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   RivkaT's e-mail address has changed to: rivkat@gmail.com
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Tikkun Olam 14/25
MustangSally78@juno.com & RivkaT@aol.com

Guildenstern: We've been caught up. Your smallest action sets off another 
somewhere else, and is set off by it. Keep an eye open, an ear cocked. Tread 
warily, follow instructions. We'll be all right. 
Rosencrantz: For how long? 

 

Dr. Strauss looked even better this time, and I don't think it was because 
she'd changed. I think it was because I was drunk enough to have to feign 
sobriety to get on the plane. "Things are different now. Worse." 

"What the hell happened?" she demanded. 

"I'm married, Frohike's dead, Scully's with Krycek and the fucking DOG FROM 
HELL is alive." I groaned. 

Her lips thinned and I found myself on the other end of a "men are pigs" 
glare. I shrugged. It wasn't the first time I'd had the special pleasure of 
that look. 

"You're married."

"Imagine my surprise."

"You changed something, didn't you?" her voice was accusatory. 

"What did you think people were going to do with this, anyway?" I asked and 
laughed in the rain for a moment, "Stay behind the red velvet rope at all 
times? Did you really think they were just going to watch their childhood 
reindeer games?" 

"The Prime Directive never worked in Star Trek either," she snarked and held 
open the door. 

"I'm not a Trekker," I lied. 

"People are such shits," she said behind me, her voice curling into my ear 
like a gust of pot smoke, hot and heavy. "It's not who won the eighth grade 
spelling bee that matters." 

My hate-addled brain lit up like a Christmas tree. "Explain." I moved past 
her, into her living room, and took possession of her couch. She followed me 
like a guest in her own house, slumping sullenly next to me, her booted feet 
crossed at the ankles. 

Secrets are so very hard to keep, because they are so very satisfying to 
tell. "The research wasn't designed for personal knowledge. There's not much 
utility in being able to return to your own childhood and be a child. The 
idea was that a person could return to a time in which she was alive but take 
on any persona available in that timespace. Like Quantum Leap." 

The woman spent waay too much time watching the Sci-Fi channel.

"The military implications would be --"   "Why do you think the project was 
funded? But control was always the problem. They never knew if the 
experiments were simply failing or if, when the subjects went back to attempt 
to alter the path of history, the changes simply spun off into other 
universelets, leaving the universe of intervention unchanged. And they 
wouldn't have known the difference because the time line was changed." 

Okay, I thought I might understand that. "But I'm aware of changes. Doesn't 
that mean it's working?" 

She nodded. "It confirms what I've believed all along, which is that the 
technology of fifty years ago was simply inadequate." 

"I am not going to live like this." 

"I'll help you," she promised, and put a warm hand over mine.  

Desperately lonely, afraid and tired and needing a drink more than when I'd 
started on the Scotch, I leant into her soft cotton t-shirt, feeling the warm 
breasts underneath and the gentle swelling of her belly. I let her cradle my 
head in her lap like a child as I sobbed a few helpless tears. Her hand was 
on the back of my neck, stroking gently, and she'd never thought of the back 
of the neck as a good place to put an implant.  Despite her tough mouth and 
black clothes, she was innocent of the true evil running like an undertow in 
the sea of everyday life. She was a civilian, a stranger, free of all my 
knowledge of death and pain, Lilith in the Garden before Eve pulled down the 
apple. 

When I kissed her, her mouth parted for me like palace doors opening.  She 
responded feverishly, her head no doubt full of all the romantic movies where 
the hero finds himself in trouble and in love simultaneously.  The hero never 
seems to have a wife back home who gets off on beating him up, and if there's 
a girlfriend she's a shrew and easily disposed of.  I didn't have a wife -- 
not really -- and I didn't have a girlfriend, and right now I didn't even 
have a Scully.  I needed a fantasy and I didn't mind being Dr. Strauss's in 
return.

She urged me to stand up and follow her to the bedroom.  I would have 
preferred the couch but I was too drunk-tired to resist.  Underneath the hard 
clothes she was a perfect crumpet, generous breasts and thighs and a soft 
rounded stomach that I could have disappeared into forever.  A whole woman, 
one who could give birth and nurture, whose body had been sculpted by Venus 
rather than ravaged by other stars.  Her fingers worked through my hair, 
soothing the cold spots where Dr. Goldstein had drilled into my skull, 
stroking the knots of hard skin.  I rolled into her balmy sweetness, letting 
her smooth my clothes away from my skin until I was sunk into her cunt up to 
my hilt and she flowed around and underneath me like sponge cake. Her hands 
swept over the bruises and weals from Hunter the night before.  I rolled safe 
and warm with her, soaking up the heat and health of her skin, thawing the 
ice in my bloodstream.

Dr. Strauss was butter and honey to Scully's cinnamon and sugar and Hunter's 
rubbing alcohol and broken glass.

She whimpered and moaned underneath me and I stoked slowly and evenly into 
her.  I was just coherent enough to hang on until she cursed and bit my 
shoulder, and then I came with pleasure born more of relief that I could 
still perform than of the inherent ecstasy of it.

I don't know when I passed out, but I woke up in a swaddle of woman-smelling 
sheets with my mouth rotting like unrefrigerated meat. What woke me was my 
cellphone, chipping away at my addled head like a dentist's drill at a 
cavity. I reached into the pocket of my rumpled whiskey-smelling jacket and 
retrieved the phone. "Mulder." 

"Where are you?" Scully's voice was as sharp as a paring knife, advancing on 
me from across the breadth of the state. 

I was so happy to have her bitch at me that I almost cried. The light was 
cruel as a sadistic headmaster. Even with my eyes closed I cringed away from 
it. 

"Frohike's dead."

"I know.  I'm sorry.  Where are you?"

"I'm in Richmond." 

Dr. Strauss ambled in, stretching so that her T-shirt rode up and exposed her 
bikini panties.  I must have been seriously stressed since this had virtually 
no effect on Mr. Happy.

"What are you doing in Richmond?"  I closed my eyes and let Scully's voice 
ground me.

"I'm trying a new technique that may let me figure out what's gone wrong with 
the timeline. I'm with a Dr. Strauss at her house --" 

Dr. Strauss' mouth shut in mid-yawn and she gave me a curious look. 

"I need your help. Dr. Strauss can give you directions." 

I handed the cellphone to Dr. Strauss, who took it with some trepidation. 
There was a long pause on our end. "I'd really rather discuss it in person, 
Dr. Scully. I have NIH approval for human-subject research and there are no 
indications that the procedure could reactivate any seizure disorders." 
Another silence. "Your concerns are entirely reasonable but I really would 
prefer to meet you and show you my results. Let me be clear: I have agreed to 
perform a procedure on Mr. Mulder. Would you like to join us?"  She proceeded 
to give Scully directions from the airport. 

"Well," she said finally, closing the phone and returning it to me, "Is your 
... friend ... always this protective?" 

"It's a very complicated relationship," I said between my teeth. 

If I found that I was fucking Skinner by the time Scully arrived, God and me 
were going to have words. 

Over on the other side of the bed, Dr. Strauss glowered. 

**** 

Fish gotta swim, bird gotta fly, Scully gotta go running after Mulder. 
Natural and inevitable as the tide, washing dead things onto shore. 

Practically frothing at the mouth, I threw clothes into a duffel almost at 
random, since there was no knowing how long this little frolic and detour was 
going to last.

Maybe I could consider why I was letting Mulder drag me around when we were 
no longer partners instead of taking flowers to Frohike's grave.  Frohike 
specifically asked me to keep working on Matheson, though.  He thought the 
government might be hiding something to do with the Superflu.  And if Mulder 
was about to allow his brain to be pureed again, I couldn't let him do it 
without a lecture. 

I almost walked right past Robert Rothstein on the street. He didn't let me. 
"Dana!"  His desperation was like Mulder's, even if the name was wrong. I 
turned and he grabbed me by the upper arms, crushing me to him. I could smell 
his days-unwashed body, thick with pheromones and salt. He smelled like 
Mulder, a solid presence even to my devastated sense of smell, like books and 
leather and late nights. Crushed to his chest and struggling, I felt his body 
shake with relieved sobs. His hand was in my hair, tangling and combing 
simultaneously. 

"Get off of her!" Alex's voice surprised us both. His hands ripped us apart 
and suddenly were standing in a small intense triangle as Robert staggered 
back, overwhelmed by the larger man. Robert looked at him and Alex glared 
back. 

"Who's this, Mulder's kid brother?" Alex sneered. "More little details you 
omitted from your life story, Dana?"  I didn't understand what he was talking 
about.  I suppose there was a slight resemblance: same eye color, same hair 
color, only Robert had never come nose-to-leather with a fastball and his 
past apparently included physical rather than emotional starvation.  

I wondered whether Dana Rothstein had been drawn to Robert because of some 
genetic predisposition towards men with that certain raffish look.

While I was studying Robert, he was watching Alex. "Are you Pyotr? Or Alex?" 

"Whaaat?" Alex and I asked like dual Ally McBeal imitators. I took a deep 
breath. This situation was not under control. "Robert Rothstein, I'm taking 
you into custody in connection with the investigation into the murders of 
your wife and children." 

He blinked at me. "Alex, will you help me escort Mr. Rothstein inside?" 

"Custody? If he's a suspect, shouldn't we --" Alex was a stickler for 
protocol. Working cases that actually went to court would do that to you. 

I spared a repressive glare for him. "It's an X File, Alex, we don't have a 
holding pen for people who can appear out of thin air." 

"I need to talk to you," Alex told me, grabbing Robert firmly by the back of 
his sweatshirt collar and swinging him around so that we were headed back 
inside.  

"I know," I said, unhappy but resigned. Mulder was just going to have to fend 
for himself for another few hours. "But this is sort of a case here, Alex, 
and it's just going to have to wait. You have the right to remain silent, Mr. 
Rothstein --" 

Robert was plunked down into my kitchen table where he promptly burst into 
tears. I sat on the chair opposite and tried not to bite my nails. Alex made 
Robert tea and after the little man had consumed a cup of caffeine and sugar 
he was able to talk. 

"Tell me what's going on," he begged and looked at me with helpless puppy 
eyes.  

"Dana --" 

"Mr. Rothstein -- Robert," I tried again, "I am not sure what exactly is 
occurring here. I -- it's obvious that I share a resemblance to your wife --" 

"But I don't understand," he interrupted. "If he's Pyotr and the other one is 
Rex, are you Samantha?" I shuddered as if a regiment of Nazi scientists had 
just goose-stepped over my grave.  Since Mulder had explained Robert's comic 
book plots, I'd been worried about this, but it was even creepier in practice 
than in theory.

Alex frowned. "What is this, Dana? I got enough fruitcake during the 
Christmas season." 

Alex hadn't seen the comic books, though. "Robert, I need to ask you some 
questions about the deaths of your wife and children." 

Robert blinked blearily at me. "I don't remember what happened. All I know is 
that when I woke up she was dead. I was frightened. I thought everyone would 
blame me and I ran." 

"Where have you been for the past few days?" I stared at him, willing him to 
be intimidated and even influenced by my apparent resemblance to his wife. 
Leaning against the kitchen sink, Alex had his arms folded across his chest, 
watching our little tableau with distaste. 

Robert shook his head. "I don't really know. Around. Running. I saw Rex in a 
park somewhere." 

Mulder's close encounter of the spooky kind. So maybe it wasn't a vision 
after all but a missed opportunity to detain and interrogate a suspect, which 
would be just like Mulder. 

I couldn't let myself be distracted by Mulder's conceits. "So it's your 
allegation that you have no involvement in these deaths?" 

Robert stared into the dregs of his tea as Alex shifted in my peripheral 
vision, no doubt wondering why I wasn't taking this dangerous suspect 
immediately into custody. "I love Dana. I would never hurt her." 

"And your children?" 

His head snapped up, his eyes crumpling into origami shapes of pain. "I would 
never --" He stopped and drew a shuddering breath. "I couldn't hurt them." 

Using present tense meant he hadn't accepted the deaths yet. People who 
killed loved ones often used the present tense even as they were telling the 
sentencing judge that they were sorry. "Your hands are shaking," I noted. 

He glanced down, surprised. "I haven't been taking my medicine lately," he 
said and essayed a sickly smile. I'd seen soap opera stars do better. 

"Pseudo-Parkinson's can be triggered by the sudden cessation of medication as 
well as a long period of high doses," I informed him. "I ... I have your 
medications here." It wasn't procedure, but I'd had some idea of researching 
the interactions, and maybe I thought I might slip a few in Mulder's morning 
coffee. 

I left Alex to watch over Robert, leaning up against the kitchen counter, 
near the door, with his arms still across his chest like a cigar-store 
Indian. "Medications?" he mouthed at me, but I looked away. He didn't move a 
muscle while I was gone, I don't think. 

The pill bottles lined up like chess pawns on the table in front of Robert, 
and he carefully allocated himself his prescribed doses. "One pill makes you 
taller," he saluted me and swallowed them with another gulp of tea. The flash 
of humor was good; it suggested that he trusted me.  

Even if he believed his own story, it was quite likely that he'd killed his 
family and had no memory of the deed. Murderers in perfectly good mental 
condition can suffer traumatic amnesia in cases like this. Robert had a 
couple hundred thousand miles on his mental odometer and I couldn't trust 
that all the warning lights on the dash were working. 

