FACING NOVEMBER by Rachel Nobel (Rachelblue@aol.com) RATING: PG (If you've seen the episode, use your own discretion) WARNING: This is "Paper Hearts" retold from an alternating first-person point of view (hopefully possessing enough uniqueness as not to be confused with Summer and Vickie's "Open Hearts"--I began this before I ever read that one), so there are major spoilers for that episode and probably the ones before it. DEDICATION: To anyone who could write this better than I...and to all who haven't lost faith in my writing ability yet. DISCLAIMER: Standard XA disclaimer applies. AUTHOR'S NOTE: I realize that at first glance (from my summary), this story may seem startlingly similar to "Open Hearts." It's not the same story--I began this before I *read* "Open Hearts"--I just write a hell of a lot slower. SUMMARY: "Paper Hearts" retold from an alternating first-person point of view. _______________________________ MULDER It was the sensation of dreaming that first caught my attention, I think. Through the flicker of the television and the hum of the fishtank I could feel myself...awakening... A dream within a dream. I'm in my apartment when I awake. On my couch, fully expecting any minute for some liver-eating mutant--or in case Tooms isn't able to fulfill his duties, the runner-up of a little gray/green man--to come popping out of the walls and eat me alive. I never have pleasant dreams. But it doesn't happen. Instead, there's a little red laser light on the wall across the room. Whimsical, harmless. FOLLOW, it spells. So I do. Something about the light seems vaguely familiar. It reminds me of one of those blinking buoys you'd see atop a lighthouse, almost like the ones we had up in Quonochontaug when I was a kid. Samantha and I used to sneak outside at night, after Mom and Dad were asleep, and tell ghost stories. Just us and the sea. We went back for just one summer...after. To find a sense of normality. It didn't work. Dad took me for a walk one night, along the beach, that lighthouse red light blinking steadily, a beacon. "Everything changes but the sea, Fox," he told me. It seemed to me then that the sea did nothing but change. But when I told him that, he just smiled at me, sadly almost. He led me home; Mom gave me hot chocolate and then sent me to bed. I remember...watching the moonlight fall across Samantha's empty bed and staring out at that blinking red light and thinking that the boogeyman had caught my sister at last. Okay. So I'm dreaming about the lighthouses we used to see on Rhode Island? It's been torn down since that summer, July 1974. I asked Mom about it, for some strange reason, driving her home from the hospital. "Whatever happened to the lighthouse?" She didn't know. Fine. Intellectually, I can see why it's entirely possible I'm having lighthouse dreams. It's been a tough year. I know Dad tried to sell the summer house many times since he and my mother divorced, but there were no takers. My things--Samantha's things--are still there. My baseball glove, Samantha's ballet tutus...even the silverware. All there. Dusty, but there. Everything changes but the sea. But the lighthouse telling me to *follow* it? I just don't know. So I end up outside--in jeans and a T-shirt, in Virginia, in *November*--in a park. Bosher's Run Park, the sign reads. Never heard of it. Where am I? It's only a dream. I'll get home somehow... White car parked on the sidewalk. Looks old, like those big fancy cars I always used to find parked in our driveway when Dad was discussing 'business.' If only I'd known... The light again. MAD HAT, it tells me. Mad hat? It wants me to...what? Follow, now that makes sense. Mad hat? Now what? I keep walking. It's there again, that light, on a tree. For a flash-- the barest hesitation of a second--I smell salt and sea air and sand. Samantha's shriek--<"Watch *out*, Fox, you'll knock over my sand castle!"> Racing her, to the lighthouse and back--I was always a strong swimmer but put me on a rocking boat and you'd better hope they've stocked up on Dramamine. Found that out on the rides to the mainland and back, as far back as '63... My dad was right, in the end. The only thing you can count on is the sea. So I'm standing in this forest--excuse me, *run* *park*--puzzling over the fact that a little red light is leading me places, and suddenly I notice the girl. I've seen her before. She's lying in front of the tree, surrounded by leaves. Dead or sleeping, I can't tell. My heart stops. No. No. This girl's hair is blond. It's not Samantha. It can't be... The light again, this time on her chest. It forms a heart, disappears as a leaf blows over it. The vortex of my thoughts becomes reality as the earth swallows her up before me. She doesn't stir. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust... Samantha's mock funeral. The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh aw-- _________ The night air was cool on his face as his conscious mind hesitated, then dragged him out into full awareness. But the threads of the dream didn't dissipate--they were strong, clear. Frightening. The girl was real, he was sure of it. Or she had been. But the images were lucid. Bosher's Run Park...in Manassas. Built on a young girl's undiscovered resting place... His mind worked furiously. He'd have to tell them he'd been tipped off, or had been looking over old files, or something...the heart on the girl's chest...the lighthouse...why was it so familiar?... Bosher's Run Park. It was four in the morning. Fast talking might get him a team out there by four-thirty. He might be chief agent on the X- Files Project, but he had been Spooky Mulder once, without a doubt the best criminal profiler in the Bureau, maybe in the Bureau's history. Or so they had told him. They might still listen, if he-- The heart. Almost as if it were to be taken out of the girl's nightgown, almost as if the light were a tool, a scissor...a heart, a cloth heart...no one could cut a heart that easily, could they? No, they'd have to trace around it, like a child's kindergarten paper cutouts--the ones Samantha used to bring home for Valentine's Day...hearts, paper hearts... Paper hearts... ____________ SCULLY The phone call woke me. It was Mulder, I was sure of it...I've been awakened at least once a night for the past few days, ever since Russia. The first time, he almost seemed surprised to hear my voice on the line, as if he had dialed unconsciously in the grasp of a nightmare and my sleepy greeting had woken him up. I don't hold him responsible--God, I don't even think he realizes he's calling when he does. Ever since Russia... It's been a tough few weeks. And there's something bigger at stake here, something more important than the physical ailments Mulder is clearly falling victim to. Technically, he was 'out in the field,' so he's required to submit a report summarizing what happened...but he won't. He refuses. He doesn't remember, he says. He doesn't speak Russian, he didn't understand what they were saying. But it's not Mulder. It's four-thirty in the morning and it's not Mulder. Oh, God... ____________ "Concentrate on this area right here." His voice. He's fine. Insane, perhaps, but fine. It was AD Skinner who placed the phone call. Mulder had requested a forensic excavation team at Bosher's Run Park in Manassas, Virginia. At five AM on a Sunday, I imagine no one was too happy about that request. Some of the pathologists look half-asleep. "Mulder!" He's wearing a leather jacket, jeans, and a T-shirt. I shiver instinctively. It's fairly warm out, for November, but it's not *that* warm. Mulder doesn't seem to notice the bite in the air. He scarcely glances at me as he watches the team work. "What's going on?" I ask as I reach him, slightly out of breath. "I'm not sure I can explain it, Scully," he says vaguely, unfocused. Ever since Russia... I persist unrelentingly. "You call for a forensic excavation team at five AM on a Sunday? What are you looking for?" Damn the psychologist in him that's so effective at dodging questions. "Just give me a minute, okay, Scully?" he says, touching my arm and effectively steering me closer to the crime scene. "Why are you out here, Mulder?" I ask as a last resort. He sighs, defeatedly, and in a low voice: "I keep having this dream. It's about a little blond girl." My mind doesn't even have time to process the information before my lips form the words. "You're out here at five o'clock in the morning because of something you saw in a dream?" He opens his mouth to shoot a tired retort when a voice calls from behind. "Sir?" I follow him down the sloped hill to the hole in the ground the team has made. Poking out of the dirt, desecrated and hideously grinning with age, is the unwelcome goal Mulder has been looking for. A child's skull. He seems saddened but not surprised, and looking at his face, at his eyes, I see something, something more precious and bittersweet reflected there. A warning. The grace, perhaps, of a single tear. The child's face. ___________ It takes a few minutes for the team to calm down. A body, right where Spooky Mulder said it would be. One suggests, only half-jokingly, that they could use him back in VICAP. God. The FBI could use Mulder anywhere. "So tell me about this dream," I say quietly. He's still got that look on his face--lost, haunted, determined. "I've had...flashes of it three nights in a row?" he says slowly, hesitantly, "...and last night it went on long enough to lead me right to her." Three nights in a row? Ohhh... When you close your eyes, is it still Samantha you see? ______________ MULDER I've made the connection. The heart, the little girl--the long, blond hair. It all connects, fits with the profile, the MO. I knew it five years ago, and I know it now. "I need the chest exposed." "Yes, sir. It just takes a little time." Whoa, I've been red. More than that, I've lost the polish of hero status. Thank God. In the ISU, when Mulder wanted the chest exposed, Mulder got the chest exposed. This agent looks young; she hasn't heard the stories. <"We'll be talking about you till the day you die, Mulder."> Bill was wrong, I guess. Of course, he had no way of knowing I'd quit the ISU. Gave the best damned talking-to I'd ever heard. Guilt, enticements, the whole nine yards. Of course, I'm a psychologist, too. And, so they tell me, a better profiler than Bill ever was. So I left, and here I am. Out here, as Scully noted, at five in the morning on a Sunday with a forensic team that refuses to expose the damn chest. Something gets the better of me. No, wrong phrase. Scully's definitely my better half, and she did just what she was supposed to; she stood back and let the team work. But I need the chest exposed. If it's *him*--and God knows I've thought about it long and hard enough to recognize it--I need to know. So I snap on a latex glove and head toward the site. Ah, Spooky's back. The legend continues. Kneeling down by the chest area, I push away the dirt with my fingers, gently. He would have been anything but gentle... "Sir? Sir, let us do that--" "Mulder, if you destroy evidence we may never find out what happened here." And now, after all the wondering, I'm sure. "I *know* what happened here. She was strangled. He used an eight- gague electrical cord. He took something from the body post-mortem. A piece of fabric cut from the cloth. In the shape of a heart." _______________ SCULLY He recites all this mechanically, and I am astonished. Ever since Russia... Come on, Dana. You need to think of a new catchphrase. "You're saying you got all these details from your dream?" I say before anyone else can. "No, I *know* this MO. I know it from memory." "*Whose* MO?" "John Lee Roche," he says with finality. "He killed thirteen eight-to- ten year old girls." Eight to ten year old girls...hearts...can't say I've heard of the case. I wish I had, though. I could have found out right up front whether Samantha Ann Mulder was an eligible candidate. Lost in thought, no one even attempts to stop Mulder from his frantic digging. And when he reaches what he's looking for, I'm sure it's all they can do not to let out a <"Sweet Jesus!"> or a <"Mother of God!"> A body, right where Mulder said it would be... "This makes fourteen." ....and fabric, cloth that for some reason doesn't disintegrate under his fingers, and a hole. In the shape of a heart. _______________ It's all I can do to get him back to the office. I want the details of this case--I want them now. I don't want to watch Mulder fall apart as they uncover the rest of the body. Why now? After everything we've both just been through. That little girl is going to end up being another Lucy Householder. I'm sure of it. It isn't about Samantha--it's never about Samantha, only his memories of her, and what she means to him. No. It's always about Samantha. Mulder seems to have regained his composure by the time we arrive, and he heads straight for the filing cabinet. "It was a difficult case; he was extremely hard to catch." I choose not to ponder over the meaning of the word . "In 1990, ten victims had been found, scattered across the eastern seaboard. The earliest dated back to 1979. VICAP named the case because of the trophies the killer took." Paper hearts. It sounds like a young child's Valentine's Day gift. Damn it. I will never look at paper hearts the same way again. "Reggie Purdue brought me on the case because he thought I could get inside the killer's head," Mulder continues. ________________ MULDER She goes right for the jugular. "Did you?" I hesitate. Scully's a pathologist, not a profiler. What does she want me to say? Yes, Scully, I got inside his head. I *am* John Lee Roche, part of me. I know his compulsions. I understand them. I sympathize with them... In 1990, it took every ounce of strength I had to finish up that case. Spooky's breaking point. As soon as the trial was over I sent in my transfer requests, day after day, week after week...I couldn't do it anymore. I had to get out. Yes, Scully. I became John Lee Roche. I dreamt about who I was and who he was and there was no difference. Would I have killed Samantha, as he did to those girls, had she stayed? I don't know, Scully. I'm not a killer. I am. I am. I'm him, Scully, I'm John Lee Roche, I'm Luther Lee Boggs... Back in the sixties all I wanted to be was the walrus... Because all the sea did was change. She sees that I'm unnerved by the question but I answer before she can ask again. "I...I concluded that we were probably looking for a salesman, someone who traveled around a lot, someone who could gain people's confidence. Someone ordinary." Do you understand now, Scully? Someone ordinary. We are murderers, all. "It turned out Roche was a vacuum cleaner salesman; his job took him all over the northeast. He'd been in someone's home demonstrating a vacuum cleaner; all the while he'd be checking out their kids. He'd choose a victim and come back for them months later." She's looking at the file as I talk, tracing her fingers over the face of John Lee Roche. Doesn't look like a murderer, does he, Scully? Tall, average weight, and bald, with a ready smile. Like someone's father. Mad hat... "But it was *your* profile that caught him," she notes finally, making up for her earlier transgression. Sometimes I'm too easy to read. I open my mouth to reply, think the better of it, close it, and open it again. Sit back in my chair. Wait. "What about the...trophies the killer took, the cloth hearts?" Notice the way she refers to him as . It's easy to pretend they don't have names, they don't exist. I try it myself sometimes. But when you *become* the killer... "We never found them," I reply. "But we didn't need them to make the case, we had him called on thirteen counts of murder. He *admitted* to thirteen. Polygraph said he was telling the truth. But that always bugged me about that case, I *always* wanted to find those hearts and count them, see if they really added up to thirteen." I feel my voice drop. "I guess they didn't." Scully sighs and leans forward. "If nothing else...I think I can at least help explain your dream." Oh, this should be interesting. Dr. Dana Katherine Scully, MD, throwing psychobabble at Dr. Fox William Mulder, Ph.D. I raise my eyebrows at her, but don't have the energy to ask for her psych class college credentials. "I don't think you ever stopped thinking about this case." Really. "I *believe* you may have solved it in your sleep." Interesting concept. Does this mean the Bureau should pay me overtime on the nights I get a full sleep? "So you think that I've...somehow had this information about a fourteenth victim all this time and have been processing it unconsciously?" "You said it yourself once. You said that a...a dream is an answer to a question we haven't yet figured out how to ask. You do good work, Mulder." She smiles reassuringly. Dana Scully, guardian angel...I was wrong. The Bureau should pay *her* overtime on nights I get a full sleep. Her voice is gentle. "Let's identify this girl so we can put her to rest." ________________ SCULLY "I believe her name is Addie Sparks," I say as I walk into the room where the girl still lies on the table. Mulder sits on a chair next to her, close by, staring. It's unnerving, how he looks at her, but I continue. "She went missing from her home in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, in the summer of 1975. I contacted the center for Missing and Exploited Children; they ran a check through the database." Mulder's already shaking his head, in disbelief. "1975's too early." "I think the match is right, Mulder, the...the height is right, the description of the sleeper is right..." He's lost the calm, collected FBI aura of before. I want to send him home, he needs the sleep, but I can't. I won't. He won't let me. He needs this for himself. "That would mean Roche started way before we thought he did..." he murmurs. I sigh. "Mulder, we're going to have to verify this. Are you up for that?" He just nods. _____________ The house was quietly suburban, well-manicured. It looked like a house that had moved on. I hate bringing this kind of news. Interrupting people's lives, bringing up forgotten hurts. It's not something we have to do very often, and I think, for obvious reasons, it affects Mulder more than I than we do. But it seems everything affects Mulder more these days. It doesn't sound right--it makes *me* sound more detached than I am. Mulder's just so... He expected me to speak; I could see it in his eyes. So when the older man opened the door and nodded as I inclined, "Frank Sparks?" I barreled along quickly. A barrage of twenty year old information thrown at the poor man in a few minutes. I was nervous--I could tell that by the calm quality of my voice. It's a habit you pick up at the Academy--the more nervous you are, the more level your voice becomes. "I'm Agent Scully, this is Agent Mulder, we're with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. May we speak with you?" He knew. God, he knew. "You've found Addie?" How do you reply to a question like that? He didn't wait for an answer, just led us inside. I handed him the sleeper pocket silently; I could see the tears shining in his eyes. "This was for the Tooth Fairy...when Addie was asleep at night I used to put a quarter in this pocket. Her mother sewed it..." I had to ask. "Where is your wife, sir?" "She passed on...last summer..." All I could think at that moment was that I was calling Mom as soon as I got home. Mr. Sparks had regained his composure, by that time. I'm sure he knew Addie was a lost cause, all those years. Who, after all, would kidnap a child from her home and set her free? Samantha... "So you're saying that...the man who did this is already in prison?" "Yes, sir, and he won't get out," Mulder said with assurance. He had put him there, five years before. "You do this full-time, telling people...news like this?" the man asked. He must have known we didn't. Are there possibly *that* *many* people who need to be told? Dead or dying? Lost or found? Alive, there was always a phone call. I remember all the times Ahab's ship didn't get in when it was supposed to, or the radio had gone out on the boat, or there was some kind of storm. It was always a phone call-- the elephant's thomp of Melissa's feet and Charles' and Bill's and mine. And Mom's, if it had been a long wait. We'd throw off the receiver and- -they didn't have speaker phones when I was growing up, so it would be all five of us gathered around the phone, and whoever at the time was in Mom's favor got to hold it--and we'd wait for the voice. Sometimes it was Dad himself, a semi-jovial greeting from over the line. More often than not it was an officer on the mainland. Always a phone call. For the dead ones they came in person. I knew. It was a naval community and we saw the cars driving up often enough. Mom would shake her head sadly--<"They're heading toward Ann's house. We should call..."