FOLLY - The Collector's Edition by RivaT Starts in early Season Four; after TFWID, Season Four doesn't happen; instead we take a strange journey into conspiracy, experimentation, and speculation. Classification: XAR (Scully/Pendrell, then Scully/Mulder) Rating: R for violence and sexual situations Revised January 1998, with an all-new epilogue--thanks, Natasha, for offering me this opportunity. Folly Part One: Meetings September 2, 1996 12:08 pm "She can get me access, I know it," Mulder said, the eternal optimism each new hint evoked in him plain on his face. Scully didn't respond. "Yeah, access to what exactly?" seemed a little too catty. She turned instead to her report, willing Mulder to wait to enthuse until she was done. She sighed. Jealous much? How silly. Natural, perhaps, since he was the only available man she knew, really, but still silly. Oh, she was sure he'd be good in bed--any Phoebe Green graduate would have to be--when he was *in* a bed, instead of being chased, hunting some killer or beastie or combination thereof, or just being generally absent without leave. And hospital beds don't count. He'd undoubtedly be sweet and attentive--10% of the time. Hostile or indifferent the rest of the time, when she'd be in his way. Come to think of it, that pretty much described their current relationship, except that she wasn't getting laid. They were both damaged goods. Unfortunately, similar parts of each of them were missing; they could only reinforce each other's gaps. She longed for stability, patience, indulgence, someone who'd keep dinner warm for her. She longed to look at a nice guy without getting a crick in her neck. A knock on the door interrupted her reverie. "Come in," she said, curious as to who'd beard the Spookys in their den. "Agent Scully?" Pendrell smiled waveringly at her. Mulder smirked at him. "Agent Pendrell, hello. What can I do for you?" He flushed. *Am I picking up Mulder's habits of innuendo? Hate to have a harassment claim filed against me.* She tried to emanate nonthreatening camaraderie. "I, uh, had some more thoughts about the protein sequencing from those samples you took from our arms. I've been doing a little extra research ... got some of the other guys in Research to give me more samples. We might be able to correlate inoculation dates with changes in the protein to get an idea of how the 'tag' was changed sequentially." Mulder was doodling ostentatiously, however that was achieved, while Pendrell spoke. "That's wonderful," she said, giving him her cheeriest smile. He looked almost ill. "Shall I come by later, when you're done with lunch?" "Oh, well, I have the preliminary results with me, if you wanted to look them over--there's some interesting stuff here --" he moved to put the file on her currently overwhelmed desk, and she made a decision. "Why don't we go over these in the cafeteria? I need to eat, and I imagine you do too." "I was going to get us subs," Mulder protested. "You can still get one yourself," she chided. "But it'd do my wallet good to eat in for once." *After all, I'm not the one in exile, Mulder.* "Won't help your stomach any." Pendrell was watching the exchange warily. She focused on him. "Would the cafeteria be ok, or would you rather go somewhere else?" He stared at her. "The cafeteria would be fine." He was actually easy on the eyes when he wasn't so rabbity-nervous, Scully mused. And he was the right height. She stood. "Let's go. See you in an hour, Mulder." "Don't rush on my account," he said, crumpling the paper he'd been doodling on and executing a perfect three-pointer into the wastebasket across the room. Wouldn't want to leave a caricature of Pendrell with horns and a mustache where Scully might find it. Lunch in the cafeteria was nice, though she found herself blinking mentally and literally as they came out of the spiritual and physical darkness of the basement into brightly-lit, squeaky-clean FBI territory. She had a lowfat yogurt and a cream cheese bagel, while he went for a salad and fries (perhaps they would cancel each other out). The DNA results were suggestive; unfortunately, the computing power necessary to run the correlations, and the samples from other parts of the population necessary to verify their theories, were going to be hard to come by. They brainstormed ideas for a while; when Pendrell suggested that they flood the IRS building with sleeping gas, freeing up the computers there and giving them a range of subjects ("always assuming that they're actually human, of