"Everything was fine until I started trying to recover my memories," he 
mused, staring into the waterglass as if it might turn into the Amazing 
Karnak and deliver all the right answers. 

"With regression therapy?" 

"Not hypnosis, I've tried that, Dana read all the studies and concluded that 
my hypnotically recovered memories were inherently unreliable. And Dr. Werber 
never helped me remember what happened before I was taken, only during."  

"Heitz Werber?" I asked, just for the record, and he nodded. Alex looked at 
me curiously. I hoped he couldn't tell that I had up close and personal 
experience with the man and his metronome. 

"Yes, but not this time. I tried an experimental memory-retrieval therapy. It 
was supposed to be a variant of drug therapy used on Alzheimer's patients, 
restoring degraded neural pathways." 

I kept my mouth sealed. It's good to let a suspect control the pace of his 
own narrative. 

"Anyway, I ... remembered ... something from the time before. A little girl, 
screaming my name, screaming for help. But then when it was over I didn't 
have any useful information. And after that things started to-it was like 
they were shifting when I wasn't looking. Just little things at first. My 
clothes weren't where I left them, or they weren't what I left. We had a 
Lincoln Navigator and then we had an Explorer," he ground to a halt. 

"Are you sure that wasn't just Bill Gates fucking with your browser 
preferences?" Alex asked unhelpfully. 

I felt a physical pull towards Virginia. Mulder was off chasing memory 
retrieval therapy. It couldn't be a coincidence. Coincidences were rarer than 
accolades from Skinner in my life.  

Robert reached past the pills and the half-empty glass of water to take my 
hand. "Help me," he said. "Don't leave me alone." 

I wondered what life with Mulder would have been like if he could say that to 
me instead of couching it in slide shows. 

end 14/25

Tikkun Olam 15/25 
MustangSally78@juno.com & RivkaT@aol.com

Guildenstern: The scientific approach to the examination of phenomena is a 
defense against the pure emotion of fear. Keep tight hold and continue while 
there's time. 

 

Agent Scully and I trooped up the gravel path to the house. It looked sturdy. 
Sturdier than any of us. Agent Scully banged the lion-headed knocker with 
more resignation than hope. Surprise flickered in her eyes when the door 
actually opened. Then her face went as still as a shut-off television. It was 
unnerving to see Dana's thin face so blank, like a dead thing walking the 
earth, unwilling to submit to death's regime. 

Maybe this was my fever dream as I languished in jail waiting for trial. Or 
execution. Can you execute a person who's not in his right mind? What if he's 
in someone else's mind? 

When I got a better look at the woman inside the house, I was sure this was 
all an illusion. 

"Dr. Strauss?" 

Agent Scully and Dr. Strauss stared at me. I guess as the crazy person/item 
of evidence in the group, I wasn't supposed to talk. 

"Who the hell are you?" she asked. 

Nobody knows me, I thought. "I did a session with you, a week ago. To find 
out what happened to me when I was a child." 

She looked me up and down, not missing the handcuffs. "No you didn't." 

"We did it in your office at the University. You had a calendar with the art 
of Boris Vallejo and a coffee mug that said 'everything I need to know I 
learned from Star Trek.'" 

She flushed, an angry slash of color across her pale face. "That was a gift." 

Agent Scully was evaluating Dr. Strauss with a monofilament-sharp gaze. 
"Doctor," she said, making up in forcefulness what she lacked in height, "may 
I see my p -- Mr. Mulder? There are many unanswered questions in this case." 
The cadences were all wrong for my Dana. Each word was edged like cut glass 
to impress upon the listener the power of her badge, the weight of the 
federal government behind her. Dana hadn't needed that weight in our life. 

The two women faced off against each other for a moment like caryatids on a 
temple, arms crossed over their breasts, eyes cold and sharp. 

Dr. Strauss fell back and we shouldered past her into the house which on the 
inside was sloppy and chaotic. Rex -- Mulder -- was sitting on a beat-up 
couch in a suit wrinkled like a raisin. His gun was visible at his hip. I saw 
his hand twitch towards it and then relax as his eyes closed with the effort. 

"Felt the need for a chaperone, Scully?" His voice was like a javelin and she 
stopped moving towards him for just a second. Not half a minute inside and 
there was blood on the floor already. The world I knew was dangerous and 
frightening, but it was softer. 

"Did your regression lead to any revelations?" she asked in a nail-gun voice. 

He flinched. "No. I need to go back further." 

"Mulder, you need to come back to Washington. This is not a good thing for 
you to be doing right now." 

The look he gave her made the skin dance unpleasantly on my back. I couldn't 
have killed Dana. But maybe Rex could have. 

****

Scully was more interested in Dr. Strauss than in me and I can't say that I 
was surprised. She had a vigorous argument with Dr. Strauss about 
antiparticles, parity, and electrical charge, which ended with Dr. Strauss 
throwing up her hands -- literally, it was very dramatic -- and proclaiming 
that she was no physicist, just a practical researcher. It was kind of like 
watching a battle on Xena Warrior Princess where the babe-a-licious 
contestants used Newton and Einstein for weapons rather than swords and 
cheesy kick-boxing moves. Deliciously enough, I realized that they were 
arguing about me as much as they were fighting about theory. Finally they 
went back to their corners and Dr. Strauss began to quiz Robert about his 
past regressions with her alternate-universe self. 

My federal darling had worked herself into a fine lather. I think I saw her 
nostrils flare when she sat down next to me on the couch. Maybe she was 
trying to smell the sex on me. "Mulder, according to all the accepted laws of 
physics, this -- well, if we assume that the theory's premises about the 
ability of consciousness to move in time are valid, the implications are far 
more serious than some perceived disruption in your living conditions." 

"What do you mean?" 

"If it were, somehow, possible that Robert had crossed the boundaries from 
one potential universe to another by regressing and changing his path through 
time, he might begin to exist in both paths at once -- never mind," she said 
at my look. "The point is that if Robert came here as a result of his 
regression, which Dr. Strauss denies any knowledge of, and the disruption 
surrounding him was sufficient to bring his entire household with him, then 
the theory suggests that the distortion will only continue to spread unless 
it's reversed." 

I sensed a bad ending. "And what would constitute reversal?" 

"It could be that if we, in layman's terms, reasserted the integrity of our 
timeline by reversing whatever incursions Robert's presence has caused, by 
replicating his regression and making the 'right' choice for this reality, we 
could suture the breach." 

The jigsaw puzzle was coming together and the picture was ugly. A man with 
Fox Mulder's genotype had gone to a Dr. Strauss to find out what had happened 
to his childhood self. But he didn't. Ignorant of the Heisenberg principle, 
he changed things, and the universe was annoyed. Like a child scratching a 
mosquito bite until the skin tore, the world ripped itself apart around him 
for his arrogant curiosity. 

"There's more," she said. 

"I may already have won the Publisher's Clearinghouse Sweepstakes?" I 
suggested.  

She didn't even blink. "Mulder, I -- I think it's possible that your, that 
Hunter is --" 

****

If what I was about to admit that I suspected about Hunter was true, time 
travel into the past via memory retrieval therapy wasn't the only thing we 
had to worry about. Hunter hadn't gotten here by regressing to her childhood. 
And if Dr. Strauss was right, it was dangerous for Mulder to blunder about in 
the past, trying to change whatever he didn't like about his life. Mulder 
dislikes so much that he is prone to wishful thinking about alternatives.  
Hell, there was a chance that he'd go back to the beginning and try to court 
me like a gentleman, bring me flowers and let me take my own sweet time 
deciding whether to kiss him. I wouldn't put it past him. I was gathering the 
courage to articulate my impossible theory to Mulder when there was a loud 
buzz from the door. 

Dr. Strauss, yet another one of Mulder's gazelles, shrugged and went to 
answer the door. She was already resigned to the fact that Mulder brought 
trouble with him like sex appeal -- he was good-looking enough that what 
would be unforgivable in a lesser man was only pathologically annoying in 
him. 

Enter Society Siren, stage right. 

Hunter brushed past her punkish cousin and targeted Mulder like a 
heat-seeking missile. 

"My credit cards are not yours to raid whenever you decide your life lacks 
excitement, Fox," she said. I was impressed that she was angry enough to 
break the facade of exquisite perfection. 

Mulder blinked up at his wife with the slow ludicrousness of the recently 
stoned. She gripped his shoulder and pulled him from the couch. 

"Come along," she instructed. 

"Couldn't we get a divorce instead?" he asked and she would have paled if not 
for her superb foundation and blush. She did pull away as if he'd slapped 
her, and he swayed like a hanged man in the wind. He looked like he was in 
the grip of a flashback, eyes reversed and seeing only the past as they'd 
been after Goldstein's butchery. 

"I have to --" he said guiltily, and then a loud noise swallowed the rest.  

I spun towards the door, still open from Hunter's dramatic entrance, drawing 
my gun as two men tumbled through, firing as they went. I dove for the pile 
of newspapers in the middle of Dr. Strauss's floor, glad that she was not the 
neatest of housekeepers. I caught a glimpse of Hunter, running like hell for 
the back door. A consultant, she had a finely honed sense of survival. Robert 
was cowering next to a bookcase by the door. He seemed to be screaming but I 
was already deaf. 

I threw a quick look at the couch. Mulder had gone over the back at the first 
sign of trouble, pulling Dr. Strauss with him. I couldn't see much of her 
because she was quite wisely cowering behind him as he fired randomly in the 
doorwards direction. Mulder jerked his chin to indicate that we should 
retreat. 

One of the intruders was down, slowing the rest of the attack team, but three 
more were already inside. They hadn't noticed Robert, who began to push at 
the bookcase. Dr. Strauss scuttled towards the back of the house, dignity 
forgotten.  

The bookcase toppled sideways, onto one and a half goons. I shot the one 
whose upper torso was pinned like an abductee under the alien knife. Robert 
had effectively blocked the door against further entrance and he bolted 
across the room, heading for the hallway Dr. Strauss had gone down, as I 
fired at the two remaining gunmen inside. They were wearing Kevlar so I went 
for face shots. 

One little piggie, two little piggie . . . I ejected the spent clip and 
reached into my jacket for another as I followed Mulder further into the 
house. 

There was blood on the cheap carpet and I didn't know whose. 

In the kitchen, Mulder and Robert were huddled around Dr. Strauss, Mulder 
pressing his hands over the wound in her shoulder, one hand on her chest and 
the other on her back as if he were trying to press her like a flower in his 
book of memories. She was looking up at him with disbelief, a department 
store mannequin aghast at her dismantlement. 

"There's a door to the garage, she has a car in there," Mulder said, staring 
into Dr. Strauss's eyes. His hands were covered with blood, running down his 
skin like rain.  

She regarded him as if he were the angel of death. 

I pulled the door open and saw an enormous Thunderbird, black with a blue 
racing stripe.  

"Do you have any idea where the keys are?" I yelled back into the house. We 
only had a minute or two more at most. 

Robert was past me and at the driver's side door in an instant. He slipped in 
and did something at the steering column and the engine turned over. I had 
forgotten that his early arrests were for car theft. 

"Do you need help?" I asked Mulder, but he was rising, holding his hands out 
to me as if I could make him clean. Dr. Strauss slumped to the yellow 
seventies kitchen table and I was there, feeling for her pulse as Mulder 
pulled me back. 

There was nothing we could do, unless we had a portable ER. Mulder grabbed a 
gray laptop from where it was staring at Dr. Strauss and we left her to die, 
piling into the back seat as Robert gunned the engine. "That's a garage 
door," I yelled as he looked back over his shoulder and prepared to go to 
reverse. 

"It's not my car," he pointed out and I put my hands over my head as we 
crashed backwards out of the garage, metal screaming and crumpling like the 
women in my abduction nightmares. We bounced and jolted as Robert spun the 
wheel, rolling over people or shrubs or both, and then we were squealing down 
the street. The back window shattered and we jittered from side to side like 
a quarterback heading into the end zone, bouncing as we turned the corner. 

They -- whoever They were this time -- were following already, but Robert 
obviously fancied himself a stunt driver because we were flying down the 
Richmond streets as if they were the tracks at Indianapolis and the red 
lights starting flags. 

"Where are we going?" he called back to us, and Mulder and I looked at one 
another blankly. 

"We need to ditch the car," Mulder decided, "it's too conspicuous." Yeah, 
about the only thing more conspicuous would be a frog and a bear in a green 
Studebaker. Bear left, right Frog. Robert spun us into an alley and pulled 
into a space marked 'residents only.' We exited, Mulder wiping his bloody 
hands on the upholstery to decrease his conspicuousness. I frowned at him. 
Getting a woman killed and stealing her laptop is one thing, but trashing her 
car shows real disrespect. However, if Dr. Strauss was going to haunt him, 
she already had good reason so I followed the two men down the alley. 

Dr. Strauss had lived in a postgraduate slum right by a commercial area, 
which was probably the only way she could afford to rent a house. Mulder 
flagged down a cab and told the driver to take us to where we could buy a 
car. Naturally, I got to sit in the middle because I was the shortest. 

"Why do we need a car?" I asked as the cabbie informed us that his 
brother-in-law owned a used car business and Mulder agreed that was a really 
good idea. 

"We're going to my family's summer house where we can escape official 
scrutiny, and we're going to fix what went wrong with Robert." Robert frowned 
and looked as if he wanted to say something until he remembered that his 
family was dead and then sank back into the seat. 

