"Laws of Motion" is a sequel to "Universal Invariants," which can be found on its own page now: http://www.omniscribe.com/universal.html. "Laws" picks up in season five with "Redux II." Scully barely has time to unpack before a ghost from the past sends her and Mulder down a murderous rabbit hole. This story is rated NC-17 for violence, sexuality and adult themes. It is not suited for people under 18. Some characters herein, including Mulder and Scully, do not belong to me. They are the intellectual property of 1013 Productions. No infringement is intended. Questions? Comments? Hit me with them at syn_tax6@yahoo.com ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~ Laws of Motion ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~ Chapter One: Dead Woman Walking By syntax6 Mulder trailed into Scully's apartment carrying her small overnight bag; one did not need many toiletries and personal items when one went into the hospital to die. But Scully and her things had received a last-minute pardon, and instead of six feet under, she stood six feet in front of him, marveling at her furniture. He hovered near the door as she stroked her blue and white striped couch, picked up a half-finished novel and held it against her chest. Mulder felt like an intruder. "Maybe I should just get going," he said. "You probably want to unpack." The words sounded ridiculous even as he uttered them. How long could it take to put away a toothbrush, a few pairs of underwear and her glasses? He set the light suitcase on the floor. Scully turned, still clutching her book, and smiled at him. He wasn't sure what to make of this new smiling woman she had become in the last week. He was glad she was happy, but when she trained that smile at his direction, it made him nervous. There was still so much he had not told her. "No, stay," she said, her smile melting into a yawn. "After all, I promised I'd make you lunch." Mulder, having sucked down a pair of donuts before picking her up at the hospital, was not especially hungry, but Scully was already on her way to the kitchen. He crossed to the bookshelf and lifted the glass casing on her anniversary clock. It had wound down sometime in the recent past, at five-oh-five, but whether that was morning or evening or ten days ago, Mulder could not figure. The best he could do was to set it moving again. In the kitchen, he heard Scully opening and closing cabinet doors. He was admiring his handiwork with the clock, the rotating parts beginning their smooth dance once more, when Scully emerged from the kitchen looking chagrined. "I don't seem to have any food," she admitted. Mulder exhaled with palpable relief. "So then I'll go pick up some groceries and you can rest," he said, already moving for the door. "Mulder, wait. You don't have to get me groceries, not after everything else..." "You should be in bed, Scully, not the frozen food aisle." He hunched his shoulders, unable to turn and look at her. Scully, he wanted to say, wake up here. I danced with the devil and you have a microchip in your neck. When it happens, payback will be a bitch for this one. "Mulder, look at me." Mulder made himself face her. Her eyes still held that grateful, liquid look he knew he didn't quite deserve. Her face was pale, her collarbone visible above the neck of her thin sweater. He thought about how this could have easily been the day of her funeral instead of her homecoming and suddenly his eyes were liquid too. "I'm well. You need to start getting used to the idea, okay? I realize our collective bad luck might make one a little gun shy, but the tests don't lie. No tumor and no trace of cancer. I've got my life back and I certainly plan on living it." "That's great, Scully, really." She folded her arms. "Spare me the bubbly enthusiasm." God, he did not have the emotional stamina for this conversation right now. Not now. Maybe never. "It's just so soon," he said. "How long before we can be sure then? Two weeks? A month? A year?" This was so Scully. Drag a flukeworm in front of her and she would deny its existence even as it bit her on the ass. Put a chip in her neck and she was already sure of its rules: everything is fine now! Mulder couldn't blame her for not wanting to look much deeper at this particular bit of evidence, but he was afraid that in this case, the gift horse might be Trojan. He didn't believe the Smoking Man had healed Scully out of the goodness of his gray, shrunken heart. "No one wants to believe it more than me," he told Scully softly. Her posture softened and she shook her head. "It's been a long week for both of us." "So let me go to the store. Really, it's no big deal. You shouldn't spend your first day of freedom standing in line at the checkout anyway." Scully relented, so he escaped into the hall where he could breathe again, practically bouncing down the stairs and out of her apartment building. Fall had come to D.C., setting fiery colors to the trees and turning the sky an almost painful blue. Leaves curled into tiny abstract sculptures before floating to the ground. Mother Nature was beautiful in her slow death. Mulder cruised the supermarket aisles, his appetite returning as the sight of red apples, rotund pumpkins and pre-packaged barbeque chicken. He picked up the essentials and then some -- did Scully need toilet paper? He stood with a package in his hand for a good thirty seconds before tossing it in the cart. Any other personal hygiene items, and Scully was on her own. The apartment sat silent when he returned. He set the bags in the kitchen and tiptoed down the hall to the bedroom, where he pushed open the door to take a peek. Scully lay unmoving under the covers, blinds drawn against the sun. He couldn't see her face or hear her breathing. Mulder hesitated a moment, lip caught between his teeth, but at last he withdrew and let her sleep. Eventually he was just going to have to trust it: Scully was alive. He went back to the kitchen and began playing hide-and-seek in her cabinets. Where did the peanut butter go? The sugar? He was debating the proper location for a loaf of bread when her phone rang. Mulder lunged across to reach the phone against the wall before it could wake Scully. "Hello," he said, a little breathless. There was momentary silence on the other end. "Hello?" Mulder tried again. "I--I'm trying to reach Dana Scully," said a distressed man on the other end. "This used to be her number." Mulder could not place the voice. "It still is her number," Mulder replied, "but she's not available at the moment. Can I take a message for her?" "I need to talk to Dana. Please, it's very important." "I'm afraid that's just not possible right now." "Is this Mulder?" blurted the voice. "You're Mulder, aren't you." "This is Mulder." He was still trying to figure out where he knew the voice. "Who is this?" "It's Ethan. Ethan Minette. Remember? I really need to speak to Dana right now. Can you find her for me?" "Mulder?" Scully appeared behind him, blinking sleepily. "Who's on the phone?" He held the phone out to her, even as he knew he would regret it. "It's Ethan." The surprise on Scully's face told him she was as shocked to find her ex-fiance on the phone as he was. She grabbed the receiver and walked with it into the kitchen. "Ethan?" Mulder stood nearby, eavesdropping openly. "You what?" Scully said. She grabbed a kitchen chair and sank into it. "Wait, slow down. When did this happen?" Mulder took the kitchen chair opposite her so he could see her face. She looked in shock. "Yes, of course I can come," she was saying. "Where are you?" A pause. "I know where that is. Okay, I'm leaving now. All right? I'll be there as soon as I can, and in the meantime don't say a word to anyone. Not anyone, you hear me?" She clicked off the phone and sat with it in her lap for a moment. "That was Ethan," she said. "So I gathered." "He's been arrested." She raised her eyes to his. "For murder." "What?" "I have to go down there and talk to him." The chair scraped loudly against the floor as she pushed out of her seat. Mulder followed her back down the hall. "Scully, wait a minute. You just got out of the hospital a few hours ago." He charged into the bedroom right behind her only to draw up short as she started taking off her sweater. Mulder faced the wall but did not cease arguing. "The doctor said you were supposed to be taking it easy." "I'm sure Dr. Harris would understand this is an exception." "What happened?" "I don't have the details. They're holding him down at the sixteen-six." Mulder heard her pants zip and turned around to find her suited up in work clothes. She pulled her hair from under her collar and affixed a holster over one shoulder. He couldn't look at her without seeing her sunken and withered in a hospital bed. A stiff breeze could still knock her down. "Who's the victim?" Mulder asked, and Scully froze. "He didn't say," she replied, not looking at him. "Look, I know it's not ideal, but he's asked for my help and I can't not go." "Does he know you've been sick?" Scully shrugged into her coat. "No. We haven't... I haven't spoken to him in a long time." Resigned, Mulder fished his keys out of his pocket. "I'll drive," he said. ~*~*~ Detective Franklin, a tall black man in a smart suit and polished shoes, chewed a toothpick out of the corner of his mouth and apprised them with a skeptical gaze. "This isn't FBI territory," he said. "Just a plain and simple homicide." "Ethan Minette asked to see me," Scully said. "Yes, that's the part that has me puzzled, see. Most people ask for a lawyer." "He doesn't have a lawyer?" asked Scully, appalled. "One phone call and you're it. You can understand my confusion on the matter." "I'm as in the dark as you are," Scully replied. "Can I see him now?" "Sure. Tell him a confession would make this whole thing a whole less painful on the both of us, could you?" Mulder and Scully both started to follow him to the back, but he stopped Mulder with a hand on his chest. "He called her, not you." "We're partners," Mulder explained. "Well, then you can be the partner that waits in the lobby by the Coke machine." "I'll be okay, Mulder, thanks." Franklin led her to the back and down a corridor to an interrogation room that was guarded by a uniformed officer. Scully's heart picked up speed as she thought of what she might find on the other side. The last true conversation she'd had with Ethan, she'd been returning his engagement ring. "Remember what I said about the confession," Franklin said as he opened the door. "I'll take it under advisement." She entered white brick room and found Ethan looking sweaty and pale at the table. In her mind, he had always been the same as the last time she'd seen him -- boyish and guileless with hurt in his eyes as she struggled to tell him she did not love him anymore. This Ethan was older, still handsome but with less hair and a thicker middle. "Dana," he said, getting up. "Thanks for coming." Scully was staring at his white T-shirt, which was dotted with dried bloodstains. He looked down at himself and back at her. "It's not what it looks like." "That's good, because it looks really bad, Ethan." She took a seat. "What happened?" "Some reunion, huh? I'm sorry to drag you into all this, but I didn't know who else to call." His lower lip trembled and he swallowed hard. "Melinda's dead." "Melinda your camera woman?" asked Scully, and he nodded. "Oh, Ethan." "I was woken up this morning by cops banging on my door. Apparently someone called a tip in saying there was a disturbance in my apartment. I didn't even notice the blood at first. I just went to the door, and there she was, lying face down on my living room floor. I didn't kill her, Dana. I swear I didn't." "Was she in the apartment when you went to sleep?" Scully asked carefully. "I don't know," he answered, a shadow creeping over his features as he ducked his head. "I was pretty drunk last night. Melinda took me home. I remember hitting my bed, but I don't remember her leaving. Someone stabbed her, D. Maybe she was in the next room dying while I was passed out. Maybe she yelled for help and I didn't even hear." "Why were you drinking?" In the years she had known him, Ethan had never been drunk enough to black out. Once he drank too much champagne at a New Year's party and told a few raunchy jokes in mixed company. That was it. He wasn't a big drinker, period. Two beers and he was usually done. Scully examined his red-rimmed eyes, greasy hair, and shaking hands as she tried to find the man she'd loved. Ethan took a shuddering breath. "Melinda was leaving and we had a get-together at the pub for her. A party." "Leaving?" "She took a job in Seattle. She wanted out." Despite his obvious fear and fatigue, the words still held the bitter edge of anger. "Out from camerawork or out from you?" Scully asked. "Both. Neither." He ran a hand through his hair and rocked back in his chair. "It was the Ryerson story, mainly. She'd had enough." "Ryerson," Scully repeated, trying to place the name. "Congressman Ryerson? The one with the dead wife?" "Dead mistress." He narrowed his eyes at her. "It's been all over the air nonstop for the past two months, Dana. Where've you been?" Scully thought of the long nights she had spent shivering under the sheets with the bathroom an agonizing journey away. No TV, no radio. The flickering light and noise had just increased her nausea. With death came clarity, and Scully had no use for the politicians' petty indiscretions. The newspapers and the networks trailed after dirty bed sheets and spreadsheets while meanwhile women were abducted from their homes, had their bodies scraped inside out and then returned to serve a slow, painful death sentence in front of their helpless friends and family. Scully squeezed her eyes shut against the sudden flush of anger. "Dana?" She opened them again. "I've been away," she said. "But I'm back now. What about the Ryerson story?" "He killed Rachel Campenella, the aide he'd been sleeping with. Everyone knows it. No one can prove it. I can't believe you don't know the case. God." He stared at the wall over her head. "I guess it's been my life for so long now I forget it's just news to everyone else." A sharp knock on the door made Scully jump, and Detective Franklin came through the door with another man. "Sergeant Millard here is going to need that shirt," Franklin said, pointing at Ethan's T-shirt. "We got you another to wear for now." Ethan looked pleadingly at Scully. "Do I have to? Don't they need a warrant?" "I'm afraid you have to give them the shirt, Ethan." "That's evidence you're wearing," Franklin told him. "We can seize anything in plain sight, and it don't get much plainer than wearing a woman's blood all over your pajamas." Franklin rolled the toothpick to the other side of his mouth as Ethan stripped his dirty shirt and put on the police-issued one. "Did you tell her about the murder weapon?" Franklin asked. Wearily, Ethan shook his head. "Kitchen knife," he murmured to Scully. "From *his* kitchen." Franklin handed the bagged shirt to the Sergeant and said, "Your boy here better start talking if he expects any help from our end." As they left, Ethan kicked his chair. "I can't fucking believe this! I would never hurt Melinda, ever! Instead of searching for who really did this, they've got me locked in here like an animal. You have to help me, Dana. Please. You're good at this. You always used to tell me about your solve rate and how you and Mulder find stuff that the cops missed. Well, they're sure as hell missing something here, because I did not do this." He was trembling by the end of his speech. Scully deliberately made herself more calm, keeping her tone even and her words careful. "You need a lawyer, Ethan. They're going to have you arraigned." "I know that. I know. But a lawyer won't find out who killed Melinda." "Who do you think killed her?" He blinked. "I--I keep thinking, and my mind just hits the wall. I mean, to do this to her, someone must have hated her, right? You don't...you don't just stab someone like that. That's some serious rage. No one hated Melinda. You knew her. Everyone liked her." Scully smiled sadly. "Yes, everyone liked her." "So you'll help me? You'll help me find out who did this to her?" He grabbed her hands and held tight. "Ethan, I want to help you, but I have no authorization in this case." "That never seemed to stop you guys before." He gave her a crooked attempt at a smile. Scully extricated herself from his grasp. "I'll see what I can do." "Thank you. Thank you so much." "I can't promise anything." "I realize that. Just that you're willing to try means everything to me." He sniffed hard and put his hands on his hips. "So, how you been otherwise? Good?" Scully patted his arm. "Good," she replied, and he nodded. "I'll go to the morgue and see what I can find out there, okay? I think I know the ME pretty well. You hang in there." She ducked to try to meet his downcast gaze. "And get a lawyer." "I will. Thanks again, Dana. It's, um, really good to see you." Scully wished she could say the same. She patted her cheeks with both hands as she walked back through the station to find Mulder. As ordered, he was lounging around near the Coke machine with a soda in his hand and the remnants of a bag of Cheetos in his lap. "Hey," he said when he saw her. "How did it go?" "Not good," she replied. "Let's get out of here, okay?" He followed her in silence back to the car. Once inside, she leaned her head back against the seat and closed her eyes. Mulder put the keys in the ignition but did not start the engine. "Are you all right?" "Yes. No." She sighed and sat up. "It's Ethan in there, you know? I can't quite believe it yet. I never imagined seeing him like this." Mulder chewed his thumbnail for a moment. "How did you imagine seeing him?" "Hmm? I didn't, not really. It's just..." "What?" She shifted to look at him. "You think that everything and everyone in your past stays right where you left them, like you could turn around and retrace your steps you'd find them just the same as when you left." "I don't know if I'm following." "The Ethan I knew never would have had a dead woman in his apartment," she said wistfully. "I guess what I'm realizing is... that Ethan doesn't exist anymore." "And you're wondering if maybe he ever did?" Scully squared her shoulders and reached for her seatbelt. "We have to get to the morgue." "Wait a second." He touched her arm, stilling her. "You think maybe Ethan did this?" "No, I don't think he did this. He says he would never hurt Melinda, and I believe him." "Melinda? His camerawoman?" Mulder sat back in apparent surprise. "I went out on a date with her." "That's right, you did." Scully looked him up and down. "I'd forgotten about that." "It was a pretty good date as dates go." He seemed suddenly shy and started brushing Cheetos crumbs from his shirt. But Scully's curiosity was piqued. "So then why just the one date?" "Oh, I don't know. It was a long time ago." Yes, Scully recalled, back just before her abduction and her return -- time lost in more than one sense. She and Mulder rarely talked about it, as if mentioning the ordeal could call up old ghosts like summoning the Devil with his name. "She was nice," Mulder finished lamely. "Yeah, nice." Scully hadn't known the Melinda very well either -- just to say hello. Mostly she had heard about her through Ethan's stories of Melinda's many dates. Mulder and Scully had a moment of silence in the Taurus for the loss of a woman they both only sort of knew. "How did she die?" Mulder asked at last. "Stabbed, apparently, with one of Ethan's kitchen knives." Mulder winced. "Ouch." "He says he must have slept through it." Mulder's expression said how likely he found this proposition. On the face of things, Scully had to agree. Melinda was a healthy, young adult woman. Unless her attacker caught her while she was asleep or otherwise unconscious, she would have fought hard. And according to Ethan, Melinda had been the sober one, just dropping him off at his apartment before returning to her own. "What the hell could have happened?" Mulder asked. "That's what we have to go to the morgue to find out." ~*~*~ "Let me do the talking," Scully ordered as they crossed the parking lot in the bright afternoon sunshine. Mulder watched her behind his shades and felt only a little bit guilty that he was following her into a morgue. They were back in action, wrangling dead bodies that didn't really belong to them, and for a moment it almost felt like normal life again. She wore the chunky heels, her stride quick and confident as ever, and he tried not to notice the way her pants hung low on her too-slender hips. Just a brief visit with the M.E., Mulder reasoned, and he could have her tucked back in bed by sundown. As it was, her mother was probably phoning Scully's apartment every ten minutes in a panic. Mulder strolled down the long hall with his hands shoved deep in his pockets. The morgue had never been his favorite place. He wasn't squeamish, but lately he'd been having a hard time looking at bodies as objective pieces of evidence. He caught up with Scully at the M.E.'s office as she was greeting Henry Kwan with a warm handshake. "Agent Scully, it's so good to see you," Kwan was saying as Mulder poked his head around the corner. "Agent Mulder, welcome to you as well." Mulder nodded and gave a vague wave. He could appreciate Kwan's appreciation arcane biology. Kwan had a collection of pickled oddities on his shelves that rivaled Mulder's own. "Last I heard you were in the hospital very ill," Kwan said to Scully as Mulder admired a seven-fingered hand. "You must be doing better." "Much better, thank you." "Good, good. I don't ever want to see you showing up here as a customer." Mulder glanced over, askance, but Scully smiled. "That makes two of us," she assured Kwan. "So am I to presume this is not a social call?" the doctor asked as he adjusted his round-rimmed glasses. "The McKenn case," Scully said. "I assume you've got her here?" "She is in there waiting under the lights for me right now. Detective Franklin call every five minutes, just like I don't have four other active cases today. But this is a plain homicide, yes? What is the FBI's interest in this case?" "Unofficial," said Scully pointedly. Kwan's eyes crinkled in a smile. "Ah, I see. It is on the QT. Under the hat. Behind the bush." "Something like that," Scully agreed. "Do you think we could take a look at her?" "Sure, let's all go in and have a look right now." Mulder lagged behind the two pathologists as they entered the autopsy bay. Scully and Kwan put on gloves and masks; Mulder didn't plan on getting that close. He stopped about five feet from where Melinda lay, naked and washed clean. He couldn't have recalled her face before this, but now that he saw her, he wondered how he had managed to forget. Melinda was beautiful, with dark hair, full, broad lips and a lithe, toned body. Charcoal lashes cast shadows on the pale skin under her eyes. "Someone really wanted to hurt this girl," Kwan observed. "I count seventeen wounds," Scully replied as she held up one arm for Mulder. "See?" she called over to him. "She did fight him." "Rigor has been here and gone," Kwan said. "She's been dead quite a while." He ducked down. "We've got lividity at her shoulders. Probably down her back as well." "Mulder," Scully said, looking up. She motioned him over to the body. "What do you have?" "Look at this. The blood settled at her back, meaning she was lying face up for some time after she died." "So?" "So Ethan said the cops found her dead face down in his living room. At the very least, someone rolled her over." ~*~*~ They stayed long enough at the morgue that dusk had settled like a light blanket over the city when they emerged. Scully pulled her suit jacket tighter as they walked to the car. Inside, her eyes were dark and unreadable. "What are you thinking?" he asked her. "That someone's trying to frame Ethan for murder." "You think that cop Franklin will listen?" "Kwan will do his best to make him understand. The evidence doesn't lie." She leaned back against the seat and stared out the window at the night. Mulder reached over and touched her knee. "This isn't your fight, you know." "He called me." "And you helped him." "Some help. He's probably in lockup with the real rapists and murderers by now." She sighed and covered her face with her hands. "I have to do something. I owe it to Ethan to do something more to help him." "I don't understand. What do you owe him?" For some reason, his heart started beating faster, as if it were afraid of the answer. "You know." She looked over at him. "You know better than anyone, Mulder, because you were there." Mulder was mute. Scully swallowed with effort. "He--he waited for me all those months. He was so happy I was back. And then I..." She couldn't even say the words. Mulder could. "You left him." She nodded, a single heavy shake of the head. "The most horrible part is, I've never been entirely sure why. Maybe it doesn't matter anymore. But maybe this is my chance to find out." ~*~*~*~*~ Chapter Two: True Lies ~*~*~*~*~*~ Back at Scully_s apartment, they took a crash course in the Ryerson scandal using newspapers that had piled up in her recycling bin during her stint in the hospital. Mulder divided the stack between them on the coffee table, with their takeout pizza ensconced in the middle, while Scully fetched a pair of sodas from her refrigerator. A quick check of the expiration date said they were still drinkable. Scully paused only a moment to consider that she could have expired before her food had. "Ginger ale?" Mulder asked as she handed him a can. For weeks it had been all her stomach could handle. Ginger ale and weak tea. "Take it or leave it," she told him as she plopped on the couch. Mulder took it. He sat at one end of her sofa with a sagging slice of pizza in his hand and a by-gone front page from "The Washington Post" spread across his legs. From her side, Scully could still read the headline on the yellowed page: CONGRESSIONAL AIDE SLAIN. "Rachel Campenella, 27, was found fatally stabbed in her apartment yesterday morning," Mulder read aloud. "Campella_s mother, Joy Campella, 54, discovered her daughter_s body when she arrived to take her to church." "How awful," Scully said, shuddering as she imagined the scene. She pulled the thin blanket on her lap closer around her. This was one of her few lingering concessions to illness; she still grew cold easily. "Campenella has been employed for the past year as an aide in Senator Christopher Ryerson_s office. The office has released a brief statement from Ryerson saying, ‘I was horrified to get this devastating news. Rachel was an intelligent, vivacious woman with tremendous ambition and unending compassion. She was a true luminary, and the world is a darker place without her. My deepest sympathies and prayers go out to her family at time." "Touching," Scully said flatly as she picked up a later edition. This one was headlined: RYERSON DENIES AFFAIR. "It says here he was overhead arguing with her the Friday before her murder." "Does it say about what?" Scully squinted. "No. But wait a second here, Mulder. By my count we have two women stabbed to death inside an apartment building the space of two months. Coincidence?" "Could be. Stabbing is such a personal crime, especially the way these women died. Whoever killed them just kept coming at them with a knife. You would think that if the Melinda and Rachel's killer were the same man, he'd be easy to find. Someone who knew Melinda and Rachel and hated them both." "That would rule Ethan out." "Nothing here about the murder weapon," Mulder said as he reached for another paper. "Maybe that came later." He scanned another article and shook his head. "No knife found at the scene and no missing knives from her kitchen. Killer must have come prepared and taken the knife with him when he left." "So whoever it was came to the apartment with murder in mind. Melinda was theoretically murdered with a weapon of convenience -- Ethan's kitchen knife." "No sign of forced entry." Mulder continued reading. He shook his head and tossed the paper back on the table. "These two murders are as different as they are alike. No way to tell right now if they're connected." Scully leaned back and rubbed her eyes with one hand. "All I know is that Ethan could not have done this. He wouldn't even let me kill a spider if it got into the house." Mulder smiled at her. "You make a habit of spider killing, Scully? Got your picture up in spider post offices around the country?" "They should know better than to invade my bathtub." When she did not say anything further, Mulder reached over and tapped her knee. "It'll be okay, Scully. They have a strong case against Ethan, but it's not without holes. A good attorney will have him out in no time." "He didn't even call an attorney. Can you believe that? He called me instead." "I believe it. I always call you first whenever I'm in the slammer." Mulder tried again for humor, and this time Scully smiled. "That's different," she replied, nudging his leg with her toes. "You're usually calling from some underground government facility that requires breaching national security to spring you." "Hey, I've been a good boy lately!" Mulder protested with a grin. Scully sobered and met his eyes. "Yes," she agreed softly. "You certainly have." The moment held until Mulder looked away, seemingly embarrassed. He started gathering up the remnants of their dinner. "I should get going so you can rest," he said. "You don't have to leave." Scully trailed him to the kitchen, where he was putting the plates in the sink. He rolled up the ends of his shirt as the water ran, and Scully found herself staring at the springy hair on his forearms. "Ten hours ago you were in the hospital," Mulder told her, as if she weren't incredibly aware of this fact. He squeezed her nearly empty bottle of dishwashing soap too hard and tiny bubbles floated into the air between them. Scully watched his hands slide back and forth over the soapy plates. "I can do that," she said without much enthusiasm. It was more fun to watch him. "I've no doubt. But you're too late. It's already done." He rinsed a plate and held it up for inspection. "My hero." Mulder wiped his hands on his ass and started heading for the door, grabbing his jacket from the back of her chair on his way past. "I'll give you a call tomorrow." "Mulder, wait," she said and he turned, leather jacket halfway on and looked at her expectantly. She leaned against the doorjamb like a shy prom date. "I just wanted to say thank you. You know, for picking me up at the hospital today, and for...well, for everything." He bent down towards her, so close she could smell his skin and his jacket and the ginger ale on his breath. She closed her eyes. "Anytime, Scully," she felt him whisper, and then he was gone. Scully blinked and touched her flushed cheek. It was the first time in over a week he had not kissed her goodbye. ~*~*~*~*~ For many moons, Mulder had existed happily by himself in the basement of the Hoover building. He welcomed the thick concrete floor that blanketed him from the footsteps above. A corner penthouse office might signal success to most, but Mulder was content with his cinderblock cellar and his walls of file cabinets. No one bothered him here. No fellow fibbies dropped in every few minutes to ask him his opinion about their cases, as used to be the everyday occurrence in both the VCU and BSU. No one whispered behind his back at the coffee machine. No one stole his pens, used his stapler or peeked over his shoulder at his email. He kept reminding himself how much he'd enjoyed that glorious silence as he sat in his Scully-less office for the third straight week. Her table gathered dust in the corner; her plant had wilted. One journal lay overturned in half, open to an article on insect DNA. Mulder knew this because he'd checked about a dozen times. He had even finished reading the article for her, not that he'd really understood all of it. But he had been prepared just in case she had asked from her hospital bed, "I wonder how that article turned out?" Now it sat waiting for her to return and pick it up, as though she had never been away. Mulder tried not to count the minutes. It turned out to be fewer minutes that he had imagined, because just before lunchtime he heard the sound of familiar footsteps in the hall. He looked up in time to catch Scully walking through the door. "Morning," she said, paper coffee cup in her hand and briefcase at her side. Mulder leaned way back in his chair and folded his arms across his chest. "Agent Scully, you are supposed to be on medical leave until next week. I've seen the paperwork." "That's why I'm here unofficially," she explained as she crossed to her desk. Mulder eyed the tailored suit, the FBI ID clipped to her lapel and the SIG holstered near her hip. "Really? That's a mighty official looking gun you have there." "Mulder, you're still checking out my gun after all these years? And here I thought the romance was dead." She took out her laptop and set it up on the table. He kept staring at her until she gave an exaggerated sigh and met his gaze. "What would you have me do, Mulder? Sit at home and watch Oprah all day?" "It's a paid vacation, Scully. Do you know how many people would kill for that?" She gave him a look that suggested he might end up as the dead body if he pursued this particular line of questioning. Mulder raised both palms. "I give up. Work away." "It's not work," she said. "It's Ethan. I wanted to do a little checking into Senator Ryerson. And before you say anything, I know it's not my responsibility, but if someone is framing him..." "Scully." "...whoever it is went to an awful lot of trouble to set him up, and I don't trust that they've finished the job yet." "Scully!" She looked annoyed. "What?" He turned his computer monitor around so she could see what he had been working on: a background check on Senator Ryerson. Scully gave him a slow smile and came around to check out the results. "Anything good?" "Nothing that screams 'I murdered my mistress' if that's what you mean. He's the son of an Illinois supreme court judge and the grandson of the late Senator Augustine Ryerson, also from Illinois. He went to Harvard law *and* business school, where he met his wife Julianne. They've been married thirty-two years and have two grown children. No sign that he's ever been in trouble with the law." "You know, I seem to recall something about his wife now that you mention her. Wasn't she in treatment for drug abuse a few years ago?" "Yeah, she did a stint in rehab in 1993. Nothing since." Scully's cell phone rang in her purse and she went to retrieve it. "Hello? Oh, hi, Dr. Kwan. How are you? Yes, of course I have a minute. Now? Sure. When did you want to meet?" She clicked off a moment later with a puzzled look on her face. "Henry Kwan wants to meet me on the Mall in twenty minutes." "Did he say why?" "No, but I assume it's about Melinda. I don't have any other business with him." Scully picked up her coat and headed for the door. Mulder grabbed his suit jacket and followed her. At the elevator, she gave him The Eyebrow. "Don't you have official FBI business you need to attend to, Mulder?" Mulder adjusted his necktie. "It's officially my lunch hour. Come on, Scully, I'll buy you and Kwan a hotdog." Instead, Scully opted for a pretzel with mustard but Kwan accepted a hotdog with the works. "Thank you for coming out to meet me here," he said. "After what happened, I wasn't so sure about speaking on the phone." They all sat down on a bench. "Is this about Melinda?" Scully asked. Kwan nodded. "I've never had anything like this happen before. I told you how anxious the detective was for my notes. Sometimes they get so anxious on high profile cases like this that they come stand over my shoulder while I do the work. But this time, it was the DA who came himself, and he brought two other men with him. They were never introduced, but I saw they carried guns." "They wanted your report?" Mulder asked. "They wanted all of it. My report, my notes. The whole tamale. They ask me, 'Is this your all your copies?'" He shrugged. "So I made some. The tape is gone, but the rest I have. Just in case something should happen to the originals." "What all did you find in the autopsy?" asked Scully. "Much the same as we discussed yesterday. The cause of death was massive internal bleeding caused by transsection of the abdominal aorta." Kwan looked around over his shoulder and took another bite of hotdog. "One thing I did find," he said. "The victim had sexual intercourse shortly before she died. I collected semen samples for the lab." "Rape?" Scully asked, and Kwan shook his head. "No sign of vaginal bruising or tearing." "I thought you said Melinda was at a going-away party most of the night," Mulder said to Scully. "That's what Ethan told me." "Maybe someone wanted one for the road," Mulder mused. "Dr. Kwan, you didn't happen to do the autopsy on Rachel Campenella, did you?" Scully wanted to know. The doctor shook his head. "Not me. I heard Roy Albridge got that case. I wonder if the DA wanted his notes too." ~*~*~*~ Back at the office, Mulder continued his computer work while Scully stared at the wall. "I suppose it's possible that they just wanted to make sure there was no leak of information in the case," she said after a while. Mulder's chair creaked as he turned around to look at her. "You don't honestly believe that." "No. I just can't think of a good reason the DA would come and demand all of Kwan's files." "You said it yourself, Scully. If it's a frame, someone's doing a bang-up job." "I don't believe the DA's office would frame Ethan for murder. What motive would they have?" "You and I are certainly not the only ones to note similarities between Melinda's murder and what happened to Rachel Campenella. I bet the DA put two and two together and got four the same as we did." His desk phone rang and Mulder stretched to answer it. "Mulder." "Mulder, it's Skinner. I'd like to come down and have a talk with you. Is now a good time?" "Yeah, now's fine." He glanced over at Scully. "Actually, sir, make it five minutes. I, uh, I've got to see a man about a horse." "Five minutes then," Skinner said in a tone of long-suffering. "You better hit the road," Mulder told Scully as he hung up the phone. "Skinner's on his way down here, and I don't think he's going to be on board with your extracurricular fun. He's the one who went out of his way to get you the extra leave time." Scully looked surprised. "God, and after what I said to him. Mulder..." "We can chat about this later," Mulder said, moving her bodily from her seat and steering her towards the door. "You have the time it takes me to visit the john to get out of here, or you're going to be meeting him in the elevator." "What did he want?" Scully was trying to turn around and ask questions even as he was showing her the exit. "To run away with me to Fiji." "Mulder--" "Scully!" Her mouth twitched as he hit the "up" button for her. "You hate the beach," she said when the doors slid open. "Go. Bye. I will call you later." Mulder leaned against the wall in relief as Scully finally left. He had only a few seconds to rest because the elevator dinged again moments later, and the doors opened to reveal Skinner. "Mulder?" he said, apparently surprised to find one of his agents lounging in the hall. "Just on my way back from the restroom, sir." Mulder led his boss to the office, where Scully's laptop sat open and blazing with light on her desk. Mulder winced inwardly and hoped like hell Skinner did not notice. "What, ah, what can I do for you?" Mulder asked, waving his hand at the chair to indicate Skinner should have a seat. Skinner ignored the silent invitation and instead wandered over to study Mulder's wall of arcane photos. "I just wanted you to know that I've signed you and Scully up for the FBI's teamwork seminar in Florida next week." "Sir, with all due respect, I really don't think Scully and I need a seminar on teamwork." "I'm afraid it's not up for discussion." Skinner turned and squinted at him. "No really," Mulder said. "Scully and me, we solve cases, we car pool -- we can even sing three part harmony with only two people, that's how great we are at the whole teamwork thing." "I know exactly how the two of you are, and that's precisely why you're going to Florida. For one week, at least, she won't be chasing you God-knows- where and ending up back in the hospital again." Mulder drummed a pencil against the edge of his desk. He had no good reply for that one. After all, he'd been the one insisting loudly and often that Scully take it easy and rest. "How long is the seminar exactly?" Skinner scowled. "For pity's sake, Mulder. It's four days. Surely you can survive four days in a nice motel with your fellow agents." "Maybe you could just send Scully." "It's a *partnership* seminar." Mulder tapped the side of his head. "Anything she learns goes right in here, sir. I'm telling you, we could lead this seminar." "Keep talking and perhaps that could be arranged." "No," Mulder said swiftly. "That's all right. I'll go." Driving home that night in the endless line dance that was rush hour traffic, Mulder called Scully to give her the bad news. "Skinner thinks we need partner lessons," he said when she answered. "Excuse me?" "He's signed us up for the annual team building seminar in Florida next week. Isn't this hurricane season, Scully?" "It might not be so bad," she answered. "I've always been sort of curious about what goes on at these things." Mulder groaned. "You've got to be kidding me. How about we just sing Kum-By-Yah over the phone and go to Disney World instead? We could get those mouse ear hats with our names on them and everything." "Mulder." "Come on, Scully. You'd look so cute in the mouse ears. And Goofy, he's got to be some sort of X- File, right? I mean, is he a dog, is he a cow, a donkey or what?" "Mulder." Her tone changed from weary to concerned. "What is it?" "I've got the news on. Detective Franklin is doing a press conference on Melinda's murder." She turned up the volume and all of a sudden he could hear. "...believe we have the right man in custody," Franklin was saying. "Mr. Minette will be arraigned tomorrow on charges of first degree murder." "You have evidence of premeditation?" hollered another voice, presumably a reporter. "I can't comment on the details of the investigation at this time," Franklin replied. "Is it true that Ethan Minette knew Rachel Campenella?" asked another voice, and Mulder nearly hit the car in front of him. "Yes, we have evidence the two knew each other, but that is all I'm prepared to say at this time. We are pursuing a number of angles right now and any public comment could compromise the investigation." "Is Minette a suspect in Rachel's murder?" Franklin dodged the question again. Scully's breathing changed, and the sound of the press conference faded as she moved away from the TV. "Mulder, Ethan never said anything to me about knowing Rachel Campenella." "I hope he took your advice about the lawyer," Mulder replied. "Because he could be waking up to find himself with a second murder charge." ~*~*~*~ Three days passed before Scully was permitted to see Ethan again. In the interim, he was arraigned on Melinda's murder and denied bail. Scully met him in a small, windowless room that smelled like mold and stale sweat. The wooden table had notches banged into it from angry criminals and frustrated cops. Scully took a seat in the cold metal chair and waited for the guard to bring Ethan in to see her. He smiled faintly at the sight of her, looking wan but more alert than the last time they had met. His shackled arms and legs prevented any close contact, but Scully wasn't in a hugging mood anyway. "Dana, hi," he said softly. "You lied to me." He blinked rapidly, hanging back near the door. "You never told me you knew Rachel Campenella." "It was one date over a year ago," Ethan replied, sounding tired. He shuffled over to take the seat across from her. "Mutual friends set us up just after she moved to Washington. We had drinks, dinner. That was it. I'd forgotten all about it until she turned up murdered this summer. I barely knew the woman." "She was stabbed, Ethan. Just like Melinda." "I know. God, believe me I know. I've had about sixty different cops point that fact out to me. I don't know what to say." When Scully didn't answer, he leaned closer to her over the table. "I didn't kill Rachel." "I didn't say you did." "You have to believe me." "They have a lot of evidence against you." "Well, then the evidence lies! I didn't kill Melinda, and I sure as hell didn't kill Rachel Campenella." His head fell back, exposing a rash on his neck. He stared at the ceiling and laughed bitterly. "I can't believe any of this is happening." "I can't help you if you don't tell me the truth." "I'm telling you the truth. It's the only truth I know. I didn't kill anyone." Scully eyed him as she would any other suspect. He looked pale and panicked, stubble dotting his skin. She tried to remember what he'd looked like the day they'd met, when he had fallen into step with her as she was out jogging, but she couldn't call up the picture. "Melinda had sex before she died," Scully said flatly. Ethan's shoulders sagged. "Yeah, I know." "You know? How do you know?" "I was the guy," he said with a little shrug, unable to look directly at her, as if this confession were somehow terrible in light of the other charges against him. Scully felt her mouth hanging open and shut it again. "You never mentioned that detail either. Jesus, Ethan. You ask me for help and then you don't tell me anything." "I forgot. I'm sorry." He clenched his fingers and looked at her pleadingly. "I wasn't in very good shape the last time we talked. I'm sorry. You're right, I should have mentioned that. I honestly forgot about it at the time. It's not every day I wake up and find a good friend murdered in my living room." "So you had sex." "You make it sound so cold." "I'm not making it sound anything, Ethan. I just want the facts." "Yeah, we had sex, um, at the party." "At the bar?" Ethan colored and he nodded dumbly. "In the supply closet. It, um, didn't go on very long." "So you were sleeping together regularly?" "No, I wouldn't say that." He shifted in his seat and stretched out his hands to her again. "Melinda and I would hook up sometimes off and on, just for fun. Only when we weren't with other people." "How often was this?" "I don't know. A dozen times, maybe a little more. We never did it when I was with you, Dana. You have to believe me about that." Scully rubbed the ache that was starting to form between her eyes. "I don't care about that right now, Ethan." "But I do. I--I would never have cheated on you." For some reason, this made Scully's heart lurch to her throat. She swallowed it back down and pressed on. "Let's stick to the facts here, okay? So you and Melinda had sex that night at the party. What else?" He hesitated, tracing the outline of someone's initials that had been carved into the table. "Ethan?" "I was kind of a dick to her after that. I know I made some snide comments about her leaving." "What kind of snide comments?" Ethan flushed again, and he pushed his chair away from the table. "Does it really matter?" "Yes, it really matters. What did you say to her?" "I don't remember all of it," he mumbled. "But I know I said something like...'you have to move because you've fucked all the guys around here.' I know. It's horrible, right? I didn't even mean it. I was just mad that she was leaving me after all these years." Scully felt sick, and not because of the ugly things Ethan had said. She knew he had just handed the prosecution their motive. Ethan reached across the table and grabbed her hands awkwardly. His palms were sweaty; the hard metal of the cuffs scraped her skin. Scully fought not to yank away as he tugged at her. "You'll still help me, right? Please say you'll help me." Scully was lightheaded, dizzy. "Ethan, I'm sorry. I have to go." Only when she left, shaking and walking from the prison as quickly as she could, did she realize that she had never answered him. ~*~*~*~ Mulder in coach class became a paper crane, all folded into sharp angles as he fidgeted in the narrow seat. Scully gave him a warning look as his elbow connected with her ribs for the second time. "Sorry," he muttered. He flailed again and nearly knocked her latte out of her hands. "Mulder, I realize you're chafing at the idea of this conference, but I would appreciate it if you could keep it to an inner struggle, at least for the next hour and a half." "Sorry," he said again with more feeling as he slouched in his seat. "I can't believe you're actually looking forward to this." "That's an exaggeration. I merely suggested we might learn something about each other on this trip." Mulder's grumble implied he already knew everything he cared to learn about her. "Hey, did you see the front page today?" he asked, sitting up again. He dropped the "Washington Post" in her lap. The headline read: POLICE SEEK POSSIBLE WITNESS IN CAMERAWOMAN'S DEATH "They haven't been able to find out who called the cops that morning," Mulder told her. Scully handed the paper back to him. "I don't want to talk about it right now." "Things didn't go so hot with Ethan, huh?" She gave him the look again. Mulder raised his hands. "Got it. Partnership. Communication. You don't have to spell it out for me, Scully." On the ground in Florida, they met up with two other agents who would be giving them a ride to the conference. "I'm Stonecypher, and this is Kinsley," said the female of the two. Kinsley waggled a pair of foil packets at Scully. "I charmed the flight attendant out of some extra snack packs, so you two just holler if you get hungry, okay?" Mulder was looking out the large windows with a forlorn expression on his face. "Does it look like hurricane to you?" he asked hopefully. Scully tugged his arm. "Say goodnight, Gracie." In the car, Stonecypher and Kinsley, apparent team- building conference veterans, shared some old war stories. "Did you play that game where, um, you can't use any negative words?" Stonecypher asked Scully. "I couldn't believe how hard it was not to use the word 'but,'" interjected Kinsley. "I'm having that same problem right now," Mulder replied in mock amazement. Scully smothered a smile. Mulder could be an ass, but he was an amusing ass. "Have you ever been