course"), and doing America a favor to boot, Scully realized that she hadn't relaxed in another's presence like that in weeks. She looked at the clock regretfully. "I'm sorry, I've got to get back to paperwork. Skinner will have my head if we don't make the 4 o'clock deadline." As they stood in line to return their trays, she turned to him. "You know, Agent Pendrell,"--"Scott," he interrupted--"Well, then please call me Dana. I really enjoyed this. We should do it more often." "Are you free tomorrow night?" The poor man looked like he couldn't believe his own words. Before he could begin to stammer or retreat, Scully seized the chance. "That would be very nice. What time?" "Uh ... seven?" "Seven would be great." She gave him her address, along with a spine-straightening smile that left him gaping. Really, he was quite flattering. She kept thinking that he must be reacting to some other woman. * * * September 3, 1996 7:00 pm Scully had agonized over the dress far more than she should have. It was cream-colored; the top was lace lined with a satiny fabric which continued to a flowing, knee-length skirt. She wore her highest matching heels. Pendrell was prompt, which came as a bit of a shock after years of waiting for Mulder. After she opened the door, he just looked at her for a minute. He'd brought her a yellow rose, which he handed to her in silence. She had to force herself not to fidget or reach up to her hair as he stared. "You're beautiful." She looked down. "You don't need to say that." "I thought you were searching for the truth." Her mouth quirked up, but she refused to return his gaze. "Dana ... who could possibly think otherwise?" Now she looked, and what she saw in his eyes made her heart drop four stories. "Let's go," she said, almost desperately. * * * "...Of course I envied them, all the tall, popular girls. But at the same time, even when I was being jealous, I didn't really want to be like them. It wasn't worth the time." "I know exactly what you mean." They smiled at each other. He was so comfortable to be with. So different from Mulder; the easy silences she shared with her partner were the product of long and painful rubbing away at each other until they were ground down enough not to chafe anymore. Pendrell--Scott-- was a shy, cerebral man with a passion for scientific investigation that matched her own. He came from a small, stable family; his parents were alive and living in California. He was a bit more interested in hardware than in biology, but that allowed her to learn from their conversation and gave her a chance to show off her own expertise. "What are you thinking?" he asked. "That I like you," she replied. "Scott..." she continued helplessly. "I don't know if I can be fair to you. I don't think I'm a very nice person anymore. Too much of me is missing. I can't promise you anything. I can't promise to be there if you need me." "Then let me be there for you, when you need me. I promise not to ask for things you can't give." She reached across the table and took his hand. "I'd like that very much. It's just...I don't know where I'm going, or what I'll be when I get there." "I'd like to be in on the journey, if you want me to be. Dana, this isn't about Agent Mulder, is it?" "Not in the way everybody thinks. The X-files are, well, all- consuming. And so is he." "So you aren't ... involved?" "No. Just being with Mulder -- it's like living under an acid drip. Every day more of me disappears, I think. If we were lovers there'd be nothing left of me at all." "Does that mean that if he asked, you'd say no?" A confused rush of thoughts and images made her pause. A pretty forward question for a first date, but fair, after what she'd just said, and also perceptive. "I don't know," she said, looking past him. "He wouldn't ask." He let that answer stand, and concentrated on entertaining her with anecdotes about techno-illiterate higher-ups who constantly wanted improbable things done. Researchers were looked down upon, sad to say. Scully found the requests he recounted sadly plausible: Can you fix it so I can get my email and my voicemail together? Tech support says it's not possible, but you guys are the *real* computer experts, aren't you? Soon they were laughing together again. They sat after coffee and dessert for nearly an hour, still talking, until the maitre d's dirty looks drove them off. She let him pay without comment. The drive back to her home was nearly silent; she reviewed the night's conversation and was surprised and relieved at how