"We need to call Skinner." 

"You think Skinner can protect us?" 

"He has before." 

"I'm the only one to fix this, it started with changes in my life -- Robert's 
life." 

Okay, so now he was convinced that he could go into the past and fix the 
present as if it were a leaky sink.  This was bad, this was the super banana 
split with three flavors of ice cream and chocolate sauce of badness. I 
pushed my shoulders against the smoky red leather of the cab seat and 
pondered how to get Mulder off of his latest ledge. Meanwhile, there *was* a 
larger military-industrial complex conspiracy afoot. Matheson was doing 
management consulting for the Apocalypse. Maybe if I reminded Mulder of this 
fact -- well, hypothesis -- well, supposition -- anyhow, maybe it would catch 
his fancy and we could shelve this world-hopping theory of his.

Mulder paid the cab driver in cash, which is how I discovered what a wad he 
was carrying around.  No wonder Hunter had been mad. 

The best course of action was to wait until he felt safe and then convince 
him to return to Washington. I kept my own counsel while Mulder dickered with 
the salesman and took the brown junker he'd selected out for a spin. It 
didn't leave the muffler behind for the test drive, so he bought it for four 
hundred dollars. 

"I'm driving," I informed them and neither one had the balls to challenge me. 
There was no way that I was going to let Robert have the responsibility for 
my physical safety, not after his previous performance, even if he was taking 
his meds again. 

It's a long drive from Virginia to the unpronounceable and unspeakable town 
where the Mulder family spent their summer vacations. Mulder had me drive 
through cow pastures and people's back yards to avoid the major roads. 
Strangely enough, we were almost making better time than we would have on the 
highway. Even though I was concentrating on the circuitous route, the country 
roads were boring enough to give me plenty of time to plot his death.

On the way, Mulder rambled about his amazing life with Hunter and how he 
wasn't supposed to have a wife, describing in great detail the apartment he 
used to have and all the fish he hadn't killed. Robert chimed in with a few 
choice observations about how the world was changing around him, even though 
it was obvious that the only thing changing was his brain chemistry. This 
didn't seem like a good time to feed Mulder's delusion that *he* was the one 
out of place with my conclusion that his lovely wife might be responsible for 
some of the distortion he was experiencing.

See, even were Mulder right about the need for him to regress to fix what 
Robert put asunder, Mulder was clearly having some kind of psychotic episode. 
The white skin, rapid respiration and dilated pupils were enough to warn me 
that Spooky was on the verge -- and what he was on the verge of I had no way 
of knowing. There was a slim possibility that if I pushed him too hard I 
would end up in one of the cow pastures with friendly bovines sniffing over 
my stiffening corpse.  

I wanted him in a more controlled environment, but the problem (aside from 
the fact that we were all three of us currently endangered species) was that 
it would be hard to get him out of the psych ward if he ever entered as a 
patient. It's hard to protect Mulder from himself and from the world and I 
had the sick-making feeling that I was going to have to choose shortly. 

I just drove.  Reflected in the rear-view mirror, Robert snuffled and 
twitched and looked at Dr. Strauss's laptop the way a burnt toddler looks at 
a stove. 

"Why did those men attack us?" Robert asked in a plaintive voice from the 
back seat. 

 "I don't know about your Dr. Strauss, but my Dr. Strauss was working from a 
set of experiments that were started during the Second World War. I'm sure 
that they were our old friends from Black Ops again." 

I snorted and Mulder gave me an annoyed look. Mulder thinks everyone who 
looks at him sideways is a Black Ops agent. One case we were on in Key West 
had him constantly twitching at every poor gay man who checked out his ass. I 
would have expected him to soak up the adoration like a plant in the sun. Of 
course the homosexuals of Key West hadn't shot at us and killed a woman. It 
was possible the hit squad had been related to Dr. Strauss and her 
experiments, as the ability to change the past was a frightening weapon. More 
likely, I thought, was that the MIBs were Matheson hires, "security 
consultants" with a vengeance. They could have been following Hunter without 
her knowledge, but I thought it rather more likely that she'd brought them 
along for backup.

By the time we got to Pennsylvania, I had a partial plan. I would keep Mulder 
and Robert on ice while we got the Gunmen and Skinner to figure out how to 
bring us in safely.  We'd deal with Hunter and the rest of Matheson, then see 
about fixing things with Robert.  A potential coup had to take priority over 
personal vendettas.  

Fortunately, Mulder is prettier than he is bright and never imagined that I 
would give the probable drug dealer at the bar in upstate Pennsylvania fifty 
bucks to let me use his cellphone while Mulder was in the men's room. By that 
time, I had consumed no less than three shots of vodka and the shaking was 
finally leaving my hands. 

I called Skinner and briefly explained the situation. He was slightly 
suspicious, the way Ken Starr was suspicious about Clinton. "Agent Scully, 
this is one of the X-Files' impending clusterfucks, isn't it? From where 
should I expect the angry call from the local authorities next?" 

"I'm not really sure, you should keep an open mind." 

"Where are you, Agent Scully?" There were alligators swimming in that 
question. 

"Buddy's Bar and Bait Shack. Somewhere off 95 -- I think." 

His sharp intake of breath told me everything I needed to know. "Agent Krycek 
has communicated with me about your conduct with respect to the suspect in 
your most recent case. I want you back in DC, Scully. Before the situation 
gets out of control." 

"Sorry," I said breezily, "I think you should just try to find Hunter 
Matheson-Mulder and tell her that her husband is alive and that I'm doing my 
best to return him in the same condition." I disconnected over his vigorous 
disagreement. 

Mulder sniffed me suspiciously when he returned, but all he could smell was 
the alcohol and he thought the drug dealer was just giving me the eye rather 
than indicating his gratitude for my contribution to his welfare. The rest of 
the journey was uneventful, despite the fact that I let Mulder drive. 

As soon as we stepped into the fusty-smelling house, Robert began poking 
around, looking at the furniture as if he'd seen it in a catalogue long ago. 
Mulder took Robert firmly by the arm and dragged him upstairs.  

Mulder found me in the kitchen, looking at the ancient canned goods. "I 
cuffed him to the bed in the guest room. I need a prescription for the 
pharmacy. I need to do another regression as soon as possible." 

"Mulder, we can't do another of these drug-induced fantasies of yours." I 
shifted, stretching my aching back and subtly moving my hand near my holster. 
I wasn't averse to holding Mulder at gunpoint if rational conversation proved 
futile, as it so often did. 

"I can't let you stop me." 

I stared at him, momentarily dumbstruck by his intransigence. He stalked 
towards me and I was prepared for him to use his size and his not 
inconsiderable sexual charm. I wasn't prepared for him to use his spare 
handcuffs. 

The thought that he was trying to hug me distracted me while he pushed my 
hands behind my back and then I felt the cold bite of metal at my wrists. 
Outraged, I butted my head into his chest and tried to knee him in the groin, 
but he was leaning forward to avoid precisely that eventuality and I had to 
settle for lunging at his ear like Mike Tyson. 

"Jesus, Scully," he complained as he removed my gun from its holster and spun 
me around so that he could get at my handcuff key, "I would have thought that 
you'd enjoy this more." 

The heel of my shoe in his calf made him grunt, but he gripped my biceps like 
any small-town sheriff and began to march me through the house. 

"You don't have to do this," I said in the correct tone for dealing with 
hostage situations. 

"Please, spare me the bullshit, Scully," he snapped. 

"You're taking Robert's story to heart, you're over-identifying with him, 
perfectly understandable under the circumstances." 

"Shut up, Scully." He pushed me harder than necessary up the stairs. 

"Mulder, you have to realize that there are people looking for us and 
spending hours in a drugged haze is not going to improve our situation. " 

"I'd gag you but somehow I don't want to give you the pleasure." 

My face boiled. 

"You had no business coming into my apartment. My personal life is none of 
your business," I said and my voice came out in a nasty, defensive whine. 

"It's not?" He picked a room and shoved me inside. I refused to stumble even 
though he had me off balance. 

"No, it's not. Your personal life is none of my business. That is between you 
and Hunter."  The bedroom looked to have been his parents', and though Mulder 
disdained Freud I thought that this was unlikely to be a setting conducive to 
harmony.

"You understand that this proves what I've been saying about parallel 
universes. That I am one Mulder in a series of Mulders and the one that you 
know is -- was -- married to Hunter, and he has my deepest sympathy, but he's 
not me." 

A little tin foil lining in the baseball cap might take care of all that. 

"Mulder --" I stopped, genuinely frightened. Dr. Strauss' death might have 
been the last dollop of guilt he needed to push him onto the B-side of 
reality. Science made me willing to consider the possibility of parallel 
universes, but the evidence we had was that the manifestations were all 
physical. If he was another Mulder, then my Mulder should also be present in 
the flesh, like Robert was. This mind-hopping was a trauma-induced delusion, 
a fantasy that he could live a better life than the one he had, brought on by 
the admittedly bizarre events of the past few days. 

He pushed me towards the bed and the world began to spin like George 
Stephanopolous. 

end 15/25

Tikkun Olam 16/25 
MustangSally78@juno.com & RivkaT@aol.com

Player: It costs little to watch, and little more if you happen to get caught 
up in the action, if that's your taste and times being what they are.


Quonochontaug.  Try saying that five times fast.  Sometimes I'm not sure 
which Scully hates more, my atheism or my Richie Rich background.  The closer 
we got to the summer house, the harder it became for her to hide her sneer. 

So Scully was pissed.  And Microsoft ruled the world.  What else was new?  It 
got to the point where I was actually hoping that she'd start telling me off. 
 With batterers, this is called the tension-building phase, and some people 
claim that the anxiety gets so intense that there's a moment of relief that 
goes through the victim when the assault is actually triggered.  But Scully 
punished me with her silence and I could only twitch uneasily in the 
passenger seat, my backache worsening by the mile. 

When we finally got to the house in Quonochontaug I had just enough energy to 
get Robert locked up and Scully under control when she became unreasonable.  
I took her into the main bedroom and tried to think what would ensure both my 
safety and her presence.  I needed to regress again.  At least, away from my 
familiar haunts, the changes wouldn't be too jarring. 

"What now?" Scully asked, puncturing my reverie, looking around the bedroom 
as though it were the slimiest of hotels. Her hands twisted like a ball of 
snakes beneath the cuffs. 

"I guess that's up to you.  How much you're willing to cooperate."  I didn't 
want to have to cuff her to the bed; it would strain her muscles even more if 
she was already in pain. 

Her head turned with geologic slowness until she finally looked me in the 
eye.  Then she smiled, a flick of her eyes at my midsection was like one of 
those Star Wars laser sword things.  "Oh, I know how to cooperate." 

The fact that Scully was furious with me never prevented us from fucking.  If 
it did, I would still lack working knowledge of what she looks like naked.   

Adrenaline is a serious aphrodisiac.

My mouth on hers plunged me into a heat wave as terrible as Washington in 
high summer, hot and humid, reducing my will to nothing.  Her epethelial 
cells on my tongue were more exhilarating than cocaine, more narcotic than 
heroin; Scully speedballs were zipping through the blood-brain barrier and 
making me sex-stupid.  We kissed until she was backed against the bed and I 
was tearing at her waistband.  Then she bit my tongue.

"Fuck," I cursed, garbled through the blood, and she smirked at me as I 
reared back.  

"Ditching me works better, Mulder," she taunted.  "It's not rational to 
reward you for mistreating me."  There was a smear of my blood on her lower 
lip, recoloring her faded lipstick.  I wanted to decorate her with it like 
warpaint.

"Mistreatment?" I sniggered.  "I thought this was your scene."  All this time 
I thought about giving her flowers or writing her poetry, and I should have 
tried leather and rubber.  

She tossed her head like a wild horse warning a cowboy off, but I'd got her 
corralled and I intended to ride her hard.  Avoiding her teeth, I bent to 
suck at her throat, to ring her fragile skin with red roses signifying my 
touch.

The back of her knees hit the bed and she deliberately allowed herself to 
fall onto the dusty comforter.  It would have been an escape if it hadn't 
left her even more vulnerable to me.  Her gaze was as forthright as ever; she 
might have been suggesting an investigatory strategy for our latest case for 
all the federal expressionlessness of her face.  "Come on, Mulder, I know 
what you want."

"Tell me," I insisted, playing out the fantasy.  

She rolled her eyes and I reached down to pinch a nipple where it protruded 
through the layers of her blouse and her bra.  When she spoke, her voice 
could have issued from the Playboy Channel.  "Fuck me like the girls in your 
magazines get fucked," she purred.  "I'm all tied up.  There's nothing to be 
afraid of." 

I felt my heartbeat increase and the blood in my veins speed up to an 
autobahn pace. For the record, my magazines usually featured the women 
wielding the whips and bindings.  But it was one kink in my very twisted tail 
and it never stopped us before.  Anyway, she was ordering me around, and my 
cock was sure that counted for something. 

I pulled my suddenly useful tie off and wrapped it around the links of the 
handcuffs, bending down to loom over her like an incubus in the night. 

"Hold still," I ordered with a nibble at her ear, and she obeyed long enough 
to get the tie knotted tight around the bedpost. Then I grabbed her hips and 
pulled her towards the center of the bed, so that she was spread across it 
diagonally, her arms above her head. 

Her legs were clamped together, and she resisted when I tried to put my hand 
on her inner thigh.  "Am I going to have to do this the hard way?"  