> She'd make arrangements, throw a casserole in the oven. I remember being over at Robin James' house when they came. We were playing some pretend game in her room when there was this muffled shriek and silence and when we ran out into the living room there were two officers, just standing there, uncomfortable, while Robin's mother wiped her eyes. Robin got this big wide-eyed scared look on her face and her mom gathered her up and brought her into her room and that was the last I saw of Robin James. I ran all the way home and they moved less than a week later. My childhood was decidedly happy. But I can't forget the images of the dead, surrounding us, stifling us. Heroes, all. But Addie Sparks was just a little girl. "No, sir, not full time," I reply, sympathy evident in my voice. Not forced sympathy, either. Mulder joins in: "It's not a good job." There is compassion in his voice as well. "You know, I used to think that...missing was worse than not knowing because...you never knew what happened, but now that I know...I'm glad my wife's not here. She got it luckier..." Make that a phone call a day to Mom for at least a week. "How many more people like me are you going to visit today?" Searching Mulder's face, his desperately vacant eyes, I feel nothing. No thoughts radiating from him. He's lost. It's stifling. I need to get out of here. His view travels to the mantle, where the smiling childlike face of Addie Sparks stares back at him. Frozen in time... It's Mulder who addresses Frank Sparks' question, not me. "Sir?" he questions blankly. They've both since forgotten I'm sitting there. I'm a mere intruder now--the only one in the room not suffering from such devastating loss. The not knowing. The unsureness. Yes, I've lost. Unexpectedly. Violently. But I knew... "Were there other victims..." the man starts hesitantly, "you didn't know about?" Mulder is frozen when I look at him. Paralyzed. There's nothing he could have done, Roche murdered this man's child in 1975. Mulder was...what, fifteen years old in 1975? Still grieving his own losses. By 1990 it was too late to save Addie Sparks. It's written on his face. Too often I wonder what kind of a childhood Mulder had, to render him as he is. But I've seen the pictures: the beach, the jungle gym. Not deprived at all. Strict parents, parents who probably expected a lot. But so many kids have parents like that. *I* had parents like that. But I wasn't a criminal profiler. And that's probably the only aspect of Mulder's life I know nothing about--the years spent locked up inside killers' minds. I've met Bill Patterson, I've heard the rumors. I've been told the stories about Fox Mulder, the Bureau's fair-haired child, boy genius, worthy of good old J. Edgar himself. God, I've seen evil face Mulder and lose, all because Mulder was the only one worthy of evil's competition. But I've learned after four years that nothing comes easy to Mulder, no matter what the rumors say. And I think Frank Sparks sees it too, in Mulder's face. So I bullshit my way through the response, and hustle Mulder out of there. Just in time. _______________ MULDER Even here, out in the open, jogging softly toward the rented car-- really, we should have just taken one of our own, Pennsylvania is so close--I feel suffocated. Confined by the dead. I saw my own father in Frank Sparks. In the way he held himself, the way he spoke. I saw myself. I'd always assumed that, by the time I reached such an impossibly old age, something in life would be going right for me. What that was, I never could figure out, not even when I was young. But to be fifty, sixty, seventy years old...alone. Oh, I never expected marriage, children. But Samantha...Samantha would come back to me. I was sure. But a birthday passed for me, just over a month ago. Thirty-five. Not so old, really, and they tell me if I'd stayed with the ISU I'd be head of Something or Other by now. Even Scully can't keep the wonder out of her voice--and Scully *knows*. At least, she pretends to. But she can't understand. Frank Sparks is a beaten man. I only wish I could say I won't end up the same way. But, at least for now, I've got Scully. I'd like to think that I'll always have Scully. She knows enough to let me walk in front of her; it's that need to drive, to focus. The car's just a few feet-- The car... The car, it *changes*. For a split second--it's... "Roche drove a white El Camino, Scully, I saw it in my dream!" I call to my partner. She calls back, something I can't quite make out, not listening very carefully to. Probably something to the effect of So? "So Roche was a traveling salesman. He'd want to keep the hearts somewhere close to him, like in his car, right?" "Maybe..." "Well, he doesn't have them in prison," I rush on. "His cell is searched regularly, his mail is examined." I glance quickly at the file--I see the look Scully gives me. I haven't let go of it. "Roche's car was sold at auction in 1993, put out of his reach." She squints up at me against the sun. "It's worth a look," I insist. "We need to find those hearts in order to count them." She sighs, a last-ditch effort to change my mind. "Don't you think the car may have been searched at least once already?" It's too hot for November. It wasn't nearly this warm, twenty-three years ago. "Not by me." _______________ SCULLY I admit it. I'm beginning to wish I *had* quit the FBI and become a spokesperson for the Ab-Roller. I really hate people's fascination with serial killers. I understand it, of course. But it repulses me. I'm touched by death, almost every day. It's so easy to become indifferent to it, to lose humanity. Death is, after all, nothing but a body. And as a pathologist, I see dead bodies all the time--once a week, probably, maybe more. But it's all the more reason for me *not* to become indifferent to it. Because then there's nothing that separates me from...them. The murderers. Mulder is touched by death, too, all the time. And he gets a lot closer to it than the Bureau demands, a lot closer than I'd like. He's said it's what Bill Patterson demanded of him--become the victim. Become the killer. Become death. I understand the fascination. The compulsion. The same thing that makes people stop at traffic accidents to gawk and brag about what they saw. But I don't have to like it. Mulder's face, I'm sure, mirrored my own when the kid whispered, awed, "Honest to God serial killer owned my car?" It was no wonder he left us alone with the El Camino--probably off to call his friends, arrange tours. Charge money. Obviously he hadn't read the newspapers the day John Lee Roche was finally caught and arrested and tried on thirteen counts of murder. But then again, neither had I. We climb in the car--Mulder in the passenger seat, for once, I on the driver's side. Variously, we stumble around as best we can--flipping down the mirror, searching under the seats. Ridiculous. For those hearts to have escaped...notice...for these many years, they'd have to be hidden in a secure place. Mulder pulls out a small knife and without a moment's hesitation, takes to the seat with it. My mock-horror is mirrored in my face, I suppose, as Mulder flashes me a grim smile and mutters, "I'm helping him detail." Another story the kid can tell his friends. First this serial killer, like, abducted all these girls, right, in *my* car, right?! And then he, like, killed them, you know, and after they, like, arrested him or something, I guess, and--yeah, that's my car! And then these two, like, FBI agents or something, came to, like, check out the car, and the guy, you know, he, like, messed with the upholstery 'cause he thought, you know, there might be evidence, right? Ugh. That's really not fair. From what I know of my various nieces and nephews, there's more to America's youth than *that* kid, probably holed up in his room, replete with Generation X/tortured youth decor, phoning--no, make that e-mailing--all his friends. I *pray* there's more to youth than that. ________________ MULDER has never been a word I'd use to describe Dana Scully. Anxious, maybe, at times. Impatient. Even...maybe...a hint of...enthusiasm? Nah...well, maybe. But never eager. Even so, she seemed that way to me, just now, a little. "Something's not right here, Scully," I told her hollowly, and she responded breathlessly with, "Maybe they're underneath," short legs practically projecting herself out of the car, frantic as I am to find those hearts, to count them. Eager, it seemed, to do it herself, to prove to me--and maybe to her, too--that the X-Files are hers now, as well. That for every sloppily handled investigation in Russia or Alaska or North Carolina, there will be a Duane Barry or a Donnie Pfaster or a Gerry Schnauz waiting in the shadows. My pain is matched only by Scully's strength--she belongs to herself, and no other. Dana Scully is someone she can call her own. But it is I, in the end, who finds the hearts. Unconsciously my lips form those words over and over--mad hat. Mad hat...mad hatter...Alice...mad hat spelled on the back of the car. The hood... "The kid said he took the camper shell off!" I'm off and running before she can respond. She'll follow, I know...Scully will follow me... But how far? It's a question I've yet to ponder for fear she'll reach her breaking point. I don't want to lose Scully--but how can I give up Samantha? And what will I do if I'm faced with that choice? I don't know. But I want to find those hearts. So I pull the camper shell out from next to the backyard shed, searching for hollow spots, expensive shoes patting down the fabric. Eventually I just bend down and rip away the cloth in a corner... God. I catch the title before I comprehend it--"Alice's Adventure's in Wonderland." "Mad hat...mad hatter..." Opening the book, glimpses of faded cloth stare blankly out at me from snatches of dialouge. <"Mine is a long and sad tale!" said the Mouse...> <"There's certainly too much pepper in that soup!" Alice said to herself...> <"We quarreled last March--just before *he* went mad, you know--"> <"I don't know how he can *ever* finish, if he doesn't begin."> <"It *began* with the tea," the Hatter replied.> <"You've no right to grow *here*," said the Dormouse.> <"Begin at the beginning," the King said, very gravely, "and go on till you come to the end: then stop."> "Fifteen...*sixteen*..." It's Scully's voice beside me, I realize, counting. My lips, it seems, are moving as well--the hearts... The hearts...there are sixteen... "Two more victims." My voice is empty. Sixteen hearts. I was right all along. All that time. All those years. All those dreams... _____________________ SCULLY There is no *end* to the amount of hatred I harbor for John Lee Roche. I despise dealing with criminals already in jail. Most memorably, of course, is Luther Lee Boggs--God, they even have the same middle name-- and his death-row pyschic act. It's with that in mind that I ponder why John Lee Roche, after the rape and murder of thirteen--fourteen? fifteen? sixteen?--young girls isn't on death row, and why all Mulder's former cases seem to pop up now and again--the living dead in the gray wasteland of Mulder's forgotten dreams. Luther Lee Boggs ended up dead. As did Jerry Lamana, Reggie Purdue, John Barnett--and as for the 'still alive' category, Bill Patterson is never getting out of that mental institution... So it's with an obvious feeling of dread that I approach this, watching Mulder hand in his gun and then bend down to strap the other one--Mulder has some joking name for it, but for the life of me I can't remember what it is now--from around his ankle. It was all I could do to get him to wait until today. It was nearly dark out by the time we got back from Delaware, and both of us had been running on autopilot since, as I kept reminding him, five o'clock this morning. And, thankfully, we can't just waltz into the prison and ask to see John Lee Roche. In the years that he's been there--since *Mulder* cracked the case and *put* him there--he's never had a visit. Not once. I lay in bed last night, but I didn't sleep. I'm sure Mulder didn't, either, but it's so hard to tell whether the circles under his eyes and the tired look on his face is a result of *last* night's insomnia or...or every night since that one November night twenty-three years ago. I keep telling myself that Mulder's an Oxford graduate, a psychologist, an FBI agent with several years field experience. That he's solved the FBI's most unsolveable and heinous cases. That he's a professional, and he knows how to handle himself, and he'll continue to do that for the rest of this case. But he won't look me in the eye--he won't even glance in my direction. Not in the car ride over here, and not now, as we walk down the drab-- it's a prison, for God's sake, what was I expecting?--hallway, toward...fate? Destiny? Death? No. As it turns out--a basketball court. A spacious, beautiful, full- court gym, and John Lee Roche panting and shooting hoops in the center of it all. Anger rises in me. Negligently, I've learned of Mulder's halfhearted passion for basketball, and I've gone down to the Bureau's gym to retrieve him on occasion. And the courts he plays on are nothing like this. Baskets that are simply rims and no netting, balls that J. Edgar himself probably shot around, and half-court rooms are all part of the federal government deal. Federal *prison*, on the other hand... Focus. "Mulder," Roche greets my partner, feigning surprise. God. He bears passing resemblance to my own father, way back when. So calm, friendly. Official, but not businesslike. Like... Like a vacuum-cleaner salesman. "Long time no see," Roche intones, and glances at me. Showtime. "Got a new partner." "Agent Scully," Mulder introduces, taking half a step forward. He knows Roche, the details, the mannerisms, and clearly he's trying to make sure *I* never have to. "What's up?" Roche asks casually. What's up? *What's* *up?!* You're in *jail* for murdering more than a *dozen* little girls in *cold* *blood*, raping them, stealing their dreams for the sake of some Wonderland prophecy, the federal agent who *caught* you and *put* you here years ago shows up to talk to and you ask *what's* *up*?! We're not here for small talk, Roche! Once again, I swallow the anger. Mulder's jaw tightens, imperceptibly. "We found Addie Sparks," he says. Roche shrugs, barely, spins the ball around on his finger, and turns his back on us, facing the basket. "Congratulations, I guess." Doesn't ask how--how we found her, how we knew. First , now . I feel like I'm in third grade, haughtily informing Bill that *I* won the *science* *fair*. Emphasis necessary. Only Bill wouldn't be playing basketball in a gym this nice. It's time. I find my voice and speak, coldly. "We also found your cloth hearts. All *sixteen* of them." Sixteen. I should know by now; we counted them--Mulder counted them-- over and over. Making sure they weren't duplicates--Roche's last hurrah. I was afraid the dye would rub off on Mulder's fingers by the time we got it to Evidence, and they bagged them and labeled them. We identified those hearts. All but two. Mulder backs me up. "*Sixteen* victims, John." John? He calls him John? He's not going to form any sort of relationship by referring to him by his first name. Even at first glance I can tell Roche is too smart for that, that he knows all the tricks. Mulder continues. "How come you said there were only thirteen?" Silently, I fill in the rest of his query. "I don't know," Roche shrugs again. "Thirteen sounds more...magical, you know?" No, I *don't* know. I've never had that pleasure, Roche--never been subjected to a lie detector test, never been the suspect in a rash of serial killings. "Why don't you tell us about the last two victims?" Mulder's voice is hard, insistent. Not the quiet, gentle, soft question he usually asks after he's broken a suspect--that's his method, the one he so often uses. Go for the jugular, ask all the hard questions, get the suspect fired up. Eventually they break, in some form another, and then you bend down and ask them nicely--<"Tell us where she is."> <"Tell us what happened that night."> <"What did you really see that day?"> Countless times. But I have a feeling that method hadn't worked on John Lee Roche. "You're in here for life; you've got nothing to lose," I add. He shrugs, again. A habit. "I've got nothing to gain." Mulder pounces on the comment, like the fox he's so often compared to. Before Roche even finishes speaking. "No, you can gain *one* *moment* of decency in your life. You can finally let those families put their daughters to rest." ...we always use that phrase. All those girls--they have been resting, all this time. It's the families that need time. Roche's eyebrows raise--slightly, very slightly--and he turns. "I understand you take this very personally, Mulder." God. Oh, God, oh, my God...and once again I'm in third grade, trying to find out who ratted on who. Somehow Roche *knows*...and I've *heard* about the 'trouble' Mulder had on cases involving children... Mulder doesn't look at me, but his whole body stiffens. Roche doesn't give either of us a chance to respond as he goes on, "How 'bout this: sink one from there and I'll tell you." Yeah, right. Being short, I was never much of a basketball player, but the distance seems far, even for me. Mulder's spending his days alternatingly chasing...*things*...or in a hospital in various godforsaken towns. Roche, meanwhile, has been brushing up on his basketball skills. But Mulder takes the challenge: hook, line, and sinker. Taking the ball coolly from Roche, he raises it above his head and in one effortless swoop...*whoosh*, Mulder's in the air, the ball's in the air, the ball swishes through the basket without so much as a *snick* against the rim. Item #867 on the Amazing Things About My Partner List. There's a small smirk on Mulder's face, but the one on Roche's is even wider as he walks past us. "You trust a child molestor?" The smirk vanishes, and so does Roche, calling after us, challenging us with his legacy as he leaves: "You bring me my hearts and give 'em back to me, I'll tell you everything you want to know." Everything we want to know? Everything? Or everything you're willing to tell us? ________________ MULDER <"If there's no meaning in it," said the King, "that saves a world of trouble, you know, as we needn't try to find any."