Title: WHEN OLD FRIENDS MEET (1/13)
Author: Jean Robinson (jeanrobinson@yahoo.com)
Disclaimer: Characters from the X-Files are the property 
of Ten Thirteen Productions and the Fox Television 
Network. All others are property of the author. No 
infringement is intended. 
Rating: PG-13
Classification: X
Archive: Please ask permission.
Spoilers: Through "All Souls."
Summary: Is it a homicide, an X-File, or something 
worse?
Feedback: Make me prance at jeanrobinson@yahoo.com
Author's notes at the end 
*****************************

WHEN OLD FRIENDS MEET
By Jean Robinson


Fox Mulder sat on the edge of his desk, impatiently 
flipping through a new file folder. He glanced at his 
watch for the fifth time in as many minutes. Scully's 
punctuality was something he'd come to rely upon and 
accept without question. For her to be more than three 
minutes overdue was an event, and here she was going 
on three hours. He debated dialing her cellphone again 
and rejected the idea; Scully hadn't picked up the last 
fourteen times he'd tried and it seemed pointless to leave 
yet another "where are you, call me" message to those 
he'd already deposited in her voicemail. Kimberly's 
officially polite phone voice had turned sharp and short 
by his third call upstairs and a personal visit hadn't 
improved her temper. Particularly since Mulder 
discovered she hadn't been lying to him; Scully was not 
in Skinner's office and had not been seen at all that day.

She breezed in just then in a swirl of rain-spattered tan 
trenchcoat. The monotonous drizzle that had been falling 
when he arrived had apparently settled in as an all-day 
weather system. She set her briefcase on her chair and 
started to remove her coat.

"Don't bother," Mulder announced, snapping the folder 
closed. "We have to go down to Falls Church and visit the 
medical examiner. New case. Where have you been? I've 
been looking for you all morning, leaving messages all 
over the place."

Scully slid her arm back into her coat sleeve. "I'm sorry. I 
had a difficult meeting, and I couldn't be disturbed."

"You weren't with Skinner." The words came out as an 
accusation, but her unexplained absence had worried 
him far too much for him to temper his tone.

"I didn't say it was with Skinner." Her voice was just 
sharp enough to inform him that she didn't appreciate 
having her whereabouts questioned in such a manner, 
and then she nodded at the folder in his hand. "What 
happened in Falls Church?"

He waited for her to say more about the mysterious 
engagement that had eaten up her morning and left him 
hanging on the edge of a phone line, but Scully merely 
stood silently, clearly waiting for him to expound upon 
their latest assignment. Mentally shrugging, Mulder 
caved in. "I'll tell you on the way."

He related the salient points as they drove. "An 
elementary school teacher was found strangled in her 
apartment a few hours ago. The school had called her 
mother to go over when she didn't come in to work or call 
in sick. They were worried because she'd never done 
anything remotely irresponsible before. The mother went 
over but couldn't get in because the chain was still in 
place on the door, from the inside. She called the police, 
who broke the door down and found the daughter still in 
her nightclothes, dead on the floor in her bedroom, with 
bruises on her neck."

Scully shifted the seatbelt as if it irritated her. "This 
sounds like a routine homicide, Mulder. Why are we 
going down there?"

"Locked room mysteries don't appeal to you?"

She shot him a look. "Mulder, even an apartment has 
numerous points of ingress and egress."

"Well," he continued, "the detective who called me, guy 
named Michael Jennings, said that the victim's on the 
eighth floor, with no balcony. The windows were all 
secured from the inside, with only one set of prints lifted. 
At this point, they're assuming they're hers."

Scully pushed at the shoulder strap again. "She could 
have died of natural causes. She could have had a 
seizure, a heart attack, an allergic reaction. The bruises 
could be from anything."

"That's why I need you to do an autopsy."

"I didn't think you were taking me along for a joyride. But 
this is a waste of time. You don't need me to do this 
autopsy; any competent medical examiner could handle 
it. I don't see anything in what you've told me that 
warrants our attention."

Now he gave her a look. Poking holes in his theories and 
objecting to cases being anything more than routine was 
something she did as a matter of course. But rarely so 
strenuously so early in the process. At least not until 
they'd visited the crime scene. "Scully, is something the 
matter?" he asked, puzzled. Quickly he ran over a series 
of sensitive dates in his head, looking for clues. The day 
she'd been assigned to him. The day her father had died. 
The day she'd been abducted. The day Melissa had been 
shot. The day she was diagnosed with cancer. The day 
she'd learned why she'd never have children and that 
he'd withheld this information from her. The day of 
Emily's funeral. Nothing matched.

He wasn't expecting her answer. He was expecting her to 
mouth, "I'm fine," and then revert to being her normal 
self. At least he hoped she would.

But instead she looked away from him, out the window, 
and gave the annoying seatbelt another uncharacteristic 
tug. "I didn't sleep very well last night."

"Oh." He didn't know what else to say. But he also knew 
she hadn't been sleeping well for a long time, although 
this was both the first time she admitted it and the first 
time it seemed to be affecting her focus. And he couldn't 
tell her that he knew. He'd found out during an 
assignment out of town in March, when he'd made an 
accidental discovery of two things that he was certain 
she had not meant for him to find.

They'd been discussing the case in her motel room, and 
he'd excused himself to wash his hands in her bathroom 
before they went to get dinner. As he reached for the 
towel, he'd bumped her unzipped cosmetic bag, spilling 
the contents into the sink. Muttering an oath at his own 
clumsiness, he'd begun scooping the tubes, jars, and 
assorted containers of feminine beauty magic back into 
the bag.

The small prescription medicine bottle froze him in place. 
Since her cancer remission, Scully was on no medication 
that he was aware of. And as her partner, it was his 
business to know, so he could relate the facts to 
appropriate medical personnel should she be injured in 
the line of duty. So he brought the vial up to eye level, to 
find out just what she was taking.

Valium.

He blinked, thinking he must had misread it. When his 
vision cleared again, the label bore the same words. 
Valium, for patient Dana K. Scully, prescribed by a Dr. 
Allison Schiff, whoever that was. To be taken daily, at 
bedtime.

The date of issuance on the bottle was January. Shortly 
after Christmas, which meant shortly after his silent, 
dry-eyed partner had buried the empty coffin of her own 
and only child and then stood alongside her ecstatic 
brother and sister-in-law at the christening of their new 
son.

Mulling that over, he tucked the bottle back into the bag 
and then noticed the small container next to it on the 
sink. Its lid had been knocked off when the cosmetic bag 
fell, and he stared at the container for several confused 
seconds before he realized that the u-shaped, clear 
plastic item resting inside was a dental appliance.

So now he knew two things:

Scully wasn't sleeping, or was sleeping poorly enough to 
seek chemical help. And when she =was= sleeping, she 
was taking her stress out on her teeth, to the point of 
needing a mouthguard to prevent her from grinding her 
tooth enamel down to live nerves.

The tangible evidence of her torment fueled in him a 
fresh hatred of the Consortium, whose past actions were 
literally tearing her to pieces molecule by molecule. Every 
year brought something new linked back to her 
abduction. What would they find out in another twelve 
months? Would she go blind? Insane? Where would it 
end for her? Would it =ever= end?

He had no answers then, when he found the pills and the 
bite plate. He had none now, when his partner sat right 
beside him, miles away despite her physical proximity, 
yanking her seatbelt in an external manifestation of her 
growing internal torment.

They drove the rest of the way in silence.

End part 1/13
________________________


WHEN OLD FRIENDS MEET (2/13)
By Jean Robinson
Disclaimers, etc. in part 1


He followed Scully into the medical examiner's office; this 
was her domain, and Mulder was a passive observer 
while she grilled the man on the details she needed 
before starting the autopsy. The medical examiner finally 
ushered them to the autopsy bay, where the covered 
body was laid out and waiting for her. Scully, now 
changed into scrubs and suited up for the procedure, 
pulled back the sheet.

Mulder gasped. "Phoebe!"

Scully glanced at him and then down at the chart she 
held in one hand. "No. Her name was Helen McCormick. 
Helen Eileen McCormick, age thirty-two."

"She. . . she looks like Phoebe Green."

Scully looked down at the body, doubt in her eyes and 
objections in her voice. "No, she doesn't. Well, maybe a 
little. Very little," she emphasized.

Mulder disagreed. Helen McCormick was heavier, but she 
did bear a striking resemblance to Phoebe Green. Scully's 
contact with his English friend had been limited to a few 
days of work almost four years ago, but he and Phoebe 
had a long history. Suddenly he couldn't stay. He'd 
watched Scully perform autopsies before and while they 
were never pleasant, he could maintain enough 
detachment to stomach the sickening wet crunches and 
slurps, the stench and the sight of glistening entrails and 
diseased tissues. 

Not now. The thought of his partner calmly sawing 
through the skull of a woman who so strongly resembled 
someone he'd had an intimate relationship with made 
him physically ill. "I'm going down to the crime scene 
with Detective Jennings, Scully. I'll meet you here later, 
okay?" he managed.

She hardly noticed his discomfort. "Sure, Mulder," she 
said absently, already engrossed in the preparations for 
the opening incisions. When Mulder nearly ran from the 
room, she didn't even look up.

At Helen McCormick's apartment with Jennings, Mulder 
found nothing to indicate foul play, and very little to 
suggest any other kind of play, for that matter. Her 
closets and dressers held clothes, all feminine. A 
beautiful doll, about three feet high, sat on a miniature 
chair in one corner of her bedroom, surrounded by an 
honor guard of worn stuffed animals, obviously beloved 
childhood relics. 

Her desk and computer files contained school-related 
tests, handouts and assignments. She had no Internet 
connection; no e-mail or chat room visits to investigate. 
Her answering machine tape was blank save a message 
from her employer and a more frantic one from her 
mother, both inquiring about her whereabouts and well-
being. The food in the kitchen was typical of a single 
career woman fighting a battle against the bulge - 
pastas, grain breads and cereals, regular and frozen 
yogurt, salad makings, fish and chicken. And a cache of 
Reese's Peanut Butter Cups lurking behind the lettuce, a 
sad reminder of how difficult that fight could be.

Her mail included a modest credit card bill and three 
advertising circulars from local department stores. Aside 
from her educational texts, her reading preferences 
included a well-thumbed collection of bestseller 
paperbacks by the likes of Grisham and King, and a 
gorgeous matched set of antique Rudyard Kipling books 
with brown marbled covers and gold striped bindings.

Her address book was neat and careful; every entry 
followed by a notation, from "hair dresser" to "optician" to 
"friend." Mulder privately doubted the book would reveal 
any homicidal boyfriends or colleagues, but turned it 
over to Detective Jennings anyway. So far, Helen 
McCormick's life appeared normal to the extreme. 
Bordering on dull, even.

It looked like Scully might be right. She was probably 
cursing his name as she weighed organs and tested body 
fluids from a woman who had simply died unexpectedly.

But he couldn't leave it so easily, and asked Jennings to 
accompany him to the school where McCormick taught.

Everyone at Thomas Jefferson Elementary School was 
distraught, from the red-eyed secretary who began to cry 
again when he identified himself and the purpose of his 
visit to the principal, who held herself in control but had 
also clearly been weeping not ten minutes before his 
arrival. The interview brought nothing new. Helen 
McCormick had been well-liked. She taught fourth grade. 
She'd been there for four years, since receiving her 
master's degree. Her students adored her. She coached 
the fifth grade girl's basketball team, and they'd won a 
small tournament that year. They hadn't told the 
children yet; they were planning to do so just before 
dismissal, so they could have time to contact the parents 
and warn them. Nothing would be the same without her.

"Did she have a boyfriend?" Mulder asked.

"Not really. I know she went out with Ted Samuels, who 
teaches fifth grade, once or twice, but I got the distinct 
impression they were just very good friends who just 
happened to be of the opposite sex. You understand?"

Yes, he did. All too well. His best friend of the opposite 
sex, however, was currently battling personal demons 
and rebuffing all attempts at assistance. He sighed.

"Every now and then she would talk about one date or 
another," the principal continued, "but nothing special. I 
think she just enjoyed meeting and being with different 
people. She didn't seem to be in any hurry to settle down, 
marry or have children. She thought. . . oh, dear." The 
principal's eyes filled up and the tears spilled over. "She 
told me once that she had plenty of time to have her own 
children, but for now she wanted to help other people's 
children."

Mulder winced internally. It was a familiar echo of 
someone else's previous philosophy - I'll have plenty of 
time for my own life in a while; for now I want to make a 
difference in the lives of others. Except Scully's possible 
plans for a life now lay in ruins, her future choices 
obliterated with swift, cruel finality by others with an 
agenda that left no room for personal considerations. 

An agenda that included him as part of the proceedings.

Back at the coroner's office, he was relieved to see that 
his partner's earlier moodiness had dissipated somewhat 
in the wake of her duty. Scully had finished the autopsy 
and was preparing her final samples to be sent out for 
lab tests. 

"Find anything?" he asked, throwing his trenchcoat on a 
nearby chair while Jennings slouched in silence against 
a countertop.

She shook her head. "Yes and no. I'm reluctant to call 
this a homicide, because internal indications of manual 
strangulation aren't present, and the external ones are 
questionable. While the bruises on her neck do resemble 
finger marks, they're very small. Definitely smaller than 
her fingers."

"Even if they were her finger marks, no one I've talked to 
and nothing I've seen indicates that this woman had any 
enemies or was even vaguely suicidal, Scully."

"I said they =resemble= small finger marks, I didn't say 
they =were= small finger marks," she snapped back. "Not 
that she could strangle herself, anyway. It's more likely 
that the bruises are totally unrelated and that the 
asphyxiation was the result of a combination of other 
causes. Sleep apnea, for example.  While death from 
sleep apnea alone is extremely rare, it is not unheard of. 
And there's a form of apnea that, left untreated, can 
cause potentially fatal complications such as high blood 
pressure and cardiovascular problems."

So she wasn't quite over her bad temper. Mulder backed 
off, and made a stab at humor to lighten the atmosphere. 
He didn't relish driving back to DC with the same black 
cloud in the car as they'd had on the way down; the 
gloomy weather outside was bad enough. "So when you 
wake me up during stakeouts because I'm snoring, 
you're doing it for my own good?"

It worked. Scully unbent; the crease in her forehead 
smoothed out and she smiled - a little. 

"Are you done here?" Jennings asked. He'd been cordial 
and helpful to all their needs so far, but Mulder got the 
distinct impression that playing chauffeur to an FBI 
agent was not the detective's idea of a productive day. 
There had been no blatant exclamations of surprise, 
disgust or annoyance over Mulder's technique; clearly 
Jennings had been briefed about the peculiar nature of 
the X-Files and instructed to go with the flow. But 
something about the man's demeanor suggested that 
Jennings disagreed with his superior's decision to call in 
outside help. Not because Jennings felt threatened, 
exactly, but because he honestly didn't think there was 
anything odd about the case at hand.

Mulder would have thought such a mindset would have 
endeared Jennings to his partner, but the man remained 
cool with Scully, too. Not hostile, just cool. Unimpressed 
with what he'd seen of the two of them so far, perhaps. 
Bored.

Mulder wasn't terribly impressed with Jennings, for that 
matter. A big, beefy man with iron gray hair, the 
detective struck him as a meticulous plodder. Anything 
about his attitude could have been forgiven and 
accepted, but Jennings had one pernicious habit that 
had grated on Mulder all day long.

Bubble gum. Jennings chewed big, pink wads of bubble 
gum. Perpetually snapping, cracking and chomping, 
blowing huge balloon-shaped bubbles and sucking them 
back into his mouth, occasionally using the entire blob to 
mop stray bits of gum off his lips, Jennings made more 
crude oral sounds than anything Mulder had ever heard 
in his videos.

Perhaps the man was a former smoker, substituting one 
vice for another healthier but no more pleasant one. 
Perhaps he'd just never grown out of the childish habit to 
begin with. Either way, Mulder couldn't face the idea of 
spending another whole day in the company of a man 
whose jaw power rivaled that of a Missouri mule.