"I don't know, how hard is it?"  Scully's face was flushed pink, a beacon 
against the faded bedspread. 

"Hard enough," I asserted and went for the button on her pants. There was 
really very little she could do to keep her pants on, and to give her credit 
she didn't try, just roiled against my questing hands like a stormy sea.  
Naked, she was a burning brand across the bed, white-hot, sucking all my 
senses to her with the force of a whirlpool; she would drown me in her fire.  
I paused to stare -- usually she didn't want to let me have second thoughts 
and so our nudity together was functional rather than decorative. 

"Jesus, Mulder, this isn't one of your videos!  Get on with it," she urged.  

Stupidly, I'd tied her up while she was still wearing her shell.  I could 
have groped her  through her clothing, but it wasn't quite right and I 
rummaged in my pants for my Swiss  Army knife.   

Her indrawn breath when she saw the blade jolted my cock with anticipation.  
When I brought it to her neck, careful to keep the sharp side away from her, 
she turned her  head away, overwhelmed by the sensation.  Slowly, with 
deference to my shaking  hands, I slit the shoulder seam running from the 
neck of the blouse to the edge of the half-sleeve, then repeated the motion 
on the other side.  Scully was jerking her hips beneath me, fucking the air.  
I steadied myself long enough to cut through the thin straps of her bra as 
well and then closed the knife.  Relief and the scent of her beneath me made 
me dizzy. 

"Now what?" she taunted.  I took the bottom of her blouse and pulled hard, 
drawing it down her body, over her hips and the firm muscles of her thighs 
and calves.  I had to struggle with her to get the clasp of her bra, since 
she tried to push down into the bed to trap my hands, but she had no safe 
ground and then she was naked. 

She moaned when my hands closed over her breasts, and moaned again when I 
squeezed.  "Harder," she demanded and I complied.  Bruises feel different 
when you know they're given in love.   

I used my fingers to tweak her hard nipples, tight in the center of her small 
aureoles. My attention was drawn by the blue veins that snaked their way up 
the contours of her breasts. Her skin was so fine, almost translucent. I 
wanted to open her up so that I could see everything, finally understand it 
all. This is what made Monty Propps kill, I remembered. But that was all past 
me; I had a particular project to finish right now.

I brushed my lips against her smooth belly, brushing the fine hairs there 
with my exhalations. Her hips flexed against my shoulders and chest.  I 
swirled my tongue around her navel, then dipped in, and was rewarded with a 
strong jerk, so strong I had to steady her underneath me with my hands on her 
hips.

While Scully squirmed, I fumbled with my belt and managed to unbuckle it, 
which was enough to get the pants off.  I wondered if she wanted to be 
blindfolded -- serious trust issues abounded with us -- but I wanted to see 
her expression.  I wanted us to unite like the worm tattoo that was supposed 
to live on the delicate skin of her back.   

I outlined her body as if I were sketching it, carving her from the air, her 
skin sliding underneath my fingers, sweat-slick.  I slalomed over her hills 
and valleys, pinching and prodding to keep her surprised, hoping to make the 
Olympic cut.  She was wet for me, just for me; surely her body would never 
lie to me, speaking louder than the misleading silences of her mouth.  Scully 
jerked against her bindings, fucking my fingers and gasping at the inadequacy 
of it.   

I pulled my hand away before she tore it off and lowered my head to her 
thighs, which she immediately clamped shut again with killing force.  This 
time, when I put my hands on her thighs to pry her legs apart, she used all 
her leverage, but it was not on a par with my lust and I pushed her legs up 
so that I had perfect access.  I felt her pushing against me, strong and 
solid, as I bathed my face in her pussy.   

Because she was tied up, I was solely responsible for her pleasure.  And 
though I am normally less reliable than a political pundit I was determined 
to get this right.  From the way she was gasping and shuddering into my face, 
the scenario was doing a lot of my work for me, and I was grateful.  Her 
yelps got higher in pitch as she approached orgasm and, finally, she keened 
like a cat with a stepped-on tail.  It's a good thing sex is so much fun; 
otherwise we'd be too embarrassed to ever do it.

I pulled away and examined her sweaty, flushed body with what might have been 
mistaken for detachment if you'd ignored the bulge in my pants.  I stripped 
so fast I almost lost a limb.  Her eyes opened, bright as muzzle flashes in 
the dying afternoon light, and she smirked at me.

"I should make you return the favor," I growled. 

"Don't put anything in my mouth you can't afford to lose."  

Returning to her, I plunged my tongue into her mouth so that she could taste 
herself on me, then pulled back when she began to worry my tongue with her 
teeth, making good on her threat. 

The shock of being inside her was as intense as if I'd just lost my 
virginity.  She was a hot shower after a long sweaty run, bread fresh from 
the oven, the surface of the sun.  Her legs stretched around me, hitching 
onto my hips so that she came up from the bed with me after every thrust, a 
limpet cemented with lust to the unseaworthy ship of my body.  

When I looked at her face her eyes were screwed shut as she gulped air, but 
it hardly mattered.  I could feel her around and inside me and what was 
between us was beyond dispute or denial.  The sex with Hunter had been 
shattering, a silver fishhook in my gut that tore me ragged, but being with 
Scully magnified me, expanded me like some fifty-foot-monster from a fifties 
film.  All my flaws and all that was good exploded when I was with her, 
spread out for her perusal.

Feeling like a god, half-laughing like a fool, I came with the sound of her 
shuddering gasps.

I started out of my half-doze to the clanking of metal. 

"Scully?" 

When milady sleeps, she sleeps well.  Scully was still twisting against the 
tie in her sleep, pouting like a petulant angel.  She wasn't going anywhere 
so, without the Judas kiss I should have given her, I left our room to check 
on Robert. 

Robert had managed to get himself off the bed and drag it four feet towards 
the window, walking on his knees.  His wrist was bleeding over the old scars 
that were the tattooed mark of the brotherhood of suicidal maniacs.  Where 
Scully had been wholly focused on getting free, Robert was twitching like a 
man with Tourette's, banging his free fist on the floor as he flopped like a 
fox with its leg in a trap. 

I grabbed a blanket from the bed and tried to get it around him so that he'd 
do less damage to himself.  He struggled away from my touch as if I were made 
of burning napalm.  "Shh, shh," I warned, even though he wasn't saying 
anything.  With the tears of effort running down his face, he was like a 
child in my arms, the little boy that I had almost been. 

I dipped into his nightmare for a moment, the world black and white and my 
groin stinging with a humiliating mix of pain and pleasure, and then his 
forehead connected with my chin and the pain untangled our thoughts as blood 
ran over my lips and chin. 

Robert fought like a cat being given a bath.  His head jerked from side to 
side and he began to stammer half-formed syllables, the Conspiracy version of 
speaking in tongues.  His volume rose until my ears hurt.  I had to cup my 
palm behind his head to keep him from banging it on the floor.  Then he 
collapsed like a  building imploding. 

I rushed back to Scully.  When I bolted into the bedroom, she looked up from 
her examination of her raw-meat wrists.  "What happened?" she asked, and the 
fear in her voice frightened me in a feedback loop of horror. 

"Scully, what if Robert's chip is slightly different than the ones in this 
universe, what if he received signals that somehow crossed over following his 
regression so that he was acting from miscommunicated commands when he killed 
his family?" 

She paid no attention to the theory.  "Let me see him." 

I felt a surge of jealousy, green as Krycek's eyes.  "Can I trust you?" 

"Why break such a fine tradition at this point?"  Reluctantly, I got the key 
from the dresser and released  her.  She rubbed at her wrists and winced as 
she stood.

Robert sobbed in the other room.  Nausea bubbled in my stomach like 
champagne.  She grabbed a sheet from the bed, wrapped it around herself, and 
pushed past me and into the hallway. 

I couldn't move. 

****

 There is only one dream.  

The light is everywhere.  It is so bright that it is not painful; it is pain. 
 This light erases all memory and hope of darkness. 

The little girl is screaming and somehow the light of the television is still 
a bluish rectangle in the larger light.  The girl is screaming because the 
boy cannot.  The light enters his bloodstream and his lungs and he is gone 
into the light. 

I woke into darkness, relieved.  At first, Mom and Dad got me a night light 
for the dream, which was a big mistake.  Eventually they sealed the windows 
and the cracks at the edges of the door.  It got stuffy but it kept the light 
out.  Tonight's darkness was less complete but I was older and it wasn't as 
difficult. 

My hands hurt, my head hurt, my knees hurt.  I felt like a rag doll run over 
by a truck. 

Dana was holding my hand the way she does, murmuring reassurance.  

In the darkness, I could almost believe it was her.  Her hands smoothed 
through my hair, calming.  I imagine that I had been screaming.  I hadn't 
done that for years but I had reason enough to regress. 

"May I turn a light on?"  I shook my head against her flat, fleshless stomach 
and pulled her more closely into me.  There was a clammy wetness on my 
bedsheet between us -- oh God I'd come from the dream.  Those were always the 
worst.  I hoped she couldn't feel it pressing against her. 

Her fingers traced the scars behind my ears and the one on the back of my 
neck.  Her touch was clinical, with the precision I associated with Dana's 
foreplay.  We were silent for several minutes as her slow fingers began to 
have an effect on my heartrate.  She felt so smooth and warm and alive and 
her heart beat under her skin. 

"When you're ready," she said, "I'd like to turn on a light so that I can 
make sure that you're all right." 

Fully awake, I could usually handle it.  It was only days when the sun was 
out behind the clouds so that the light was directionless and shadowless that 
I cowered inside with the shades pulled.  "Go ahead," I told her, proud that 
my voice did not tremble. 

The light snapped on and it was reassuringly yellow.  I hadn't noticed until 
then, but she was naked except for a sheet.  So she was sleeping with Agent 
Mulder, like I'd thought.  The thing with Pyotr was just too strange.  She 
checked my fluttering pulse and stared into my eyes.  I don't think she 
really needed the light for a medical reason.  When she tilted my head 
forward so that she could look at the scars, I went without protest. 

After a few minutes she let me go.  She rose from her seat on the edge of the 
bed and I was sure she'd abandon me.  "Let me see your scar," I requested.  
"I've never seen mine." She was surprised enough to sit down again, still 
graceful but with unusual haste.  Her long, wild hair was falling in front of 
her eyes and I couldn't see into them.  Her breath was loud enough to scrape 
against the insides of my ears.  With the lamp behind her, she was a black 
silhouette, the shadow of a woman I knew. 

Hesitantly, like a bride on her wedding night, she swiveled on the bed so 
that her back was to me.  She tilted her chin towards her chest and I brought 
my hands up to push the fall of hair away. 

The scar was smaller than I had imagined.  It always felt so large, even 
though Dana claimed it was unnoticeable.  But on Scully it felt as large as 
mine and still looked like a delicate white line, a suicide's hesitation cut. 
 She trembled like an oak in the wind as I traced around it, still and strong 
at the core but wavering at the edges.  "What do you remember?"  I asked, 
because she wasn't looking at me and she might be able to answer that way. 

Her breath lost its carefully measured rhythm and became panicked Morse code. 
 "Very little," she said at last.  "Whispering voices.  Men above me, making 
decisions.  The pain, the dizziness, not even knowing who I was.  The light." 

"He doesn't understand.  No one else can."  It wasn't a question.  Dana had 
tried to understand for years.  She tried to accept the regression therapy 
too, even though Missy thought it was a good idea.  It was a testament to 
Dana's love that Missy's enthusiastic endorsement hadn't made her run 
screaming in the opposite direction.  My chest tightened and the swan's neck 
before me blurred. 

My hand was still on her, my fingers moving in patterns without conscious 
volition.  I hadn't felt this hormonally charged since before we were 
married, when I wasn't sure I'd actually get to have sex. 

My lips were so close to the scar on the back of her neck warmed under my 
breath.  I wanted to touch it with my lips, I wanted to make love to her.  I 
wanted Dana back. 

If I could still smell anything I suspect I would have smelled him on her.  
But I couldn't even tell if she smelled like my Dana.  Of course not, Dana 
smelled like milk and cookies and baby things.  Scully must smell of guns and 
scalpels. 

When Mulder pushed the door open, it banged against the wall, and we all 
jumped, even him. 

"What's going on?" he accused as Scully bounced to her feet, tugging the 
sheet around herself, away from my hand and my wanting. 

 **** 

When I finally went to find her she was sitting with Robert on his bed that 
was now the centerpiece of the room.  He was touching her naked back, the way 
a long-time lover would.  I growled and Scully pulled herself away, slowly, 
as if she didn't want to leave his gentler hands.  What a laugh, since it 
seemed that Scully wouldn't know what to do with gentleness if she found it. 

"He's not seizing," she informed me, looking as stiff and untouchable as a 
nun at prayer.  We glared at each other until I looked down. 

Scully drifted into the hallway, somehow managing to stay clear of me by at 
least a foot even though I was almost blocking the door.   

"You had your chance," I warned him. 

"No," he said softly, staring at her white marble back above the whiter 
chitonlike folds of the sheet, "I don't think I ever did." 

That shut me up, and I followed Scully out of the bedroom.  She was still 
standing  there, looking into the darkness at the head of the stairs.  Alpha 
Centauri could have been reached more easily than Scully at that moment. 