> I've been scouring the book over and over, weighing it in my hands, searching for clues. I don't know why John Lee Roche became a killer-- I'll never know why any of them do. "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" is supposed to be a children's book, right? Whimsical fantasy. The look on Scully's face when we left Roche today confirmed that he turned it into anything but that. I was never an "Alice" fan--that was Samantha's department, and apparently Scully's. It was a *girl* book when I was a kid, and when it showed up on Samantha's required reading list the year she turned eight, every one of her friends ended up at our house in blue pinafores and headbands, arguing over who got to be Alice and the Queen and the Duchess and the less coveted masculine parts like the Cheshire Cat and the Caterpillar. Full-scale productions in our living room culminated in my reluctant and occasional observances of such monotonously delivered lines as "Once, I was a real turtle" and "The Dormouse is asleep again." John Lee Roche...Alice in Wonderland. A connection? There must be. We all know of the rumors that classify Lewis Carroll as a pedophile and allegations that he was 'high' when he wrote the book. But I, as I do in most cases, want to believe...Lewis Carroll was just your friendly neighborhood mathematician/photographer/artist/writer who based his few stories on tales he had told to little girls. How many of the people who brought those charges have ever read the three poems in the two books that explain how the story was written, the poems that Mom recited to my sleepy sister in a soft, gentle voice just before her bedtime. Prima, Secunda, and Tertia...those were Alice, Lorina, and Edith. Why would an author lie in poetry about his own works? Samantha loved that line. <"See?!"> she would shriek. <"Even kids in...even kids a long time ago didn't like going to bed, and *their* parents probably let them stay *up*!"> Mom would just go on. <"Without, the frost, the blinding snow, The storm-wind's moody madness--"> Samantha used to make something of everything, back then. I will find a clue here. Roche mentioned to me something about me 'taking it personally.' I almost said. But Scully was casting me a 'please stay calm, we'll deal with this later' look and I'm not far gone enough to ignore that. Only 'later' hasn't come yet, and I'm still here at the office, eyelids drooping, trying to define 'it.' I take it personally? The fact that you murdered sixteen children, you son of a bitch? Of course I take it personally. All of America took it personally--it was the case that was supposed to be my greatest success, Spooky's holy grail, and it was also the one that broke me. But there's something here, something missing. Two hearts, two more victims...Tweedledum and Tweedledee, perhaps? No, that was later, that was "Through the Looking-Glass," that didn't come out until the real Alice was nineteen and didn't give a damn about fairy tales anymore. Samantha insisted she'd never grow too old for fairy tales, and now Samantha is gone and immortalized at the sacred age of eight, and my whole life is based on a fairy tale. I'm so tired. My reading glasses--old and tired, with a prescription too weak to even warrant the wearing of them--slip unconsciously off my face. I rub my eyes. I take it personally, Roche. When I stop taking it personally, then I'll start to worry. _______________ I'm awake. In my office, the hearts on my desk. I slip my glasses off and-- I just took my glasses off. A second ago. And I rubbed my face-- Just as I'm doing now... I'm in my office. Awake. What time is it? <"It's always six o'clock now..."> It was always tea time in Wonderland, and through the looking glass everything went *backwards*-- I remember that, the time going backwards... I'm still tired. So I *must* be awake. How can I be tired when I'm sleeping? I *can't* sleep. Wake up, Mulder, you've got-- --a lighthouse red beacon to follow... Intellectually, now, I *know* I must be sleeping. I've never seen that little red laser when I'm awake. I must be sleeping, I must be dreaming, and I must be searching for a clue... I rise, a floating motion, and, enchanted, start toward the door where the light leads me. Pushing it open, feeling curiously like an overgrown male Alice, the light disappears, leaving me on my own in this Wonderland. And I freeze. The room is drab, and smaller than I remember it. I haven't been back here since...since that night, in fact, not even to retrieve my things or visit my old friends before my parents divorced and we bounced around the east coast until Connecticut. I'm oversized now, as Alice was in Wonderland. Was it van Gogh who noted that "I am a stranger in a strange land"? Or was that Moses? Suddenly, I can't remember. I can't remember... The years slip away as I recognize the vase on the mantlepiece, the monotone of Leon Jawarski on the small, newly-colored television. And in the center of it all sits my sister, Samantha Ann, flipping her long dark hair over a shoulder as she gives me a sisterly scowl and repeats brattily, "Fox--it's *your* *move*!" I move into the room slowly, amazed but not stunned. I *am* sleeping now, right? I'm only sleeping... "Samantha," I breathe, coming to a rest on the floor beside her. She was tall for her age, sophisticated, but next to my six foot one frame she is tiny. I will myself to breathe--after all, I am only dreaming. I'm dreaming about the night Samantha was taken--with a new twist. The Dream God has come up with another way to torture me. The scowl--I used to call her Elvis when she did that, because of the way her lip curled up into a sneer--returns as she asks, "Are you gonna move or not?" Brotherly irritation rises up in me, and I almost tell her to screw the board game. I'm never twelve in my dreams--I'm an adult version of myself trapped in Fox's body. But tonight...tonight, I can save her... I squelch the thought. That's all it is. A dream. Samantha throws a glance back at the TV. <"It would be very difficult to assume that it was an accident..."> It must have been Dad who left the channel on Watergate--he always did like to keep up with politics, and since it was 1964 when he bought that television, there was only one in the entire house. "Do we *have* to watch this, Fox?" That was Samantha--independent/dependent. It would have been so easy for her to jump up and change the channel herself, but she was asking my permission, in her own way. "*The Magician* comes on at nine," I say, unable to conceal the wonder in my voice as I look at her. <...what a wonderful dream it had been...> Because that's all it is, Samantha. A dream. I'm sorry... She tilts her head. "Mom and Dad said I could watch the movie, buttmunch!" Buttmunch? Buttmunch? Did that word even exist in 1973? It must have. It must have, because if it didn't it means Samantha didn't really say that, which means my memories are wrong, which means... "They're...next door at the Galbrands'. They left me in charge," I reply, as scipted, unable to inject any life or emphasis into the statement. I'm in charge. I'll protect Samantha. Always... I squint and bring my hand up to block the light that fills the room. It's strange...I see that light so many times during the night, every night in my dreams, and still it's too bright. The light hurts my eyes... I jump to my feet. "...No. Not again..." I won't let it happen again. I won't let them take her again. I reach for my own gun, but it's gone--why is it gone? I never take it off, I always have it with me-- "Samantha, run!" Because they don't want me, they'll only take Samantha, they've never come for me, not even in my dreams... My father has a gun. I knock the box down and it breaks open on the floor. I'm tall now, I'm strong, I know how to use the gun, if it's loaded, God, I hope it's loaded--how can I shoot an alien, what difference does it make?--I can save Samantha. I can save my sister. For once, even if it's only in dreams. The light is so bright and the sounds are so loud. I reach into the box and grab Dad's gun, heavy with the weight of bullets. Pulling it out of the-- The door bangs open and I look up. A man, not an alien, stands there. A tall, lanky man--not unlike my own frame--with receding hair strides in and in three steps he's reached me. He has hair in this dream. Of course. He would have had hair, twenty- three years ago. John Lee Roche... He smiles at me, of all things. Smiles and swoops my sister into his arms and walks away. Doesn't even run, just walks away and I can't fire the gun, I can't do anything, it's just like before, I *can't* *help* *her*...I *can't* *move*... And she is screaming my name, "Fox, Fox!" Because I'm her brother, her big brother--*very* big, tall and I carry a gun and I'm a psychologist and an FBI agent--because I'm her brother, and I was assigned to protect her... He smiled when he took my sister...he took her to Wonderland, the one place she always wanted to be. _______________ "Samantha!" My voice is foreign and loud as I bolt awake. I *am* awake now--I am trapped in a dream that doesn't end... Roche was in my dream. The red light was in my dream, and all the dreams with that light have since become faithful prophecies. Roche was in my dream and *Roche* *took* *Samantha*... My hands clench and plastic crinkles. The hearts rustle in my hand. The cloth hearts, encased in plastic. Two hearts. Two victims. My sister... ____________________ SCULLY I don't want him alone with John Lee Roche. I know it's no big deal that Mulder specifically requested to speak to Roche alone. Criminals in jail--even those who will be there until they die--are not eager to speak to *anyone*, period, let alone with a guard hovering by, a guard who could probably make his life miserable and get away with it--not that John Lee Roche doesn't deserve such treatment. But criminals--most criminals--talk to Mulder, eventually, probably because the FBI only bothers Spooky after all their other agents have burnt out and the suspect has already chewed them up and spit them out. John Lee Roche is the exception. He's ready and willing--friendly. Freely admits to killing those girls, didn't even try to elude capture when the police came cruising for him. Nothing is a struggle for John Lee Roche, and since Mulder's entire life is based on nothing but a struggle, it makes me uncomfortable having the two anywhere near each other. But they need each other. Mulder needs Roche to find those girls. And Roche...Roche needs Mulder as his personal plaything, someone to string along and drag down. Take a few innocent people with him, as Mulder noted of Robert Patrick Modell--full names for the big ones--less than a year ago. I haven't spoken to Mulder; he hasn't told me what's going on, what he's doing, what he's thinking. Mulder doesn't want me to know--whether it's for the benefit of him or myself, I'll never know. There are so many things about Mulder I'll never know, so many things he refuses to talk about. And one day, I'm afraid, all his demons will come crashing out into the light and become too much. But when that day comes...I'll be there. By the time we finished up with Roche yesterday, the day had flown and it was almost four o'clock. There were still a million tests being run on Addie Sparks' body, as well as whatever else anyone could find. I've always been the scientific aspect of the partnership--I'll go check out what the tests confirm and you can sit around and brood. I don't say that, of course. And somewhere during the course of Mulder's 'brooding' he can come up with some pretty damn good ideas. Insane, perhaps, but good. I knew Mulder would be at the office, brooding. Turning those hearts over in his hands, skimming "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland,"--he'll be an expert by the time this case closes, if he isn't already-- searching through five year old transcripts. Pondering Roche's statement that he takes things personally. But he wasn't there when I got a chance to run down to the basement at five-thirty. I cornered one of the many female agents who happen to have a small crush on my partner--thankfully, they're also professional government workers who are willing to put aside for the office--who happened to have been rifling through storage boxes in the basement. She told me Mulder had been in his office, working, and not more than fifteen minutes ago she had heard 'kind of a bang, like slamming on a desk,' and Mulder's voice. She said he screamed Samantha's name. Anger was my first reaction--anger at John Lee Roche for planting such thoughts in Mulder's mind. Fury gave way to concern and fear for Mulder. He's overworked, he's tired, and he's an FBI agent whose superiors don't give a damn what my feelings are about cases like these. They *need* Mulder--it's why they let him have the X-Files, in exchange for a few criminal profiles. They need him. And that terrifies me. So he was tired, he fell asleep at his desk--because Mulder never sleeps, he can drift off anywhere--and he had a nightmare about Samantha. And he woke up in a hurry, disoriented--and then he *drove* home, disoriented. But he answered the phone when I called. I had woken him up--good sign? Bad sign?--and once he was on the line there was nothing I could say. I couldn't tell him what I knew. All I could say was that the test results had been inconclusive, that he should get a good night's rest and that I'd see him in the morning. It seems like morning hasn't come. He went in to see Roche alone--didn't call, didn't leave a message. The rumor mill creaked and whirred and here I am, on the other side of the looking-glass, watching. Mulder is certainly subdued, no longer the fiery advocate of justice and truth and control he was yesterday. Arms folded across his chest, he looks like he's trying to pull himself into a little ball, fold himself up so that Roche can't get inside and see what he's hiding there. Roche, as always, is calm. He walks in, smiling all the while--if he starts whistling, I can just picture Mulder hitting him--sits down, and mechanically brushes nonexistent specks of dirt off the table, looking up at Mulder expectantly. He's taller than Mulder, by about three or four inches. Sitting, looking up at him, he looks like a child anxious to please his father-- as Mulder was when he was young, I'm sure. As we all are. "Did you bring me my hearts?" Roche asks, the sound tinny from this side of the glass. Mulder doesn't respond; he hardly looks up. His voice is slightly hoarse as he speaks. "Yesterday you said something about me taking it personally. Why did you say that to me?" Oh, God...of all the things I expected to hear coming out of that mouth, that has to be the one I feared the most. Ask him about the other girls, Mulder--ask him anything, just don't get into this, not now, not so soon after Russia... Roche just sits there, relaxed smile on his face, as if he's enjoying Mulder's tortured show. For Mulder, it's already too late...and Roche has all the time in the world. Mulder takes a breath. "Where were you in 1973?" That's my cue--to run in and end it all. But I'm entranced by this display, this open embracing of humanness. It sounds like a bad cop movie. But I want to hear the answer. Were you on an alien spaceship and if so, did you take Samantha Mulder?...No, not you, Roche, you're real. What is Mulder getting at? I already know. "The whole year?" Roche questions, the corners of his mouth curving upward. Roche knows what Mulder's getting at, too. And he likes it. "*November*," Mulder clarifies dully. "The twenty-seventh of November. Do you know what I'm getting at?" A bad cop movie. It's a sick parody of a bad cop movie, and all the actors know what's going on, and all of us have the power to stop it but we *can't*. Roche's voice is silk as he answers, "I was selling vacuum cleaners in 1973. I made a sales trip up to Martha's Vineyard that year, and..." He pauses, as if thinking, as if drawing out the suspense. "I sold a vacuum cleaner to your dad." Mulder doesn't react, but I draw in a sharp breath. Roche is--he's claiming--but-- "He bought it for your mom; I believe it ws an ElectroVac Duchess or Princess model..." God... Roche has a habit of ending each sentence as if it's an open-ended question, making it impossible to tell whether he believes in what he's saying or not. I don't know what to think. Just because Mulder's father bought a vacuum cleaner from him doesn't mean-- Bullshit. Of course it does. "...Your dad and I talked about it at great length." Which gave him plenty of time to check out Bill Mulder's children--his only daughter... "He had a really hard time choosing," Roche finishes, an invisible note of triumph in his voice. Mulder believes him. Do *I* believe him? I don't know. Mulder doesn't move, arms still folded, impassive. But his voice-- tired, scared, and little more than a whisper--cracks as he asks Roche one last question. "What do you know about my sister?" Roche has won. He's succeeding in breaking Mulder, bringing my partner to his knees. He's satisifed now. But for one thing. "You bring me my hearts; maybe I'll tell you more." Too fast for me to ponder the implications, Mulder draws back his hand and brings it forward, effortlessly as he did yesterday with Roche's basketball, to connect with Roche's face and send him reeling across the floor, knocking the chair down with him. Then he shakes his hand out--I think he's hurt himself more than he's done harm to Roche, who seems out of breath but not terribly stunned or upset. The guard, who's been watching the whole charade with me, moves to the door and pushes it open. Roche gets to his knees and stands. "This man...this man hit me," he says, pointing at Mulder. The guard half-sneers. Roche deserved it, of course. Not that I'm concerned about him. You don't hit criminals--Mulder *knows* that. You take deep breaths, you leave the room and bang your head against the wall as far as the FBI is concerned. But you don't use violence, unless the suspect is resisting arrest, which Roche most certainly was not doing. The guard, taking a look around the room--at the overturned chair and Mulder rubbing his injured hand--almost shrugs. "I didn't see it," he says coldly. I step in behind him. "I did." Mulder, looking down at the floor, gives no reply. ________________ "He was *there*, Scully, he was in the house, he took Samantha," Mulder rambles disjointedly as he strides out the doorway. "In your *dream*, Mulder, it was a *dream*," I say firmly--I've been listening to Mulder's --no pun intended--for over half an hour now, in that little room. He tried so hard to make it unemotional, but failed miserably as he told me of how John Lee Roche, not the alien being, took his sister. <"And then he took her..."> "Your *mind* made it up," I finish. "A dream is an answer to a question we haven't yet figured out how to ask, right? Something buried in your subconscious. You heard him in there, he *knew* something, he *mentioned* being on Martha's Vineyard--" It's quiet, controlled hysteria, and I'm determined to stop it. And this time, this time I have proof. "Is it a secret you lived on Martha's Vineyard?" I ask. "Well, how would *he* find out about it?" he shoots back, the perfect lead-in. "Through the prison library," I say with finality as we stop walking. Was it only yesterday I was complaining about the exalted prison facilities? "The inmates have access to the Internet. I checked. Roche logged on just yesterday." His face almost wilts with confusion. "Looking for what?" "The server records don't show, but on the 'Net, Mulder, he can find out practically *anything* about you! Look, he is *playing* with you, Mulder, he is committing emotional blackmail and *you* are letting him. You *walked* into that room with your heart on your sleeve, he *saw* vulnerability and he took advantage of it." I take a breath. Because I didn't mean to come off sounding so harsh, so in a hurry. Because there are so many holes in that argument. Because Mulder isn't listening. Because John Lee Roche is still alive and there are two little girls without families to come home to. "You had a *dream*," I say in gentler tones. "A nightmare, and you had it because of all the emotions that this case is stirring up for you. But it was nothing but a dream." "My last dream came true," he replies distantly, shattering my argument, my proof, all my concerns. He's silent for a moment, and then, in a low, urgent tone that I can't help hearing still, in my dreams: "Scully, do you believe that my sister Samantha was abducted by aliens? Have you ever believed that?" When he puts it like that--abducted by aliens--I can't help but cringe. I believe that Samantha Mulder existed, and she's gone. I believe that *something* took her. Who or what that something was, it's not my decision to say. I look down. <"I believe that *you* believe she was, Mulder."