"For now. I may want to come back tomorrow and talk to 
her mother. I can do that myself, though. It won't be 
necessary for you to accompany me, Detective." 

For a minute, he thought Scully would argue with him, 
would object to spending another day on what seemed to 
be a dead-end case and recommend that it be turned 
back to Jennings' jurisdiction. But she didn't. Her 
professional composure won out over whatever personal 
grudge she held against the day in general and her 
partner's investigative strategies in particular. If she 
planned on quibbling with him about his handling of the 
case she would wait until they were alone in the car, 
rather than showing a divided front in the presence of 
another law enforcement officer. Her shoulders slumped 
slightly and she turned to gather up her things.

Observing her with a sideways glance, Mulder thought, 
she's more than tired; she's exhausted. He wondered if 
she was still taking the pills, or if she was trying =not= to 
take them, more leery of their potentially addictive 
powers than she was of the effects of not sleeping. Now 
that he was taking the time to get a really good look at 
her, he could see she'd lost weight, too. Scully was small 
to start with; she didn't have all that much mass she 
could afford to throw away. Particularly not after being so 
sick last year. 

As they headed out to the car, he debated about whether 
to pry any further, and decided against it. He'd just 
defused her. It would be a mistake to give her an 
opportunity to fly off the handle again.

She didn't speak much on the way home and her "Good 
night, Mulder" when he dropped her at the office to pick 
up her car was distracted. Watching her drive away out 
of the Bureau garage, he decided he was for once being 
overly paranoid. Everyone was entitled to have an off day 
and feel grouchy and out of sorts. True, Scully didn't 
have as many as some people - namely himself - but that 
was all the more reason to let the whole episode drop.

End part 2/13
________________________


WHEN OLD FRIENDS MEET (3/13)
By Jean Robinson
Disclaimers, etc. in part 1


Mulder did go back to speak to Mrs. McCormick the next 
day, alone; Scully stayed behind to catch up on the last 
lab results and begin a draft of their final report. Since 
the case had so far yielded nothing out of the ordinary, 
they were free for the weekend. Before he left, he'd asked 
if she had any plans.

She avoided his gaze by engaging in a prolonged search 
through her briefcase for her reading glasses. "Yes. Bill 
and Tara are coming in with Matthew, and Charles and 
his family will all be at Mom's. They couldn't come out for 
Easter and they're both on duty for Memorial Day 
weekend, so we're celebrating now with a barbecue 
tomorrow. If you need to reach me, try me there first."

She sounded pleased at the prospect of a rare weekend 
with her family, but her eyes, when he finally saw them 
reflected in the muted blue background of her computer 
screen, told a different story. Two whole days with small 
children running underfoot. Two whole days with her 
mother fussing over the latest grandchild, with Mother's 
Day just a calendar page away.

Two whole days of constant reminders that her brothers 
were the only ones who could provide a family legacy, 
knowing that she would never be able to measure up in 
what was probably the most final, most important of all 
challenges in a family where competition reigned 
supreme.

Something in her eyes indicated this was a contest she 
didn't want to face just yet, if ever. Again, Mulder backed 
down from a potential confrontation, not wanting to 
upset her more. So he just nodded "All right," and left to 
visit the mother of their victim.

And because it seemed destined to be that kind of day, 
the interview with Mrs. McCormick didn't give him any 
new clues, new thoughts or new theories. The woman, 
tearful but pliant, agreed to walk with him through her 
dead daughter's apartment, discussing and describing 
her furniture, her clothing, and her life.

She paused in the bedroom, and Mulder saw her looking 
at the little shrine of old toys in the corner. "Oh," she 
sniffled, starting to cry a bit harder, "those were Helen's 
favorites. She was afraid if she left them in the attic, I'd 
throw them out or they would rot. When she was small 
she used to say they had feelings. She never left any of 
her toys out in the rain, or anything like that. She was 
such a gentle child. She treated them all as if they were 
real. They all have names." Mrs. McCormick started 
pointing them out. "That's Hoppy Bunny, Lilypad the 
Frog, Chocolate Bear, Squealy Squirrel and Peep the 
Sheep." She wiped her eyes with a damp, ragged tissue.

Mulder handed her a fresh one. "What about the doll?" 
he asked. On closer inspection, it didn't really look like a 
child's toy, but more like some kind of adult collectible 
item. A faint coating of dust dulled the finish on its lace-
trimmed, velvet clothing and the dark brown curls 
cascading down its back in neat corkscrews.

"The doll was Elsbeth. She came with the name; Helen 
didn't give it to her. She used to say Elsbeth was her 
little sister. For a while we even had to set an extra place 
at the dinner table for her. Helen was an only child, you 
know."

"I'm very sorry for your loss, Mrs. McCormick."

She looked up at him with wet eyes that were both 
hopeful and distressed at the same time. "Will you catch 
the person who did it?"

Probably not, because at this point it doesn't look like 
anyone did it, Mulder thought, as he launched into the 
familiar reassuring words of comfort without promise. 
"We are going to do our best, Mrs. McCormick. You've 
been very helpful. I'll let you know if anything else comes 
up." He escorted the woman out, and stopped at the 
police station to check in with Jennings on his progress, 
such as it was. 

"There's nothing strange from her address book. The 
woman kept better records than we do. Get anything 
more from the mother?" Jennings was hip-deep in 
paperwork. Mulder suddenly wished Scully had come 
with him just to see her expression at Jennings' work 
space; his desk surface was an overflowing volcano of 
gum wrappers, reports, forms and notes, all precariously 
balanced on a multitude of coffee-stained cups, old lunch 
bags and file folders. One stray air current would start a 
paper avalanche.

"No," he answered, carefully easing himself down into a 
chair a safe distance from the crash zone, just in case. 
"Looks like we might have been called down here for 
nothing."

Jennings grunted and shifted today's mouthful of gum to 
the left side of his jaw. "Well, you never know how things 
are going to turn out. Oh, forgot this." He reached into 
the middle of a messy stack. Mulder jerked back, 
expecting a document deluge, but Jennings extracted a 
pink message slip as deftly as a magician snatching the 
tablecloth out from under the china and crystal. 
"Someone called here yesterday for Agent Scully. Guess 
they tried to reach her in DC and it got routed here from 
your switchboard or something. The desk officer forgot to 
pass it on. Funny, she didn't mention she'd already been 
in town yesterday morning."

"What are you talking about?"

"That." Jennings pointed to the little note and cracked 
his gum. "It's from the Church of the Holy Family. That's 
here in Falls Church, about a mile from McCormick's 
apartment building, in fact. Some priest from the rectory 
was calling your partner to tell her she forgot her 
calendar gizmo when she was there."

Startled, Mulder looked at the paper and read, "Have 
your electronic scheduler, will keep it safe until our next 
visit or mail it back. Let me know. God bless. Father 
Bauer."

Jennings was saying something else, but Mulder tuned 
him out briefly. Scully's words from yesterday explaining 
her tardiness repeated themselves softly inside his head 
like a phantom echo: "I had a difficult meeting."

In Falls Church? With a priest? What in the world was 
that about? He knew she had been attending Mass more 
often when they were in town, but she went to St. John's, 
Father McCue's parish.

Odd that she hadn't mentioned this, especially after 
hearing that their latest case was taking them right back 
to the town she'd just come from. Practically the same 
street, in fact.

For now, he just folded the note and offered Jennings, 
who was staring at him expectantly, a bland, non-
informative smile. "Thank you. I'll be sure that she gets 
the message."

When he got back to the office, Scully was gone; she had 
left a copy of her first draft and he read it over, thinking 
he had nothing new to add. It looked like the first draft 
would be the final one. Death by natural causes. A little 
unusual in a woman with no medical history to indicate 
a problem, but not unheard of.

He spent the weekend puttering around his apartment, 
tackling all the mundane household chores he normally 
neglected. Every few hours he had another mental 
argument with himself about whether to call Scully, and 
resisted the temptation. However genially her mother 
treated him, Mulder knew he was not winning any 
popularity contests with her brothers, particularly Bill 
Scully, Jr. He could almost hear the man's voice: "Dana! 
Your sorry-son-of-a-bitch partner wants you!" And this 
particular case certainly didn't justify ripping her away 
from her family this time, even if she might want him to.

She beat him to the office on Monday morning and 
seemed refreshed and rejuvenated; more the Scully he 
was used to. Especially when he told her the report 
looked fine and that they could close the case. The rest of 
the day was spent in a continuation of his weekend's 
work; with no pressing file, Scully insisted they attempt 
some spring cleaning, even if only to locate the surface of 
his desk blotter.

"If you think this is bad, you should see Detective 
Jennings' desk. I'm a virtual paragon of tidiness by 
comparison."

She shoveled another batch of yellowing newspapers into 
a recycling bin and replied, "I suppose he also claims to 
be able to lay his hands on any particular item at any 
time, like someone I else I know?"

"As a matter of fact, he can." Mulder had moved his most 
recent file folders aside and unearthed the pink message 
slip, which he belatedly recalled leaving in the office last 
week. "He gave this to me when I went back on Friday. 
The desk officer forgot to pass it on."

Scully took it. "And then you forgot, too."

He shrugged sheepishly. "Guilty as charged. Sorry."

"It's all right," she responded absently, reading the note. 
"I figured that's what had happened to it." She crumpled 
the paper and dumped it in the trash, then bent back to 
task at hand. They'd spent an hour separating things 
into piles of "Urgent," "Very Urgent" and "Extremely 
Urgent." Mulder had nicknamed the last grouping the 
SHIT stack, which stood for "Skinner's Having Incoherent 
Tantrums." Scully informed him she didn't appreciate his 
cavalier attitude. He should be taking this clean-up 
seriously, not making obscene jokes. She then proceeded 
to form a fourth stack, mumbling, "Damn, damn, damn, 
damn," to herself each time she added a new bit of 
garbage to that particular clump of office detritus.

"And you say =I've= got a foul mouth. Dana Scully, who 
taught you to swear like that?"

She flashed him a serene smile. "I'm not swearing. That's 
the 'Decaying And Moldy Mulder Matter' pile."

Now he paused before adding the shavings from his 
overflowing pencil sharpener to the DAMMM collection. 
"So you were in Falls Church earlier on Thursday for a 
meeting?"

"Yes." She flipped a few pages of a stapled report, 
frowned at the angry red marker notations on the top 
sheet, and set it on the "Extremely Urgent" stack.

He waited for her to continue, but apparently that single 
word was all Scully planned to say on the subject.

Not his business, really. She was free to visit any priest 
she wanted and not discuss it with him. After that case 
at Easter with the quadruplets, Mulder was reluctant to 
mention anything remotely connected with religion to 
her. The stunned expression on her face when he'd found 
her, sitting motionless on a folding chair in Father 
Gregory's clapboard church and staring at the stiffening 
body of Roberta Dyer, was not one he wanted to 
remember.

Dull, shocked eyes. One hand clutching her cross as she 
breathed raggedly through her mouth. The last girl was 
dead, frozen in the same posture of supplication her 
sisters had been in when they expired. Whatever Scully 
had done, whatever she'd tried, it hadn't been enough to 
save her.

Alarmed at Scully's immobility and ashen complexion, 
afraid she'd been injured, he'd rushed over to her, police 
swarming around them like bees in a rose garden. The 
minute he touched her, she'd snapped back from 
whatever alternate universe her mind had been visiting 
and shook him off.

Her statement was brief. She'd come to Father Gregory's 
church with Starkey, at his request. Left him outside, 
located the girl. There was a brilliant flash, possibly 
lightning, possibly an electrical explosion or overload 
from somewhere within the poorly maintained building. 
Roberta had been caught at its epicenter. When the light 
cleared, Roberta was dead and Starkey gone. Though 
they'd never considered Starkey a suspect before, he 
could have engineered everything; the police should 
initiate a search for him for questioning.

The case left Mulder with about three dozen unanswered 
questions, all of them concerning his partner's official 
report of what had occurred in the few minutes she'd 
been alone in the Church of St. Peter the Sinner with 
Roberta.

Scully might have told the truth, but the curt recitation 
of facts she'd handed the police that day was definitely 
not the whole truth. Something else had happened in 
there, but he never worked up the nerve to question her 
about it. Instead, he let it go, hoping that whatever 
elusive peace she was seeking could be found 
somewhere, if not at her own church, then perhaps at 
Holy Family.

By the end of the day they'd bulldozed down to a single 
layer of paper, and the SHIT stack had been reduced to a 
few items Mulder swore to take care of the minute he 
came in the next day.

Nothing more was mentioned about Falls Church.

End part 3/13
________________________


WHEN OLD FRIENDS MEET (4/13)
By Jean Robinson
Disclaimers, etc. in part 1


The shrill burr of the telephone woke him at 4:00 in the 
morning. Mulder sat up on his couch, trying to rouse 
himself. Early morning phone calls were rarely good 
news, and this was no exception.

"We've got another one," Detective Jennings barked.

"What?"

There was a pause and a slight whooshing noise and 
Mulder grimaced, imagining Jennings inhaling another 
bubble back into his mouth so he could speak. "Another 
potential homicide. Or just another woman whose time 
ran out, I don't know. It's the same M.O. as the 
McCormick woman; single female, dead alone in her 
home. Doors and windows locked from the inside. A 
neighbor said she heard something banging and called 
the police. The body is still there."

"Don't move anything. I'm going to call my partner and 
we'll be there in an hour." He hung up and punched the 
speed dial button for Scully.

It rang once, twice, three times, four, and the answering 
machine picked up. Halfway through the message, Scully 
came on the line, sleepy and disoriented. "Hello?"

"Scully, it's me. Get dressed, the case we thought was 
over might not be as over as we thought. Another woman 
was found dead in her home. I'll come by and pick you 
up."

"What. . . oh. That." He heard rustling, and pictured her 
sitting up in bed, pushing back her hair. There was a soft 
sound of her exhaling a breath. "All right, Mulder." She 
hung up.

She was outside in the emerging dawn, fully awake and 
impeccably dressed, when he pulled up to the curb. 
Mulder gave her the scant facts as they sped along the 
empty streets to the Virginia countryside.

Jennings met them at the entrance to the small house, a 
sour look on his unshaven face. "Marilyn Scova," he 
reported. "Divorced, no kids. As for the neighbor, I think 
she did hear something, but it was probably an animal. I 
get the impression she didn't think much of Ms. Scova 
and liked to make trouble for her. The patrol car that 
responded found her, checked for a pulse, tried CPR and 
mouth-to-mouth. No luck. The paramedics think she was 
dead long before the uniforms got here." He waved an 
arm at the house. "Go on in."

They entered the small dwelling directly into the living 
room, where the victim  was laid out on the floor by her 
couch. Scully immediately went to look at the body, and 
missed Mulder's first reaction behind her.

Marilyn Scova was a dead ringer - pardon the expression 
- for Kristen Kilar. The woman he'd succumbed to in a 
nightmare case during that hellish three-month period 
when Scully was gone. He fought to rearrange his face 
into something more natural than outright shock before 
she turned around, but didn't quite make it.

"Mulder? What's wrong?"

"Nothing." At least his voice sounded normal. He hoped. 
"Nothing. Does it look like the same type of death?"

"Well, there are some little red marks on her neck. I'll 
know more after the autopsy." She stood up and began to 
discuss the body removal with Jennings, who glowered 
down at her, brows knit together over stormy brown eyes, 
jaws working furiously as if he was trying to vent his 
anger over having his beauty rest interrupted by 
unexplained deaths and visiting FBI agents on the 
chewing gum itself.

Dismissing the detective from his thoughts, Mulder took 
a more careful look around the living room.

Couch, love seat, overstuffed chair. Expensive-looking 
stereo system on a bookcase, surrounded by CDs. An 
equally expensive-looking television and VCR, 
accompanied by a haphazard pile of videos, both 
homemade tapes and purchased movies. Three huge 
potted floor plants. A rocking chair with a doll seated on 
it.