to a team seminar, Agent Mulder?" Stonecypher inquired. "No, you know unfortunately around this time of year I always develop a severe hemmorhoidal condition." Thankfully, he did not get the opportunity to elaborate because moments later a state police officer stopped them at a roadblock. Mulder got out to stretch his legs and the next thing Scully knew he was following the crime scene tape into the forest. "Where's he going now?" Stonecypher asked. By the time Scully caught up with him, he was kneeling with a female officer over some tracks in the woods. The woman was gesturing deeper into the forest and Mulder was asking questions. From what Scully could overhear, at least two people were missing in a suspected animal attack. The woman office walked away and Mulder approached Scully with one of his "I'm thinking up new ways to get into trouble" expressions. "Mulder?" she said. "We've got this conference. They're waiting." "Yeah. How do I say this without using any negative words." "You want me to tell them that you're not going to make it to this year's teamwork seminar." "Yeah, you see that? We don't need that conference. We have communication like that. You know what I'm thinking!" Scully wished he could tell what she was thinking as she watched him walk away. ~*~*~ Scully attended the welcome lecture and received an activities folder for both herself and her wayward partner. She barely had time to leaf through it before the wine and cheese reception, which was being held in the motel's main conference room. Not exactly a cheery setting, Scully observed as she slipped into the room. The fake wood paneling was broken up by a single window on one side and a dry-erase board on the other. A white, crepe paper tablecloth disguised a conference table at one end, where a man in a tux was overseeing the cubes of cheese and the miniature bottles of cheap wine. Scully snaked her way across the room to the food. No one stopped to greet her, and she did not recognize anyone save Kinsley and Stonecypher. Years of basement dwelling with Mulder had cut her off from most of her fellow agents. Thrown together with them now, she had not the faintest idea how to engage them in conversation. Shoptalk was the norm, but Scully's latest case had been her own. She was not about to discuss at a cocktail party a government conspiracy to give her cancer and the resultant chip in her neck. Scully considered the wine selection with some interest. A long last medication free, she could finally drink alcohol again. It was a shame her first taste would come from wine with a screw-on top. "To my health," she thought, unable to hold back a smile as she picked up a bottle of white wine. She paused only when she realized there was no one present she wanted to toast with; the only someone who would really understand was back in his room hiding out. Scully waited until the caterer was looking the other way and swiped a small tray of cheese to go with her wine. Stupid conference aside, she and Mulder deserved a little celebration. Maybe they could learn something new about each other after all. "Who cut the cheese?" Mulder asked when she entered his room with the goodies. "Since you won't be making it to the conference," Scully said, crossing to his bed. "Par-tay!" "You know, of course, that this goes against the Bureau's policy of male and female agents consorting in the same motel room while on assignment." She managed to keep a straight face as she said it, despite the fact that she and Mulder had consorted plenty in the past. They argued cases, ate take- out food, played cards, and on rare occasion, even slept part of the night in the same bed together, due mainly to the fact that she tended to fall asleep in the middle of movies. As far as infractions went, this particular one sat quite low down on their list of habitual missteps. "You try any of that Tailhook crap on me, Scully, and I'll kick your ass," Mulder joked as she opened the wine. Scully only half-heard what he said after that because she was imagining what he would do if she really did smack him on the rear-end and make a suggestive remark. Unfortunately, she never got to find out because the next thing she knew, Mulder was putting on his coat and heading out the door. "You know, Mulder, sometimes I think a little work on your communication skills wouldn't be such a bad idea." "I'll be back soon, and we can build a tower of furniture. Okay?" Scully sighed and took a long gulp of wine. So much, she thought, for celebration. ~*~*~ Mulder was afraid to wonder if their little adventure into the forest could get any worse. Two of the their search party were missing. They had no food or water. Temperatures in the wet night now hovered slightly above freezing. Wasn't this supposed to be fucking Florida, he thought, the land of perpetual warmth and sunshine? Oh, yeah, and something had tried to claw him to death, leaving a large gash in his left shoulder. That same something still lurked out in the darkness somewhere, plotting its next move. Mulder huddled closer to the dank log on the forest floor and watched Scully try to start a fire. The cold and wet and lack of food couldn't be good for her, either. Considering this was his boondoggle, she was taking their rotten luck surprisingly well. "You need to keep warm," she told him, sounding concerned when she couldn't get the fire going. "Your body's still in shock." Mulder's teeth chattered. "I was once told that the best way to regenerate body heat was to crawl naked into a sleeping bag with someone else who is already naked." "Well, maybe if it rains sleeping bags, you'll get lucky." Mulder nearly choked; in five years, this was as close to propositioning him as she had ever gotten. In fact, the time she jumped him in Arecibo, she hadn't given him any warning at all. If she had, he might have run the other way. The fire flashed and burned out just as quickly. Scully shrugged and rejoined him by the log. Gently, she put her arms around him and tried to pull him into her lap. His muscles, sore and frozen, protested. "I don't want to wrestle," he said. "Get over here. I'm going to try to keep you warm." At length, she managed to haul his upper body across her legs, and Mulder cuddled closer. She was indeed warmer than he was. He smiled to think it; for so many months her hands had been ice to the touch as the cancer slowly drained her lifeblood away. "One of us has to stay awake," he reminded her. "You sleep, Mulder." "Wake me if you get tired." He closed his eyes and heard the night sounds of the forest. "Why don't you sing something," he prodded her. "Mulder, no." "If you sing something, I'll know you're awake." "Mulder, you don't want me to sing. I can't carry a tune." "It doesn't matter. Just sing anything." Mulder waited, holding his breath and blinking in the darkness. Silence stretched out so long he thought she had refused for good. But at last, she began: "Jeremiah was a bullfrog...was a good friend of mine." Oh, she's awful, Mulder thought with secret delight. "Chorus," he prompted when she stopped. "Joy to the world," Scully sang, and Mulder closed his eyes again. She had been right: they were learning something new about each other on this trip. Scully reached the end of the song, but Mulder was not asleep. His shoulder ached. His toes were frozen. And lingering worry about the invisible killers in the bushes kept his adrenaline in a low state of terror. He shifted and Scully rubbed his back. "You're supposed to be sleeping." "Can't." "We're going to be fine, Mulder. I did not beat cancer just to die hiking in the Florida swamps." "Wetlands." "Whatever." Mulder hugged her knees. "What you were saying before, about finding meaning in death... did you?" "I don't know. I'll say this: it gives you clarity. You find out really fast what has true meaning in your life." Maybe he imagined it, but it felt like she squeezed him. "They say that the day you die, you have complete freedom of speech. You can say anything and everything you've ever wanted to, and it doesn't matter." Mulder tried to turn to peer up at her, but couldn't quite make it. "Did you? Say everything, I mean." Scully was quiet a minute. "I guess not," she allowed. "After all, I'm still here." This time he squeezed her. "Actually, I find myself thinking more about it now," Scully continued. "I came back to my apartment and there were all my things, and I thought, this is what I would have left behind. Everything I had done, it was all I would ever do. You can see your life from beginning to end and all the choices you made or maybe didn't make." "I'm not sure I follow." "Take Ethan for example. I could have married him, and then who knows what would have happened?" "You think maybe you should have married him?" "No," she said quickly. "That's not it at all. I'm glad I didn't marry him. I can look back on my life and be sure it's the one I chose. No regrets." "No regrets is good," Mulder agreed. Scully tried to rub some more warmth into him. "Mulder," she said, sounding curious, "have you ever wanted to be married?" Mulder froze. The answer was of course yes. And then about six months later he had wanted to be divorced. "Sure," he said in what he hoped was a casual tone. "Who hasn't?" "Who was she?" "Hmm? Oh, you know, I was speaking more generally about the idea of finding someone to spend your life with." "Oh." Mulder hesitated a minute and then tapped her kneecap. "I'll tell you this, though: if the rest of my life is spent here on the forest floor, I'll have been pleased to spend it with you." He could practically hear her roll her eyes. "Go to sleep, Mulder," she said, but she was smiling. And so finally, he did. ~*~*~*~ Chapter Three: Love Bites As a child, Scully had always loved Halloween. For one delicious night, kids took charge of the neighborhood, running pell-mell through the streets with no adults around to shoo them back inside. You could put on a mask and be anyone you wanted to be. Back then, Scully had used the costumes to try on some of her siblings' traits; she could be bold like Melissa, tough like Bill, or feisty like Charlie. Only in the morning did she have to turn into dutiful Dana again, and even then there was a pile of colorful candy to ease the transition. As an adult, Scully always made sure to leave the light on and have a bowl of treats waiting by the door, just in case some miniature gremlins came calling. The first few years she had lived in her apartment building, she did get a number of teeny princesses, ghosts with misshapen eyeholes and growling Ninja Turtles begging for candy. But since then, real demons had made a habit of visiting her home, and parents were reluctant to send their kids down the hall to visit the crazy lady who always had crime scene tape decorating her front door. So Scully sat by herself with the candy bowl in her lap on Halloween night. She had just reached the projectile vomiting scene in the "Exorcist" when her doorbell rang. Surprised, she wiped the Snickers crumbs from her hands and went to answer it. Mulder stood -- rather, lounged -- on the other side, wearing a long black cape and fake vampire teeth, which he chattered at her. "I vant to bite your neck," he said, and God help her, her neck actually quivered. She touched it and tried to hide her smile. "Aren't you a little bit old to be trick-or-treating, Mulder?" "I came to pick you up," he said. "Get your coat." "Excuse me, but where am I going?" "Halloween mischief, Scully. Madness, mayhem -- you know the drill. Come on, hurry or we might miss him." "Him?" she echoed even as she grabbed a light jacket. "Mulder, please tell me we're not going to spend the night in a pumpkin patch waiting for the Great Pumpkin to make an appearance." "Better." He pulled something out of his pocket. "Here, you'll need these." Scully accepted the present before she knew what it was. "Ears?" she asked as she inspected his offering, a pair of black satin ears sewn to a headband. "Mulder, you shouldn't have." "You have to wear a costume to get in," Mulder said as he held open the front door of the building for her. Scully stuck the ears in her pocket but followed him to the car anyway. He drove them back to towards the city, "Monster Mash" blaring from the radio as Scully watched the streets for Halloween revelers. While they idled at a red light, a glowing white skeleton passed by the car, turning briefly human under Mulder's headlights before melding into the eerie night once more. Mulder stopped the car outside a tall brick apartment building. The main door stood propped open by a large pumpkin, and a group of teenagers had draped themselves across the front steps. Loud music played inside one of the apartments; Scully did not recognize the artist, but the bass line was strong enough to vibrate the sidewalk under her feet. Mulder taped his head as they approached the building. "You need the ears, Scully." "Why? They're not wearing any costumes." Scully eyed the group of teens. The only possible concession she could see to the holiday was a green neon necklace that one boy wore like a crown. The boy looked them up and down and took a drag of his cigarette. "You here to see Leroy?" he asked, and Mulder nodded. The kid indicated the stairs with a jerk of his head. "Top floor, but there's a wait." "Ears," Mulder said again, leaning down into her personal space as they mounted the steps. "All right, already." Scully put the ears on, and Mulder grinned. "They're crooked." Scully moved to correct the angle, but Mulder caught her hand and stopped her. "I like them like that," he said. Scully trudged up the narrow, worn steps until she reached the top floor. A line of people crowded the hallway; old and young, all dressed in elaborate costume, they chatted and dodged hyperactive children running wind sprints down the corridor. Scully even spotted a Dalmatian wearing a clown's hat and ruffled collar. The air was a thick perfume of latex, face paint, and hairspray. "Mulder," Scully said in a low voice. "What on earth is going on here?" "Everyone is here to see Leroy. He only does this kind of open house on Halloween night." "And who, pray tell, is Leroy?" "Hey, look, Scully -- Elvis!" "Mulder. Who is Leroy?" "He's a kind of fortune teller," Mulder replied, not really paying attention to her. The Dalmatian wandered over to lick his shoes, and Mulder scratched the dog's ears with delight. "What kind of fortune teller?" "Um, the feathered kind?" Mulder stood up again. "Let's hope I didn't guess wrong with the cat ears. I don't think he's sensitive to that sort of thing, but you never can tell with a parrot." "He's a parrot?" "A psychic parrot. He made headlines a few years ago when he helped find a missing neighbor boy. You didn't hear about the case?" "Case? Was this reported in the real news, Mulder, or just something you picked up in line at the supermarket?" "You think all these people would be here if it wasn't true?" Scully stared at him, trying to discern whether this was some big Halloween prank. Mulder looked serious enough, but the twinkle in his eye suggested he was just waiting to spring the "gotcha" on her. She leaned against the wall with her arms folded. "Enlighten me," she said. Mulder put one arm over her head and leaned too. "I believe it was about four years ago now. Tommy Alderson, a boy in the building, disappeared from his apartment one summer afternoon and his mother was frantic with worry. Everyone went out searching for Tommy, but no luck. No one had seen the kid." "Except the parrot," Scully commented dryly. "Well, that was the funny part. Leroy's owner, Penny Brown, said the bird was the one who alerted her to Tommy's whereabouts. She had paused in her searching to get some water, and Leroy came up to her and said, 'Tommy's on the roof.'" "That's quite a mouthful for a small bird." "Okay, maybe he said, 'Tommy, roof.' But he said it over and over, quite insistently, Penny told reporters." "I think I saw this on an episode of 'Lassie' once." "At Leroy's insistence, Penny went up to the roof to search for Tommy. His family had checked before and found nothing, but Penny gave it one last try, and sure enough -- Tommy had crawled into one of those large pipes and gotten stuck. Penny believes Leroy had a vision of the boy trapped in the pipe, and that's how he knew to alert her." The motley crew shuffled forward, so Scully shoved herself away from the wall to keep pace. Mulder's fingers skimmed her spine. "So let me get this straight," she said. "Leroy the parrot had a psychic vision a few years ago, and now he reads fortunes on Halloween." "He can't read, Scully," Mulder said with mock disdain. "He's a bird." Scully rolled her eyes. "I don't need a bird to see my future, Mulder. I'm going home. I'm taking a bath. Tomorrow I will drop off my dry cleaning and have lunch with my mother." "No, that's what you were supposed to be doing," Mulder said as they shuffled forward again. "Instead you're here with me." He gave her the look that made her belly quiver. "Are you suggesting the parrot could have foreseen you strong-arming me into this little escapade?" Mulder squawked and flapped his arms. "Tall dark handsome vampire will bring you cheap thrills," he said. They had reached the door to the apartment at long last. Scully balked but Mulder nudged her over the threshold. Blackout shades hung over the windows, and colored scarves were draped over the lampshades. A woman appeared from behind a beaded curtain. She wore a purple scarf on her head, a flowing skirt down to her knees, and a green parrot on her shoulder. "Welcome, welcome," she said. "I'm Madam Penny. I take it you all are here to see Leroy?" "Is this-is this him?" Mulder stuck out a finger and the bird snapped at it. "Oooh, watch yourself, honey. No, this isn't Leroy. This is Josie. Leroy's an African Gray, and Josie here is a Cherry Head Conure." "Hence the red head," Mulder explained to Scully, as if he had known this all his life. "You look like you know a thing about red heads," Penny said to her. "You and Josie would get along real well, I expect. She doesn't cotton to males so much." Josie lifted a wing and rooted around under it with her beak. "Does Josie see into the future too?" Scully inquired dubiously. "Oh, heavens, no." Penny smiled. "But if you put on disco music, she'll dance for you. This is Leroy's night, though, and I expect he's the one you're wanting to see. Come back this way." They followed her through the beaded curtain into another room, this one also with a black-out curtain. Several empty bird cages sat against one wall, and in the far corner, a parrot paused from his grooming routine to give them a once-over. "Leroy," Penny said brightly, "You have more visitors. This is..." "Fox Mulder," Mulder told the bird. He elbowed Scully. "Dana Scully," she muttered. Leroy fixed his gaze on the ceiling and cooed. "Come on, Leroy," Penny coaxed. "Do your thing." "How many words does he know?" Mulder asked. "Oh, I've never done an exact count," Penny replied. "Somewhere around five hundred. Come on, Leroy. These nice people came just to see you. Don't you have anything to say to them?" "Boo," said Leroy, and walked to the end of his perch. "So when Tommy Alderson disappeared," Mulder said, "what if he had been somewhere that Leroy didn't have a word for?" "I shudder to think what would've happened then," Penny answered, her eyes wide. "But Leroy knows the roof. Don't you, boy? We go up there sometimes if the weather is nice. He just loves it." "Roof, roof," Leroy agreed. Scully wandered over to look inside the bird cages. Penny kept her birds well stocked in toys. They had bells, mirrors, chew rings and colored balls. Scully guessed the curtain hid a large window that allowed them to look out over the city. Not a bad life, she supposed, but still rather limiting if you were used to soaring above the trees. Her gaze went to the vent above the cages. She squinted at what looked like feathers trapped at the edge. "Mulder," she said, but he wasn't listening. Leroy had decided to speak. "Vid-e-oh," he said, leaning way down to look Mulder in the eye. "What?" Mulder asked, puzzled. Scully joined him. "Sounds like he's heard about your famous collection," she said, trying to keep a straight face. "Vid-e-oh!" Leroy said again, flapping his wings for emphasis. Mulder and Scully took a step back. "Gracious," said Penny. "He does like to watch his nature videos. Maybe he's just confused." "I'd say he's pretty accurate," Scully said, and Mulder gave her a dirty look. "Let's see what he's got for you," he answered, thrusting her in front of the bird again. Scully's shoulders came up around her ears as she stood there, frozen under the weight of Leroy's beady stare. He fixed her with his black eyes but remained silent. "Leroy, honey, don't you have anything you want to say to Ms. Scully?" Penny asked, but the parrot did not reply. She gave Scully a helpless look. "Sometimes he gets like this. I don't now why. Maybe he's just feeling a little shy." "Really, it's okay," Scully told her. The phone rang in the other room, and Leroy's feathers rose. "Phone's ringing! Phone's ringing!" He mimicked the trill almost perfectly. "Excuse me one moment, please," Penny said. "Hello, who's calling please?" Leroy said, prancing from one end of the perch to the other. Scully folded her arms and looked at Mulder. "I can't believe you think this animal has a window to the future," she said as Leroy transitioned into his telephone ring again. "Scully," Leroy sang at her, and Mulder and Scully both looked over at him. "Scul-ly." "I think he likes you," Mulder teased. "Maybe that's why he won't talk." "Scully," Leroy squawked again, and leaned down from his perch towards her. Scully took a step forward. Leroy stretched his short little bird neck out as far as it would go, until he was nearly beak-to-nose with her. "Kiss," he said. Scully blinked. Mulder clapped his hands with delight. "He really, really likes you," he said to Scully as he put an arm around her shoulders. "Go ahead, Scully. Lay one on him." "Kiss," Leroy repeated, very seriously, and then withdrew to resume tending to his feathers. Penny returned, excusing herself again and apologizing once more for Leroy's reticence. Scully could have sworn the damn bird waved at her as Penny led them to the door. "Happy Halloween," she said. "Next!" "Tell me that wasn't fun," said Mulder as they worked their way back through the crowd. "It was interesting," she allowed, and came to a stop at the stairs. She tilted her head at him and smiled. "But I don't think for a second that bird is psychic, Mulder." Mulder smiled too. "You're saying there's no kiss in your future?" Scully crooked her finger and started up the stairs instead of down. "I'll explain on the roof." Outside, the mild night air smelled of trees and warm wind. Scully clawed her hair from her eyes as Mulder followed her across the rooftop. The far edge of the building held a group of snoozing pigeons. "Look out for your shoes there, Scully," Mulder said, pointing. "I see evidence that Leroy was here." "Exactly my point," Scully replied, leading him to the large aluminum pipe. It was covered with a mesh barrier to prevent any small birds from climbing inside. "Feel that," Scully said as she grabbed Mulder's hand and held it in front of the pipe's opening. "Air," Mulder replied. "So what?" Scully plucked a stray feather from the mesh. "Look familiar to you?" "It's a gray feather. Maybe the pigeons hang out over here to keep warm." "Or maybe Leroy's found his own way to the roof." Scully took out her keychain flashlight and inspected the inside of the pipe. Sure enough, there was evidence that a bird had spent some time there. "I noticed the air vent was loose in his room, and it had a feather stuck to it. A feather very similar in shape and color to this one, I might add. I think Leroy's been making secret trips to the roof using the ventilation system. He didn't envision Tommy Alderson in the pipe. The poor kid was probably blocking Leroy's view when he got up here." Mulder took the feather from her and ran it over his fingertip. "That still makes him a pretty clever bird." "Clever, yes. Supernatural, no." To make it up to him, she wore the cat ears all the way home. Mulder walked her up to her door but stopped short of coming inside. He gave her the feather back, after first tickling her cheek with it. "A souvenir," he said, "of Halloween." Scully stroked the satiny gray fronds. "Happy Halloween, Mulder," she said. Mulder leaned down, the look of mischief in his eyes. "You know, Scully," he said, his voice low and dangerous, "there might just be a kiss in your future tonight afterall." Her heart leapt to her throat and she tried not to wheeze. He wouldn't, she thought, but on Halloween night nothing was for sure. Devils danced and goblins howled, and tricks could become treats in the blink of an eye. "Close your eyes," he murmured. Scully did, her pulse hammering as her lips parted. She felt a little dizzy, as if she were swaying on her feet. Mulder's hand touched her, his fingers teasing her palm, and Scully ceased to breathe at all. He slipped her something and closed her fingers over it. "Happy Halloween, Scully," he whispered, and pulled away. Scully opened her eyes to see him disappearing around the corner. In her hand was a single chocolate kiss. ~*~*~*~ November dawned cool and gray, thin clouds streaking pale across the bleak sky. By the time Scully reached the prison, fat drops of rain had started falling on her windshield, creating miniature paw prints of water across the smooth glass. She had no umbrella with her, so she held the bag of sandwiches over her head as she hurried to the front door. After the guards ensured she had not brought Ethan a tuna salad with a file in it, she was allowed inside to see him. "Are you a sight for sore eyes," he said as he scraped the chair across the floor. "I brought lunch," she told him. Ethan looked at the bag she had set out and smiled faintly. "The food here isn't as bad as I thought it would be," he said. "I just haven't been very hungry." "You need to eat," Scully said, not unkindly. She sat down across from him. Ethan shook his head as if bemused. "I've covered plenty of corruption stories over the years. I've done death penalty cases where the guy gets off twenty years later because it turned out the DNA didn't match. No one knows better than me that Uncle Sam doesn't always get his man." Scully reached over and took his hand. Ethan turned haunted eyes to hers. "I just never thought it could happen this fast." "What does your lawyer say?" "That's why I called you." Ethan sat forward, intent again. "He's so focused on finding holes in the prosecution's case, on picking apart their evidence that it's me." "Ethan, that's his job." "But he's not looking for the killer, D. I'm in here, but someone-someone out there *killed* Melinda, and that guy is walking around free. He could do it to someone else. You have to help me find out who did it. The cops sure as hell aren't doing anything." "I don't know what more I can do. I don't have access to any of the evidence." "You can go to my apartment," Ethan said quickly. "Maybe you can find something the police missed." Scully knew very well that the cops would have taken pretty much every usable piece of evidence with them. She hesitated, biting her lip as she tried to think of the most delicate way to phrase her question. "Ethan," she said at last, "stabbing is generally a very personal crime. Whoever did this likely knew Melinda well enough to have built up this kind of rage against her. You were her friend. You must have some idea of who could have done this?" "It's all I think about." His nose was running and he sniffed hard before wiping it on his sleeve. "Who could have done this to her? I keep thinking and thinking, forcing myself to go over every little detail of our conversations for any sign that this was coming. But you knew Melinda. Everyone really liked her. I can't think of anyone who would want to call her an ugly name, let alone do something like this to her." "Melinda dated a lot. Maybe there was someone she'd rejected recently?" Ethan smiled sadly. "Only me. I begged her not to go to Seattle, but her mind was made up." He sighed. "There was no one special in her life. She hadn't been out in a while. We'd been so caught up in the Ryerson story; neither of us had much time for a social life the past few months." "Okay, then," Scully said on a long breath. "I'll go look at your apartment, but I can't promise to find anything." "Thank you. It would mean a lot to me." Just then, he reminded her of the old Ethan, the man who always spoke with such earnest conviction that she believed everything he ever said. The first time she had taken off her clothes in front of him, he had smiled and said, "You're perfect." Since that night, she'd been too fat and too thin at varying times, the worst of it in the last year as cancer stole the flesh from her bones. But for one night she had been perfect; the look of raw anticipation on his face when he'd said it was something she had never forgotten. Ethan opened his sandwich so Scully did the same with hers, the paper crackling loudly in their confined space. "You never told me," Ethan said as he wolfed his down, "how is Mulder?" "He's fine." Scully licked a stray bit of tuna salad from her thumb. "I'm glad. You know, I look back on you and me, and some of the things I said there at the end weren't really fair. It helps to know he's stuck around." "Stuck around?" Ethan shrugged. "It can be so hard to change the picture in your head. I thought we were getting married. Then all of a sudden, we weren't. It didn't really seem real. Or even possible. For a long time, I kept thinking maybe you would come back. I kept thinking there would be a happy ending, you know? But it helps, knowing you got one." He smiled a little. "God knows someone should." "I don't know what you're talking about," Scully said as she set down her sandwich. "You and Mulder. I'm saying I'm happy for you. At least this way I know I made the right decision not to fight harder back then." "Fight? Fight Mulder? For me?" Scully knew she was sounding vaguely like the parrot from the evening before, but what Ethan said made no sense. "I think you have the wrong idea," she told him. "Mulder and I are partners. Nothing more." Ethan furrowed his brow at her. "He answered the phone at your house--" "So?" He shook his head as if to clear it. "Mulder was crazy in love with you. You're telling me you two never got together?" Scully opened her mouth but no sound came out. "Oh, don't pretend you didn't know." "There's nothing to know," Scully stammered. "I can't imagine where you got this idea, but Mulder and I are friends and colleagues." "You're telling me he never made a move in all these years? Never once?" "Not once." "And here I always thought Mulder had the most guts of any guy I'd ever met. Take it from me -- that man had it bad." He leaned back in his chair. "I guess maybe he couldn't change the picture in his head, either." "Mulder's not in love with me," Scully insisted. Ethan shrugged again. "Well, he was. I'm sure of that much." Later, she staggered out into the drizzle and slammed her car door shut against the wind. Her hair stuck to her face and her stomach had twisted up tighter than a wet towel. She was not sure which was more disquieting: that Mulder might have been in love with her, or that maybe he no longer was. ~*~*~*~ Mulder was pretty sure his couch had an ass magnet embedded deep inside the cushions; its force was strong, able to keep his rear-end lodged firmly in its grasp through six episodes of "The Twilight Zone" and one atrocious rerun of "WKRP in Cincinnati." When the phone rang, he didn't even get up. He nudged the receiver down the coffee table with his foot until he could reach it without moving. "Help, I'm being held hostage by my furniture," he said by way of greeting. "Mulder? It's me." "Scully, what do you think is the Guinness World Record for most consecutive hours of TV viewing?" "Making your mark in history, are you?" He could hear the sound of traffic in the background. "You're out and about, I take it. How was lunch with Mom?" "I didn't make it. That's part of why I'm calling. Do you think you can meet me at Ethan's apartment, say in about half an hour?" Mulder sat up. "Sure, what's up?" "He wants us to take a look at the scene and see if the police might have missed something." "My favorite hobby," Mulder replied. "I'll see you there." They hung up without saying good-bye, as usual, and as Mulder slipped on his shoes he considered how many times other people had tried to make him say good-bye to Scully. Ethan, when she'd gone missing. Her sister, when they had disconnected her life support. Skinner, this last time in the ICU. But Mulder never said it and Scully was still here. They had a system that worked. Rain slashed his windshield as he drove across town to Ethan's address. Scully's car sat parked out front with Scully in it. He could see her watching him in the side mirror as he parked behind her. Mulder got out, tossed his keys and caught them one handed as he walked over to Scully's window. She rolled it down. "Thanks for coming," she said. "Are we breaking and entering?" he asked. She waggled a set of keys at him. "I got a copy from his attorney," she said as she opened the door. "Ethan feels that no one is bothering to look for the real killer in the case, so he asked us to check out the scene just in case there's something left to find." Mulder followed her out of the rain and into Ethan's high- end apartment building. In the elevator, she stood hunched in one corner but kept sneaking looks at him. "What?" he asked, looking down at his front to see if he had food stuck on his shirt. "Nothing." Mulder watched the glowing numbers count upwards, but he could feel her eyes on him again. When the doors opened, he escaped into the hall where he could breathe and started searching for Ethan's front door. "This is it," he said when he had found the unit. Scully fit the key in the lock. Mulder knew the minute she cracked the door that their efforts would likely prove fruitless. The strong scent of lemon cleanser hit them in the face as they stepped into the apartment. "Crime scene clean up beat us here," Scully said. "Can't have blood and guts stinking up the place for the neighbors." Mulder flicked on a nearby light. "Looks like a rug is gone," Scully observed. "This must have been where they found her." "You say the cops came in and found him standing over the body?" "Pretty much, yeah. Someone in the building called in a disturbance." Mulder turned to look at her. "Did they ever find out who?" "I don't know. Ethan never said." "Huh," Mulder said. "What?" "It's just, when we saw the body, she'd been dead for a long time." "Kwan estimated time of death between midnight and three a.m.," Scully replied. "So then what was the disturbance at six in the morning?" "Good question." Mulder resumed poking around. Ethan had floor-to-ceiling bookcases that were jammed full. A large black and white print of bamboo trees hung over a black leather sofa. Mulder knelt down to examine the hardwood floor, but saw no trace of blood. Up close, he could smell the bleach used to erase the crime. "It just doesn't make any sense," he called out to Scully. Her voice echoed from the back. "What doesn't?" "The way this whole thing went down. We agree that stabbing is a personal crime, suggesting Melinda was a very specific victim, but she wasn't usually in this apartment. How did the killer know she would be here that night? And then, the weapon was a knife from the kitchen. So the killer was improvising. You've got two lines of evidence that don't match - either he knew she'd be here somehow and was waiting, or he came here for another reason and ended up killing her when he didn't expect to." Mulder went down the hall to find Scully in Ethan's office. "The cops cleaned everything out," she said to him. "All his notes, his computer." "I can see why they like him for it," Mulder replied. "He's the only answer that fits the evidence. He knew Melinda was here, and he likely hadn't planned on killing her." "He didn't do it, Mulder." Scully opened his top desk drawer. "I didn't say he did. I just said I can understand why they believe he's guilty." Mulder picked up some sort of journalism award while Scully continued to search the desk. The award looked like a giant prism, and it had an impressive lack of dust. Either Ethan was a neat freak or he had a housekeeper. "It's kind of weird," Scully remarked as she flipped through a notebook, "seeing his things again. This desk was in my apartment for a while." "Yeah?" "I used to hate that thing," she said with a smile. Mulder held up the award. "This?" "I'd come around the corner in the morning, and it would shoot the sun like a laser right in my eyes." She stopped suddenly, her smile fading. "What is it?" "Oh, nothing." She pulled something from the desk drawer. "Just an old picture." Mulder came around to see. It was Scully five years ago, with her hair long and Ethan wrapped around her. They looked happy and in love. "It was a million years ago," Scully murmured. She tried to set the photo aside, but Mulder picked it up again. "Do you have your answer yet?" he asked her. "About what went wrong?" When he turned, Scully was looking at him again. "I don't know," she replied. "Maybe." Her shoulders rose and fell with her sigh. "Or maybe no one ever really knows, even when there's no government conspiracy or missing time or overt drama. After all, we understand less about love and attraction than practically any other human behavior. If love's beginning remains a mystery, then perhaps its end always will as well." She seemed to be waiting for him to say something. Mulder cleared his throat and put the picture down. When he peeked at it, young Scully was still looking up at him, the way the other Scully in front of him had never looked: as if she existed only for him. Sometimes, he thought, love was more painful when there was no end. "Let's check out the kitchen," he said, and left her standing there in a room full of ghosts. ~*~*~*~*~*~ Chapter Four: Only You "You want to tell me what we're doing here, Scully?" Mulder leaned down, obscuring her from view. Scully paused from picking the lock on Rachel Campenella's front door. "Do you need me to draw you a diagram?" she whispered back. "When you asked me to meet you here, I didn't realize breaking and entering was on the menu for the evening." Scully paused again to roll her eyes at him. "If it's not a government defense facility, where's the challenge, is that it?" The lock gave way to her insistent needling, and Scully cracked open the door. Cool air hit her in the face; there was no need for much heat in an empty apartment. The place smelled of dust and disinfectant. Scully groped blindly along the wall for a light switch, but Mulder's hand covered hers and stopped her. "You are such a rookie," he said, pulling out his pocket flashlight. "Turn the lights on and everyone knows we're here." "Good point," Scully said as she dug around in her deep coat pocket for her light. "So what are we looking for?" Mulder asked. Their beams crossed on the wall of Rachel's living room. "I don't really know. But did you see the paper this morning? Senator Ryerson is pushing for Ethan to be charged in Rachel Campenella's murder too." Mulder snorted. "I just bet he is." "Did you notice at Ethan's place that the cops took all his knives? Bet you five to one they tested them all, hoping to find Rachel's murder weapon." "And apparently found nothing," Mulder said as he shone his light over Rachel's bookshelf. "I've got law books over here, some Japanese history, and a bunch of paperback murder mysteries." He turned to Scully. "I bet she never figured she'd end up starring in one." "I don't think anyone expects to end up murdered," Scully replied as she wandered down the hall to find Rachel's office. There was a bookshelf there, too, this one decorated with knick-knacks and photos as well as books. Scully picked up a jade turtle for inspection. "Anything?" Mulder asked from behind her. "These all look like family members to me," Scully said, shining her light across the photos. "Family and maybe some girlfriends." "Well, if you're having an affair with a senator, you probably don't want to advertise it." Mulder started rifling through Rachel's desk. "Looks like mostly personal bills and letters here," he said. He tried a file cabinet. "It's locked." While Mulder hunted around for a key, Scully discovered an answering machine. "The tape's still in it," she said. After a closer look, she managed to retrieve the last messages. "Rach, it's Mom. I'm waiting outside." Mulder winced. "Little did she know," he said. Scully rewound some more. "Rachel, it's Dan," the machine said. "If you want to talk, give me a call, okay? I'll be up late." Scully arched an eyebrow at Mulder. "Now who do you suppose Dan is?" "This guy?" Mulder held up a loose photograph he had apparently picked up from the top of the filing cabinet. Scully trained her flashlight on it and squinted. The picture showed Rachel and a preppy-looking young man about her age, with wire-rimmed glasses and short, dark hair. They had their arms around each other. "Check the phone logs for that night and we can get his full name," Scully said. "Any luck with the file cabinet?" "No sign of a key. You want to bring your lock-picking skills over this way?" "Sure, now you're impressed." Scully smiled as she slid between him and the cabinet. He held the light for her as she worked. When the drawer slid open, it revealed a bunch of empty folders. "Looks like we're a little late to this party," Mulder observed. "I wonder why they left the answering machine tape." "No idea, but whoever Dan is, you can bet they've found him first." ~*~*~ Mulder and Scully lounged against Mulder's Taurus in the Saturday morning sunshine. They wore street clothes and held paper cups of coffee as they awaited the appearance of Dan Cooperstein. "Nice neighborhood," Mulder observed over the rim of his cup. Scully took in the manicured bushes, the tree-lined street and the neat row of brick townhouses. "Pricey neighborhood," she said. "The must pay assistant college professors more than they used to." "Maybe I should take it up on the side," Mulder said. "Make some extra dough." "I don't think they offer courses in man-eating flukeworms or astral projection." "No, but they should." Mulder took a gulp of coffee and nodded at the man jogging towards them. "This look like our boy to you?" Scully consulted the driver's license photo they had printed out of Dan Cooperstein. "Yeah, that's him." "Mr. Cooperstein?" Mulder called as the man started up the front steps of his townhouse. Cooperstein turned and jogged back down. "Who wants to know?" Mulder held up his badge. "I'm Agent Mulder, this is Agent Scully. We'd like to ask you a couple of questions if you don't mind." "About Rachel, right?" He sighed. "Sure, come on in." Mulder and Scully took seats in his neat but Spartan living room. Scully sat on the low sofa while Mulder perched on the end of a modern metal and leather chair. Cooperstein reappeared with a towel around his shoulders and a bottle of water in his hands. "I'll tell you the same thing I told the cops. That SOB Ryerson killed her. Maybe you can do something about it, because it's damn clear no one else can." "What makes you so sure it's Ryerson?" Mulder asked. "Rachel wanted out. I don't think Ryerson took it too well." "Out of their affair?" asked Scully. "There never was any affair," Dan said. "Ryerson wanted it, but Rachel kept putting him off. That's part of why she was leaving." "She was leaving the office?" "Yeah, that's what she said. She couldn't put up with his crap anymore. I think he must have flipped when she told him, and that's when he killed her. I don't imagine 'no' is a word he's used to hearing." "What was your relationship with Rachel?" Mulder asked. Dan toyed with the bottle top to his water. "We'd been going out about six months," he said. "Nothing too serious. We were both so busy. But I cared about her." "How do you explain the people who saw Rachel and Ryerson at a hotel together?" Mulder wanted to know. "Rachel told me about that. He used to rent out a suite sometimes and work there. Said it was for peace and privacy. But I kept telling her it was an excuse to get her alone near a bedroom." "When is the last time you spoke to Rachel?" Scully asked. "The night before she died. She said she'd had enough. She was going to tell him she was leaving. I offered to come over, but she said no." He shook his head. "I shouldn't have listened to her. I knew she was worried about him. I never should have let her talk to him alone." "Rachel was afraid of Ryerson?" Scully asked, surprised. Everything she had heard painted Rachel Campenella as a confident and capable woman who liked her boss and was able to handle herself in any situation. "I don't know about afraid. Worried. She didn't think he would take their conversation well." He hesitated. "I told the detectives, so you may as well know too. I think Ryerson may have hit her once before." "When?" Mulder asked. "About two months before she died. We were having dinner and she showed up with a bruise on her left cheekbone." He touched the spot on his own face. "I asked her what happened, and she seemed really nervous. She told me she had been hanging a picture at her apartment and the hammer slipped. But I was at her apartment that weekend, and there was no new picture." "You say you told all this to the police?" "Fat lot of good it did, too." He looked from Mulder to Scully. "Get this asshole, will you? Rachel deserved so much better. He gets away with this, and who knows what he might do next." Later, as they left Cooperstein's home, Scully stopped on the front stoop and blew out a long breath. "Now that's a new side of the story," she said. "Her co-workers thought Rachel and Ryerson were having an affair. Her family thought they were having an affair. This guy says it was all in Rachel's head." Mulder put on his sunglasses. "Maybe that's what she wanted him to think." ~*~*~*~*~ Her first winter in the basement with Mulder, Scully had found it somewhat depressing. Darkness fell early, entombing them in concrete, with their only company Mulder's various oddities peering out from their jars on the shelf. Creature comforts indeed. Nowadays she did not mind the way night settled outside and left them alone in their private world. She had a hotplate for tea, the familiar clank of the heater, and the sound of Mulder's fingers trying to keep pace with his brain as he typed at the computer. Her medical journals had their own shelf, and she had even grown to appreciate the creature collection now that she and they shared a history. It was her flukeworm, too, dammit. On this night, they had stayed longer than usual by tacit agreement, perhaps because this was the last time they would see each other for quite a while. Scully was leaving for Christmas in San Diego in the morning. The tiny potted fir tree on her table had reminded her all week of the coming trip. This morning, Mulder had brought in a large glass ball decorated with snowflakes to add to the tree, so it now bent its head towards the window, as if yearning to join its larger brethren in the open air. Scully smiled as she touched the ball. She had not asked Mulder about his holiday plans, and he hadn't volunteered any when she had mentioned hers. She hoped at the least he would not be alone. As though he could read her thoughts, Mulder stretched like a large cat and swiveled his chair around to look at her. "It might be time to close up shop for the night, Scully. I understand Santa is fussy about showing up while people are awake." "I was thinking the same thing," Scully replied as she tucked away her laptop. She bit her lip, catching sight of Mulder's present nestled at the bottom of her briefcase. She had splurged this year on a special gift, one that had extra meaning for her, and she hoped, for him. But traditionally they exchanged small tokens, and she felt a bit chagrined about breaking the unspoken rules so assiduously. When she sat up again, Mulder was smiling and waving a box at her. "Looks like Santa snuck in a little early," he said. "This one has your name on it." Scully smiled too. "What a coincidence. I seem to have one here that has your name on it." She handed him the much smaller box. "You first," Mulder said, fidgeting. Scully ripped off the red and gold striped paper and took the lid off the box. Inside rested a selection of granola bars and the Gunmen's latest magazine. "For your trip," Mulder explained quickly. "To keep busy on the plane." Scully sat back and smiled up at him. "Thank you, Mulder. That's very thoughtful." He ducked his head, seemingly shy. "I hope you haven't read it already." Scully checked out the cover story. GENETICALLY ENGINEERED EGGPLANT: WHAT THE GOVERNMENT DOESN'T WANT YOU TO KNOW. "I can honestly say I haven't." Mulder sat on the corner of his desk and began ripping off the paper on his present. Scully held her breath. He stopped short at the jeweler's box, and she made herself not flinch. He looked over at her with a question on his face, but she said nothing. Mulder opened the box. "Oh, wow," he said as he removed the silver watch inside. "Scully, this is, um, it's really nice." "I know it's more than we usually do," she said in a rush. "I just saw it and I wanted you to have it." "It's inscribed," Mulder said, as if she didn't know. He read aloud: "To the man always looking for lost time. Love, Scully." He looked up, clearly at a loss for words. Scully rose from her chair with her things and crossed to stand next to him. "It's too much," he protested. "It's not." "But I got you magazines and granola." Her heart lodged in her throat and she swallowed carefully before speaking. "No," she said, taking his hand and looking directly into his eyes. "This year, I wanted to get you what you've given me: the gift of time." His fingers closed over hers and he gave her a warm squeeze. "Merry Christmas, Scully," he murmured. She stretched out and kissed his cheek. "Merry Christmas, Mulder." ~*~*~ Christmas night, Mulder lay on his couch, half-watching Bill Murray as Mr. Scrooge, and half-wondering what on earth he could get Scully to make up for his lame Christmas