> It's what I should say. But Mulder's a psychologist, an FBI agent--my partner. My friend. And Mulder, for all his halfhearted joking that one day I'll come around, for all his stolid insistence against the wall of my proof...Mulder knows what I believe. And now I need to say it to his face. But I don't. I don't answer at all. Mulder answers for me. "No." And the second-hardest question of them all: "So what do you think happened to her?" He's right. For four years, I've resisted the belief that Mulder's sister was spirited away by extraterrestrial beings. But I've neglected to face or mention *my* version of what happened. Doing so would mean destroying my faith in my partner, dissolving his credibility and memories...and annihilating the man himself. So I've pushed it aside, but sooner or later I know I'll have to face the fact that Samantha Mulder's abductor was human, and if it was human...it could have been John Lee Roche. And for all my reported ice queen qualities, my professionalism, my calm exterior, I'm afraid. For Mulder, and for myself. We've worked so hard, and so long, and so diligently. Mulder told me once that he couldn't give up...not as long as the truth was out there. And then, another time, that he was more certain than ever that the truth was in the X-Files. Here, there, and everywhere...Mulder searches for truth wherever he gets the notion he can find it. If only he could realize that he is the truth--just by being who he is and doing what he's doing. We're a part of the truth, Mulder and I. And I, at least, can realize that the truth may be unreachable, but at least I know I am real, my proof is real, and what I remember is real. That's what attacts me to science--it's real, it's tangible. But Mulder searches for truth in malleable places--in memories, in death, in thought. In dreams. And for Mulder, recognizing the unreachable goal of truth makes everything he's worked so hard for effectively void. Mulder doesn't really want the truth, as he's so often told me. Mulder-- and he admitted it once--wants an *apology* for the truth--something the government can own up to, something he can be compensated for. Because what's the use of reaching a goal when there's no one to share it with, no one to take the blame? Mulder will never realize that he only has himself to blame for the truth--for the lies. And one day, for Mulder, there will be no truths left to find--only truths he will have to learn to live with. And for Mulder, that's not enough. "What are *you* saying you believe now?" I ask quietly. He sighs and shakes +his head--less a riddle than a mystery. His eyes shine when he finally looks at me. "I don't know," he says, his voice curious with amazement. "I don't know what happened, I don't know what to believe...But I know I have to find out now." That's Mulder--courage and strength staring into the bottomless pit of fate. He turns and starts off down the hall, leaving me standing, wondering. _______________ MULDER I love this house. It's odd, in a way--most, if not all, of my childhood memories are tainted on recognition, stained with the grief of that November 1973. And this house, in Connecticut, is a reminder of the changes that followed--the divorce, the move, the letting go of Samantha. And by the time I was twelve, too old for childish Samantha-loved games like hide and seek and find the hidden passage--<"I *know* there's one here *somewhere*, Fox!"> she'd insist--new houses held no adventures for me. But I love this house. Driving Mom home from the hospital, months ago, stirred up new longings within me--that things could be the way they used to be--but most of all, acceptance. Things are the way they are now--and if I want to change that, I have to fight it. And I will fight it. And at least for now, this house can be an escape from all that. I've come here to find out if what Roche said is really true--if I can find, as he told me, an ElectroVac Princess or Duchess model vacuum cleaner. Night has fallen--it's a long drive to Connecticut--and I let myself in with the spare key I had made, cleaning out the house after Mom's hospital stay. I came in quietly, and went upstairs, first, to see if she was awake. She wasn't. Suddenly *I* felt in charge--I was the big brother, the caretaker. Irrational, of course, because Mom's stroke hasn't really debilitated her--and my mother has always been a fighter, and will be to the end. But that feeling of supremacy, of power--over my own *mother*!--is in some ways a frightening thought. Mothers are supposed to have all the answers--and if they don't, they lie, and you believe them. Mothers hold you when you cry and boss you around when you disagree. There are no mothers left, of course, that truly fit this profile--and I've profiled enough 'mothers who killed their children' to know. But it's a wishful child inside me that still wishes my mom had been everything I wanted her to be, that my dad had been the perfect father, that-- That Samantha hadn't been taken away... My mother knows that all I want from life is my sister. And there's no doubt in my mind that she knows *something*--whether she realizes it or not. But I won't push--she is, after all, my mother. It's so hard to search through twenty-three years worth of crap quietly, without stopping to remember. Sports trophies, dance outfits...packed into boxes, little squares of my life cut up so long ago. I'm rifling slowly, carefully, quietly, when I hear her voice. "Fox?" Damn it. "Mom! I'm in the basement." My mother's sleepy face descends down the stairs. "I'm sorry," I tell her, grasping her hand. "I didn't mean to wake you up. I'm sorry." She looks so frail, so fragile, standing there. Were things like this, always? Before the stroke? Before Samantha? I'll never know. "How are you feeling?" I ask, a question born out of mandatory repetition. "Good, Fox, I'm fine," she answers, as scripted, but this time I think she means it. I face death every day, but life is so much more precious now. Before her stroke, Mom was just...my mother, just there. Always there. Now... She sighs, looking around, like the time Samantha and I had a pillow fight while she was at the supermarket and managed to destroy every down pillow in the house. "Honey...what are you doing down here in the middle of the night?" She doesn't ask what I'm doing in her house, or even in Connecticut, for that matter. I take a deep breath--. I have to tell her--I have to ask her. Indirectly. I'm sorry, Mom. I pull the fabrics out from my suit pocket--not the best way to transport evidence; they're crumpled and the plastic is soiled. I really should have left these at the office, tagged and bagged in the evidence room. Not a chance. "Do you recognize these?" I ask her, holding them up to the light. "These fabrics, either one of them." She's confused, I know, but she knows it must have something to do with Samantha. It *always* has something to do with Samantha. "What am I looking at?" she asks. I don't want to tell her. I *won't* tell her. I can't. "Just look closely," I sidestep. "Do they seem familiar to you?" "Familiar how?" Mom--besides Scully--always asks the toughest questions. "Just *familiar*," I insist quietly. "Have you seen them before?" It's a long shot. Over twenty years...but Mom would remember something like that, right? Her child's last pajamas? She sighs. "Fox...I don't know what you want me to say. You know my memory's not as good as it used to be before I had the stroke--" Suddenly, everything my mother stands for, everything *I* stand for, everything we've created Samantha's memory to be, comes flooding back in a rush. Mom shouldn't have to deal with this. She shouldn't be in this big drafty house in New England; she should be playing bridge in Florida. Her child never should have been taken away from her...she shouldn't have had to make a choice... I interrupt her explanation by wrapping my arms around her, once again reminded that I'm so much bigger than my mother. Dwarfed in my arms, I smile as encouragingly as I can. "I'm sorry. It's all right." It's not all right. I don't want to be taller, bigger, than you. I don't want to have to walk on eggshells because I'm afraid of upsetting you. I don't have the answers, Mom! I don't know if I want the answers! And...and if I were seven years old again, splashing my toddler sister in the backyard, I wouldn't *need* the answers. Even in my dreams now I'm facing up to something bigger than me... Mom sighs again, an sigh that wipes away my rambling thoughts. "Oh, Fox," she says quietly. There's a bond there, between Mom and I. From 1973 until the time I went away to Oxford, it was the two of us--Dad was so wrapped up in his own grief and government projects that he hardly noticed. We've drifted away from each other over the years, but from the affection in her voice there will always be something unspoken between us. Mother and son. For that, at least, I'm grateful. I pull back from her embrace. "Dad never bought you a vacuum cleaner, did he?" I say easily. It's a safe question. And I'm sure, after all these realizations, that the answer is-- "Yeah. A long time ago." She shakes her head. "I don't use it anymore." The easiness of a moment ago is gone, replaced by gnawing fear. I can almost *feel* my face harden, masks slipping down. "Where is it?" "Well, it's here, under the stairs." I'm off before I realize where my feet are taking me. Tossing aside the boxes I was so careful not to disturb only moments ago, I pull out the heaviest one in the back, the one I don't remember ever being used, when I was twelve years old. A vacuum cleaner, like Mom said. An ElectroVac...just as Roche told me. Oh, shit. Shit. My first reaction is not one of fear or sadness but of anger. No. Damn you, John Lee Roche. I have not spent *twenty-three* years of *my* life looking for my sister only to find out *you* took her from me, you bastard. No. _____________ He won't let me near him. Somehow he found out about the 'incident,' as Scully calls it, with Roche yesterday, and he won't let me near him. But I need to talk to him. I need to see him. I need to look evil in the face and have it give me some answers. I need the truth. "Sir? I've been *denied* further access to John Lee Roche, I'm told that order came down from you?" All I wanted to do last night, the whole drive from Connecticut--and believe me, it's a long drive--was talk to him. It was too late, of course, but I was in the office even as the janitor unlocked the building, anxious and apparently scary-looking as hell. Even Scully balked when she walked in this morning, backed out, and came back with coffee. Strong coffee--two cups. Both for me. Having Scully as a partner is like being a dog walked by its master, on one of those leashes that stretches out and out and out, but reaches the end of the rope eventually and reins the dog back in. Scully lets me run ahead as far as she--I--can take it, and then *wham*, I'm yanked backward so fast I don't have time to let go of the tree I'm sniffing around. Roche has screwed me up so thoroughly that this time, it's the authorities yanking the chain. Bursting into Skinner's office today wasn't the most proper thing I could have done about it, but my brain is functioning so...forget it. He's lucky I didn't start tossing around furniture, the way I'm working right now. Skinner's eyes flash. "Can you tell me why you saw it fit to strike a prisoner in federal custody?" There's only one way he could have known about that, and as that way walks in behind me, my head gravitates toward her face. She looks as surprised as I. "Now, Agent Scully didn't report that to me, Mulder,"-- I intone silently--"though she should have. The whole incident was videotaped as per prison policy"----"--I saw it. And you're lucky I don't have your ass in a sling!" My vision moves jerkily, but I'm conscious of the presence of Scully by my side, giving me strength to argue, though in truth I'm just so tired... "Sir--" He doesn't give me a chance, but his voice is softer. "You've gotten too close to this, Mulder. You've let this man get to you!" _________________ SCULLY His voice is low, soft with urgency, agony. "I have reason to believe he can tell us what happened to my sister Samantha." Twenty-three years of searching, chasing, wanting to believe, wrapped up into one consequential statement. What the hell *did* happen to Samantha, Mulder? Do you know? Do you want to? Skinner's looking at me, as if to confirm what Mulder is saying. I take a deep breath. "It is looking possible, sir." Mulder almost wilts at that, dead weight on his feet. Only twenty-four hours ago I was reassuring him that John Lee Roche did not take his sister, that he was playing Mulder for a few last kicks. Isn't he? But if aliens didn't take Mulder's sister, then a human being did. And while any decent person would shudder at the thought of considering John Lee Roche a normal human being...why not? All the evidence is there. All he's looked for all those years--everything I've given my life for. Proof. The shutdown of the X-Files was replete with bemoans of evidence absence. He told me then all he wanted was proof. He was wrong. Mulder doesn't want proof. Mulder wants his sister back. And if the evidence points to the contrary, evidence should rightly be dismissed. But Mulder is willing to face proof this time--stare evil in the face and lose, if it means knowing. Evidence, truth, and knowing...used synonomously, but in Mulder's world--in my world--they're miles apart. I told Mulder, years ago, on our first case together, that I wanted the truth. Meaning the government's version of the truth, the people's version...not the dark side of the truth; that was something I wasn't yet prepared for, that I'm still not prepared for. Yet I face it every day. And as the months went on and the cases got harder, the enemies got tougher, the truth became more obscure. Mulder and the X-Files gave me something I could never give myself: strength. Strength to face truth, injury, emotional demons. Yet for all Mulder fantasizes about getting out of his work, he gains nothing. Nothing. I give him nothing. We know nothing. <"Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?"> <"That depends a good deal on where you want to get to."> Dynamic equilibrium. It was the fancy words that drew me to it in eighth grade advanced earth science--cutting through deeper, it only meant a state in which all forces were equally balanced. At times when it feels as if Mulder is draining me of all my strength--of my *life*--I remember those times when Mulder gives as much as he takes. All these years it's been implied--by other agents, by family, by Mulder himself-- that Mulder needs me--not to go on, not to live or love, not simply as a partner, but...but between the two of us, if one had to choose...all these years I've been looked at as the stronger one, the practical one, the one that Skinner looks to for truth, as he did just now. And perhaps I am. Because looking at Mulder's youthful face, like a child who's just lost his pet puppy and desperately wants to find her by nightfall, with a flashlight, a whistle, any means necessary, I don't see the years that have been taken from him, the truth he's lost time and time again. He's just Mulder, and if he weren't an FBI agent the world would probably walk on the other side of the street when they saw him coming. I look at Mulder, knowing him as deeply as he allows, at his face and his eyes, and I see truth. I see strength. Strength magnified in guilt as he's proven again and again that death is just another obstacle to be overcome. A hero personified. One of the things I learned about dynamic equilibrium in that science class was that if both forces were equal, nothing was happening. If in an erosional/depositional system, erosion and deposition were balanced, then nothing would change. If uplift is occurring to raise the land, and leveling is occurring at the same time to lower it, then the land stays exactly the same. Which may explain why Mulder and I are going effectively nowhere in our investigations--as our dreams and scope widen, our channels of investigation narrow and our cases become more confusing. Eventually something has to give, and we're both so damn tired. Do I believe that when Mulder finds Samantha, he will stop looking? I don't know. Does Mulder believe that she'll be left on his doorstep, ID and medical tests and proof attached, years falling away, memories pure? I don't know. I hope not. But if one of those little hearts is Samantha, then we will be the ones to give. Dynamic equilibrium can slip away as easily as it is first instituted--Mulder will need all the strength life can offer. Mulder has no strength. He's given it all away. "John Lee Roche apparently spent most of 1973 in Boston. He did take one sales trip up to Martha's Vineyard in October of that year." What am I doing? Mulder wants to talk to Roche and I want to keep him away. Yet I'm pursuing this, this whole investigation. I even ran a check through all the existing databases I could get to last night, while Mulder did God knows what God knows where. I don't want to know Samantha, or find her--not this way, not dead, not burying her after so many years and the closest look I've had of her is a happy face and long dark hair smiling out at me from Mulder's various framed photos. Mulder has hunches and instincts to go on--I have proof. I can withhold that proof and let Skinner keep Mulder away from Roche, like I want, or I can offer that evidence and proceed with the investigation, as Mulder wants. Mulder *needs*. I owe him that much. I owe him truth. My voice grows soft. "The timing is right." Skinner glares at me, and back to Mulder. Before he can get his next words out of his mouth--they're about to be or at least they should be--Mulder speaks. "I need to know. I just need to speak with him one more time, sir." Not begging--begging? Has Mulder even ever said please?