"I want you to know," she said, "as far as I'm concerned this was a one-time 
event, a mistake brought on by stress and trauma.  I'd be lying if I said I 
never imagined that we'd -- get together some day, but I always knew that a 
sexual relationship begun under such intense circumstances would be a serious 
error.  I apologize for not taking action to prevent this, and I hope you'll 
respect my wishes in the future."

I couldn't even follow her back into the bedroom.  I should have been 
watching to make sure she didn't try to escape through the window into the 
trees outside but I was devastated, clear-cut by the sharpened axes of her 
words.  I slumped down against the  door of her room.   

I thought that no matter how far I drifted through possibilities we would at 
least be together.  I had assumed that if I had a wife I also had a steamy, 
Melrose Place-style office affair. 

First time?  Been there, downloaded that, saved it to disk.  And now it had 
been destroyed for this Scully, who might have given me a chance to do it 
right.  Every small change I encountered was for the worse, like icebergs 
calving off what had seemed like a pretty shitty life but was now looking to 
be above average for the Fox Mulder potentialities. 

I could feel each and every blood corpuscle move through the capillaries in 
my head.  If the only side effect of the lipid therapy was a headache and one 
very fucked-up existence, it wasn't going to be popular in the Midwest.  
Through the cardboard of the summer-house walls I could hear Scully 
breathing, getting herself under control so that she could dissect me more 
effectively in the morning.  Maybe she wouldn't be so keen to have Krycek 
beat her if she cut loose and yelled at me once in awhile. This wasn't the 
Scully that I knew, even though she looked and smelled like the genuine 
article.  But so would a clone for that matter and a dimensional version and 
a clone really weren't the same as the real thing at all.  

****

Mulder has a serious madonna/whore complex, and being with Alex had clearly 
pushed me to the "fallen" category in his mental ledger. When he knocked 
hesitantly on his parents' bedroom door I didn't respond, because he was 
going to come in whether I liked it or not. 

"Scully," as if my name were his rosary, "I -- I can fix this, I know I can. 
I just need to go back, and this never has to happen. I grabbed the drugs, 
you can help me go back --" 

I pulled the sheet more tightly around me, as if it were my shroud and I were 
fleeing Mulder by dying -- it was the only thing that might keep him away 
from me. "This isn't wise, Mulder. We have to assume that we're being tracked 
--" 

"Even more reason I should go now, before it's too late." He sat down on the 
bed and I managed not to flinch, though it was close. 

"Mulder, no. I haven't had a chance to study Dr. Strauss's research, I can't 
take the chance that the drugs would do long-term damage." 

Mulder has a very complicated understanding of the word "no" when it comes 
from my mouth. That's my fault as much as his, I know, but sometimes I can't 
help but feel that we've been playing a trust game for five years and he's 
never let me know what the safe word is. If I'd had it, I might have used it. 

When he went downstairs to get the drugs and the laptop, I couldn't honestly 
say that I was surprised. 

I should have refused to help, but if he had to self-inject there was a 
decent chance he'd wind up with an air embolism. That man could injure 
himself buttoning his shirt, and has. I put my funky clothes back on while he 
was downstairs, mourning the loss of my overnight bag back in Virginia.  

He offered his arm to me as if we were going to dance. Mulder's veins are the 
most receptive part of him, really; new ideas that don't fit with his 
megalomaniacal worldview would have a better chance if they could infect him, 
like a cold virus. I considered just knocking him out and calling for help, 
but he was fragile enough that a new betrayal might break him, regardless of 
the fact that his fragility was the direct consequence of his own overheated 
libido. I would let him regress and then insist on returning to DC, where we 
would find out whether he was a husband or a widower. 

Watching him lie there with the IV bag was entirely too much like watching 
him in an ICU bed as I'd seen him many times before. He twitched like a 
sleeping dog dreaming of chasing squirrels. Strauss had been very specific 
about the amount of time that Mulder could remain in the regressive state, 
but she had been unclear as to what the outcome would be if the poisoned 
apple caught in his throat and he stayed under. The side effect could be as 
mild as a hangover or it could lead to psychosis or an extended vegetative 
state. 

And the side effect of watching someone regress could be psychosis or an 
extended vegetative state. 

I looked at my watch. Half an hour left and then I'd change the IV to 
straight saline and, hopefully, he'd wake as normal. As normal as Mulder ever 
gets.     

I should have known that avoiding sex with him was risky. We were like planes 
circling each other, trying to keep a minimum safe distance without any 
guidance from the striking air-traffic controllers of our better judgement.  
The crash had been spectacular and the FAA was still searching for survivors. 
 In my half-completed fantasies about us there had always been a quickie 
divorce, and a slow bottle of wine and a confused and indirect declaration of 
devotion, if not love.  Well, that was shot to hell now, like the one where I 
ended up with a white picket fence and two point five children who were 
genetically mine.

Watching him wasn't doing my nerves any good so I dug Dr. Strauss's reports 
out of her backpack -- our backpack now, as the afterlife doesn't allow many 
carryons -- and settled down in the armchair to read. Just to add another 
humiliation on top of the rest of them, the type on the reports blurred 
before me. Since Mulder was well and truly down for the count, I let the 
tears run down my face as though I were alone. The bruises on my thighs 
throbbed and though it had to be psychosomatic it still spurred on the tears. 

On the bedside table there was an alarm clock/radio.  I put on the news 
channel and listened to the national manhunt for the person or persons who 
were responsible for the kidnapping of former Senator Matheson's son-in-law  
- one Fox Mulder, formerly of the FBI.

Oh great.

end 16/25

Tikkun Olam 17/25 
MustangSally78@juno.com & RivkaT@aol.com

Rosencrantz: He's not himself, you know.  
Guildenstern: I'm him, you see.  
Rosencrantz: Who am I then?  
Guildenstern: You're yourself.  
Rosencrantz: And he's you?  
Guildenstern: Not a bit of it. 


When I stared at the walls I thought I could almost see them changing. Just a 
little at a time, of course. But I would look at the cheap painting next to 
the window and it would be a winter scene and then, when I looked again, 
autumn. 

Mulder's explanation was that we were cutting through parallel universes like 
a rebellious gradeschooler writing the wrong way across ruled paper. I would 
find that easier to believe if I hadn't experienced it before. Until Mulder, 
everyone I told thought that drugs would be very helpful. 

Dana Scully came in to check on me, the silver of the handcuffs dangling from 
her wrist like jewelry on the bruised skin underneath. To her, the walls were 
not changing. Even if they went from blue to pink, when she looked at them 
they would always have been pink to her. It made my head hurt worse than 
doing taxes. 

"Mulder and I are like the tines of a tuning fork," I told her, and she 
looked at me with her cool evaluating eyes. "We're vibrating together, 
sharing the same frequency, and everything else in the world keeps changing. 
Only we stay the same together." 

"I haven't seen any evidence of changes," she told me, checking for fever 
with the same smoothness she'd always used on the kids. 

"That's the point," I insisted. She nodded and went back to Mulder. I wanted 
to cry out: Don't leave me alone. But she would have anyway in a minute or 
so, when another Dana came to take her place. They kept getting further and 
further away from mine. 

 ****

The man had a thin, sharp face and close-cropped curly hair. He was the kind 
of man whose nose could twitch like a rabbit's. But any uncertainty he might 
be feeling was concealed behind a veil of smoke and the cigarette he was 
holding his thinly sensual lips. 

"Well, if it isn't daddy's little spy," he said and I looked around wildly. 

When I turned, I saw a little boy, with defiant brownish eyes and a stubborn 
mouth set in a pout that would disappear at the next distraction. 

To wit, me. 

In my amazement, I stumbled backwards, into a haze of grey smoke that had me 
coughing and jerking away from the friendly hand on my shoulder. "Calm down, 
Bill," the smoking man said soothingly. "I'm sure the boy didn't mean to 
frighten you." 

"Excuse me," I said, and bolted for the bathroom, which was as I remembered 
it (the only thing that was). When I looked into the mirror I was staring 
into my father's lying eyes. He looked as I always remembered him, young and 
vibrant. Even when the drinking made him wrinkled and grey in reality I never 
saw his older face when I looked at him, only the stern Daddy face underneath 
it. 

I brought my father's shaking hands to his clean-shaven cheeks. Welcome to 
Freaky Friday, Mulder. 

"Bill?" The voice behind the door was familiar now that I couldn't see it 
issuing from that young strange face. 

"I'll be right out," I managed. 

"Good," he said silkily and I wanted my gun, the gun that was twenty-five 
years in the future. I splashed water in my face. My father's eyes were 
bloodshot and when I cupped his palm in front of his mouth I could smell the 
alcohol on his breath.  

Walking with the care of the not-entirely-sober, I exited the bathroom and 
brushed past the smoker. "Let me talk to my son for a minute," I told him and 
I felt his gloating eyes brush against me as I left. 

The boy was moping in the kitchen, kicking his feet against a chair as he 
contemplated a glass of milk and a plate of cookies. Yes, this was before Mom 
stopped cooking. 

I was transfixed by the sight of the little boy, almost a young man really, 
who would be denied a bar mitzvah because his parents were too assimilated 
and who was about to go through an altogether worse initiation into manhood. 
My nose was still straight and those were all real teeth.  The mole hadn't 
begun to bother me because I wasn't shaving yet and I had no inkling why 
girls were different than boys. 

"Fox?" I said, my voice full of wonder and trepidation. 

He looked up at me with a similar expression. "Dad?" 

"What -- what did you want?" 

"Dad -- please don't let them take me!" He was out of the chair and throwing 
himself against me, wrapping his arms around my neck like a hangman's rope. 
"You don't know what they'll do, you've got to help me!" 

I pushed away. "Robert?" 

The boy's eyes were old, and not sane. "You've got to help me." 

And let Scully die, and let Robert tear the world into confetti in his search 
for resolution.  

"I'm sorry, son. Go back. There's nothing you can do. It happens as it 
happens, that's all." It was a lie to find my own truth. How many times can 
you betray yourself? How many times before you destroy the person you once 
were? 

Tears flew down his cheeks and he turned away, shuddering with the force of 
his fear.  Then he straightened up and looked back at me and Robert had gone. 
"Dad? What is it?" 

"Nothing, son. Go do your homework." 

He nodded mistrustfully and fled. I turned back to the smoker and whatever 
dastardly deed Bill Mulder was plotting. 

The smoker didn't say anything as I walked to my desk and sat down so that 
the alcohol in this body's blood wouldn't distract me. "Did the conversation 
with your young son help you decide?" 

Oh God. This was it, the moment I'd been expecting for too long. Scully or 
Samantha.  

Fox or Samantha. 

"Just to be clear, what if I decide not to decide?" 

"I'm afraid ... our mutual associates would consider that a lack of 
commitment to the Project, Bill." The threat was vague but unmistakable. 
"It's not the end of the world, you know. Just a different life for the 
child." Yeah, if by different you mean full of torture and Nazi-style 
experimentation, I guess you could say that. 

"You wouldn't have to be making this choice right now if it weren't for your 
recalcitrance eight years ago, Bill. The Project would be further along, 
there'd be a clear choice for the test subject, and you would never have 
allowed yourself to get so attached. Attachment is a mistake. You know that." 

"I'm not sure what you mean," I hedged, seeking more information. 

He sighed. "Your foolish desire to keep your wife's genetic material for your 
own selfish purposes ensured that this day would come. Now decide. I've been 
very lenient with you, old friend, and people are beginning to ask me 
questions." 

I cleared my throat and spoke the only name I could. Funny, for the longest 
time it was the only name I knew. "Samantha." 

"Samantha goes, or Samantha stays?" 

"Samantha ... goes." 

The smoker stubbed his cigarette out on the overflowing ashtray on my 
father's desk. "She's a charming, intelligent child. I'm sure she'll do well. 
That's your answer, then." 

"Yes." I swallowed, wondering if my father had felt that the sacrifice was 
worth it too. If I were him, I'd be asking-"When?" 

"I believe you and your lovely wife have a standing date to play cards with 
your neighbors? You'll make sure that you honor that practice two weeks from 
tonight." 

I nodded blankly, looking down at the desk but seeing into the future-past. 
The Magician would be on. I wish that They would have waited until we'd 
finished the game of Stratego. I would have beaten her because I'd already 
killed her scouts and her spies; she was a terrible general. 

"And here they are now," the smoker said, lighting another cigarette. I heard 
the crunch of tires on gravel and looked out through the window. Sure enough, 
Mom had just pulled up in an enormous pre-gas embargo car, a Chrysler I 
think, and she got out and went to let the squabbling kids in back out of 
captivity. Then she went around to the trunk for the groceries. 

I should have gotten up to help but I don't think my dad ever did. 

Then Samantha got out of the car and I thought that all the oxygen had left 
my lungs and my bloodstream at once. As the world began to break up into 
static and lightning, I only knew one thing. 

The Samantha Mulder I'd just sold down the river was blonde. 

The end sequence of 2001 starring me as the star child whisked through the 
gloppy soup that was my mind. I was watching the psychedelic oil and water 
show on the screen behind Jerry and the rest of the Grateful Dead through the 
best version of "Sugar Magnolia" in the universe, the one that existed in my 
imagination. 

When I finally hauled the garage doors of my eyes open the bedroom in the 
vacation house was as I had left it, which was a good sign that I'd returned 
to where I had left. 

Almost. 

Scully was missing. 