easy it had been to spend time with another man. She was even more surprised when he walked her to her door and turned to go. "Scott?" she asked, insecure and nervous. He turned back, and she took hold of his jacket as gently as was practical for balance, stood on her toes, and brushed her lips over his. A thrill ran through her when he responded, then quickly released her, blushing. "We'll do it again, soon," she promised him, and he smiled. He was so open, so unmarred. *I won't hurt him, I swear,* she thought, not sure to whom she was making the promise. * * * September 14, 1996 Waterloo, Iowa They were checking their bags at the Waterloo airport after another snipe hunt. Mulder was leaning over the counter, flirting with the cornİfed ticket agent, when her cellphone rang. "Scully," her clipped tones carried to him. Then she said "Hi," in a different tone entirely: shyly, tentatively. He stiffened in shock and whipped his head around to see her smiling. "Eight o' clock, unless there's a delay ... That would be nice ... Lasagna sounds great ... No, no answers, as usual. I'll tell you all about it ... Yeah, me too. See you soon." Me too? Me too, what? "Scully?" he asked, as teasingly as he could manage, though he suspected that it came out sounding more frightened than lascivious. She didn't seem to notice. Instead, she blushed. "Who was that?" "Scott Pendrell," she said, squaring her shoulders and assuming her best professional demeanor. "Scott?" "Yes...we've been spending some time together," she said to the plane schedule posted behind his head. "Will you need a chaperon tonight?" "Mulder, your idea of being a chaperon is probably to initiate a threesome." She sounded a little irritated, but bantering was a good sign-- covering affection with irritation, Scully-style, right? Same old Scully. Same old Scully, only dating someone. He raised his eyebrows. "Is that an invitation?" "I'd be bored and you'd be confused," she said, ending the conversation by heading toward the minuscule gate area. He turned back to the now-slightly-miffed ticket agent (*things are tough all over, my dear*) and collected the tickets, then followed. * * * September 15, 1996 Scott brought wine for dinner, and regaled her with Skinner-among- the-agents stories that she'd missed, being out of the loop or out of the office. He had a keen eye for detail and a dry wit, both of which she appreciated, especially after a day of loopy theories. And the more time they spent together, the more he revealed himself to her as a decent, caring man. The phone rang as they were finishing dinner. "Mind if I get that?" "Please go ahead." It was her mother, calling about Thanksgiving. Bill, Jr. might make it, and her mother was going in with a neighbor to create a big event. "Do you want to bring a guest?" her mother asked. "Yes, I think so," she said, then cupped her hand over the receiver. "Would you like to have Thanksgiving dinner with my family? I mean, if you're not going home ...?" His face lit up. "I'd be honored." She let her hand fall from the phone. "Yes, I'll be bringing someone." "Fox?" her mother asked hopefully. Pendrell saw her face change and understood what her mother had asked. He looked away, embarrassed for both--maybe all three--of them. "His name's Scott," she said firmly, dignified as always. "We work together." "Oh--well, I'm looking forward to meeting him, honey. Call me later when you have a chance, ok?" *So you can pump me for details.* "Sure, Mom. I love you. Goodbye," she hung up, then sighed explosively and began collecting plates. "Scott ... I know everyone and my mother thinks that Mulder and I are together, or want to be." "Dana, I don't want to come between you two." "How many times do I have to say it? We're *partners,* that's it. No more. It's a close relationship, closer probably than most lovers, but not the same." He didn't react. "Scott?" "Mm-hmmh?" "Why are you being so, well, patient and nice about this? I know I'm not the most --" "Dana, don't say anything about yourself. You have to understand that I--well, I've wanted to get to know you better for a while. And however far that takes me, it's great to be with you. I couldn't be anything but thrilled by your presence." "I just think you must be confusing me with some other woman." "Really? How many red-headed gun-toting alien-fighting doctor/FBI agents do you think there are in the DC office?" "Ok, so it's a limited field. I mean, thanks, Scott. Thanks for being here." "The pleasure's all mine, I assure