--but stating the facts. Skinner sighs. "Which just makes it even less of a good idea," he declares. There is naked desperation in Mulder's eyes, and if he opens his mouth he is going to say something incredibly stupid. So I do it for him. "Sir, the fact remains that we still have two victims left to find and identify." I feel rather than see Mulder flinch unconsciously at my side. "No one has more insight into this than Agent Mulder"--no one has more insight into *anything* than 'Agent Mulder'--"and this is still Agent Mulder's case." Skinner is silent for a moment, as if weighing his options. He lifts an index finger. "You *tread* very lightly," he says to Mulder, and turns his vision on me. "And you see that he does." Mulder strides out of the office and I follow, biting back a reply. _____________________ MULDER "I'm not going to talk to you if you're going to hit me again." There's a tiny smile hiding somewhere in his face, waiting. Like the Cheshire Cat, it's impossible to tell what Roche is thinking or feeling or waiting for me to say, locked up in that smug smile. No one suspected Roche, they told us, because he was so damn friendly. Complimented little girls on their dolls, agreed with a smile to see their rooms. Told them the new vacuum cleaner their mommy was about to buy would make the place spotless...charmed them. Those girls went willingly, many of them...off to a magical place because it'd been proven that they all believed without question in the magic of Wonderland. Roche knows Samantha. Whether he took her or not, I don't know, but he knows *something* about her. Something. He *was* in my house, he must have sold my father that vacuum cleaner...so what's to say he *didn't* take my sister? Because I remember a classic abduction scenario almost twenty years later? Because 1973 was too early and Samantha would have been the first? Because I don't want to discover that she's gone? I give Roche a smirk of my own and bring the last two hearts out of my pocket. I don't want to give them to him--they're not his anymore. They were never his to take. Even Scully protested--almost took them away from me the drive over, saying I was going to wear the plastic away if I kept fingering them like I was. Told me we were playing right into his hands, giving him exactly what he wants. But what Roche wants and what I want are exactly the same thing--we want to know what happened to my sister. Perhaps Roche already knows...and there's got to be some way he'll tell me. Scully gives me a Glance--one short step away from a Look--as I slide the hearts across the table to where Roche sits with his hands folded. He reaches for them almost eagerly, fumbles to open the plastic. "No." My voice is a surprise to myself as I choke out the word. "You don't get to touch them. They stay in the bag." *No* *one* is supposed to touch those hearts, but the hell with procedure--I need to feel the fabric, sweep away the years. Samantha wasn't exactly a women's lib advocate...like any other little girl of the 1960s, she was all bows and ribbons and pink. Mom actually had to force her into jeans on weekends at the playground. I dug out all the old pictures I have of my sister, and any one of her outfits could be a match for either of those hearts. Even the times she did wear jeans--the smiling dark-haired child on the slide, hair flowing down her back for once, perfect teeth, hereditary in my family, shining in the sunlight--the shirts were pink, purple, red. , I used to tell her. Such a baby. Don't worry, Samantha, I won't let them hurt you... "Name them," I tell Roche. If only it were that easy. He'd point to them and tell us--their names, where we could find them. I want to find Samantha. I don't want to find her this way. But if this way turns out to be the truth, I will have to face that. Not everyone has a choice--not everyone can pick and choose during a disaster who comes out alive. I've been told for years that my sister is most likely dead...abductees come back, but not after twenty-odd years. But Samantha...Samantha was special. Samantha was part of the Project-- they said so, my father told me himself...Samantha was insurance, Samantha-- But my father is dead. And I am too close. If I stop searching, if I give up the X-Files, will they return Samantha knowing I am no longer a threat? Is my sister all I want out of life? The corners of his mouth upturned, Roche speaks. "Well, I think you know one of them already..." Scully's words hit like a bullet. "Prove it." Roche's smile widens slightly. He begins, as if telling a story to a child, as he so often did on his sales trips. If I think hard, I can almost remember...coming home from school, Samantha being out sick, hearing her laughter. My father's laughter--but my father never laughed. My mother's gentle smile. And something else...some stranger. But all the strangers blur--UPS man or head of the Project? The smell of lingering cigarette smoke long after the men had left the house, Samantha's worried eyes after my father yelled when she walked in on one of his meetings. Samantha was Daddy's little girl...he never yelled at her. My mother's surprised face when the box arrived...not the most romantic present, perhaps, but useful, something we needed...Samantha telling me how funny the bald man was... But I don't know. I don't remember. The memories aren't there for me to find. "Watergate was on TV," Roche tells me--only me, as if Scully isn't even in the room. "You and your sister were sitting in front of it, playing a board game with little red and blue plastic pieces." "You wanted to watch...that TV show...you know, the one with Bill Bixby...what the heck was the name of that thing?..." <*The Magician* comes on at nine.> I swallow, hard. He was there. He knows. He was on Martha's Vineyard and he sold a vacuum cleaner to my father and he took my sister and he *knows*. He knows... "How could you know what I said?" The answers are too easy. "I was watching. From outside the window. I was very careful," he adds unnecessarily. So carefully I didn't notice...so carefully the memories came so many years later not as you, John Lee Roche, but as aliens in the doorway...because it's too hard to believe that *you* took my sister...because aliens were beginning to interest me and I couldn't explain why...because it was a classic abduction scenario... Because I wanted to believe. "If that's true, tell me where my sister is." Tell me, Roche. Let me sink my hands into the soft earth and let death weave through my fingers. Let me take my sister back from where the soil claimed her those many years ago. Let my tears fall into the dirt and replenish the earth you ruined with Samantha's broken body the night you *took* her from me. Why did you take her from me, John? She didn't deserve that, to be taken away. She didn't want to be taken from me. You didn't give her a choice, John! She deserved a chance! You gave *me* no chance! You took my sister and you made me who I am. And I made you who you are. Did she make you want more, John? You couldn't stop after Samantha, you needed more, to redeem yourself. For Samantha. For Alice. And twenty-three years later, I want to relive the nightmare with you. Let me bring her home. Roche considers the thought for a moment, and a light gleams in his eyes. "Pick her out." My voice is harsh, a whisper. "What?" "You choose the one that was your sister," he says slowly, "and I'll tell you where she is." I feel Scully tense beside me, and I know that any minute she'll speak, move, stop this. Because I can't stop it, as much as I'd like to--I can't. I have to do this. I have to send myself to hell. "It's a fifty/fifty chance," Roche continues. "Either way you get a victim..." He says this easily, almost as if he and I are old friends and he's trying to sell me one of his vacuum cleaners. Hell of a salesman, that Roche, they told us before we caught him, and then they never got over the shame. Rotting bodies in his trunk with the new shipment went unnoticed. My sister went unnoticed... I have to choose. Not for my sister, but for the children, the little girls. Either way we get a victim... They look the same to me, the hearts--pink, white, flowers, bows. I weigh the options carefully. Samantha didn't like frills, she liked flowers and muted extravagance. She needed to be comfortable so she could chase me around the house at bedtime. She... It's useless, hopeless. Scully watches me, fascinated. Do you see now, Scully, why I couldn't give you an answer to your question? Do you see why I left the ISU, why I couldn't go back to Behavioral Sciences even when you suggested it that night, an alternative to leaving the Bureau altogether? Do you understand, Scully? John Lee Roche is evil personified, and I am the other side of his coin. He is offering me my sister--he is offering me peace. Truth. Knowing. In return, I give him my life. "That one," he says softly as I choose. "You sure you want that one?..." Sharp eyes catch the fear that rises in my throat, up through my eyes. I chose the wrong one, I picked the wrong heart, it's not my sister, he'll die before he tells me where she is...I'm sorry...I'm sorry... "No, just kidding," he finishes, tangible sadness evident in his face. His voice is quiet. "It's a good choice." Oh, God, my sister...Samantha...I've chosen Samantha as they chose her, *Them*, so many years ago...as Roche chose her, now, the first of many, the first Alice, the first uprising, his first savior...my sister paid for his soul with her life, with my life, and if she hadn't been taken, I wouldn't have joined the FBI, and they never would have caught John Lee Roche and I never would have cared. It's a good choice. ............death cancels everything but truth. My heart stops. We need locations. Directions. A good choice. Roche doesn't stop smiling. He's satisfied. He's won. _______________ SCULLY Virginia. He told me she was in Virginia, after Mulder bolted out of the room. The Forks of Capracon--I don't recognize the name. Our car radios are perpetually tuned to the local oldies station, in an effort to keep the mood light. Mulder stared out the window the whole trip--didn't blink, didn't move, not even to tap his fingers nervously on the dashboard like he usually does. Didn't flinch, even when the station picked that moment to try alternative and broke out into choruses of I'd rather he'd fall apart than be so calm. He sat in the car with his fists clenched and his jaw tight, eyes flashing, burning. I spoke to him in the hopes he'd answer, test his voice, but there was nothing. He hadn't even heard. There should be a calvary following us, half of the Bureau's finest agents ready to back us up with this. We should be up to our necks in forensic pathologists and news crews. But Mulder has told no one. Samantha Mulder--*no*! Not Samantha, but whoever that little girl turns out to be, if we find anything at all--was such a little girl when she was taken; it seems fitting, now, that most of Virginia's manpower should be spent on finding her. I considered pulling out my cellular phone and calling AD Skinner on the way over, to tell him we had something, but as I looked over at Mulder's grim stone face I knew I owed him more--we owe Samantha more. We owe her peace. He's scaring me; he's scaring himself. The only words he spoke? "Stop here." How does he do that? How does he know? He wasn't in the room when Roche told me where the landmark would be, and he wasn't in the viewing room, either--I found him in the men's room ten minutes later, splashing ice water on his face. A weak smile--at least he made an effort. I don't want to figure out how. But he knew. Even as I pulled the car into the direction of the parking lot: "Stop here." He was out and running before I could pull into park. Across the lot, straight to the rock. The landmark. Mulder's Holy Grail. He pushed the ferns away with a gentle hand. MAD HAT. Words scratched into the rock strong as they were years ago. MAD HAT...Roche is the mad hatter. "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland"...why would he be the mad hatter? He's a mere character in a few scenes. And if he wanted to stay true to the book, it would have been off with their heads rather than strangulation with an electrical cord. Mulder was wrong--Roche is not acting out a fantasy world. But he wants us to think that, to believe that, to believe that he is a psychopath and not just a human being who takes pleasure in destroying. Not just lives--souls. Cores. Truth. Mulder is running on pure adrenaline now, and he plunges his fingers into the ground, pushing the dirt away. Frantic. Desperate. Yet in him I see a hint of what he must have been before--a big brother. Protector. And now, savior. I won't let him do this. I let him choose a heart--I couldn't stop him. It was something he had to do. But I have to offer him a way out. I won't sit back and watch Mulder send himself to hell. "Mulder?" Quiet, gentle. Not an order. He'll listen to me. He's always listened to me in the past, when things get this far. He'll understand. Won't he? "Let's get a team out here." My voice is breathless, rising louder, fascinated by his hands, weaving and interlocking and savagely, finally, pushing the earth aside. "Let somebody else do this!" She's not *here*, Mulder! You won't find her this way. I can't let you!-- His voice is choked, a whisper, desperate, despairing. "Help me, Scully." Help me. Begging, pleading. Help me. Help me bring her home, Scully...I can't find my way home... His hand brushes against mine as I reach down into the soil, to help my partner uncover an earthbound angel he lost to the darkness so many years before. ________________ MULDER It's dark in the room and the lights flick on mechanically, a faint buzzing sound signaling my presence in the room. I shouldn't be here. It isn't my place to intrude on death, cheat it, know it, believe it. The air is cool but stifling, strangling me. I am alone. It's quiet. There are no enemies here, no lies, no conspiracies--there is no dark truth to this death. There's nothing more I can do. I have spent my life searching for my sister, yet at times it's impossible to fathom why. I loved her--I love her. She was...she is...my sister. She will always be my sister. But the lies, the coverups, the conspiracies, all signaled the presence of something bigger, some secret, some truth, some holy grail that fate decreed I would be the one to find. I had always assumed that that truth meant the return of Samantha, the exposure of the consortium, the cure, the healing, the faith. Knowing. Truth. Evidence. Samantha isn't here. There is no comfort in knowing, no acceptance. I can't feel her presence. I never could. She's lost to me. I can't remember the sound of her voice, the echoes of her laughter, the way her eyes danced when she smiled. She's gone. Even if she is out there...I don't know where. I don't know where to start, where to finish. I have held truth in my hands and let it slip through my fingers...I have stared evil in the face and let it claim me for its own. I have chased malleable enemies through dark alleys at night and battled human monsters in a battle of minds. I have comforted grieving families, stood up to government officials, won small fights in a war I do not understand. But life...a small child in my arms...a grown woman whom I can call family...life, it seems, has passed me by. Life has moved on--the world has moved on. Without me. Without Samantha. A flash of red/brown hair disappearing off a bridge...a childish scream of terror swallowed up by light. My mind races, I pull my gun, I yell aloud, and the world becomes a mass of words and fear and action and nothingness. All these times. Always. But now, the room surrounds me, real, tangible. This room is proof. I am alive; I am existant. I am real. This is real. And there are no enemies here. My gun is with Scully. I can't bear to have it here, a heavy weight that is a constant reminder that I am in danger, always...that ghosts give no warning. The shadows have no eyes. I am alone. There is nothing I can do--no weapon I can use on the bad guys, no one to save me. Because she is not here. They are not here. And I can feel death. The girl before me is nothing more than a pile of bones, stacked haphazardly within a mass of dirty cloth. The table gleams metallic, stabs of light glinting and darting off the corners and leading back to where my dreams lie. Images crowd in my mind, flashing but gentle. A child at the beach, on the playground. My sister. A child. Not this child. I hold the X-ray up to the light, but it tells me nothing. Proof is hard; it does not lie. I need lies--I need a life that will never be cut-and-dry. Proof offers no hope, no faith. I believe but I have no faith. There is nothing. The edges of her clothing are torn and ripped, smudged with the dirt of old Virginia soil. Had she run? Screamed, pulled, tried to get away? Samantha would have fought him...for the sake of fighting, even if she had believed she was going to Wonderland. Does she fight now? Is she strong? Alive? For all the times I have been strong, faced enemies with a power beyond my capability to imagine, I am nothing now if not fragile, inadequate. Worthless. What do I say? Goodbye? I let him take you and I did not make a sound. I spend my life investigating the paranormal from a basement within the bowels of the government because I don't want to face the possibility that find you could mean saying goodbye. I tell myself that every case brings me closer to the truth. I have found truth. I stand here and I face truth. And all I want to do is walk away. I don't. My fingers reach out slowly, as if guided, to touch the little girl's nightgown. Even caked with mud and dirt and years, I feel the frills of the cloth. How pretty she must have felt in this--special, dainty. Like Alice. Are you Samantha? I don't yet know. I always believed that when I found you I'd *know*...I'd recognize you, your hair, your voice, your eyes. My eyes. An idealist hope for a forgotten dream--I will know you. I've lost you. I've lost everything. Roche took it from me. I reach around to run my fingers along the fabric, and I hit bone. It is repulsing and fascinating at the same time. *Bone*...that's all it is, now. Bone. Life and dreams and hopes and truth locked up into this mass of bone. Her brain is gone, her skin is gone, her tissue is gone...but bone remains. A skeletal frame of what she used to be--what she could have been--what she was. What she is. At Oxford, in one of my pysch classes, we learned about a phenomenon called censorship--not the censorship that everyone is familiar with, of books and movies and magazines--but a censorship of the mind. The brain refuses to allow unpleasant memories to enter consciousness in their original form----as in dreams. The textbook phrase jumped out at me; it went on to cofirm that hypnotic regression therapy and the like are therefore unreliable, because even if you are being dredged into your subconsciousness, the original memory has been altered so thoroughly that it's just not in your head to find. Where are you in my mind, Samantha? Who are you? What have you become? What have *I* become? I don't know you; I don't know who this little girl is. The bone is dry with age but smooth, unbroken. A sudden flash of sunlight...a shadow overhead...a scream, a thump, silence. A cry. <"Samantha!"> Faded marker on linen-- My fingers tremble, searching for cracks. Bones mend, but they do not heal. I know this. I will be distinguished upon my death by all the injuries, bullet wounds, broken bones. So will my sister. Smooth. Unbroken. Truth. I know. There's the faint whoosh of air as the heavy door pushes open, and a voice as if through water and air from miles away. "Mulder?" Breathe. I can't breathe. Scully has proof--she holds it in her hands. She has evidence. Unbroken...but am I right? "It's not her, Scully," I exhale. "Am I right?" She walks closer, concerned. Tell me, Scully. I want to know. I need to. "Samantha broke a collarbone when she was six," I explain quietly, anxiously. "It was her left collarbone, we had a...we had a rope swing out in the backyard...it's not broken, is it?" _______________ SCULLY I fear truth. Mulder and I...we search for it every day. Mulder hopes one day to come across it in some deserted alley somewhere, with the brilliant lights of heaven softly glaring out of every corner, shedding light on the tiny dusty box that he can hold in his hands and up to the sky with that glorious smile I see so seldom. <"I've found the truth, Scully!"