agent Mulder, I assume that you have spoken to Agent Scully about this." 

"We spoke." 

He wasn't going to get any more than that from me. I handed over my ID, my 
badge, and my gun.  

"Good luck," he said in a voice that had an ultraviolet spectrum of meanings 
to it, most of which were invisible to the human eye. 

Feeling naked, I shut the door behind me. 

Sure enough, a pair of green grunts with bad haircuts and worse suits 
escorted me back to the basement office and watched me empty my personal 
effects from my desk.  I'd gone through a major housecleaning right after I 
met Hunter and there wasn't quite as much shit as there had been before. I 
packed up everything that wasn't purchased with taxpayer money -- my slinky, 
my wedding picture, a genuine Michael Jordan autographed baseball (the great 
Jordan's lackluster baseball career was an X-File unto itself), a couple of 
snapshots of Scully and me staring at bodies, and a half-empty bag of 
sunflower seeds. My things barely covered the bottom of a file box. The 
grunts watched to make sure that I didn't walk off with a pad of Post-Its or 
a paper clip. I thought about taking the "I want to believe" poster but 
decided to leave it for Scully. 

The grunts walked me to my car where I gave them the parking permit taped to 
the windshield. That was it, it was done, all over in less than an hour, and 
I was free. Free as a man hanging on the gallows. 

 ****

The empty desk in the office was far more eloquent than Mulder ever could be. 
I stared at the nice clean desktop and the sweat broke out all over my body 
as if I'd stepped onto the surface of the sun. The son of a bitch had stood 
there, extorted a confession of my deepest feelings, and lied to me.  Part of 
me dropped to the floor and began to weep like a Jane Austen heroine, but my 
body made its jerky, mechanical way over to the telephone and my fingers 
punched in the digits for another extension. 

Mulder would never have done this of his own volition. You can't work and 
sleep with someone for as long as I had with Mulder and not know him.

"Krycek." 

"It's Dana. I need a favor." 

I could hear the hard drive grind in his head even through the coaxial cable 
and concrete of the big, ugly building. 

"How can I help you, Agent Scully?" 

"Somewhere there has to be a dossier on Hunter Matheson. I need to see it. 
I'd get it from personnel myself but --" 

"It just might look like you're trying to exhume some dirt on your 
ex-partner's wife who's pussy-whipped him into ditching you and the Bureau on 
a permanent basis," the warm slap of his sarcasm made me swallow dust. 

"News travels fast," I said. 

"I'll grab the file and a pizza and meet up at your place at seven, right?" 

"Fine. Thanks, Alex." 

After I hung up the phone, I collected an armful of my own files and 
paperclips and spread them liberally over the shining absence of the desk. It 
didn't make me feel any better. 

I plotted Hunter's death and that cheered me somewhat. 

 ****

Hunter had not yet forgiven me for having to talk me down from yet another 
bridge too far. She maintained, with some accuracy, that I was unduly 
influenced by Scully. Still, I had gone through with it, and it seemed unfair 
of her to hold my uncertainty against me. It wasn't surprising that after 
twelve years I had second thoughts. Or was that two sets of thoughts? The 
Rothsteins, something about the missing Robert -- I had memories of another 
life. Hadn't I? 

I was sulking on the bed as she undressed. In her presence, my memories of my 
recent time on the X Files seemed gray and useless, navel-gazing of the least 
satisfying kind. Hunter's navel was much more interesting.  She brought 
happiness into an otherwise worthless life. What right did I have to deny her 
-- deny myself -- normalcy? 

"Skinner has the letter now?" 

"Yeah, it's over," I said. 

Hunter sighed and walked over to me, reaching down to ruffle my hair. Once 
again the world yawed, images splitting as if I were having my eyes checked 
in the doctor's office. Hunter shouldn't make me feel this strange. She was 
an overbred Harvard MBA with expensive tastes and a flavor like oysters and 
caviar. From the beginning she'd controlled me through my own desires, 
knowing exactly what I wanted and seeming to enjoy it too. She didn't fight 
me on everything, like Scully. But I was discovering that the dominance games 
didn't stop at the bedroom door.  Did I mind? No, not really. There was a 
comfort to following orders, a narcotic I wasn't familiar with. 

"I've got to get clean," she sighed. "Join me?" Silk and linen drifted like 
falling leaves to bare her elegant limbs as she made her way to the bathroom. 