you." While the dishes soaked, they retired to the couch. They'd been taking things very slowly; she offered him every chance to back out before she increased the intensity. Now that they'd hit the extremely pleasant making- out-like-teenagers stage, she was entirely happy with the speed and direction of the relationship. While he was kissing her ear, he finally put a tentative hand to her breast. She purred and rubbed against him, and he bent to kiss the exposed skin of her neck. As he unbuttoned the first button on her blouse with shaking fingers--a phenomenon she found both endearing and arousing--the phone blatted, making them both jump. They looked at each other, knowing who it had to be. "How does he know?" she asked him, laughing. "It's almost...spooky." And immediately felt guilty. Scott pulled back, allowing her to go for the phone. "Scully." "Pack your bag again, Scully. We're heading for Stephen King country." "Maine?" "Five sightings in the past three days, in a little town an hour outside of Bangor. We leave at ten tomorrow." "You couldn't have told me this at work?" "Just got off the phone with the airline. Lone Gunmen called me an hour ago--emailed me some great stuff! There's a picture--" She sighed. "Mulder, show it to me tomorrow." His voice grew suspicious. "Scully, are you alone?" "No, I'm not," she said, annoyed. Sure, she'd given him plenty of reason to expect that she'd always be available whenever he called, but everything changes. It wasn't as if he didn't *obviously* have the hots for that Uniblonder. Who came well past his shoulder. "Ah, ok," he said. "Tell Pendrell hi. And don't do anything I wouldn't do--on second thought, don't do anything I *would* do." She hung up on him. "Where were we?" she asked with forced cheer. "Sure you're still in the mood?" He raised an eyebrow at her. "Is it that obvious? Sometimes...it's like he can't decide whether he's a big brother or a...or not. It gets confusing," she admitted, relaxing back into the couch. He put a tentative arm around her, and she settled into it. "I imagine he's pretty confused, too." "Scott, Mulder and I have something that's both indefinable and irreplaceable. I won't be put in a position to choose between him and" <*you*> "the rest of my life. But I invited you over, not him, because I wanted to be with you. One of the nice things about being with you is that you remind me that there's a Dana in here, somewhere underneath all the X- file dust and slime." "So I should shut up about it?" "I would say, more like, shut up and kiss me." He complied with gratifying eagerness. * * * September 16, 1996 Reading, Maine Maine quickly lost its fall-foliage-enhanced charm. New Englanders take UFO hunters less seriously than any other group in America, and they don't have much truck with FBI agents, either. After a fruitless day of interviews, even Mulder conceded that there didn't seem to be evidence of real visitation, as opposed to the dazed imaginings of drunk and stoned teenagers. They agreed to head back in the morning, after one last interview with the almost parodically inarticulate trooper who'd responded to the witnesses' panicked reports of blinding lights in the sky. Scully was in her blue pajamas, reading a journal article, when the familiar knock on the connecting door came. "Come in," she called out. "Scully?" he asked, as tentative as she'd ever seen him. His usual pout was exaggerated by the worry that tightened his face. She put the article down. "What is it, Mulder?" "It's ... it's nothing, it's stupid ..." She scowled at him. "It's just that ... I worry about losing you." He stared at her feet. she thought, "You're not losing me, Mulder. I'm right here. Come over," and she patted the bed, scooting over to make room for him to sit. He sat so that only inches separated them. "Am I still the only one you trust?" So needy. "To keep searching for the truth, to come after me no matter what happens? Yes, you are." "But you trust Pendrell in other ways?" "You trust Skinner to yell at you, don't you? It's different. Scott...he's something that's not difficult, not demanding. He lets me breathe. When I'm with him, *I'm* the odd one, the one who needs to be humored and pampered. And it's nice." *Scott reminds me of the difference between chivalry and sensitivity. But there's no need to kick you when you're down.