A doll.

Mulder moved toward it. It wasn't the same doll that 
Helen McCormick had; hers had been dressed in what he 
thought was a Victorian period costume. Scova's was a 
1920s flapper, complete with a fringed, knee-length 
dress, a long, skinny cigarette holder balanced in one 
hand and a sequin-dotted headband hugging a brown 
wavy bob. But it was the same type of doll. With the 
same light film of dust, visible in between the lines of red 
fringe.

Scully came over to him. "What is it?" she asked.

He pointed. "Helen McCormick had a doll like that."

She crossed her arms. "Don't even say it. Don't even say 
that you think these women are being murdered by their 
toys. It's too early in the morning for that kind of 
nonsense, Mulder."

"Scully, you have to admit it's a strange coincidence."

His partner raised an eyebrow in exasperation. "Mulder, 
they both had televisions. They both had microwaves. 
They both worked in the educational system. You could 
find two dozen more things they had in common without 
even leaving this room."

Yeah, and they both look like women I slept with, but 
you don't know that, do you? he thought. He hadn't told 
her about the vampire case. Discussions about the time 
she had lost unnerved her. In general, he avoided 
referring to events that occurred during her 
disappearance.

Jennings joined them. "Find anything, Agents?"

"Yes."

"No."

They'd spoken in perfect concert, negating each other. 
Jennings glanced back and forth with lifted brows and 
planted his meaty hands on his hips. "Excuse me?"

Scully was quicker on the recovery. "Nothing conclusive, 
Detective. Just an observation of the victims' 
surroundings."

"I see." He nodded derisively, as if to say, "Sure, if you 
want to play that game, I'll go along with it. For now."

"Has your team dusted for prints in any of the other 
rooms yet?" Mulder asked, anxious to get rid of him so he 
could continue his conversation with Scully.

"I'll check." Jennings blew a giant pink bubble and 
moved off, his studiously nonchalant posture leaving no 
doubt that he was fully aware he was being dispatched 
on a meaningless errand to get him out of earshot.

"Scully, what. . . ."

"Mulder," she overrode him, "it's nothing but a toy, a doll, 
and dolls can't. . . they don't commit homicide." 

For a brief instant he could have sworn she looked faintly 
uneasy, as if by saying the words aloud she could seal 
their validity in her own mind and deny any deviations 
from her pronouncement. Then the moment was gone 
and she was continuing with no hint that she'd ever 
harbored any doubts.

"It's not an unusual doll, either. I had a one like that 
when I was little. Your sister probably did, too. They were 
called Old Friends, because it was a series of dolls based 
on different eras in American history. Mine was from the 
1940s; she was dressed as a Rosy the Riveter. In terms of 
popularity, they were almost as big as Barbie. They still 
are. I was shopping for something for Matthew before I 
went to Mom's and saw them in the store. The company 
is putting out a collector's edition to commemorate their 
thirtieth anniversary of production. In fact, the company 
that makes them originated here in Falls Church, and 
when the dolls started to sell off the shelves they moved 
to New York City."

Some of his strongest memories of Samantha were of her 
running to keep up with him, all flapping braids and 
crooked teeth and peeling, sunburned nose, the perfect 
portrait of a tomboy except for the doll clutched under 
one arm. The mental image hurt too much to 
contemplate for any length of time, so he countered the 
old ache by imagining his partner at the same age. A 
little Dana Scully, a velvet headband taming her red 
curls, pouring invisible beverages and serving invisible 
cookies at a make-believe tea party, whose special guest 
list included Rosy the Riveter and a collection of stuffed 
animals, all of them lumpy and worn from constant love. 
The visual that formed in his head was almost 
unbearably sweet and he fought to keep the smile off his 
face. "Do you still have yours?"

She shook her head. "I didn't have any toys for very long 
with my brothers around. What they didn't break, they 
desecrated. Rosy lasted until the day Charles decided he 
needed a crash-test dummy for his wagon. I still have 
nightmares about what they did to my teddy bear."

"Winnie-the-Pooh Meets Dr. Frankenstein?"

She ignored the joke. "My point, Mulder, is that toys 
notwithstanding, Marilyn Scova had an active social life 
and according to her observant neighbor, entertained a 
different man almost every night. She's a librarian, but 
without the conservative veneer people tend to ascribe to 
that vocation. If you want a suspect, I'll bet we can find 
at least ten before we reach the B's in her address book."

The autopsy took the rest of the morning. He met her for 
lunch prepared to admit that Ms. Scova did indeed have 
several possible suspects for her untimely demise.

They sat down in the small restaurant at a table by the 
huge front windows. As Scully tilted her head to read the 
menu, Mulder saw something he hadn't noticed before in 
the uncertain light of the early morning and the dark 
interior of the victim's house.

"Scully, what happened to your face?" An ugly scrape 
marred her jawline. She'd concealed it with makeup, but 
her coloring was too fair to hide it completely.

She waved it off. "Nothing. I fell over one of my throw 
rugs in the dark and hit my hall table."

He had a sudden, chilling vision of her falling and doing 
more than just banging her chin. In a snap his vivid 
imagination had her lying unconscious on the floor, 
dying alone from her injuries. "You should be more 
careful," he admonished lamely. "You know how many 
people die from household accidents each year?"

"The same number that are abducted by aliens?"

He grinned, relieved that she still had her sense of humor 
intact. "Nah, lots more."

"Mulder, I tripped because I forgot to turn on my hall 
light when I walked into my kitchen after you woke me 
up this morning. It was pure carelessness on my part, 
nothing more. Okay?"

"Okay. At least I know what to get you for Christmas this 
year - one of those clapper things."

He got the trademark raised eyebrow. "You do and you're 
dead," she said dryly.

Their food arrived. "So what did you find during the 
autopsy?"

Scully picked at her salad. "Four broken fingernails. 
More signs of asphyxiation. Her medical records indicate 
a history of asthma dating back to her childhood, 
though. She used an inhaler until her teens, then more 
or less grew out of it. But she could have had an attack 
yesterday. If she didn't have any medication handy 
anymore, it could have easily gotten out of control. The 
pollen count has been bad these last few days."

"What about the bruises on her neck?"

She shrugged. "I'm still not sure what they are. Marilyn 
Scova's are less defined than Helen McCormick's were. 
They could have been self-inflicted; she may have 
panicked if she couldn't breathe. It might also explain 
the broken fingernails."

They spent the afternoon and most of the evening with 
Jennings, tracking down Scova's ex-husband, most 
recent boyfriend and her employer.

The boyfriend appeared to be the most likely suspect; a 
jazz musician, Abe Turner sported long, uncombed hair, 
seven earrings in one ear and six other facial piercings, 
as well as tattoos that blanketed his arms from wrist to 
shoulder with intricate lines and swirls, giving him a 
dizzying pair of permanent sleeves.

Mulder found it difficult to even look at him, let alone 
question him. The man seemed distant, unconcerned 
that the woman he had slept with not two days earlier 
had turned up dead.

"Lynnie and me had a thing, sure," this bleary-eyed 
apparition told them, "but we also had an understanding, 
y'know? I do what I want, she did what she wanted. . ." 
he trailed off.

"What did you want to do last night?" Scully asked him 
coolly.

"Nothing with Lynnie, that's for sure. Juke Joint had a 
gig down at the Tower Hotel. Two hundred dentists and 
their wives, all in town to talk cavities and root canals. 
Opening dinner dance."

"You played for a dental convention?" Jennings repeated 
in sarcastic disbelief. Mulder had to agree with the 
detective's skepticism. Turner looked like he'd be more at 
home wailing out notes at eardrum-piercing decibels for 
a few thousand jumping, jittering teenagers at a dim 
warehouse rave than performing "In the Mood" for fox-
trotting tooth specialists in dinner jackets at a 
respectable hotel.

The suspect shrugged. "They asked for the best. That's 
us." He rocked back in his chair, shrewd eyes measuring 
the three of them. "You're thinkin' I'm some low-life pond 
scum, I can see it on your faces, but you'd be surprised 
how nice we clean up, pal. Might want to think about 
that next time you need a good band for your big annual 
bash. Your tax dollars at work, y'know." He winked.

Why, Mulder thought irreverently, does everyone seem to 
think the FBI has a formal dance with sequins and 
tuxedoes?

Scully ignored Turner's comment altogether and repeated 
the questions about the circumstances of his last 
encounter with Marilyn Scova. The interrogation dragged 
on for another hour.
 
Although they all believed whatever mind-bending drugs 
were still perking through his system could have caused 
him to kill her, they were forced to release him. Jennings 
called around to check his alibi, and the Tower Hotel 
confirmed that the jazz combo Juke Joint had indeed 
played for them. The organizer of the dental convention 
specifically remembered Turner; he had been impressed 
by the man's saxophone prowess. The band had taken 
three breaks. Turner had spent them in the kitchen, 
playing poker with the caterers, where he'd won almost 
$400 from the pastry chef.

It was almost midnight before they came back to DC, 
zero for zero. Even though Marilyn Scova's life differed 
greatly from that of prim Helen McCormick, there was 
still little evidence of foul play. Scully, although ready to 
close the case, reluctantly agreed to give it a few more 
days.

Three more days of digging into alibis, backgrounds, and 
the most intimate details of Marilyn Scova's life 
unearthed only one other marginally helpful lead - the 
woman had played a starring role in some of those 
homemade videotapes found in her home. It wasn't 
necessary to be a learned movie critic to evaluate her 
performance; within the first five minutes it was obvious 
she enjoyed the parts she played, most of which involved 
very little costuming and a variety of equally enthusiastic 
and unclothed men. All of them low on dialogue, high on 
action, with predictable and repetitive plots.

"Well, now we know how she really broke her fingernails," 
Mulder joked weakly.

Neither Scully nor Jennings commented.

Viewing the sexual escapades of a deceased woman was 
bad enough, tracking down and talking to her castmates 
was excruciating. Jennings wasn't the only one ready to 
scream in frustration after the third interview, but they 
had no choice but to speak to all of them. Mulder was 
grateful for approaching weekend; Friday was finally over 
and they had no reason to continue on the Scova case 
until Monday. None of the nine video Romeos provided 
them with anything other than a story of a woman who 
liked to see herself on film for her own personal 
pleasures.

End part 4/13
________________________


WHEN OLD FRIENDS MEET (5/13)
By Jean Robinson
Disclaimers, etc. in part 1


But as Mulder lay on his couch Sunday evening 
aimlessly channel surfing, he thought again about the 
dolls. Both had occupied prominent positions of honor in 
their respective households, yet both also bore signs that 
the women who harbored them had not paid much 
attention to them in quite some time. Possessed 
inanimate objects? Neglected toys exacting revenge on 
uncaring owners who had once lavished boundless love 
and affection on them? 

Why not? 

He reached for the phone and dialed Scully to bounce the 
idea off her. She'd probably shoot it down, accusing him 
of perverting the theme of "The Velveteen Rabbit," but 
what the heck. He was curious about her slight 
hesitation when they'd first discussed the possibility in 
Marilyn Scova's house.

He was probably reading more into that than necessary, 
too; there was nothing about murderous dolls in any 
case file he could recall. A more likely scenario was that 
for Scully the mention of them dredged up echoes of 
cruel playground taunts of "Raggedy Ann! Raggedy Ann!", 
the price of growing up redhead in a brunette world.

Nobody home. He left a message and fell asleep waiting 
for her to call back.

She came up behind him as he was unlocking the office 
door on Monday morning. "Morning, Mulder."

He pushed open the door and flicked on the overhead 
light switch. "Morning. Late night?"

"What? Oh, you called. I'm sorry, I was so tired when I 
got home I went to bed before I even saw there was a 
message. I didn't get it until I was running out the door 
this morning." As she spoke, she removed her suit jacket. 
The DC area had been hit with the first heat wave of the 
coming summer; it was already 82 degrees outside and 
humid at eight in the morning. The Hoover Building's 
timer-controlled air conditioning had not yet kicked in for 
the week ahead and the atmosphere in their small space 
was stifling and stale after a weekend of being closed up. 
With the foresight of long experience, Scully had worn a 
blouse with short sleeves and a collarless v-neck to 
compensate.

"Jesus, Scully!" Mulder stopped short, staring at her in 
shock.

Dark bruises ringed both her forearms with bracelets of 
black, blue and purple, eerily reminiscent of their current 
cases. Even to his untrained eye, these looked exactly 
like fingerprints. Big fingers, too, by the size of them. 
More marks decorated her neck and the visible section of 
her collarbone.

Incredibly, her return gaze reflected utter confusion, as if 
she were unaware of the reason for his sudden, intense 
scrutiny. 

"What happened? Are you all right? Who attacked you?" 
He had one hand on the phone, ready to call Skinner, 
Violent Crimes, 911, anyone and everyone to begin the 
process of tracking down and apprehending the 
perpetrator. Surely she had a description of who had 
done this to her?

"Mulder, what. . . oh." She followed his gaze down to her 
arms, as if seeing the horrendous contusions and 
registering their potential significance for the first time.

"What the hell happened to you?" he practically 
screamed, his patience unraveling like a ball of yarn in 
the face of her illogical reaction and response to the 
situation. Concern for her safety was rapidly giving way 
to fear for her sanity. What had happened to her in the 
last forty-eight hours that she didn't even seem to know 
or care that she'd been assaulted?

Scully sat down, still unaffected by his hysteria. "I've 
been taking a lifesaving course at the gym," she 
explained without stress. "During each class we alternate 
being the drowning victim and the rescuer. Victims are 
expected to simulate true panic by struggling against the 
rescuer, and rescuers must subdue the victim and tow 
him or her to safety. Occasionally some of my classmates 
get carried away in their zeal to make it a realistic rescue 
instead of merely an exercise in a pool."

"You =let= someone do that to you?" He gestured at her 
throat, where the signs of her previous evening seemed 
more in line with a domestic abuse case than a water 
safety class.

"You should see what I did to him." She offered him a 
strange little smile. "I can be a very dangerous victim, 
Mulder."

He didn't know what to make of that comment, which 
seemed to have at least four different meanings, 
including some that could be construed as sexual 
harassment. He also didn't understand why she hadn't 
told him this before, and why now, of all times, was the 
evidence of this activity suddenly showing. The phone 
distracted him before he could question her further.

"Mulder."

"Agent Mulder, this is Detective Jennings."

Five minutes later, they were on their way back to Falls 
Church to the scene of a third fatality. Jennings hadn't 
even bothered to pretend it wasn't a homicide; he'd been 
blustering about serial killers when Mulder hung up on 
him.

Despite the appearances of the first two victims, Mulder 
still wasn't prepared for looking into the dead face of a 
twin to Dr. Bambi Berenbaum. At least he got Scully to 
reluctantly agree that Terri Steeber did look like the 
entomologist.

"Who?" Jennings demanded, his jaws working double-
time around his gum.

"A consultant on a previous case," Mulder hastened to 
explain.

"No connection?"

"No," Scully answered firmly, but her gaze was fixed on 
Mulder, daring him to contradict her.

He didn't. "It's a coincidence, Detective. Ms. Steeber just 
happens to look like someone we met on a previous case. 
That's all."

Jennings looked from Mulder to Scully in disgust. "Yeah. 
Right. Whatever you say."

They wandered around the apartment together as the 
body was bagged for removal.

"No doll, Mulder," Scully pointed out a trifle smugly.

True. There was no doll in the apartment. But when he 
talked to Ms. Steeber's sobbing younger sister later in the 
day, he learned that she'd just moved into the 
apartment. "It was a smaller place than Terri had before," 
Kelly Steeber wept. "The security was supposed to be 
better. Fat lot of good it did!" She blew her nose. "Terri 
had a lot of stuff she couldn't fit in the new place. She 
rented one of those storage places for her extra 
furniture." She showed Mulder which key it was and gave 
him the address.