She had tidied up from the night before: the euphemistically named "marital 
aids" had been sequestered in the spice chest on the dresser. We had jokingly 
named it "the toy chest" when I'd bought it for her from the antique dealer 
in Paris on our honeymoon. I stared at the chest, the handmade brass lock, 
the inlaid panels on the top and front, and the memory of that day paled like 
an oil painting left in the sun too long. Thin sound, scratchy memory, like a 
bootleg videotape-recorded over too many times. 

Not my memories, not mine. 

I heard the shower running. Shower running and Scully coming out with tequila 
on her breath and her hair sweeping over the coffee table -- 

"Fox?" she called. 

Cool and silky water poured over my mind and I relaxed, pulling off my tie 
and throwing it to the floor on top of Hunter's jacket. The cleaning woman 
was due in the morning and she was used to our slovenly ways. I poked my head 
into the steamy bathroom and caught the blurred outline of her body behind 
the shower door. My cock stirred, lazy as a snake in the sun. 

"I just want to check my e-mail." 

"Don't be long," she said and laughed. 

I did check my mail, booting up the computer in the office, a computer that 
would have made the FBI server blush with inferiority. Money does have its 
advantages. Scully had always made such an issue of money, of her 
thriftiness, her speed at getting expenses approved, finding the most 
"cost-effective" hotels and car rentals. Her bourgeois attitude was cute, but 
tiresome. Out of habit, I went to log into the FBI network and found that my 
password was invalid. They'd cut me off. Annoyed, I went back into the 
bathroom and shucked my suit, slipping into the warm water just behind 
Hunter. In the sweet-smelling steam she wrapped around me and there was no 
uncertainty in the way we moved together, as if we'd been machine-engineered 
to match. 

Afterwards, I dozed in a vanilla-scented haze in the cool sheets. 

For dinner there was delivery gourmet pizza and microbrew beer. We watched 
basketball on the TV in my study with her wiggling toes under my ass and me 
resting my beer on her legs. Life was good. After the game on the West Coast 
was over I made my wobbly way to the bathroom to piss out some of the beer. I 
popped the toilet seat and unzipped my pants, and the pale tablet floating on 
the water made me gulp. I knew those pills. Ortho-Cept.  I'd seen those in 
too many bathroom medicine cabinets through the years, the vanguard against 
babies. That was even the brand that Scully took before Conspiracy made 
contraception a thing of the past. 

It seemed insensitive to piss on the pill so I flushed it before emptying my 
bladder. 

"Why are you flushing your birth control pills?" I asked. 

Hunter's head snapped up from watching the post-game on ESPN. 

"Hello? You quit the Bureau, I get pregnant? Remember the deal?" 

"No. I don't remember." 

"Are you drunk? We've been talking about it for years." 

"Have we?" 

Hunter didn't deign to answer, instead she hauled me off to the bedroom and 
proceeded to suck out my IQ via my cock. 

It worked. 

end 12/25

Tikkun Olam 13/25 
MustangSally78@juno.com & RivkaT@aol.com

Guildenstern: All your life you live so close to truth, it becomes a 
permanent blur in the corner of your eye, and when something nudges it into 
outline it is like being ambushed by a grotesque. 


Saturday we went to Matheson and she showed me my office. While Hunter went 
to gather up some files I roamed around the unoccupied space and surveyed 
what was going to be my domain. 

It was a great desk, as far as desks go, big and real wood instead of the 
picture of wood laminated over particleboard which I was used to, or 
government issued metal desks with ugly beige sides and drawers edged just 
right to tear your pants. I adjusted the lamp a few inches to the left and 
sat down in the soft leather chair, looking out the window to where I could 
see the tip of the Washington Monument blinking in the twilight, like a cock 
bleeding luminescent red. 

It was a good office. It looked to be free of the bugs of both kinds that 
plagued the basement of the Hoover. Windows on one wall and modern art on the 
other, meeting table and chairs by the window and a fountain dribbling near 
the door. Hunter had said that a Feng Shui practitioner had been through the 
entire building the year before and since that time billable clients had 
almost doubled. Maybe I should have the Feng Shui master come through and 
rearrange my mental furniture. Things were getting crowded and weird in the 
ol' homestead. 

I looked at the phone for a moment, and dialed the number I had better 
memorized than my social security number. I found myself listening to 
Scully's answering machine -- again. I'd called her cellphone, her office 
extension, and her home number, only to leave messages to her cold electronic 
shadow. She wasn't returning my calls. Hunter said that Scully was just 
sulking, but there was something itching at the base of my brain that 
disagreed with my lovely wife. 