* "I'm sorry I'm such a burden," he said, standing up again. "Mulder, sit the hell down!" She waited until he had resumed his place. "You're not a burden. The weight that you are ... is the ballast that keeps me from giving up my grip on the world and just floating away. I like how you challenge me, and I wouldn't want to be without it. Ever. And for now, I also don't want to be without Scott." She put her hand on his arm, and they stared at each other. His hazel eyes told her, and she tried to send the message that he could ask her, and he'd win, but that things would never be the same. "Can I stay on the couch in here tonight?" he asked huskily, after an eternity had passed. "I know it'll be a bad night, otherwise." "Of course." She helped him set up the blanket and pillows, and said no more about it. * * * September 20, 1996 Georgetown University Hospital Scully had been chasing down one of Mulder's leads on a local murderer--a man who'd caught the FBI's attention when he killed a Senator's mistress--when she got shot. Mulder had just been down the hall--there in time to fall on the suspect in a rage, nearly strangling him, stopping only because Scully was bleeding; in time to hold the wound together until the paramedics came. But not in time to protect her in the first place. So once again he sat with her in her hospital room, waiting for her to wake up. When Skinner demanded an explanation of what clue or inspiration had led Mulder to the killer's Georgetown row house in the first place, he had to leave her for a few hours. He was tempted to tell his questioners that he did it with dowsing rods just to shut them up. He was out of the door before Skinner finished dismissing him, heading back to the hospital. Mulder strode into the room, aiming for his chair next to the bed. His chair was occupied. By Pendrell, who was holding her hand. A haze obscured his vision for a second, and his hands clenched involuntarily at his sides. Pendrell regarded him steadily. "I was sitting there." "You left." "I'm back now." "Are we going to have to take this outside?" He glowered. Obviously, nasty looks were not going to get rid of the techno-nerd. "Pendrell ..." "Agent Mulder, do you want to date Dana?" Dana. He remembered the way she'd repeated the name, incredulous and a little angry, when he used it after her father's death. No, he didn't want to date Dana. And he refused to alter the terms of the question any. He shook his head. "It's not like that." "Then what is it like?" "You wouldn't understand." "I don't understand why you don't want her to be happy." "With *you*?" "If I can. Is there really no room for someone besides you in her life?" "Scully's ... mine." Not what he meant, but what words were there? "Agent Mulder, I don't want to be your enemy, but that's the dumbest thing I've ever heard you say. And you're usually a smart man. If you wonder why Dana needs to see someone besides you, you should think carefully about what you just said." Mulder felt his face contort even more. He must look like a goblin. Pendrell glanced down at the pale figure on the bed and smiled tenderly. "I'll go now," he said. "But not forever." "When she wakes up, she'll want to see me," Mulder said vindictively. "But I'll be there when she comes home." Even more furious at the other man's unflappability, he pushed past Pendrell to take the vacant seat. He stared down at Scully, but he wasn't seeing her. Pendrell made it to the hallway before he had to lean against the wall, shuddering. He didn't want to get into a war with Mulder. Dana would hate them both for it and, honestly, he was hardly an alpha male like Mulder. He drew in a long, careful breath. If Mulder truly cared for her, he'd have to accept her needs. *Yeah, right,* an inner voice said, *he's exactly the well- adjusted type who wants only what's best for her.* Ok, scratch that thought. He hoped that, for all their sakes, Mulder could be reasonable. Or that Dana would break it off gently. * * * September 30, 1996 Scully rose from her desk to go to the cafeteria. The miracles of bed rest and plentiful transfusions had once again worked their magic, at least to the extent that she was fit to do paperwork. Now that she was seeing Scott, she left Mulder to eat takeout at his desk alone. She'd never invited him to the cafeteria, and he wouldn't have gone. Even if she weren't going to meet Pendrell, all that hostility and ridicule threw him off his feed. "What do you see in him, anyway?" he asked suddenly. "He tells me I'm beautiful," she said softly. He opened his mouth, but she held up her hand. How regular and even her nails were, he thought, as compact and smooth as the rest of her. "He tells