He called Scully on her cell phone to tell her where he 
was headed; she was deep into the autopsy and said 
she'd see him later. Before she hit the disconnect button, 
he heard Jennings' voice in the background asking her 
something about fingernail scrapings.

Poor Scully. Not that she couldn't handle six and a half 
feet of superiority attitude with a mouthful of 
Bubblicious questioning her actions as a forensic 
pathologist, but it would drag out the procedure if 
Jennings planned to hound her for minute details on 
every step she took.

At the U-Store facility, he spoke to the clerk on duty, who 
pointed out unit 114. Mulder slipped the key into the 
lock and rolled up the door. He flicked on his flashlight 
and played the beam around the dark space.

It illuminated a dining room sideboard, a disassembled 
set of twin beds,  mattresses, an exercise bike, a bureau, 
four lamps, three small tables, and a big wooden chest. 
Mulder went over to the chest and lifted the heavy lid.

The doll lay on top, with books and clothing packed 
neatly underneath it. This one was dressed in the stark 
black and white of a Pilgrim or Quaker woman, from the 
early Colonial times. He didn't touch it, and shut the lid 
again, thinking.

Three women, all of whom looked like women directly 
connected to him. Three dolls, different but the same. 
Four, a voice in his head said idly, if you want to throw 
in Scully's doll for good measure.

He might have followed that random but intriguing train 
of thought further if his cell phone hadn't rung.

"Mulder, it's me. Terri Steeber doesn't have any marks on 
her neck. She died of heart failure."

"Does she have a history of heart trouble?"

"Not her personally; she was only twenty-seven. But both 
of her grandfathers and her father died of congestive 
heart failure, and her mother died just last year of heart 
failure caused by complications following some surgery. 
The family history is there, Mulder."

"All right. I'm almost done here. I'll be back to get you in 
ten minutes."

"Playing with dolls?" she teased.

"As a matter fact," he said slowly, still staring at the 
closed lid of the chest, "yes. Terri did have one of those 
dolls. A Pilgrim, I think it was supposed to be."

"You're kidding."

"No, really. She did."

"Mulder, I told you they were popular. I can name you 
four girls in my second grade class who had them, too."

"I'm sure you can, Scully. I'm sure you can. I'll see you in 
a few minutes." He hung up.

As he drove back to the coroner's office, he allowed his 
thoughts to roam without direction. When they got back 
to DC, one of two things would happen: he'd either have 
to start working up a profile of a killer who entered the 
homes of single women who owned a certain type of toy 
and murdered them in such a way that it seemed they 
had died a natural death and then escaped without being 
seen, leaving the place locked from the inside, OR he'd 
have to agree with Scully that after the final lab tests of 
this victim, Falls Church just had three unlucky female, 
doll-owning residents whose time on earth was up a little 
before anyone would have expected it.

Serial killer or natural causes?

Dolls or coincidence?

His head hurt. And what were the Vegas odds on three 
women who looked like his past girlfriends dying one 
right after another? What kind of coincidence was that, 
friends and neighbors?

No matter what the skeptical scientist in the scrub suit 
thought, something weird was going on here. It would 
just take him a little longer to figure out exactly what this 
time.

The skeptical scientist, now dressed in a black pantsuit, 
was politely but firmly deflecting Detective Jennings' 
inquiries about the condition of her arms and neck when 
Mulder arrived. As he walked in, he heard Scully's steady 
voice, laden with overtones of impatience and a touch of 
anger.

"Detective, I'm fine. Don't concern yourself with it."

Jennings wouldn't let it go. "Pardon me for saying so, 
Agent Scully, but you look like someone beat the shit out 
of you and that kind of pissant excuse is exactly what all 
the battered wo. . . ."

"Detective? Is something wrong?" Mulder interrupted. As 
he joined the duo, he purposefully halted a pace too close 
to his partner's side in a show of support he knew Scully 
neither needed nor appreciated, but that made him feel 
better.

Jennings declined to take on the alpha male challenge, 
opting instead for muttering, "No, nothing's wrong." He 
unwrapped another block of gum and shoved the pink 
cube roughly into his mouth.

Scully picked up her notes and bestowed an icy glare on 
both of them. "Let's go, Mulder."

When they got to the car, however, rather than 
expressing her ire with his caveman tendencies, she 
argued all the way back to the office about the case, 
brushing aside his insistence that the dead women 
looked just like people he knew. By the time they reached 
the Hoover Building the atmosphere between them was 
hostile and they'd resolved nothing.

Scully slammed the car door. "I'm going home, Mulder. 
And tomorrow, when I turn in the report on these cases, 
I'm not putting in any unsubstantiated theories of serial 
murderers, killer toys, shape-shifting mutants or any 
other paranormal gibberish. They just died. That's it. It's 
over." She stalked off before he could respond.

He drove home turning the argument over in his mind. 
The case wasn't the only thing weird around here. 
Scully's behavior over the last week had been more than 
strange. Drug withdrawal? Depression? Was she taking 
some other kind of mood-altering medication without 
telling him? What was going on inside her head?

They rarely left each other's company angry; even when 
he ditched her to investigate something stupid, she 
generally reacted with resigned annoyance rather than 
genuine fury. After dinner he called her apartment, 
thinking he'd better sound her out a little if they wanted 
to get anything productive done in the morning. No 
answer. He left a message, then tried her cell phone.

She'd turned it off. All he got was the "no service" 
message from the wireless system.

Scully never turned off her cell phone when they were 
working.

Wait. There were other explanations, after all. The 
battery might be low. Maybe the phone had been 
damaged somehow; who knows what chemicals she may 
have accidentally spilled on it during the last three 
autopsies. Maybe she went for a drive and hit one of 
those random pockets of space where the antennas 
didn't reach. Maybe she really had turned it off just to 
get a decent night's sleep, something it looked like she 
needed more than anything else. It didn't automatically 
mean she was avoiding him, even if that's what it felt 
like.

Mulder realized he was thinking more and more about 
his partner's bizarre personality changes and less and 
less about the case. Now why was that? Were the two 
connected? Let's just roll along that road for a second, 
shall we?

He started plotting a loose timeline in his head.

March. He unearths Scully's secret little stash of stress 
relievers, signaling that the transition from potential 
mother to permanent aunt has been more traumatic 
than she was leading him to believe.

April 24. Helen "Phoebe" McCormick, owner of doll #1, 
dies, possibly killed by someone with small hands. 
Scully, exhibiting some signs of sleeplessness and 
irritability, finds nothing extraordinary in the autopsy.

April 27. Scully comes back after a weekend in the family 
fold, looking and acting "fine."

April 28. Marilyn "Kristen" Scova, owner of doll #2, dies, 
again possibly killed by someone with small hands. 
Scully, sporting a new facial decoration but otherwise 
normal, reports that she probably died of an asthma 
attack. Two additional days of rigorous investigation into 
the woman's life fail to turn up anything other than a 
fondness for creating her own porn library.

May 3. He tries unsuccessfully to reach Scully to chat 
about homicidal playthings.

May 4. This morning. Terri "Bambi" Steeber, owner of 
doll #3, dies. No marks on her, but plenty on Scully, who 
looks like someone used her for batting practice. 
According to her, Steeber died of something that's 
already killed others in her family at an early age.

This afternoon. Their "discussion" about the case 
escalates into a vicious shouting match, ending with his 
partner storming off in a rage.

This evening. He tries again to reach her, only to find her 
incommunicado.

Scully, who just happened to be the former owner of doll 
#4.

Scully, who had small hands.

Scully, who as a medical professional not only knew how 
people died, but how 
one could make them die.

Scully, who exhibited thinly disguised contempt for his 
few old flames or potential new flames she had met 
during the course of their work.

Scully, who suddenly looked like she'd gone the distance 
in a championship wrestling bout.

Scully, who had been showing classic signs of 
unbearable emotional strain that even he couldn't fail to 
notice; his scientifically grounded partner had actually 
admitted seeing visions during the case with the 
deformed sisters.

Visions of Emily. Visions of her last chance at achieving a 
somewhat normal motherhood slipping away because of 
what had been done to her four years ago.

Scully, who lived with a piece of technology embedded in 
her neck, one that had already driven her to commit one 
unexplained act that nearly ended in her death.

No.

Not that. Anything but that.

End part 5/13
________________________


WHEN OLD FRIENDS MEET (6/13)
By Jean Robinson
Disclaimers, etc. in part 1


Mulder sat up on his couch. You're not really thinking 
this, are you? a voice in his head insisted. You are =not= 
thinking your partner had anything to do with this? Of 
course not. That's why you're not reaching for the phone 
book to call her gym and ask about the lifesaving class, 
right?

Right.

The aquatics director was surprised to hear from an FBI 
agent at 8:30 at night, but willingly came forth with the 
information. "I don't know how much it'll help you, Agent 
Mulder. We do have a Dana Scully registered for the 
class, but I know the instructor was sick that evening. 
The students were given the option to stay and practice 
on their own, and many of them did. I can give you the 
name of the lifeguard on duty, but. . . ."

"What?" Mulder asked.

"It's a big class, Agent Mulder. It only meets once a week. 
I don't know if any of them really know each other 
personally. There was no one to take attendance that 
night, either."

"The person I'm interested in is a very short woman with 
red hair and blue eyes. You can't have that many in the 
class."

"You don't understand, Mr. Mulder. We require everyone, 
men and women, to wear swim caps, to keep the hair 
from clogging the pool filters. Once you put that on, 
everyone looks alike. And the lifeguard on duty, well, that 
night it was Jerry. He's six-nine. To him, everyone is very 
short. Plus, I see from the schedule that there was a 
family swim going on in the shallow end. Jerry is very 
safety-conscious. I can give you his number if you'd like 
to speak to him, but I'm willing to bet he spent more time 
concentrating on the little kids who couldn't swim than 
the lifesaving class that could. You see?"

Mulder did. He gave it one more try. "Does the lifesaving 
class get rough?"

The aquatics director laughed. "Unfortunately, yes. I've 
taken it myself several times. It seems the more times 
you go through it, the more rotten tricks you learn to 
play on the person who comes out to get you. And 
without the instructor there, who knows what they were 
doing."

"Thank you for your help." Mulder hung up. Part of her 
story could be true. Maybe. But he wasn't convinced, and 
there seemed to be no way to fully verify how she had 
obtained those bruises on her arms and neck.

Scully doesn't even know who Kristen Kilar was, he 
rationalized frantically, let alone what she looks like. How 
could she have decided to include her in a victim 
selection?

She can read, can't she? Kristen's file is right there in the 
cabinets. The cabinets Scully's always straightening up 
and rearranging, no matter how many times you ask her 
not to. You wrote everything down, every last word, every 
nuance of emotional despair and horror you felt because 
you were sure that was going to be your last case and it 
wouldn't matter who read about your tawdry little one-
night stand with a bloodthirsty seductress. Scully was 
gone; you never in your wildest imagination ever thought 
=she'd= be going over your notes.

He thought about the autopsies. Scully said there were 
no signs of a struggle with any of the victims, and had 
voiced no objection to his assumption that Marilyn 
Scova's broken fingernails had come from an overzealous 
stint as a video vixen.

Would she really lie about it? Conceal evidence?

She's done it before, the insidious whisperer in his head 
spoke up unbidden. She can't lie very convincingly under 
normal circumstances, but the one time she had to do it, 
she came through with flying colors, didn't she? Oh, yes. 
She lied through her teeth for you, tears and all, and 
they believed her. When she has to, when it counts, she 
can fib with the best of them, and you know it. Skinner 
told you it was an Oscar-winning performance if he ever 
saw one. That if he hadn't had hard evidence to the 
contrary, he would have believed her without question. 
Not to mention how she held back information from a 
Congressional Subcommittee, to the point of sitting in a 
federal jail cell while you ran around Russia on a wild 
goose chase with Alex Krycek.

No. I won't believe this. The dolls. . . it has to be some 
connection with the dolls.

He tried to think of all the information he'd ever read 
about spirits invading inanimate objects, of witchcraft 
and voodoo and sorcery, and all he kept hearing was 
Scully's voice: "Mulder, even an apartment has 
numerous points of ingress and egress."

The voice of experience. Her home had been invaded 
more times than either one of them cared to remember. If 
anyone knew how to get into and out of a place 
undetected, it was Scully.

He was still awake at 2:14 a.m. when the phone rang, 
and he knew before he picked it up who would be on the 
other end. Detective Jennings. With a fourth victim. 

He tried Scully, and was dismayed but not surprised that 
she still wasn't answering at either number.

He drove to Falls Church in a daze, wondering who it 
would be this time. Jennings greeted him at the house, 
where the coroner's people were wheeling out Elaine 
Ross.

Or as he knew her, Detective Angela White, who was 
probably sleeping peacefully in her own house in Comity, 
unaware she even had a lookalike in Virginia, let alone a 
dead lookalike.

A quick glance through the house revealed the doll, 
hidden on a shelf in the bedroom closet, atop some old 
blankets. This one was a Native American, dressed in a 
soft, beaded leather outfit with braided hair.

"My lieutenant's not happy about this," Jennings growled 
as they searched through the rest of the house for other 
evidence. "She told me to call you, you know, said you 
two were some kind of experts on strange things, and 
here we've got nothing but body after body and nothing 
to show for it. I don't care what your partner says, people 
don't just die one after another like this. And where =is= 
Agent Scully, anyway?"

"I haven't been able to reach her yet; she's probably away 
from her phone."

Jennings paused as he sifted through the contents of 
Elaine Ross' desk drawer. "You want to tell me what 
happened to her now?"

Mulder tensed. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"She got an abusive boyfriend or something? An ex that 
came looking for revenge?"

"If you have questions about Agent Scully's ability to 
attend to her duties with respect to this case, you can 
direct them to me. If you have questions about her 
personal life or well-being, I suggest you direct them to 
her."

Jennings slammed the drawer shut in disgust. "I =did= 
direct them to her, and I got zip. All she said was, 'I'm 
fine,' just like the lady in my last case, right before she 
went into surgery for a ruptured spleen, which her 
boyfriend had kindly smashed for her with a baseball 
bat. She was so fine she died on the operating table. 
That's how fine she was, Agent Mulder, and that's how 
fine I think your partner is, too. Something's the matter 
with her, and I think you know it."

This is all I need, Mulder thought wearily. A suspicious 
gum-popping cop on a night when I can't stop my own 
mind from wandering into the red-light district. He forced 
himself to stare at Jennings with a poker face, ignoring 
the other man's belligerent expression. "I appreciate your 
concern and I'll take your comments under advisement. 
Now excuse me while I try to reach my partner again." 
And he walked away.

It was now almost four in the morning. This time, she 
answered on the first ring. "Scully."

You don't sound like you were asleep, Scully, he thought 
miserably. You sound extremely alert for this hour of the 
morning. He explained the situation, and after she 
agreed to come over to the coroner's office, he added, "I 
tried to get you earlier. Twice."

"I went to a movie and then out for a drive."

"Oh." A drive, Scully? A drive where? To Falls Church 
and back? Is that where you went after you left me, 
hopping mad?

"I'll be right over, Mulder." She disconnected.

He pocketed his cell phone and stared at nothing. He 
would have to ask her, and when he did, he feared the 
answers might mean the end of everything.

He was waiting in the autopsy bay an hour later when 
Scully came in, dressed in a blue scrub suit and pulling 
on her gloves. She peeled back the sheet to reveal 
Elaine/Angela's head and shoulders, more of the 
unexplained tiny bruises mottling the victim's throat. 
Scully reached up and clicked on the hanging 
microphone and began to dictate her report.

"Subject is Elaine Ross, Caucasian female, age thirty, 
sixty-five inches in height, weighing approximately 120 
pounds. . ."

It was now or never. If he waited until she was busy 
cutting open the latest victim, he'd never have the nerve 
to say it. Mulder raised one hand and switched off the 
microphone.

". . .no visible signs of. . . Mulder, what are you doing? I 
need that!" She reached for mike again.