I threw my feet over the edge of the bed and swallowed down the wave of 
nausea that threatened to send me falling back to the mattress again. The 
shunt hurt when I pulled the IV line out and I was reaching for the water 
when I saw the blood. 

I was bleeding and my chest hurt. 

I poked and prodded at the white tape surrounding my ribcage, feeling the 
familiar grinding pain from a foreign object cutting through muscle. I had 
been wounded, fairly badly, and I didn't know by whom or why. This was a 
definite sign that all was not well. 

"Scully?" I bellowed at the dark and open doorway. 

She didn't answer and I hauled my hurting carcass up from the bed again. The 
floor was imitating the deck of a ship on a rough sea, which made the nausea 
flare up again. I grabbed the doorframe and hung there for a moment, letting 
the sharpness of the pain in my chest fight off the woozy sick feeling. The 
hallway and staircase were dark but I went ahead anyway. 

In the living room, the only light was coming through the porch light, 
dappled black and silver across the old furnishings. I swung loosely around 
and spotted a ghostly smear in the armchair before the fireplace. 

Krycek. 

Of course, we hadn't seen him lately. 

"Krycek?" I asked and nudged his arm. 

He blinked and looked up at me. 

"How'd it go?" he asked. 

It was beginning to look like on this side of the coin Krycek was one of the 
good guys. And monkeys might fly out of my butt. 

"Not good. It's still wrong. I didn't accomplish what I needed to do. I have 
to go back."  

"You have to eat, Dana said you'd be dehydrated and your electrolytes out of 
balance." 

I followed Krycek into the kitchen and sat at the table while Krycek puttered 
around with various cooking things. I sat there and watched him. The meal in 
question turned out to be Campbell's tomato soup and Gatorade. While I ate he 
sat opposite me and drank instant coffee, watching me with opaque eyes. There 
were a few thousand questions I wanted to ask him, but I didn't want to blow 
my cover. 

Krycek opened his mouth several times to start to speak, but each time 
thought better of it. I couldn't tell whether my curiosity or my fear was 
greater. 

The front door banging open made both of us start and broke the hermetic seal 
of the cabin. 

"Fucking Lincoln Town Car followed me halfway from goddamned Boston. So I'm 
thinking that this is it and that the assholes are finally going to get me, 
and I'm doing eighty on the back routes, and a fucking highway patrol car 
comes out of nowhere and fucking pulls me over. Nailed for speeding. Speeding 
of all fucking things. And this bull dyke comes around to collect my license 
and I figured that there was no way out. Hey, I wouldn't be totally averse to 
trading a quickie for a ticket, but muff diving is not in the job 
description." 

"Nice work if you can get it." Krycek drawled over his shoulder. 

"Fuck you, Comrade," Langley snorted and threw a bag on the table, I could 
hear the telltale clanging of metal. 

Guns. 

Byers followed suit, carrying an equally impressive arsenal. What the fuck 
was going on? Finally, Scully walked in and I sucked air. Throwing a leather 
jacket into the corner, she ripped a black knit cap off her head and shook 
her burning hair free. It was a particularly nasty-looking handgun that she 
dumped on the tabletop. 

"Fort Drum is completely deserted. No personnel, no communications coming in 
or out and all the security has been shut off. The equipment is just sitting 
there. Tanks, helicopters, troop carriers, and everything else is collecting 
dust," she said and raked her fingers through her hair. 

"Good chance to walk away with a Humvee at the five-finger discount," Langley 
agreed. 

"What is going on?" I asked. 

Brilliant blue eyes centered on me for a moment and then flicked back to 
Krycek. 

"How long has he been up?" she asked and went through the age-old routine of 
checking my pupils, taking my pulse and generally examining me like an 
unpromising lab specimen. 

"Half an hour," Krycek said. 

"Save the universe, Spooky, or are we still fucked?" Langley demanded, one 
hand straying to the gun at his hip. 

"Knock it off, " Byers protested, "You know Mulder's always disoriented when 
he comes around." 

"Did you fix it?" Langley persisted. 

"I don't know what you're talking about," I mumbled. 

"That's enough," Scully snapped, "he needs rest right now, and I'll ask the 
questions, all right?" 

Her strong little hands caught me under the arms and hauled me away from the 
table; Krycek helped her ease my stupid body into the living room and onto 
the sofa. 

"He's gotta go back again," Krycek warned her and looked back over his 
shoulder at the light in the kitchen, "and I don't care how they feel about 
it." 

"He's not regressing again until I'm sure that it's safe. There's no research 
on the long-term effects of Dr. Strauss' drugs."

Alex scowled at her, looking like a Boy Scout pretending to be a gangster. 
"Details, details. When I was in town the guys in the post office were 
talking about the latest news from Washington. The President is still saying 
that there's nothing serious wrong, that the travel restrictions are simply 
to prevent confusion and rioting." 

"I guess he knows that we wouldn't believe him no matter what he said, unless 
it involved some sort of sexual confession," she plumped a pillow and eased 
it gently behind my back, "There's no communication with South America or 
Canada at all. They say that Texas has closed all its borders -- Mexico and 
US -- and that all the healthy soldiers have orders to shoot to kill." 

"Like that's unusual in Texas." 

"Fuck you, Alex, Russia isn't even organized enough to defend its borders. 
When this is over Germany's going to stretch all the way to St. Petersburg 
again." 

Pain surfaced on Krycek's face for a moment before he stood up and ambled 
over to us where Scully put her hand on his shirt and he grabbed the hair on 
the back of her head and pulled her head back for a brutal kiss. My face 
burned as though I had opened a red-hot oven. With her neck bent backward 
like a smooth white bone, she gave herself up to him. After a moment, they 
broke apart and looked back over at me as though nothing had happened. 

"How's your chest?" she asked. 

"Bleeding." 

"Let's take a look at it." 

end 17/25

Tikkun Olam 18/25 
MustangSally78@juno.com & RivkaT@aol.com

Guildenstern: Wheels have been set in motion, and they have their own pace, 
to which we are ... condemned. Each move is dictated by the previous one -- 
that is the meaning of order. If we start being arbitrary it'll just be a 
shambles: at least, let us hope so. Because if we happened, just happened to 
discover, or even suspect, that our spontaneity was part of their order, we'd 
know that we were lost. 
 

I followed Scully upstairs and I have to admit that I was enchanted with the 
delicious view of her ass as she skipped up the stairs in front of me in her 
tight black jeans. I wanted to reach out and grab her, squeeze the muscle and 
flesh in my hands like baseballs. She was a bruised peach with thick mascara 
and she was obviously still fucking Krycek. It made me wonder what I had done 
for this to happen. Hey, universes may pivot, it's always my fault; my guilt 
is an art form. 

It was another bedroom that she took me to, the one that Samantha had used 
when we were children, and there was a king-sized bed there now and an 
assortment of medical supplies on the bedside table. She put her hand on my 
shoulder, pushed me to a seated position on the side of the bed, and began 
unfastening the tape on my chest.  

Despite her slightly grubby appearance, she smelled good, like some heavy 
perfume that my Scully would never have worn. Her hands were as sure and as 
quick as ever. Pulling off the rest of the gauze, she revealed a series of 
deep, drying scratches that were too shallow for stitches and too jagged to 
leave uncovered. Scully dabbed at the scratches with peroxide-soaked cotton 
and the scratches foamed white. She pushed my head to the side so as not to 
block the light from the bedside lamp. I could feel the warmth of her skin 
radiating from the dark shadow of the cleft between her breasts. 

When she pulled away I was grateful that she hadn't noticed my changed 
breathing and dilated eyes, or if she did she chalked it up to the drugs. I 
didn't want to upset her; I needed her and Krycek to get back to where we all 
should be. Now the issue was more than personal. I had to go back and fix 
things so that the right Samantha got taken or, it seemed, the end of the 
world would be getting a big jumpstart from the Muldermobile. 

I was trying not to pay attention to Scully when she began to undress. 

"Listen, Mulder," Scully said as she shucked her cable-knit sweater, hair 
flying around her face. "I don't like having you go back under." 

She was unzipping one boot while hopping around on the other stocking foot 
which would have been funny under almost any other circumstance. She 
struggled with the jeans and they began to squeeze down her body. I dragged 
my gaze back up to her face so I could think. 

There were two important issues: First, I wasn't interested in joining this 
Mulder's world at all. Scully and possibly Krycek and the Gunmen were going 
to be very suspicious, very soon. I had to get back, further into the past. 

Second, what was the deal with the striptease? 

"You wouldn't be much use in a fight anyway right now," Scully continued, 
stalking over to the bed. As she pulled back the covers and joined me, 
maneuvering carefully to avoid jostling the injury, the hot skin of her knee 
brushed my leg and made me start. With the bandages, I felt overdressed.  

"But if They do find us I want you mobile, not drugged up and time traveling 
inside your head. I know you think you can prevent this, but Robert's story 
was hard to believe even for me." Her hand stroked up the inside of my thigh 
and my idiot dick jumped.  The lower centers of my brain had been so well 
trained by her back in the real world that any one of the versions of Scully 
could have made me hard in a heartbeat. "And I'm still not sure what you can 
do to prevent this growing disorder. It's hard to tell when a situation goes 
beyond that which can be controlled by one man. Complexity theory is only 
beginning to give us a vocabulary to describe, much less understand, these 
things..." 

The red line of her mouth homed in, hot and wet on my navel and headed south, 
and no matter what my head was saying to me my cock was agreeing with the 
warm and dangerous lips.  

"But the good news is that you seem pretty mobile now," she said with a dirty 
chuckle into my thigh. 

"Um," I hedged, wondering if I could get out of this by claiming that the 
wound had me on the bench for the season, sexually speaking, and also 
wondering if I wanted to get out of this. 

My dick was already casting his vote and he did his own little dance of joy 
when her lips closed around the head of my cock and she started sucking away 
at me with long, slow lashes of her tongue. Scully, my Scully, is no slouch 
when it comes to giving head, but this version had a divine calling for 
blowjobs. Her teeth skimmed me in the wet softness of her mouth and I grabbed 
at the sheets with both hands, the hurt in my chest dying out like a fire 
without oxygen. My skin danced into goosebumps and I swear my toenails were 
curling up. She made a sound low in her throat that sounded like amusement 
and she sucked harder, her cheeks turning into concaves of hunger. 

"If Robert's story is so unbelievable why does he have my DNA and alternate 
memories of current events? And can it be a coincidence that he showed up 
when things started to go wrong here?" I managed, congratulating myself on 
the coherence of the sentence, as Scully brought her hand up to caress my 
balls and then slid an inexplicably slick finger into my anus, prodding what 
I can only assume was my prostate gland and sending a firehose of unbearable 
pleasure through me. I jerked up and howled as she worked me from both sides. 

The door opened and Krycek sauntered in. 

"You started without me?" he asked, his voice filled with obviously false 
hurt. 

Oh, I had fucked this one up but royally. 

Krycek flicked out the bedside lamp and Scully picked up her head long enough 
to gift him with one of her rare smiles before putting her head back down and 
trying to suck my cerebral cortex out through my cock. Stupid with sex, I 
watched while Krycek slipped out of his sweater and began unbuttoning his 
jeans. I hadn't paid attention before, but now I think I would have killed to 
have his body. His chest was broader and thicker than mine, and all over more 
heavily muscled, right down to the soccer player heft of his thighs, and, 
yes, his cock was impressively thick.  

Kneeling on the edge of the bed, Krycek grabbed Scully by the hips and pulled 
her closer. Scully raised herself up on her knees, bracing her hands on 
either side of my hips and arched her back like a cat in heat. His muscles 
shimmering in the moonlight like a quicksilver statue, he looked over the 
smooth white expanse of her back and smiled at me. He shoved into her with a 
jerk that moved down through her body like a wave and she gasped around my 
cock in her mouth. I shuddered and shut my eyes, trying to block him out and 
concentrate on what Scully was doing to my cock, which wasn't difficult. 
Scully removed her finger from me and braced her hands against the bed for 
better balance. Every thrust into her was telegraphed through her body into 
me as though he was fucking me through her. A trio of hard breathing, 
quivering muscles, and ice flame on nerves. When she started to shake as if 
laughing, I opened my eyes in time to see this Scully's eyes flame with an 
unmistakable orgasm. I knew that look entirely too well. Krycek was working 
his hand between her legs and wearing a fuck face that belonged in a porn 
tape. 

I couldn't come like this, not with him watching me. 

Finally he came with a choking cry and flopped onto her back as though shot, 
but life wasn't that kind. She shook him off and they both rolled sideways 
off me, her mouth sliding off my cock. My erection was still a loose cannon. 
It was nice that they'd both come and left me holding the baby, so to speak. 
Krycek pulled Scully on top of him, pressing her back to his chest and 
splaying her legs out like a rag doll's. Her pubic hair flamed against the 
white of her skin. 

"Come on, man --" he growled. 

Resting against his body, her face was satiated, sluttish. I was shaking but 
I did it anyway, moving over her and finally sliding into her where she was 
hot enough to burn. Her hands grabbed my ass and pulled me in deeper, and 
Krycek's hands covered her breasts, and I saw him squeeze her flesh and her 
nipples standing red and hard between his fingers. Tipping her pelvis up, she 
drew me in deeper than before and whimpered into my ear even as her teeth 
closed on my earlobe. Closing around me like a fist, she shimmied underneath 
me and went into another climax that threatened to throw me off the bed, but 
Krycek held onto my shoulders when I finally came with the finality of a 
coffin lid slamming shut. 