gift. Jewelry, maybe? She wore an occasional pin, he thought, though he could not recall any specifically, and this made him question whether he was hallucinating the whole thing. Rings of any sort were just out. Too much symbolism and latent meaning there. Perhaps earrings? He could just hear his conversation with the jeweler now: "I'm looking for something that says, I think you're the coolest chick who's ever busted me out of the DOD." Mulder threw an arm over his eyes in despair. He was doomed. Not that he would really trust himself to pick out jewelry in the first place. Good stuff and bad stuff looked pretty much the same to him. He was like a raccoon when it came to jewelry: oooh, shiny! He was still agonizing when his phone rang. Mulder looked at the clock in mild surprise at who might be calling so late. He had already spoken to his mother that morning, and he had eaten dinner at noontime with the Gunmen. "Hello," he said. "Mulder, it's me." "Scully!" He settled back onto the couch with a big smile on his face. "Merry Christmas. Although, I don't know how it can be Christmas out there where it's sunny and seventy degrees. Does Santa wear sunglasses and Bermuda shorts on his California run?" "Merry Christmas to you too," she said, but her voice sounded odd. "What's up?" he asked her. "Family driving you mad already?" "No, that's not it." He could hear her take a deep breath. "Do you have a minute? I need to talk to you." "Of course." Mulder sat up and put his feet on the floor. His pulse spiked and he felt his face flush, and he wasn't even sure why. "What is it, Scully?" "I got involved in an unusual case here, Mulder. I won't even bother you with how right now, but I've been working with the San Diego police on the murder of a young mother. It looked like maybe her husband did it, but now the case is more complicated. He has been murdered too." "Okay," Mulder said slowly. "Do you have any suspects?" "Not really, but that's not why I'm calling." She paused, and Mulder felt the tension pulling him apart like taffy. "They had a daughter, a three year old girl named Emily, whom they adopted. I thought for a time she might be my sister's baby." "Melissa had a baby?" "Apparently not." Scully stopped again. "Mulder, I ran the tests. The results say I am Emily's mother." The floor seemed to fall out from under him. He wasn't sure he had heard her correctly over the buzzing in his ears. "I'm sorry, what? Did you say you are Emily's mother?" "The DNA doesn't lie." "I don't know what to say," Mulder admitted. He had his head in his hands, the phone caught between his chin and his shoulder. "I know it's a shock," Scully replied, her voice thick. "It was to me too. But you'll like her, Mulder. She's sweet and smart and so serious it about breaks your heart. No one should have to go through what this poor girl has gone through in the past two days. She's lost both parents inside of forty-eight hours. If you think I'm reeling, you should see Emily." He imagined a tiny child with red hair and blue marble eyes. "What's... what's going to happen to her?" he asked, fearing he already knew the answer. "I've filed for adoption," Scully answered softly. Mulder held back a curse. He got up and started pacing the length of his living room. No way Scully could raise a preschooler and work on the X-Files at the same time. It was just not possible. "Mulder?" she said, sounding a little desperate. "Are you still there?" "Yeah, I'm here. I'm just trying to take this all in." "You and me both." "Scully, have you thought about where this child came from at all?" He knew very well she had never given birth. He had her medical records filed away along with the rest of the X-files. "It's all I've thought about. I understand the implications here." She sounded teary and exhausted, and he felt like a heel for asking. "I think it's pretty clear that she must be the result of the same experiments that were conducted on me four and a half years ago. I know that. But she's my child, Mulder. I can't ignore that." "I just think maybe you need all the facts before you make a decision here." "I have the facts. Emily's parents are both dead. She's sick and alone, and right now, I'm all that little girl has. I can't turn my back on that. Could you?" "No," Mulder admitted, closing his eyes. He heard Scully blowing her nose. "I was hoping you could come out here," she said. It was the closest she had ever come to admitting she needed him. Mulder took his suitcase out of the closet. "I'm on my way," he said. ~*~*~ On the plane across the country, Mulder thought of a dozen reasons why he should not support Scully's petition for custody. She did not know the full story behind her reproductive issues. He knew this was partially his fault, given that he had failed to mention he had a vial of her ova cooling in the deep freeze. But if they were truly making babies out of her eggs, there could be a hundred little Emilys out there somewhere. Did Scully think she could adopt them all? These were genetic experiments with possible alien DNA. Scully would deny this, of course, but he knew better. Emily could have serious health issues, possibly even lethal ones. Scully could not send the little girl to preschool to have her demonstrate her shape-shifting ability, or worse, spray the room with some sort of alien toxin. And, perhaps the most scary possibility of all, if Emily were part of the same ongoing experimental project he had witnessed before, then her keepers would be coming after her soon. They would either destroy her to hide the evidence, destroy Scully and take the girl, or just kill them both and be done with it. Mulder had all these arguments and more lined up as he entered the doors of the San Diego County Children's special needs ward. Scully understood logic better than anyone. She would see the truth in his words. But then he found Scully on the floor of the children's room, coloring with a small blonde girl, and all logic went out the window. Scully looked up and gave him a smile but did not say anything. Mulder crouched down between them. Emily had Scully's white-pink skin, her rosebud mouth, and her serious demeanor. "Emily?" Scully said. "I'd like you to meet a friend of mine. His name is Mulder. Remember, I told you about him?" Mulder felt a rush of pleasure than he had merited a discussion. He waved to Emily, but she kept coloring. "She's a little shy," Scully explained. "What are you coloring?" Mulder asked. "A potato," Emily answered. "Have you ever seen Mr.Potato head? He looks like this." Mulder puffed out his cheeks and crossed his eyes, causing Emily to smile. Mulder knew then for good that logic was a lost cause. ~*~*~ Back at Bill Scully's base housing that night, Scully's family gave them concerned looks but a wide berth. Mulder took an uneasy seat on the sofa in front of the Christmas tree. Scully took the other end. "Thank you for testifying for me today," she said. "I know you have reservations about this." "I have reservations about the situation that led you this point," Mulder countered. "Not about you, and not about Emily. She's beautiful, Scully." Scully gave a sad smile. "Yeah, she is. But she's got a very serious form of anemia, one that's incurable. No matter what happens with my application, she's got a tough road ahead." She turned and looked at him. "Why didn't you tell me?" Mulder thought about everything he *still* hadn't told her and his mouth went dry. Little did Scully know that *you have no ova left* was just the tip of the iceberg. "I never expected this. I thought I was protecting you," he said at length. Scully must have been too tired to fight because she seemed to accept this. "Why would they do this to me?" "I only know that genetic experiments were being done, that children were being created." "Children being created for who?" Mulder shrugged. "For who? For what? I don't know." The phone rang then, and Scully went to answer it. The next thing Mulder knew they were rushing a very sick Emily to the emergency room. ~*~*~ Emily Sim lived just six days after that, though Scully lived a lifetime on the other side of glass, helpless as a virus devoured the daughter she barely knew. Mulder confined himself to the background, helping in the only way he knew how: tracking leads about Emily's surrogate mother. He found her in an old age home with a dozen other geriatric mothers. This discovery he meant to tell Scully, but every time he saw her, she was standing sentry over her dying daughter. So Mulder kept another secret. He stood next to her at Emily's casket with three white roses in his hand, one for each year the girl had lived. Scully had her usual stiff upper lip; she had not cried or grieved. She did not let him touch her. "Who are the men who would create a life whose only hope was to die?" she asked in a raw voice. Mulder searched himself for an answer. "I don't know. But that fact that you found her, and had a chance to love her... then maybe she was meant for that too." He wanted to hug her, but he didn't dare. Scully was deathly quiet on the way home, pale and withdrawn. She seemed eager to get away from her family and San Diego, so Mulder accompanied her on a plane back to D.C. that very night. The sunset was beautiful above the clouds, the sky turning fiery orange before fading into baby pink as it drifted towards twilight. Mulder had the window, and he watched the lights wink on in the cities far below. Beside him, Scully shifted. "What are you thinking about?" she asked, which struck him as a strange question given the events of the day. "Nothing," he said. "It's nice to be going home." "Detective Kresge told me what you found at the old age home," she said, and Mulder felt his face go hot. "I was going to tell you," he said. "I swear." She put her hand on his arm. "It's okay." Her head lolled back on the seat. "Does it seem late to you? I feel like it's the middle of the night." "Yeah." Mulder fell quiet again, looking at the constellations of cities on the earth below them. "What?" Scully asked again. He sighed. "I wonder about the fathers. Where are the fathers?" "I've wondered too." Scully sat up. "It's possible they might not need them. If they are really doing the kind of genetic experiments you say they are, perhaps Emily has two mothers." "That's really possible?" "In theory, yes." "Huh." Mulder leaned back and closed his eyes. He thought of Emily's smile and felt the weight of her in his arms as he had carried her to the hospital. He could still smell the salt of her skin. Science could remove the father from biology, he thought, but never from the heart. ~*~*~ Their red eye dropped them off with red eyes just as dawn broke over Washington, D.C.. Mulder insisted on seeing Scully back to her apartment. "I can make breakfast," she said through a large yawn. "I'll take a rain check," he said. "You need some rest." "So do you," she protested, just as her phone rang. "Probably my mother making sure I got home okay." Scully moved to answer the phone as Mulder hovered with his car keys by the door. "Hello? Ethan? What's going on?" Mulder froze in mid-exit. "Ethan, now isn't the greatest time. Oh." Scully looked at her watch. "Okay. Okay, yes. I'm on my way." "What was that about?" Mulder asked as she hung up. "Ethan remembered something important about the case he wants to tell me, and he doesn't think he should say it over the prison phone. He's been trying me for days." They both looked at the flashing red light on her machine. Scully put on the coat she had just taken off five minutes earlier. "Scully, wait. This is insane. You haven't really slept in a week. Ethan can hang on another twenty-four hours." "I'll take a cab," she said as she yawned again. "It'll be okay." "No," Mulder said, surprising them both with his firmness. "You rest. I will go see Ethan." She blinked. "You'll do that?" "I'll go right now, okay? I'll call you later and tell you what he said." He put his hands on her shoulders, which sagged under the gentle pressure. "Thank you, Mulder." He tried to pull her closer for a hug, but she twisted away. "I'll call you," he said again. Scully was already heading for the bedroom. ~*~ "Where's Dana?" Ethan asked as Mulder came through the meeting room door. "Hello to you too." Mulder pulled out the chair across from him, flipped it around, and sat down. "I'm sorry. It's just that Dana said on the phone she was coming." "Yeah, you and me, we need to talk about that." Ethan looked blank. Mulder continued: "Every other day, you call up and expect her to drop everything and run down here. I get that you're in a nasty situation, but you can't keep running Scully ragged on your behalf. She didn't do this to you, and it's not up to her to get you out. She's not on your case. She's not even in your life anymore. So enough with the constant demands already." "Oh, so that's it. You think this is about me trying to win her back?" Ethan gave a humorless laugh. "That's rich. Let me tell you something, Agent Mulder -- I can promise you romance is about the last thing on my mind right now." "No, apparently Dana is the last thing on your mind. Did you know she was sick?" Ethan looked shocked. Mulder nodded. "That's right, she had cancer and nearly died a few months ago. Did you even ask her how she's been, or did you just start assigning her errands?" "I asked," Ethan said. "She didn't tell me." "No, she wouldn't," Mulder agreed. "So I am. You're not the only one with problems. Yours is not the only pain in the universe, so I'd appreciate it if you could stop it with the prison summons." Ethan swallowed. "Is she going to be okay?" For an instant, Mulder felt guilty for even letting the man stew. "She's doing much better. She's even in remission. But my point still stands." "It's a good point," Ethan agreed. "Tell her I'm sorry." Mulder ran both hands through his hair. God, it felt like he had been awake for years. "All right, then. Tell me what was so important." "God, it will probably sound really stupid now. I'm such a jerk." "Ethan!" Mulder waited until the other man looked him in the eyes. "I got up yesterday morning in San Diego, okay? I am not looking to hang around here any longer than necessary." "Sorry. I just wanted to say I remembered something that might help with the case. A few days before she left -- I mean, a few days before she was leaving, Melinda got a phone call from a cop she had dated. The cop said he might have a lead on an angle for us on the Rachel Campenella murder. Melinda called him back but didn't reach him. That was the last I heard." "What was the cop's name?" "George Fussy. I remember laughing because it's not your usual tough-guy kind of name." "Any idea where he works?" "In the city. I don't know what station. It might be in Melinda's notes." "The cops have them all. Hers and yours." Ethan sighed, and Mulder felt another twinge of pity. "Yeah, that's what I was afraid of." Mulder rapped the table and stood up. "We'll check it out, okay?" "Thanks. I owe you guys big time. And I promise to be less demanding." Mulder looked around at the dreary concrete walls. It smelled like mold and, in one corner, water dripped into a bucket. "I think I'd go crazy in here too." "Be sure to tell Dana I said sorry." "I will." "Will you?" This got Mulder's attention. Ethan was staring right at him. "I said I would." "You loved her. I know you did. But you never said anything." Mulder dropped his gaze to the cement floor. "It's more complicated than you know," he answered at last. "Funny." Ethan folded his arms across his chest. "From where I'm sitting, it looks like the easiest thing in the world." ~*~ Mulder returned home and slept like the dead for many hours. When he awoke again, it was dark and someone was banging on his door. He stumbled through the apartment, turning on the entryway light at the last possible second. "Yeah?" he said, pulling open the door and squinting into the hallway. Scully stood hunched and small in his line of vision. Her face held no color and she seemed to be struggling to speak. He guided her inside. "Scully, what's wrong?" She stared up at him. "Mulder, I was gone for months." Oh, Scully, he thought. I know. Believe me, I know. "Yes," he agreed simply. "I don't understand," she said. "I don't understand why this happened to me." "I wish I could tell you. I wish that more than anything." "I have no memories." "I know." She turned huge eyes to his. "What was it like here? What was it like while I was gone?" Mulder hesitated for a minute and then grabbed his shoes. "I'll show you," he said. They drove all the way to Skyland Mountain. As the car began climbing the stead ascent, Scully sunk lower in her seat. "You okay?" he asked her. "Yes." "Have you ever been here before?" "No," she answered, and he thought that was telling. She had read the reports. She knew the facts of what had happened during her abduction by Duane Barry. "We can turn back if you want," Mulder offered. Scully set her jaw. "No," she said. "I want to see." They drove until they ran out of mountain, to the very top, where the trees thinned into rocky cliffs and grassy hills. Mulder parked the car and led her to the point of her disappearance. The night was still and clear, but cold. Stars scattered the sky, and he watched as Scully searched it for some sort of meaning. "I came here a lot," he told her. "I used to sit here for hours and think." "About what?" "Where I had gone wrong. What, if anything, I might have missed. I think part of me kept hoping you would reappear here." Scully reached out and patted his arm. "It's so quiet," she said as she took a seat on the grass. Mulder joined her. "It always was, except for that night." "I don't remember any of it." She sat forward with her arms over her knees. "And I can't forget," Mulder replied quietly. He picked at the grass near his hip. "I was just a few minutes too late. If I had just been a little faster..." "Don't," she said. "We can't play that game." "I never even saw you," he whispered. "Just Duane Barry and the lights." Scully shook her head slowly. "I feel so empty, sometimes, you know? It's just a few months out of my life, just a small portion of my memory, but sometimes it feels like... like... well, this." She indicated the giant cavern at the edge of the cliff. "Insurmountable." "Yeah." "You can't imagine what it's like to have such a huge dramatic thing happen to you, and yet come out of the experience with only confusion and questions." "Actually, I think I have some idea." Scully turned and looked at him. "Yes, I guess you would be the one person who would. What a pair we make, huh?" He tossed some grass at her, and she smiled. He was glad to see some of her color returning. "Do you ever have a dream that seems so real that you think it happened?" she asked. "Doesn't everyone?" "I mean really real." "Well, a few weeks ago, I dreamed you and I took a Frankenstein monster to a Cher concert." Scully laughed. "You did not." "I did! And I, uh, I asked you to dance." He risked a sideways look to see how she was taking this news. She was smiling. "Now we know it's a dream. You don't dance, Mulder." "How do you know?" "Call it instinct." "Well, it just so happens your instincts are wrong in this case," he informed her. "I had a full year of dance lessons when I was young, and I'm proud to say everyone's toes survived intact." Scully still looked skeptical. "Okay, then, I'll prove it." He tugged her up from the ground. "No, Mulder, that's really okay. You don't have to prove anything. I believe you." "Nope, too late." He half-dragged her back across the grass to the car, where he rolled down the window and turned on the radio. He had three stations to choose from, so he stopped on a slowish song from the 1950s. "May I?" he asked, extending his hand to Scully. She gave him a dubious look, but put her cold hand in his. Mulder pulled her closer and easily found the beat. They maneuvered around in gentle circles for a few minutes, and a smile spread over Scully's face. "You're pretty good at this, Mulder." "Told you." She was quiet a moment. "But Mulder, Cher?" "It all made sense in the dream." "If you say so." And then, to his shock, she laid her head on his shoulder. Mulder folded her closer still and rested his cheek against the top of her head. They continued dancing until the music ended. Before he could say anything, Scully reached around and hugged him fiercely. She seemed tense and desperate, not joyful. Mulder patted her back awkwardly and murmured into her hair, "Scully, are you okay?" "No," she said, her voice muffled against his thick wool coat. "But I will be." ~*~*~*~*~*~ Chapter Five: Baby Steps Mulder and Scully sat on opposite sides of a red plastic booth, sipping coffee and waiting for George Fussy to arrive. Scully kept eyeing the cherry pie that sat under protective glass on the countertop by the register. "Scully, if you keep making moony faces at that pie, it might get the wrong idea. The next thing you know, it will be ordering you a beer and asking you to dance. 'I thought we had something special,' it will say, 'but then she never called me again.'" Scully frowned and forced her gaze away from the pie. "Where is this guy, anyway?" she asked as she checked her watch. "He'll be here." Mulder twisted in his seat and signaled their waitress. "What are you doing?" Scully asked. "Consummating your relationship with the pastry." He smiled at the big-haired woman in the apron. "Two orders of pie, please." Scully leaned across the table as the waitress went to fill their order. "Mulder, it's not even eleven in the morning." "So? Think of it as a really late dinner dessert." Scully couldn't argue as the gooey concoction of golden crust and oozing cherries was placed in front of her. She had just split off a piece when her fork when Mulder glanced at the front door. "I think this is our boy," he said. The cop entered in full uniform, including the hat. He wore dark sunglasses and tight-fitting pants. Wavy blond hair stuck out from under his cap, and he sported a tan despite the January weather. Scully half-expected him to start a strip-o-gram as he approached the table. "Are you Agent Mulder?" he asked. Mulder half rose behind the table. "That's me, and this is Agent Scully. Thanks for agreeing to meet us. You want some coffee?" The man slid in next to Scully and took a look at her pie. "What you're having looks just great." Mulder flagged down the waitress and ordered another round. Fussy's leather jacket creaked as he shifted to look at Scully. "So you want to tell me why the FBI is looking into Melinda's death?" "It's not an official investigation," Scully answered. "We're just helping a friend." "Friend?" "Ethan Minette," said Scully, and Fussy froze with his big hands wrapped around the coffee mug. "That's the bastard who killed her." "He says he's innocent," Mulder said. "The hell he is. I heard what happened. They found her cut up on the floor of his apartment with one of his own knives. If you think I'm going to help you get him off, you've got another thing coming." He moved to slide out of the booth and Scully bristled. "You don't have all the facts," she protested. Mulder reached across the table and grabbed Fussy's arm. "We want to talk to you about Ryerson," he said, and Fussy stopped. Wariness flickered in his eyes but he eased himself back down beside Scully once more. "Ryerson, he's another sonofabitch. Makes me sick watching him on TV crying over that poor girl." "We heard you contacted Melinda with some information about him." Fussy looked from Mulder to Scully as if trying to gage their intentions. "I've got a cousin on the job in Winnetka, where Ryerson lives half the time. He's told me stories for years about that family. The one son, Connor? He wrapped a Lexus around a tree and Joe told me they were all supposed to keep it hush-hush. There was a rumor the other kid fathered a baby by some underage girl, but I never heard anything more about that one. But Ryerson, man, he's the biggest shit-head of all. Joe said they responded to a nine eleven call a few years ago. They found Mrs. Ryerson with a black eye and the old Senator acting all squirrelly, if you know what I mean. But no one would talk and the wife made up some stupid accident story, like they always do. That's what I wanted to tell Melinda. I figured if he likes to pound on his women, maybe it's not such a big leap to murder." "Why go to Melinda?" Scully asked. "Why not tell the detectives who are investigating Rachel's murder?" Fussy shot her a disgusted look. "You think they don't know? But knowing and proving are different things, and Ryerson, he's got an army of lawyers around him lined up six deep. I thought maybe if Melinda could do a story, public pressure might force Ryerson into saying something." "Did you tell anyone that you had contacted Melinda with what you knew?" Mulder asked. Fussy looked confused. "I don't know. I might've mentioned it to a buddy or two. We were all pissed off with the way Ryerson was acting. It's not like Ryerson's dirty laundry was some huge secret." "Maybe someone believed it was," Mulder murmured to Scully. "Melinda's dead. Ethan's in jail. They certainly won't be doing any reporting," Scully agreed. "Wait a second here," Fussy broke in. "Are you saying you think the murders are connected? I thought that was just a bunch of B.S. Ryerson was selling." Mulder gulped the last of his coffee and signaled for the check. "I think maybe it's time we heard his B.S. in person," he told Scully. ~*~ Their FBI badges got them as far as Senator Ryerson's front office, where his assistant, a young man wearing a suit that was disturbingly similar to Mulder's, stonewalled them. "Absolutely no one sees the Senator without an appointment," he said. "How soon could we get an appointment?" Mulder asked. The man consulted his computer. "I'm afraid the earliest I have would be two weeks from Friday. I can pencil you in for that time if you like, but his schedule is always subject to change." "Then maybe you could change it so we can see him right now," Mulder replied, leaning over the desk. "We won't take very long." "That's not possible." Mulder had opened his mouth to argue some more, when the door behind them opened and Ryerson himself emerged. "Gary, I thought you were going to print out the draft of the..." He trailed off as he saw Mulder and Scully standing there. "Sir, these are agents from the FBI," Gary said quickly. "I was just explaining how busy you are right now." "That so." Ryerson leaned back and peered through his glasses at Mulder and Scully. "What does the FBI want with me?" "If we could speak privately," Mulder began. "I'm afraid not," Ryerson interrupted. He handed a file to his assistant. "I have a meeting in ten minutes." "So we'll only take nine," Mulder said. "Do you want me to call security, sir?" Gary asked. "We can leave," Scully said, "but then we'd just have to come back." "Back and back again," Mulder agreed. The Senator sighed and made a show of checking his watch. "Eight minutes," he said. "That's all you get." Mulder and Scully followed him to his spacious office, where he offered them two low-backed leather arm chairs. Ryerson took his place behind the desk and gave them his full attention. "Now then, what can I do for you?" "We saw in the papers that you believe that Rachel Campenella and Melinda McKenn's murders are related," Mulder said. "I don't believe I'm alone in that assumption. The man they have in prison for that young camera woman's murder also knew Rachel, and the crimes appear to be remarkably similar. But I wasn't aware that the FBI was investigating either of these cases. Last I checked, these were simple, if horrific homicides, and the likely killer is already behind bars. I suppose we can all be grateful for that small favor." "We were just curious," Scully said, "since you knew Rachel so well, if you knew of any reason why Ethan Minette would have wanted to hurt her." "You're asking me about the motives of a madman?" "It just seems a little thin," Mulder explained. "If he was, as you say, a madman, why target a woman he barely knew first and then go after someone close to him?" "How on earth should I know? He was irrational. Traditional rules of logic don't apply. But I don't think it can be co-incidental that two women were brutally stabbed to death and he knew them both." Mulder sat forward. "Now, that's interesting. Not coincidental, you say. I'd be inclined to agree, except that you yourself knew both women." Ryerson frowned and folded his hands in front of him. "I don't know what you're talking about. I didn't know that camera woman." "Sure you did," Mulder replied easily. "We can pull the tapes from the station's library, if you like," Scully added. Ryerson looked annoyed. "Do you know how many cameras follow me around, day in and day out?" "More now than usual," Mulder guessed. "All I see is the lens and a bright light. I don't pay any attention to who is behind the camera." "Melinda was kind of hard to miss," Scully remarked. "Maybe for others, but not for me. Now, if you'll please excuse me, I really must be getting back to work now." He rose behind the desk, but Mulder and Scully did not get up. "The thing is," Mulder said, "and we wouldn't expect you to know this, so you'll have to trust our expertise on this point -- people don't tend to suddenly snap and become violent killers without some sort of previous history of violence." "Yes, well, as you say, you are the experts in this area." He moved toward the door, but again Mulder and Scully did not move to follow. "Maybe he had a temper no one knew about." "You wouldn't know anything about that, would you, sir?" Scully asked. "I'm quite sure I don't. And I'm quite sure we're out of time." "How about your wife?" Mulder asked as they got up from their chairs. "Would she know anything about violent tempers?" For a brief moment, Ryerson's carefully controlled mask slipped and rage glinted in his eyes. "You stay the hell away from my wife." Mulder paused on his way out the door. "So long as you do the same," he said softly. Scully leaned into him as they hurried from the office and back down the hall. "He'll try to have us fired for that, you know," she muttered. Mulder hit the button to summon the elevator. "If he is what we think he is, we'll be lucky if our jobs is all he wants." ~*~*~*~ That Saturday morning, Mulder parked his car outside Scully's building and sat there as if on surveillance. But the only thing he was surveying was the slim folder in his lap. He bounced it with his knee as far as the steering wheel permitted and glanced repeatedly at the front door. Scully had not mentioned Emily since their return from San Diego, and part of Mulder was loath to bring the whole mess up again. The other part of him wondered why he had even felt the need to muck around further, given that each new piece of the reproductive puzzle seemed to bring more heartache for them both. But it was too late now. He had the information burning in his lap and it was time to play hot potato with Scully. With a deep breath, he got out of the car and took the folder up to her apartment. "Coming," she called from the other side when he knocked. A moment later, the door opened to reveal Scully, who was dressed in jeans, a faded flannel shirt and a bandana around her head. She wore one yellow rubber glove and the room behind her smelled of carpet cleaner. "Mulder," she said with some surprise. "What's up?" Mulder had the folder behind his back. "Can I come in for a minute?" "Of course. I was just doing some cleaning." She wiped her nose on her forearm as she swung the door open to admit him. "Is something wrong?" Inside, Mulder noticed she had her curtains down and her books removed from their shelves. "You're really going all out here, huh?" "I'm home for the first weekend in a month. It seemed like a good time to get things in order." Watching her attempt to regain some control over her life by rearranging the furniture about broke his heart. "What do you have there?" she asked, pointing behind his back to the folder. Mulder brought it in front of him as if he had never seen it before. "Oh, this?" "That." Mulder tapped it against his palm a few times. "Why don't we sit down for a minute?" Scully gave him a curious look, but she pulled off her rubber glove and joined him on the striped sofa. "You remember we had that conversation about Emily, and you told me it was genetically possible to eliminate the male DNA, that you could create a child with two mothers." "Yes," Scully said slowly. "In principle." "But that would apply only to girls, right?" "The father typically determines sex, yes. Two mothers could produce only female offspring. Why?" "One of the surrogate mothers from the old age home was Evelyn Burmeister. The records showed her as delivering a healthy baby boy. If I recall my high school biology correctly, it would mean that at least this one child had a father." Scully swallowed visibly. "We--we know they've taken men, too. Duane Barry, for example. It's possible they're harvesting sperm as well as ova." "Frohike helped me dig around a little. The other name on Evelyn's file was Gail Neely. I brought along a copy of her medical records." He handed her the file, and Scully flipped open the cover. "Missing for eight weeks, she reappeared seven years ago in a New York hospital," Scully read. "Tachycarida, electrolyte imbalances, no evidence of conscious awareness." She looked up. "Mulder, this file, it's like a carbon copy of mine." "I know. She recovered after two weeks and no underlying cause of her condition was ever determined." Scully looked at the papers for another minute before shutting the folder and handing it back to him. "No evidence of cancer. She seems to be in good health." She shoved herself from the couch and returned to her rubber gloves. "That's it?" Mulder asked as he turned on the couch. "That's all you have to say?" "What would you like me to say, Mulder? We've seen this before. We both know I'm not the only one." "Gail Neely lives in Baltimore now. I thought you might want to go talk to her." "Talk to her? Why on earth would I want to do that?" Scully picked up a sponge and headed for the kitchen. Mulder followed. "She could have information," he started, but Scully cut him off. "She's a lab rat, Mulder, not the mastermind. Sure, we could go up there and grill her about her missing time. Maybe she'll remember some lights in the sky or a drill or vague memories of pain. Then we can tell her she might have a child out there, a child she never knew about and who is probably either dying or dead already." Scully was viciously scrubbing the sink. "If she's really lucky, maybe she can find the child just in time to watch the last of his suffering. I'm sure she would give us a big thank-you for that." "Okay, maybe you're right." Mulder looked down at the folder in his hands. Scully laughed darkly and continued her scrubbing. "You don't believe that." "I don't know what to believe." The fight left Scully and her shoulders slumped. She turned and looked at him for more explanation, but Mulder just shrugged. "You have a point," he said to her. "Who are we to turn this woman's life upside down? If you really think that talking to her would do more harm than good..." Scully straightened again. "Don't you dare put this off on me." "I'm not putting anything anywhere," he said as she resumed her cleaning. Scully did not seem to believe him. She lathered the sink in silence, not looking at him, and Mulder turned to go. He made it as far as the kitchen door before returning to her side. "Scully," he said, touching he arm. She shook him off. "You come in here and dump this in my lap, and then you blame me when I don't jump up and down the way you do. This is not some game of 'Clue' to me, Mulder. This is my life." "I know that," he said, his throat aching. Tears were running down her face but she just kept cleaning. "Scully..." "What?" she demanded, but it came out all watery and heartbroken. "I need to tell you something." "God, there's more?" Mulder reached over her to turn off the water. Scully still wasn't looking at him. "I found Samantha," he said to the top of her head. Startled, she tried to turn and face him, but space only permitted her to move halfway. She looked at him with wide, wet eyes. "What did you say?" He nodded at her to show she'd heard correctly. "A few months ago, when you were in the hospital. Our friend Cancer Man arranged for a little meeting in this diner after hours. She showed up with him and called him her father." He moved to the kitchen table and sank into a chair. Scully pulled out the one next to him and sat down as well. "What happened?" "We talked for a few minutes. She seemed to remember me, at least a little." He smiled painfully and stared at his hands. "I tried to get her to come with me, but she was scared. She begged me to let her go." Scully reached over and covered his fingers with her cold, gloved hand. Mulder shrugged. "What could I do?" he asked. "I had to let go." "He's been hiding her all this time?" Mulder took a deep, shuddering breath and made himself look at her. "Who knows? I mean, who the hell knows anything anymore? Sometimes I think I hallucinated the whole encounter. Was it her? Was it some sort of clone? Was it some actress he hired for the night just to yank my chain?" Scully squeezed him. "Why didn't you tell me?" He gave a half-shrug. "I couldn't figure out why I let her go. Why I didn't try harder to hang on, or to follow them, or find out more about her. I still don't know." "If she's out there, you'll find her, Mulder." "I'm not so sure she wants to be found," he answered quietly, and met her eyes. "I just wanted you to know that I do understand. Sometimes you just can't bring yourself to ask the questions because the answer may be even worse." Scully's mouth twitched as she struggled not to cry again. Instead she reached over and hugged him. "I'm sorry," she whispered. Mulder ran his hand down her back. "You don't have anything to be sorry for." Scully sniffed and pulled away. "This woman, Gail Neely, what answers do you think we can possibly get from her?" "I really don't know. The only thing I do know is that she was the only name on that list with a baby boy. I'd like to know why." Scully drew off her gloves, revealing red and raw hands. She covered her face and was silent for a long minute. "Okay," she said at last, "so would I." ~*~ Scully's small breakfast of toasted bagel, cream cheese and coffee was doing the hula in her stomach by the time they reached Baltimore. She gripped the inside door handle with all five fingers and willed herself not to be sick. Even when she thought she controlled these type of encounters, the women always ended up surprising her with some unwanted bit of information, be it cancer, implants or just the sense that they recognized her when she hadn't the faintest idea who they were. "We can still turn around," said Mulder as he steered them onto Gail Neely's street. "No, it's fine. But Mulder -- I think I should talk to her alone." He shot her a look that was a mixture of hurt and concern. "Are you sure?" "I'm sure." She squinted out the window at the sunshine- washed street. "I think this is it, number sixteen." The small house sat on a postage-stamp lot. There were no trees, and the grass was a winter brown, but the house itself was a cheery yellow. A fading Christmas wreath still hung on the front door. "I guess I'll wait at the end of the block for you then," Mulder said. "Call if you want backup." Backup, Scully thought, as though we're busting in on a felon and not some poor unsuspecting woman. She squared her shoulders and marched up the front walk to the door. After she knocked, the door swung open with a small boy hanging like a monkey from the inside doorknob. Scully adjusted her gaze downward and smiled at him. "Hi," she said. "I'm looking for Gail Neely." The boy did not smile back. "Mom!" he hollered. "There's a lady here to see you!" A slender woman appeared behind him with a wooden spoon in one hand and a baby on her hip. "Hello," she said, gently pushing the boy aside. "May I help you?" "My name is Dana Scully. I work for the FBI." Scully showed her ID even though her business wasn't especially FBI- related. She wanted the woman to understand she wasn't a crackpot, a veneer she expected to maintain just long enough to get inside the house. "FBI," said the woman uncertainly. "My goodness." "Do you have a gun?" the boy demanded as he hung on his mother's leg. Scully opened her overcoat to show him, and his eyes went round. "Wow," he said. "A real gun. Is it loaded?" "Ryan, go run and play," his mother said as she tried to open the screen door and keep the baby away from the spoon at the same time. Scully reached to take the door. "You're Gail Neely?" she asked as she entered. "That's right. Is something wrong? Is Steven okay?" "Everything's fine," Scully said. "I just wanted to talk to you for a minute about something that happened years ago, if that's all right." "Um, I guess so. Can we talk in the kitchen?" "Of course." Scully followed her through a toy-cluttered living room into a crowded, narrow kitchen. Gail put the baby into a high chair and scattered some cheerios in front of her. Scully admired the array of plants in the large window. The fridge was covered in magnetic letters and children's drawings. Scully took a seat at the round table while Gail tended the pot on the stove; it smelled like vegetable soup. "So what did you need to talk to me about?" she asked Scully. Scully hesitated, trying to figure where to begin. "It's about what happened to you eight years ago in New York." Gail stopped stirring the pot and closed her eyes. "That was another lifetime. I haven't thought about it in years." Scully knew a lie when she heard one. "Do you recall what you were doing before you disappeared?" "The last thing I remember, I was unloading groceries from my car. I wanted to put the ice cream away before it melted. Chocolate chip." She gave Scully a half-smile. "It used to be my favorite." "I'm partial to vanilla swirl," Scully answered. "The cops say they have no idea what happened," said Gail as she returned to chopping celery. "No idea who abducted me. No idea what happened to me while I was gone, and no idea who brought me back. For weeks afterward, I didn't leave the house. I was sure whoever it was would just grab me again." She looked suddenly alarmed. "Is that why you're here? You know who did it?" "I wish I did." "Then I don't understand. What does the FBI care about what happened to me a zillion years ago?" "The FBI doesn't," Scully said softly. "I do. Because it happened to me too." "What?" The knife sagged in her hand. "Oh, my God." "And there are others," Scully told her. "Mostly women, many with the same story." Gail covered her mouth with one hand. "I don't know what to say." "Why don't you sit down," Scully said as she pulled out a second chair from the table. "Ma-ma-ma-ma," said the baby. Gail touched her head on the way past and sat down next to Scully. Scully smiled. "You have beautiful children." "Thank you," Gail said as she wiped her eyes. "Ryan's five and Gabby here is almost a year now. They drive me crazy half the time, but I love them more than anything in the world. What about you? You have any kids?" Scully took a deep breath and put her palms flat on the table. "I can't have children," she said. "Because of what happened." "Oh, my God," Gail said again. "Me either. Ryan and Gabby are adopted. The doctors said that my infertility might have been related to what happened to me, but they thought it could have been on account of my miscarriage." "Miscarriage?" "I was pregnant back then. When it happened, I mean. But I guess I lost the baby." Her eyes welled up once more. "When I woke up in the hospital, I wasn't pregnant anymore. The doctors said they found signs of scarring inside me." "You were pregnant at the time of your abduction?" Scully tried to absorb this new piece of information. "Fourteen weeks. We were hoping for a boy." As if on cue, Ryan came charging into the room with a plastic water gun. He trained it at Scully and his mother and let loose with a string of machine gun noises. "I got you! I got you!" he said. "Ryan, that's enough. Take it outside now." "Aw, Mom, it's not even loaded." "Now!" Ryan heaved an exaggerated sigh and left through the back door. "Steven's been a saint through everything," Gail told Scully. "He said that even though we couldn't have kids of our own, that didn't mean we couldn't have our own kids." "They're great kids," Scully said, and Gabby agreed with a shriek of delight. "Do you think it matters that I was pregnant?" Gail asked, her expression worried. "I mean, was that why they picked me? We hadn't told anyone but family. I wasn't showing or anything." "No," Scully said uncertainly. "I don't think they could have known." "I thought maybe they were picking on pregnant women or something." She got up and scooped Gabby from her highchair. "You said there were others. How many of us are there?" "Too many," Scully said. "I don't understand how you found me." Scully looked around at the little handprint paintings, the pre-packaged plaid curtains, and the pot of soup simmering on the stove. "Old medical records," she hedged, because it was not really a lie. This woman had two whole, healthy children to raise. Scully would not give her nightmares about the one that got away. Later, Scully found Mulder at the end of the block. He had parked the car and found a small park with a bench, where he sat eating sunflower seeds and watching the kids chase each other around the slide. Scully sat next to him. "I couldn't tell her," she said. "She has a happy life, Mulder. Who am I to take that away? And what could I say for sure? That maybe she has a baby boy out there somewhere, but we don't know where?" Mulder sat forward, his gaze still on the kids playing tag. "Samantha and I used to have contests on the swings," he said. "Who could go higher, who could jump farther. I can still remember that moment, just as you let go and the seat falls away. For a second you know what it's like to fly." He turned at smiled at Scully. "She never could beat me." Scully said nothing. She reached over and put her hand in his. They sat there like that for the better part of an hour, just another old couple in the park on a sunny Saturday afternoon. ~*~ That night, Scully curled on her sofa in front of the flickering light of the TV, but she wasn't paying attention to the program. The conversation with Gail Neely haunted her. They couldn't have known, Scully had told her, but now she wasn't so sure. It was a question they had never thought to ask. They had always focused on what happened to the women after their abductions. What if it were possible that the men behind the tests had some way of identifying pregnant women ahead of time? Scully raised her shirt a few inches and touched her own belly. She had pregnancy dreams from time to time. Nearly all women did. "No," she told herself, pulling her shirt back down. "Not possible." She had been taking birth control pills back then; she was sure of this. She recollected taking them, and she had found the half-empty package in her medicine cabinet when she had returned home. Ethan had wanted children, as she had, but that was always down the road sometime, and sometime never happened. *There is one way to know for sure* said the voice in her head. Scully got up from the couch to take her empty tea mug to the kitchen. Some questions you don't want the answer to, Mulder had said. Scully leaned against the sink. She saw her reflection in the black window and remembered the times she had looked up and seen Ethan reflected behind her. Another lifetime, as Gail told her. Another life. Scully now carried Emily's picture inside her wallet. Maybe she had carried her inside her body too. She wanted this answer. Scully grabbed her purse and her coat and ran out the door. She did not stop to think of what would happen at the prison; she had muscled her way past tougher security in the past. Heart pounding, she retrieved the sample collection from the trunk of her car. A harmless cheek swab from Ethan and she would have her answer. God help them all if it was yes. ~*~*~ by syntax6 Chapter Six: Take Me Home Tonight Mulder was cleaning his fish tank, with Watson and Holmes making faces at him from their temporary home in his iced tea tumblers, when his phone rang. "Coming," he yelled at it as it continued to ring while he struggled out from his long rubber gloves. "Yeah, hello," he said, somewhat breathless by the time he reached the extension. "People who stick their noses where they don't belong sometimes find them cut off," said a low, threatening voice on the other end. "Mom? Is that you?" Mulder asked, deadpan, as he crossed to hit the record button on his answering machine. "You and your partner stay away from that prison," the voice told him. "You stay away from this case." "Which case is that?" Mulder asked. "You know what I'm talking about." "Maybe I need some clarification. Are you talking about Melinda McKenn's murder? Or Rachel Campenella's? Both, neither -- what? I need to make sure I'm getting this all down." "Mind your own business, Agent Mulder, and nobody gets hurt." The person hung up then, and Mulder swallowed a curse. He immediately dialed Scully at home, but he got her machine. He tried her cell. "Yeah," she said, and he could hear the sound of a car engine humming in the background. "Where are you?" he asked, eyeing the clock. It was going on ten at night. "I'm on my way to see Ethan. Why?" "You might want to watch your back," Mulder said as he walked to his window. He used two fingers to scissor open the blinds and peered out at the street below. No sign of any activity. "I just got a phone call telling us to stay away from Ethan's case," he told Scully. "At least I'm pretty sure that's what the guy wanted. He wasn't especially specific, except with the threats." "Threats? What kind of threats?" "The kind that involve bodily harm. Why are you going to see Ethan?" Scully did not answer right away, and Mulder stopped his pacing to listen harder. "It's personal," she said at last. "You're going out there in the middle of the night for a social call?" "Not social. Personal. Listen, I'm at the gates so I've got to go. Thanks for the warning, and I promise I'll be careful, okay?" "Scully, wait," he said, but she had already hung up the phone. ~*~ Scully managed to fast talk her way past prison security, as the guards weren't sure how to handle an FBI agent showing up during off hours and demanding to see an inmate. She waited in the interrogation room, which wasn't much bigger than a cell itself, until a guard escorted Ethan inside the door. His hair had grown shaggy and he hadn't shaved in a few days. His face registered surprise at the sight of her. "Dana, hi. What's the emergency?" Suddenly she felt a little foolish standing there with her sample collection kit. She had gone four years without an answer; a few more hours would not have been too much to bear. "Did you find something out on the case?" Ethan asked. Scully shook her head. "Nothing like that. I'm sorry." She held up the DNA kit. "I just wanted to get a sample from you in case we need it for later comparisons." There was no way she was going to tell him about Emily before she knew for sure. Even then, what good would the news do him if the answer were yes? *So then why are you here?