He grabbed her hand and held it. "Scully, where were 
you tonight?" he asked softly.

"I told you, I went for. . . ." Her voice, puzzled and edged 
with impatience, trailed off. She stared at him.

There was a heartbeat of silence. His eyes locked with 
hers, and when hers widened with the knowledge of what 
he was truly asking, his heart sank. Mulder braced 
himself. Scully didn't lose her temper very often, but 
when she did, the results tended to be volcanic.

"You son of a bitch." It was softly spoken, but he could 
feel the gathering storm in that whispered phrase. She 
yanked her hand free. "You son of a bitch!!" Rising to a 
shout, now. Her hands curled into fists over Elaine 
Ross's dead body.

"Scully, listen. . . ." He tried to stem the tidal wave of her 
anger, but it was far too late.

"No, =you= listen!!" she overrode him, enraged. "You 
think =I= did this? Is that what you called me down here 
for? A confession? You think I killed four women, you 
bastard?" Screaming full out, no holds barred.

"Scully, I. . . ."

"Go to hell, Mulder!" And she was gone, just like that. 
The swinging door bounced back and stuck in an open 
position from the force of her fury.

All the sorrow, all the sadness, all the wrenching loss he 
felt inside from creating this latest rift between them, one 
that might never be healed, couldn't mask the gut-
twisting fear, because she hadn't really answered his 
question.

And the open door revealed Michael Jennings standing in 
the hallway listening to them.

End part 6/13
________________________


WHEN OLD FRIENDS MEET (7/13)
By Jean Robinson
Disclaimers, etc. in part 1


"Agent Mulder!" Jennings grabbed at his arm as he ran 
past in pursuit of Scully.

Mulder dodged both the reaching hand and the furious 
questions hollered after him as he raced toward the front 
door. He didn't have time or the energy to stand around 
and discuss this with the detective, not now.

When he got outside, her car was gone. There was no 
answer at her cell phone.  It was still too early to call her 
mother, and he had no idea what he'd say to the woman, 
anyway. "Hi, Mrs. Scully, this is Fox Mulder. I accused 
Dana of being a serial killer and she ran out on me, so if 
you hear from her, could you let me know?"

In his dreams.

On impulse, he detoured to the cemetery on his way back 
to DC, but there was no one kneeling by Melissa Scully's 
grave, and the flowers there were wilted and old. The 
bench overlooking the Potomac where they'd often met 
during the times the X-Files had been closed for one 
reason or another was empty. Her car was not parked 
near her apartment, and it was not in the Bureau garage.

She'd simply vanished.

Actively worried, he went to the office, not knowing where 
else to go. Although it was still early, there was a 
message from A.D. Skinner on his voicemail: See me 
immediately. Both of you.

Great. Mulder ran his hands through his hair, wondering 
how - and if - he could explain Scully's absence. He 
hated to admit it, but she had a lot more practice in 
covering his ass than he did in covering hers when it 
came to toadying up to the powers that be. Delay would 
only result in a personal summons, so he straightened 
his tie and went up to Skinner's office to face the music.

His heart leaped up into his throat and then plunged into 
his stomach as soon as he walked in to see his boss, 
because Skinner was not alone.

Detective Michael Jennings sat in the chair usually 
occupied by Scully, a smug expression on his heavy 
features. For once the gum was silent; Jennings had 
either spit it out prior to the meeting or had wedged it 
into a corner of his mouth for the time being.

Skinner was shuffling a small stack of paper, as if he 
needed some kind of physical distraction to keep him 
grounded. "Agent Mulder, what is the problem with this 
case you and Agent Scully keep closing and reopening 
again? Are you confused, or just sloppy?"

Mulder winced. Skinner was furious; he saved his 
sarcasm for times when Mulder's unorthodox 
investigative tactics truly stretched his patience. "Agent 
Scully and I have been following the leads as they 
appear, in cooperation with local law enforcement," he 
began gamely.

"Detective Jennings has presented me with information 
that I find extremely disturbing regarding your conduct. 
And Agent Scully's. Where is she?"

Hell. Hell, hell, hell. He would kill Jennings later. Right 
now he had to talk his way - and Scully's - out of 
Skinner's office before this went any further. "She's. . . " 
he faltered, realizing from the set of Skinner's jaw that 
the A.D. already knew, that Jennings had probably come 
here directly from the Falls Church coroner's office to 
spill the news about his battered partner and the gist of 
their argument over Elaine Ross.

Skinner spared him from the lie. "You don't know where 
she is, do you?"

Breathe. Remember to breathe. "No, sir."

Skinner set down the pages in his hands and glanced at 
Jennings. "Detective, would you please excuse us for a 
moment?"

Jennings threw Mulder a triumphant grin. "Sure, Mr. 
Skinner." He heaved his bulk out of Scully's chair and 
left the room.

Skinner was on his feet before the door had clicked shut. 
"Mulder, what the hell is going on?" he hissed. 
"According to him, you think Scully's the suspect and 
you've both been covering up evidence to conceal that 
fact! He said you accused her this morning and she took 
off and now you can't find her?"

Now he knew what Scully felt like, all those times she'd 
been called on the carpet to defend his actions and his 
stability. "Sir, you can't believe what he's saying," he 
protested weakly, feeling like the worst kind of hypocrite 
because he had concluded exactly what Jennings had 
implied to Skinner, with far more proof than the detective 
had at hand to warrant such an accusation.

"I don't want to. I find it next to impossible to believe that 
your partner would just go off the deep end without any 
warning and start murdering people. But I'm looking at 
the facts, Mulder, and they don't look good from where 
I'm sitting."

But there had been warnings, Skinner just hadn't known 
about them. The pills. The tooth grinding. The lack of 
resolution with the quadruplets. The delayed stress from 
Emily's death, piling up and up and up until perhaps 
something inside Dana Scully had snapped.

"Do you have =anything= that might send this 
investigation in another direction?"

Dolls. I have dolls, and even those lead back to Scully, 
because she owned one, too.

"No, sir." The words weren't even a whisper, just forced 
air with the faintest touch of vowels and consonants to 
make them audible; he couldn't believe he was serving 
his partner up on a silver platter as the first course in a 
murder investigation.

Could this get any worse?

The answer to that question was, of course, yes.

"Mulder, I'm sorry," Skinner said hoarsely, and to his 
credit, he did sound sincerely distressed. For once, it 
looked as if he would openly embrace Mulder's wildest, 
most outlandish tale, perhaps something about soul-
sucking aliens from Planet Google, if there was one iota 
of evidence that would deflect the blame from Scully. 
"Jennings wants to issue a warrant for her arrest."

"No!" Yelling wasn't going to help the situation, but 
Mulder couldn't stop himself.

Whatever he personally felt for Scully, Skinner wasn't 
about to tolerate an outburst from a subordinate. Later, 
Mulder realized his boss was probably just trying to 
prevent Jennings from gaining any more leverage against 
Scully as he eavesdropped at the keyhole. Now all he felt 
was a burning rage as the A.D. admonished him sharply.

"That's enough, Agent Mulder! Get hold of yourself!" He 
leaned over his desk and continued in a low, intense 
tone. "I don't think there's enough to justify an arrest 
warrant. Yet. But she has to be brought in for 
questioning. Do you understand me, Mulder?"

"Yes." In other words, find her. Find her first, and find 
her fast, because Skinner wouldn't be able to stall 
Jennings for very long.

"I know you're worried about her. Believe me, I am, too. 
But it's my job to worry about the public at large. Are we 
clear on this?"

Mulder bit back his anger. "Yes, sir."

Skinner sat back down and picked up his paperwork 
again. "That will be all."

The administration had not skimped on cost when it 
came to redecorating; the doors in the Hoover Building 
were thick and resilient, built to withstand slamming. 
The decorators may not have had Fox Mulder's temper in 
mind when they picked the wood for Skinner's door, but 
they'd chosen wisely regardless. The oak did not split or 
crack despite the brutal force applied as Mulder yanked 
it closed behind him. The hollow crash echoed up and 
down the hallway; Kimberly jumped in her seat.

Jennings had retreated to the corridor, a prudent move 
considering Mulder's wrath. They faced each other 
silently, Mulder's hands clenching and unclenching at 
his sides.

"You have no idea what you've done," he said finally, the 
quiet tone belying the intensity of his words.

"Just because you refuse to acknowledge it doesn't mean 
it didn't happen."

"Scully had =nothing= to do with this!"

"You didn't sound so sure this morning, Agent Mulder. In 
fact, you sounded damn certain she =had= done it. I 
wasn't so sure, either, despite the way she looks and the 
fact that she's conveniently out of touch each time one of 
these women pops off. I talked to Father Bauer."

For a second Mulder had no idea what the man was 
referring to, then it came to him. The priest. From Holy 
Family in Falls Church.

Jennings was nodding, seeing the name recognition sink 
in. "Yeah. The priest. The one she saw the morning of the 
first death. I wanted to know why she was there, what 
she was doing visiting a priest so soon after the 
McCormick woman was killed."

"Agent Scully is a practicing Catholic. She talks to priests 
all the time, and her personal life is =none= of your 
business!"

"Excuse me, Agent Mulder, but in this case, it's 
everyone's business. Because Bauer wouldn't tell me. He 
claimed he was her confessor, and that divulging the 
nature of their talk would violate his sacred vows as a 
priest."

"He's right."

"And this doesn't sound the least bit =off= to you, Agent? 
That your partner feels the needs to =confess= right after 
a murder has been committed less than a mile away?"

It sounded a lot off, although he wasn't about to let 
Jennings know that. The odds of Scully just happening 
to need a priest outside her own parish and finding one a 
stone's throw from the first of four victims were too high 
to be coincidence.

"We still have no conclusive proof that those women were 
murdered." Mulder didn't remember adopting his 
partner's viewpoint, but bringing up the dolls or the 
victims' resemblance to his past paramours would only 
add fuel to the fire.

Jennings thrust his chin forward belligerently. "We have 
no proof because our main suspect is the one feeding us 
all the information about the victims!" he growled. "For 
all we know there could be evidence galore on those 
bodies but she's just not telling us because it would 
implicate her!"

Mulder grew very still. "I am not going to stand here and 
allow you to malign Agent Scully's integrity. I have 
nothing more to say to you."

For once, his maintained control of his temper. Usually 
this was the breaking point at which he'd begin berating 
reticent hospital staff, punching out Alex Krycek or 
shoving a gun into the face of the Smoking Man. Much 
as Mulder wanted to bury his fist in Jennings' 
considerable stomach for his actions and accusations, 
such conduct would only land him in a holding cell for 
assault. And every minute he delayed now was a minute 
wasted in locating Scully.

Jennings fired one last parting shot as Mulder stalked 
away. "I'm not the one who accused her first, Mulder! 
Just remember that!"

As if he could forget.

Mulder left the building, the red haze of anger fading into 
numbness. Find her, he thought. Find her before 
Jennings decides to set up roadblocks, before he comes 
knocking on Margaret Scully's door to announce he'd be 
posting a twenty-four hour watch on the house and her 
daughter's apartment. She's not at the cemetery, she's 
not at the bench, and ten to one she didn't go to her 
mother's. Where the hell could she be? And what the hell 
have I done?

It took him two days to figure it out. Two days of 
wracking his brain for hideouts that might hold some 
significance for her, two days of ducking the increasingly 
frantic calls from her mother while dodging Skinner and 
Jennings as well, two days of worrying himself sick that 
his partner was now the next best thing to a fugitive, 
considered armed and dangerous. All thanks to him.

Two days reliving the horror of when she'd been missing 
for so much longer, wondering if he'd ever see her alive 
again. He hadn't gotten to the point of exploring what 
would happen between them if he did find her.

He really didn't expect her to be there. It was just a 
whim, because he'd exhausted all other possibilities and 
thought the long drive would do him good, as well as 
reassure him that he really had tried everything in his 
quest for her safety.

Things had changed since his first visit here. The 
skytram to the summit of Skyland Mountain was now 
open year-round, but Mulder took his time driving up the 
winding road to the mountaintop restaurant. He thought 
he'd look around, maybe try to eat, and then watch the 
sun set, hoping another idea would occur to him. The lot 
at the top was full; the place was alive with backpack-
laden hikers, picnicking families, and outdoor 
enthusiasts basking in the scenery and the fine spring 
weather. He parked in one of the few empty spaces, so 
convinced she wouldn't be here that he didn't even 
bother to look for her car.

He strolled past the restaurant, where tourists swarmed 
for ice cream cones, soft drinks and greasy, fried snacks. 
His wandering feet took him across the road, over the top 
of a ridge and down the other side into a sloping 
meadow, a small field that ended abruptly at the 
mountain's edge. The official summit and lookout point 
was behind him; there was nobody in this expanse of tall, 
waving grasses.

Nobody except a small figure sitting near the cliff edge, 
whose distinctive copper-colored hair was a clearly 
visible beacon even at fifty yards on a cloudy day.

End part 7/13
________________________


WHEN OLD FRIENDS MEET (8/13)
By Jean Robinson
Disclaimers, etc. in part 1


Mulder froze, feeling faint with relief. It had to be her. 
There couldn't be another red-haired woman who just 
happened to like this particular vantage point on this 
particular mountain.

She was facing away from him, looking out into the valley 
below. 

He wondered what she was really seeing; he doubted it 
was the spectacular view. Maybe the black helicopters. 
Maybe an unrecognizable, unclassifiable aircraft. Maybe 
just a vague recollection of too much light, too much 
noise and too much terror. From what she told him, she 
didn't remember anything clearly between the time 
Duane Barry dragged her out of the car trunk and when 
she awoke in the hospital, a host of doctors and nurses 
hovering over her.

Now that he'd found her, it seemed obvious that this was 
where she'd be. This was where the X-Files really began 
in her mind, not during that harum-scarum first 
assignment together in Oregon, when she'd mistaken 
mosquito bites for indications of alien abduction and 
scared herself into literally stripping both her mind and 
body bare in front of him. Not that case, nor any of the 
others that followed it, from liver-eating mutants to 
Arctic worms to midnight rendezvous with mysterious 
informants. But here, in a grassy meadow on a tourist 
trap of a mountain, where people she had never heard of 
had decided to drive home a powerful message to her 
partner by torturing her. Where her health had been 
compromised almost to the point of death. Where her 
motherhood had been ended before it had a chance to 
begin. Where nearly everything she'd hoped and dreamed 
for out of life had been snatched away from her, leaving 
her nothing but her work. 

And what kind of work was it, anyway? Running around 
in circles with him, chasing the truth until they were 
exhausted and out of breath, only to have someone 
swoop in at the last minute and neatly erase any trace of 
their accomplishments, time and time again? And finally, 
to have him accuse her of being the embodiment of all 
the evil they were striving to eradicate?

For Scully, this is where it had begun, and he felt a 
sudden, sickening certainty that she had come here to 
find an ending.

She was sitting close to the edge. Much too close to the 
edge.

Mulder started to jog toward her, and five steps later 
broke into a full-fledged run. In his mind, he could see 
her stand up and walk the last ten feet to the edge and 
disappear over the lip before he could get to her. 
Desperation lent wings to his feet.

The wind out here was strong; she didn't hear him 
approach. It blew her hair around her head, and she 
didn't bother to brush it out of her eyes when it whipped 
across her face. She simply sat, motionless and rigid.

Twenty feet away, Mulder slowed, and quietly walked the 
remaining distance, trying to still his galloping pulse. He 
came around on her left side and stopped slightly in front 
of her, not wanting to alarm her. "Is this seat taken?" he 
asked gently.

She didn't answer, didn't look at him. Only a faint catch 
in her breathing gave away the fact that she was even 
cognizant of his presence. Mulder lowered himself to the 
ground, assuming a position that kept him between her 
and the beckoning drop-off.

"Hi, Scully," he said softly.

No response.