It was not much later that I finally fell asleep with Scully clutched to my 
chest like a teddy bear and Krycek plastered to my back. I had never felt 
less safe in my entire life. I hoped they'd both had their shots but 
considered it unlikely. 

I was actually praying that I'd wake up dead when I finally conked out. 

My cock woke up first, because it was the part of me receiving the wakeup 
call, in the form of a warm, pliant mouth. This must be the oral sex 
universe, I thought as the finger slid into me again. It was just as good 
this time, if not better, and I threw my head back into the pillow and 
writhed helplessly as a mouth that could have suck-started a jet engine 
focused its considerable talent on me. I wondered briefly, before thought 
ceased entirely, if I could maybe try to keep this aspect of Scully constant 
when I changed the world again. 

I was still far from awake while I was being licked clean by a tongue made 
almost too rough by excess of sensation. 

You know what happens next, and don't think that I'm so oblivious that I was 
unaware. I didn't open my eyes even when I came fully awake. I didn't really 
want to acknowledge that Alex Krycek had been sucking on my cock because, A, 
I didn't want to blow my cover, so to speak, and, B, well, a blowjob is a 
blowjob. No use looking a gift horse in the genitals, or something like that. 

Nonetheless I became alarmed when he crawled up my body to settle himself 
over me, keeping most of his weight off me but allowing his erection to poke 
me in the hip. It couldn't have been more frightening if it had been a cattle 
prod. He was fiddling around with a tube of something over on the nightstand 
and I had the sinking feeling that it was lubricant. 

"Alex!" Scully's voice was sharp and schoolmarmish and blessed. "No 
penetration, it could start him bleeding again." 

"You seemed pretty content last night," Krycek grumbled, but he rolled off of 
me and I tried to slow my breathing. 

"You may have noticed that I don't have a penis," she pointed out. "I'll 
solve your little problem." He stood up and stretched, his erection a ruddy 
arrow pointing towards Scully, and then followed it to the opening bloom of 
her mouth. I closed my eyes.

I am so out of here, I thought. I am history in the making. 

Time flowed and I flowed with it. When I opened my eyes again Krycek was 
still there, but wetter. They must have shared a postorgasmic shower.

"You gonna shower?" he asked as he shook his head, sending waterdrops flying 
as if he were a lawn sprinkler. Lawn sprinklers didn't have consciences, did 
they? It fit. The towel rested low on his hips, below the pelvic cut, a place 
that Scully found very erotic. 

I looked up at his face and shook my head. "I feel like shit," I explained. 

He nodded and grabbed a long-sleeved shirt from the dresser, then dropped the 
towel to put a pair of slacks on. "As long as Dana doesn't complain about the 
smell, you know how girls are. I'm gonna feed the monster in the basement, 
want to come along?" 

Intrigued, I swung my legs from the bed and found discarded pair of boxers 
that I hoped were mine. Would Krycek wear Joe Boxers? Did he even wear 
underwear? Did he have crabs or anything else I should worry about?  I hoped 
not. A white T-shirt completed my attire and I plodded downstairs after him, 
smoothing my hair.  

"Take a look at this," was all Langley would say and stepped out from in 
front of the television set.

At first glance, I thought that some channel on deep cable was re-running 
"ID4" but then I realized the telltale logo of CNN was down at the bottom 
right of the screen.

"Holy fuck," Alex choked.

Scully was hunched on the sofa between Byers and Langley with her knuckles, 
white and hard as bone, pressed to her mouth, her eyes looking like she was 
staring into a Hell Bosch would have needed Valium to get through.

All in all it was fairly pretty, the lights twinkling on the saucer's rim, 
like fairy lights reflected in the ice crystals of a New England winter.  The 
Goyim and their Christmas lights.  Only the saucer was hanging like a wind 
chime over the top the white obelisk of the Washington Monument, glittering 
like the diamonds and platinum of Hunter's engagement ring.

I knew what it was to be Cassandra.

"Ladies and Gentlemen, Elvis has left the building." Alex muttered.

The hard agate of Scully's eyes dared me to gloat.   All the years of 
mockery, all the snide comments, the Star Trek jokes, the copies of The 
Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy showing up on my desk, Princess Leia dolls 
giving blow jobs to ET in my 'in' bin, and the like.  I was finally 
vindicated.  I now had the right to give the world the finger and crow from 
the top of the Empire State Building that I was right, there were aliens.  We 
were not alone.  And Carl Sagan was right.  I could scream out the windows 
"I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it any more!"

But I hadn't quite parked in a trauma-free zone. After all, this had started 
as an X-File and wasn't going to stop until I'd gotten a couple more kicks in 
the balls.

Naturally, a statement was going to be made to the press.  By my wife, the 
little woman, the woman who was supposed to be standing behind me, the great 
man.

As if.

"Thank you," Hunter said as her eyes, green on video, burned into the camera. 
"I can appreciate the fact that a great number if you are frightened right 
now.  I want to reassure you that the visitors mean us no harm, they have 
come on a mission of mercy."

"Blow me," Krycek remarked and flopped onto the floor as though he was 
watching an unpromising football game.

"The Visitors have been monitoring our communications and television for 
quite some time now and they have chosen this opportunity to offer their 
friendship and help with the so-called  Superflu that has been decimating the 
population of Earth."

"I hate that," Scully braked, "decimate -- that means to reduce by a tenth.  
She should know better."

The Queen of precision lives.

God save the Queen.

Without another word, Scully rose and swept out of the room.  After a moment, 
Krycek followed, either to tease or fuck her out of her snit.

What did I do?  What do I always do?  I turned my attention to the television.

I watched my wife, who seemed as unreal as a tissue paper outline mounted on 
silk, give information and shine brighter than the star that the aliens had 
come from.  My emotions were feeling like a curry entree and I was pretty 
sure that I should have been standing behind her back in DC like the trophy 
husband that I was, smiling the inane smile of Princess Diana.

CNN laid it all out for me, and I was probably the only viewer who hadn't 
heard it before.  Me and the OJ jurors.  The coughing, sneezing, stuffy head 
so you can rest eternally Superflu, which had been existing on the edge of my 
consciousness since I had gotten mixed up with the departed Dr. Strauss and 
her magic potion, had been going though humanity like a sharp weed-whacker in 
an overgrown lawn.  What had begun as an illness of the poor and 
disenfranchised had worked its way up the social food chain to hit the common 
taxpayer and the captain of industry alike.  Both Bill Gates and Donald Trump 
were dead.  So it was true about ill winds, huh?

Bodies were building up like scum in a public bathroom.  Everything was 
contaminated by touch, breath, and it seemed that you could also get it 
telepathically.  The Russian Cosmonauts circling the earth in their space 
station were dead of the virus and there was no one capable of recovering the 
bodies.

It was making the Black Death look like heat rash.

So the aliens -- the Others, isn't that pretentious? -- were going to help 
us, give suggestions on how to cure and how to contain the virus.  We just 
had to do everything their way.  It was pretty simple.  Martial law, 
quarantine, compulsory infection checks, and the general movement to a very 
harsh, centralized control, and all with the help of the little gray fuckers.

Sons of bitches.

While the TV droned on into the night, the Gunmen slept in the blue-gray 
rays, Robert disappeared to the basement again and I found Dad's stash of 
Scotch, which had aged quite nicely.

Say you're an intelligent race that has mastered space travel, and you find a 
nice little blue-green planet in the unfashionable section of the Milky Way 
with an annoying race of hairless apes destroying a perfectly good 
environment, what would you do?  You can't flat-out fight the apes since they 
have dirty thermonuclear explosives and a bad habit of using them. So you 
decide to eliminate a good section of the population with a nice little 
genetically engineered virus that won't fuck up your gray ass.  Then after 
the virus is doing its job, you convince the governments of the hairless apes 
that you are the only hope and BOOM!  You are a race of saviors and not 
invaders.

And Hunter was probably in it up to her sparkling hazel eyes. God, she was 
beautiful. 

Half a bottle of single-malt and I was a fucking genius.

end 18/25

Tikkun Olam 19/25 
MustangSally78@juno.com & RivkaT@aol.com

Guildenstern: What a fine persecution -- to be kept intrigued without ever 
quite being enlightened. 


The invasion was televised.  Yes they came in peace, child-sized, toad-belly 
soft, gray-white, with big Bambi eyes, looking so helpless and fragile next 
to the big pink humans.  I felt dirty, wondering if they'd been involved in 
my abduction or whether my captors had been trying to stave off this outcome. 
 Either possibility left me unquiet and unclean.

Alex grabbed my shoulders and spun me around in the bathroom and I stumbled, 
catching myself against the ugly blue tile wall. 

"What?!" 

"You're not letting him do it again!  Jesus Christ, Dana, his brain is 
ruined.  I could see it last night. He doesn't know who you or I are!" 

I suspected that Alex was just put out that Mulder hadn't accepted him with 
open legs that morning.  Like most men, if Alex doesn't get his RDA of sex he 
gets mentally constipated.  I pushed my hair out of my face and turned on the 
water in the shower to cover the sound of the conversation. 

"Mulder was never stable.  I think crisis has made him saner while everyone 
else goes crazy."   

Thousands of people were fleeing the cities as if that would slow rather than 
hasten the spread of infection, and thousands of others were rioting and 
destroying what they couldn't hoard.  In the midst of it all, Mulder was 
suddenly the Rock of Gibraltar.   He'd gotten us to the house in Rhode Island 
and we still had a secure phone line, tanks of gas to run the emergency 
generator, and at least six months' worth of food.  "I think we have to trust 
him on this," I began to stroke Alex's cock, since the less blood he had to 
think with the better.   

Alex spun me around and I braced myself against the tiled wall of the shower 
as he pushed me up and thrust into me with his usual brash confidence that he 
would be expected.  Since we fled Matheson's goons (not to mention the U.S. 
military detail sent to bring us in, which I didn't like to think about 
because it made me feel unpatriotic), we'd been fucking like the damned on 
the Gates of Hell, as if orgasm constituted defiance.  It was pack behavior, 
rubbing and nosing one another to reconfirm the links between us.  A 
fundamental, needy reaching for humanity in the face of disaster.  I 
understood it even if I didn't necessarily like it.  I was just glad that 
Langley and Byers had their own arrangement.

Alex's voice lifted and fell with the rhythm of his thrusts.  "What if it 
doesn't work, Day?   What if you put him under again and he comes back as 
oatmeal?  You'd go back to DC and start shooting aliens with your Sig and 
that would be that."  The water washed down over me, washing away the sins 
and the filth of the day before to ready me for the sins and the filth of the 
day ahead.  Alex's cool wet fingers caressed my breasts and I shuddered 
around him.  "I can't lose you both." 

Alex and I had the same problem: we couldn't deny Mulder anything, like two 
proud parents spoiling our demon child.  "Mulder's stronger than you think," 
I said to the tile, wanting it to be true.  Alex's hands drew temporary 
tattoos on my breasts and belly, images of our former lives that were washing 
away under the water.  "If what he says is true than we aren't even supposed 
to exist, not like this anyway.  If this is an artificially created timeline, 
then it has to be removed." 

"We're fucking with forces we don't understand," he intoned like a voiceover 
in a bad sci-fi movie, and I had to chuckle which made him thrust faster.  He 
moved a hand to probe at my clit but I slapped him away; this early in the 
day I couldn't stand the direct stimulation.  He took the hint and grabbed my 
hips, pumping into me like an oil derrick, making me shake as the water 
danced on my neck and shoulders.  I closed my eyes and shut everything else 
out, packed away in brown cardboard boxes for the reconstruction of my life.  
Alex's desire was contagious and I shuddered as his fingers marked me; I'd be 
wearing sergeant's stripes on my hips for a week.  My quick orgasm wasn't 
really worth the effort, but it satisfied Alex.  A few more serious thrusts 
and he came, shaking his head under the water and groaning like a bull 
elephant.  When he backed away I turned and he swept me into a hug. 

"We're going to survive this," I said to his slick shoulder.  "Even if 
Mulder's wrong, there are other things we can do to fight.  Don't forget 
that." 

He washed my back before he left. 

****

Holed up, things were just about unbearable.  My idea of hell was being 
trapped in a house with Langley and Byers, Scully, Krycek, and my freakish 
twin Robert.  Those of us who were arguably sane clustered about the 
television as if it was the fireplace and there was ten feet of icy snow 
outside.  Occasionally Langley and Byers would tell some Frohike anecdote 
that was supposed to be funny, but none of us ever laughed.  I hadn't seen 
him die but the pictures on TV gave me a pretty good idea of what had 
happened to him.  Robert stayed in the basement, drawing and drawing and 
drawing more aliens, more mechanical rapes, and more nightmarish images of 
aliens implanting unspeakable things in humans' bodies.  This might have been 
his editorial comment on the tiny grays appearing on every newscast.

This wasn't how things were supposed to be, I knew that somewhere deep in the 
alcohol-soaked sections of my brain.  There was something fundamentally wrong 
with the Universe and I was the only one who was aware of the fact.  I could 
see it as my companions stared at the screen of the television with rapt 
attention at the parade of aliens and the humans groveling at their feet.

The other thing that pissed me off was having to lie in bed at night with 
Scully and Krycek fucking each other's brains out while I pretended to sleep. 
 I don't know who they thought they were kidding by trying to be quiet, but 
the bed bounced like the boat at the beginning of Gilligan's Island.  Just 
because the booze had dampened my libido with the rest of my nervous system, 
they didn't have to rub it in.