me I'm beautiful, not 'hot.' He doesn't joke about it. He tells me sincerely and simply, and he believes it." She walked away from her desk and left the room, distant and dignified as Athena. The door clicked closed. "You're beautiful, Scully," he told the empty air. There was no irony whatsoever in his voice. END Folly Part II: Night Visions Prologue October 30, 1996 Scully stalked into the office, so angry that spots actually danced in front of her eyes. Four years, four years of glacially eroding mistrust on his part and blind, slavish following on hers. Completely worthless compared to a woman hellbent on killing herself. Oh, right, she got the consolation prize- -to die for Mulder, again and again. A main reason she refused to believe this crap was that she'd never respect her soul for choosing to be that kind of doormat life after life. Bad enough to do it once. Her desk drawer stuck; she couldn't open it far enough to get the paper clips. She slammed it with her palms as hard as she could and it screamed closed. The welcome ache traveled up her arms. She ran her hands through her hair, disarranging the stiff, carefully- sprayed style. A knock on her door. "Come in," she called, willing the ice clogging her brain to creep into her voice for strength. It was Scott. She stared at him dully. He smiled, giving her a chance to reciprocate. And she did try, tried to release all the anger into the ground like an electric discharge, but the attempt to lift the corners of her mouth seemed to generate more resentment. He deserved better, so she gave up. "Hey," she said. "I'm not doing too well now. Can you come over after work?" His smile more than made up for her inability to respond. "I'd love to. Seven?" How long had it been since--since *anyone* had looked at her like that, hungrily? "That'll be good," she said, mentally checking her refrigerator. They could eat chicken. He'd hold her even if she shook. He'd listen to her rant about Mulder. No. Some things were better left unsaid. He'd take her to bed and help her forget. The phone rang, wrenching her from her reverie. Scott smiled again, a wry goodbye, and gave her a little salute as he let himself out. She lifted the receiver. "Scully." "Agent Scully, the bodies are here for the autopsies." She grunted and hung up. Oh God. Bodies, little child bodies, and her job was to cut through the fragile cooled flesh to look for the signs of abuse that would have justified the raid in the first place. Bodies brought to her on slabs far too large for them, because little kids aren't supposed to need autopsies. Scalpels turned to gutting knives by the bodies' relative tininess. All this done on the word of Sydney, Sydney the protector who preserved Melissa's own memories of abuse so that she wouldn't have to deal with them. What had Sydney seen in the church, and what only in memory? Of course no one could have known who Sydney was. And with apocalyptic, well-armed groups springing up like poison toadstools across the country, they had to investigate. In a year, that hell- bound group could have blown up another building and left someone else's babies dead for the great sin of getting government- sponsored daycare. No good answers, only tragedy. Sometimes she thought that a real conspiracy running everything would be a fine idea, because if they were truly well-organized these horrors wouldn't happen. Rising like a much older woman, Scully went to do her job. Between anger at Mulder and outrage at Ephesian and his crimes against the innocents he'd touched, Scully was unable to eat. She'd gotten pretty good at pushing food around on her plate under Mulder's eagle eye, however, and Scott was less experienced at watching her. "Ice cream?" she asked, clearing the plates. "No, thanks. Hey, I've been hitting up all the agents who come by with research requests for smallpox scar samples. We're getting a pretty good library of sorts. Now if we could only figure out the cataloguing principle whoever did this used... If Agent Mulder ever comes to the lab again, I'll even get him." She frowned. What was wrong with that? Mulder sent her like an errand girl when they needed something analyzed these days, but she understood that. That wasn't the problem. Something about his medical history... "Dana?" He was concerned about her. Scott was learning to read her moods, and she'd almost given up hope that anyone but Mulder could, or would care to, do that. "Sorry. Just thinking. Scott, I need a hug." He was instantly on his feet, taking