"This was a good one," he continued in the same quiet 
tone, the one he used to coax coherent responses and 
useable descriptions from frightened, skittish witnesses. 
"It took me two whole days to think of it. With any luck, 
it'll take the police a lot longer than that."

She blinked, but that was all.

He was running out of pleasantries, and all his 
psychology background wasn't going to help him here. 
Scully had never responded in quite the way modern 
psychological theories said she should in any given 
situation. It was as if the unusual combination of her 
Catholic upbringing, extensive scientific training and his 
paranormal influence had produced a whole new breed of 
person, with totally unexpected reactions to stimuli. He'd 
often thought she'd make an interesting subject for a 
paper, if he could ever propose it to her without getting 
slugged.

He tried again. "I thought I was the only one who was 
good at ditching my partner. I didn't realize you were 
taking lessons."

"Go away, Mulder."

It was so soft he almost didn't hear it, and she still 
wouldn't look at him. But it was a start. He jumped to 
seize the opportunity.

"Scully, are you going to let me explain?"

"You think I killed four women. What's to explain?"

"Dammit, Scully!" He hadn't intended to get angry, but 
the anger was there, nonetheless. Anger at her for giving 
him two more sleepless days and nights. Anger at himself 
because he knew he was wrong and had brought this 
latest disaster down on both of them. "You're the one 
who always wants tangible proof, scientific evidence! 
What was I supposed to think?"

Now she finally turned to face him, and those blue-gray 
eyes were March ice. He wasn't the only one who was 
mad. But his anger was hot; hers was glacial. The cold 
hatred in her eyes made him recoil; it was an expression 
he'd never seen before in five years of close contact with 
her.

"Proof?" she spat at him. "You call that string of 
circumstantial evidence =proof=?"

"We've arrested others on a lot less, Scully."

"I was your =partner=, Mulder," she snarled viciously. "I 
once thought that gave me the benefit of the doubt."

Her use of the past tense didn't escape him, but as long 
as she was still sitting here talking to him, there was 
hope.

"I know you've been having a hard time these last few 
months. . ." he started again, and instantly realized it 
was the wrong thing to say.

She rose to her feet in one fluid movement and for a brief 
second had the psychological advantage of height. "You 
don't know anything," she hissed, and turned to walk 
back to toward the buildings.

He scrambled to stop her; if he lost her now the next time 
he saw her would be in police custody. "Scully, wait!" He 
grabbed her wrist.

She pulled away from him and suddenly he was staring 
at the muzzle of her drawn service weapon. "Don't touch 
me," she said, her voice low and dangerous. "Don't you 
ever touch me again."

The whole scene was starting to play out like one of their 
former cases, when she'd fallen victim to the influence of 
an electrical signal while examining evidence. She'd 
pulled a gun on him then, too, and only the intervening 
presence of her mother had brought the situation to 
bloodless conclusion.

Margaret Scully wasn't here now. Her daughter, while 
distraught, was responsible for her own actions this 
time. And it looked like she didn't care if she had to take 
the fall for his murder, if she could have the satisfaction 
of gunning him down herself.

He lifted his hands to shoulder height in a universal 
placating gesture. "Scully, shooting me isn't going to 
solve anything. It won't bring Emily back. It won't change 
what they've done to you."

She started to say something, but couldn't get the words 
out. To his immense relief, she slowly lowered the gun. It 
slipped from her grasp and fell into the long grass. She 
swayed, then sank to her knees, hands pressed to her 
face.

End part 8/13
________________________


WHEN OLD FRIENDS MEET (9/13)
By Jean Robinson
Disclaimers, etc. in part 1


Mulder slowly and carefully reached for her gun, stowing 
it in his coat pocket. He crouched down beside her and 
tentatively touched her shoulder. She shuddered at the 
contact. "I'm sorry," he whispered. "I'm sorry, Scully."

"An apology isn't going to make it all better this time." 
The frightening statement was muffled but clearly 
enunciated; Scully might be emotionally battered but she 
wasn't about to give in to the luxury of tears.

"I know. But I am sorry, all the same." He wanted to hold 
her, to gather her in his arms and comfort her, but he 
wasn't sure she would let him yet. Or ever, for that 
matter. "Are you at least willing to listen to me?"

She remained motionless and silent, her face still hidden 
by her hands, his palm still resting hesitantly on her 
shoulder.

Hurry up and explain, he thought, before something else 
happens - like Jennings demolishing the fragile detente 
they'd achieved with a police convoy, sirens flashing and 
alarms shrieking. "Scully, I'm sorry, and I mean that. 
This is my fault. I never meant to hurt you like this."

"You thought I killed those women." Her voice was dead, 
stifled against her palms.

He sighed. Denying it would be useless, admitting it 
would be catastrophic. "Scully. . . I didn't know what to 
think. You weren't yourself. Those women looked like 
people in my past, and you looked like you'd been in a 
fight. There were too many explanations that didn't add 
up."

"You thought I killed those women!" She was building 
back up to a rage that she wasn't ready to relinquish, 
exhausted or not. Anger meant control; control meant 
everything.

"Scully. . . ."

"That detective went to Skinner because of you! He sent 
the police to my mother's house! Do you know what she's 
been through? They told her I'd murdered four people in 
cold blood! How could you let them do that to her?" Now 
she finally looked up at him again, anguish on her 
strained white features.

Yeah, stupid, exactly how could you do that to her 
family? Mulder thought wretchedly. Just what did the 
Scully clan ever do to deserve him in their life? Bad 
enough his own existence was such a disaster; now he 
was wreaking havoc on hers on what seemed to be a 
daily basis. 

While he was still pondering her question and how to 
respond, she gave in to the overwhelming need to hurt 
him as he had hurt her. He'd taken her weapon, but she 
was far from defenseless. And suddenly the side of his 
face exploded in sizzling, scorching pain, the aftershocks 
of the openhanded slap she'd delivered radiating all the 
way up to the top of his skull. Little sparks of silver light 
danced in front of his eyes. The hand that had provided a 
shaky physical bridge between them shot up 
involuntarily to cup his cheek as he shook his head to 
clear his vision.

The lingering sting punctuated the agonized repetition of 
the question he had no answer for.

"How could you let them do that?"

Mulder slowly lowered his hand and moved his jaw 
experimentally to the left and right. Good. Everything still 
worked. Time to try the voice.

"I tried to stop him, Scully." 

Her whole body sagged slightly, as if she'd run out of 
strength all at once. She sat slumped and silent with her 
head bowed.

He continued cautiously. "I was wrong, Scully. I know 
you didn't kill them."

She maintained her silence for several drawn-out 
minutes, then stated flatly, "You didn't trust me. You 
never have."

He opened his mouth to voice a vehement denial, and 
nothing came out.

She raised her head and looked at him coldly. "That's the 
crux of it, Mulder. I'm tolerable as long as I'm asking you 
questions and providing you with the opportunity to 
explain everything step by step as if I were a civilian 
bystander instead of a participant. But the minute I 
move out of that role, I'm a threat. You never wanted me 
here. You made that quite clear in the first five minutes 
of our acquaintance."

He reined in his own anger and softened his tone 
considerably. "If I didn't trust you, I wouldn't have spent 
the last two days and nights looking for you. I would 
have let the police find you and deal with you."

"They probably followed you here," she retorted. "Or is 
there a SWAT team hiding in the bushes somewhere 
giving you backup right now? Are you wired, Mulder? Is 
Skinner listening to this entire charade?"

He caught her hand, desperate to make her understand, 
to halt the bitterness before it was too late. "No one is 
listening to me, unless you are. No one is here but me. I 
was wrong, Scully. About the case, about the dolls, about 
you. I'm here because I do trust you, because I care 
about you, and because I need to make this right."

He'd broken her concentration. His sincere apologies 
were even scarcer than her losses of control. She tried to 
maintain the anger, the grief, the pain at what he'd done, 
but she couldn't. The pieces wouldn't hold together 
anymore; the fierce emotions that formed the glue of her 
fury had dissolved. She let him hold her hand in his 
without resistance and was quiet.

The sudden burr of his cell phone jarred them both; 
Scully jumped with a small cry. Mulder pulled it out of 
his coat with his free hand. "Mulder."

"It's about damn time you started answering your phone 
again, Agent Mulder." The voice was loud and bothered 
enough for both of them to hear the greeting before 
Jennings moderated his tone to a vehement whisper. "If 
you haven't found your partner yet, I'm going to a judge 
right now for an arrest warrant no matter what your boss 
says," he continued. "We have another related death, but 
this one just happened. Neighbors heard sounds of a 
struggle and shouting, and looked in the window. Saw 
the woman on the floor, and called the police. It all went 
down about ninety minutes ago."

Mulder closed his eyes. He had to know. "The victim. 
Does she happen to have shoulder-length dark brown 
hair? Tall, slim, maybe five-seven, or five-eight?"

"That pretty much describes her. How the hell did you 
know? A confession?"

Damn. Diana Fowley, another female skeleton in the 
closet from his checkered past, apparently had a twin, 
too. The Lone Gunmen knew about Fowley, but his 
partner didn't. The intimate details of exactly how the X-
Files had come about and who else might have been 
involved at the time had never been brought up. He now 
glanced at Scully, who was listening to this one-sided 
conversation with undisguised curiosity. It was a vast 
improvement over her previous expressions; he felt 
sudden hope that they could put this behind them.

"Lucky guess. If you've got the time frame right, then 
you've just exonerated Agent Scully. We'll be right there." 
Mulder disconnected before Jennings could respond with 
more than a surprised squawk, realizing he was still 
gripping his partner's hand. "Someone else was killed, 
just under two hours ago." He began rapidly punched 
more numbers into his phone. "Sir? Yes. I have new 
information on the case, information that excludes Scully 
as a potential suspect. Can you relay that to the 
authorities, and call off the search? Yes, I'm positive." He 
paused, listening to Skinner's ranting while watching his 
partner's face. "Thank you, sir." He tucked the phone 
away again and looked her square in the eye. "Are you up 
for this?"

"I don't know." At least it was an honest answer. At least 
it wasn't "I'm fine, Mulder," when both of them knew she 
was not fine, and neither was he.

He took a deep breath. "You're my partner, Scully. You're 
the only one I trust. I hope you can believe that, because 
I need your help on this."

She dropped her gaze to their hands, still clasped 
together on his knee. The silence spun out between 
them. "All right," she said finally, her tone and her 
expression carefully neutral. "Do you want me to autopsy 
the latest victim?"

"Please."

She was surprised; he never said please. Especially not 
in that tone of voice. 

"Fine. Let's go." She stood up and started to walk away, 
back up the hill toward the parking lot.

He followed her, not saying anything until they reached 
the edge of the lot. "Are you coming with me?" he asked.

"No." She hesitated, as if she wanted to say more, then 
shook herself slightly. 
"No. I'll meet you there."

Mulder watched her as she snaked in and out of the rows 
to her vehicle; she had been parked only one row and 
eight cars away. So close. So unbelievably close and yet 
so far. 

End part 9/13
________________________


WHEN OLD FRIENDS MEET (10/13)
By Jean Robinson
Disclaimers, etc. in part 1


The autopsy revealed one deviation from the previous 
cases: distinct defense injuries. The latest victim, 
Jennifer Lombardi, sported minor scratches on her 
hands and forearms, clear signs that she'd tried to ward 
off an attacker.

Scully pointed out that the woman had also died of heart 
failure.

"She's got the same bruises on her neck, Scully."

"She's got =bruises= on her neck, Mulder. Those marks 
are extremely small. This was a healthy, thirty-one-year-
old woman in good physical condition. She was a 
personal trainer, for God's sake. Yes, someone attacked 
her. But if you interpret those bruises as the finger 
marks of the perpetrator, you'd be looking for a two-year-
old child."

He strove for a normal tone, trying to maintain their 
uneasy truce. "Then how do you explain her death?"

Scully glared at him. "You want my medical opinion? 
Fine. Cardiac arrest. In her case, she literally died of 
fright. My guess is that when she was attacked, she 
suffered a heart attack as a result."

"You just said she was healthy, in the prime of her life. 
Now she's got a heart condition?"

Snapping her gloves off in a vicious gesture, she 
answered him in clipped tones. "Ms. Lombardi, for all her 
healthy habits, was also a smoker. Sudden cardiac arrest 
is not out of the realm of possibility."

Mulder stopped arguing, not because he agreed, but 
because something still didn't add up.

And he wasn't yet ready to tell Scully the full details of 
his relationship with the victims' doppelgangers.

She hadn't believed him about Helen McCormick. Might 
not know about Marilyn Scova. Only grudgingly agreed 
with his assessment of Terri Steeber. They'd never even 
discussed Elaine Ross. And there was absolutely no way 
he was going to delve into Jennifer Lombardi's 
resemblance to Diana Fowley.

If he was lucky, he'd never have to explain Diana Fowley 
to Scully at all. Ever.

His partner was talking again. "Besides, Mulder, there 
was no doll at this scene. In my opinion, this death is 
similar but unrelated to the other four."

I think you're wrong, Scully. There's something I'm not 
seeing here, but I don't know what it is, and for once, I 
can't bounce my ideas off you. If I did, I think I'd knock 
you down. And as resilient as you are, I'm not sure you'd 
have the strength to stand up again.

". . . going home."

He hadn't caught that. "What?"

Jerking off her lab apron, Scully tossed it in the 
designated waste receptacle. "I said I'm going home." She 
hesitated, then added sarcastically, "If I'm free to do that 
at this point?"

"Yes." He sighed. The state and local police had been 
notified. Nobody was looking for her anymore. Jennings, 
far from mollified that his own assessment of the time 
frame had provided Scully's alibi, had made himself 
scarce since their return to the medical examiner's office. 
Their suspect, or suspects, were still at large.

"Fine. I'll see you tomorrow. Assuming I can explain all 
this to my mother."

Cheap shot, but he deserved it. He had probably caused 
Margaret Scully an additional two years of heartache in 
the last two days.

In his opinion, motherhood, despite all its joys and 
wonders, was a setup for unimaginable pain.

Cases in point:

Mrs. McCormick, whose only solace was the ancient 
playthings of her murdered daughter. Helen might be 
remembered by her current students, but young children 
were fickle and impressionable; after a few years their 
memories of her would dim, replaced by other 
experiences and individuals.

Margaret Scully, rightfully fearful every time her 
telephone rang thanks to her daughter's choice of career 
and the FBI's choice of partner.

And of course, Scully herself, helplessly watching her 
only child suffer and die with nothing but the emotional 
right to mourn her, all legal avenues to claim Emily as a 
legitimate member of the family having ended in failure.

He had vivid memories of the some of the trauma his own 
mother had endured because of her children, pain that 
had nothing to do with Samantha's abduction.

Teena Mulder hadn't been one to bake cookies and 
dispense hugs for no reason even before that horrible 
night when his parents found him on the floor, paralyzed 
by the image of his sister floating away into a blaze of 
blinding light. But her maternal instincts sprang forward 
with a vengeance given enough provocation, such as the 
day Samantha had broken her collarbone falling off the 
rope swing in their yard. His mother had come running, 
her face distorted with distress, screaming her daughter's 
name. Samantha, who hadn't thought to cry until her 
finely tuned hearing picked out the note of terror in her 
mother's voice, began an enthusiastic vocal recital of her 
own, exercising her lung power to full capacity as her 
mother swept her up and ground the broken bones 
together.

No one had ever asked him how it happened. "Fox, look 
after your sister" was not a mantra ingrained in him by 
parental authority; a self-sufficient and indulgent older 
brother, he'd assumed the responsibility on his own, 
without consulting or informing anyone.

But even the brightest ten-year-old lacks the sound 
judgment that comes with maturity and experience. He 
hadn't meant to hurt her, hadn't realized that the rough 
pushes he was accustomed to giving his friends on the 
swing were more than powerful enough to dislodge his 
light, dainty sister. She wanted to swing higher, and he 
tried to oblige. In doing so, he shoved her hard enough to 
break her grip on the ropes and send her flying through 
the air, a wingless bird on a brief flight that ended with 
disaster on the packed dirt beneath the tree.