My new secretary was gracious, well-organized, attractive, and old enough to 
be my mother. I'm sure Hunter arranged each of these things. 

Matheson was developing a specialty in coordinating law enforcement resources 
to take advantage of new technologies and advances in recordkeeping. There 
are traditional rivalries, but computers know nothing about egos and so if 
the computers talked, Feds and locals wouldn't need to, and everyone would be 
happier except the criminals. The farmers and the cowboys could be friends. 

I was happily correlating robberies with police patrol patterns when the 
Senator called. 

"Sir," I said, as respectfully as I knew how. 

"Fox, it's been a while. I'm glad you've entered my old hunting grounds -- I 
think you'll find it rewarding." 

"I certainly am." It was hard to think of the old man as part of the private 
sector, since he'd been in office before I could vote, but the consulting 
firm had been in his family for ages, and Mrs. M. still worked here three 
floors above me. 

"But I didn't call just to pat you on the back, Fox, I have a special project 
for you, one that will take advantage of your background -- put that 
psychology degree to some use." 

"What is it?" 

"Major disaster planning. FEMA's a joke -- we're talking Armageddon, half the 
population at least incapacitated. The federal government wants to know which 
would be the crucial facilities necessary to maintain order in the remaining 
population, and as usual the private sector is the only option for providing 
the skills they need." 

"What's the expected cause? Asteroids, minor nuclear war, global warming, 
what?" 

"Does it matter?" he asked. 

"Sure," I told him as if I'd been doing this for years. "It affects whether 
or not you have access to infrastructure, communications, food supplies -- 
and it probably affects whether or not the good citizens are going to be 
listening when Uncle Sam comes around with his bullhorn and his promises." 

If the Senator disliked the flippancy, he ignored it. "A virus." 

"Another Ebola scenario?" 

"I'll have the files sent over. Oh, by the way, you did go to your doctor's 
appointment, didn't you? Hunter wanted me to check." 

"She knows me pretty well," I smirked into the receiver. "Clean bill of 
health. I even got a flu shot for the coming season." 

"We like our employees to be well-prepared," and the smile in his voice was 
as polished as thirty years of the rubber-chicken circuit could make it. 
"Take care, Fox." 

I twiddled with the statistics for a while, already distracted by the new 
project. The real challenge would be getting people to believe a 
government-sponsored leader rather than some Hitler-wannabe using disaster as 
his Great Depression. The government would have to present itself as having 
the solution, even if it didn't. Trust was far more important than ammunition 
in a crisis, though the latter couldn't hurt. 

I got out my notepad and started to jot. 

I hadn't shut the door to my office and after awhile, I had to get up and 
seal myself off from the outside world. Someone was coughing outside and the 
noise was annoying me. 

****

Frohike called me after eleven o'clock, his voice hushed as if that would 
keep the surveillance he always expected from catching his words. When he did 
speak, he sounded strangled, as if he'd got the flu that seemed to be bogging 
everyone down. The lunchroom at the Bureau had sounded like a doctor's 
waiting room for the past few days. "Mulder won't return our calls." 

"Thanks for sharing." Maybe he was trying to get back at me, hoping that the 
Gunmen would then ignore my messages and then there would be a weird triangle 
of failures to communicate.

"This is serious, Dana, Matheson is involved in some weird shit."

"Tell me."

"Supposedly we're holding off on demobilizing from the Bosnian situation 
because of a flu outbreak in the military, but we don't think that's what's 
really happening. We think that the military is readying itself for martial 
law, using illness as an excuse to shut itself off from regular society. 
Electronic and voice traffic between Matheson's firm and the Pentagon has 
quintupled over the last week, and members of the consulting group have been 
quietly moved into offices at Langly and Quantico. Our friends in the world 
of government watchdogs" (that is, conspiracy theorists, I told myself) "are 
convinced that a coup is imminent."

"I'm not sure I understand what you want me to do, Frohike."

"I could show you pictures," he leered, but his heart wasn't in it. "We want 
you to approach Mulder. He always condescended to us, even when he needed us. 
He trusts you more." His voice was sad, and I felt a sudden wave of sympathy 
for the man.

"You think he could stop this?"

"He'd be a voice from inside the beast, someone who could expose the truth 
about the whole operation."

Informants, the agent knew, were supposed to provide information -- and 
occasionally get themselves slaughtered. I swallowed and tasted silvery-metal 
fear. "I'll talk to him. But I can't promise --"

"Yeah. Hey, Dana, I've been looking for information on Hunter, but it's 
really " His voice trailed off in a pained wheeze, "... strange. You might be 
interested in it. I'll send you the file."