> his voice tells me in my dreams, mocking me gently, . I walk the streets at night and my vision darts from one stoplight to the next, wishing childishly for some angel's halo that is my passageway straight to knowing. <"I've found my own truth, Mulder,"> I want to tell him. I don't need you to show me the way. I don't need you for any outside agenda. I need you because of who you are to me. Not because you bring me truth. Because you reaffirm my faith, every day. In believing. In moving on. In dreams. Like a man who has known the weight of a thousand dying voices he stands before me, waiting. Graceful fingers reach out to trace around the girl's bones, grieving face like stone as he struggles to hold himself together. My heart swells with joy to be able to tell him what I know now...and contracts again as I realize. Is the little girl Samantha? To Mulder, it doesn't matter. Not now. Maybe it never did. "Mulder?" I call softly as I push the door open. He doesn't lift his head, doesn't turn. "It's not her, Scully. Am I right?" His voice is broken, shattered along with his mind and his heart. He knows. And it doesn't make a difference. But he needs to know for sure. "Samantha broke a collarbone when she was six," he continues, to my surprise. "It was her left collarbone, we had a...we had a rope swing out in the backyard...it's not broken, is it?" His face is taut, pleading. Waiting. Mulder has spent his life waiting. I close my eyes briefly--more like a blink than a gesture. "You're right, Mulder, it's not a match." I pause, letting the words sink in, adding effect. "It's not her." His body slumps and lets out a long breath, measuring the hours that added up to days and weeks and months and years. Waiting. Hoping. Wishing. Wondering. He turns away then, tears shining in his eyes. It hasn't mattered. My truth gives him no relief. "But it is somebody, though." Somebody. Anybody. Everybody. All of us, all our lives. A little girl, dead, and the world pays no heed. No notice. Because she is not a movie star, or the president, or 'important.' But she could have been. And the world would have noticed... He is leaning against the table, the weight of his lean frame evident as his eyes droop. It's not her. It's not Samantha. But Mulder cares; Mulder gives a damn. I have faith in him, in his strength. He's going to need that. That little girl is not Samantha, but that's all I know. And the only man who can tell us who she really is is John Lee Roche. _______________ MULDER He shrugs. "Well, like I said, it was a fifty/fifty chance." "Tell us her name." Scully's voice is sharp as a knife. She hates him, despises him with a passion; I can see it in her eyes, in the way she grips the pen. Controlled distrust, anger, hatred. I wish I could say the same. John Lee Roche is a sick man--the worst kind of human being. Before I joined the FBI, I used to believe that serial killers had no place in society, that they were so far gone they had to be locked away and helped no matter what, not deprived of their animal instincts. Kind of like a zoo, where they could be taken care of on their own terms. And then I started profiling. And through Luther Lee Boggs and John Lee Roche, I learned that some criminals kill for no other reason than because they like the way it makes them feel. You can't cure a human of natural pleasure. And so we lock them up, pamper them with cable and exercise facilities to make them happy. So the rest of America can forget. So only those unlucky enough to have the oppurtunity to deal with them. I know John Lee Roche. I know what he wants, how he thinks...or at least, I used to. I thought I did. Either way, he wants to play with me, dangle the mouse in front of my nose and then snatch it away. But I can't be sure if he's telling the truth. And Scully. Scully shouldn't have to deal with this. She's as anxious as I am to bring that girl home, but Scully follows procedure. Always. Usually. She told me yesterday that I was tired--excellent observation, Agent Scully--and sent me home to sleep. Told me to call her if I needed anything. Scully, I need Samantha back. I need to know the truth. I need to travel back in time and choose a life where truth is something the government can deal with. I need your help. The look in her eyes this morning told me what she'd been planning--. At a loss, eventually, for my complete turnaround. Because I'm holding myself together. Because I get through this as long as I know I have her there. Because Roche is nothing but a man, but I will always have my sister. Always have the memories. My childhood cannot forever be darkened with the screams of that one night. I won't let that happen. I will move on. I can't afford to look back now. Because I may never know where I'm going...but I always know where I've been. Because she was my sister. "That was...Karen Ann Philliponte..." Roche says slowly, as if he's having trouble remembering. Of course. Sixteen little girls and they all blur together eventually, right, John? I'm angry inside. I won't let him see. I'm an FBI agent now, not a grieving brother. I won't let him see. "She lived in a green ranch in upstate New York...mint grew outside her window. I used to stand outside her window and smell the sprigs of mint. Smelled wonderful." His voice is eerie, calm but wistful. As if he's sorry he killed her. Scully breathes sharply. "*What* *year*?" she asks, her voice hard, cold, calculated. Anger bursting and flaming in those blue eyes. She understands, now, why I hit Roche. It's an emotion you can't control. I used to look at men like him and think I still do. But it's so hard--almost impossible--to believe that he enjoys the pleasure killing brings him, that there's not some outside force acting upon him, forcing him to be who he is. Childhood, maybe...illness... Aliens... But that's all it comes down to, in the end. Roche and his heart and his mind and a little girl at the end of the world. "That was...July..." He draws out the syllables, weighing the words lightly against their burden. "...1974?" he says, as if to himself. His voice grows stronger, more insistent. "I had her mother on the hook for an ElectroVac Argosy. But at the last minute she said thanks, but no thanks?" He smiles easily. "Oh, well." _______________ SCULLY I'm shaking inside as Mulder slides the last heart across the table and leans back in his chair to wait. ?! I thought when I first met John Lee Roche that his casual conversation was a bit disconcerting--now I find it downright infuriating. This man has no right to sit before me and smile and shred my partner's life into tattered cloth hearts. He has no right to play basketball any time he wants and have access to the kind of technology that hardworking people only dream of. I work for the Justice Department, the government run *by* *the* *people*--yet it seems like the 'people' are getting the raw end of the deal. Roche shouldn't be here. He should be locked up to rot in his dark cell in solitary confinement with just enough food to keep him alive but not enough to satisfy his hunger. The last time I resorted to such rage was with a prisoner who truly frightened me with the things he knew and the way he said them. Roche...Roche could be my father, my uncle, my friend. The guy next door. Roche *is* the guy next door--and he likes it. I can see it in his eyes, his smile. He knows. Mulder is trying so hard to be strong, but he knows. Roche casts a passing glance at the heart--. His eyes flicker to Mulder's face, gauging his reaction. "It's your sister." There. He's said it, with finality. No sidestepping--<"you know one of them already">--no mind games--<"pick her out."> Just...it's her. I took her. I took her and you couldn't save her and now you need me to find her, bring her home. Ironic, isn't it? It's written on his face. But Mulder doesn't react--no intake of breath, no deep exhale. What was I expecting? A sudden choke in the voice, Mulder's run for the door? Mulder won't. Mulder *can't*. For Samantha. For his father. For himself. He stares at Roche, a long, measuring glance. "If that's true, tell me where." I took my nephew to the Children's Institute of Science once, a fancy euphanism for a big building in Annapolis that's just a child's huge science playground. One exhibit showed two plastic balls--one green, one orange--that seemingly did nothing but chase each other around a big fishtank for hours on end. There was a crudely made funnel of water swirling toward the center of the tank, designed, apparently, to suck the balls in. The green ball circled around the funnel for half an hour while my nephew watched, fascinated--like a shark cornering its prey. The orange one was dormant, floating quietly until suddenly, with a splashing wave, it gravitated sharply toward the water funnel and 'fell' in. Pulling the green one along with it. Roche and Mulder remind me of those two balls--Mulder, the green, chasing the truth, warily straying from the darkness that was the center of his life for so many years; Roche, the orange, suddenly arriving and stealing life, love--everything--from my partner, bringing Mulder down with him. Why now? Roche shakes his head, falsely rueful. "You wanna know more than that, don't you? You wanna know *everything*, right? The big mystery revealed?" "Stop the mind games," I break in. What can *you* tell us about Samantha Mulder? Either you took her or you didn't. What else is there to know? There's a shifting in the movement beside me, and I'm reminded that this is Mulder's case, Mulder's life, Mulder's truth. There are chinks in the armor now...but we have to see this through. He has to. "I can't just tell you," Roche continues, as if I'd never said anything. "I mean, I know you don't believe me yet. You need me to show you, you need me to lead you through it because after all these years, nothing less than that's going to satisfy you, right?" My eyes fly to Mulder's face, but it's calm, serene. Blank. He is silent for a moment, and then he shakes his head musingly and pushes back his chair to stand. "You just want to get out of here." I want to applaud. Mulder can handle this; he's not losing it. Not at all. He's right. He knows. He knows. "You're damn right I do," Roche agrees. "Even if it's just for a day or two." His voice is tinged with sadness. "I'm...I'm realistic." He pauses, that small smile curving his mouth upward again as he strings the words out, slowly. "Even more than that, I...I can't wait to see your face." "Oh, God." My unwarranted gasp and strangled words are past my lips before I can stop them. Mulder's gaze revolves slowly from Roche to me, eyes sad, face defeated. There is apology in his stance at my outburst, as if this is a lost cause all his own once more. Roche smiles as I swallow my anger and regain composure. "You're going to see the inside of your cell instead. And you're going to rot there." It's a lame comeback, sure, but what do you say when evil challenges you to defeat him? I gather my things and flee the room. Roche doesn't move as we watch him through the glass. Mulder's face is sorrowful, melancholy. Oh, God. Oh, God, I was wrong, he's not handling it, he can't...how could anyone?... My God. Mulder, don't. Please. Don't do this. Don't. _____________ MULDER Her voice is soft and distant, because Roche is all I see. How does he do that? I walked into that room strong--an FBI agent, and that's all. He broke me--he broke Scully. With a simple gesture, a tossed-off laugh, a passing thought. He's nothing if not convincing...and who am I to say he's not telling the truth? "You okay?" she asks, casting a glance first to Roche through the glass and then back at me, blue eyes blurred with compassion. Gratitude. Four years ago, I would have been getting that question in spades by now, but I think after Canada--Russia--all the years--Scully knows that I need to work through things on my own...as long as she's there. I feel my head moving in a weak attempt to nod, but I don't think Scully was expecting any sort of response anyway. Her voice is low and urgent, but soft with concern. "Mulder, the last thing we should do is give this man his way on this. If we do he could string us along forever." A pause, and I consider. She looks at me and she knows--that I've fallen apart, that I'm contemplating Roche's suggestion. That he needs to show me. That I want to know everything. I want to know the truth. "I know you appreciate that," she says, voice even softer now. Does she? "There has to be another way to come to the truth." Another way...another way. The words echo in my mind, crashing and grinding against each other with pounding intensity. Behind me, there is the bubbling gurgle of the fishtank as the fish, like myself, swim around in endless circling outlets and come to no end. Find another way. I can't. I don't want to. There is no easier way. I'm sorry, Scully...I need to do this. On my own. For my sister. "This is Special Agent Fox Mulder with the FBI, badge number JTT07041111...I need a removal order for a federal prisoner..." ________________ The sounds of the plane are paradoxically comforting--the wail of a child, the roar of the wind past the wings, the whir of an opening can of soda. Roche, that damning smile finally wiped off of his face, stares straight ahead. He knew I'd come back for him. He knew. He smiled when they brought him out, handcuffed and shackled, and asked me where my partner was and how I managed to get past the judge so quickly, so easily. I told him to shut the hell up. Then I took my own advice. "Can I use the restroom?" he asks, slightly mocking, as if it isn't my right to deny him such a privilege. I sigh. "Keep the jacket over your hands." First rule broken: never take a convicted killer with you on a commercial flight with no other agents present. Second rule broken: never go anywhere without telling Scully. Third rule broken: never fail to go through proper channels and Bureau procedure. Fourth rule broken: never travel to an island without Dramamine. I even forgot to feed my fish. When I was eleven or so, my mom went through an art phase. My dad brought home some expensive painting that he swore to heaven and back was an original, and we hung it up in the front hallway where all the visitors could see it first thing. High up on the wall--Samantha and I weren't even allowed near it. When my parents divorced, Mom stored that painting in the bottom of a box in the basement. Years later, at Oxford, in one of my required art courses for the semester, we studied a copy of the original in an art book. And when I went up to Connecticut just a few days ago, I caught a glimpse of it, where Mom had left it, and the pieces clicked into place. Our original was backwards. The two sides were transposed. The man in the blue suit on the right in our copy was on the left in the original. Our painting had been reversed. I didn't have the heart to tell Mom. When I called ahead to make arrangements, they told me my old house in Chilmark had been sold. I'm sure the people living there now wouldn't have minded leaving for a day while a federal officer took a look around his old house, maybe dug up some clues on a case. Hell, we could have made them leave if they hadn't wanted to. But what would be the point of bringing Roche back to Vine Street? What could he tell me about that night that I hadn't remembered in my dream? Maybe, like Mom's painting, I've been looking at things backwards. Maybe I can't take Samantha back from John Lee Roche...maybe I just have to tear Roche away from my sister and leave her memory alone. Roche stands and steps over me on the way to the bathroom. I let my jacket fall back, revealing the reholstered gun. He glances at it quickly and keeps walking-- --and the refreshment cart gets in my way. "Excuse me," I say, but the stewardess pays no heed. Roche keeps walking, and stops suddenly. My heart goes cold. Roche can't do anything on an airplane, can he? Not with his hands cuffed and my gun ready and waiting. He leans down and speaks in a happy voice, probably to a child. I can't hear what they're saying. The cart moves and I move with it. "Caitlin," a small voice chirps. Roche nods happily. Shooting a glare at him, I steer him away from the child and towards the lavratory. He doesn't look back. But I can imagine those small eyes on me, wondering who I am and why the taller bald man is so much nicer. And I swear that he will never get out like this again, to fulfill his fantasies even if for only a moment. It's a short flight. I've already decided what to do... Now I just have to make the right choice. _______________ SCULLY "What the hell do you mean he checked out Roche?!" Skinner's voice is a controlled roar, and something in it tells me he expected nothing less from Fox Mulder. And also, that he hopes for nothing more. I sigh. "Agent Mulder convinced the judge that this was an emergency situation." At least, that's what they told me at the DA's office, after I called the prison and told them not to let Roche back online and they informed me that Agent Mulder had recently checked out Roche for the night and yes, as a matter of fact, they did think it was a bit strange that his partner wasn't with him. I was furious, but somehow not surprised. He looked ready to fall apart when I left him--God, he looked halfway there already. But the nervous secretary told me that Agent Mulder had presented 'a very convincing case.' No doubt he left out the part about the 'remaining missing child' being his sister and that he had recently perpetrated a violent attack on the same criminal he was getting a removal order for. I was about to check up on the flights he could have taken--I already knew where he was going--when Skinner requested a meeting with us. *Both* of us. "And where were you while all this was happening?" Apparently, he's noticed Mulder's absence. Anger boils in me--I'm not Mulder's babysitter; would *you* like to try it, sir?--but concern wins over. "I had left Agent Mulder for the day, I suggested that he should get some sleep." If you can call <"Mulder, go home and get some sleep"> 'suggesting.' I knew he wouldn't listen to the order, but at least he was out of my sight. Out of my state...out of my career...out of my life... Off with his head?... I understand his reasoning. We're not getting anywhere interviewing Roche in jail, so why not bring him back to where my life originally ended and he can screw with my mind there? He didn't call me, because he knew I'd try to talk him out of it. He doesn't want someone to do that--he wants to do this on his own. Mulder can handle it. Can't he? Mulder is in control of this car. He can barrel down the freeway and scatter everyone in his path and run right over Roche in the process, or he can slow down and let Roche get through his performance and then speed up and leave him in the dust. But even after all that, Mulder's likely to fall asleep at the wheel and drive himself into a tree. I take a deep breath as Skinner shifts in his chair. "Sir, I have a clear idea of where he might hve gone and I am certain I can catch up with him--" "No, *I'll* be the one to catch up with him," he interrupts. "Where's he headed?" "Martha's Vineyard," I reply, and this time the anger surfaces. "And I hope you would appreciate the uniqueness of this situation and the effect it has on Agent Mulder!" But then, Skinner wouldn't understand, would he? *I* don't understand. I try--I pretend I do--I pretend to understand. But I don't--I can't. Not yet. And I hope I never have to. "Oh, I fully understand the effect it has on him, Agent Scully," he retorts as he stands, and his flashing eyes tell me that all too clearly. Mulder is nothing but an agent to AD Skinner--an employee. An employee who can't do his job because he's too busy ignoring the company's standards and letting the world collapse on everyone around him-- That's not fair. It's not true. Mulder has taken so much from me--my career, my life...but I can't deny that I've willingly given it away. For the sake of the truth...of faith, of belief, of all that's good and right. But I still am, and always will be, Dana Katherine Scully--he can't, no one can, take that away. I am still my own. Mulder hasn't molded me, shaped me, tried to make me a tool, as so many others have. Perhaps because he's so focused on his own inner landscape that he can't be bothered. Or perhaps because he doesn't need to, because I don't have to prove myself, because I'm capable as I am. He's taken what I could have been...but he's given me what I am. .................. "As I recall, it was the sum and total of my last words to you on the subject." He pauses and stares at me, controlled fury personified. "You let me down." And while I'm pondering those words and hoping he didn't really say that because as a self-respecting woman I'd be required to rage back, he goes on. "Now let's clean up this mess before it gets out of hand." It's too late for that, Skinner. It's already out of hand. _________________ MULDER This house is a ghost. Genuine only in its unreality, the plastic dust and gloomy hallways loom large even as an adult, mocking. The phone call he made that night disrupted me, disoriented me. Scully told me later I was