* the voice in her head demanded. Ethan sagged against the table and sighed. "I thought maybe you had a break or something," he said. "But sure, go ahead. Take what you need." Scully put on her latex gloves with nervous fingers and took out the sterile cylinder for sample collection. "We did go to see Ryerson," she told him as she stepped closer to him. "You did? When?" "Just the other day. You might be surprised to hear he agrees with you that Rachel and Melinda's deaths are connected." She raised the cotton swab to his mouth. "Open, please." Scully gently rubbed the swab against the inside of his cheek, avoiding his eyes as she did so. It was strange, standing so close to him after all this time. She felt his hot breath on her hand and smelled the familiar scent of his skin underneath the prison laundry soap. "Maybe that's because he killed them both," Ethan said when Scully had finished. She capped the sample. "You really believe that?" He reached out awkwardly with his shackled hands and grabbed one of hers. "I don't know what I believe anymore. Doing time in the county lock-up for a murder you didn't commit tends to warp your point of view, you know? That's why I'm glad I have you." "I haven't done anything," Scully replied, looking at his worn tennis shoes. "Mulder told me," Ethan said as he ducked his head to try to meet her eyes. "He told me about your illness." Scully pulled away. "He shouldn't have said anything. I'm fine now." "He was trying to protect you. I can understand that." His mouth twisted into an ironic smile. "I never thought there would come a day when you had to be protected from me. Of course, look at me now. The cops think everyone needs to be protected from me." "They've made a terrible mistake. None of this is your fault." "It's not yours either." He tilted her chin up to look at him. "I'm sorry if I made you feel it was." "You didn't." "I just want to be clear," he said. "You don't owe me anything because of what happened between us." Scully broke free from his touch and went to put away her test kit. "You're wrongly accused of murder, Ethan. I'd be here no matter who you were." "No," he replied, not unkindly. "You wouldn't." Scully busied herself with the kit. She could still feel Ethan's gaze on her. "God knows I hope you find something," he continued. "I want Melinda's killer caught and I want out of here more than anything in the world, so forgive me if I can't take the high road here. I can't ask you to stop trying. But you were able walk away from me once, Dana, and I hope if you needed to, you could do it again." She did just that, packing away a piece of him in her briefcase and hurrying out of the prison into the cold starry night. Few cars scattered the dark parking lot, and all Scully heard was the sound of her own heels against the cement. She reached her car and shut herself inside with a resounding slam, taking a moment to catch her breath before she started the engine. The briefcase with her answer rested on the seat beside her, and Scully kept glancing at it as though it would divulge its secrets without any sort of PCR test. She considered going straight to the lab to run the gels now. It was late enough that no one was likely to be around to ask her what she was doing. Scully's thoughts on the DNA evaporated under a sudden, harsh glare in her car. The vehicle behind her had pulled up close, shining its high beams right at her mirrors. Scully squinted painfully and tried to shield her eyes with one hand as she sped up to put some distance between her and the person behind her. The SUV/truck sped up too. "Jerk," she muttered. "Just go around." The road was otherwise deserted; the other driver could easily pass her. Instead, he crept closer, nearly threatening her bumper. Scully checked her speed: sixty-five in a fifty mile-per- hour zone. She nudged the needle up to seventy, but the driver kept pace and the blinding light made it hard for her to see the road in front of her. She hit a curve and nearly ran off the pavement. Her car swerved over the double yellow line as she over-corrected the wheel. Scully held tight and pressed the pedal down to the floor. She kept one eye on the road as she groped blindly with one hand for her cell phone. Just as her fingers made contact, the much larger vehicle rammed her from behind. Scully's car swerved as she was thrown forward against the seatbelt. Her phone slipped to the floor. Her pursuer rammed her again, harder this time, and her wheels caught the edge of the road. She was unable to steer as she became airborne, her car turning over like a carnival ride. Her briefcase hit the side of her face. Her stomach slammed against her ribs. Scully shut her eyes and held her breath for the crash. Glass shattered around her. Metal and plastic twisted together as the car folded in on her like a tin can. She tasted blood in her mouth and the smell of burning oil filled the air. Hung upside down by her seatbelt, Scully slowly opened her eyes. Alive. Breathing. She tested her arms and legs and found them movable. The only sound was her own harsh breathing; the person who hit her had either driven away or was parked and waiting to finish her off if she emerged from the car. Scully winced as her bruised knee made contact with the dash. Her keys jangled but she did not attempt to remove them from the ignition. She fumbled with her seatbelt as glass fell from her hair. Her scalp still burned from the impact. Outside, she heard tires squeal to a halt. Her heart started pounding again as she felt around in the dark for her gun. "Scully?" she heard Mulder call. "Mulder," she answered with relief. "I'm okay." Dirt and gravel pinged against the shell of her battered car as he came down the ditch to her. She could just make out the familiar outline of his work boots. "Scully, are you all right? What happened?" "Someone ran me off the road." She managed to get her seat belt loose but the door wouldn't open more than a crack. The warning beep came on, alerting her to the fact that her keys were in the ignition. "Shut the hell up," she muttered at it. "Scully?" Mulder was kneeling down next to the smashed window. "Are you hurt?" "Not really." She used her forearm to wipe away the rest of the window glass. "Here, let me help." Mulder put his coat over the frame so she could wriggle through it. Her bruised ribs protested, making her grimace, but she got free without too much trouble. Mulder caught her hands and helped her to her feet. "You sure you're okay?" He brushed glass fragments from her coat as she stood there in a bit of a daze. "I'm all right. We need to call towing." Mulder surveyed her car. "More like the dump." He palmed his cell phone and called in the accident. "Help is on the way," he said as he clicked off. "How did you find me?" "I was coming out to the prison to meet you and saw your car flipped upside down by the side of the road. What happened?" "I was just coming home and some big thing came up behind me and ran me off the road. Maybe a truck or an SUV. Definitely larger than my car." "Were you followed from the prison then?" "I don't know," Scully admitted. "I wasn't paying close attention." Mulder took out his flashlight and shone it at her face. Scully squinted and put up her hands. "What are you doing?" "Making sure you're all right." "And what, you thought you'd try forced confession?" She grabbed at him until she made contact with his arm and pushed the light down. "That's quite a bruise you have on your cheek." Scully touched the tender, swollen spot under her right eye. "My briefcase clocked me somewhere in midair," she replied, and then remembered what was in her briefcase. "I've got to get it out of there," she said as she knelt down again by the side of her car. "Scully, wait a second. Your stuff isn't going anywhere. At least wait until someone comes to flip the car back over." Scully pressed herself on the cold hard ground and reached through the window. Glass shards pressed into the front of her thick overcoat as she flailed around with one arm. She couldn't quite reach the briefcase. "Damn it," she said. She felt Mulder's hand on her back. "Let me try." Scully squirmed closer and whacked her head on the window frame. "Ow," she said, wincing back. Mulder's hand slipped to her ribs and he nudged her gently away from the car. "My arms are longer." Reluctantly, Scully backed off and let him wriggle around at the car window. She stood over him, watching him grimace in the moonlight as he struggled to reach the far side of the car. "Got it," he breathed, and withdrew it carefully through the broken window. He stood up and dusted himself off with one hand. Scully grabbed the case from him for inspection. "What have you got in there, gold bullion?" Fortunately, the kit appeared intact. She could get away with swabbing Ethan once, but twice? He was bound to start asking more questions she didn't want to answer. Scully hugged the case to her middle as the emergency sirens started wailing in the distance. An ambulance and two cruisers rolled up to the scene, scattering red and blue light into the trees. Mulder reached over and tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. "The cavalry is here," he said, stating the obvious. "I'm fine," Scully said by way of rehearsal. Mulder's smile was tender. "Of course you are." Two EMTs came trooping down the hill into the ditch. "Anyone still in the car?" "All clear," Mulder told him. "I wasn't involved in the accident, but she was driving." It was the EMT's turn to shine a light on her. "Are you injured, ma'am?" "I'm fine," Scully said. "Just a few cuts and bruises." They checked her over and wanted to take her for tests at the hospital anyway, just to be sure. Scully didn't want to go to the hospital. She wanted to go to the lab. But now she had six men surrounding her with concerned expressions and just one common goal: to get her to the ER. "Humor us," Mulder said. "Let them make sure your insides don't resemble your car." So Scully let them load her into the ambulance and take her to the nearest hospital, where doctors prodded and scanned her and pronounced that she would live. She was lying on the cot, peeking under her hospital gown to examine the long, seatbelt-shaped bruise she wore like a sash from hip to shoulder, when her mother appeared from behind the green striped curtain. "Oh, thank God," she said when she saw Scully. "Mom, what are you doing here?" "The hospital called and said you'd been in accident." "I'm fine," Scully said as her mother embraced her. "They shouldn't have worried you." Her mother put her hands on either side of Scully's face. "Let me look at you. Are you hurt anywhere?" "I'm okay, really." "What on earth happened?" "I was out at the prison," Scully began. "The prison? Why?" "To see Ethan." "At this hour?" Her mother smoothed back Scully's hair and frowned. "I know you feel awful for him, Dana, but I worry you're pushing yourself too hard. The police are already working on his case." "Mom, I wasn't there about the case." Her mother stumbled in mid-lecture. "Oh?" "No," Scully replied as she tried to figure out how to explain. "I've recently learned it's possible I was pregnant at the time of my abduction, that it's possible Emily was conceived in the usual way." She and her mother had not had any sort of sex talk after Maggie explained the basics back when Scully was in high school. Scully didn't believe her mother figured she was a virgin, but by the same token, this was the first time she had ever admitted as such out loud. "I don't understand," Maggie said, her brow knit. "I thought you said Emily was the product of some terrible laboratory experiment." "She was. But I thought they created her, and I may have been wrong about that. It's possible that Ethan was her father." "Possible," Maggie repeated. "But you don't know for sure." Scully eyed her briefcase across the room. "That's why I went there -- to get an answer." "I see." Maggie's gaze turned downward, and she covered Scully's hands with her own. "And if it's true? Then what?" "I--I don't know." "Will you tell Ethan?" "I think he has a right to know." Her mother pinned her with a sharp look. "Know what? That he may have had a little girl who died a horrible death?" "Leave him out of it then. I have a right to know." Maggie held her gently by both shoulders. "I know you do. I know it. I've watched you search for years to get back what you lost during those months. All it ever does is make you sick and unhappy. I don't question your anger, Dana, or your desire for answers. I just wonder if the answers you're seeking will ever bring you peace." Scully's throat closed off with tears as her mother spoke. She tried to answer but faltered. "She was my baby," Scully whispered. "I never even knew it." "I know," her mother soothed, rocking her. "And I am so sorry." Scully clung, burying her hot face in her mother's neck. Maggie rubbed her back with the same slow strokes she had used when Scully was a child. "You can't change the past," her mother told her. "You can't bring back the ones you've lost along the way, no matter how you might wish it." Scully squeezed her eyes shut against the words. She couldn't go forward; she couldn't go back. She was stuck forever in limbo with the ghosts of her own past. ~*~ Mulder sat in the emergency room waiting room between an elderly woman with a cane and a clown with a bloody nose. The clown was a talker. "You take this gig thinking you're going to make people laugh. Turns out half the world hates clowns. I should've listened to my mother and become a car mechanic. Everyone hates them too, but at least you make a butt load of money." Mulder ignored him and watched the door, waiting for Scully to appear. He had an old "Sports Illustrated" open on his lap but he hadn't read a word. He kept seeing Scully's car folded like an accordion and heard her say, "It's personal." It had not occurred to him until now that Scully might still harbor romantic feelings for Ethan. Given her track record, an arrest for homicide might just make him more attractive. This made her three-for-three in the "lovers charged with bloody murder" category. The bad news for Ethan was that the previous two ended up either dead or in a psychiatric hospital for the criminally insane. The clown used up one handkerchief, so he yanked it up a bit and a second materialized behind it from his pocket. Mulder silently willed Scully to hurry up. Sure enough, she walked through the door a minute later with her mother, who had an arm around her. Mulder stood at the sight of them. "Fox," Maggie said. "Dana said she could catch a ride home with you." Mulder nodded and gave Scully the once-over. "How are you doing?" "No permanent damage," she replied. Maggie hugged her daughter and kissed her on the cheek. "You get some rest, okay? I'll call you later." Scully gave Mulder a wan smile. "Thanks for waiting," she said as they started for the door. "Anytime," he said. He could not believe it was still dark outside. It seemed they had been awake for days. "I'll take you home." Scully linked her arm through his. "I've got a better idea," she said. She directed him to an all-night pancake house, where they slid into an ugly orange booth and examined plastic menus featuring all manner of greasy food. The only other customers were a pair of middle-aged men with beer bellies and faded baseball caps. They drank coffee and chatted up the frumpy waitress while Mulder and Scully considered their food options. "My dad used to take us all out for pancakes on Saturday mornings," Scully said. "Maybe twice a year. I used to wonder how the cook managed to make every one in the same perfect circle." "Mom used to make us French toast for dinner on nights she and my father went out. I don't think I've had any since I was twelve years old." Scully smiled. "You should get that, then." "I think I will." So Mulder ordered three slices of his childhood while Scully requested a plate of pancakes. They drank mugs of coffee and considered the events of the evening. "Your mysterious friend on the phone was serious," Scully said. "We continue this investigation at our peril." Mulder tried not to look at the bruise deepening on her cheek. "I think it was a man who called, but I can't be totally sure. The timing is interesting, though, don't you think? We pay a little visit to Ryerson and all of a sudden we're getting the big 'back off' signals." "Certainly lends weight to the idea that Melinda was murdered and Ethan was framed to shut them up." "Wish we could get our hands on all their notes." "Without a subpoena, we have no leverage. The station doesn't have to give us a thing." "You're sure you didn't notice anyone at the prison?" Mulder asked as their food arrived. His stomach rumbled at the smell of bacon and he realized he probably hadn't eaten in twelve hours. "As far as I recall, the parking lot was pretty deserted. I didn't even notice someone was behind me until he started bearing down on my bumper." She speared a piece of pancake and popped it into her mouth. "I think it's clear you were followed. From now on, I don't think you should go out to there alone." "Right. Next time he can try to run us off the road together." Mulder had no good answer for that one. "So your talk with Ethan," he said. "It went okay?" "Okay," she said, but did not elaborate. She washed down another mouthful of pancake with some coffee. "Mulder, I was wondering... did I say anything to you about Ethan back then before we broke up?" Prickles raised the hair on the back of his neck. He covered with a long sip of coffee. "Like what?" Scully was concentrating on dissecting her stack of pancakes. "I don't know if I ever told you," she said. "I took his ring off. I don't remember doing it, but I must have had a reason." "That's what you went to talk to him about?" "I just wanted to know if maybe I said something to you about it at the time." Mulder shifted uncomfortably. "We weren't working together. The X-files had been shut down. It's not like we had a lot of opportunity for conversation." "Okay," she said, sounding disappointed. "You didn't talk a lot about Ethan at any point," Mulder told her. And he had never asked. "He was jealous of you." A smile twitched at her lips. Mulder couldn't help his grin. "Oh, yeah? Jealous of me? Was it my rugged good looks or my unassuming charm that did it?" "He didn't like all the time we spent together." Mulder sobered a little, recalling their heated indiscretion and the resultant tension. As far as he knew, Ethan had never found out about it. "We spent a lot of time in shitty motels, eating crap food and driving around in rented cars. Not much to be jealous of there." "I don't know," Scully said thoughtfully. "Maybe he had a point." Surprised, Mulder put down his coffee mug. "What do you mean?" "Five years later, here we still are." After breakfast, he drove her home as the sun turned up the volume on the morning. Traffic increased, the birds chattered and early morning joggers appeared along the side of the road. Scully had swallowed a couple of painkillers before leaving the restaurant and she promptly conked out cold against the side of his car. Mulder pulled to a gentle stop in front of her apartment building, but Scully did not stir when he cut the engine. He reached over and squeezed her hand. "Scully," he said, "we're here." Scully mumbled something but did not awaken. He didn't want to jostle her too hard for fear of hurting her. Mulder sighed, got out of the car, and went around to the passenger side door. He opened it and crouched down as Scully sat up, blinking sleepily. "Is it over?" she asked. Mulder unbuckled her seatbelt. "Over? The fun is just beginning. Let's get you inside, hmm?" Scully let him help her out of the car, and he noticed her grimacing as she pushed off from her seat. She walked with slow, careful steps up to the front door. Mulder held out his hand to take her briefcase as she fumbled around for her keys, and to his surprise, Scully acquiesced. She opened her front door with one hand while smothering a yawn with the other. Mulder set her things down in the living room while Scully headed straight to her bed. He popped his head in to find her crawling beneath the covers. He smiled fondly at the trail of clothing she left in her wake: a coat, a suit jacket, two haphazard shoes. Mulder scooped up the coats and draped them over a nearby chair. He took a seat near Scully's hip, and she dragged her eyes open to fix him with a glassy stare. "Get some sleep," he said, tucking the blankets around her. She reached out and curled her fingers around the end of his T-shirt. Mulder pried her hand loose, capturing it with his own. "I'm glad you're okay," he said. "Ethan was right," she murmured so low he almost didn't hear her. "One reason I took the ring off was you." Mulder bit his lip. He wasn't sure whether she was giving him credit or blame. "Scully," he said, but she had closed her eyes again. Her hand went limp in his. Mulder lifted it to his lips and pressed a kiss to her knuckles before gently settling it back under the covers with her other one. Scully sighed and snuggled deeper into the pillow. Mulder crept back out of the room, intent on leaving, when he spotted the briefcase by the door. He hesitated just a moment and then stooped down to unzip the top. Inside he found her gun, her ID, her wallet, a few folders and a DNA collection kit. A used DNA collection kit. He picked up the cylinder with the swab inside for closer examination. There was no name on the label, but reason told him it could belong to only one person: Ethan. Personal, she had said. Not related to the case. Just one more open secret. Mulder tucked the kit back where he had found it and left before he could uncover any more unwanted knowledge. ~*~*~ Next weekend, Mulder went to M.I.T. for a symposium and Scully went to Quantico to run some tests. By Sunday evening, she was sipping tea at her kitchen table with the results of the PCR tests in front of her. They stated conclusively that Ethan was not Emily's father. Scully slid the gels over one another with one hand, back and forth, but there was no denying the truth. The results came back late, leaving her alone in the lab to absorb the findings, and Scully had shed tears in equal parts sorrow and relief. She had never been pregnant. Ethan would never need to know. It seemed silly to her now to have ever wondered. They had not been trying for kids. Quite the opposite; she had been very clear about not wanting them for some time. A newly minted FBI woman did not have time for babies. But five years later, Dana Scully had believed she had room in her heart for a small, serious girl with wide brown eyes and a shy smile. She leaned back with her tea mug, holding it to her chest so the heat burned through her thin blouse. If her heart was the only place she ever carried Emily, so be it. Sometimes, she thought, the answers do bring peace. ~*~*~ Tuesday morning she found Mulder back in the basement office looking both worn-out and restless. She tossed a newspaper in his general direction. "Shouldn't that be my picture next to the headline?" she asked with a teasing smile. There he was in black and white with the words 'ALL THIS CONJECTURE ABOUT LITTLE GREEN MEN, DANGEROUS, DELUSIONAL.' Mulder began drawing an ink moustache on his picture. "Cassandra Spender is living proof that the truth I've so boldly sought for the last five years is the truth of a madman." "How's that?" "One more anal-probing, gyro-pyro levitating-ecoplasm alien anti-matter story, and I'm gonna take out my gun and shoot somebody." "Well ... I guess I'm done here. You seem to have invalidated your own work. Have a nice life." "How do you know about Cassandra Spender? "Her son accosted me in the hallway. He's an FBI agent. He's of the same opinion as you, by the way - that she's not well." He tossed the newspaper back at her, and Scully took it up again. This time she looked beyond the bold print to the details below. "What?" Mulder asked her. "Cassandra Spender was abducted at Skyland Mountain. That's where I was taken ... where Duane Barry took me." "The woman is a nut, Scully." Scully knew the same had been said about her. She continued, "It says here that she has an implant ... in the base of her neck." "Where the government no doubt removed her brain. Isn't that what her son stopped you to say, Scully?" Mulder got up to leave but did not say where he was going. "Oh, no, he, uh, he asked if you'd please not talk about this with anyone." Mulder adjusted his collar on his way out the door. "Wish granted." But Scully couldn't walk away this time. She went to visit this mysterious Cassandra and found her in a psychiatric ward. Cassandra told a tale Scully only remembered in her dreams, of tests and summons and the feeling you were always being watched. "They took a fetus from me once," Cassandra said, smiling as if this were an honor. Scully's stomach turned over, but she made herself ask: "What happened to it?" "They have her out there," Cassandra replied as she turned to look outside at the night sky. "That's partly why I am so anxious to return, you see. They told me I might see her." A sharp pain hit Scully at the base of her neck, right where the implant lay, and she resisted the urge to touch her hand to it. "I'm sorry," she said, suddenly unable to catch her breath. "I'm afraid I have to go." Cassandra gave her a knowing smile. "Of course, dear. I understand completely." ~*~*~ Mulder walked among the fifty odd bodies without really seeing them. The smell of charred flesh and burned rubber filled the air. Helicopters circled overhead, as they always seemed to do at Skyland Mountain. Sometimes when he closed his eyes at night he could still hear them fading away as he screamed her name over and over at the top of his lungs. He noticed Scully in the distance and was tempted to turn the other way. She noticed him, though, so he met her halfway among the dead. "Are there any survivors?" he asked. "No. Not as of this moment." "Self immolation?" "There's no evidence of that right now." "And what was their relationship to each other? Were they families?" "There's no way to ID their bodies right now," she said. "It's going to be a painstaking dental process. Mulder, why are you tiptoeing around the obvious fact here? I mean, this is Skyland Mountain. We're right back here on Skyland Mountain." "And you think it's related to your abduction from the same place?" "Well, you can't deny the connection." "You think this is some kind of abduction scenario?" "No... I'm not saying that." "Do you have any evidence of that?" She frowned at him. "What do you mean by evidence?" "That's what I'm asking you." She was the evidence. The chip, the scars, the cancer -- Scully was a living record of the atrocities perpetrated on the innocent. He knew this as well as anyone, but he was going to make her say it out loud before he could believe it. But by the time she made him hear her, it was too late. Scully was gone. ~*~ Mulder was driving home with the X-rays of the dead when he got the call from Skinner. "Mulder, I'm en route to Pennsylvania," he said. "There's been another incident. I think you and Agent Scully should get here as quickly as possible." "Incident?" Mulder repeated. "Initial report says another fifty, maybe more, burned to death tonight at Ruskin Dam. It's just like Skyland Mountain all over again." Mulder lurched his car to a stop in the middle of the road. "Sir, I haven't been able to reach Scully all day. I'm afraid she may already be there." "No, Mulder. Local officials are the only ones on the scene so far." "You don't understand," Mulder said. Someone honked behind him. "I'm saying she may be among the victims." "Oh, Christ." Mulder turned the car around and started speeding towards the highway. "Tell me there are survivors." "I don't know." "Tell me!" "I don't know! But I am damn sure going to find out." Mulder drove through what remained of the night, getting spotty and terrifying reports from Skinner. Many dead. No survivors yet. No sign of Scully. All the while the haunting memory of burned bodies floated through his mind. He tried Scully's cell phone every few minutes, just in case, but each time he got her voice mail. He left increasingly panicked messages and made up stories for himself about where she might be. Only when he reached Ruskin Dam did he have to accept the awful truth. "Is she here?" he demanded of Skinner. There were the fucking helicopters again, making it impossible to hear anything. Skinner shouted back: "Yes, and the medics are all over her." They loaded her scorched and in shock into a chopper for transport to the nearest hospital. And so it came to pass again that Mulder stood helpless, watching as Scully was carried off into the sky to an uncertain fate. ~*~ She woke for the third time to find Mulder at her side again. His tie hung loose around his neck and he was watching some sort of sports report on TV. She could see the bags puffing out under his eyes in the blue, flickering light. He noticed she was awake and rolled his chair closer. "Hey, how are you doing?" he asked softly. She sat up. "I'm still so thirsty, but other than that, okay I guess." Mulder obliged her by pouring a glass of water from the plastic pink pitcher the hospital provided. Scully drank it down greedily. "You were lucky," he said. "I heard them say they'll let you out of here tomorrow, probably." "Lucky? Mulder, I was nearly burned to death and I have no recollection of what happened." He ducked his head as if conceding her point. Her heart started pounding and she felt dizzy again. "I--I don't know how I got there. I have no memory. Mulder, why does this keep happening to me?" "I don't know," he said, "but I promise we will find out." "You said the others all had implants. What if it's the chip that's making me do these things, controlling my memory? What then? I can't take it out!" "Scully, shhh." Mulder looked a little desperate. Tough shit. He wasn't the one wandering around among the dead with no memory. Scully covered her face with both hands. Her burns protested the touch, but she welcomed the pain. Mulder tried to pry her fingers away. "I can't do this again," she said tearfully. "You won't," he soothed. "You don't know that. I could go to sleep here tonight and wake up God knows where or maybe I just won't wake up at all." Mulder squeezed her hands. "I won't let that happen. I will stay right here the whole time, okay?" "What, are you going to stay with me every night for the rest of my life?" "If I have to, I will." She looked at him askance, and he smiled at her. "We can car pool and fight over the morning paper." "I'm glad you find this so amusing." "I don't," he replied. "Not at all." He shifted so he was sitting with her on the bed. "I just want you to get some rest." "I can't," she said in a broken whisper. "Sure you can." He urged her back down against the pillows. "We can figure out the next move tomorrow, okay?" She was so tired she couldn't even think. Maybe he was making sense, maybe not. She didn't have the strength to argue anymore. Mulder drew the covers up over her shoulder and she curled against him. "Don't you ever just want to say 'enough'?" she asked him softly. He stroked her hair. "All the time." Scully sniffed and closed her eyes. "If Samantha had stayed, that night in the diner, would that be enough for you? If you finally knew the truth?" "Maybe at one time. Not anymore." She shifted to look up at him. "Why?" "Because of you. And her. And me. And all those others who died last night. No matter what I believe, I can't walk away now." "No," she said, suddenly sleepy. She grabbed his hand. It was rough and warm and familiar. "Not now." ~*~ It ended the way it always did for them, detained by Air Force security personnel after sneaking onto a base. Mulder got the memory wipe this time and the evidence got away. Scully had some partial memories, not in her head but on tape, courtesy of her hypnotic regression with Dr. Werber. She listened to herself gasp as aliens descended and took Cassandra Spender back into the sky. "Well?" Mulder asked her as they sat together in the basement. He nodded at the tape she had in her hand. "What's the verdict? Truth or fiction?" "I don't know that it's always so easy to tell." Scully sat up with a sigh and placed the tape on his desk. "Did you know that a few years ago, doctors were performing brain surgery on this woman and they opened her up ahead of time to map out various brain areas so they would not destroy important tissue during the operation. They poked her with electrodes and she told them different stories." "She was awake?" "Yes, you can do brain surgery under relatively mild anesthesia. And they needed her awake so they could figure out where her language centers were. In any case, they discovered that if they stimulated one spot, she vividly recalled her 8th birthday party. In another spot, she told a detailed story about a trip she took to Mexico." "So memory is stored in a specific place?" "Maybe not." Scully stood and collected her things. "It turns out this woman had never been to Mexico." Mulder picked up her regression tape and turned it over several times with his fingers. "So you're saying now that you don't believe what you said here is real?" "I don't know what to believe. I guess what I'm saying is, if the truth is in me, we may still never find it." "So where is Cassandra Spender?" "I don't know." She reached across and took the tape from him. "But ten to one she's not in Mexico." ~*~ Scully had taken to hiding her keys at night, as though whatever force willing her to death wouldn't know to direct her to the jewelry box under her bed. But it was the only way she could sleep, and even then it often took her over an hour to drift off. When she did sleep, she dreamt vivid, Technicolor dreams of Cassandra ascending into the stars. She saw faceless men and bodies on fire. Duane Barry peered at her from the other side of her window. She heard the high whine of a drill and felt again her swollen body. Sometimes Mulder was there. Sometimes Ethan. That night she dreamed of pounding rain and the wet smell of the jungle. She heard herself moan and felt Mulder moving inside her. She sat straight up in bed, her blood still singing hot through her veins. She throbbed from head to toe and her tongue had gone totally dry. She shook all over. Scully clapped her hand to her mouth. Not a dream, she realized. A memory. ~*~ When Scully failed to show up for work, Mulder's first reaction was to panic. He had visions of her burned to bits somewhere, and the fact that he could not raise her on her cell phone added to his worry. Not until Skinner told him Scully had taken the day off did some of his anxiety begin to subside. She had earned some R & R, he reasoned, settling in for a long day of solitude in the basement. But he could not shake the feeling that something was amiss. It started raining on his way home, razor-line drops slashing at his windows as he drove the dark, wet streets. He picked up his phone and tried Scully one more time, but her machine clicked on and he did not leave a message. He was wondering what TV dinner to thaw out as he opened his front door. Light shone in the living room. Mulder drew his gun. He approached from the side with caution, only to stop when her familiar voice called out. "It's just me, Mulder." Adrenaline subsiding, he re-holstered his weapon and rounded the corner with a smile. "Scully," he said, but drew up short when he saw her. She was not smiling back. "Um, what's going on?" She stood up from the couch and walked over to him. "I came to give you this," she said, and handed him a cigar wrapped in plastic. "It's a little late, but I'm sure you'll understand." "Actually, I don't." "Congratulations, Mulder. You're a father." ~*~*~ by syntax6 Chapter seven: Score That a Balk Mulder stood there, still wearing his overcoat, and looked dumbly at the cigar she had handed him. "I don't understand," he repeated. Scully reached down and retrieved a pair of gels from his coffee table. She held first one and then the other up to the nearest floor lamp. "This is Emily," she said, "and this is you." She slid the two together so that half the bars overlapped in a perfect match. Mulder took a step forward, mesmerized. He stretched out his hand but did not quite touch the gels. "Oh my God," he breathed. Scully snatched them away. "Why didn't you tell me?" Her voice was raw with hurt. "Scully, I had no idea. I swear." "Oh, cut the crap, Mulder. All that talk about' where's the father? Why doesn't anyone ever care about the father?'" She thrust the gels at his chest, shoving him back slightly. "You never said one damn word to me about what happened between us." His heart started beating so fast it felt like it was vibrating. Blood rushed to his ears; his mouth went dry. "I...are you saying you got pregnant?" Scully threw up her hands and stalked away from him. "You tell me! You must have a far greater recollection than I." She turned at the window, folding her arms across her chest. "Were you ever going to tell me, Mulder? Was this going to be the next little secret you sprung on me -- sorry, Scully, I meant to tell you about the ova. Oops, I guess I didn't mention we slept together!" "I was going to tell you a million times," he said quietly. "And yet you never did. Pardon me if I don't believe you." Mulder cradled the gels to his middle as gently as if they were an actual child. "I'm sorry," he said. "That's not good enough this time," she replied, turning from the window to snap at him. "You can't always be sorry after the fact, Mulder. Sorry doesn't make everything okay again. All these years, you knew, and you never said anything. God, I'm such a fool." "No, Scully. Never that." She sniffed hard and glared at him. "I must be the biggest joke to you, showing up to work every day and not having a clue about what happened. I must be a walking punch line. Was it funny, Mulder? Did you get a good laugh?" He recalled the days after her return when he had walked around on eggshells, half hoping she would remember and half dreading that she would. He hadn't eaten for a week. "You think this was easy for me either?" "I don't know! I don't know what it was like for you because *you never said*." "I didn't know what to say." He sunk down on the sofa with the gels in his lap. "You were gone, and then you were back. You nearly died. And then there was Ethan." "That was four years ago. You've had four years to say something." "Say what, exactly? Hey, Scully, you don't remember this, but we slept together one time. Pass me that file?" "Yes, for instance." She put her hand over her eyes. "I can't believe this. I can't believe this is happening." Well, that right there was one reason he had kept his lip buttoned. No one was better than Scully at denying what she didn't want to know. He figured there was a damn good reason she remembered the Flukeman and not him. If she were repressing this particular incident, he wasn't about to force the issue. Hell, there were many times he wished he could repress it himself. "Is there anything else?" she demanded, stalking towards him. The lamp light cast her large, angry show across his wall. "Anything else?" "Yes. Any other secrets, any other things you've been meaning to tell me but just haven't quite gotten around to mentioning yet." "No." He couldn't look at her. "You're sure there's nothing. Absolutely sure. Be very, very sure, Mulder." All of a sudden he wasn't sure. His head hurt. He was still reeling, and Scully was looming over him, demanding answers. "I...I don't think so." Scully just stood there staring at him. He waited out the terrible silence for a long minute. "What?" he asked, finally meeting her eyes. "I'm trying to remember," she said as she looked him over searchingly from head to toe. "I know there was rain." Mulder leaned back and closed his eyes. "Yes, rain," he said. "We were in Arecibo." It felt strange to hear himself say the words out loud. He had been keeping the memory quiet for so long. "We didn't plan it. It just kind of happened. We didn't exactly talk about it afterward, and I think we both knew it was a mistake." Scully's jaw quivered and she turned away from him again. "You must have been relieved then," she said, and he caught her wiping at her eyes. "All the mess just went away. No wonder you never said anything." "Hey, I was trying to save you a mess," he said, an edge creeping into his voice for the first time. "You were the one with a fiancé at home, remember?" Scully shook her head broadly, refusing to look at him. "You should have told me." "It wasn't exactly a happy memory," Mulder said. "But it's a memory you have and I don't," she said. "A memory you've kept from me for years." She turned and faced him. "Please tell me no one else knows about this." Mulder blanched, and Scully looked horrified. "Oh, God," she said. "You didn't tell Ethan, did you?" "No, no." He hesitated. "I may have mentioned something about it to Byers." "Byers? You mean Byers knows more about my sex life than I do?" "He doesn't have any details." Scully clutched her head with both hands. "I've got to get out of here. I can't think." He pushed off the couch and tried to block her exit. "Scully, wait a second. Don't leave yet. Sit down and let's talk about this." He had a panicked feeling that if he let her leave now, she might never come back. "No." She made an effort to dodge him, but he stepped in front of her. "I'm sorry," he said. "Really I am. You're right that I should have told you. I'll tell you now, if you want. Anything you want to know, just ask me." "I want to know how you could do this to me." She sounded broken and lost, stamping one small foot like a little girl. His heart constricted. He reached for her, but she brushed him off. "I never meant to hurt you," he said. "You have to believe me." "All this time, I've been searching for these memories, to try to get back some of what was taken from me, and I thought you were helping me in that search." "I am," he said with feeling, but Scully shook her head. "You've been hiding the truth from me, Mulder, just the same as they have. I--I don't know how to forgive that." She broke away from him, wiping her eyes with her sleeve, and hurried for the door. Mulder stood rooted in his living room until the sound of her angry slam jolted him awake again. Slowly, as if his limbs were made of lead, he returned to the couch. He still hadn't taken off his coat. He covered his face with his hands to still their shaking and tried to think. Rain pattered against his windows, making it easy to call up that long ago night. When he let himself, he could still feel her body moving under him, felt her hair sticking to his cheek. It all seemed dreamlike after all these years, as if that happened to two other people and not the pair of them. He rarely looked at Scully and thought: I had sex with her. That wide-eyed innocent had disappeared from Skyland Mountain and never returned. How he could explain this to her, he did not know. She seemed to think he had devised the whole unfortunate scheme as some big joke at her expense, as if he had gotten his rocks off over the fact that he had seen her naked but she could not remember. Mulder sat forward and contemplated the gels on his coffee table. He slid one atop the other and back again, watching the truth click into place over and over. In his memory, he heard Scully panting and felt himself pouring into her body. He wondered, if she had reappeared pregnant, whether he would have found the words to tell her what had happened between them. But now they would never know. ~*~*~ At home, Scully stripped naked and stepped into a blazing hot shower. The water needles stung her skin, slicing away her outer layers as she turned her face to the water and gasped for breath. The rushing sound was all she knew; that and Mulder's body on hers. If he had not told her, she would never have known it happened in Puerto Rico. She had no context. No details. She punished herself with the pain, for it was easier to take than the humiliation she felt every time she remembered her four years of ignorance. She had been to bed with him, performed the most intimate of human acts, and then shown up for work every day like nothing had ever happened. To think she had wondered all these years what it might be like to make love with him. She had been fantasizing about something that had already happened. Scully scrubbed her skin raw, barely holding back the sobs. In her mind, it was always beautiful, this coming together after a slow, inexorable slide into each other. Instead it had been some tawdry encounter that left Mulder so shaken he hadn't even mentioned it. And Ethan. She had been unfaithful to him, and for what? A night she barely even remembered. Scully covered her face as tears of shame mingled with her shower water. She slid to the bottom of the tub, her spine pressed hard against the porcelain. She bent her arms over her knees and wept. Mulder had been the one person she was sure of, her one true thing. For the first time since she had met him, Scully felt totally alone. ~*~*~ Sitting at his desk, Mulder gnawed the yellow off a number two pencil and did not even pretend to work. He kept checking first the clock and then the door, but Scully had not shown up yet. He was beginning to wonder if she was upstairs handing in her resignation to Skinner. Part of him was terrified. The other part was annoyed. Okay, so now she knew they slept together. Nothing had really changed. Hell, he had been working with this knowledge for four years and it hadn't affected their ability as partners. She's just weirded out, the same as you were, he told himself. She'll come around. But his stomach sank when he picked up his phone to find Skinner on the other end. "Mulder, I need you to come up here right now," he said, sounding unamused. Mulder screwed his eyes shut for the bad news. "Yes, sir." "And bring Scully with you." Mulder opened one eye to look around, in case he had heard correctly. "Sir?" "Now, Mulder." "Sir, Agent Scully isn't in yet," Mulder said with some relief. "Then bring a pad to take notes, because I don't want either of you to miss a word." Mulder wisely decided not pursue the discussion further, instead grabbing his suit jacket and the prescribed pad of paper. He almost ran into Scully on his way out the door. "Hey," he said, drawing up short. Scully hugged her briefcase to herself and barely looked at him. "Sorry I'm late." Mulder contemplated pretending like nothing had happened but then considered where that had gotten him the first time. "No problem," he murmured, his voice low. He tried a smile. "I was afraid maybe you weren't coming at all." She looked right at him then. "If you ever lie to me again," she said, "I won't come back." "I won't," he promised. "I mean it." "So do I." She gave a stiff, business-like nod, and her gaze slipped away again. From inside the office, his phone gave a particularly shrill sounding ring. "Uh, I bet that's Skinner," Mulder said. "He wants us both upstairs now." "About what?" Scully asked as he hit the elevator button. "He didn't say. That's usually bad, right?" "The worst," Scully said pointedly, and Mulder fell silent. They shared an awkward twenty seconds alone in the elevator, both looking at the lighted numbers overhead as Mulder willed the car to move faster. When the doors slid open, Scully stepped out without a backward glance. Kim looked up from her paper work and grimaced at the sight of them. "I don't know what you've done this time," she said, "but he is not happy." Mulder leaned down to Scully as she opened Skinner's door. "What have we done this time?" he whispered to her. Scully did not answer him, instead entering the office and greeting their supervisor. "Sir? You wanted to see us?" "No, actually I didn't want to, but I wasn't really given a choice." He took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes with one hand. "Sit down, agents." Mulder and Scully exchanged glances before settling into their usual chairs. "The Director was waiting for me when I got in this morning. It seems two of my agents are interfering in active investigations by the D.C.'s District Attorney's office. Surely not, I said. My agents know better than to badger witnesses, demand access to prisoners after hours and harass a Senator who isn't even a suspect in either of these investigations." "The hell he isn't," Mulder said, and Skinner shut him up with a scowl. "Do I not give you two enough work to keep you busy? You have go ambulance chasing after ordinary homicides?" "Sir, with all due respect to the Director," said Scully, "the District Attorney's office is not investigating. They're busy railroading an innocent man." "He's innocent," Skinner said. "You know this how?" Mulder risked a look at Scully, who faltered. He guessed she didn't have much better to say than, "because he said so." "I know him," she said finally. "He would never do this." "There are things that don't add up," Mulder said as he sat forward. "Ethan Minette's motive is extremely weak. There is a missing witness, the person who called in the disturbance. Ethan and Melinda were investigating Rachel Campenella's murder when all this went down. We think there may be some possibility that Melinda was killed and Ethan framed to shut them up." "Evidence?" Scully shifted in her seat. Mulder sat back and let out a long breath. "Someone