"All right," I said and hung up, realizing too late that such behavior was 
rude when Mulder wasn't on the other end of the line. He'd stolen my phone 
manners, but then why should they be any different than the other parts of my 
life that he'd colonized?

I turned on my computer and retrieved my email. The attachment from the 
Gunmen proved to be a set of scanned files from Hunter Matheson's early 
years. I was surprised that the Mathesons had adopted. I could imagine the 
political benefits, but they had two children of their own already, and 
wealthy adoptive parents usually choose sweet little babies rather than 
twelve-year-olds. The Gunmen had dug up an interview with the Senator in 
which he explained that Hunter was the daughter of an old friend of his who'd 
perished tragically with his wife and another child in a fire, and he'd 
gladly taken the bereaved youngster in, ensuring that she was raised in the 
same environment that her parents would have given her.

How small a community is Martha's Vineyard, anyway? Hunter had gone to prep 
school, naturally, and probably summered in Europe, but the Senator was an 
old friend of Mulder's father and I found it hard to believe that no one had 
ever paired the two aptly named children. Mulder had never mentioned that he 
knew her from before. Of course, important things like that tended to slip 
Mulder's mind -- hey, Scully, were you aware that you didn't have any ova? 
The man couldn't be relied on to buy toilet paper and it was sickeningly 
possible that Hunter had been his childhood sweetheart, the one he never 
forgot, the one who outshone all the other women who were just papering over 
the aching void inside him until he returned to her.

Yo, Dana, jealous much?

But something about Senator Matheson's story made my fur stand on end. I 
looked at the records again and noted her listed birthdate. October 31, 1960. 
A nest of snakes stirred to life in my stomach, coiling and tangling and 
biting at me.

I wondered if they'd had neighboring bassinets at the hospital.

Frohike had appended a note near the end. "Her history is funky. All the 
school records check out, but if you call the people who were supposedly in 
her class, they have no idea who she is. And I got one guy to lend me his old 
facebook, the original and not the kind the universities keep for display. 
There's no one with the right name or face there."

The snakes swallowed pigs and I was rapidly losing my ability to breathe.  I 
wanted so badly for her to be the bad guy, but now that it seemed to be true 
I could only wish for my standard disbelief.

The message I sent back was simple: "I need to know who her biological 
parents were."

****

The message from Scully was simple. "Please meet me after five." 

She was at our bench when I arrived and I felt a thrill just from knowing 
that I'd gotten the part of the message she'd left unsaid. Sometimes I 
thought Hunter and I shared the same neurons, but it was different with 
Scully, because I'd had to work for it with her. Even if I wasn't willing to 
do the hard labor of knowing her anymore, I still respected the achievement.

"Hey," I said as I sat and flipped my trenchcoat around to cover my knees. 
There were fewer tourists than usual around the Mall. If I were still 
paranoid I'd feel more secure with the decreased opportunity for surveillance.

"Mulder, I --" the words stretched like spun sugar until they crystallized 
into glass and shattered in the air; I felt the fragments against my face. 

"It's so good to catch up on old times with you."

She made a small sound that I would have interpreted as pain in another 
person. "I think there may be something wrong with your new job."

"Would that be the fabulous pay, the cushy office, or the bankers' hours?" I 
turned so that I could see her out of the corner of my eye. Had she been so 
thin before? I could see the lipstick and blush covering her real face like a 
layer of dust on a statue.

"I don't understand what happened to you, Mulder. These people -- Matheson -- 
they're heavily involved with the military, with keeping vital information 
from the public about what the government is really doing, and suddenly 
you're nonchalant. I didn't expect marriage to neuter you."

I shifted on the bench. "Your territoriality would be charming if you 
actually had any claim to the territory."

"That's not the point!" I heard her take a deep breath, and then she shifted 
so that she was facing me, her legs drawn up onto the bench, her hands hot 
around mine, and though I didn't mean to I grasped them like a drowning 
sailor grasps flotsam. "Mulder, for your own sake, so that you know what it 
is you're dealing with, I'm asking you to find out what Matheson's 
relationship to the government really is. I don't think that this is mere 
political patronage. I think this is dangerous."

She was staring at my chest, at our joined hands, and I couldn't see her 
eyes. "Scully," and she looked up and I should have been more careful what I 
wished for; they were chlorine-blue and as distant as the bottom of an 
Olympic pool, cloudy as if something had drowned.