so far gone it was a wonder I hadn't crashed the car into a tree on the drive between here and Massachusetts. Add one point to the Lucky Mulder Scale. I didn't want to see him. I didn't give a damn about what he had to say, because only my contact could give me information that I needed. Only later, after I found out that the State Department wasn't the most innocent branch of the government my father could have worked in, did I stop to think about the consequences, the implications. Dad told me I should never give in to 'them.' He told me everything had been so complicated. He asked me to forgive him... As if he knew he was going to die. As if someone had warned him. As if he had made the wrong choice, twenty-three years ago. But if my father knew about Samantha's 'abduction,' and the entire 'consortium' knew as well, then how is it possible that John Lee Roche took her without warning, without provocation? The more plausible explanation is that my father, and the men, were lying. The more believable explanation is that John Lee Roche is wrong. I can't deny my father truth, even in death. Even after all the years of ugly silence and awkward meetings, even after giving up on a happy father/son relationship over and over again. Scully knew. she told me. Unconditionally. I don't know. I'll never know. Never hold the truth in my hands and declare it as such. And the only way to get any closer is by process of elimination. My dream was real. It was me in that room...just me. My sister and I...and then, I alone. Roche didn't take my sister. He didn't take Samantha. I don't know who took her...but I will find her someday, somewhere, in death, in dreams. I will save her. I want to be able to declare that unequivocally. I want to know for sure. I want to believe. "No one home?" Roche smiles as he comes up behind me. He sits gently on the plastic-covered couch, and I want to yank him up, make him stand, tell him he has no right to take my sister and my life away and then come and sit on this couch and smile that shit-eating grin at me and start a conversation with me. Catching you caused me more hurt than it did you, Roche. You're living the good life in jail and I... But I have Scully. It's an oddly comforting thought. Scully may not know what to say when I see her again...odds are she'll be mad as hell. She has a right to be. But she's *there*. Just knowing she's all right. Roche has only himself in that prison cell, and no matter how well he's living, it's a life devoid of other life, of friends and laughter and love. To tell the truth, I may not have any of those things either. But I exist. I have a purpose. And I may never reach the goal on top of the mountain, but to be alive, to have a goal at all, is what matters. The search is fruitless, but the pursuit serves me all the same. Roche gestures to the furniture around him. "I sat on this couch," he says in that offbeat, detatched manner. "You and your dad bought the vacuum cleaner..." He trails, as if giving me the oppurtunity to think that over. The couch, the vacuum cleaner...I struggle to remember before realizing Roche has caught me in his trap, just where he wants me to be. Thinking. Not paying attention. It won't be the same couch, the same vacuum cleaner. The melody is different but the words remain the same. He can't tell. "You ready?" he asks, as if I'm a victim trying to pick out of a lineup the man who assaulted me. "Go," I say, voice purposely dulled, and he draws out the words like suspects, one by one. "November 27, 1973," he sets the scene for me. Well, thanks very much, John, I never would have remembered. Roche always liked theatrics--he reminds me of myself when I'm flashing the slides for Scully before a case. "I watched the house for hours," he continues. "I parked out across the way over there." He motions out the window. There should be lights in here. It's too dimmed, too muted. The edges are blurred while the image is crystal clear. The essence of the memory. Stark, bleak, empty. Proof. I want to turn and run, empty my gun into Roche and leave him for someone else to find. I don't want proof. I need proof. I believe. I want to. That's not enough. "I was just casing, I wasn't planning for this to be the night...but then all of a sudden your parents leave and I figure..." "Where'd they go?" It's a lame trap. Does it matter where they went? They left. They weren't here. I was alone. I let him--I let them take her. It wasn't my fault... Roche stands, peers out the window, just as my father did months before. "House next door," he replies, a tinge of smugness to his voice. A+, Roche. "To play pinochle, I don't know, or whatever it was that people did back then." I incline my head slightly. I want to hear the rest. I need to. "Go on." "So after they're gone I get out of the car and I move closer. And I watch...you and your sister playing that board game." An involuntary shiver runs through me. He was watching. Outside, all that time, waiting, biding his time, planning. Real. Tangible. It's possible, isn't it? That I took Roche and turned him into an alien in my mind because the man was too frightening but the unreal aliens were not? No. No. "And a little bit after eight, I'm about ready, so I move to the junction box, and I cut the power...and the lights go off, and I move around to the front door...and I was ready to kick the door in?" he asks rhetorically, "and it was unlocked. Because 1973..." He shakes his head in mock amazement. "It was a different world back then." I was on the debate team in junior high school, in the eighth grade. The instructor, a large, stern man, told us that the most important skill we could learn was listening. We already knew how to take notes, we knew how to speak aloud, we knew how to research. "But most of you," he boomed, "have never had to *listen* and *understand* anything before." By the second debate he was pleased, told us we were cutting through the crap and the bullshit and getting right to the bone of the argument. I don't give a damn what Roche thought about the state of society. I don't care what he thought my parents were doing next door at the Galbrands'. He's not going to tell me he's wrong--I have to prove it for myself. He has to be wrong. I know he's wrong, this moment, right now. I have proof. But *why*? "And what did you do then?" I prod him. "Well, you remember that," he grins. "I...I came in through the front door, and you...tried to get to your father's gun, I...I give you credit for that, but then you sort of froze and then..." He looks around him, far away to a place I cannot reach. I don't want to reach. I do remember. But I only remember what my dreams can tell me. Which means that Roche must also know what happens when I sleep at night. "...and I took your sister away from all this." He pauses, the first display of delusional behavior I've heard from him in years. "To a happier place." It's so real. He makes it sound so real. I believe him--for an instant, a second, a moment in time. "That's exactly how it happened?" I clarify. "Right here in this room?" Bursting, I'm bursting. With the need to tell him. After all those years of profiling and chasing and dreaming and losing. I win. I'm not satisfied--I'll never be. But now I know. There's a flicker of *something* in the back of Roche's eye, but he brushes it away as quickly as I notice. "Yeah," he says cautiously. There's a moment of silence while I let the world wash over me. I see my sister, and in my mind she's not screaming, not floating, not begging for help. She's laughing. At the beach, on the playground. It's bright with sunlight and I can hardly see to squint against the sunlight. Laughing. Her voice is bright and tinged with happiness and daytime. Laughing--because Roche didn't take her, he didn't hurt her. There's still a chance. For her, for me, for us...for faith. I believe. There is hope. "Wrong house," I intone, letting the sound of a smile creep into my voice. "My father bought this house *after* he and my mother divorced. This house is in *West* *Tisbury*, the house that Samantha was abducted from was in *Chilmark*. That's *six* *miles* from here! You screwed up! You were never here, you didn't take Samantha!" It's the longest speech I've given him in years, not since his arrest. But the barrage keeps coming, the words keep flying. His eyes flicker and dart around the room, caged birds, panicked. He's wrong, and he knows it. I'm right. I win. He regains his equilibrium quickly. "Wishful thinking," he retorts. I shake my head. "No." And it clicks into place. All the versions of what happened all come from my dreams. In my dream I can't see the address of our house or the neighborhood or the street. In my dream we could be anywhere, but for the layout of the room. In my dream... I've never told anyone about the dreams. Scully knows I have them, knows about the prescribed sleeping pills that I refuse to take and all the times she's had to wake me up on stakeouts because if tired enough I fall asleep anywhere--and dream. But I won't describe them or discuss them in detail, not even to those Bureau-ordered pyschologists we all get sent to every once in a while. I've told Scully that my sister was taken...that we were in bed when it happened, because it's the easiest version to relate, and then she was just gone. As I came to trust her more, I told her what I believed. But not in detail, not the different versions--only information she could get anywhere. The truth lies in my dreams. And I've told no one about that truth. But Roche knows. Like my father, something that was once so complicated is now so clear. Like glass. But it's impossible not to wonder if maybe that glass is really a looking-glass and that the truth is staring me in the face and I've just broken for the mirror. Damn it. Let me revel in my joy for a moment. "No, but I think I know what happened. Somehow you got inside my dreams." Roche raises his eyebrows. "Come again?" "I profiled you." The words pick up speed and I know he thinks I'm ridiculous but I don't care. "I got inside your head, maybe you got inside mine, maybe some nexus or connection was formed between us. And through that, you got access to my memories of my sister Samantha and you used them against me. For *this*." Roche half-rolls his eyes. "You're just resisting me." "And you're in the wrong *house*, you stupid son of a bitch! You were never here, you *liar*!" He's calm and I'm out of control and those aren't very good odds. I'll deal with the reprecussions later, the possibilities, the truths, the lies. But I am in charge now--for once, I am in charge. "It's geography, man, it's geography," Roche grasps. "It was twenty-three years ago, that's geography we're talking about." I force myself to speak slowly, quietly, working out the words first. No street signs in the dreams. We could have been anywhere, and if he saw that and knew me-- "Yeah, but you remember all the other details so vividly." I pause, barrel ahead. "That's because you watched it through my eyes. Through my dreams." I'm already asking. What, Roche had a dream one night and said Did he go into some sort of 'receiving transmission' mode while I slept, like...Harry?...and the Big Giant Head? And why *now*--why not five years ago? Because he's a sick bastard and he wants to dredge up old memories--well, he could have done that two years ago. Five years into the future. Why would he 'lead' me to Addie? Can't I at least grant myself the possibility that maybe I'm just a smart FBI agent who finally figured the bastard out? Roche laughs suddenly, inappropriately, the sound cutting through the silent air. "I hear things about you, Mulder," he tells me conversationally. "You know what I heard? I heard you go after aliens. From *space*." He sits on the couch behind him and points upward, making loops with his hands, whistling through his teeth to signify the presence of a UFO. "Seems like your world would be okay if you could believe in the flying saucers. But I'm telling you the God's honest truth," he says seriously. "And I can see you're not as open-minded as you think you are." Maybe Roche is right. Maybe he did take Samantha and I'm just fooling myself. Maybe my life, and everything I stand for, is based on a lie. But I'm tired of suspicion and searching and not believing. I've been told that I'll believe anything...but sometimes it feels like I'm the most skeptical cynic on earth. I want to take something for granted, this time. I want to believe. The smile is not one of victory but of belief, and I lay it casually at Roche's feet as he sits before me. "You must've made one hell of a salesman, Roche." ___________ Dark. I squint against it but I cannot sleep. Not with John Lee Roche just feet away and the truth about my sister just beyond my reach. I called him a liar and told him he hadn't taken Samantha. It was the truth. One version of the truth. I have learned after years of searching that no truth is sacred, no lie overturned. Everything can be argued. Everything can be defeated. Everything dies. He wanted to speak but I would not let him. I glanced over some case files, let him watch television. The accomodations in this roadside motel are probably less than what he's used to in prison. He's sleeping. It would be so easy to pull my gun out of the holster and fire, or smother him with the blanket he's clutching. Rearrange the evidence so that no one knows and he can't go on living and destroying with his mind. So easy. Painless. Simple. But then, not only does John Lee Roche win, *they* win. They succeed in making me a cold-blooded murderer. They succeed in making me one of them. I will *never* be one of them. Never. I'm one of the good guys, I remind myself--I'm fighting for truth and justice and a way to make the world *right*. But I'm no Luke Skywalker. And I've always wondered what the outcome of "Star Wars" might have been if we got to hear the other side of the story--Darth Vader's motivations for becoming one with the Dark Side. My life is not based on "Star Wars", on '70s movies that depicted the triumph of good over evil. My father was my own. Wasn't he? It's quiet. Dark and silent. Surreal. The heart offers up a glimpse of childhood heaven from the solid wooden table. If I stare at it hard enough, brush my fingers over it once more, it will give me answers. One heart left. Just one. One life, one memory. One dream. There's a noise from outside, a calling. A drunk patron, no doubt, returning from the local bar. My eyes droop, but I keep the heart in my hand. I'm so tired. The calling gets louder. It's not a drunkard but a child. A girl. Her words unidentifiable at first. And it's familiar, all too familiar. "Fox! Fox, help me!" Calling my name... Over and over again, "Fox, Fox!" I almost knock over the table in my hurry to get up and outside, forgetting about Roche almost entirely. Familiar voice, familiar face. Urgent and the same as the pictures on my desk, in my wallet, in my dreams. "Fox! Help me, I'm locked in here!" His car. She's locked in Roche's car. My heart swells. My sister, Samantha--Roche took her but he's asleep and I can get her back, I can save her this time-- "Help me, I'm locked in here!" She's banging on the window and amazingly no one else hears her but me. I pull on the door handle but it doesn't budge--it's locked, she's inside, and Roche is... ...is not sleeping, he's in the car. I can hear it revving up, the personification of an old '70s car. White El Camino, Scully, I saw it in my dream! I can't save her but I have to try. Hopelessly I reach into my pocket and almost too easily I pull out a key as the car backfires uselessly. "Fox!" The key slips into the hole as effortlessly as it did in "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland." I yank the door open and don't wait for her to jump out but I scoop her up in my arms and hug her tightly, savoring the tickle of her hair against my face and the smell of her first perfume and the digging of her lanky arms around my neck, holding me, knowing she's safe in her brother's arms and that she doesn't want to leave as much as I won't let her. She's so light in my arms, so easy to protect. The same child I'd yearned for those many years. I lift her backwards lightly, enjoying the sight of her. Samantha, my sister. I smile gratefully and hug her again, assured this time. Roche can't get to her now. We'll-- The car revs again. Blossoming, the laser red appears on the tinted windows like a child's toy possessed. BYE And the car is gone. And my arms are empty as I reach for nothing and embrace air, and know that it's just a dream. My life is a dream. And my sister, and my memories, and John Lee Roche...they are nothing. Nothing but a pack of cards. _____________ SCULLY "You *let* Roche *go*?!" Skinner's voice is a low roar of amazement. Mulder, eyes half-closed, arms folded, makes a feeble attempt to explain. "I did it in my sleep. I had another dream." Mmm. Right, Mulder, that explains everything to the assistant director. It explains that you've gone insane and that he'll be forced to commit you--at least in his eyes. Mulder is not doing himself any good. He'd never let Roche go, not voluntarily...but then again, I don't know where he brought him or what they found. <"Give me the keys and I'll bring you your sister,"> Roche could have said, and who am I to guess whether Mulder had agreed? He had another dream. Suggesting that Roche is the creator behind his dreams, that Roche forced Mulder, in his dreams, to let him go. It's now that I understand the compulsions of psychopaths. Roche knows he's wrong and what he did was wrong...but he can't stop it. He has to do it again. He *has* to kill, destroy, anger. It's in his blood. The thought sickens me. Any one of us could turn out that way. Mulder's greatest fear--I can tell by looking at him--is the idea that he could potentially become one of the men he seeks to destroy. It's a curse he picked up working with Bill Patterson that's crept into everything he does. Seek to destroy and you inevitably become one of the destroyers. Skinner, looking more than a little annoyed with Mulder, Roche, and the system, turns to the agents behind me and delivers his instructions in a low rumble. "Why don't you find out if anybody saw anything?" He turns back to Mulder. "He took the last cloth heart," Mulder says absently. "He also took your badge and your gun," I join in, feeling his empty suit pockets. Skinner hammers the last nail in Mulder's coffin: "Where's your gun?" Mulder just moves halfway between a nod and a shrug. "How do you explain yourself, Agent Mulder?" Mulder's thought this out and, to his credit, doesn't mince words. "I don't." Skinner pounces. "You don't. A predator is loose because of you! God only knows how many hours lead he's got!" Mulder doesn't flinch, stares straight ahead. He knows something, and I want to ask him--alone, in private. He can cry out "The Pool of Tears" from the Alice books for all I care, but I need to ask him. But not here. Not now. Not where he can be vulnerable in front of the AD. Skinner sighs, proof that he's more concerned with finding Roche than with disciplining Mulder. "Any ideas where he might be headed?" he says, exasperated. Mulder's eyes cloud in thought for a moment, and when he conceives the thought it's like heaven opening up to reveal rays of sunshine. His eyes light in ugly realization and when he speaks his voice comes through air from far away. "Yeah..." "Where?" I say sharply, harsher than I'd intended. "Where's your phone?" he asks the AD, who fishes it out of his pocket in response. "There was a small child on the plane," he says slowly as he sits and dials. It hits me as it hit Mulder a moment ago. "What child?" "Yeah, please put me through to your supervisor," he speaks into the phone. "Mulder, what child?" Holding up a hand to silence my query, he talks quickly. "This is Special Agent Fox Mulder with the FBI, I need a passenger list for Flight #1650, Washington National to Boston, 8:50 last night...my badge number is--" He's silenced by the voice on the other end of the line, and when he hangs up the phone the distance in his eyes is cut short, tethered to reality by a truth he finally has to face. "Agent Mulder just called ten minutes ago. They gave him the same information." ____________ I hear the tearful hiccupping sobs before I see the woman delivering them--wiry hair, eyes glassy and red with tears. Policemen surround her, notebooks flipped open, listening hard. "...needed to take Caitlin...about 6'5" or something..." The voice grows stronger as we near. "He said his name was Mulder." She spits the name with the kind of disgust I have often heard directed at my partner...but never for this. He'll never forgive himself for this. "He had a badge," she continues in what sounds like a protesting tone of voice, as if she's trying to convince herself as well as us that what she did was warranted. "He looked official..." One of the officers turns to face Mulder, squinting against the sun, a concerned look on his face. "We sent one of the units over to pick up the girl's mother, bring her over." Skinner nods. "Wh--what am I going to tell her?" the woman cries as Mulder fidgets. "It's all my fault!" "It's not your fault," he breaks in with the kind of low intensity and fierceness only Mulder can deliver, and lays a comforting hand on her arm. "It's my fault." He turns and strides away and she stares after him, forgetting, watching, wondering. I don't wait. I follow. "I'm sorry, Scully, you were right. He was playing me the whole time." "You don't think he took Samantha." There's lethargy to my voice, but it's not a question. Neither is Mulder's response. "None of that really matters now, does it." It doesn't. And in some ways it does. It always will. But not while there's an ongoing investigation to complete and a little girl to find. "Well, where do you think he'd take this girl? Would he follow his MO and drive her out of state?" Familiar ground. The wheels turn in Mulder's head--he can handle the work. For now. "There's no reason for that. He knows we're going to catch him, he just needs it to be later rather than sooner. He'll be somewhere nearby." "Well, how much a creature of habit is he? Would he try to take her someplace familiar?" Mulder jumps on the idea before I've finished presenting it, and I get the feeling that he's not listening to me, but working the investigation out on his own. "Try to relive some past glories, is that what you're thinking? I don't know, maybe, why?" A lead. Maybe. "Well, Roche lived in Boston in the early '70s, right?" Skinner's voice. "What've you got?" I feel Mulder beside me, wound tight, wired. Hands clenched into fists, jaw tight, eyes burning. "Roche's old address in the area," I reply. "Revere...9809 Alice Road, apt.