followed me from the prison the other night and ran me off the road," she said. "I could have been killed." "It's probably the same person who called and told me to back off the case before we got hurt," Mulder added. "Maybe it's not bad advice." "Sir," Scully said, but Skinner cut her off. "You have no authority in either of these cases. You think you're helping, but all you're doing is distracting everyone from doing their jobs. If Minette is innocent, they will find that out soon enough." "Not if the same person complaining to the Director is also complaining to the District Attorney." Skinner squinted at him. "Stay away from Ryerson. This is none of your business." "Someone tried to kill Scully. That makes it our business." "I have an answer for that, too," Skinner said. He turned to Scully. "You won't be allowed into the prison anymore, either of you. If you go near this investigation again, it will be a two week suspension without pay." "So he gets away with it," Mulder said, disgusted. "And we help him." "Do you have even one piece of evidence linking Senator Ryerson to either of these murders?" "No, but--" "Stay out of it. Period." He picked up his pen and bent over the papers in front of him again. "Dismissed." Mulder and Scully lingered in shocked silence but Skinner ignored them. At last, they got up in unison, pushing slowly from their chairs and walking out without a word. Back at the elevator, Scully took out her aggression with a vicious stab at the button. "For a man who supposedly isn't even a suspect, Senator Ryerson certainly spends a lot of time patrolling this investigation," she said. Mulder agreed, but he was also somewhat relieved to have her angry at someone other than him for a few minutes. "What do you want to do next?" he asked her as they stepped into the elevator. "I can probably still get messages to Ethan through his lawyer. He is not going to like this latest development." "Staying away from Ryerson shouldn't be a problem. It's not like he was going to break down and confess if we went back there and grilled him some more." "I don't know what else to do. Ryerson is our best lead right now." "I was thinking about that," Mulder said as they returned to the office. "I think we should talk to his wife." "And she'll talk to Ryerson and we get a mandatory two week vacation." "Maybe not." Mulder sat behind the desk and put his feet up. "From the sound of things, she's been putting up with his bad behavior for years. Beatings, other women -- she might be waiting for the opportunity to stick the knife in when given the chance." "She's been sticking by him for years." "Yeah, but now he may be a murderer. Everyone's got to draw the line somewhere." "What makes you so sure this is hers?" Mulder studied his chewed-up pencil for a second and then launched it at the ceiling. He stuck the landing. "Because maybe it's occurred to her," he said to Scully, "that she might be next." ~*~*~ They did a little surreptitious checking and discovered that Ryerson would be out of town Friday night, leaving his wife available for interview. Mulder drove them to the house after work. It was the first time they had been alone together in such an enclosed space since their confrontation, and Scully was having a hard time concentrating. She looked at his hands on the wheel and imagined them on her body. The memory for her was like a word on the tip of the tongue -- present but just out of reach. It was exhausting to be angry with him. She had not slept well in three days. Dream memories clung like spider webs, wrapping her tighter the more she fought them. Mulder spoke only when spoken to, as if he were afraid to say the wrong thing. Instead it only reminded her of his silence. "This is it on the right," she said in clipped tones. Mulder pulled up to a brick mansion with a long, half- circle drive. "You want to be the bad cop or the good cop?" he asked as they got out of the car. "Let me talk to her," Scully said. They rang the doorbell and a young man opened the door eating an apple. "May I help you?" he asked them. "Agents Scully and Mulder from the FBI," Scully said as she flashed her ID. "We would like to speak to Julianne Ryerson." "I'm her son, Seth. Is there some sort of problem?" "No problem," Scully said in a neutral tone. "Is your mother at home?" They knew the Lexus in the driveway registered to her said she was. But Scully made nice with a smile. "Um, sure, come on in." He widened the door and showed them to a sitting room off the front hall. "I'll just tell her you're here. What should I say it's about, exactly?" "Just a little security matter," Mulder replied. "We do this all the time." Seth did not look like he quite believed him, but he left the room to fetch his mother anyway. Scully sat while Mulder checked out the mantel. "I think this is real," he remarked of the Picasso hanging over the fireplace. "It is real," said a voice from behind him. Mulder turned to find Julianne Ryerson standing in the doorway. She looked younger and blonder than the pictures in the paper made her appear. He could see she wasn't a great beauty. Her mouth spread too wide; her forehead sat too high. Her eyes were a striking shade of blue, similar to Scully's, but they stuck out a bit, giving her a vaguely bug-like look. Still, she was approaching fifty with a slim figure and a great head of hair. Money, Mulder thought, let you accentuate the positives. "Mrs. Ryerson," Scully said as she stood to shake Julianne's hand. "Thanks for agreeing to see us." "I wasn't under the impression the FBI allowed much room for debate on that issue," she replied. "What can I do for you?" "We're following up on a lead your husband gave us," Scully said, "about Rachel Campenella's murder." Julianne's courtesy smile faded. "I don't believe my husband knows anything about that." She smoothed her skirt over her knees. Even from a distance, Mulder spotted a bruise on her right wrist. "That looks painful," he remarked, pointing. "It's nothing. You were saying about my husband?" "He mentioned that he believes Rachel was killed by the same person who murdered Melinda McKenn." "Yes, that TV journalist. Thank the Lord they arrested him before he could do it again." "Actually, we don't think he's the killer," Scully said. "We think he might have been framed," Mulder added. Julianne blinked rapidly and her hand fluttered to her chest. "What makes you say that? Did my husband say something to you?" "He said he saw Rachel the night of her death," Scully lied, and Mulder turned his head sharply. This was a rather large gamble. "That's not possible. Chris was with me." "The whole night?" Scully asked. "Yes." "You know, you might want to have Agent Scully take a look at that bruise," Mulder said. "She's a medical doctor." Julianne covered it with her other hand. "Really, I'm fine. And I don't think I can help you. I'd like you to go now." "What if I said there was a witness who could place your husband's car outside of Rachel's apartment that Saturday night?" Scully asked. At that moment, Seth Ryerson stuck his head in the room. "Everything okay, Mom?" "Seth, go back to your room." Mulder thought this was maybe an appropriate order for a six year-old, but not a college student home on break. "If they're bothering you..." "Now, Seth. I'll talk to you later." Her pale face had colored, matching her rosy sweater. Scully went in for the kill. "About the witness who saw the car," she began. "There was no witness!" Julianne snapped. Scully's eyes were guileless. "Are you sure?" From upstairs, they heard a door slam. Julianne jumped. "I guess..." She paused to lick her lips. "I guess if you say there was a witness, then maybe he was there." "Was he or wasn't he?" Mulder asked. "How should I know?" "You said he was with you." She screwed her eyes shut, clearly frustrated. "I need you both to leave. Any further questions you have, you can direct to my husband or our lawyer. I'd ask you not to come to the house again." She walked them to the front door and opened it to the cold night. "Good night, Agents." They stood on the lighted stoop with their breath turning to frost in the air. "I can't tell if she was defending him or throwing him to the wolves," Scully said. "She's certainly ambivalent," Mulder agreed as they started down the front path. "Maybe not surprising for a woman in her position. She's used to covering for him, after all, but I think this goes further than that." "How do you mean?" "I think she knows something about the murders. I think maybe the ass she's covering is her own." Scully paused at her car door. "You think she killed Rachel and Melinda?" "I think maybe she knows who did. She was afraid to keep talking for fear it might slip out. If she somehow helped Ryerson cover up for the murders, poor Seth there might end up a prison orphan." He drove Scully home in relative silence after that. But at her door, he reached to hold her hand as she tried to get out of the car. Scully looked down to where he touched her but she did not pull away. "Let me come in," he said. "Just for a minute." "I don't think that's a very good idea." "You have to understand, every day that went by, it became harder for me to say anything. I couldn't see a way to bring it up, and if I did, I would also have to explain why I never said anything." "I'm still waiting for that answer." He squeezed her hand. "So let me come up." For a moment, he thought she might agree. Her mouth parted in the shadows; her eyes searched his. "I don't think so," she said at last, and pulled her hand free. "Good night, Mulder." ~*~*~ The next morning, Mulder spent some of his nervous energy playing basketball. Since it was gray and drizzling, he had the court to himself. The hard slap of the ball against the wet pavement echoed around the empty lot. Mulder found himself hurling the ball at the net rather than through it. After his sixth miss in a row, he smashed the ball deliberately against the backboard. "Fuck," he muttered. "That's what got you into trouble in the first place," said a voice behind him. He whirled and found Scully standing in the rain. She had a look of dangerous purpose in her eye. "Scully, hey." She walked closer and he could see the wet tendrils of hair sticking to her chin. She had apparently been watching him for some time. "I've tried everything," she said. "I can't remember anything more." "Truly, it's a memory I would give up if I could," he said, and she flinched. "I mean--" "I know. You said it wasn't great." "Parts of it were. It's just, Scully--" She waved him off. "You would want the memory if someone else took it from you, Mulder. You would want it more than anything in the world. Pieces of my life keep disappearing on me and I'm powerless to stop it." She might have been crying again; in the rain he couldn't tell. "I would do anything to give that back to you," he told her. She swiped at her wet cheeks with the cuffs of her sweater. Her mascara was running now. "Anything?" she asked him. "You know I would." She nodded as if she had expected this answer. "Okay then," she said, sounding a little shaky. "We need to do it again." Mulder choked. "What?" "One night, no strings." She looked deadly serious. "Scully, that won't bring your memory back." "Maybe not, but it would put us on a level playing field again. I think it's only fair." Fair, she said, as if they were trading baseball cards and she wanted his Don Mattingly for her Wade Boggs. "One night," he repeated, still dumbfounded. "Just sex." God help him, the words from her mouth stirred his traitorous body. "Just like before," she said, turning to leave. "I'll give you the day to think about it." And then she left him alone to play with his balls. ~*~*~*~ Chapter Eight: XXX Mulder sat in his apartment with only the yellow light of the floor lamp for company. For dinner, he had consumed two beers. He had been staring at the blank TV screen for at least an hour but had not bothered to turn it on. Instead, he took a quarter on a rolling tour of his leg, down the thigh, around the kneecap and back "Heads I do it," he said to the empty room. "Tails I don't." He flipped the coin high in the air, caught it, closed his eyes, and turned it over on his leg. He peeked with one eye at the result: tails. "Two out of three," he said, and flipped it again. The next time it came down heads. Mulder flipped the coin a third time and the result was the same: heads. He blinked and fingered the ridged edge of the quarter. "Best three out of five," he said. The problem was, like the coin, Scully only had two sides: meet her for one night of sex or... He caught the coin in midair and froze. Or what? She hadn't actually specified. Mulder wondered what she would say if he asked her to clarify his options; he suspected he might not like the answer. Besides, just how would he phrase that question -- hey, Scully, what's the runner-up prize after a night of "no strings" sex? Mulder grabbed a pillow from the end of his couch and muffled a scream of frustration. The irony was, if she could have remembered how awkward their last one-nighter had been, he was pretty sure she wouldn't be pushing for an encore. His phone rang, jolting his face from the pillow, but he made no move to answer. What if it were Scully demanding an answer? He chewed his lip as the phone continued its shrill wake-up call. At the last second, Mulder lunged for the receiver. He didn't want her to have to leave some sort of awkward sex message on his machine. "Hello," he said, cringing and trying to sound casual all at once. The momentary silence on the other end increased his dread, but when the person spoke, the voice did not belong to Scully. "Mulder," said a man he did not recognize. "I'm a fan of your work." Mulder sat up, instantly alert for trouble. The last time he had gotten one of these calls, Scully had ended up in the emergency room. "My own personal fan club, huh?" he said, getting up to go record the call. "I heard you speak in Boston," the man said. "I think we might have a lot to talk about." "Oh, yeah? Cause I don't know about you, but I think the Red Sox are in trouble this year." "You're awfully flip for a government man." "This is my customary courtesy for anonymous phone calls. Give me a name and maybe you'll get a new attitude." "The name is Spartan." "Okay, Mr. Spartan," Mulder said as he peeked out the window to see if anyone was watching the building. "What did you want to talk to me about?" "You had some interesting things to say about the government, about the men in charge who are destroying this country. There are some of us in a position to stop them." Spartan, Mulder thought, flipping through his mental files as he tried to place the name. "Stop them how?" "I can't say any more on the phone," replied the man. "You want more, you're going to have to meet me." Mulder looked at his watch. "A blind date, eh? Where and when?" "Tomorrow seven PM. The Dirty Dozen theater on South Street. Buy a ticket for the seven o'clock show and sit near the emergency exit." Mulder had about fifty flip answers for that one, but he kept his mouth shut this time. "How will I know you?" "I'll find you," said the man, and hung up the phone. Mulder rested the receiver against his stomach and tried to think. Spartan, the man had said. Someone who could stop the government. "Holy shit," Mulder blurted as he hit on the answer: the New Spartans. A small but growing army of sophisticated underground terrorists. And now they apparently had his home phone number. "Shit," he said again, and ran a hand through his hair. Whatever invitation the Spartans had for him, he was reasonably sure he did not want to RSVP. Last year their name had come up in conjunction with a raid on a biotech company outside of Madison, Wisconsin. Two murders and a quarter ton of explosive chemicals later, the Spartans disappeared again and had not come up for air since. Mulder's phone rang in his hand and he punched the "talk" button. "Yeah, Mulder," he said, still distracted. "Hello to you too," Scully replied, sounding annoyed. "Scully! Hey. I, uh, I was going to call you." "I've saved you the trouble." There was a long, uncomfortable pause. "So what were you going to say," Scully asked, "when you called me?" "Um, I was going to make sure you hadn't changed your mind. You know, about what we talked about earlier on the basketball court." He winced, fearing the answer. "I recall the conversation. No, I haven't changed my mind." "Oh." He took a deep breath. "So then I was wondering about details. If I said yes--" "Are you saying yes?" "I said, "if.' If I said yes, how do you see this working?" Another long pause. "I have an 8th grade biology text I could lend you." Live by the cheap shot, die by the cheap shot, Mulder thought as he repressed a sigh. "No, I mean, your place, my place... did you want to fly down to Puerto Rico and relive the whole thing?" "That would be stupid." "Yes," Mulder agreed baldly, hoping she was coming to her senses. "Yes, it would." "I think maybe a hotel," Scully said. "Your place or my place might be too personal." "Scully, we're talking about sex here. Personal is already part of the equation." "You're the one who asked the question." Mulder rubbed his eyes with one hand and sank down into the sofa. "Okay then, a hotel. When did you want to do this?" For the first time, trepidation crept into Scully's voice. "You're saying you'll do it?" Really, he was buying time more than anything. Time for her to reconsider. Time for him to think up a good answer. "Name the hotel and I'll be there." He could actually hear her swallow. "I...I don't know. I'll book one and let you know." "Okay, good. Time?" As if they were just discussing their next flight out of National. "Tomorrow?" she ventured. "E-eight o'clock?" Oh, no, Mulder thought, head in his hands. Spartans at seven and sex with Scully at eight. His social calendar was suddenly a little messy. "Um, could we make it earlier? Say three?" "Mulder, that's the afternoon!" "So?" "It's Easter. I--I have church." "You have church until three in the afternoon?" "No, but I need time." Mulder was tempted to ask what she needed time for, but decided it was better not to go there. "I, uh, I can't make it at eight," he said. "Why?" Scully sounded suspicious. "I just can't. Unmovable commitment." He imagined Scully sitting there wondering what on earth he would not cancel for sex. He could hardly believe it himself. But part of him wasn't sure that the Spartans wouldn't come looking for him if he failed to show; he didn't figure Scully would appreciate an audience. Scully sighed. "You know, Mulder, if your heart's not in this..." "I wasn't under the impression it was my heart you were after," he said, more sharply than he'd intended. "Fine," she said stiffly. "Forget the whole thing." "Scully..." Mulder got up and began pacing his living room. "I'll meet you. I just can't do tomorrow night." "Tell me when then," she answered. Mulder hesitated. "Monday? Tuesday?" "After work?" She sounded scandalized again. "After work would probably be preferable to during, don't you think?" He smiled for the first time. "I--I think we should wait for a weekend," she said. "Just in case." In case of what? he wondered. "It's your party." "Next weekend then," she said. "Unless you have other unmovable commitments." "All clear. I'm penciling you into my day calendar as we speak." She let out a long breath. "Okay, then. Next Saturday would be okay." She hesitated. "Thanks, Mulder, for doing this." She sounded approachable for the first time in days, and his own guard began to slip. "Scully, can't we talk about it some more? I really think--" "No," she said swiftly. "I don't have any memories to talk about. What could I say?" "This plan won't change that," he reminded her. "Maybe it will. Maybe I'd remember." Oh, Scully, he thought. If you're putting all your eggs in that basket... "I'll talk to you later," she said before he could answer her. "And I'll let you know where for Saturday." She hung up, and Mulder replaced the receiver in its cradle with a heavy sigh. Two phone calls and two X-rated dates, he thought. Zippity-fucking-doo-dah. ~*~*~*~*~ Scully put on a sunny dress and went to Easter mass, but she had a hard time paying attention. Considering the circumstances, she hoped God would forgive her scattered thoughts. She sat on the crowded pew with ordinary families who would be returning to ordinary lives. Children squirmed in tiny suits and frilly dresses. Grandmothers wore tilted hats and white gloves. Everyone looked forward to the Easter feast to follow. These people had not been shot at, kidnapped, or medically raped. They had not had their siblings abducted or their sisters killed or their father's brains splattered all over the living room floor. These cherub-cheeked children had chocolate bunnies at home and dogs in the backyard and parents who tucked them in safe at night. They watched cartoons sprawled on the living room floor, not from inside an ICU isolation ward. Scully blinked back tears at these families and tried not to be so angry. "God gave his only child for you," said Father McCue to the congregation. "And today we celebrate his everlasting gift." Scully knew she should be grateful. For the first time, she could appreciate what an enormous sacrifice God and Mary had made, yielding their only child and watching him die a slow, torturous death. But on this day, her anger simmered and all she could think was what had been taken from her. Jesus had died and she got eternal life. Emily had died and so far, all she had received in return was unending pain. The service ended but Scully did not stick around to mingle with the other parishioners. She kept her head down and hurried for the door before anyone could stop her and ask how she was doing. God forbid she actually told them the truth. She had cleared the heavy church doors before a voice called her back. "Dana," said Father McCue, leaning out to get her attention over the heads of the others. "Do you have a moment? I'd like to speak to you in private." ~*~*~ Ominous gray clouds rolled in during the afternoon, and as Mulder left his apartment, thunder cracked the sky open and unleashed sheets of rain. He yanked the collar of his leather jacket up over his head and raced for the car. The engine turned over with a rheumatoid cough, as if protesting the ugly working conditions. Mulder snapped on the headlights and headed for the sex theater. He figured the Spartans would expect him to be armed, so he saw no point in hiding his weapon. Briefly, he wondered if they might creep up behind him while he was watching a three-way and put a hole in his head. But they seemed to want to be friends, for some unknown reason, and a singular murder was hardly their style in any case. Mulder arrived at six-thirty, a half hour early, and slid some crumpled bills across the booth to the bald, disinterested fat man on the other side. He pocketed the stub and followed the worn red carpet to the main theater. Cheesy muzak played through the poor-quality speakers while still advertisements for local porn shops broadcast in slide-show form on the blank screen. Mulder lingered near the back as his eyes adjusted to the low lighting. He spotted a few male heads among the seats, but no one was there with a buddy. The room smelled like forced-air heating and stale cigarettes. Mulder noted the glowing exit sign on the far wall and dutifully took the seat nearest it. The spring inside the fake leather cushion nearly goosed him in the ass; Mulder suppressed a curse and moved over one chair. He bounced his leg up and down and tried not to look around too much. You didn't want to get caught checking out the clientele in a place like this. The screen flashed an ad for quality, life-like dildos, and Mulder blanched momentarily: what if the meeting place was some sort of sign about what the Spartan guy wanted him for? Hey, Mulder, you wanna come back to my place and see my stolen DOD files? Blow me or I'll blow you away? At quarter to seven, his cell-phone vibrated in his pocket. Mulder withdrew it and saw Scully's number glowing on the screen. He debated for a moment just ignoring her, but decided there might be hell to pay. And perhaps the news was good; she might have changed her mind. Mulder ducked out the way he came in, through the front door, but discovered he couldn't get a strong enough signal to call her back. Thunder rocked the theater, reminding him of the inclement weather. He peered outside and saw a phone booth visible through the pouring rain. Once again, he trotted between the drops. "Hey, Scully," he said when she picked up. "I'm returning your call." He checked his watch. Ten minutes now until his blind date showed up. "Hi... uh, something's come up. I was, uh, hoping that you could do me a favor." He thought she sounded strange, but it was hard to hear her over the beating rain. "Why? What's going on?" "This isn't official FBI business so I was hoping that we could keep it outside of work." A car pulled up in the driveway behind him. "Hey, look," he said, "I'm, uh ... I'm kind of tailing a possible suspect right now, so I'm kind of rushed, so, uh... " "I need some birth and adoptive records on a Dara Kernof." "Who?" "Dara Kernof. I can't tell you much more than that, Mulder. I'm sorry." "You want to give me a hint? Anything?" "Not until you get me those records." Mulder wondered if maybe he had other secret children. Or if she did. His stomach sank. But it was clear Scully was not giving any more details at the moment, and Miss Manners always said it was rude to keep a terrorist waiting. "All right," he said, "I'll talk to you later." He dashed back into the theater and slumped in his chair. The film started playing, flickering images of large breasts and oily-looking men across the screen. Mulder barely had time to catch his breath when the emergency door opened and a tall, dark figure slipped inside. The man took the seat behind Mulder and Mulder resisted the temptation to turn around for a better look. He sat there, the hairs on the back of his neck prickling, and held his breath. As the first blonde, boobed woman lost her top, the man leaned forward and whispered in Mulder's ear. "Agent Mulder, how would you like to help us change the world?" ~*~*~ At ten that night, Scully tried Mulder's cell phone and got his voice mail. Next she tried him at home. The phone rang unanswered. Scully pushed the hang up button down with two fingers and hesitated, the receiver still cradled by her chin. Off pursuing a suspect, he had said, but he had not mentioned who. Scully suspected he was just avoiding her. She did not call back and leave a message. ~*~ Across town, Skinner paced the length of his office while Mulder sprawled on the sofa with one arm covering his face. "And you have no idea what it is the New Spartans want from you?" Skinner asked for the tenth time, as if Mulder would suddenly recall a demand for illegal weapons, access to the FBI database, or an order for three dozen chocolate chip cookies. "All he said was that my beliefs seemed in line with theirs and that he thought we could work toward a common goal." "Which is?" "Exposing the fraud in the government." "Mulder, you are the government." Mulder sat up with a sigh. "Yeah, I think that's why they picked me. I'm an easy way in, but into *what* specifically, I don't know yet. They said they would be in touch." Skinner stopped near one end of the couch, casting a long shadow over Mulder. "We've been trying to nail these guys for years. I can't believe they would risk coming up for air, risk this kind of exposure by contacting an FBI agent." "They must think the risk is worth it." Skinner started pacing again. "These guys cover their tracks well, Mulder. They'll get what they want from you and then they'll kill you." "That's kind of the point of this little discussion," Mulder replied. "If I'm going in, I'm going to need backup." "I'll do what I can, but Mulder..." Skinner frowned and seemed to be struggling for the right words. "Discretion is your only hope here. Right now they think you are sympathetic towards their mission, whatever that mission is. If they find out you're even thinking of double- crossing them, they'll just kill you and disappear again, no questions asked." "So we only tell people we can trust." Skinner shook his head. "We tell the US Attorney and no one else." Mulder sat forward, suddenly paying close attention. "I have to tell Scully." "You tell her and it puts her life and yours in danger. Do you really want to do that?" Mulder considered the deadly purpose in the voice on the phone. He felt the hot whisper on his neck from the theater and reached around to wipe it off. "So what do you want me to say? There's only so many times I can run to the john before she gets suspicious." "Let me worry about Scully." "Fine," Mulder said shortly. "You lie to her." "You will too, if you want to keep her alive." "And if she finds out, it may be my funeral." Long after Skinner went home, Mulder lingered in the basement like a dungeon prisoner. He didn't turn on many lights, instead working by the eerie glow of his computer. He ate one of Scully's yogurts from the fridge and squinted at the tiny print on the monitor. One way to keep Scully from asking him questions he didn't want to answer would be to give her answers she did want. So this was how he came to be sifting through old adoption records for a girl named Dara Kernof. She was dead. Mulder sat back in his chair at this news, the spoon still stuck in his mouth. Oh, Scully, he thought, what the hell are you doing? He knew a thing or two about trying to find answers in dead little girls. All you really got was the grim affirmation that, yes, they were dead. Nothing brought them back. Nothing stopped the next girl from dying. Mulder hit a few more keys and punched up the birth records. Apparently Dara had three identical sisters who had been cast upon the winds of fate as well. Mulder printed off the search results to show Scully and leaned back to grab the papers from the printer. With three other chances, maybe they could get there in time for once. ~*~*~ Three days and three dead sisters later, Mulder leaned against his car and watched Scully deal with the local PD. Behind her, the EMTs carried Dara's sister Roberta out of the church in a body bag. Mulder could make out the rigid posture of the girl's outstretched hands as they poked at the bag's walls. Mulder stretched an arm through his open window and withdrew a handful of sunflower seeds. Scully started walking towards him, her dark coat a standout against the pale, bleak sky. She joined him against the car, and he wordlessly extended his palm full of seeds to her. She shook her head. "You did your best," he told her, because this is what he always told himself when girls got carted away in the coroner's van. He hoped she believed the words more than he did. "I don't think it was up to me this time," she replied. "Those girls didn't need my protection." Mulder crunched a seed. "Because they had God's," he finished for her, in the most neutral tone he could manage. "You believe God called them home." "I believe they are better off. I believe they're at peace now." "Like Emily?" She gave a short nod, and he thought he saw her chin quiver. She kept her eyes trained on the brown grass at their feet. "I saw her again, in there. She was asking me to let her go." The force of her words took Mulder's breath away. The seeds became tasteless in his mouth. For a moment, he envied her this psychic connection. Emily haunted him, but not in any metaphysical sense. Sometimes he would be stopped at a red light and it would hit him: he was a father. Only not. Or maybe yes. Mulder was not sure how to define his absent family. He was a brother with no siblings and a father with no children. "And can you?" he asked Scully. "Let go?" Scully studied her fingers for a long moment before spreading them in a gesture of resignation. He took this as a tentative yes. "I was really angry," she said, still not looking at him. "I've been thinking how unfair life has been to me, and all that I've lost. I think this case has been a good lesson in humility. These girls suffered, all of them. They had deformities and family problems and one was even homeless. I'd started looking at everyone else around me and imagining their perfect life. But other people lose loved ones. Other people get cancer. I think maybe this was a sign to me to stop focusing on my troubles and imagining them to be greater than they are. You know, Mulder, in the grand scheme of life, I'm really not so important." He nudged her shoulder with his. "You are to me." Scully smiled in return but did not say anything. "So that's it, then," he said, "God spoke to you and everything's okay." She shook her head. "God didn't say anything, Mulder. You did." "Me?" "You were right all along. Some miracles aren't meant to be." She placed her hand on his arm for a minute and then gave him a little pat. "I'll talk to you later, okay?" And he watched her walk away, back into the pale blue sky. ~*~*~*~ The next afternoon he returned to the basement to find Scully peeling an orange over the trashcan. "Long time, no see," she remarked mildly. Mulder tugged on his necktie around his collar. "Yeah, sorry about that. Skinner wanted to talk to me." "That's odd, because Skinner just called here looking for you about five minutes ago." Mulder grimaced as her back was turned to him. "Uh, yeah. He probably just wanted to add something. I hit the john on my way back." Mulder realized he was babbling but couldn't seem to stop. "It was a three-article trip." He picked up a magazine and waved it at her. "Please spare me the details." She returned to her table and placed the naked orange on a folded paper towel. Then she picked up a slip of paper and walked it over to him. "Passing notes in school?" he teased, but Scully did not smile. Mulder looked down and read: The Milton Hotel, 8P Saturday. "Assuming you're still amenable," Scully said. "I, um, yeah." Mulder looked at the words until they blurred before his eyes. "I just..." "What?" she asked him, a hint of challenge in her voice. "Do you want to meet there, or what? Should we... I don't know. Get dinner or something?" Scully looked wary. "I think meeting there is best." "Okay then." Her eyes narrowed. "So you'll come?" Mulder bit back a crass remark and tapped the edge of the paper against the desk. "I'll be there." "If you think you're calling my bluff, you're not." "I don't think that." "Because I'll be expecting you." He sat down and pulled his chair up to his desk. "I said I would be there." She eyed him a minute and then nodded, apparently satisfied. "Saturday at eight," she said. As she walked away he started imagining her naked. It was going to be a long two days. ~*~*~ Saturday afternoon faded with the setting sun but Scully's anxiety was on the rise. She had bathed, shaved, and changed her clothes six times. Eventually she settled on a skirt and blouse that she often wore to work, but she left the jacket off and put on silk underwear instead of the cotton she normally chose. As she strapped the bra between her shoulder blades, she glanced in the mirror and realized Mulder would be seeing her like this. She was wearing underwear for someone else for the first time in four years. He'll be seeing more than the underwear, a voice in her head reminded her, and Scully's stomach twisted a little tighter. She dried her hair and fussed over her makeup, feeling a bit foolish the whole time. Mulder saw her nearly every damn day. It's not as though she would be fooling him about the package he was getting. She placed a condom in her small handbag, and then after a moment's hesitation, she added a second one in case the first one broke. She considered further and added a third because a girl could not be too careful. What if the first two got lost somehow, or they both broke? Scully added a fourth condom and snapped the purse shut. Then she wondered: what if Mulder saw all the condoms and thought she expected to do it four times? Scully took two condoms back out. Her phone rang, causing her to scatter condoms across her bedroom floor. She answered with a pounding heart, convinced it was Mulder calling to cancel. She wasn't sure whether she wanted it to be him or not. "Hello?" she said, somewhat breathless. "Dana?" "Oh, Ethan." She tucked her hair behind one ear and sat on the bed. "Hi." "I hope I didn't catch you at a bad time. This is the first opportunity I've had to use the phone." "No, it's fine. How are you? I'm sorry I haven't been by to see you." "My lawyer told me what happened, that they won't let you in. If I didn't know before that someone was setting me up, this really seals it." "I'm so sorry, Ethan." "Hey, you tried." He sounded miserable and defeated. "That's more than most people would do." "We've hit a dead end. We think Ryerson's wife might know more than she's telling, but we have no authority to question her and no leverage to press her with." "So he fucking gets away with murder again. God damn it." "We need access to your notes and your tapes, everything you were working on before Melinda was killed. The answer to her murder might be in there somewhere." "I wish I could get them to you." "Maybe you can," Scully mused, "in a way." "Anything. I'll do anything." "You can write down everything you remember, every single detail. Or talk into a tape recorder. Recount absolutely everything you and Melinda did on the Ryerson case, especially in the last week before she was killed. Have your attorney bring me the notes, and I'll see what I can do." "I can do that. I don't know how helpful it will be, but I can sure try. It's not like I've got anything else to do in here." "It can't hurt and it might help." Scully tried to sound encouraging. "I'll get started tonight. I hope it does work." He paused, seeming like he might say more. "What?" Scully asked him. "I just thought of something. If you're right, then there's something I know or I did -- something Melinda and I did -- that got her killed and me in here. If I tell this to you, you could be next." "Nothing is going to happen to me," Scully assured him. "That's what I always thought about myself. And look where I ended up." "How about a different scenario," Scully suggested. "You tell me what you know, and I use it to go out and arrest the SOB. He takes over your cell and you get on with your life. How's that?" "I like that option a whole lot better. You're too good to me, Dana." Scully shifted the phone to her other ear. This was the first time she had spoken to him since she'd learned of her indiscretion. Shame flared up inside her, making her face hot. "I'm not so nice," she told him. "You're an angel." "Ethan... I--I wanted to say I'm sorry. The way I broke things off with you..." "Hey, I've heard worse. At least you were honest." Scully closed her eyes. "Maybe not entirely." "No, I think you were honest enough with me. Just maybe not with yourself." Her eyes fluttered open. "What do you mean?" "I told you Mulder was in love with you, but that's not really why I gave up. I mean, so what if he loved you? Who could not love you? I couldn't blame the guy, and I figured he could pine away all he wanted as long as he kept his hands to himself." "I don't understand." "I gave up because you loved him back," Ethan said, sounding impatient, as if she were a slow child. "I didn't want to fight a battle I'd clearly already lost. I expected you to pick up the phone and call him the second I was out the door. I didn't count on the pair of you lying to yourselves about what was going on. To me, sure. But to yourself?" "Maybe... maybe I really didn't know." "Well, now you do. The question is, what are you going to do about it?" ~*~ Scully slid the key card into the lock and opened the door as she heard the tumblers click free. The room at the Milton smelled faintly of flower-scented carpet cleaner. She flicked the lights and walked further inside, where she was promptly confronted by a king-sized bed. The curtains stood partially open, and Scully moved to close them in a business-like fashion. She shut off the fan coming from the heating/cooling unit, and total silence descended upon the room. Slowly, she walked to the bed and sat on one corner. It had occurred to her on the drive over that perhaps Mulder had not mentioned having sex with her before because she'd been awful at it. He'd alluded as much, talking about how awkward it was and how it wasn't a happy memory. That, coupled with his reluctance to meet her, suggested she might in fact have been the worst lay of his life. She swallowed the lump in her throat and went for a drink of water. She did not want to think about the fact that Mulder was ten minutes late. In the bathroom, she patted her flushed cheeks and gave herself a pep talk. If it's awful, she said to herself, at least you'll know. After tonight, at least you'll know *something*. She would have something concrete to tack to the blank slate in her head. Scully returned to the room and sat in the armchair instead of on the bed. She was missing just a few short months from her life. It didn't seem possible that such a small gap would matter so much. Lord knew she could have excised longer gaps at other periods and not missing anything as important as sex with her partner. Because it wasn't as though she didn't have memories. On the contrary, she had a lifetime of vibrant, colorful movies, a fact she had reminded herself of often whenever she started to dwell on the tiny chunk that was missing. She could still name all six hundred and two bones in the human body. So what if she couldn't recall where she had been on October 3, 1995? Most other people couldn't either. She remembered the salty smell of the docks in San Diego as she ran alongside her father's ship and feel the rough, thick ropes that curled like snakes on the pier. She remembered the time Bill backed the car over their neighbor's mailbox, its little red flag waving in surrender from the ground as the rest of the family dissolved in laughter. And she could still feel her mother's tears against her cheek the day they had cast Ahab out to sea forever. Then there was Mulder. She could recall perfectly the day they'd met, the way his lips had nearly smirked right off his face as she had advanced her scientific theories. Part of her had wanted to connect her heel to the top of his foot, but she had left his office with a tingling feeling she'd not had since the day she'd decided to join the FBI. She could hardly wait to hear what he'd say next. She remembered fighting her attraction that first year, the way her body rose like the tide whenever he'd stood over there. Not your type, she'd told herself. He's too unstable. Too maddening. Too driven. Too pushy, obvious, condescending and, well, nuts. But somewhere during that time, the motels with Mulder began to feel more like home that her own apartment, with her books, her furniture, and her fiancé in it. She had never thought that Ethan suspected. She never thought she'd acted on it. And yet, there it was, always just beyond her mental reach -- Mulder's mouth, his hands, the feel of his breath on her skin. Sex with Mulder was a waking dream. Scully checked her watch again. Now he was half an hour late. She bypassed the condoms in her purse and dug out her cell phone. No messages. She waited an hour before she called. He did not answer at home or at the office. She waited another hour before she could admit the painful truth: Mulder wasn't coming. Scully wiped the tear threatening under her mascara with one finger. Gathering what was left of her dignity, she turned out the light next to the bed, and walked quietly from the room. ~*~*~*~ Chapter Nine: You're All the Things I've Got to Remember Seated at a rickety table in a low-lit warehouse, it was hard for Mulder to believe he was in the presence of a diabolical terrorist. Jacob Steven Haley drank cheap American beer and rambled on about how the prison system was sham, locking up thugs while the true evildoers rose to power in the Capitol. He had a receding hairline and wore an expensive brown leather coat over an ugly gray MIT T-shirt. In short, he was a nerd. Hardly an image designed to strike terror into the hearts of Americans. Mulder leaned on one arm and sneaked a look at his wristwatch, which read close to midnight. He sipped his own beer, long gone warm and flat, and waited with growing impatience for his host to get to the point. If it weren't for the bald Neanderthal with the gun who watched them from the corner, it was like any other Saturday night conspiracy theory party with the Gunmen. Mulder could still feel the imprint of the gun barrel against his ribs. Baldy had been waiting for him to step out of the apartment, and his message was clear: Haley required his immediate presence at the warehouse, or else he became Baldy's plaything for the evening. Scully, Mulder thought as he propped his head on one hand again, I'm so sorry. "We're getting closer to the day of reckoning," Haley said. "Tomorrow I have to complete an essential but delicate transaction to procure the supplies we need to go forward. This is where you come in." "Hmm?" Mulder jerked to attention. "This transaction requires contact with a drug dealer named Cadre, who comes with his own checkered history. I don't need him showing up with the FBI or DEA behind him." "You want me to make sure there's no sting," Mulder said. "I want you to make sure the transaction goes down without any sort of audience. I can't stress this enough, Mulder. Our whole operation hinges on the success of this deal. If there's even a hint of government interference, I expect to hear it from you." "I haven't heard anything," Mulder said, because it was the truth. "What sort of transaction are you making with this Cadre?" "None of your business." "If you want my help, you have to give me details to work with here." "You have all the details you need," Haley said, and the punk with the gun stepped forward in case Mulder needed further reminding about the chain of command. "Where is the meeting?" "Tomorrow at two in Folger Park. I expect to hear from you ahead of time for the all clear." He slid a piece of paper across to Mulder. "Call that number no later than noon. Someone will ask you what the weather is like in D.C.. If we're a go, you say it's sunny and warm. If there's trouble, you say it looks like rain." "What if it's partly cloudy?" Mulder asked. Haley scowled at him. "For your sake, you'd better pray for sun." Baldy stuck a hood on him and escorted him home. Mulder kept his breathing shallow and tried to track the street sounds to figure out where they had taken him. He guessed they were at least forty-five minutes outside the city, but it also seemed to him that they drove in circles to ensure his confusion. Around two, the SUV lurched to a halt by his apartment, and Baldy yanked the hood off, taking a chunk of Mulder's hair with it. "Thanks for the ride," Mulder said, rubbing the side of his head as the tires squealed away. He trudged up the stairs to the fourth floor and fumbled with his keys. Inside, he saw the red light flashing on his answering machine. Mulder weighed the keys in his hand a moment before punching the "play" key. "Mulder, it's me. I--I'm at the hotel waiting. If you're not coming, could you please let me know?" He leaned against the wall and closed his eyes. She sounded hurt, confused and angry all at once, and he couldn't blame her. He also couldn't explain. Mulder uttered a string of curses as he covered his face with both hands, the keys scraping his cheek like metal spikes. He had not the first idea what he could say to her that might sound even remotely plausible. Car trouble? Flu? Cell phone accidentally fell in the toilet? The New Spartans wouldn't have to execute him. Scully would save them the effort. With a sigh, Mulder picked up the phone and punched some numbers. Skinner answered a moment later, his gruff voice even rougher from sleep. "Sir," Mulder said, "we've got a situation here. There's some sort of meeting happening in the park tomorrow with a an arms dealer named Cadre, and I think Haley might make the exchange himself. If you still want a shot at him, this might be the time." "I'm on my way in now. This is good work, Mulder. But nailing Haley won't get it done. He's high up, but he's still a foot soldier. Bremer's the one we want." "Well, then you're out of luck, because I didn't see Bremer's name on the guest list for tomorrow." "What do they want from Cadre? More guns?" "That's my guess." "To what end?" Mulder could hear his boss getting dressed. "I still don't know. They haven't exactly filled me in on the grand plan yet." "They wouldn't risk getting you into this mess just to play lookout for a gun deal." "Agreed. But I can't get anymore from them unless they decide to let me in on the secret handshake." "Well, maybe there's a way we can encourage that," Skinner said thoughtfully. "Meet me downtown in an hour." ~*~*~ Scully slept little that night, dozing fitfully and waking up with a heavy heart around dawn. She pulled aside the sheer curtain and noted the weather reflected her mood: gray and drizzling. She did not bother to get dressed, instead curling up in her pajamas and robe with a cup of coffee. Huddled on one end of the couch, as though she could make herself small enough to disappear, Scully leg the hot coffee mug burn warmth into her numbed fingers. She looked every so often at her silent phone. This was the worst part, truly, that he had not even bothered to call her. He was probably too chicken, she thought. This way his message is clear and he didn't even have to say anything. A fresh wave of humiliation washed over her. You would think it was a big clue, she told herself, that he never mentioned the night in Puerto Rico. What more did he have to do, draw you a picture? Her phone rang, rattling her. Scully sloshed coffee on her knee and scrambled over the couch before her answering machine could pick up. "Hello?" She held her breath in anticipation. "Agent Scully, I'm sorry to bother you at such an early hour," Skinner said. "Oh, no bother." Scully grabbed her robe closed with one hand, as if she were standing in his office instead of her own living room. "What can I do for you, sir?" "We have a developing situation and your assistance is needed immediately. Can you meet me in the main conference room as soon as possible?" "Of course," Scully