It never occurred to Samantha to make any revealing 
statements when questioned about the details of the 
accident. It was always, "I fell off," never "Fox pushed 
me."

She never blamed him for the sling that kept her off her 
bike for three weeks. Easily entertained, Samantha had a 
new distraction to keep her attention on quieter pursuits 
while she healed. Teena Mulder bought her a doll.

A doll.

Remembering the story of Samantha and the Tree Swing 
had taken up most of his drive home. As Mulder 
unlocked his apartment door, the rest of the memory, 
thrust away into a dark, cobwebby corner of his mind 
when Scully had first identified the Old Friends series in 
Marilyn Scova's house, came back to him in a sudden, 
appalling rush.

It had been a big doll, almost as big as Samantha herself. 
A doll with a pink sweater and a matching felt skirt with 
a poodle on it. Saddle shoes, little white socks and a 
blonde pony tail. He thought its name might have been 
Kate, but he wasn't sure. All he recalled was that 
Samantha loved her Old Friend, adored it, talked to it 
and lavished every affection on it. For two years, she was 
never more than an arm's length away from it.

The day after the search was officially called off, Teena 
Mulder disposed of all of Samantha's toys and clothes. 
Kate was in the first box out the door; Mulder 
remembered seeing a flash of pink skirt from his vantage 
point in his room.

His mother couldn't face distributing Samantha's 
belongings to a charity. His father had taken charge of 
the roaring bonfire that consumed almost every last trace 
of the little girl's presence in the house.

And now, according to Scully, that doll series was 
celebrating an anniversary.

Thirty years for Old Friends.

Twenty-five for Samantha.

Maybe his "Velveteen Rabbit" theory wasn't so far-fetched 
after all.

Except if he remembered the story correctly, the 
neglected toys became real, or reincarnated, or went to 
toy heaven, or something equally happy and joyous.

Then again, the child in the book had contracted scarlet 
fever, he hadn't been stolen from his home because his 
older brother wasn't strong enough or brave enough to 
protect him.

He could almost hear Scully's disdain, as clearly as if she 
were standing in the room with him, hands on her hips 
and eyebrows arched: "You think a =doll= is exacting 
revenge upon you for the loss of your sister, Mulder? Are 
you sure you're not confusing reality with a movie plot?"

Given the choice of victims, yeah, he was beginning to 
think that was precisely what was happening. Besides, 
he mentally argued, in that horror movie there was only 
one homicidal doll and it was possessed by the soul of a 
murderer. This is different. This really =is= the soul of 
the doll, and I think it's angry and procuring a little 
cooperation from its sisters to do its dirty work.

If it hadn't been for me, Samantha wouldn't have owned 
and loved Kate in the first place. If it hadn't been for me, 
Kate wouldn't have lost Samantha and consequently 
wouldn't have lost her "life."

Maybe Kate's been storing up some negative energy until 
the time was ripe to act. Maybe all the brouhaha with the 
special commemorative collection gave her spirit the 
impetus to start a little killing spree.

If what he was thinking was indeed possible, all the 
lookalike deaths were a warm-up, a dress rehearsal for 
the grand finale, the death of the one person closest to 
him to compensate Kate for the loss of the one person 
closest to her.

Scully wasn't the perpetrator. 

Scully was the ultimate target.

He lunged for his phone.

End part 10/13
________________________


WHEN OLD FRIENDS MEET (11/13)
By Jean Robinson
Disclaimers, etc. in part 1


No answer from Scully, either at her regular number or 
her cell.

Squashing down his rising panic, he dialed Margaret 
Scully's number.

"Hello?"

"Mrs. Scully, this is Fox Mulder."

"Fox?" Her welcoming phone voice transformed into a 
chilly Arctic blast, broadcasting her new low opinion of 
him. Her next audible words were, "What do you want?" 
but the subtext was, "Go to hell." If she wasn't of the 
generation that read Emily Post and still believed in 
courtesy and forgiving thine enemies, he had no doubt 
she would have slammed the phone down already and 
terminated the conversation.

"Is Dana there?" Please let her be there. She said she was 
going to explain everything to her mother. Please, please 
let her be there.

"No. I haven't seen her at all today." Alarm melted the ice 
in Margaret's tone. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing," he lied smoothly, hoping to God it was not a 
lie and that he was, for once, overreacting. "I. . . I need to 
know something about Dana. About when she was a 
little girl."

"Fox, what on earth are you talking about?"

"Mrs. Scully, she told me she had a doll when she was 
about seven or eight. Dressed like a Rosy the Riveter. 
What happened to it?"

Anxiety and annoyance gave way to perplexity; Margaret 
Scully clearly had no idea where he was going with this 
line of questioning. "You want to know about a toy my 
daughter had twenty-five years ago? Fox, what =is= 
this?"

"Please. It's important. She said Charles broke it. I need 
to know what happened to it after that. Was it thrown 
out? Did she keep it even though it was broken?" He 
realized each desperate question sounded more insane 
than the last, but he didn't know how else to get the 
information.

His urgency leaked into his tone, agitating Scully's 
mother again. "Something's happened, hasn't it? What's 
the matter with Dana? What have you done to her now?" 
she demanded.

"Mrs. Scully, I don't know anything for sure. I just need 
to know if that doll is still around, or if it was put out in 
the trash. Please. Try to remember."

"I. . . I just don't know. We moved so many times when 
the children were young. Dana was a packrat. She might 
have kept it even if it was broken."

Mulder closed his eyes. This was not what he wanted to 
hear. Scully wasn't with her mother and she wasn't 
answering either phone and her broken Rosy the Riveter 
might be lurking in dark corner somewhere waiting to 
pounce.

"Fox?" Margaret was yelling in his ear. "Fox, what have 
you done to Dana? Where is she?"

He forced himself to pay attention. "Mrs. Scully, I'll have 
to call you back. I have to go." He hung up over her 
protests.

Calling the Georgetown police for backup would require 
explanations and assurances he couldn't give. He 
grabbed his keys and ran for his car.

She's a trained, armed federal agent. She can handle a 
doll that stands no higher than her knees.

Jennifer Lombardi couldn't handle it, and she was in 
better shape than either one of you. Scully says she 
basically died of fright. Terri Steeber probably did, too. 
After all, who expects their doll to leap from the closet 
and attack like a striking cobra?

The drive seemed interminable. When he arrived, Scully's 
street was ablaze with light and color, alive with frenetic 
activity.

Spiraling crimson and blue lights. Emergency vehicles. 
Police cars. An ambulance.

Oh, dear God, no. Not again.

Please let this be for someone else. Not that I want 
anyone else to be in trouble, but please let one of her 
neighbors be having a heart attack, or an epileptic 
seizure, or a baby, or anything not involving homicidal 
toys.

Please don't let me go in there and find her dead on the 
floor next to a doll in gray coveralls.

End part 11/13
________________________


WHEN OLD FRIENDS MEET (12/13)
By Jean Robinson
Disclaimers, etc. in part 1


Flashing his badge at the first young police officer 
stationed outside Scully's building launched an eerie 
sense of deja vu. I have been here before, he thought 
wearily. All I need is some broken glass, an empty 
apartment and her mother arguing with the cops to make 
this little reunion scene complete.

The next round of officialdom, guarding Scully's open 
door, looked at his badge and asked him his business.

"I'm Agent Scully's partner."

She nodded, serious and solemn. "Go right in, sir. She's 
in the kitchen talking with Detective Marsh."

Mulder, who had started to stride by her, stopped so 
abruptly he staggered. "She's alive?" he choked. Until the 
officer's comment, he hadn't realized how certain he'd 
been that she wouldn't be.

The woman seemed puzzled at his state. "Yes, sir." 

He brushed past her then, frantic to see for himself that 
Scully was indeed alive and coherent.

The living room looked the same as always, with no sign 
of a struggle. As he headed toward the back of the 
apartment, his foot came down on something hard and 
cylindrical. He almost fell, twisting wildly and clutching 
at the couch back at the last instant to save himself. The 
object squirted out from under his shoe and rolled across 
the floor.

Heart pounding, he glanced down to see what had nearly 
done him in.

It was pink. For a second he couldn't place it, then 
realized he was looking at a disembodied toy leg.

The sound of many male voices from Scully's bedroom 
distracted him from his morbid contemplation of the 
plastic limb, and a quick glance through the door 
revealed that that room was the main focus of interest; 
several people were busily dusting for prints, snapping 
photographs, taking measurements and copious notes. 
The sheer number of bodies made it impossible to tell if 
the room was in disarray or not, but Mulder didn't care, 
because Scully wasn't in there.

He finally spied her in the kitchen, and all the air left his 
lungs because she wasn't at her table calmly discussing 
the situation with the detective, she was instead sitting 
sideways on the floor, pressed into the corner formed by 
her cabinets, her knees bent and legs flat against the 
linoleum.

Scully caught sight of him over the detective's shoulder; 
the man had crouched down to her level to converse with 
her. "Mulder," she said, extending a hand to him.

He knelt down beside the detective - Marsh? was that his 
name? - and grasped her hand like a lifeline. "Hey, 
Scully."

She looked unharmed. She sounded almost normal. But 
an unharmed, normal Scully would not be hunched on 
the floor while the police paraded through her home, and 
would not be clutching his hand with enough force to 
grind his knuckle bones together. It was all he could do 
to suppress a wince at the unexpected pain.

Marsh, a young black man who thankfully did not have 
the same oral fixation as Jennings, greeted him calmly. 
"Agent Mulder. We were about to call you."

"Scully, are you all right?"

She nodded. Now that he was closer, he could see fresh 
red marks on top of the fading greenish-yellow bruises on 
her throat, and blood oozing from several shallow cuts on 
her forearms and one jagged scrape next to her left eye.

Scully saw his attention sharpen and hastened to 
amplify. "It's not serious."

"What happened?"

Marsh answered for her. "The neighbors heard some 
noise, thumping. Said it sounded like a fight, but they'd 
seen Agent Scully come home alone and no one had been 
buzzed in. They called us, and when we got here Agent 
Scully said she'd been attacked by an unknown intruder 
who was no longer on the premises."

A typically Scully explanation. Mulder relaxed a fraction; 
if she had enough presence of mind to formulate a 
sensible-sounding tale, she couldn't be too badly hurt. 
"Why haven't the paramedics seen you yet?"

She shook her head. "I wanted to give my statement first. 
I'm fine. It's nothing, just a few lacerations."

He leveled his gaze at her, silently asking the obvious. If 
you're fine, then why are you still parked on your 
designer floor tiles?

She answered him somewhat defensively, even though he 
hadn't spoken out loud. "I'm a little dizzy. It's just the 
adrenaline rush wearing off. I'm fine."

Translation: I felt faint and wasn't sure I'd be able to 
stand up and stay up, so rather than risk humiliating 
myself I just stayed down. I'll get up when I'm good and 
ready. And if you call me on it, Mulder, I will =not= 
forgive you.

She was talking sensibly, and her visible injuries did 
seem superficial. Because of that he could overlook the 
pallor under the contusions, the slight tremor 
thrumming through the hand wrapped around his in a 
deathgrip, and the tension radiating from her rigid 
shoulders and clenched jaw.

That unsettled, nervous look in her eyes was another 
matter entirely.

"I'm going to check on how they're doing in your 
bedroom, Agent Scully," Marsh announced, his knees 
popping audibly as he stood up. "Can't guarantee they 
won't leave enough fingerprint dust to choke a horse, but 
I keep hoping." He smiled reassuringly.

Scully smiled back in an obligatory acknowledgment of 
the witticism, but the expression went no further than a 
slight upward turn of her lips. "Thank you."

Mulder patted her hand with his free one. "Let the 
paramedics look at you, Scully."

She nodded wearily, closing her eyes and leaning her 
head back against the cabinets as she finally released 
her hold on him. Gingerly flexing his fingers, Mulder 
gestured for the uniformed man and woman standing 
inconspicuously in her living room to come forward, and 
backed away to give them room to work.

His partner silently offered her arms up for inspection, 
allowing them to disinfect and bandage, to wrap her in 
gauze gauntlets that hid the old bruises as well as the 
new cuts. Patiently tolerated the poking and prodding as 
they took her blood pressure, listened to her heart and 
inquired if she'd suffered a blow to the head. Assured 
them that the worst of the marks on her neck had not 
come as a result of this assault. Made direct eye contact 
with them to reinforce her insistence that her assailant 
hadn't inflicted any unseen damage; that she'd been 
more startled than hurt by the whole incident.

If he hadn't been watching for it, he would have missed 
it. The movement was slight, hardly more than a flicker 
of her eyes. If she could have stopped herself from doing 
it, Mulder was sure she would have. But every few 
seconds her gaze drifted away from ambulance crew who 
tended her so solicitously and wandered to the left, out 
toward a corner of her living room.

Checking. And rechecking.

Mulder was reasonably certain of what he would find 
once he looked under the coffee table which seemed to be 
the focal point of her mild anxiety, but he had no 
intention of drawing further attention to it by 
investigating now. Scully obviously hadn't intimated that 
her attacker was anything other than human when she'd 
given her statement to Marsh.

The paramedics concluded their examination and helped 
her stand, guiding her to a kitchen chair. "Just keep an 
eye on those scrapes, you don't want anything to get 
infected. And take it easy for the rest of the night," the 
woman instructed.

The smile she produced was still wan, but it was better 
than the one she'd mustered up for Marsh a few minutes 
earlier. "Thanks."

They packed up their bags and Mulder escorted them to 
the door. "She's all right?" he asked quietly.

The woman glanced back at Scully, who was sitting with 
her head bowed, her  bandaged arms resting lightly on 
the table. "Physically, she's fine. But she had a big scare 
tonight, even if the bastard didn't really hurt her. Are you 
going to stay with her for a while?"

"Do I need to?"

She shrugged. "It's probably not necessary, but it would 
be a good idea. If she was going to get shocky on us she 
would have done it by now, but sometimes these things 
take time."

He thanked them and went back to Scully. 

End part 12/13
________________________


WHEN OLD FRIENDS MEET (13/13)
By Jean Robinson
Disclaimers, etc. in part 1


Half an hour later, Marsh and the crime scene unit also 
departed, promising to follow up with results and 
progress. Mulder, who had been playing host with 
Scully's silent consent, closed the door for the final time, 
returned to the kitchen and sat down across the table 
from her. "So."

"Yes." In the last few minutes Scully had developed an 
intense fascination with one of her placemats, tracing its 
abstract design with one fingernail while worrying the 
edges of the fabric between the fingers of her other hand.

"How do you feel?"

"I'm fine, Mulder."

He reached out and laid his hand on top of hers, halting 
her creation of invisible art. She went rigid under his 
touch but finally met his eyes, looking tired but calm. 
"Shall we go see what's under your coffee table, then?" he 
inquired gently.

Scully pulled her hands back into her lap and turned 
away, her voice soft and disinterested. "You can go look, 
Mulder. I already know what's there."

He left her at the table and went over to the offending 
piece of furniture, crouching down on his hands and 
knees to see all the way underneath.

All those years of watching her brothers wreck her toys 
with childish glee must have made some impression. 
Scully had done a number on Rosy worthy of the most 
deranged demolition Bill or Charles could have managed. 
Mulder reached carefully under the table and swept the 
pieces out with one arm.

The doll's body, still clad in a mechanic's outfit with 
rolled cuffs and sleeves, complete with fake grease 
smudges and a little white patch embroidered with 
"Rosy" in red thread dulled by time, sported one 
accessory that the toy company surely hadn't provided in 
the original packaging - an eight-inch carving knife 
speared through its stomach.

The clothes flopped loosely; both arms, one leg and the 
head had been separated from the body, ripped seams 
testifying to the force with which they had been removed.