--" "He's there," Mulder says suddenly, fist raised in a halfhearted punch at the car window. "How do you know?" Skinner asks. "Alice in Wonderland. He's the mad hatter." "Oh, that's a dead end--" Skinner scowls. "It's where he got the idea in the first place!" _______________ MULDER Useless. A dead end. Wasted time. Against my better judgment... It was Skinner's reply when I insisted on being the first one in. I was too tired to argue the fine-tuned point that while I may be 'spooky' and ignorant of Bureau regulations, I'm probably the best agent he has on this case and without me we would never have gotten to this point in the first place. Which is probably why he added the bit. The door burst open with a well-placed jab from my right shoulder and I raced inside, gun beaming ahead. Useless. A dead end. Wasted time... I spun around in a halfhearted attempt to check the corners, but the room was empty--grafitti staining the walls, old garbage lining the rooms. "Check the other rooms!" Skinner called, but it was useless. Scully's voice echoed my sentiments. "I don't think he brought her here." Something about the window drew me. Sunlight gleamed hot off the parking lot across the way, rows of derelict school buses like wilting flowers. And somehow, I knew. "He never brought anyone here." Heedless of the consequences, knowing if I'm right it'll save a little girl, I spin around and run from the room, from the apartment...making it so easy to keep running forever. Across a field that reminds me, absurdly, of the days we spent in Apison, Tennessee what seems like a lifetime ago. What *was* a lifetime ago. I climb over the fence and I'm faced with a lifetime of choices, boxed up in the rows of abandoned buses at my feet. I begin the trek slowly--cables moving, wheels turning, anything. A clue. Behind me, there's the distanced shout of the many agents crawling around the building, looking for Roche, and for Caitlin. And for me. There's a scream. Piercing and loud and sharp--a child's scream. Instinctively I pull out my weapon and run--forward--slowing--turning--nothing. Gone. The bus cables catch my eye. Movement. I lower myself and bring my weapon up, circling around until I reach the door. Gun out, pointed forward, stay to the side...I run through the Academy instructions in my head. Forward--the door opens-- Roche is in the back seat; Caitlin is in front of him. I lower the gun. It will scare her. Roche smiles musingly. "You know, I'm beginning to believe we do share that 'nexus' you spoke of...you always seem to find me," he says, drawing his words out, making sure I know every moment could be the girl's last. I ignore him. Caitlin looks fine--her fact not even tearstained. Roche probably urged her to scream for whatever sick reason he could think of. I don't care anymore. I have to get her out of here. "You okay, Caitlin?" I say slowly. She nods toothlessly. "Good. My name is Fox and I'm going to take you home." She nods again. I have a gun and I speak in a soothing voice just as Roche did, but she trusts me. I've promised to bring her home. I *promised*... What lies did Roche tell her? That they'd be going to a happier place, that he'd take her to Wonderland? "I have your gun, Fox," Roche interrupts, his voice slightly mocking, the use of my first name an ugly parody of my recent words. I don't know what to do. I'm on a bus with a little girl and a murderer and I don't know what to do. "Caitlin, can you do me a favor?" I say slowly. "Can you...count to twenty? Can you close your eyes and count to twenty out loud? Quietly and slowly?" I don't know if twenty is high enough--I don't know if she can count that high. But she nods and closes her eyes hesitantly, and I begin with her. "One...two..." As soon as I'm sure she can't see me I take steps forward quickly until I reach Roche and point my gun directly at his head. "I will shoot," he says simply. "Don't...make this end badly," I say, my voice low. Tensing my body, I sneak a glance over my shoulder. The gun--my gun--is pointed directly at the back seat where Caitlin sits. At this range, it will only take a moment before she's gone. She won't know what hit her. She'll be safe. I have to know. "Six...seven..." "You're not giving me very much choice," he goes on negligently. "I really don't want to go back to prison." But she deserves to live. _____________ SCULLY Of all the places I've seen life begin and end, a graveyard of abandoned buses has never been number one on my list. We followed Mulder here. Skinner had this odd gleam in his eye, as if he thought Mulder was completely out of his mind and we'd have to have him committed as soon as we found the little girl. There was movement, and then voices. And then a loud one, cutting clear through the sunshine after an eternity of waiting. And Mulder's voice, mixed in at first with the little girl's and then fading to nothing. "One...two...three..." For an FBI agent with no contact with children, Mulder's extremely good with kids. He puts on his easy smile and his cheerful voice, and he just draws kids like a magnet. Caitlin had to choose between two men: Roche, who promised to bring her to a fantasy land; and Mulder, who promised to bring her home. They both had guns and they didn't seem to like each other very much...and Mulder probably wasn't smiling when he got on that bus. But he asked her to count with him. And she chose Mulder. She chose life. Roche reminds me in some ways, now, of Robert Patrick Modell. He's playing with Mulder's mind and this time Mulder is fighting hard to win. "Put the gun down, Roche!" Skinner yells from above me on the stairs. Roche unfolds the last heart from his breat pocket and continues, calmly, nicely. "You've got one left," he says to Mulder. "How are you going to find her without me? How sure are you it's not Samantha?" "Seventeen...eighteen..." "How do you know?" I don't know how high Mulder asked that little girl to count, but whichever way you look at it he's running out of time. "Nineteen..." Mulder half-closes his eyes, almost as if he's in pain, and in a flash of movement I see him look down at where Roche is holding Mulder's gun. Another flash and I fancy I see the end of the world: the squeezing of the trigger, the ending of a life. Mulder fires, just as Caitlin reaches twenty. A scream, childish--a long drawn-out wail. She's up and running and in my arms and there's movement outside--a yell, the sound of foosteps. "Call an ambulance!" And Mulder stands, frozen, in the middle of it all. At the end of time. Arm outstretched, gun pointed outward, prolonging a moment that should have ended when he pulled the trigger and defeated his enemy. Stands frozen at eternity as Roche's limp body slumps... ...and falls. For a second I see a glimmer in his stance--a tremble, a sigh, a tear. But he does none of those things. He stands silent for another lifetime, as if maybe, maybe, he'll wake up and find this end another dream. He lowers his gun and breathes hard, and does not look at me when he turns away. __________________ SCULLY I knock before entering, a useless gesture born out of constant repetition and a tradition of respect for my partner. There's a moment of silence and I push the door open, aware that the light is framing me where I stand and that Mulder doesn't look up. He's holding the last heart. Evidence took the rest to return to the families, but there is no home for the last heart. So Mulder has given it a home of its own. I don't speak; he doesn't greet me. I've yet to determine if he's aware I'm in the room. I glance at him, a loose measure of sympathy that utilizes no words. I drop the folder gently on his desk. "I got back some lab results," I begin quietly. "The dye analysis determines that the fabric of the last heart was manufactured between 1969 and 1974...but beyond that there's nothing they can tell us." He remains silent, stroking the heart, face dull. I don't know what the official punishment was, but he shouldn't be here. Not because I'm an FBI agent or because it's my job. Or because I'm a doctor and that's my diagnosis. Because Mulder can't be strong for himself or for me all the time. And as much as he knows I wouldn't hold it against him if he just lost it for awhile, he can't do that yet, not in front of me. His strength feeds off mine. His silence breaks my heart. "Mulder, it's not Samantha," I continue, finally daring to say her sacred name aloud. He turns away, threatening tears shining in his weary eyes. "And whoever that little girl really is, we'll find her." Something registers at that, and he tilts his head upward to look at me--tired, defeated. Dreamless. "*How*?" I haven't heard him speak in hours, and his voice is dull and hoarse. The Mulder of a day ago, the one so totally wrapped up in the investigation he couldn't stop to think about its implications, is gone. The Mulder of a week ago, who was so busy running himself ragged across the continental eastern seaboard to identify two lives, is gone. The Mulder who believed wholly and completely that John Lee Roche would eventually give him an answer if he had to sacrifice himself for it is gone. There is only the Mulder I am all too used to: silent, self-implicating, wistful. Mulder believed that Roche knew the truth. And as long as Roche was alive, that truth could be discovered somehow--some way. As long as Roche was alive, he could be punished for his undiscovered crimes. As long as Roche was alive, Mulder held on to his hope. The little girl's voice counts down the seconds in my mind. there is no time left. For the rest of my life, I will hear little Caitlin's voice, running down on life. "I don't know," I tell him honestly. I don't know. There are thousands of missing girls from 1973--and the heart doesn't belong to Samantha, we're looking at a time frame of five years. And even if we do run down the list and cross-check every single one of those families and find out which one the heart belongs to...we still don't know where to find her. "But I do know you," I say, and his head jerks up, almost in surprise. How's that for an expression of faith, Mulder? A tiny smile curves the edges of his mouth, a gesture that hints nowhere near his eyes. It vanishes as quickly as it appeared, and he looks down at his desk again, lost. I take a deep breath and say the only words I have left. "Why don't you go home and get some sleep?" This time there is not only surprise in his face, but a kind of bittersweet joy as well. He laughs then--a real, full, rich sound from deep within him I've never heard from my partner before. I can't help but smile as well, and he leans toward me just as I reach for him, a brief embrace that is scripted, for once, not by our minds but our hearts. I touch his head tenderly and pull away suddenly, sensing as his smile fades that he needs to be alone. Mulder thanked me today--not in words, but there was gratitude in his eyes and in his smile and in his laughter--laughter like warm chocolate sliding down my throat, staying with me even after its fleeting sound is gone. I thought before that Mulder had no clue--that his life held no purpose, his quest held no goal. But I know now that Mulder's strength lies in existing, in reaching, in searching for that goal. And somewhere in that cool exterior of obsessive chasing and senseless ideas lies an intelligent, compassionate, dedicated man, whose grace and depth reach to astonishing heights in facing undeserved challenges. Mulder knows the difference between truths and lies, fantasy and reality, hope and expectation, and he uses it to his advantage. Mulder may not win, may not triumph over the darkness--but he will never, as long as he remains his own, let the darkness defeat him. Not as long as we have truth, and faith, and hope. Not as long as we have each other. _______________ MULDER "Why don't you go home and get some sleep?" Absurdly, as the inappropriate laugh bursts out of me I'm reminded of the images my dreams have brought me this past week--of lighthouses, Stratego games, white cars... And my sister. And like a knight in shining armor, I thought I could swoop in and save her. The tenative smile Scully gives me is one of relief, and hope. It's a comforting gesture that serves to remind me that, no matter what, I will always have Scully to believe in. Her brief embrace levels us as equals...partners. She leaves as she came, in silence, abandoning me to my thoughts. One heart left. Roche asked me how sure I was--he asked me how I knew. For Scully, the strength of sheer belief in her father's love was enough to satisfy her...not satisfy, but reaffirm her faith in the power she had always been taught. But I...I don't know. I'll never know. And the prospect of spending the rest of my life fruitlessly not knowing, I must admit, is a bleak and utterly frightening thought. I want to know. I've based my life on the need to know. Every day begins with a hunger, a yearning, a truth to be found. A possibility. A doorway. A hope. John Lee Roche, with his smile and his easy stance and his casual teasing, stole my hope. I was a twelve year old boy with the need to believe in something, sick of not trusting and suspecting. Roche gave me a straw to grasp at, a religion to place my faith in, even if his temple was admittedly the wrong belief for me. He gave me *something*--a truth. A possible truth. A death, a life, a dead end...what does it matter? There was something there to sink my teeth into after all those years and all the lies and the little girls I saw but could not touch. And, in the end, he gave that hope back to me. He gave me my sister. I felt her in my arms--real, whole, complete. Alive. He gave me the hope that one day I *will* find her and hold her in my arms as I've done so many times in my dreams. He gave me reality. And then he stole it away. But the hope, as Scully has taught me, lingers. Roche gave me back my dreams--he gave me a truth I've never been able to give myself. My sister. Shadows, in the end. Shadows that are swallowed up by the larger part of the darkness from which they are born. Shadows that, for once, were cast out into the harsh sunlight and I found that the sunlight hurt my eyes and that maybe my destiny was to prefer the shadows to the light. My life has been about the need to find my sister, and then about something bigger: about finding truth. A truth that, I admit, will probably never satisfy me because someone else, somewhere, will know a different version. If I was delivered an exact replica of Samantha, who looked like her and talked like her and laughed like her--who was her--and another shadow told me that there was another 'real' Samantha out there, waiting, I'd be satisfied with neither and spend the rest of my life searching for the real one. I'm lost. I come away with nothing. But there are pictures, and letters, and things. And there are memories. However false they may be, no matter what, Samantha Mulder was my sister. There was nothing I could do. I had to kill him. The official reports will reflect that--he was about to shoot a little girl. America wanted him dead, anyway. He was a murderer. He should have been on Death Row. I will be in the newspapers. I will be a hero. Killing Roche was justified--killing itself is justified. But that still doesn't make it right. I wanted to know. I wanted to believe. I wanted to look into his eyes in the safety of his jail cell and listen to him tell me *one* *last* *time*. I believe in UFOs and liver-eating mutants and shapeshifting monsters, but not in miracles or love or my own heart. There's something to be said, in that--that maybe, once in awhile, if I just took a break and stayed home, I'd find something about myself that no shadowy consortium member can tell me. That no matter what the Project has made me, I am still my own--that I have beliefs and ideas and an optimism that no conspiracy can touch. I may not know the truth as Roche would tell it, but I know myself. I know the nagging doubts and the persistent fears will stay with me, always. Justifiably. I know the truth is a far ideal and that the quest is often hopeless. I know this incident means punishment, probation, suspension, expulsion. I don't give a damn. Perhaps, someday, there won't be this hunger in me, this need to find any truth but the one in myself I'm so afraid to face. Perhaps, one day, I can stop looking and settle down to mourn the loss of my sister and my faith. Perhaps, then, I can move on. But that would mean giving up this hope, this one belief I've learned to hang on to. And I'm not ready to let go of that, not just yet. So, for now, I tuck the faded cloth heart into the sloppily-ordered desk, and let it remind me of the one truth I do know. I have Scully. I have truth. I will move on. I loved her. She was my sister. And even now, here, in this room, in the silence, I fancy I can hear her calling, shrieking, laughing. Even in silence. _______________ THE END: I've never written this kind of story before and I'd really appreciate some raw, honest criticism. Vince Gilligan can rest assured: I won't be eclipsing his brilliance any time soon. All comments accepted and joyfully responded to at: SkylandMt@aol.com Thanks!