said, and then hesitated. "Sir, this doesn't have anything to do with Mulder, does it?" "What makes you think that?" "No reason," she answered quickly. For the briefest moment, she thought maybe he had gotten caught up in a case. Maybe even got hurt. "Agent Mulder will be at the meeting," Skinner said. "I'll explain more then." So Scully hopped in and out of the shower, threw on the first non-wrinkled suit she could find, and drove through the wet streets to the Hoover building. She found two dozen other agents already milling around in the conference room, but no sign of Mulder. He entered a few minutes later, just behind Skinner, drinking something from a paper cup and not meeting her eyes. Unlike most of the other suited agents, Mulder wore jogging clothes. Scully allowed herself a moment of relief when she realized that he truly wasn't hurt. There was an empty seat next to her, but Mulder sat farther up the long conference table. Scully dropped her gaze to the pad of paper in front of her and said nothing as the other agents took their seats. Skinner explained that Jacob Steven Haley, number two man in the New Spartans organization, would possibly be surfacing that afternoon in Folger Park. Their job was to capture Haley after he completed his transaction with Julio Cadre. Scully gathered this explained Mulder's casual attire. As the meeting broke and everyone filed into the hall, Scully jogged to catch up with Mulder. She called his name but he did not turn around. Despite the many footfalls, she knew he had to have heard her. Scully stopped short, realizing he meant to shrug her off. Her stomach clenched and her mouth went dry. She stood rooted like a rock in the riverbed as the other agents streamed past in a sea of black suits. Mulder got into the elevator and did not look back. Scully turned around so she wouldn't see the doors closing between them. ~*~ Scully got to work the van with Skinner and two other agents. They monitored the cameras stationed at various points around Folger park, keeping an eye out for Haley's appearance. She was not sure how she merited this particular job, but she had a sneaking suspicion that her small size factored into the equation; space was tight in the van. She watched Mulder do slow loops from monitor to monitor. As he disappeared from the range of camera two, he would materialize in front of camera three. "Mulder, can you hear me?" she said, and he scratched the back of his head to indicate he'd heard. Scully considered the irony. She finally had his attention but couldn't really talk to him. Haley showed up on schedule, looking like an ordinary schlub out for a Sunday walk. He wore drab clothes and sported a slight paunch. Scully kept a close eye on him as he crossed to the bench where Cadre sat. Mulder was about fifty feet away, doing stretching exercises. Haley seemed to spot him. "Mulder, be careful," Scully told Mulder over the microphone. "He's watching you." Mulder backed off, but a moment later, everything went to hell. Cadre fell to the ground, writhing in pain, and Haley started screaming for a doctor. Agents rushed in, but in the confusion, Haley ran for the exit. Mulder ran after him. "Mulder, he's armed!" Scully yelled as he disappeared behind some flowering trees. Mulder did not answer. Scully bit back a curse and tore out of the van. Whatever poison Haley had given Cadre, it could kill in a few seconds. She ran at full speed, trying to intercept Mulder before he could come in contact with the poison, her lungs on fire with each sharp breath. She heard Mulder running, recognized his footsteps, and picked up her pace even further. "Mulder!" she yelled, but again, he did not answer. Scully cleared the trees just in time to see Haley vanishing over the hill. Mulder doubled back, apparently coming from the same direction. He looked pale but not as winded as she expected. "What happened?" she demanded. Mulder wouldn't quite look at her. "I lost him." "What do you mean?" This explanation seemed impossible. Mulder gave a half shrug and started jogging back towards the others. "He got away." ~*~*~ Scully reviewed the tapes from all the cameras to confirm her suspicions, and while she couldn't prove it was Mulder helping Haley get away, the silhouette certainly looked like him. Mulder said he had no idea what she was talking about. By the end of the day, she knew why. For the second time in two months, Scully found herself run off the road, this time courtesy of the US government. Mulder was deep undercover, they told her. You could endanger his life by following him further. Scully promised she wouldn't interfere, but she had exchanged one horrible premise -- that Mulder was aiding and abetting terrorists -- for another, namely that Mulder was deceiving these terrorists into thinking he was one of them, and if they found out, he was a dead man. So she went to his apartment to wait for him in the dark. She kept her coat on as she wandered the empty rooms. The fish looked hungry, lips smacking as they nosed the front of the glass, so she sprinkled some food into their tank. She checked his machine and there were no messages. On the pad by the phone, however, was a note written in Mulder's handwriting: 8PM Scully. It was underlined three times. She gave a melancholy smile as she stroked the letters with one finger. Just then, she heard the scrape of a key in the lock and she crossed to the front door. "Don't be alarmed," she said as Mulder entered. His shoulders slumped. "Scully, get out of here." "Mulder..." "Get out of here!" "I know what you're doing. Skinner told me everything." "I don't know what you're talking about." He walked past her without turning on the lights, and she noticed he was holding his left hand close to his body. "What happened to your hand?" "Nothing." She grasped it gently and examined his fingers as best she could in the dim light. His pinky appeared to be broken. She maneuvered it gently and Mulder let out a low hiss. "Oh, Mulder. What did they do to you? God, this needs to be set. You're in pain." "Yeah, if you keep pulling it around like that." Mulder sank down onto his couch as she went to the kitchen. He had a half dozen TV dinners and a bag of ice in the freezer. She removed some cubes and wrapped them in a soft dish towel. Scully sat on the coffee table across from him so their knees mingled. "Let's the get the swelling down," she said as she set the towel carefully over his injured hand. Mulder winced but didn't say anything. "They've killed again, Mulder -- fourteen people in a movie theatre in Ohio. The same toxin they released in the park." "Fourteen people? That doesn't make any sense." "Unless it was a test for something bigger." Scully kept light pressure on the ice pack and slipped her other hand beneath his to hold him steady. "Why do this to you, Mulder?" "They're testing me too. Haley's paranoid...and spooked. I was sure he was going to kill me." "What stopped him?" "They still need something from me... and I'm sensing there's someone Haley trusts even less -- the man giving him his orders. Someone I haven't met yet. A man named August Bremer." Scully pulled the ice pack back to study their progress. Tenderly, she probed Mulder's pinky joints. "This is definitely broken, Mulder. You need to see a doctor and have this set." "I've got an old splint around here somewhere from a basketball injury. It'll be fine." He sounded exhausted, and Scully felt guilty for all the evil thoughts she had been having the past few days. As if reading her thoughts, Mulder reached out with his good hand and captured one of hers. "I'm sorry about the other night," he said. Scully looked down at their joined hands and squeezed him. "It seems now like you had a good excuse." "There was no way I could tell you, not without putting you in danger." His thumb rubbed hypnotically over the back of her wrist. Scully nodded, her hair falling forward to curtain her face. "I know that now. I just... when you didn't show..." "Hey, I was going to show. I was on my way out the door, I swear." She nodded again, trying to believe him. "I saw your note," she said, indicating his phone pad with the tilt of her chin. "See?" he said with a smile. "I even wrote it down." Their eyes met and as she searched his face she realized with a pang how close she might have come to losing him. She bowed her head so he wouldn't see her tears. "Scully?" He leaned forward, his head touching hers, his voice soft against her cheek. "It's okay. It's over." She put both hands on his knees. "They could have killed you." "Me? Nah. I'm strong like bull." She gave a watery laugh, and his hand came up to cup the side of her face. His thumb smudged a tear away, sending a shiver down her spine. She lifted her head up the same time he was ducking down, and their noses bumped. "Oh!" Scully said softly, but then nothing else because Mulder was kissing her. His mouth was gentle, barely moving, and Scully couldn't quite believe it was happening. He smelled like rain and leather, and the ice pack slipped from her lap to the floor. She tilted her head a fraction of an inch and his mouth settled more fully on hers, catching her bottom lip in the middle of her soft sigh. They kissed for several long minutes, changing angles every so often so that his nose rubbed her cheek. Scully's hands crept up from his knees to his thighs, her finger nails lightly scoring the denim of his jeans. Mulder's murmured something unintelligible and deepened the kiss, moving to the very edge of his sofa and forcing her back to arch. He cupped the side of her bottom and tried to move closer still. The coffee table feet skidded against the wooden floor, causing Scully to gasp and breaking their kiss. Quickly, she got up and moved out of the way. Her mouth felt swollen, the blood there warm from his kisses. She put the back of her hand to it as Mulder rose from the couch. "Scully," he said, reaching for her. "I've got to go." "Wait a second." He followed her as she started for the front door. "I thought this was what you wanted." "I... not like this." "What do you mean? Scully, wait." "It's late. I'm tired. You're exhausted and your hand is broken." "Finger." "We can't do this now, Mulder. We just... can't." He leaned against the front door she had opened. "Then when?" She gave a helpless shrug. "After this is all over." "It's never over. Not for us." She patted his middle and ducked under his arm. "Take care of that finger, Mulder. I'll see you tomorrow." ~*~*~ Nearly taking a bullet to the brain did a lot for one's perspective. Mulder still felt the wet, cold earth under his knees and the hard muzzle of the gun at the back of his head. Those eternal seconds he had waited to hear the sound of his own death seemed to stretch like wire inside him. He couldn't quite believe it hadn't happened. He padded barefoot around his apartment, a cat on his ninth life, and drained a bottle of water straight from the container. He wore his dress pants and his white shirttails hung out on all sides, waiting to be tidied up for presentation at a certain hotel. It was Saturday again, and he had another date with Scully. Mulder dressed up in part to show her he took this whole thing seriously, because she was not going to be pleased with his answer when he got there. Mulder shaved and combed his hair, stalling, he supposed, but only to a point. He was making certain not to be late this time. If he had any hope at all of setting things straight with Scully, he had to show her he was committed. He had to show her the wisdom of doing things his way rather than hers. At seven-thirty, Mulder slipped on his shoes and grabbed a bag of trash to toss in the dumpster on the way out. He took the back way down the stairs, to the rear of the apartment where his footsteps crunched over the gravel. He flung the bag high and up, pumping his fist when it went sailing over the edge without even touching the side. Then he turned to leave and his head connected with a metal pipe. Mulder hit the ground as pain radiated throughout his skull. Above him a voice said, "I told you to stay out of the case." Mulder tried to look up but the pipe connected with his ribs. "Next time it will be a gun," the man said, and Mulder recognized his old phone buddy. He tried to catch his breath, to get up and fight, but the pipe found his shin and Mulder fell to the ground again. As he hunched over in pain, he heard his attacker running back down the driveway. Mulder pushed up from the ground, grabbing the dumpster for support. He staggered momentarily before finding his footing. His shin throbbed and his head hurt like hell, but otherwise he seemed to be all right. The blinding pain receded somewhat. Mulder took deep, even breaths to quell the nausea. God damn, the terrorists and the thugs would have to start carpooling to his apartment. Dirt and gravel caked the front of his shirt, and Mulder brushed it off with a curse as he began the slow trek to his car. So much, he thought, for a good presentation. ~*~ He was late again, but this time by only twenty minutes. The angry lines on Scully's face vanished as she took in the sight of him. "My God," she said, getting up from the chair by the bed. "What happened to you?" "Apparently, despite our lack of progress on Melinda and Rachel's murders, someone still feels that we are too close to the investigation." Mulder knew that doctors prized the personal exam of a patient when making a diagnosis. Don't just read the chart, went the teaching. Make sure you lay hands on the person. He always felt better when it was Scully's hands doing the laying. She stood on tiptoe and touched the lump on his head. "That looks serious, Mulder." "It felt pretty serious too." "Sit down and I'll get some ice." So once again, he was left sitting there in pain as Scully tended to him. Gently, she applied the ice wrapped in a towel. He flinched and she grimaced in sympathy pain. "Sorry," she murmured. She was standing close to him and he could smell her perfume. She had dressed nicely, too, he saw, in a flattering pencil black skirt and a blue silk blouse. But it was nothing she wouldn't wear to the office. "Did you lose consciousness?" she asked, her voice low and soft. "No." It was almost enough to make him change his mind about sleeping with her. If she had shown up at the hotel dressed in a come-hither outfit, all made up like some sex- pot, he could have resisted easily. But here she was, looking and smelling just like Scully, the woman he'd been mad for going on five years now. Sensible but feminine. Gentle. Always there to bandage his wounds. "Is it any better?" she asked him. He took her hand down. "Much." "Ethan's attorney dropped off a bunch of notes and tapes Ethan made for me earlier. Maybe that's what set this guy off again." "I wish I'd gotten a look at him. All I saw was the driveway." "Your poor head." She examined it again, her fingers sifting through his hair. "He doesn't seem to have broken the skin." Mulder closed his eyes under her deft touch and imagined her hands elsewhere on his body. He was really going to say no to this? "Did he hurt you anywhere else?" she asked. "Hmm?" "Are you hurt anywhere else? Mulder, you seem a bit disoriented. Maybe we should get you to the hospital." "No, no. I'm okay." Her brow furrowed, looking doubtful. "I can't believe you drove here with a head injury." "Scully, driving across the city is about the least of the things I've done with a head injury," he said, and she gave a half-smile. "I suppose that's true," she replied, ruffling the non- bumpy side of his head. She handed him the ice pack and Mulder put it back to the goose egg growing near his temple. Scully's shoulders rose and fell with her great sigh. "I guess this room goes to waste again," she said. "At least you have some place to rest and recover." Mulder leaned back against the pillows. As his head made contact, it started throbbing again. Scully appeared with a hotel glass and a pair of Tylenol. He accepted both gratefully. Scully turned on the TV and took the other side of the bed. He admired her nylon-covered toes before she tucked them under herself to keep warm. "Sports Center?" he asked when he noted what channel she had selected. Scully shrugged. "You're hurt." Mulder really, really, couldn't believe he was going to turn down sex with her. "You know, I had a thought about Ethan's case," he said. "Oh?" "What if... what if what got Melinda and Rachel killed was the same thing?" Scully frowned as she shifted to face him. "I think we already decided that, didn't we? It's the same person." "I'm talking the same motive. We've been operating under the assumption that Melinda and Ethan got too close to uncovering Rachel's murderer. Maybe what they uncovered was something else, and it's that something that also got Rachel killed." "Huh. Any idea what?" "No. Just a theory." "Well, Ethan gave me a lot of notes to sort through. Maybe the answer is in there somewhere." "I hope so," Mulder answered as he eased the ice pack away from his head. "Because I'm getting damned sick of the message man." Scully yawned against her hand. "You want anything from room service?" she asked as she picked up the nearby menu. "I could go for a pizza." So instead of sex they had pizza. Veggies on her half, sausage on his, and they met in the middle of a king-sized bed. Somewhere around midnight, they crawled beneath the covers to watch the late-late movie and that's where Mulder fell asleep. When he woke, light was filtering in through the cracks in the heavy drape. He touched his tender head and diagnosed himself: he'd live. Scully lay curled nearby, not quite touching him, still fast asleep. He smiled and brushed a sticky lock of hair from her cheek. Her blouse had come unbuttoned during the night, revealing a lacy bit of underwear beneath it. She stirred slightly and blinked at him. "Oh," she said, sounding surprised. "What time is it?" "Don't know. Looks like morning." She lifted her head to look around and her hair had totally flattened on one side. She squinted like a naked mole rat and he could make out the corner of a pillow mark on her cheek. She was a mess but he loved her more than ever. This was the problem. "I think breakfast comes with the room," she was saying. "Scully." "But only the continental. If you want more, it's extra." "Scully," he said again, and grabbed for her hand. "What?" "I'm sorry about last night," he began, and she pulled her hand away. "Don't worry about it. We can always try again next week, right? Third time's the charm?" He shook his head, hair rustling on the pillow. "I don't think so." "What do you mean?" She sat up and looked down at him. Mulder sat up too so that she didn't look so huge. "I can't do this," he said softly, "not the way you want. I thought I could. I thought maybe I owed it to you, but I can't go through with it." "I see," she said, eyes downcast. "Well, thank you for telling me, at least." She started to get out of bed, but he grabbed her wrist. "Scully, wait. You need to listen to me." "I have." "No, you haven't. Not one time. You just give the orders and expect me to show up here to obey." She stiffened and tried to pull away, but Mulder held fast. "I am sorry I didn't tell you about Arecibo. Truly, I am. I see now I should have found some way to get the words out, but sometimes, Scully, I wasn't sure if maybe you already knew. I thought you might have remembered and never said anything." "I didn't," she bit out. "I know that now." He rubbed her wrist with his thumb, trying to gentle her, but she remained rigid. "We can't go back," he told her. "We can only go forward. I think you want to put this thing between us into a box, as if this room can contain it, but it doesn't work that way. You can't make rules about this sort of thing, Scully." "I see. You get to make all the rules, is that it?" She was listening, but she wasn't hearing him. "I can't spend the night with you and walk away again. I know you. I know you think you can fix this by analyzing it, by controlling it, by trying to put it in a defined, circumscribed place, but you can't. Trust me, I tried it that way once and you can see where it got us both." Tears had started leaking down her cheeks, and she wouldn't look at him. Mulder continued: "I know it feels like you have no control over what happens in your life right now, but that's not true." She swiped at her face with her free hand. "You can either go all in with me here or you decide not to. That's your choice, Scully, and nothing and no one can make it for you." ~*~*~*~ Chapter Ten: Hiding in the Light Scully tugged her wrist free from Mulder's grasp and turned away, her back to him. She felt his hand at her hip and shifted until he could no longer reach her. His words had fallen on her like a hundred tiny blows, and all she heard was the rejection. She stumbled to her feet, tripping over her shoes. Mulder called her name as she bent down to retrieve them, but Scully couldn't answer. Her heart had lodged permanently at the back of her throat. She forced the shoes on with shaking fingers and did not look at him as she stood to find her purse. He couldn't have told her earlier that he didn't want to sleep with her, but instead he waited until they were actually in the hotel room to make it extra specially humiliating. Scully blinked back more hot tears. She found her cell phone on the desk and shoved it into her small black handbag, ignoring the condoms nestled inside. "Scully, hold on a second," Mulder said. "Did you even hear what I said?" "I heard. You said you can't do this. I understand, Mulder, you don't need to explain any further." She grabbed her coat from the chair. "I said I can't do this the way you want." "Well, that's the same thing now, isn't it?" Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Mulder swing his feet to the floor. She started walking to the door before he could grab her and stop her. She couldn't breathe. She had to get out of there, had to... She halted when she saw Mulder buckle at the waist. "Mulder?" she asked, turning around with alarm. "I'm okay," he replied through clenched teeth. He touched the side of his head. "I just got up too fast." She crossed to stand directly in front of him. "You're dizzy?" she asked as she checked out the lump on his head. It wasn't as large as it had been the night before, but he definitely had swelling near his left temple. "It's fading already," Mulder told her. "I'm fine." "Mmm." Scully sifted through his hair to assess the extent of the damage. "Any blurred vision? Nausea?" "No, really. It's okay." "Follow my finger without moving your head," she ordered, holding up her index finger for him to track. His optic nerve function appeared normal. "You should really see a doctor, Mulder," she said at last, "and have your head examined." Mulder's hand came to rest at her hip. "If I had a nickel for every time you said that to me..." Scully sighed and put her hands on his shoulders. "Mulder..." He leaned into her, so close she could feel his body heat, and his fingers squeezed her lightly at the waist. "This is how it started last time," he told her quietly, and Scully froze under the power of his hushed confession. She held her breath, waiting to see if he would continue. "I was a little woozy from my time in the tin box at the telescope site," Mulder said. "You came over to the bed to check me out. I can still feel you. Your T-shirt was wet from the rain, stuck to your body." Scully shivered, imagining the scene as his other hand came around to pull her closer. She could feel him peeling the wet cotton from her body. His forearm came to rest just under her bottom. Without really meaning to, she found her own hands inching from his shoulders towards his neck. The collar of his dress shirt stood open, and her thumbs found the naked skin there. Mulder pressed his face to her middle so that his hot breath tickled through her blouse. "We couldn't stop," he whispered. "We didn't even try." He nuzzled her, causing another one of the buttons to pop open on her shirt. The tails had come loose long ago as she'd slept. Scully bit back a cry as his lips grazed the tender skin of her tummy. He muttered something that was lost against her skin, and she tangled her fingers in his hair. If he wasn't supporting her in back with one arm, she thought she might dissolve into the rug right there. Mulder's other hand slipped from her waist and down to her knees. His nimble fingers mapped the contours of her left knee through her stocking, feeling every bump and hollow. The touch sent heat like a rising tide through her body, hardening her nipples, making her arms lax, and finally reaching her flushed face. Her mouth fell open on a ragged sigh, and Mulder apparently took this as a cue to explore further. His hand slipped higher, hitching her skirt up between her legs. Scully dragged her eyes open and saw his arm disappearing beneath the bunched black fabric. They looked like the first reel of a porn film. Mulder tilted his head up, his eyes dark and huge on hers, and she could not look away as his hand crept ever closer to the tops of her thighs. He skimmed along lightly until he reached the tops of her stockings and realized she was wearing thigh-highs. Scully hung on tighter to his shoulders as he traced the elastic all the way around one thigh, barely touching the naked skin above. Her hair fell forward as she leaned down, forming a curtain around her already-warm face. Mulder's eyes continued to hold her gaze. She felt trapped, expectant, like a soap bubble about to burst apart on the surface. His hand swept up suddenly to cup her between the legs. Scully gasped, her eyes going wide. She lurched to the left but Mulder held her up with one strong arm. Her breathing turned shallow and irregular as he started to caress her through her underwear. Still she could not look away, her dry mouth hanging open, all the while, Mulder's bottomless eyes on hers, as if telling her -- yes, see, this is how it was. The narrow confines of her skirt made it impossible to spread her legs very far. Mulder's hand was wedged in tight, his fingers rubbing her through the damp silk in a regular rhythm. She heard their labored breathing; she could smell his scent everywhere, saturated in the clothes he had worn all night. Again, he leaned forward and his hot mouth found the gaping hole at the bottom of her blouse. The tip of his tongue traced a circle around her belly button. She started to feel dizzy, her hands tangling in his hair. Her hips swayed with the rhythm of his hand. The voice in her head repeated Mulder, Mulder, Mulder over and over; she didn't know whether the words escaped her lips. His fingers became more insistent, rubbing quicker, harder, driving her upwards until she thought her heartbeat would turn to a high-pitched hum. Orgasm hovered close, vibrating in her blood, causing white light to flash behind her eyes. She swallowed twice and clutched his head to her stomach. "Mulder, I... oh." He held her tighter and increased the pace of his fingers but she couldn't quite get there. She gave a whimper of frustration, breaking their rhythm, and Mulder withdrew his hand. She felt cold and dazed for about three seconds, until he tugged her with him onto the bed. She rolled beneath him, his weight heavy and warm as he pressed her into the mattress. "You want to know what it was like?" he muttered. "You want to know?" He yanked her skirt up, exposing her legs to the cool air. She could feel his erection like a hot poker in his pants. Coherent thought disappeared with her underwear. She watched through heavy-lidded eyes as he opened his pants and withdrew his erect penis. She reached for him, but Mulder was having none of it. He mounted her swiftly and thrust in with one quick push of his hips. Scully stiffened at the unexpected pain. Her arousal flagged, her heart still hammering in her chest. She grabbed at Mulder's shoulders as he started moving inside her. He was huge and hot and her inner muscles stretched to hold him. His head was above hers; she couldn't see his eyes. She raised her knees on either side of his hips and held him close. It was like trying to ride a mechanical bull. She couldn't catch his rhythm. Mulder grunted. Scully squeezed her eyes shut and tried to breathe. He was on her, in her, just as she had wanted, but it felt awful and out of control. She sucked in great gasps of air. "Yeah," Mulder said, apparently thinking she was into it. A moment later, he stiffened as if struck. She felt a pulsing inside her, followed by a hot, sticky wetness. Mulder collapsed on top of her, his shoulders heaving, his breath warm but harsh against her neck. Oh, my God, Scully thought, her head still spinning. We did it. It had been nothing like she planned, nothing like she had imagined. Mulder's penis softened and slipped out of her. She pushed at his shoulders. "I'm sorry," he muttered. "That was too fast." "Mulder, please," she said, sounding distressed to her own ears. "I need to get up." Confusion colored his face as he shifted to free her. Scully staggered out of bed on rubber legs, buckling momentarily and catching herself with one hand on the mattress. "You okay?" Mulder asked. "I'm..." She didn't have words for what she was. Her vision was still a bit blurry, whether from adrenaline or tears, she did not know. She knelt on the floor and searched around with both hands for her underwear and her shoes, which had somehow come off in their mating. "Scully?" He hung his head over the bed to look down at her. "I've got to go," she said as she found her things. "You can't go now." "You--you were right, Mulder. I get it now. I--I never should have pushed for this." "Scully, what are you talking about?" He tried to get out of bed, but got tangled in the sheets. His pants and underwear still hung open at the waist. "I'm sorry," she said without looking at him. She couldn't face him now, not when she was sore and bruised and could still feel him inside her. "I should have listened. You tried to tell me. This was a really bad idea." Mulder managed to shove himself between her and the door. "Scully, wait. I'm sorry. I'm the one who let things get out of control here." Dammit, she was going to cry again. "Mulder, please, can you just let me go?" Mulder leaned forward and pressed a long kiss to the top of her head. "No, I never can," he murmured. "I--I'll call you," she said, ducking around him. "I'm sorry. Mulder, I'm so sorry." She felt his arms slip away from her as she escaped into the hall. The door slid closed with a sharp click and she practically ran down the hall to the stairs. Outside, in the safety of her car, she checked her reflection in the rearview mirror. Smudged mascara ringed her eyes, making her look like a charcoal drawing left out in the rain. Her hair was matted on one side and stood out at a funny angle on the other. She touched her red, swollen lips to still her trembling fingers. Mulder was right. Messy didn't begin to describe the situation. ~*~*~*~ Sunday morning Mulder left his apartment for a long run. When he returned to his front door, a family of errant ducks was hurrying along as fast as their waddles could carry them. Mulder paused to let them go, watching as each small duck fell off the edge of the high curve and went "splat" in the street. I know how you feel, fellas, he thought as the dazed creatures shook themselves off in turn and hurried to catch up with the line. So far, Mulder hadn't been able to shake himself off. He had dragged himself home from the hotel and laid on his couch all day, still dressed in his fancy clothes. A dozen times, he had reached for the phone to call her, but he hadn't the slightest idea what he could say that he hadn't said a hundred times already. A perverse part of him was glad that this time, at least, she was suffering right along with him. You wanted to know how it was, he thought as he opened his apartment door with a rough shove. Now you know. As he tossed his keys on the end table, his phone started to ring. He imagined, the way his day was going, that it was someone else calling to threaten his life. With a weary sigh, Mulder hit the "talk" button on the receiver. "Hello?" There was an awkward pause. "Mulder?" Scully said finally. Mulder sat forward on his couch and held the phone closer to his ear. "Scully, hey." She didn't say anything further, so he fumbled around for some words. "Um, so, how's it going?" he managed at last, wincing at how lame he sounded. "Okay. Listen, Mulder, if you're not too busy, I was wondering if you could come over. I...I need your help with something." "Sure, of course. Are you okay?" She hesitated again. "I'm fine." "I'm on my way," Mulder said, already stripping off his sweaty T-shirt. "I can be there in a half an hour." "No hurry," she answered, but Mulder was tearing around his apartment looking for something clean to throw on. He dropped the phone on the bed, grabbed a clean shirt, and stuck his head under the bathroom faucet long enough to rinse away the sweat and grime. As he drove to Scully's, he mentally rehearsed what he wanted to say to her: "Scully, I'm sorry about yesterday," he said to the car. No, then she might think he regretted the whole thing...which, he kind of did, but she might take that the wrong way and think he didn't ever want to do it again, which he definitely did. No sex in four years had made him a tad over eager. He'd lasted, what, maybe a whole minute and a half? No wonder she'd been running for the hills as soon as it was over. She was probably glad she hadn't agreed to any sort of long-term sexual relationship. His freebie offering didn't exactly set her world on fire. Mulder gripped the wheel with both hands. "Scully," he said, "about yesterday -- I can do better, really." By the time he arrived at her apartment, Mulder had a little speech all prepared. She opened the door and he opened his mouth, but he never got the words out. "I didn't call you over to talk about yesterday," she said, not making any move to let him inside the apartment. Mulder kept his voice low. "Scully, we're going to have to talk about it eventually. We can't pretend it never happened." "Funny, I would think you'd be quite practiced at that by now." Okay, why was he here again? Mulder ran a hand through his hair as Scully hugged her arms around her middle. "Sorry," she said, looking at his shoes. "I...I didn't call you over here to fight." Mulder saw an opening and grabbed it. "Why did you call me over?" he asked softly. At last, she stepped aside so he could enter. "Did you see the paper this morning?" she asked. He shook his head. Unless the news had been suddenly printed on his living room ceiling, he was not likely to have seen it. Scully handed him the front section. "DA close to charging Minette in second slaying," Mulder read. He looked up. "They're really going after him for Rachel's murder too?" "The DA won't confirm, but the paper says sources close to the investigation predict new charges within the week." "Based on what, though? If they had been able to connect the murder weapons, we would have heard about that by now." "The paper says there is a witness who puts Ethan near Rachel's apartment a few days before the murder." "Any truth to that?" Scully shrugged. "I wouldn't think so, but I have no way of contacting him directly to ask. Take a look at this." She led him to her hallway, where she had papered one wall with colored Post-It notes. "I used Ethan's recollections to try to create a timeline of his and Melinda's actions in the days before Melinda was murdered. Blue is for places he went on his own. Yellow is for just Melinda, and the green represents leads they followed together. I've been standing here staring at it for days now but I can't seem to get anywhere. I thought maybe a pair of fresh eyes would help." Mulder scanned the line of sticky notes that read things like, "Tuesday PM -- talk to Penny Grossman, Rachel's neighbor; reports seeing Sen. Ryerson at Rachel's apartment several times but not the night of the murder." "They sure were busy," Mulder mused as he touched the notes one by one. "They talked to Ryerson, his wife, and both of the sons." "Ethan said the older son, Connor, seemed angry at his father for causing the family all this scandal, but he wouldn't say anything regarding Rachel's murder." "He's in law school?" "Columbia." "That cop we talked to, the one with the family on the job in Illinois, didn't he say one of the kids was a hell raiser?" "My impression was that they both were a little wild. Connor shared his mother's alcohol problem and the younger one, Seth, may have fathered a child in high school." Mulder turned to look at her. "Any word on what happened to the baby?" "No, I've searched, and I can't even confirm there was a baby." Mulder went back to studying the notes. "Well, that kind of money will buy you a lot of silence," he said. "So far, we have evidence suggesting Ryerson beats his wife, that the wife and son drown their problems in a bottle, but you won't find these stories on the front page of the paper." "In the forty-eight hours before she was killed, Melinda and Ethan talked to Seth on campus at Princeton, they tried to get another interview Ryerson and were denied, they went to the Ryerson house and talked to the wife briefly, and Melinda also tried to get in touch with her cop friend, the one we talked to, but never reached him." "They also visited Soba?" Mulder said. "That restaurant downtown?" "Ethan said they were trying to find out if Ryerson and Rachel had been on a date there." "What about this one?" Mulder asked. "The Brigham House?" "It's a battered women's shelter. Melinda volunteered there once a month. She also got her hair done Friday afternoon before her good-bye party." "Some good-bye," Mulder muttered. He shook his head. "I don't know, Scully. It hardly makes sense, especially written out this way. If you go by the theory that Ryerson killed Rachel, and that Melinda was killed because she was close to proving that fact, you would think Ethan would have known about it and known what sort of proof she had." "Maybe then your theory is right," Scully said, stepping closer to him. Their arms nearly touched. "Maybe she wasn't killed because she could identify Rachel's killer; maybe she was killed for some other reason." "I want another timeline," Mulder said. "One that shows Rachel Campenella's actions before she died." "That's not as easy to reproduce. I mean, some of it we can piece together from Ethan's told us." "And the newspapers," replied Mulder, warming to the topic. "I bet that we can put together a close approximation of her schedule based on the different news reports." "I'll make coffee," Scully said. "You start the online searches." Mulder sifted through the archives for the local papers and printed out every article he could find about Rachel Campenella's murder, and as an afterthought, he added all the articles that mentioned her name in the two months before the murder as well. He divided the stack in half and handed one section to Scully, who traded him for a hot mug of coffee. "Thanks," she said as they settled on her couch. "And thanks for coming." "Scully, you know I..." "Here's a stack of Post-Its," she said quickly. "I figured we could use pink for Rachel." Mulder sighed and turned his attention to the printouts in front of him. "Here you go," he said. "Two weeks before she died, Rachel was with Ryerson when he gave a talk at the district's public library to encourage reading." "You think that's what got her killed?" Scully asked, deadpan. "Maybe she had a really overdue book." Mulder tagged a pink note with the words, "Library with Ryerson." Two hours later, they had pink notes scattered along the wall above the first timeline. "The only problem with this," Mulder said as he added another sticky to group, "is that it's restricted to her public appearances. We don't have a good idea with what she was doing off duty." "Well, we have some idea," Scully remarked dryly from the other room. Mulder smiled and continued studying the list of Rachel's activities. Lots of public appearances with Ryerson, he noted. "Mulder?" Scully walked over from the living room with sheets of paper in her hand. "Look at this. A couple of months before she was killed, Rachel was with Ryerson at the Brigham House." "Really? Doing what?" "Benefit dinner. You think it means anything?" "Maybe, maybe not. But check out our two lines here. Brigham House is the only point of commonality." "I'll check it out," Scully agreed. Mulder picked up his leather jacket from the back of her couch and lingered near the door. "I really want to apologize to you for the way things happened yesterday," he said. "You have nothing to be sorry for." She had to work at it, but she was able to meet his eyes. "After all, the whole thing was originally my idea. You were there at my request. I guess you can say I got what I wanted." "Did you? Because I didn't. I don't think either one of us did." Scully said nothing. Mulder sighed. "You can't put it back in the box," he told her. "Not this time." He left then, to the sound of her closing the door behind him. ~*~*~*~ Mulder slept poorly and managed to cut himself shaving Monday morning. There was a fender bender at the end of his street, causing him to be fifteen minutes late for work. All he wanted was a cup of coffee, but Scully met him at the door to the office. "Where have you been?" she asked. "Skinner asked to see us ten minutes ago." "Fabulous," Mulder muttered as he turned around and punched the elevator button again. He and Scully leaned against opposite walls and did not say a word on the slow ride to the fourth floor. "Agents, have a seat." Skinner said when they entered. Mulder slouched a bit and forced himself to pay attention. Mainly, he eyed Skinner's coffee mug with naked envy. "I need you to go to Chicago as soon as possible to perform a threat assessment," Skinner said. "A threat assessment for whom?" asked Scully. "VinylRight. They make siding. Their telemarketing hub in Oakbrook was the focus of an anonymous audio-taped manifesto, one which threatened violence. Apparently, several years back they had an incident in another office - - a disgruntled employee with a gun. They feel they can't be too careful." "Why can't the Chicago field office take care of it?" Mulder asked. Skinner frowned. "Because I prefer you did." Light dawned and Mulder leaned back in his seat. "Because the manifesto contains bizarre overtones...claims of a paranormal nature?" "It speaks of a monster stalking employees. Your insight into such claims should aid in assessing the threat, if any, posed by this person." "Monsters," Mulder said with disgust. "I'm your boy." They left the office, Mulder striding towards the elevator and Scully working to keep up. "I must have done something to piss him off," Mulder said. "What do you mean?" "Get stuck with this jerk-off assignment or have I finally reached that magic point in my career where every time somebody sees Bigfoot or the Virgin Mary on a tortilla I get called to offer my special insight on the matter?" Scully looked annoyed. Mulder didn't care. "You're saying 'I' a lot," she said. "I heard 'we.' Nor do I assume that this case is just a waste of our time." "Not yours, anyway. There's no reason both of us should go to Chicago. I'll take care of it." "Mulder..." "I'm monster boy, right?" "We're supposed to be partners," Scully reminded him as they reached the elevator. He looked her up and down. "Maybe it wouldn't be such a bad idea to spend some time apart right now," he said softly. Scully blinked in surprise as the doors slid open. "You...you want to split up?" "Let me go to Chicago by myself," he said, stepping into the elevator. "It will give us both some time to think. We can re-evaluate when I get back, okay?" Scully nodded, mute. Mulder held his hand between the doors, which threatened to close. "You coming?" "No, you go ahead," she said hoarsely. "I'll catch the next one." "Scully," he said, but she turned around and walked away so he was never sure what he might have said after that. ~*~*~ Mulder left for Chicago, so that night Scully went alone to the Brigham House, where she found a group of volunteers serving dinner assembly-line style to fifty-odd women and children. The rotund black man dishing out the meatballs on top of the spaghetti looked up as Scully approached. He wore a sauce-splattered apron and a backwards baseball cap. "Can I help you?" he asked. Scully showed her ID. "My name is Dana Scully," she said. "I was wondering if I could talk to someone here about Melinda McKenn." The man's face fell and he crossed himself with the hand not holding a ladle. "Awful, just awful what happened to her," he said. "She's one of God's own angels now, you can count on it." "You knew her well?" Scully asked. The man asked a compatriot to take over his meatball duties and jerked his head to Scully. "Come on over yonder," he said. "Better to talk here." Scully followed him to an empty table near the back. "Jeffrey Burns," he said, shaking her hand. "I run Brigham House." "Then you're just the person I wanted to talk to." "You investigating Melinda's murder?" "In a way. I heard that she was a regular volunteer here." "Since before I took over in '96," he said. "She goes way back. Always had a smile and a kind word for everyone. She traveled a lot, you know, and she'd always bring back little soaps and shampoos and stuff for our guests. Everyone here just couldn't believe what happened to her." "I saw in the paper that Rachel Campenella was here as well." Jeffrey scratched the back of his bald head. "I suppose she was at that. She was here with Senator Ryerson as part of the benefit dinner we had last July." "Was Melinda at that dinner, by any chance?" "Melinda? No. It was a fancy fat-cat kind of thing. I had to wear a tux and make nice for the cameras." Scully was disappointed, feeling her slim lead slipping away. "So nothing unusual at all happened while Rachel was here?" "I don't recall anything, no. Her boss listened to some of the women's stories and pretended to care for about five minutes. I didn't get to talk to Rachel much, but she seemed like a nice girl." His eyes went wide. "You think her killing is connected to what happened to Melinda?" "We don't know," Scully admitted. "But so far, this house is the only common link we can find, excepting the way in which they died." "I wish I could help you, but I can't think of anything around here that might lead to murder. Least ways, not the murder of those two women. Mostly we're ducking abusive husbands." Scully sighed and laid her hands on the table. "If you could get me a list of everyone who was here at the benefit, and everyone who volunteered with Melinda, I might want to talk to them at a later time." "Sure thing. Can I email it to you later tonight? Would that be okay?" "That would be fine," Scully said as she rose. "And I appreciate your time." "I just wish I could be of more help. You know, I knew I didn't like Ryerson from the way he swaggered around here, but now I read in the papers that maybe he might have been a wife beater himself?" "Melinda helped bring that to light," Scully said, wondering if maybe Melinda had been especially attuned for the signs. "I hope you get the dirty bastard," Jeffery said. "For Rachel, for Melinda, and for all these women here who poured out their hearts to him thinking he was on their side." Scully went home and took a long bath and tried not to think about Mulder. He had not called and she had no idea how his threat assessment was going in Chicago. From his cool departure, she thought he might just opt to stay in Chicago rather than come back to face her. He warned you, she thought. He said it was awkward and unpleasant but you had to go and press him on it anyway. God, no wonder he never mentioned Arecibo. She covered her face in the tub even though there was no one there to witness her humiliation. By the time she got out, her skin had wrinkled like a Shar-Pei. She wrapped herself in a fluffy robe and checked her email. No Mulder. She did have two lists of names from Jeffrey Burns, one for the benefit dinner and one for regulars who knew Melinda McKenn. A quick check told her there was a decent amount of overlap. Seventeen women had been at the dinner and in the shelter during the time Melinda had volunteered. Also, six staff members: Jeffrey himself, Margaret Owens, Stephanie Conrad, Tim Jennings, Annie Quinlan, and Katherine Hill. Scully noted the grand total of twenty-three names and put the list aside with a sigh. Sometimes a coincidence is just a coincidence and not a clue, she thought. In the morning, she would begin crossing off names. ~*~*~ But instead of investigating her vague leads, Scully got summoned to Illinois by Mulder to help him with his "nothing" case. The threat assessment turned out to be very real indeed as a man named Gary Lambert took a dozen members of VinylRight hostage with Mulder in tow. Everyone escaped unharmed, but Mulder couldn't seem to let the case go. He became convinced there *was* a monster on the loose. This was how Scully came to flip on her phone and get extremely disturbing news from Skinner. "Agent Scully, I'm calling from Calumet Mercy Hospital in Chicago." Scully, who was just getting into her car, paused the Hoover parking lot. "Mulder," she blurted. "I'm afraid so. We've checked him in here for observation." "Observation of what?" Scully asked, a slight edge of panic in her voice. Skinner did not answer right away. "Sir, observation of what?" "He's in the psychiatric ward," Skinner said. "Against his will. He's still seeing monsters, and today he tried to attack a man in front of me. I could barely hold him off." Scully closed her eyes and swallowed. "I'll be there as soon as I can. Tell him I'm coming, okay?" "They won't let me see him." "Well, they're sure as hell going to let me," she replied. Scully caught the first available flight for the obscene fee of five hundred and sixty-three dollars. At the hospital, they raised surprisingly little fuss when she demanded to see Mulder, right now, or else. She pushed back the curtain and found him strapped to the bed like an animal. Her heart twisted. Mulder tried to smile as she took his hand. "Five years together, Scully. You must have seen this coming. Did you examine Backus's body? What did you find?" "More or less what we thought we'd find." "More or less? What is that supposed to mean?" "The body showed signs of decomposition beyond what we expected to find, which, in and of itself means nothing, really. Time of death is notoriously hard to quantify." "Or, that Lambert was telling the truth and that man was dead before he was gunned down." "No, Mulder." "Scully, when that monster, Pincus -- whatever you want to call it -- when he attacked that woman last night he did something to the back of her neck. He--he bit her there or he injected something in there. There's got to be evidence of that. You've got to check for that." "Mulder, the case is over. There's no more evidence to be gathered. There's only my hope that you'll be able to see past this delusion." Mulder looked desperate. "You have to be willing to see." "I wish it were that simple." "Scully, you have to believe me. Nobody else on this whole damn planet does or ever will. You're my one in five billion." He squeezed her hand and they looked at each other. The monster theory was utterly ridiculous, she knew. The doctors said she should do absolutely nothing to encourage him in his outlandish ideas if she wanted him to get better. "Mulder, if you keep talking like this, they're never going to let you out of here." She tried to withdraw her hand but he held tight. "You really want to know why I never told you about that night in Arecibo?" he asked, his voice low and urgent. "I'll tell you." Her skin prickled with equal parts anticipation and fear. "You wouldn't even look at me after that night." She turned her head away, denying his words. "I had been down in that basement by myself all that time, so long I had convinced myself that this was the way I wanted it. Screw the rest of the world. I could do it on my own. But then you came along, Scully, and you *listened* to me. Even when you thought I was talking shit, you always listened. You were like a drug. I was hooked." Scully shook her head. Mulder clutched her hand so hard he cut off the circulation. "I was afraid you were going to leave for good," he murmured. "But you didn't. You stayed. Everything went more or less back to normal, and I just couldn't take that risk again, Scully. Do you see?" "Mulder, if I go check out the woman's neck," Scully said, her voice wavering, "will you do everything the doctors tell you and stop talking to them about monsters?" "As long," he said, "as I can always talk to you." ~*~*~ Mulder was right about the injection mark. Maybe he was right about the monster, too, but she couldn't bring herself to admit that out loud. At least they let him go from the hospital without pumping him full of anti- psychotic drugs. She drove him to the hotel to get some rest, but he stopped when he saw she wasn't getting out of the car too. "Where are you going?" he asked. "I figured as long as I'm in the area, I'd see if I can find George Fussy's cop cousin and ask him about the Ryerson family." Mulder sat back in the car and pulled his door closed again. "I'll go with you." "Mulder, you need your rest. Besides, I'm doing all this as a favor to Ethan. You don't have any obligation here." "I slept with his fiancé," Mulder said. "The least I can do is try to help him dodge a double homicide." In spite of herself, Scully smiled. "Is that in the Guy's Code of Conduct manual? One night of incidental infidelity begets aid on a murder charge?" Mulder smiled back. "It only seems fair," he said. "After all, I got to keep the girl." They tracked Joe Fussy down at his precinct, and he agreed to talk with them while he took a cigarette break out back. "George told me he'd talked to you guys," he said as he lit up the end of a smoke. "Fat load of good it seemed to do, eh? Ryerson's still on Capitol Hill instead of playing drop the soap in the prison showers." "We're doing what we can," Scully explained. "That's why we're here. George told us you'd responded to 9-1-1 calls over at the Ryerson household." "Couple of times. 