"Is there any way that we can sneak a bomb or something onto the Mothership?" 
 Krycek asked during a commercial for Diet Pepsi.

Coke, apparently, was evil and the Others had it done away with.  This might 
have been the biggest horror of them all.

"Get real," Langley sneered.

"Fuck you."

"Fuck you."  They bickered like children in front of the television.

Scully stared at the screen and bit her nails.  She and the boys had made a 
few more weapons runs while I healed from my strange injury.  We possessed an 
arsenal that would have made any extremist militia proud, but the consensus 
was that we needed to hide and figure out where the new regime was weak 
rather than rushing out like kamikaze pilots and smearing ourselves over the 
side of some alien ship.

And we were frightened, and we hoped that if we did nothing the world would 
go along with us, neither collapsing further nor reaching out to destroy us.

Time passed.  The leaves came out like brave drag queens and the heat of the 
summer flushed New England's pale face. The aliens moved in and made 
themselves comfortable, and the Sci Fi Channel went off the air.  In the 
cabin, not much changed.  I drank, watched TV and tried to sleep as much as 
possible until the night that I decided that I had to regress again and put 
the world to rights.  Messiah complex -- don't live through an alien invasion 
without it.

The smoker's references to "eight years ago" during my last regression meant 
that something had gone wrong with Samantha's conception. I could change 
that. I had to.  It didn't matter to me whether I sent a little blonde girl 
to tortures beyond imagining or a little brunette girl.  Well, it mattered 
some, since I'd known the brunette Samantha, but I was beyond petty ethical 
qualms at this point.

I took my bottle and went upstairs.  Somewhere in Scully's briefcase were the 
drugs -- Dr. Strauss' chemical cocktail we'd fought about time and time 
again.  My hands numb with Scotch, I felt around in the case and finally came 
up with the bottle.  The mixture swirled around inside like liquid pearl.  I 
unwrapped a syringe and filled it with the drug, being careful to get all the 
air bubles out and prevent an air embolism.  If I was going to die from this 
injection, I'd rather overdose and die in far more dramatic fashion.

The world melted and swirled like a 1960s musical interlude, taking me away 
with the tide.

"Dr Mulder?"

I blinked and tried to focus.  A pretty young woman, wearing a sweatshirt 
embazoned with a large green circle, looked across a table at me.  I didn't 
know her.  She was a honey blonde with a ponytail, and a set of breasts that 
you could hang a bookshelf on.  The unusual sharpness of the scene made sense 
when I reached up to my face and touched my glasses.  The young woiman folded 
her hands on the shiny tabletop and frowned with concern.

"We could go over your notes later, if you want," she said.

"Yes. I . . . have a . . . headache," I lied and looked at the papers on the 
table between us, it looked like a research paper of some kind.

"I'll set another appointment with Carol," she said and gave me an unsteady 
smile as she gathered up the papers and stuffed them in a backpack.

"Great.  Thanks."

Whoever the hell Carol was . . .

Once the door was shut behind the young woman I looked around the room and 
realized that I was in the unmistakable messy and book-choked office of an 
academic.  I recognized my high school baseball trophy and my certificate 
from Oxford on the wall, but the electric guitar and amp in the corner was 
unfamiliar.  Legs shaking, I walked over to the window and looked out onto a 
pleasant, spring afternoon in a generic college campus.  The only thing that 
was unusual were the students. 

Students, not coughing or sick from the Superflu, walked between classes with 
just one difference -- there were normal human students, aliens in college 
sweatshirts, and young adult versions of the hybrids that populated Robert's 
drawings.  I also noticed the guard towers and the aliens carrying what 
looked like Uzis that had been dipped in liquid silver.  The human-looking 
students all wore gray sweatshirts with the green circles, the hybrids wore 
blue sweatshirts with black squares, and the aliens wore plain white 
sweatshirts.  I started having Schindler's List flashbacks, and barely made 
it to the trashcan before I threw up.

Hopefully the vomiting was a side effect from the drug and I wasn't turning 
into a bulimic or something.

While I was wiping off my mouth and waiting for the nausea to fade, there was 
a polite rap at the door, and Scully walked in.

Only it wasn't Scully, not entirely.

The bones in her face were distorted around the huge black orbs of her eyes 
under the shining copper cap of her hair.

I started to scream.

The world swirled around me again and I was falling into something.

"What the fuck?"  Hands reached me and eased me down.

I felt my mouth still stretched out into a scream and the endless sound 
flowing out of me like water.  Never in my life I had been so cold.  I was 
freezing in the spring afternoon and the co-eds were walking with their alien 
classmates while the cherry blossoms were blooming and the mothership hung 
over like a chandelier.  So fucking cold and the blossoms were turning into 
snowflakes to bury me underneath.  Hands were burning my face and my neck.

"Damnit, what the hell did he do?  Shoot up in here? Is this a reaction or 
what?"

"It's not a reaction, he's come down with the Superflu." Scully's voice was 
more ice in my freezing tomb.

Well that was the cherry on the top now wasn't it?  Maybe the aliens had been 
a fever-hallucination too.

****

Mulder down with the Superflu.  I shouldn't have been surprised.  He has the 
immune system of a week-old infant who had been fed on canned condensed milk 
all its life and whenever the daycare children of the Bureau's support staff 
were sick he would catch it too, which did nothing to improve my assessment 
of his maturity.  Between Dr. Strauss' drug and the stress, it was only 
natural that he should come down with the Trojan horse Superflu that the 
aliens had used to get onto our planet.   I should have seen it coming, I 
should have been carrying antipyretics -- but that was Mulder's goddamned 
fault since he had kidnapped me.  You don't get a chance to move your luggage 
into position when your lover/ex-partner kidnaps you after a shootout in his 
mistress's house.

Like the dry highlands outside LA, Mulder burned for days.  Without a 
thermometer, I had no way of knowing how high his temperature was going, but 
when I used my mother's unscientific method of pressing my lips to his 
forehead he was hot enough to melt wax.  I worried about brain damage -- 
well, more brain damage. I wrapped him in wet towels and tried to keep his 
neurons below the boiling point.  Alex wasn't amused and spent the better 
part of the week doing something mysteriously Alex-esque in the woods 
outside.  I filled Mulder with aspirin and Gatorade, all that I was left with 
in the unsuitably primitive conditions.  The Gunmen were barred from the 
upstairs of the cabin and Robert stayed in the basement, drawing.

After a week the fever diminished somewhat and Mulder began to cough up great 
handfuls of beige phlegm -- a sure sign of infection.  He needed the Others' 
substitute for our useless antibiotics. He needed fluids; he needed a 
hospital.  He did not need to be out in a cabin in the middle of nowhere with 
two of the seven dwarves, two former FBI agents with creative sexual 
practices, and a comic book artist in a pear tree.  He couldn't die like 
Frohike.

I turned on Mulder's cellphone, which no one had used for weeks for fear of 
it being traced.

I went through the menu and found Hunter's private number.

The phone trilled three times.

"Hunter," she said in that throaty voice of hers.

"Mulder has the Superflu.  He needs to go to a hospital.  I am giving you two 
minutes to trace this call.  Have your people be here no sooner than eight 
tonight."

"Dana."

"We don't want him to die, now do we?"

I left the phone on empty air and when my watch said that the allotted 
hundred and twenty seconds had elapsed, I hung up.

Okay, to save Mulder I might have sold us all up the river.

I went downstairs to warn the boys.

I should have known that the bitch wouldn't keep her word.  Less than two 
hours later, I heard the vehicles crashing through the woods.

"Scully, we got company!" Langley screamed from outside and I heard gunfire.

I draped Mulder's arm around my neck like I was escorting home a drunk and 
double-checked my gun.

Alex looked at me.  I nodded at him, knowing that I had to be the emotionless 
one.  "You have to get out of here.  If it comes to that you have to make 
sure that Robert isn't taken.  He might be able to regress as well."

The windows shattered inwards as if a bomb had gone off outside.  A bleeding 
slash appeared on Alex's forehead. 

"Everybody down!" screamed the man in black who landed in front of me after 
cannonballing through the window.  I had my gun out but I didn't want to kill 
anyone yet so I rolled over the back of the couch, dragging Mulder with me 
and praying for time. 

Someone screamed.

Multiple thuds indicated that more people were coming through the blown-out 
windows.  I bolted for the door, wobbling to dodge the bullets that zinged 
like angry flies through the air.

Byers staggered towards me from the kitchen.  There was blood dripping from 
his mouth, sticking in the rough strands of his beard, dyeing it like a henna 
rinse of the damned.  I saw his knees give out.

I managed to get Mulder to the door, ostentatiously dropping my gun to the 
ground and holding up one hand while the other supported the limp form of my 
partner.  MIB's swarmed on me, grabbing Mulder and dragging him away.  My 
hands were jerked behind my body and I was cuffed like a criminal.  One of 
the MIBs marched me over to a camouflaged Humvee where Hunter waited.  She 
hoisted herself out of the back seat and set her cross-trainers on the pine 
needles underneath.

What the television crews had been avoiding was not the truth about the 
aliens but her body from the waist down -- she was visibly pregnant. Yet 
another reason to hate her.  She was fertile and presumably carrying Mulder's 
child.  Irrationally, this pissed me off almost more than the aliens.  What 
kind of a world was it when a duplicitous bitch like her could get pregnant 
and I had fewer eggs than the supermarket on Easter Sunday?

"Dana," she said, "I realize that I owe you an enormous debt for handing Fox 
over for medical care.  I will keep you out of jail for this crime, but I 
think it would be best if you stayed away from -- us for a while."

I stared at her, wondering if Alex had escaped with Robert.  There was only 
one body covered on a stretcher, and Langley was snarling at the men who were 
searching him.  

"You killed Byers, you bastards!" Langley screamed.

Mulder occupied the paramedics, including the Gray in its Buck Rogers 
jumpsuit.  Maybe no one even knew that Alex and Robert had been here.

"Is there something you want to say to me?" Hunter prompted.

If she thought I was going to thank her, she was mistaken in the extreme.

"You're using the Superflu and the aliens to further your political 
ambitions," I accused, which was marginally better than 'eat shit and die, 
cunt'.

She rolled her eyes.  "How can you have lived in Washington all these years 
and still know nothing about politics?  Your mechanistic worldview fails to 
account for the realities of human nature.  I can explain recent events to 
decrease the creeping terror felt by the general public and salvage what's 
left of organized society, and that's a good thing, Dana, not a maniacal plot 
perpetrated on an unsuspecting populace."

If not for the content and the lack of a slide show, the speech could have 
come from Mulder himself.  My expression must have been more eloquent than I 
wanted it to be, because Hunter sighed and smoothed her blouse over her 
belly.  "I hear that Georgetown University hospital still needs doctors, I'll 
have you taken directly there so you won't be forced to suffer the 
indignities of a press conference."  She nodded over my shoulder and strong 
hands materialized around my forearms.

I went quietly but not happily.   

****

Hunter was sitting in an orange plastic chair left over from the seventies, 
and her stomach was distended.  I knew it had to be a dream because Hunter 
would never use a piece of furniture like that.  I wondered where the stacked 
blonde undergrad had gone.

But my eyes were gummy with sleep and when I blinked she was still there, 
smiling.

"Wha --" I mumbled, and cool hands adjusted my pillow and gave me a drink of 
water.  Hunter supervised, her face stretched into an unfamiliar expression 
of joy.

"Fox, I'm so glad you're awake.  We were so worried about you --" she stroked 
her stomach.

We.  As in her and the baby.  

I turned my face into the pillow, wanting the blankness.  I knew that there 
was something wrong with Hunter, something that made me flee, but I'd been 
floating like a barge at high tide for so long that I couldn't quite decide 
what it had been.  Aliens, I remembered, but how could even alien invasion 
have driven me from the side of my pregnant wife?  What kind of man was I?

My father had some ideas about that.  He wouldn't have been surprised in the 
slightest.

God, why couldn't I remember?  I tried to raise my hands to rub my temples 
and found them restrained.  Hunter noted my confusion, and with one motion 
orderlies were untying me.  "You were delirious for a while, Fox, the 
infection had progressed dangerously far.  You were restrained for your own 
safety."  I stretched and clenched my hands in fists, feeling like a newborn 
baby, wondering how long it would take for me to recuperate.  At least the 
Bureau's HMO was unlikely to complain about costs anymore.  I supposed that I 
had plenty of sick leave at Matheson. 

"Fox, I know we've had some problems in the past, been working in opposite 
directions, but I do love you.  I want this to work.  We have to bring our 
child into a stable family now that the world has changed so much.  You know 
what it's like to grow up in a family without love.  I can't have that for my 
child."

My throat closed around the words that were forming and all I could do was 
nod and blink at my stinging eyes.  Leaning over the bed with her belly 
cradled up against my shoulder, Hunter's face was a cool balm against my 
forehead.  Within the swelling confines of her abdomen, a little person 
kicked at me like a frog in a blanket.

"Yeah," I managed to choke out and I felt her cool tears on my face.

"Let's get you home as soon as possible," she whispered "I missed you so 
much.  I missed you like part of myself was gone.  I'm not whole without you, 
Fox.  I need you."

I shut my eyes and felt her heart beating with mine.

end 19/25