"All I want is for you to find out why your consulting group has increased 
communication with the Pentagon in the last few weeks fivefold, why there are 
members working at the FBI and the CIA and probably the other alphabet 
agencies. Maybe it's nothing. But you owe it to yourself -- you owe it to 
what you used to seek -- to find out."

I shivered, wanting her warmth to surround me, trying to use my grasp on her 
hands to pull her closer, but she dissolved away from me like smoke and then 
she was a retreating figure on the sidewalk, stopping to offer a tissue to a 
coughing tourist and then moving away. 

Then I had a thought that should have been warning enough: What could it hurt 
to just take a look around?

When I returned to the Matheson building, I went up to Hunter's office. I 
knew that she had an appointment with the Secretary of Commerce. What I 
didn't know was how she could stay awake during those things. "She's not in," 
her secretary told me as I approached.

"I know. I just have some ... love notes to hide."

The secretary smirked, but I thought it was a pretty good bluff, under the 
circumstances.

You have five tries to get the password right on the Matheson computers 
before you're shut down. But Hunter had just gotten yelled at by the security 
staff to change her password, and we had an amusing little conversation about 
the appropriate replacement. Her favorite name for a girl baby was 'Molly,' 
don't ask me why, and sure enough it worked.

Logged in as Hunter on Hunter's computer, I checked the root directory. There 
were a lot more files there than I could remember seeing. Obviously, her 
access was better than mine. Out of curiousity, I checked her directory. 
Devoted TV junkie that she was, Hunter had named the directory "FoxFiles." At 
that point, I was honor bound to look at what she was writing about me. And I 
wanted to know if *that* was why the secretary had smirked at me.

There was a file dated the day after our last big fight, right before I'd 
quit the X Files. It was a saved email from a Doctor Rendigar at Princeton.

"Dear Ms. Matheson,

Your concern that Fox is experiencing flashes of 'memory' from alternate 
paths is understandable, but not well founded. In theory he might get some 
interference, like signal leakage that creates radio interference, but there 
is no reason he would experience it at this time, when there have been no 
recent cross-temporal events to trigger it. I hesitate to offer personal 
advice, but it sounds to me like you should just chalk it up to a marital 
spat whose wounding words meant more to you than to him.

I remain, Your humble servant, Akhil"

Memory, signal leakage, cross-temporal events -- the jargon seemed so 
familiar. 

Memory-gate theory, time slippage, a woman's science-sexy voice in my ear, 
going back to Bellefleur with Scully, and again --

Holy fuck.  Memories swirled around me like the plastic litter in a shaken 
snowglobe.  

Even paranoids have enemies, and I have more than most.  Hunter knew that 
there was something wrong with me. How could I lose myself in another man's 
memories for days? It made no sense that I would slip without protest into my 
otherself's life (not to mention his wife) when I had noticed the change in 
three inches of Scully's hair. 

I retained enough composure to log off, and then I staggered out of Hunter's 
office. One privilege of power was that no one gave me any shit about taking 
off work early. I took a cab home.

When I opened the door I saw that the message light on the telephone was 
blinking.

"Mulder?  It's John Byers. . . Uh, I'm afraid I have some bad news --"

What, their server crashed again?

"Frohike's dead.  About an hour ago.  He had a bronchial infection and -- 
well, he died.  They talked about that Superflu that's going around.  .  .  
Uh, we're having a memorial online, if you're interested, and Langley is 
bringing some good beer.  Call me if you can. . . Bye."

The world gave a sickening shudder around me.

Frohike?  Dead?

She was blue and silent, her outline distorted and inhuman on the bedside. 
Cold. 

And I remembered. How her cheekbone had felt against my knuckles as it 
crumpled, the salt spray of hot blood from her mouth as she fell back and 
back. I remembered collapsing her throat with the edge of my hand. It felt 
like fruit, bursting and bubbling beneath the elastic skin. 

I stumbled and bounced off the wall, knocking the mirror on the floor, where 
it broke into shining silver shards.  Seven years of bad luck . . . God this 
was wrong, this was a big fucking ball of wrong.

Hunter's purse on the side table next to the mail, and I almost bolted, but 
then I heard the shower running and I was reassured. The keys to the Volvo 
were in her handbag as well as a few other things I felt I needed. Did DC 
observe communal property laws? Since I wasn't really her husband, it was 
theft no matter which way I looked at it. 

I called Scully from the car, but she wasn't home. Maybe she was at Krycek's 
place for a change, but I didn't have his number.

The bar at the airport was open and I drank Scotch until my plane was called. 

end 13/25