'Course, nothing ever made it on the records. Mrs. Ryerson, she never wanted to press any charges. Dress 'em up in a tailored suit and pearls, and they ain't no different from the junkie hookers across town that we fish out of the streets half-broken with their teeth missing. They all just want to stand by their man." "What can you tell us about the sons?" Scully asked. "Connor and Seth." Joe snorted. "Connor liked to party, all right. He was drunk off his ass every weekend, and one year, he wrapped Daddy's car around a tree. But no one was hurt and the tree's owner didn't want to press charges. He got a small fine and walked away clean." "And Seth?" "Seth was less trouble as far as we were concerned. I heard he got into a pretty bad fight once at school, but that isn't my territory." "George mentioned he might have fathered a baby," Mulder said, and Joe nodded. "That was the rumor. He was going with a girl named Kitty Hill, a pretty little thing with long dark hair. But she disappeared one day, and her family said she'd gone to California to help take care of a sick relative. Rumor had it she'd gotten knocked up." "Do people really send girls away for that sort of thing now?" Mulder asked. "This was what, 1991?" "Around there, yeah. But listen, this isn't just any girl we're talking about here. Kitty came from good people. The Hills have been around this town since days of Mrs. O'Leary's cow. I think they'd rather hush up the baby then let it get out that their precious daughter got knocked up in high school." "Should be easy enough to check birth records," Mulder murmured to Scully, who nodded. "Thanks for your time," she told Joe Fussy. He waved them away as he tapped the ash from his cigarette to the ground. "I hope you can nail the SOB," he said. "God knows I never could." ~*~ Back at the hotel, Mulder punched some keys on Scully's laptop while she poured them each a drink of ice water. "Kitty is short for Katherine, right?" he called. "I'd guess so." "No evidence of any live birth to Katherine Hill in 1991," he said. "How about '92?" There was a pause as Mulder searched the record. "Nope. I tried 1990 already. Looks like the pregnancy rumor might have been a rumor after all." "Either that or money can make a baby disappear," Scully said. "You're thinking black market?" "Right now I don't know what to think." Mulder sighed and shut the laptop. "Well, all I know is there is no record of any Katherine Hill giving birth during that time." "Mulder, wait a second. Katherine Hill." She went to her purse and dug out a folded piece of paper. Sure enough, there was her name. Scully held the paper out for Mulder to see. "There is a Katherine Hill is on the list of people Melinda and Rachel met at the Brigham House." Mulder let out a low whistle. "So Kitty is back in town. Wonder what she had to say." "And I wonder who she said it to," Scully replied. ~*~*~*~ by syntax6 Chapter Eleven: Boomerang They took a late flight back to D.C., with two-thirds of the plane empty and the lights down low. Mulder usually opted for the aisle seat, where he generally ended up tripping the flight attendants with his long legs, but this time he leaned against the hard plastic wall and pressed his nose to the cold window. In his dark suit, he blended with the night sky. At his left, Scully sipped water from a plastic cup before delicately licking her lips and setting the glass exactly back inside its prescribed hole in the fold-out tray. Mulder rolled his eyes and turned his attention back to the pattern of city lights below them. "My third week teaching at Quantico," Scully said, "I was going to demonstrate removal of the organs. The cadaver was a man in his sixties who had died of a heart attack the week before. He looked a little like Ross Perot. I remember he seemed to be smiling, and I thought to myself that at least he must have died happy." Mulder pushed his head up with one hand to look at her. She seemed lost in her story. "Anyway, I had already performed the major incisions before class started. He was lying on the table covered in a sheet as the students came in. I took the sheet off and this one young woman just started screaming. I'll never forget that awful, awful sound." "What happened?" "She knew him. He was her next-door neighbor growing up -- used to give her hard candy and let her pretend to drive his Cadillac." Mulder shrugged and leaned against the plane again. "Is there a point to this story?" "You work so hard to remain detached." She took another drink of water. "You tell yourself it's not a person you're dissecting. It's just a body. But then sometimes the sheet comes back and it's your next-door neighbor." "Scully, I'm kind of tired," he said, closing his eyes. "Can we talk about this later?" "Oh. Sorry." Mulder kept his eyes shut, knowing he would not sleep wedged in like a pressed ham but needing some distance between them, even if it was only the thin skin of his eyelids. As long as they had a case in front of them, it was okay. He could pretend everything was the same. But he was not going to sit here and make painful in-flight chitchat with her. The flight attendant stopped for their trash. The plane would be landing soon. Thank goodness for the short trip. Mulder sat up long enough to hand over his crushed cup and napkin. Scully grabbed his arm. "Mulder, your wrist." He yanked free from her grasp and tugged his sleeve down over the angry red marks. "That's what happens when you get checked in to the loony bin against your will," he said. "Let me see," she said, reaching for him. "It's fine." "Those are nasty looking sores, Mulder, you should have them bandaged or--" She tried to pry his arm away from his body, but he held firm. "Scully, stop it!" She drew back, clearly wounded. "I don't need you to play doctor this time, okay? I'm fine." "I was just trying to help." "Well, you're not. Things are complicated enough without you putting your hands all over me right now. If you haven't noticed yet, this little exchange is how we keep getting into trouble." She dropped her chin to her chest. "You think that's what I'm doing? I just want--" "What, Scully? What do you want?" Her head snapped up but she didn't say anything. The flight attendant stopped and gave them a friendly smile. "You need to put your seats up now and prepare for landing," she said. "Make sure your seatbelts are tightly fastened." Scully fumbled around with her lap belt while Mulder tightened his with a sharp jerk, nearly knocking the breath from his lungs. She sat ramrod straight, staring at the seat in front of her and blinking just a little too often. "Listen, forget it, okay?" he said. "I'm just over-tired and it's been a hellish week." Scully said nothing. Mulder leaned over so his head nearly touched her shoulder. "Hey, you can't take me seriously, remember? Two days ago I was in the loony bin." Scully bowed her head and looked at her hands folded in her lap. "I want us to be friends again," she whispered. Mulder sagged. Friends, he thought wearily. Right. He patted her arm weakly and righted himself in his seat as the plane began to dip downward. "Then you have nothing to worry about," he told her. ~*~*~*~ ~*~*~*~*~ They enjoyed a whole fourteen hours away from one another before reuniting on Saturday morning to track down Kitty Hill. Mulder was waiting for her outside Kitty's apartment building. The windy day made his hair stand up on end, and he had both hands wrapped around a paper Starbucks cup. Scully, who had overslept and not had time for coffee that morning, eyed it with fierce envy. "Sorry I'm late," she said. "I haven't been here long." He squinted up at the ten story brick building. "You say she's in three-seventeen?" "That's what her driver's license says." She looked around at the parked cars on the street. "We may be striking out here. She's the registered owner of a red Toyota Carolla but I don't see one around, do you?" "She's young, it's the weekend -- maybe she slept elsewhere." The wind shifted and Scully could smell the hazelnut roast from his coffee. Mulder caught her looking and extended the cup in her direction. She shook her head. "No, I couldn't." "Please, have some. I think of it as self-preservation." A smile played at his lips, and he tilted his chin, encouraging her to accept the coffee. Scully gave in and smiled, too. After yesterday's tense plane ride, she was willing to do just about anything to keep the peace, and after all, this was caffeine he was offering. She took a few long sips and handed the coffee back to him with a lipstick mark on the rim. She tried not to stare too hard as he put his mouth right over it, just where he lips had been. Mulder drained the cup and crumpled it in one hand. "Shall we knock?" he asked with exaggerated gallantry as they headed for the stairs. He tossed the cup over her head and pumped his fist when he hit the trashcan. They only had to wait a few seconds before someone exited the building, allowing them to slip inside. They climbed the stairs to the third floor and located apartment three-seventeen, which had a red checkered welcome sign hanging on the front door. Scully raised her hand to knock but Mulder beat her to it. She heard the sound of footsteps on the other side, and a young woman in sweat clothes opened the door a few inches. "Yes?" she said, her expression guarded. Scully flashed her ID. "My name is Agent Dana Scully, and this is Agent Mulder. We're looking for Katherine Hill." The woman's face closed off completely. "There is no one here by that name," she said, starting to close the door. Mulder stopped her. "This address is listed on her driver's license." "She used to live here. She doesn't anymore. I don't know where she went, and I can't help you." She tried again to close the door. "You are?" Mulder asked. "My name is Stacy Isaacs," she said reluctantly. "Stacy, it's really important that we talk to Katherine," Scully said. "Look, I'd help you if I could, but I can't. She left about six months ago and she didn't tell me where she was going." "No forwarding address?" Scully asked. "What about her mail?" Stacy widened the door so they could see a small table in the front hall. It displayed a wire mesh basket that was filled to overflowing. "She said she'd call when she could, but I've never heard from her." "You say she left abruptly?" Mulder said. "Actually, I didn't say that," Stacy replied, looking uncomfortable again. "Why do you need to talk to Kitty? Is she in trouble or something?" "What makes you think she might be in trouble?" Scully asked as neutrally as she could. Mulder had taken advantage of the widened door to poke around the hall and living room. Stacy kept glancing at him as though she wanted to stop him, but she didn't protest. "It's never good when the FBI wants to talk to you, right?" Stacy wrapped her arms around herself. "You're worried about her," Scully said. Stacy shrugged. "I haven't heard anything from her since she left. Not a card, not an e-mail, nothing." "Did she say why she was going?" For the first time, Stacy started to look more afraid than annoyed. "You think something's happened to her?" "We expected to find her here," Mulder said as he turned around. "So any information you can give us about when and why she left would be extremely helpful." Stacy hesitated a moment and then disappeared. When she returned, she was carrying a folded piece of notebook paper. "It was the first week of October. I was at my boyfriend's for the weekend, and when I got back, Kitty's things were gone and she'd left this note for me on the kitchen table. She also left five thousand dollars in cash to cover the rest of her rent." Scully accepted the letter and read it aloud. "Dear Stacy, I'm sorry to run out on you like this, but something has come up that requires my immediate attention. I can't stay here. I've left the money for rent, and I'll have someone come by to pick up the rest of my things. I'm really sorry for leaving so quickly. I'll call as soon as I can to explain. Take care. XXOO, K." "Do you mind if we keep this?" Scully asked. "I don't know what good it will do." "What about right before she left?" Mulder asked. "Did she seem worried about anything? Maybe she mentioned if something was bothering her?" "Not that I saw." Stacy colored and looked at her sneakers. "But I wasn't really around all that much, you know? I slept here maybe two nights a week. But she seemed good, happy. She was working on a grant for that battered women's shelter -- the Brigham House?" "Did she talk a lot about her work there?" Mulder wanted to know. "Sure, that was her whole life. She just wanted to help people." "What about Melinda McKenn or Rachel Campenella? Did you ever hear her mention them?" Scully asked. Stacy's brow wrinkled in concentration. "I don't think so...but the names sound familiar." Her eyes grew large as she placed the dead women's names. "Those are the two women who got stabbed to death. Why would Kitty know them?" "We don't know that she did." "Oh, god. But that's why you're here, isn't it? You think Kitty knew something? You think she might have been next?" "No one thinks that," Scully said gently. "What about Seth Ryerson?" Mulder asked. "Did Kitty ever talk about him?" "Who?" "Senator Ryerson's son," answered Scully. "We heard Kitty may have dated him back in high school." "She did? She never said a word to me." Scully exchanged a meaningful look with Mulder. If Kitty hadn't mentioned her association with the Ryerson family, it was unlikely she had ever mentioned a possible baby, either. She withdrew her card from her coat pocket and handed it to Stacy. "If you do hear from Kitty, please let us know." "You didn't tell me what you wanted to talk to her about," Stacy said as she studied the card. "If I tell Kitty you were here, she is going to want to know what for." "I think she'll know," Mulder said lightly. "Thanks for your time. We'll show ourselves out." In the hall, Scully let out a long breath and looked up at him. "Well? What do you think? She seemed like she was telling the truth to me." Mulder was looking at the front door. "To me, too. But I do think something happened here to send Kitty running." He lifted the "WELCOME" sign and underneath was a fat, fist- sized dent. ~*~*~*~* Life had kicked him in the gut a time or two; he was used to the stomach-punching blows. But this time life aimed a little lower. There he was, enjoying showing up that twerp Jeffrey Spender in front of a room full of colleagues, when Diana reappeared. "I think Agent Mulder is right," she said, getting his attention just as easily as she had some eight years earlier. "Looks like the boy sensed the shooter precognitively. If you rewind the tape, you'll see it." She looked exactly the same. How was this possible? he wondered. He was a completely different person now but she looked exactly the same. Those seductive words -- I think Agent Mulder is right -- they had been a drug to him once. She smiled at him, just a little, a secret acknowledgement of what they meant to each other, and Mulder had no words. Like the boy on the tape, she could read his mind, and she had to know what he was thinking now: what the hell brought you back here? He wondered if she was also remembering their last conversation, the one in her bedroom where she was packing with the lights off while their relationship crumbled at his feet. "I can't believe you would just leave like this," he'd said, "that you would just take this assignment without even talking to me first." "I did talk to you," she'd reminded him. "You told me there was only room for one agent on the X-Files. What else did you expect me to do, Fox, take up cocktail waitressing to pay the bills?" "So this is punishment, then," he said, "because I failed to get approval for two X-Files agents." "You didn't fail. You never even tried." She'd zipped the body bag around her expensive suits, and he had found himself hating those suits. It's you she has to pay for, he'd thought bitterly. "Diana, we've been over this. I barely got them to approve my assignment. There's no way they were going to let two agents flush their careers down the toilet." "Did you even ask them?" she'd demanded, her eyes pinning him in the semi-darkness, and he'd opened his mouth to lie but the words never came out. Diana had conceded his defeat with a short nod of her head. "I thought not." "Why Europe? Why four thousand miles away?" "Because that's where the job is. You have to go where the leads take you. Isn't that what you've always said?" She always found a way to use his own words against him; it was one of the things he hated about her. "I worked as hard as you did for this," she'd said tightly, her back to him. "I deserved it as much as you." "And because I can't make you my partner, because I can't offer you a position on the X-Files, you're just going to walk away from everything. Funny, I always thought you cared about me more than the X-Files." She had turned then, and looked him straight in the face. "And I never made that same mistake about you." Seeing her now, he could still remember that awful silence, with her perfume bearing down on them in the close room. He wondered if she would still smell the same. The meeting broke up and agents started filing into the hall. Mulder, close to the door, made it out first, but Diana soon found him down by the elevator. "Agent Mulder, it's good to see you again," she said, with that same knowing smile. "Uh, good to see you, too." Mulder glanced at the glowing numbers to see if the elevator was on its way soon. Scully arrived before the elevator did. "Mulder, Skinner asked if we could go interview Gibson Praise. I gather he believes the mind-reading angle is worth pursuing." Her tone implied that clearly she did not. She looked from Diana to Mulder. "I'm sorry, was I interrupting something?" "No, no," Mulder said. "Diana, this is my... this is Dana Scully. Scully, this is Diana Fowley." Diana smiled tightly at Scully and turned back to Mulder. "If you're going to see the boy, do you mind if I tag along? I'd like to see him myself." "It's no trouble," Scully answered before Mulder could say anything. And so they all stood there, waiting and watching the glowing countdown: five...four...three...two... Boom, Mulder thought, and the doors slid open. ~*~*~ Diana's long legs would let her keep up with Mulder easily, but as they got out of the car, she fell into step beside Scully. "So you work regularly with Agent Mulder now?" she asked. "We've been partners for nearly five years," Scully replied. "On the X-Files?" Scully caught a hint of incredulity in the woman's tone. "Is that surprising?" "You were introduced at the meeting as a medical doctor, a pathologist. I'm just surprised someone with your background would choose an assignment investigating the paranormal." Mulder glanced back at them, probably wondering what was being said. He reached the main door and held it open, waiting. "I didn't choose it," Scully answered shortly. She looked at Diana. "You say your background is in terrorism?" "More recently, yes, but originally my work was in parapsychology." "The paranormal," said Scully, and Diana gave her another forced smile. They reached the door where Mulder stood. Diana stopped behind Scully. "After you," she said. Gibson Praise reminded Scully a bit of her little brother Charlie at that age -- the same bowl haircut, the same round glasses. Charlie had sat for hours in front of the TV watching cartoons, too. Scully had always found them boring. The Roadrunner always won, and Tom never did eat that mouse. Mulder was crouched down next to the boy, trying to get him to play a computerized chess game. "Don't you want to see how fast you can beat it?" "No." "Maybe that's because you can't." He turned off the TV and the room got very quiet. "I'm right, aren't I? You know what I'm talking about. You knew the moment I came in. That's how you win, isn't it ... how you know what your opponent is going to do? You get inside his head. You read his thoughts. That's how you knew that man was going to shoot you ... isn't it?" Scully waited for the boy to break out laughing, but instead he said, "I know what's on your mind. I know you're thinking about one of the girls you brought." "Oh?" Mulder said. "And one of them is thinking about you." Scully arched an eyebrow and looked at Diana, who looked impressed. Suddenly Scully wasn't so amused by the game. "Which one?" Diana wanted to know. This is ridiculous, Scully thought, but she was holding her breath. Gibson concentrated on Mulder's face. "He doesn't want me to say." Mulder laughed it off but seemed uncomfortable. Scully gave Diana another appraising look. I wasn't thinking about him, she thought. And you barely know Mulder. "The kid's going to need round-the-clock protection," Mulder said and then walked out into the hall. Scully followed while Diana hung back in the doorway. Scully had to call his name to get Mulder to slow down. "What was that all about?" she asked when he had stopped. "The kid's no chess master. Under controlled conditions, I could probably beat him." "Mulder, he's recognized internationally as a prodigy. He's beaten Grand Masters." "With the most unfair advantage. What he's doing amounts to a kind of parlor magic trick." "Mulder, he was goofing on you. He was playing along. You're positing that this kid can read minds." Mulder apparently had no reason to doubt Gibson's ability. The boy's words rang in her ears: "I know you're thinking about one of the girls you brought." "We've seen a number of these cases before, Scully." Scully took a cleansing breath. "Say that what you're suggesting were even possible, who'd want to kill a kid whose abilities would offer you the ultimate advantage... I mean in business, in war, in anything?" Diana materialized by her shoulder as if from thin air. "Maybe somebody whose business is in keeping secrets," she offered. "Well, let's test him. I think the kid will stand up. Let's run a brain scan and a psych evaluation on him. You know what to do, Diana." He walked away then, leaving Scully feeling sucker-punched. "So, you two know each other?" "It was a long time ago," Diana said, and walked off in the direction Mulder had gone. ~*~*~*~ Mulder caught up with Diana at the hospital, where Gibson was watching TV. He glanced around but he did not see Scully anywhere. "How's little Karnac doing?" he asked. Diana smiled. "Put a TV in front of him and he turns right into a normal kid. He's the real deal, Fox. We tested him with Zener cards, random numbers, a variety of ESP tasking. He's got the ability to not just focus on a thought, but a multitude of thoughts at once." Through the glass, Mulder watched Gibson and wondered if the boy could hear him thinking now. "That was a good catch on the videotape," Diana said. "I was impressed." "Oh, you would have caught it eventually." "No, I've been too many years trying to get inside the head of too many Arab terrorists. I'm out of practice at this stuff. But you seem at the top of your game." "That's all I do. That's all I've been doing for the last five years. Been my life, such as it is." "Sometimes I hear about you... about the work you're doing. And I think how it might have been if I'd stayed." Mulder looked her over. "We'd all be blown up by some terrorist bomb, no doubt, eh?" "I sense you could have used an ally, though -- someone who thinks like you, with some background." "Oh, you mean Scully?" Diana smiled without humor, and for the first time he noticed lines around her eyes. Maybe time got to her after all. "She's not what I would call an open mind on the subject." On any subject, Mulder thought with a rueful laugh. Diana assured him she was on his side, and the next thing he knew, she was holding his hand. He was surprised at how unfamiliar she felt. "When we were together, I don't think I appreciated what a special kind of talent you are," Diana said. "I've worked with a hundred agents in the past five yeas, and not one has had your drive, your passion." She overlaid her other hand on top of his, her thumb grazing his wrist. Mulder pulled away. "Why did you come back, Diana?" "My work in Europe wasn't satisfying me anymore. I missed being back here, near the center of things. You spend all your time overseas trying to protect America from the bad guys, and after a while, you start to forget what you're protecting." "And the fact that your first case back is with me?" "Pure coincidence." She flashed him a dazzling smile and ran her hand along his arm. "But a pleasant one. We always did work well together, Fox. You know we did." "Yes," he whispered. "And now that I'm back, we'll be seeing a lot more of each other." "I have a partner, Diana." "So you say." Her expression was coy. "I've seen your office, Fox. There's still only one name on the door." His cell phone rang, making him jump, and Diana pulled back as he withdrew the phone from his coat pocket. He nearly sagged in relief at the sound of Scully's voice. "Where are you?" he asked her. She asked him to meet her at the office. "I'm on my way," he said. "Trouble in paradise?" Diana inquired. "Scully says she has something to show us about the boy." "Us?" Diana asked, looking skeptical. Mulder held the door for her as he considered that, in fact, Scully hadn't mentioned Diana at all. "I'm sure Scully wants to you be there. You're part of this case." Diana walked through the door. "I just don't think she likes me." "Don't worry about it," Mulder said mildly. "Scully doesn't really like anybody." "You mean anybody but you." ~*~*~ As they drove to the hotel the next morning to meet Diana and Gibson, Scully considered the fact that Mulder had yet to mention he had worked with Diana, let alone been romantically involved with her. His little chickadee, Frohike had said, but Scully couldn't imagine Diana cooing at anyone. She seemed so... plastic. Scully looked up from her lap and glanced at Mulder. His face was passive, neutral, as though he were lost in thought. And this time she didn't have Gibson here to give her any clues. "I wonder if his parents know," she said to Mulder, who swung his head around to look at her. "Hmm?" "Gibson. I wonder if his parents know about his abilities. I'd guess they would have to, wouldn't they? Especially if he's been this way since birth. I imagine that as a small child, he wouldn't have known yet that he is unique. He probably thought everyone could read minds. Can you imagine when he started talking and his parents realized what they had?" "Maybe that's why they spend all their time shipping him around the globe," Mulder allowed. "So they don't have to deal with it." "Diana mentioned you had seen others like him before." Mulder shook his head. "No, nothing like Gibson. Some people with precognitive abilities, yes, but he blows everyone else out of the water." "It sounds like you worked closely with her for some time." "For a time." He squinted out at the road. "It was a long time ago." "That's what she said." He looked at her again, surprise on his face. "You talked to Diana about me?" "She's been more forthcoming than you have." "There's nothing in my past history with Diana that I need to come forth about," Mulder shot back. Scully pursed her lips. "Forget I said anything then." "What did she say?" "Nothing of consequence." Scully turned her face to the gray day out the window; it seemed to her that it had been gray forever. Mulder gave a dark chuckle. "Diana told me you didn't like her. I brushed her off, but now I'm starting to think she might be onto something." "I don't know her well enough not to like her." "Well, it looks like you're going to get the chance, because she's planning on sticking around for a while." "Doing what, exactly?" Mulder gave an exaggerated shrug. "What she used to do, I guess." Right, Scully thought. Great. Because they both knew what -- and who -- Diana Fowley used to do. As the hotel came into view up ahead, Scully noticed two police cars and an ambulance, all with their lights flashing. She sat forward in her seat for a better view. "What's going on?" she asked, even though Mulder wouldn't have any better idea than she did. "This is bad," he said grimly. "Very bad." He stopped the car and they both jogged toward the hotel. Skinner met them halfway, confirming there was bad news. "They killed a US Marshal and shot Agent Fowley." Behind him, the paramedics carried Diana out on a stretcher. Scully looked on in horror as Mulder reached for Diana's hand. He squeezed it briefly before the EMTs pushed him aside to load Diana into the ambulance. "What about the boy?" Scully asked. "Is he here?" Skinner shook his head. ~*~*~ Much later, the sun went down outside Mulder's apartment as Scully talked with Skinner on the phone. Mulder lay on his couch like a mummy, staring at the ceiling. He had barely said ten words to her since they had arrived at his place. Scully spoke in hushed tones, as though at a funeral. Skinner warned her the X-Files would likely be shut down and she and Mulder reassigned. When she broke the news to Mulder, he seemed defeated. "This was all strategized, every move. I just couldn't see it. It was all part of a plan." Scully wondered if he had even registered the fact that they were probably going to be split up. She remembered the last time this had had happened, how desperate he had been for reunion, both with her and the X-files. Now he seemed resigned to letting them both slip away. "Mulder, whatever you believe, this time they may have won." Mulder nodded, as if to himself; he still hadn't looked at her. "I'm sorry about Diana," she whispered, looking down at her hands. "You know when I first saw her, you know what I thought? I thought -- it's been eight years since she helped me found the X-files, and what I have I done since then? Nothing. I have file cabinets stacked three deep and they're all full of garbage." Scully winced. She was in those files. "That's not true," she said quietly. "And you know it." "Gibson, he was the real deal," Mulder said, as if she hadn't spoken. "He was my chance to really get somewhere. We were so close..." "And we will be again. Gibson is out there somewhere, Mulder, and we can find him." "You said it yourself, Scully. They're going to shut us down." "But they can't stop us." She gave him what she hoped was an encouraging smile. He sat up with his feet on the floor and leaned forward, looking directly into her eyes. "What I remember about last time is that they took the files away, and when that didn't work, they took you too." Scully sat back, taken with the unexpected force of his words. "That... that won't happen this time." "Why not?" he said, gesticulating wildly. "It worked last time, didn't it? They got Diana, didn't they? They just take and take and take..." He closed his fists weakly and sagged backward on the couch. His phone rang but he made no effort to answer it. With a sigh, Scully reached for the receiver. "Hello?" "Agent Scully, I think you and Mulder better get down here right away," Skinner said. "Sir?" "There's been a fire." Fire trucks ringed the building like shiny red tanks, the Hoover an ugly concrete fortress under siege. Scully raced to keep up with Mulder, but when he wanted to, he could put distance between them with no effort at all. They arrived breathless, and Skinner tried to stop Mulder from heading to the basement. "Mulder," he said, reaching for him, but Mulder stalked right on past. Skinner cast a helpless look at Scully, who hurried to the stairs after Mulder. Already she could smell the ash and smoke and water. The stairs were slick beneath her feet. She felt the cold, wet wall with her hand as she stumbled down the steps into the blackened basement. Mulder stood among the ruins. Scully covered her mouth briefly before venturing into the muck. Water dripped from the ceiling. All of Mulder's posters and clippings had burned to bits. Their file cabinets had melted under the flames. She did a slow circle around the room, trying to absorb the damage for him, as Mulder just stood there, mute. His hands clenched and unclenched, but he did not say a word. She could not speak past the lump in her throat. Their life together went up in smoke. She walked to him and touched his bare arm. He burned like the room. She laid her head against his chest and heard the thundering of his heartbeat, all the anger he was holding inside with his rigid posture. Mulder did not hug her back. "That's it," he said finally, his voice hollow under her ear. "They've taken everything. There is nothing left." "Mulder..." He pulled away from her and turned to walk upstairs. "Mulder, wait. Talk to me." She scrambled after him, only to stop short at the bottom of the stairs when he did not even slow down. "Go away, Scully. Get as far away from me as you possibly can while you still have the chance." ~*~*~ Scully did what she always did when her life went to hell -- she cleaned. She put a bandana over her hair and shoved her hands inside rubber gloves. When her eyes started to burn with tears, she told herself it was just the chemicals from the cleansers. It was two in the morning. She was utterly exhausted, so tired her bones ached, but she kept cleaning. She mopped the kitchen. She scrubbed the bathtub. She rearranged her living room furniture. Twice. But she couldn't make all the pieces fit in a way that pleased her. She had tried phoning Mulder's apartment six times, but the machine always answered. She preferred to believe that he was out drowning his sorrows somewhere than that he didn't want to talk to her. Scully gave her couch another shove, so hard it slid into her bookcase, knocking books and tapes to the floor. She huffed angrily, kicked the couch for good measure, and bent over to start retrieving the mess. She slapped each book on the shelf in turn, muttering at them, and then turned her attention to the basket of videotapes she had knocked loose from the bottom shelf. "He doesn't want to talk, that's fine," she said. "I don't care. God, there have been days I prayed he would shut up. He'll come around. Tomorrow he'll call with some ridiculous plan and you'll have to be talking him down from the mountain top again." Scully tossed her tapes in the basket one by one. The rattling sound as they knocked against one another was rather heartening. She picked up the second-to-last one, stretching to retrieve it from under the end table. "Superstars of the Superbowl," she read from the cover. Mulder had given her this tape years ago and she had never once watched it. Grown men giving themselves concussions over a piece of pigskin was not her idea of a good time. She could practically name the bones breaking with each collision. She slid the tape out, noting that it wasn't even wrapped in plastic. "I come back from the dead and he gives me a used tape," she said. "Figures." The tape also lacked a label. This was odd. There should have been a tacky gold sticker proclaiming it was the best Superbowl tape yet. Maybe he gave her a porn tape by accident. Or on purpose. After all, they had been having sex back then. Scully popped the tape in the VCR out of curiosity. After a moment of fuzz the screen flickered and Mulder came into view. He was younger then, and looking pretty scruffy. He was walking along a street at night with a bag of takeout in his hand. The camera followed him until he reached his apartment and went inside. "What the hell is this?" Scully said. A new image: Mulder on the basketball court alone. He was missing nearly every shot. "Who the hell filmed this?" Scully demanded of the TV. The picture changed again. It was Mulder sitting on Skyland Mountain, looking up at the stars. "Oh," Scully said as her hand went to her mouth. *this is how it was* "Oh, Mulder." She stroked his face on the screen. "Me too." With trembling fingers, she yanked the tape out and tugged the bandana from her hair. She tripped over the couch in its wrong position but this time did not stop to curse at it. She had the evidence and now she was going back to the scene of the crime. And she wasn't leaving until he talked to her. ~*~*~*~ ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~ LAWS OF MOTION ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~ by syntax6 Chapter Twelve: The Cookie Crumbles An old black-and-white noir film played on Mulder's television. He couldn't name the movie; he wasn't even watching. But the atmosphere suited him just fine. He was starring in his own noir picture, stripped to a black and white world where really everyone was just a shade of gray. He could no longer pick himself out as the hero. He sat alone in his shadowed apartment, still smelling of smoke from the fire; all he needed was a slowly rotating ceiling fan and a cigarette to complete the frame. The soft knock at his door made him sit upright and look to the clock. His VCR flashed just "12:00" at him, in perfect symbolism for a life that never seemed to move forward. Mulder gave the machine a little symbolism back in the form of his middle finger as he moved to answer the door. Scully stood in the muted light of the hallway with what looked like a VCR tape in her hands. "Scully, what..." he started to say, but she pushed past him into the apartment. He let the door drift shut behind her and rubbed his eyes. Scully knelt in front of his entertainment unit and turned on the offending VCR, sending his noir movie into white fuzz. "Hey, I was watching that," he mumbled unconvincingly. Scully stood up as the tape began playing and he walked to her side. There was no sound, only the jittery motion of a hand-held camera as it tracked his younger self down the middle of a street. Mulder recognized the take-out Chinese bag in his hand and the lost expression on his face. As Ethan zoomed in for a close up, the image blurred momentarily and then came into sharp focus, revealing the stubble on his jaw and the smudges under his eyes. One month gone, Mulder thought to himself. Everyone else had given up hope. He reached out with one hand to touch the screen but let his arm fall away before he made contact. "What about it?" he asked her finally. "This wasn't a Superbowl tape, Mulder." He backed up and sank down onto his coffee table. "You're just figuring that out now?" "Apparently," she said, sounding annoyed. They both looked at the screen, where he was sitting on Skyland Mountain under the stars. "You asked me how it was," he said. "Now you know." "I can't believe you never told me," she murmured, not annoyed anymore. "I did tell you." "Not this. Mulder, you..." She broke off and swallowed with difficulty. "You never mentioned this." He gestured at the screen. "Picture's worth a thousand words, right? I figured you had a million dollar speech right here. Why do you think I gave it to you?" She searched his face, but he wouldn't look at her. "I don't know. If I had watched it earlier... if I had seen..." She shook her head. "Mulder, why did you put it in a Superbowl cover?" "It was the first one I grabbed when the hospital called and told me you were awake." He paused. "I almost didn't answer. I thought they were calling to say you had died." Scully moved to sit next to him on the table. She said nothing but put her hand on his bare forearm. "I'm not dead," she said at last. "I'm not missing. I'm right here." "I know that." He tried to pull his arm away, but she held fast. "I saw you today, Mulder, after Diana, after Gibson was missing. The office burned down and you started looking just like that again." She pointed at the TV screen, where younger Mulder was slouched in a car, looking tired and alone. "Scully, you said it yourself -- they're going to split us up. They're going to close the X-files, and there's not a damn thing we can do about it." Mulder sat back as her grip slackened. "You were there, Scully. The firefighters said the blaze started right at the file cabinets. They knew exactly what they were doing. They destroyed everything." "Not everything," she said quietly. "That's what I came here to tell you." On TV, he was walking an empty late-night street again, the black pavement slick with November rain. It had been a cold, wet fall, he remembered, where drizzle trickled endlessly from the sky. He reached for the remote and hit "pause," freezing his own image. "I would have looked forever," he told her, still staring at the screen. "I know." Her hand found his. "That's what I wanted you to know." Scully leaned her cheek against his upper arm. "I've always known it. I don't need the tape for that." "Ethan followed me around all the time, as I guess you can see. I think he thought that any second I was going to find you, and he wanted to be there when it happened. Eventually, he just gave up like everyone else." "Not everyone." She rubbed her cheek against his T-shirt. "He was so angry at me. I started wondering how much he knew about...what happened in Arecibo, but I figured if he knew, he'd probably just kill me." "I don't think he knew." Mulder drew away. "Because you didn't tell him." "But I would have." He looked at her again, curious as to how she could sound so sure. "You remember?" "No, but I took his ring off, and now I know why." Mulder shook his head and tapped the remote against his kneecap. "Well, here we are again." "What do you mean?" He pointed at the TV with the remote. "Let's recap, shall we? Four years ago at this time, the X-Files were shut down, you and I had been split up, and we'd just slept together but weren't really speaking. As Yogi would say, 'it's déjà vu all over again." "They haven't split us up." "Yet." He hung his head low and studied the floor. Scully did not say anything for a long moment. "Mulder, about... about the other thing. I just wanted to say I think I understand why you couldn't tell me." He turned his face to look at her. Scully fidgeted with her hands in her lap. "I mean, I wish you had told me, but in your place, I think I would have done the same thing." "There wasn't going to be a happy ending no matter what I said or did." "Not then, no." Surprised, he put the remote aside and shifted to meet her eyes. "And now? You think things are different?" "I think we haven't reached the ending yet," she said, taking his hand again. He closed his fingers over hers and looked down at their joined hands. "You know what the definition of insanity is, don't you? Doing the same thing and expecting a different result." Scully smiled. "I knew there was a reason I've stuck around for five years. Insanity it is, then." He leaned down until his nose nearly touched her cheek. "No excellent soul is exempt from a mixture of madness," he said. "Shakespeare?" "Aristotle." "Mmm." She reached up and stroked the side of his face. "How about, 'I can predict the movement of heavenly bodies, but not the madness of men.'" Mulder shivered at the whisper caress of 'heavenly bodies' across his cheek. "Da Vinci?" he guessed as his mouth moved closer to hers. "Issac Newton," she breathed, just before he kissed her. Unlike their previous frantic encounters, this kiss was slow and measured, almost tentative. She smelled faintly of sweat and bleach, the tip of her nose cold against cheek as he held his mouth gently over hers. The angle wasn't the best; he leaned on the coffee table with one arm and held her hip with the other as he craned his neck down to reach her lips. She lifted her face to meet him halfway, her mouth warm, her breath barely a sigh. He was dimly aware of their surroundings; the TV light filtered through his closed eyelids, water burbled in his fish tank and his refrigerator kicked in with a distant hum. Scully's mouth plumped up with each press and pull of his lips, and he leaned closer, straining for more. She made a small murmur and her thumb slid across his cheekbone, grazing his ear and sending a flush of heat to his toes. Her mouth opened slightly in invitation, but at that moment, he lost his balance and his right arm skidded out from under him. Scully gasped in surprise as he came crashing down against her. Her shoulder caught him squarely in the breastbone, and Mulder panted as he righted himself again. Their eyes met, neither saying anything, but then Scully let out an embarrassed laugh and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. "Sorry," he muttered. "Are you okay?" Nothing wounded but his pride. "Did I get you?" he asked as he touched the side of her jaw where he had hit her with his head. Scully opened and closed her mouth beneath his touch. "I'm all right." Mulder's fingers gentled to a caress, and Scully reached up and pulled his hand into both of her own. He used his free arm to pull her into a loose hug. "You know, I'm really not that bad at this. At least I didn't used to be." Scully snickered and kissed the center of his chest. "You want to take a break while you compose your list of references?" "Hey, you had no complaints the first time." He said the words lightly, but the minute they left his mouth he regretted it. He tensed as Scully raised her head. "Oh, sure, the amnesia defense," she said, amusement in her eye. "How convenient. I think I'm beginning to understand why you never told me." He tugged her closer and let his hands wander under her top so that his fingertips just tickled the bare skin at her waist. "If you'd care to join me in the other room," he said, his voice low, "I'll be happy to show you exactly how it was." Scully paused and then reached for his hand again. "I have a better idea," she said as she stood up. "Why don't you show me how it's going to be instead?" She started walking away, her hand threatening to slip from his, so he did the only sensible thing and held on tight. He let her lead him into his dark bedroom, the only light coming from the street lamps shining through the open blinds. Scully stopped near the foot of the bed, seeming suddenly uncertain in this strange terrain. He could no longer see her face, and he was torn between turning on a light and leaving them off so she couldn't tell what a wreck his place was. Laundry spilled from the chair onto the floor, and he had about a half-dozen shoes scattered around the room. Two empty beer bottles sat on the nightstand next to a used Kleenex. The bed was unmade but the sheets were semi-clean. He heard her breathing, saw the white light slice across the top of her red head. She seemed to be expecting him to make the next move, which he guessed was only fair since she had nearly had to drag him by his hair into the cave. Say something, he ordered himself. Make it nice. "I haven't had anyone back here in a really long time." "Oh, yeah? Exactly how long are we talking?" He squinted in thought, trying to count back, and Scully laughed. "That's long enough," she said tugging him towards