Setting the torso down carefully, Mulder picked up 
Rosy's head. The doll's curly mop was mostly hidden by a 
jaunty kerchief of the same material as her coveralls, still 
tied neatly in place after all these years. He wondered if 
the color of the hair had been the reason someone had 
given it to Scully in the first place; the shade matched 
hers perfectly.

Charles' handiwork was blatantly obvious.

The doll had never been pretty in the same way as Eileen 
McCormick's had been, but it must have been cute. 
Before Scully's brother had eradicated its face in his 
quest to emulate Ralph Nader, that is. One green eye was 
missing entirely, leaving an oval window into the doll's 
head. The other eye, frozen in a half-open position, gave 
it a perpetually sly expression. A jagged horizontal crack 
in the vinyl divided its face neatly in half. The break ran 
straight across the peach-tinted cheeks, which had also 
been decorated with a fake grease smear, and the nose. 
The entire lower half of Rosy's face canted inward, giving 
her a grotesque smile above the cocky grin formed by her 
molded lips. Her forehead was a spiderweb of smaller, 
less serious cracks, faultlines rippling out from a long-
ago site of impact.

A glint of silver caught his eye and he exchanged the 
head for Rosy's left arm.

When he'd seen the knife, his first assumption had been 
that somewhere during the struggle, Scully had been 
nicked by her own weapon. Now, looking at the telltale 
stains on the miniature wrench clutched in the doll's fist, 
he realized why his partner's wounds hadn't been more 
severe. The tool, like the doll itself, was a toy, and fairly 
blunt.

If Rosy =had= gotten her little plastic hands on the knife 
before Scully had managed to disembowel her, the end 
result of the battle might have been a lot different.

He gathered up all the loose bits, detouring across the 
room to retrieve the leg he'd stepped on earlier. Scully 
watched him without comment as he dumped the parts 
on the table, her face a mask of neutrality.

Mulder tapped the protruding knife handle, making the 
torso rock back and forth on the tabletop. "Playing 
doctor, Scully?"

His attempt at levity fell flat. Scully stared at him evenly, 
her eyes guarded and careful. "It was dark, Mulder. I'd 
turned off the lights to get undressed. I did not see what 
attacked me. What. . ." she caught herself and made the 
correction almost immediately, "=whoever= it was, I did 
not get a clear view of him at any time. The perpetrator 
was hiding in my closet, and must have picked up the 
doll before he jumped me. It must have gotten in between 
us during the fight, because I obviously did more damage 
to the doll than to him."

"You keep carving knives in your bedroom, Scully?"

She looked away again. "No. At some point we ended up 
out here, and I grabbed it off the counter."

"Did you know the doll was still in your closet?"

A faint blush of embarrassment crept up her cheeks. 
"Mulder, although you may find this hard to believe, 
there are probably things in my closet that date back to 
the Carter administration. I remember the day my 
brother tied my doll to a wagon, set it running down the 
steepest hill in our neighborhood and crunched her 
against an oak tree. I remember punching him in the eye 
and both of us being punished that night. But I don't 
remember dragging her along with my possessions until 
now. I certainly could have. I've got a box of report cards 
in there that aren't even mine, they're Missy's. I don't 
know how I ended up with them, either. Does it matter?"

He supposed it didn't. She knew in her heart what had 
happened; he didn't need to force her to announce, "My 
doll tried to kill me!" on the evening news to satisfy his 
ego.

Especially since a little case of patented Dana Scully 
denial was nothing compared to his transgressions.

Scully looked exhausted; he didn't want to start this 
discussion now, but postponing it wasn't going to make it 
any easier for either of them.

"You're right. I didn't trust you."

She raised her eyebrows. "=I'm= right?"

He ignored her mock surprise and plunged forward. "I 
didn't. I had a workable theory. . . ."

"Homicidal dolls," Scully interrupted dryly.

"Scully, stop. No matter what you think, it was a 
workable theory. And I let it go and didn't pursue it 
because I didn't trust you. I asked you how you got the 
bruises, and I didn't believe you."

"Why didn't you?" she asked softly.

"Because. . . because I feel like I've been walking on 
eggshells around you since Christmas. You lost Emily, 
then there was that whole incident at Ruskin Dam. 
Maybe you =could= be made to do something you would 
normally never consider. And then I found. . . ."

"Found what?" she prompted.

Before he knew it, the story of the tranquilizers and the 
mouth guard came out. "So I knew you'd been having 
difficulty coping, and you weren't telling me everything, 
and after the girls and Father Gregory, I didn't know if 
you'd been telling me =anything=. All I could do was 
watch you struggle alone and wonder." He'd been staring 
at the doll's head; it was easier to focus on the battered 
toy than on his battered partner. Now he lifted his gaze 
to meet hers and found to his astonishment that she was 
smiling.

Not a lot. Just a very small smile, as if something he'd 
said had amused her. The way she sometimes smiled 
when he started talking about vampires or mothmen or 
shapeshifters. "You thought I was relieving my stress by 
killing people in a Valium-induced fog?"

It sounded preposterous, stated in such blunt terms. But 
yes, that was pretty much what he'd thought.

"Mulder, when you were perusing my medications, did 
you even look at the dosage?"

He thought back. No. The very idea that Scully had a 
prescription for a tranquilizer had rocked his foundations 
so severely that he hadn't looked any further than the 
drug name itself. He shook his head.

"Or the quantity prescribed?"

He shook his head again.

"It was a one time, seven day dosage, for two milligrams."

His mouth dropped open. "That's it?"

"That's it. The bottle was empty, Mulder. I'd finished the 
prescription long before you ever came across it."

"But. . .  who is Dr. Schiff? And why were you taking 
Valium in the first place?"

She sighed and leaned back in her chair, pushing her 
hair away from the bandage on her face. "Dr. Schiff is my 
dentist, Mulder. I've suffered from bruxism all my life; 
just ask my mother. Usually I relieve it with muscle 
exercises specifically designed to reduce tension in the 
jaw, and sometimes I sleep with the bite plate. After the 
cancer, the chemotherapy, Emily. . . I was having trouble 
sleeping. It got to be a vicious cycle - the more I couldn't 
sleep, the more I'd clench my teeth, and the more I 
clenched my teeth, the more I couldn't sleep. Dr. Schiff 
gave me the medication to break the cycle, not to drug 
me into a stupor. I suppose I forgot to take the bottle out 
of my bag when I was done."

"Oh."

"I am taking a lifesaving class, you know," she said after 
a pause. "That =is= the unadulterated explanation for the 
bruises. When you get grabbed around the neck or by 
the wrists, the victims hold on for dear life."

"I know."

"Is there anything else you'd like to know? Anything else 
you're not sure of that you'd like to clarify right here and 
now?"

Well, the swimming also explained what he thought had 
been a weight loss, but was probably just a conversion of 
fat to muscle, a more compact body component. That 
left. . . .

"Father Bauer, Scully. Jennings checked up on you and 
said you were at a church near Eileen McCormick's 
house earlier that day for confession."

She shook her head in wonder. "He really went for the 
kill after he overheard us in the morgue, didn't he? I'm 
surprised Skinner didn't issue the arrest warrant." She 
took a deep breath. "Mystery solved, Mulder. I went there 
as a favor to Father McCue. There's a parishioner in Holy 
Family who's in law enforcement and is having some 
difficulties reconciling their job with their faith. Father 
McCue asked if I could go down there and speak to the 
person, as someone who. . . ." she stopped.

As someone who has reconciled her duties with her 
religion. As someone who has experienced the conflict 
firsthand and survived. As someone who has taken a life, 
however justified that taking might have been.

The specifics of her visit didn't really matter, but one 
thing still rankled. "You couldn't just tell me that?"

"By coincidence, the parishioner works with Detective 
Jennings, Mulder. Suffice to say it would have made life 
extremely difficult for this person if Jennings learned 
about their personal problems. Besides," she said, that 
tiny smile becoming something sad and accusatory at the 
same time, "the last time Father McCue asked me for a 
favor, it. . . well, you know how it turned out. You were 
there."

Yes, he had been there. And knowing what he did about 
the deaths of the four girls, Scully's reaction to them and 
his own actions, he wasn't surprised she'd kept mum 
when the priest approached her with a second request 
for help. 

"Did you really believe I was responsible? That I could do 
something like that?" she asked softly.

He wanted to say no, wanted to deny he'd ever 
entertained the thought, but he couldn't. Not if he 
wanted to salvage anything out of this. "Yes. For a while. 
. . yes."

Scully spoke slowly, as if choosing her words with great 
care. "I can see how the evidence might have looked. And 
after Ruskin Dam, I understand how you could believe I 
could be. . . coerced into doing something. I know you 
never intended for Jennings to overhear us, and never 
imagined things would spiral this far out of control. But 
your suspicions, and what happened to me and to my 
mother because of them. . . I don't know that I can 
forgive you for that, Mulder. I've worked with you for 
almost six years. I've defended you, lied for you, covered 
for you, and even when I didn't agree with you, I 
respected your opinions. After everything that we've been 
through together, I never thought you'd doubt me like 
this. That you would think me capable of such an act, no 
matter what the provocation, that disturbs me."

He nodded miserably. "I know. You said an apology 
wasn't going to be enough, and you're right. It's not. So 
where does that leave us?"

"I'm not sure."

He summoned up the courage to ask it, even though his 
mouth felt dry and his throat hurt, as if the words 
themselves had sharp edges and were slicing him on the 
way out. "Do you want to request a transfer out of the X-
Files?"

She chose to cock her head and regard him with 
narrowed eyes rather than answer right away, and he 
squirmed under the mental dissection. When she set her 
mind to it, Scully knew exactly how to make him suffer. 
Mulder was just thankful she generally reserved this 
particular talent for studying specimens under a 
microscope instead of scrutinizing him.

He could hear his own heartbeat thumping in his ears 
while he waited for her response.

Scully drew it out a moment longer and wet her lips. "No. 
I don't. I know you didn't start out this case thinking I 
was the perpetrator, and that circumstances could be 
reversed in the future. We both made errors in judgment 
along the way. I want to continue to work with you and I 
believe I can do that."

He couldn't suppress a gasp of relief and reached out to 
touch her hands, mindful of the bandages. "Thank you. I 
didn't want you to go, Scully, but I would have 
understood if you had."

She allowed herself to smile a little more now. "I can't 
speak for my mother, of course, but I don't think she'll be 
inviting you over for tea and crumb cake any time soon."

"Scully, your mother has never invited me over for tea 
and crumb cake. Ever."

"I know. But sometimes I get the impression you'd like 
her to do that."

His cellphone rang, interrupting the quiet moment. 
"Mulder."

"Agent Mulder? This is Officer Stanhope?"

He frowned; neither the name nor the voice were familiar, 
and the young man on the other end of the line added a 
vocal lift to his own name, turning what should have 
been an assertion into a question.

"Er, yes, Officer? What can I do for you?"

"I'm with the Falls Church PD, Detective Jennings asked 
me to call you?"

Another question, as if the man was never sure of what 
he was saying and required confirmation of every 
sentence. Mulder was trying not to fall into the same 
speech pattern, but it was difficult when neither of them 
seemed certain of why Stanhope had called.

"What is it, Officer?"

"I work in the lab? Detective Jennings wanted you to 
know that we didn't get any stray fingerprints from 
Jennifer Lombardi's house? And we didn't get any off the 
doll?"

Mulder sat up straight. "Doll? What doll?"

"Um, the report's not really clear, but I think they found 
it when they moved a pile of laundry? So I guess they 
missed it the first time through the house but then found 
it and brought it in because who leaves toys under 
laundry? But it doesn't really matter because it had no 
prints on it other than hers, but Jennings wanted you to 
know so I'm giving you the message?"

"Does it say what kind of doll it is?"

"Um. . . ." There was a pause and a rustling sound while 
Stanhope flipped pages. "The report doesn't say? But I 
saw it and it had on a tie-dyed shirt and bell-bottom 
jeans? Like from Woodstock? Is that what you mean?"

"Yes. That's what I mean. Thank you, Officer."

"Um, you're welcome?"

Mulder resisted the urge to ask if Stanhope was really 
sure he was welcome or not and disconnected. "There 
was a doll at Jennifer Lombardi's after all. A hippie, 
sounds like."

Scully let her gaze drop to the disassembled doll in front 
of her. "It's over, Mulder. Whatever it was, it's over."

"Do you want to know what it was?"

He braced himself, knowing her answer to the question 
might involve explanations with more far-reaching 
implications than just his idiotic behavior over the last 
few days.

Scully stared moodily at the smooth vinyl body parts, 
and reached for the arm with the wrench, turning it over 
and over in her hands for several long, silent minutes. He 
could almost see the wheels turning in her head as she 
pondered everything she knew about the case and 
whatever else he might have to tell her. Finally she set 
the arm down firmly and stood up. "No." Apparently 
Scully had decided she'd absorbed as much unwelcome, 
unpleasant information as she could handle for one 
evening. "I don't think I do this time, Mulder. Those 
women died of natural causes. Even if the toys were. . . 
were somehow involved, we have nothing tangible to 
prosecute. And I get the feeling that this," she poked 
Rosy's arm with one finger, "means the end of it. Am I 
right?"

He nodded. "Yes. You're right."

"A first."

"What is?"

"I'm right again. That's twice in one night. I could get 
used to this."

He smiled and stood up. "Don't let it go to your head." He 
looked closely at her face, at the dark circles under her 
eyes and realized how tired she truly was. "You should 
get some sleep. Will you be all right alone?"

"I'm fine, Mulder. You don't have stay and babysit. I'll see 
you in the morning."

"All right. Good night, Scully."

"Good night."

He had only taken two steps before she called him back. 
"Mulder. . . ."

"What?"

She ducked her head, a distasteful grimace twisting her 
mouth, and waved a hand at the table. "Would you. . . 
get rid of that? Please?"

"Sure." Determined not to make a production of it 
because she seemed so uncomfortable, ashamed even, of 
being afraid of the doll, he found a plastic bag under her 
sink and swept the offending toy segments into it and out 
of sight. "I'll put it out for the trash when I get home," he 
replied, careful keep his voice even and matter-of-fact. 
"Okay?"

She kept her head down, a curtain of hair obscuring her 
face, and nodded mutely.

"Scully?"

"I'm. . . " she swallowed, then went on, "I'm sorry. I just 
don't want it here anymore."

"It's all right, Scully. I understand." He did, too. Now. 
Back then he hadn't understood why his mother felt the 
need to remove everything that reminded her of 
Samantha, but he did now. "Tell you what, though, I'll 
save your carving knife if you want it. Unless you want to 
confirm my landlord's belief that I conduct sacrificial 
rituals in my apartment every time the moon is full."

He'd hoped that would gain him an authentic, full-
fledged smile, and it did. Well, almost. There were still 
things left unsaid, questions unanswered. About Emily, 
the quadruplets. His pigheaded assumptions about her 
motivations. The residual awkwardness between them 
would take time and effort to overcome. But he no longer 
felt the desperate need to know everything; if Scully 
wanted to share with him her feelings about her losses, 
she would do it in her own time. 

And if she ever wanted to know the real story behind the 
Old Friends, he would tell her. All of it.

"I suppose you've given your landlord more than enough 
reasons to withhold your security deposit already. I'll 
take my knife back, then, whenever you get a chance," 
she replied.

"Good. See you tomorrow, Scully."

"I'll be there."


End


Author's notes: This was the fourth story I started, back 
in early 1999, and it remained unfinished until the 
summer of 2000. That I found both the inspiration and 
the nerve to complete it is due to Jill Selby and Jordan, 
who both offered their services as beta readers and 
cheerleaders, and to Sarah Segretti, who supplied some 
helpful geographical data.  :-) If you haven't read "The 
Velveteen Rabbit" by Margery Williams, I recommend it. 
Any resemblance between the Old Friends dolls and any 
toys you have in your attic or have seen in the stores is 
completely coincidental; I really did just invent them for 
this story.

Feedback makes me prance at jeanrobinson@yahoo.com. 
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