her with her fingers through his belt loops. He found her mouth easily in the darkness; all those maddening hours of staring at her face as she said "you're crazy, Mulder" or "Mulder, do you honestly believe that..." finally paid off. He just leaned his head down and there she was. Her body he knew only in jigsaw puzzle pieces -- a glimpse here, a hand on her back there. He had touched her everywhere but never all at once. As they kissed he put the mental pieces together, mapping the hard edge of her shoulder bones and the soft slope of her waist. He cupped the back of her warm head, her hair thick in his fingers as her mouth parted under his. His world narrowed to the slide of her tongue and her heated breath against his cheek. Scully quivered, her mouth falling further open as he kissed her with increasing urgency. Her fingers caught the end of his T-shirt and he thought she'd try to remove it, but instead she grabbed fistfuls of material as her breathing quickened. Mulder felt the same rising urgency. His heartbeat thundered in his ears. He grabbed her hips and pulled her tight. Scully gasped, her mouth coming free from his as her hips jerked several times against his lower body. He flailed behind him with one arm, searching for the end of the bed as he tried to kiss her again. Scully was agreeable, but when he stepped backwards, she stumbled. "Oops," he said as he held her up. "You want to turn on a light?" Her breathing was ragged in the dark. "Do you?" "How about a small one?" He reluctantly dropped his hands from her to go turn on the reading light next to his bed. The effect was an interrogation-bright halo over one pillow as the rest of the room filled with shadow. Scully squinted at him as her eyes adjusted. Her hair was thoroughly tousled and her lips were swollen. Somehow, the top two buttons on her shirt had come undone, and Mulder couldn't help but stare at the curve of breast visible beneath. "Mulder, maybe..." She made some motion with her hands that he barely registered. "Mulder?" "Hmm?" He made himself look at her face again. She smiled and repeated the hand gesture. "Maybe flip the light up to the ceiling?" "Oh. Yeah. Good idea." The spotlight shifted to the ceiling so neither one of them would go blind in bed. Scully reached down and touched her fingers to his rumpled sheets. Mulder bit his lip, now unsure of his next move. His rhythm was broken. She looked at the floor as he ambled over to her. He stopped just inches in front of her and waited until she met his eyes. Without breaking her gaze, he reached out and began unbuttoning her shirt from the bottom up. Her breathing became uneven again; he could feel the heat coming off her skin but he did not touch her, only her blouse. When he had freed all the buttons, he gently parted the material. They both looked down at her simple white bra, and he watched her breasts rise and fall several times, his mouth going dry. He resisted he urge to reach out with both hands and grab as if he were testing melons. Instead, he took one finger and traced the top wavy edge of her bra from one side to the other. Scully held her breath. "I never got to see before," he whispered as he repeated the motion against her skin. "Wow." Scully flushed a little, but she looked pleased. "Wow?" "Oh, yeah. I'd say even a wow-plus." He drew the shirt off of her shoulders and set it on the end of the bed. Scully tugged his shirt up and he obediently shed it to the ground. His skin burned where she pressed her palms to his chest. He kissed her again, but it was mainly an excuse to slip his hands around her back and try to divest her of the bra. He was out of practice, though, and not very subtle about it. Scully broke the kiss and helped him out. He sucked in his stomach as he got his first look at her naked breasts, their nipples poked out like two chocolate kisses. There was no way he could get his mouth on them from this angle, so he stroked them both with his fingers. Scully made a choked sound near his neck as her fingers found his ribs. Slow, he reminded himself. Their last two attempts had been over by this time. They divested each other of their remaining clothing, and Scully climbed onto his bed. He stood there a moment, his penis pointing at her like a divining rod. Scully held out her hand and he took it, crawling over until he was hovering over her. He trailed his fingertips lightly over her face and pressed his lips to her brow. Scully, seeming shy, tucked her face into his shoulder and wound her arms around his neck. He returned the hug and tried not to rut against her like a dog. His penis lay trapped between them against the soft swell of her stomach. Mulder felt her quick breathing at his neck. He dropped a hand to her breast, where her heart thundered. "You okay?" he asked as he attempted to meet her eyes. "Yes." She did not sound unsure, but he ducked down until he was able to see her face. He brushed the hair out of her eyes. "It's just me." He touched his forehead to hers and smiled at her. She held his head in her hands. "I know. I just didn't expect it to feel so..." "So...?" "Much," she finished softly. "Yeah." He kissed her long and slow, her thighs falling open under the urging of his wandering hand. They had not done this enough for him to know exactly how to touch her. He stroked around with the pads of his fingers until he found a spot she seemed to like. Her knees fell wide and she hissed against his neck. His fingers grew slick as Scully started rocking with his hand. He wasn't sure how much longer he could last. As if reading his mind, Scully reached between them for his penis. It bucked when she touched it, and Mulder gritted his teeth. "Uh, no," he said, tilting his hips away from her. Scully grabbed her hands back and looked down. "Sorry." "No, no." He kissed her cheek, her eye. "You do that I won't last thirty seconds." He did not want a repeat performance of their hotel coupling. "Then let's not wait," she said, trying to maneuver herself under him. Mulder stretched an arm out toward the nightstand. "Just a second," he said as he tugged the drawer open. He fished around until he connected with a condom. Scully's eyes glittered in the half-light. "It's a little late for that," she said. "Humor me," he said as he put it on. He figured dulling the sensation just a bit could increase his chances of sustaining the action. "You might enjoy it better this way." He settled between her legs again and positioned himself for entry. Scully stopped him with a palm to his chest. "Slow," she said, and then smiled, borrowing his earlier phrase: "I haven't had anyone back here in a long time." Mulder winced a little, remembering how he had thrust hard into her the last time without even thinking. "As slow as you want," he replied, hoping he could keep the promise. He pushed just the head in and checked for her reaction. Scully's cheeks were flushed pink and her eyes were dark. She curled her fingers around his biceps and nodded, so Mulder eased in a bit further. He let out a long breath, willing control. Her inner muscles clenched and relaxed around him several times in quick succession. "Still okay?" he asked her tightly. "Mmm, yes." She kissed him and he lost control over his lower body as his hips thrust forward in one final push. He panted, prepared to apologize, but Scully was hugging him with her thighs and planting kisses along his jaw. She felt so hot and tight and good that he was not at all sure he was going to make it much longer. The bed rocked gently with their movements, the only sound in the room the creak of the headboard and the sweet slide of his penis between her legs. A fine sheen of sweat broke out over his brow as he tried to keep his thrusts even and slow. He ran one hand over her hip to pull her closer, and Scully sighed against his cheek. Mulder's orgasm was bearing down on him like a freight train; he heard its warning whistle and felt the vibrating hum of the tracks. His hips picked up the chugga-chugga rhythm, increasing speed. "Scully?" he said uncertainly. He looked down, trying to judge how close she was. Her hair spread across the pillow; her eyes were closed and her mouth parted. When she dragged her lids open, he expected to see his own desperate, glassy need, but her gaze was warm and calm. "Mmm, nice," she said as she caressed the side of his face. Nice? She was only at "nice"? He had left nice in the dust about two seconds after she'd removed her shirt. The memory made him glance down at her small, round breasts again. They jiggled a bit with each thrust of his body and Mulder clenched his eyes so tight he saw stars. Just a bit longer, he coached himself. Hold on. Hold on. "Argh," he said with a strangled groan as control slipped from his mental grasp. Orgasm tore from him, causing him to spasm indefinitely above her. Scully held him to her with arms and legs as he buried his face in her hair. Aw, fuck, he thought the tremors subsided. He lay heavy on her, his heart thudding, his skin sticking to hers wherever they touched. Scully rubbed the back of one of his legs with her own. He pushed up on one shaky arm to look into her eyes. She smiled tenderly at him and touched her fingertips to his face. "God, I'm sorry," he said, feeling like a selfish bastard. "I tried to wait." "It's okay." Her voice came out scratchy, whether from sex or from the fact that it was four in the morning, he did not know. "Really," she insisted, turning his chin to look at her again. "I'm glad you... enjoyed it." He leaned down to press his face into her hot neck. "Always," he whispered, and she hugged him tightly. "But I wanted you to enjoy it too." "I did. I am." She rubbed his back and his penis softened, starting to slip out of her. He kissed the hollow where her neck met her shoulder. "Be right back," he whispered. He went to the bathroom to dispose of the condom, and when he returned, Scully was tucked demurely beneath the sheet again. "You want anything?" he asked. "Maybe some water?" "Water would be good." So he went naked to the kitchen for two tall glasses of cold water. Okay, so I can't give you an orgasm, he thought with disgust, but I sure can pour water. Scully sat up to accept the glass as he slid in next to her. "I can't believe how late it is," she said in between long sips. "The sun will be up soon." "Yeah." She set her glass on the nightstand and settled back into the pillows. "We should get some sleep." Mulder's hopes fell. He had wanted a chance to redeem himself. Reaching over her, he set down his glass and turned off the light. "Um, are you sure that's all you need?" "Hmm?" She sounded half-asleep already. He lay down next to her and stroked her from shoulder to hip. She snuggled closer and draped an arm loosely around his waist. He kissed her head. "You sure there's nothing else I can do for you?" he murmured. With his eyes closed, fatigue suddenly caught up with him, too. "No." She traced idle patterns on his skin. "It's okay, Mulder. I don't always... it doesn't always happen for me, and that's okay." He was pretty sure he'd managed to give her an orgasm in Arecibo, but maybe that had just been dumb luck. If he had known he was going to need to repeat the technique, he would have paid more attention. "Unfortunately for you, right now my average kind of sucks," he said by way of rueful apology. He felt her smile against his shoulder. "You haven't had many at-bats." "So that's what I'm saying," he said, trailing his hand down to the valley of her thighs. "Let me try again. Show me what to do." "Mulder, no." "I want to make you feel good." "You did," she said, starting to sound anxious as she tensed and tried to pull away from him. He trapped her before she could get too far. "Okay, okay. I got it. No more tonight." He kissed her cheek, nuzzling her in the darkness, but it took several long moments before she relaxed again. "It's not you," she whispered, turning her face toward his neck. Her eyelashes tickled his skin in a butterfly kiss. "You did everything right." Apparently not everything, he thought to himself, but he didn't want to give her the impression that she had somehow disappointed *him*. He rested his cheek against the top of her head and swept his hand down her back in long, slow strokes. Okay, so maybe he had made her come in Arecibo, but this after part was much, much better. He resolved to keep his mouth shut and not mess it up any further. As if reading his thoughts, Scully shifted to look up at him. "That night in Arecibo," she said, "who started it?" "You did." She nodded as if to herself and rested her head against him again. "You don't seem surprised," he observed as he ran one finger lightly over her naked shoulder. "I don't remember that night, Mulder, but I remember other things. I remember wanting you." He remembered the moment before she'd kissed him, how he'd felt her face growing nearer, felt her breath on his lips. He hadn't believed it was happening until they finally touched. "I never knew," he told her. "Mulder, can I ask you something? And maybe I don't want the answer, but I have to know." Wary, he replied, "Okay..." "Just how in the hell did Byers find out?" "Oh." He rubbed one hand over his face in the darkness. "I kind of told him. I was asking for advice right after it happened. Not that I mentioned your name, but he guessed anyway." "You didn't have a lot of FBI partners, Mulder. I don't imagine it took a Mensa membership to deduce my identity." To his relief, she sounded amused. "I didn't say you were my partner. I, um, I kind of used a metaphor." "Oh, God. Exactly what kind of metaphor are we talking about here?" "Well, I was me. You were, um... you were a cookie." "A cookie?" she repeated in incredulity. "Yes, and I ate you." Scully hid her face in his arm. "You said I was a cookie," she muttered. "I can't believe you, Mulder." "You were a good cookie," he told the back of her head. "Very tasty." She looked up. "So what advice did Byers give you?" "I said the situation was a mess. He said he thought maybe you were worth it." "I always knew he was the smart one." She settled against his side again, her hand rubbing over his stomach in an affectionate caress. He felt her yawn. "Good night, Mulder." He kissed her head and hugged her close. "Good night, cookie." ~*~*~*~ Scully slept well, considering she was in a foreign bed, and awoke past ten to find Mulder reading the paper beside her. He gave her a mug of coffee and a good-morning kiss, but the kiss was hot so her coffee grew cold as he took his java- flavored tongue on a tour of her body. Soon she was lying with her legs spread wide and his head between them. Her clit popped out like a Vegas showgirl from behind the curtain, eager to bathe in the attention of his talented mouth. She hummed a sound that was part pleasure, part nervous energy. He felt so good, but she worried what would happen if she couldn't climax again, and the worry made it hard to let go. Through glazed eyes, she looked down and saw her erect nipples, swollen and darkened from his earlier attention. She saw his tan hands on her white thighs, holding her open for his busy mouth. His hair, uncombed, tickled the tender skin of her upper thighs. He licked and licked until she thought she was going to die. Eating me, she thought dazedly, like a cookie. He found a spot on the left side that made her gasp. Her hips jerked but her held her in place. Scully uttered a strangled sound of frustration as Mulder licked even faster. She was so close, so close, but couldn't quite make it. She turned her cheek against the pillow, her eyes shut, her mouth locked in a perfect "O" as orgasm continued to hover just out of reach. I need... I need... she thought, but did not know how to complete the sentence. She was about to drag him up her body when his hand crept up to find hers. He took it gently, interweaving their fingers as if they were holding hands at the movies instead of making love in his bed; it was a gesture they had shared a dozen times before, however briefly, and this small but powerful reminder of their shared history did the trick. This was Mulder licking her, getting her off. Loving her. She cried out once as orgasm hit and then shook for what seemed like an eternity. Only when it was over and she was trembling weakly in Mulder's arms did she realize how much she had needed the release. He petted and soothed her, murmuring words she barely comprehended near her ear. If he made some crack about batting averages now, she thought she might kill him. But when she pushed the hair out of her eyes to look at him, he appeared as awed and humbled by the experience as she was. "Wow, Scully," he said, smiling at her as he helped smooth her hair. "Can we do that again?" She laughed softly and rested her forehead against his breastbone. "After I've had an IV transfusion, maybe." "Will you settle for some coffee? I've still got hot stuff in the kitchen." And you're not too bad in the bedroom either, she thought, but kept the quip to herself. Mulder pulled on a pair of boxers as she cast a glance at the floor in search of her clothes. "We're ridiculously late for work," she said. "I hope you have a good excuse prepared." He stopped in the doorway. "We don't have work. Hell, we don't even have jobs right now. Skinner called this morning while you were asleep and said not to bother coming in today." "Today, or just don't bother coming back at all?" He shrugged, looking less upset than she might have imagined. "Since we saw fit to contribute so robustly to the office barbecue, I imagine they'll use it as the perfect excuse to shut the X-files. How are we supposed to work cases without any files?" "We can build them up again." He smiled at her and shook his head as if bemused. "What?" she demanded with as much authority as one could muster while wearing only a sheet. "I was just thinking... a few years ago you probably would have been glad to have the whole thing go up in flames. You might have even lit the match." "That's not fair," she said, rising from the pillows in protest, but Mulder waved her back down. "Relax, Scully. I just mean it's surprising how much has changed in five years." He looked her over appraisingly. "We aren't the same people anymore, either of us." She realized then that he must have been thinking back on their night in Arecibo, to memories she didn't have. From the descriptions he had given her, it sounded like their relationship had gone up in flames back then. *who started it* *you did* *you wouldn't even look at me afterwards* *a few years ago you probably would have been glad to have the whole thing go up in flames. You might have even lit the match* "You're right," she said to him with effort. "We're not the same." It did not matter that she could not remember the past. She wasn't that person anymore. He smiled softly, apparently glad she understood, and ran his hand over the doorjamb. "I'll get the coffee," he said. She dressed while he was gone, surveying the damage in the mirror. Her shirt was wrinkled from its night on the floor, and her hair poked out at six different angles. She would need a shower and a change before she went anywhere, which meant returning to her place. Mulder returned and set the fresh mug on the sink next to her as she tried to straighten her hair. Their eyes met in the mirror. "Skinner also said that Diana is awake." He seemed to choose his words carefully. "She doesn't remember anything about the shooting." "She'll be okay, then?" "The doctors seem to think so." He sipped from his mug and watched her reaction. "Good." She finished pinning her hair back and tucked away the remaining pins in her purse. "I, uh, I thought I might go and see her today." Scully touched his bare stomach as she passed him on her way to the bedroom. "I think you should." "You do?" She stopped gathering her things and looked at him seriously. "She's your friend, Mulder, and she's had a serious injury. Of course you should go and see her." He toed away a sneaker that was lying in front of him. "She was more than a friend, once," he confessed. "I know." "You know?" Her mouth curled in a smile. "Byers told me," she said sweetly, and his jaw fell open in shock. "Well, Byers and the other two. They weren't sure why you and Diana split up, though." "There's a limit to how much I'll kiss and tell." Scully swallowed a last gulp of coffee and handed him the mug as she moved to leave. "In that case," she said, stretching up on tiptoe to reach his mouth. "I know you won't say a word about this." She kissed him warmly and thoroughly before sliding back down. He looked dazed with the half-empty coffee mugs sloshing in his hands. Scully brushed the lipstick smudge off the corner of his mouth with one finger. "See you later," she said, feeling satisfied that he was unable to summon a reply. At long last, she thought, a way to shut him up. ~*~*~*~ Diana was still in intensive care but the doctors agreed to let Mulder talk with her for a few minutes. "The bullet punctured her left lung," they explained. "It's hard for her to breathe, let alone speak." "I won't stay long," Mulder promised. Diana had a private room with a guard posted outside the door, just in case the shooter decided to try again. Mulder showed his ID and entered quietly. She turned her head immediately, summoning a smile as he shut the door behind him. He could see a bandage sticking out from the wide collar of her gown, and she was hooked up to some sort of monitor as well as an IV. "Hi," he said as he took her hand. "They say you're doing much better." She nodded, her dark eyes tired and dull. "Sorry," she whispered, "about the boy." "Don't worry about that. We'll find him." "It's my fault. I should have seen the shooter." "We should have given you more protection." She smiled as if she didn't believe him. "Too kind." "You just concentrate on getting better, okay?" He patted her hand. "Let us worry about the rest of it." "Us," she repeated hoarsely. "You mean you and Scully." He did not want to get into the fire and the state of the X- Files with her, not in an ICU ward. "Scully says hi. She wants you to get well too." Diana narrowed her eyes at him and she shook her head on the pillow. "She was sent to spy on you, to shut you down." "What makes you think that?" An unreadable expression flashed across her face and she seemed momentarily agitated, her hand twisting free from his. "Because they asked me first." The hair stood up on the back of his neck, and he risked a glance at the door. "What do you mean they asked you first?" "Just what I told you. I refused, of course. I would never do that to you. It was my work too. But they wanted a woman, someone who wouldn't arouse your suspicions. I got the feeling seduction was optional." "Why are you telling me this now? Why didn't you tell me years ago if you were so concerned?" She blinked rapidly. "Because," she said, "I didn't think it would ever work. If you would never let me near the X-Files, how was she supposed to earn your trust? I didn't think you would even give her the opportunity." "I didn't have a choice. It was the only way they would let me keep the X-files. But you're wrong about Scully." "Am I? Are you really so sure?" He was somewhat surprised to find the answer was yes. He really was a changed person from five years ago. "Whatever they may have sent her to be, it doesn't matter. Scully is incapable of being anything other than herself. I can promise you the men upstairs are every bit as disappointed in her as they are in me." "And the seduction?" she asked, her voice raw. "Still optional?" Mulder looked down for a long minute, contemplating a biting answer. Instead, he just patted her leg as he rose to leave. "Get well soon, Diana." ~*~*~*~*~ Back at home, Scully laid out thick towels for her shower and a new set of clothes. She changed into her robe, but before stepping under the spray, she made one phone call. "Detective Franklin," said the man on the other end. "Detective Franklin, this is Agent Dana Scully. Do you remember me?" She heard the sound of his chair creaking. "I tend not to forget people who come into my workplace and accuse me of shirking my duty." "Yes, well, you still have the wrong man behind bars. What does that tell you?" "What would you say if I told you I was starting to agree with that assessment?" Scully gripped the phone tighter. "Really? You agree?" His voice lowered and she heard other phones ringing in the background. "They never could find that witness, the neighbor who supposedly heard Melinda McKenn screaming early in the morning. I canvassed that building myself -- twice. Not only did no one call, nobody remembered hearing anything from Minette's apartment that night. And another thing... the ME put time of death shortly after one AM. Now, I know that these estimates can be off somewhat, but I can't help but wonder how a dead woman was screaming bloody murder." Thank god, Scully thought, sagging in relief. Finally someone in a position of power who was prepared to believe them. "And?" "And what? I asked these questions in a meeting six weeks ago and suddenly I got assigned a new case." "I don't understand. Why do they want to frame Ethan for these murders?" "I think they'd be happy framing my dog at this point. Anything to get the story off the front pages." "So that's it? You're content to let an innocent man get railroaded for murders he did not commit?" "Hey, I can't prove he didn't do it. For all I know, he did do it and we just have the timeline wrong. All I know is the story that is being scripted here has some big holes, and no one seems to want to fill them in." "I may have a way to get some answers, if you're interested." "I'm interested." "You have access to Melinda McKenn's notes on Rachel Campenella's death. I need to know if the name Katherine -- or Kitty -- Hill is included in those notes anywhere." "Doesn't ring a bell, but it's been a while since I've looked through those notes. I don't have them anymore, obviously, but I might have a way to get a look at them. Who is this Katherine Hill?" "She's a possible link between Melinda McKenn and Rachel Campenella, and she's missing." He gave a low whistle. "You think we're looking for another body?" "I hope not. How soon do you think you can have an answer for me about the notes?" "Give me two hours at least. I'll call you when I've got something." Scully ducked under the hot shower spray, closing her eyes as the water relaxed away pleasant aches from muscles she had not used in a long time. Once clean and changed, she powered up her laptop to do a little investigating into Katherine Hill. Graduated from Columbia with honors and then moved to D.C. to sign on with the Brigham House as a junior staff member. There was no hint of trouble in her past, not even a parking ticket. Scully did a little more digging and found Katherine Hill's parents living in Maryland. Perhaps Kitty had gone home to mom and dad? Scully left Mulder a voicemail message that she was driving to Baltimore to check it out. She found Peter and Penny Hill living in a large house outside the city, with a lush green lawn and fresh white shutters. Large potted urns filled with cheery red geraniums flanked the front stairs. It did not look like a house that knew trouble. Scully lifted the brass knocker and rapped several times. A few minutes later, the door opened to reveal a tall, trim woman who looked to be in her late forties. She wore a tailored blouse and round glasses that showed off her owl- like eyes. "Yes? Can I help you?" "My name is Dana Scully and I work at the FBI." Scully showed her identification and the woman's expression became more guarded. "Are you Penelope Hill?" "Yes, I am. Is there something wrong?" "I'd just like to talk with you for a few minutes. May I come in?" The woman looked over her shoulder once. "Now is not really a good time. What is it you wanted to talk to me about?" "It's about your daughter, Katherine. You're sure you can't make time?" "What do you want with Katherine?" Scully looked pointedly inside the house. "I can explain everything inside." Reluctantly, Penny Hill widened the door and let Scully into the entryway. There was a red and gold oriental rug covering the marble floor, and a sweeping staircase running up the back wall. Scully looked up at the leaded-glass chandelier. "You have a lovely home," she said as she looked about for any trace of Katherine. "Thank you. If you'll just follow me to the sitting room..." The sitting room boasted a large fireplace and expensive furniture. On one wall, there was a framed portrait of Katherine as a teenager. "We had that painted for her high school graduation," Mrs. Hill explained when she caught Scully looking at it. "She's very beautiful." "Yes, she is. Now if you please tell me what interest the FBI has in my daughter..." "We tried to reach her at her address in D.C., but her roommate told us she had left quite suddenly without giving any forwarding information. Were you aware of this?" "Yes, Katherine decided she needed a change of scenery." "All in one weekend?" Mrs. Hill frowned. "Why did you want to speak to Katherine?" "We wanted to ask her about Rachel Campenella," Scully said, watching closely for any reaction. The woman froze momentarily but recovered with ease. "Who?" "You must have seen the papers. She's the Congressional aide who was murdered last year." "Oh, yes, now that you mention it, her name is familiar. But I don't see what Katherine has to do with any of this." "Rachel worked for Senator Ryerson. I understand Katherine used to date Ryerson's younger son, Seth." "That was years and years ago. I'm quite sure Kitty hasn't spoken to Seth since high school." "Why did they break up? Do you know?" Mrs. Hill gave an awkward shrug. "Who knows why teenagers do anything? The bloom was off the rose, I suppose. They were young. No one expected it to last forever. I don't see how a high school romance of my daughter's would be of any interest to the FBI." "There are rumors she got pregnant," Scully said quietly, and the other woman blanched. "I don't deal in rumors." "Did she have a baby? Seth's baby?" "I don't think I want to continue this conversation," replied Mrs. Hill as she stood up. "I think you should leave now." "You sent Kitty away that year." Scully pressed on even as she rose to go. "Was it to hide the baby?" "Please leave. I--I can't help you." "Can't or won't?" Mrs. Hill was visibly upset as she wrenched open the heavy front door. "Just leave us alone. Please." "Where is Kitty now, Mrs. Hill? Is she here?" "She's traveling in Europe with friends." A lie, Scully could tell immediately. "There is some possibility she could be in danger," she told the woman gently. "We really should talk with her." "Katherine is just fine. I'll thank you not to bother us again on this matter." With that, she shut the door in Scully's face. Scully walked slowly back down the brick path. None of this really made sense to her. The family clearly treasured Katherine; it did not seem likely that they would send her away because she got pregnant in high school. Maybe they thought she would ruin her future, Scully mused, but she couldn't imagine Mrs. Hill sending a grandchild away for someone else to raise. Scully started her car but did not travel far. She parked it again at the end of the street, out of the view of the Hill House, but near the mouth of the cul-de-sac road. The Hills could not leave without passing her. She opened a bottle of water and settled back to watch when her cell phone rang. It was Detective Franklin. "Katherine Eileen Hill," he said and rattled off an address. "Yeah, we've been there," answered Scully. "Katherine left months ago." "Well, that's how she was listed in Melinda's notes." "Anything else besides her name?" "Not that I saw. You want to tell me what's going on here?" "As soon as I know myself. Thanks for checking." A few minutes later, Scully nearly choked on her water as a dark blue Mercedes sedan flew past her with Penny Hill at the wheel. Scully slipped the water into her cup holder and fired up her engine in pursuit. She tailed the woman at a good distance, figuring Mrs. Hill might expect her to be following. Wherever the woman was going, she was in a hurry. They did at least ten miles over the speed limit the entire trip. Eventually, Mrs. Hill came to a stop clear across the other side of the city, in front of a small, boxy house with a chain-link fence around it. Scully watched as she opened the gate and rushed up the front walkway. Mrs. Hill opened the door with her own key and disappeared inside. Scully observed the car in the driveway: a red Toyota Corolla. She picked up her phone and called Mulder. "I think I may have found Kitty Hill," she said, and gave him the address. "I'm on my way," he replied. Peter Hill beat Mulder to the meeting. Scully sunk low in her car seat as he parked behind her and went jogging toward the house. The gang's all here, she thought, wondering what was going on inside. If she had to guess, she would bet that they were planning on moving Katherine again, possibly arranging for her to make that European tour. She checked the clock on the dash and mentally urged Mulder to hurry. She wasn't sure what she could do if the Hills decided to leave before he got there. Finally, she saw his car pull up on the other side of the road. He got out and joined her inside her car. "Rush hour traffic is a bitch," he said, eyeing the house. "What's going on?" "Don't know. Mr. and Mrs. Hill are both in there, and I expect Katherine is as well. That's her car in the drive." "So we... what, go up and knock?" Scully recalled her chilly reception at the Hill house. "They aren't likely to just hand her over to us." "And we can't make them. She's not charged with anything. She's not even a witness that we know of." He looked at her. "You want to know something interesting? I did a little checking on my way down. Turns out Seth Ryerson is on leave from Princeton this year." "He was set to graduate." "Not anymore. They wouldn't tell me the reason he left." "Did they tell you the time?" "He left for Christmas break and never returned." "We need to talk to Katherine," Scully said as she opened her car door. "We'll just have to make them understand." Mulder followed her the front door and poked the bell. She heard footsteps on the other side but no one immediately answered. At length, a man's voice called through the door: "What do you want?" "FBI," Mulder said, and held his ID up to the peephole. "We need to talk to Katherine." "She's not here." "We have reason to believe she is," Scully called back. "Her car is in the driveway." "We can get a warrant," Mulder said, "but it would be easier if you'd just let us in." Scully looked at him, hoping the man wouldn't call their bluff. After a long wait and some muffled conversation, the man opened the door. He had thinning gray hair and a neat beard. "Come in, then, if you must," he said. He led them into a cramped living room, where Mrs. Hill and Katherine sat holding hands on an overstuffed pink sofa. "Why couldn't you leave well enough alone?" asked Mrs. Hill. She stroked her daughter's dark hair. "Haven't we been through enough?" "Tell us," Scully said. "What happened with Seth Ryerson back in high school?" Katherine raised her eyes and Scully noted the girl had not been crying. "Everyone thought Seth was so wonderful," she said. "Connor was the bad boy, the one who was in trouble all the time. Seth got good grades and was polite to his teachers. He was confident -- fullback on the soccer team, captain of the debate squad. Everyone knew he was going places. All the girls in school wanted him, and he wanted me." "Go on," her father said, his jaw clenched. "Tell them." "He was sweet at first, the same boy I knew in school. He planned grown-up dates to the symphony when other kids I knew went out to the video arcade. But it seemed like the more time I spent with him, the more time he wanted from me. He was jealous of my friends, even my family." "We told her to stop seeing him," Mr. Hill said tightly. "She was too young to be tied down like that." "Did you stop seeing him?" Scully asked. "I tried. I told him I wanted us to take a break, maybe date other people. He accused me of sleeping around on him and said I was trying to humiliate him in front of the whole school. We had an awful fight." "Did he hit you?" Scully asked. "Not--not then." She swallowed. "This is the part I'm not supposed to talk about." Her father gave a short nod. "Go ahead and tell them." "Daddy, the money." "We'll it give back! We'll give it all back. Just tell them what he did to you." Katherine paled and took an unsteady breath. "He came over after school a few days later when I was the only one home. He was acting all nice about everything and said he understood why I had wanted to break up with him. He said he wanted to be friends. I let him inside and went to get us some Cokes. He... he followed me to the kitchen." Her mother gripped her daughter's hands tightly, her head bowed. Katherine continued: "I was opening the refrigerator when I felt him behind me. He had a knife. He made me lie down on the kitchen floor and he took my pants off. His face was so angry, I thought he was going to kill me. He--he raped me. The knife cut my neck. I remember he seemed to like that part, like the blood made him more excited. Afterward, he let me up and let me put my clothes back on. I was shaking so badly I could barely button my pants. He acted like nothing had happened. He washed off the knife, kissed me good-bye and said he would see me around school the next day. He even took the Coke with him." "By the time we got home," her mother said, "Kitty had showered a dozen times and burned her clothes in the fireplace." "I didn't want to go to the police," said Kitty. "I just wanted to sleep." "We didn't know what to do," Mr. Hill said. "I wanted to go over there and kill the little SOB." "You did go over there, didn't you?" Mulder guessed. "You told Senator Ryerson what happened." "Actually the Senator wasn't home at the time. I told his wife. She begged me not to go to the police, said that her son was sick and they would get him help. She didn't seem surprised by what I was telling her." "She offered you money," Mulder said. Mr. Hill nodded. "A million dollars. I didn't want to take it at first, but Penny said we should think about it." "I was thinking of Kitty," Mrs. Hill protested. "A trial would have been ugly and public, and what evidence did we have? It was her word against that of a Ryerson boy -- the good Ryerson boy, the one everyone adored." "I signed a contract," Katherine said, "promising I would never talk to anyone about the Ryerson family again, and then I went to finish school out in California." "But you did tell someone what happened, didn't you?" Scully asked. "Maybe Rachel Campenella at the Brigham House?" "No, I never told her. I never told anyone what happened." "But you did say something." Katherine hugged herself with slim arms. "I didn't even want to be there that night, knowing the Senator was going to be speaking, but the staff needed me. I couldn't say no. Turns out I was worried for nothing. Ryerson didn't even recognize me. He talked about how every woman should have a right to feel safe in her home. I had to leave and go to the bathroom or I thought I might just start screaming. Rachel was there." She broke off, hesitant. "Later, when I saw she had been stabbed to death, I thought about Seth and what he'd done to me. But I couldn't believe it. I told myself it was just a horrible coincidence." "What did you say to Rachel that night?" Scully asked. "I just said I couldn't believe she swallowed all his B.S. about women's rights. I said it would make me sick to work for a man like him." "And did she answer?" "She wanted to know why I thought it was B.S. I said she would surely find out for herself in time." "That's it?" "That's it. I didn't think it would matter. It's not like I said a word about what had happened between me and Seth, but I guess she must have found out somehow. At least she started asking questions." "How do you know?" Mulder asked. "Because he found me. He came to my apartment one night and started pounding on my door. I hid in the closet and pretended I wasn't home, and finally he went away." Her mother smoothed her hair back. "She left that night." "What about Melinda McKenn? Did you ever speak with her?" Scully inquired. "She called my apartment but I never got the chance to call her back. My roommate took the message. I was long gone by then." "Why didn't any of you ever contact the police through all this?" Mulder asked. "With what?" Mr. Hill replied. "We have no proof of anything at all." "Well that's one area in which we might be able to help you," Mulder told him. "Leave the proof to us." Later, as they left, Scully asked Mulder, "Are you thinking what I'm thinking?" "That the black eye Mrs. Ryerson sustained back in Illinois might have been courtesy of her son and not her husband?" "If it was Seth, they're never going to give him up. They've been protecting him for years." "If I'm right, they might not have a choice." "Right about what?" She stopped at her car and looked up at him. "Mulder, do you really have some sort of proof?" "That anonymous 9-1-1 call the morning of Melinda's murder. It's only anonymous if you don't have a suspect to match it to." She reached up and grabbed both sides of his face. "Mulder, you're a genius," she said, before pecking him on the lips. "You know, Scully, I'm really liking this new turn in our relationship," he said, but she was already getting into her car. ~*~*~ Detective Franklin was preparing to go off-duty when they arrived at the station. "We think we may have a new suspect for you," Scully told him, "but we need to listen to the 9-1- 1 call from Melinda's murder." "I don't know that I can get back into the evidence twice in one day," Franklin replied. "What's up?" "We have reason to believe that Seth Ryerson may have made the call," said Mulder. Franklin's eyebrows rose. "The Senator's kid? That's a big fish you're trying to fry. But if you're expecting to hear him on the tape, I can tell you right now you're going to be disappointed." Scully's hopes fell. "Are you sure?" "Pretty damn sure. It was a woman who made the call." Scully looked at Mulder and knew he was having the same thought: Julianne Ryerson had lied for years to protect her boy from rape and assault charges. What was a little murder thrown into the mix? "We need to listen to that tape," Scully said. "And fast." ~*~*~ Night fell before they reached the Ryerson mansion in D.C.. The street was quiet and the only sound was Scully's heels against the pavement as they walked up the lighted path. Mulder knocked and a housekeeper answered. "We need to speak to Julianne Ryerson," Mulder said as they showed their identification. "I'll see if she's in," the woman replied, preparing to close the door, but Mulder stopped her with the flat of his hand. "We'll check with you," he told her. She looked pained and uncertain. "You must wait here..." "Nanette? Who's at the door at this hour?" Senator Ryerson's voice boomed through the front hall. He scowled when he saw it was them. "I thought I told you to leave my family the hell alone." "That's just not going to be possible anymore, sir," Mulder answered. He waved an audio cassette tape at the man. "We've got your wife's greatest hits here, and I think you'll want to hear them." Just then, the lady in question appeared. "Christopher? What is going on?" "Stay out of this, Julianne. Go back to the table." "Too late for that too," Scully said. "What are they doing here?" Julianne asked her husband. "I thought you said they weren't going to be of any more trouble." "The trouble's just starting," Mulder told her. "We're just the messengers." "We don't have to let them in," Julianne said. "Let's just go back to dinner." "They have a tape," he muttered at her. "So they have a tape. So what?" "It's a 9-1-1 call from the morning of Melinda McKenn's murder," Scully supplied. "The police haven't been able to identify the caller who claimed to be a neighbor." "We were hoping you could help us," Mulder added. "I'm quite sure we don't know anything," the Senator said, but his wife had gone deathly pale. "How about your wife?" asked Scully. "Maybe she can identify the voice." "Make them go away," Julianne urged, her hand on her husband's arm. "We don't have to take this." "If we listen to this tape of yours, will you go away?" Ryerson asked. "Chris, no--" "Of course," Mulder agreed, already pushing his way into the house. "We'll leave immediately if you don't know the voice." "Chris, I really don't think this is a good idea." Julianne's shrill voice echoed off the high ceiling. "Mom?" Seth stuck his head into the hall. "Seth, get back now!" she yelled at him. "He might want to hear this too," Mulder said. "He's not hearing anything," Ryerson said. "Seth, do as your mother says." Scully watched the young man disappear behind the double doors and wondered if he knew his time was running short. "I have a tape player that I use for dictation in my office," Ryerson was saying. "Come this way." They all gathered around his desk, Ryerson looking annoyed, his wife looking ill. Mulder handed over the cassette for the Senator to play. After a second or two of static, the emergency operator's voice filled the room. "Nine-one-one, what is your emergency?" "A woman is screaming in my building," came a woman's voice. Ryerson whipped his head around to stare at his wife. The tape continued: "It sounds like someone is hurting her very badly. Please, send someone fast." "What is your address, ma'am?" The woman on the tape gave Ethan's address and then hung up. Ryerson clicked off the machine. "That could be anybody," he said. "So what?" "Voice print analysis is ongoing as we speak," Scully said. "Results will show your wife made that call." "Cops are already watching the house," Mulder told them. "So don't even think of running. That won't look good in court." "I want you out of here," Ryerson ordered. "Now!" Julianne had started weeping softly. "Melinda McKenn had been dead for several hours by the time of that call," said Mulder. "Our best guess is that Seth is the killer and mom here helped him clean up the mess. But I suppose we could argue you did the murder yourself, Mrs. Ryerson. First Rachel Campenella, then Melinda McKenn -- they were asking questions you didn't want answered." "Out!" Ryerson repeated. Mulder and Scully started walking to the door. "Someone moved Melinda's body to help frame Ethan Minette," Scully said. "Was that you again, Mrs. Ryerson? Did you help your son take a butchered woman back into the apartment?" Ryerson flung open the door to expel them, but now there were six cruisers with lights flashing in his driveway. "You can keep the tape," Mulder told him, clapping him on the arm. "We've got copies." ~*~*~ Three weeks later, Scully and Mulder stood with Ethan at Melinda's grave on a breezy summer day. Ethan held a bouquet of peach roses, the wind playing with his hair as he looked down at the stone marker. "I wish I could have been there for the funeral," he said. "I wish I'd had a chance to say good-bye." Scully touched his arm in silent sympathy. "I can't believe she's really under there," he whispered. "It's so quiet here. Melinda was *never* quiet." His shoulders, thinner now after seven months in jail, rose and fell in the confines of his suit. He stepped forward and knelt in front of the grave. "I'm so sorry, sweetie," he said, stroking the stone. He laid the flowers down. "I miss you more than you could ever know." He took a deep breath and pushed to his feet again. "I know I've told you guys thank you already, but I don't think I can say it enough." "Seeing you free again is all the thanks we need," Scully said. Mulder squinted in the sun and nodded. "The station asked if I want to cover the trials, Julianne's and Seth's. I said no thanks." "No?" He shook his head and scuffed his shoe against the grass. "Having to sit there in the courtroom and listen while they talk about how he followed her out of my apartment, with my knife, and knowing I had a chance to stop it... I can't talk about that on television. Not now, maybe not ever." "They can't blame you for that." "No. To be truthful, the whole situation is kind of awkward. I was gone so long they had to hire someone to replace me, so my job isn't even really available. But I'm a big story, so they don't want to let me go either." "What are you going to do?" Scully asked. "I'm not sure yet. I might just look elsewhere. I don't know that I can work there without Melinda. Too many memories, you know?" "Yeah," she said softly, and reached for him. He enveloped her in a strong hug. "Thank you," he whispered by her ear. "For everything." She nodded, too emotional to say anything. As he lowered her back to her feet again, she wiped her eyes on her sleeve. Ethan shook Mulder's hand. "I don't think I'll ever be able to make us even," Ethan said, "but maybe this is a start." He pulled out an envelope from the inside of his coat pocket and handed it to Mulder. "Dana said you'd understand the meaning." Scully watched as Mulder pulled out two open-ended tickets to Puerto Rico. He smiled at her. "Yeah, I understand." "Good. Dana tells me you two have some unwanted vacation time." "Until they figure out exactly what to do with us, yeah." "No more ghosts and aliens?" Mulder slung an arm around her shoulder. "Nope, we're just your garden variety fibbies now." Ethan shook his head. "If there is anything I can do to help you get your jobs back, let me know. I can't do much, but I might be able to rustle you up some media attention." "We might just take you up on that one day," Mulder said. They shook hands again and Ethan left. Mulder still had his arm around Scully as he checked out the airplane tickets. "Puerto Rico, huh?" "I figured this time we could skip the men with guns and just go for the food and the wildlife." "I feel I must warn you," he said as they started walking for the exit. "The jungle brings out the primal instincts in me, Scully." She shivered. "Primal?" "Totally animal." "And just what does that me--" She broke off in a yelp as his teeth found her neck. "Mulder, you're crazy." "How soon can we leave?" "How soon can you pack?" He started running for the car, daring her to catch up. She arrived breathless and laughing and he already had the engine running. By sunset, they were on a plane out of town. ~*~*~*~*~ End.