her in his arms. "You're so strong, Dana. Lean on me a little if you need to." He smelled like soap and Pert, so much cleaner than anything else in her life. The rush of heat that filled her was welcome. "What would you say if I said that leaning's not what I want?" "I'd be very happy?" The hint of a query in his voice made her smile as she pulled his head down--not so very far, after all--to her lips. They made love for the first time gently and quietly, without words. When it was over, she cried in his arms until she was exhausted. She was slipping into sleep, but she had to explain. Voice muffled by her pillow, she spoke: "Scott, you know I didn't cry because--it's just that when things are really bad, I do fine, unless someone's nice to me. Niceness gets in under the radar. I'm happy we did this." He slid his hand down her shoulder and over her arm, ending by clasping her hand in his. "Me too." She yawned, exhausted. "Sorry--but I'm so tired," she mumbled. "Shhh." He watched her slide into sleep, nervousness and wonder mingling on his face. October 31 The agents tried to write a report that they could both agree on, but Mulder just couldn't shut up about the past lives. She tried not to react. When had she ever been in control of her reactions to Mulder? Soon they were going at it hammer and tongs. She wanted to spit at him--but apparently that privilege was reserved for soulmates. "Then explain the fucking timeline." She could tell her profanity shocked him. Good. "What do you mean?" "For a genius, you've got highly questionable logic. Tell me how Sydney the Brooklyn smoker--don't tell me he got that accent in Poland-- and your husband the Polish Jew somehow managed to coexist in the Forties. Tell me how Cancerman was a Nazi killer while he was learning how to conspire in grade school here in the U.S. Mulder, I cannot believe that I am even having this conversation, this is so obviously ludicrous." "What's your explanation, then?" "I doubt that you want to hear it." "That's a bigoted thing to say." "You sat in on her hypnosis. You're a trained psychologist, Mulder, you should know that you're contaminated. You wanted it to be, so you made it so." "Explain Sullivan Biddle!" "Why do you think those photos were at the top of the stack in the library so that I found them instantly? I checked, and a Ken Burns-hopeful just made a documentary on the battle, using those pictures and other relevant information. You could have had PBS on while you slept, or--or had it on while you were reading the latest Hustler." "I found the bunker, Scully!" "But not the other ones with the guns. I don't know how you found the bunker, but I know something else. You threw your *trust* at her, not just your belief. You wanted her to be the one so that you wouldn't have to worry about other issues." "You mean, you." "I mean us." "There is no us, Scully, you've made that abundantly clear." "Me! That's almost funny. You want someone who's absent, someone you can always fail and always regret. Someone who's so damaged that you know from the outset that she'll never demand anything but that you repeatedly hurt her." "If that were true, Scully, we'd have gotten together a long time ago." He walked out, slamming the door, and left her gaping. It was an exit line to which she couldn't even begin to formulate a response. Folly: Night Visions Chapter 1: What Voyage This ... I must not dream for when I do I see the table set and a faltering crone at my place, her eyes burnt by cigarettes as she eats betrayal like a slice of meat. ... There was a theft. That much I am told. I was abandoned. That much I know. I was forced backward. I was forced forward. I was passed hand to hand like a bowl of fruit. Each night I am nailed into place and I forget who I am. ... What voyage this, little girl? This coming out of prison? God help-- This life after death? Anne Sexton, "Briar Rose (Sleeping Beauty)" November 3 "I want to see you, Scott, but if I don't get that autopsy report in, I'll have to explain it to Janet Reno herself." "That's ok--how late are you going to have to work?" "At least ten, maybe later." "Why don't I bring you dinner?" "Oh, you don't have to go to the trouble." "Eight ok?" "Sure," she said uncertainly. "You really don't need to ..." "It's never trouble to make your life easier." She smiled up at him, standing eagerly in front of her desk, and he grinned broadly, looking far too young for what she'd like to do to him. "All right." "Great." He backed out, still smiling. Ending conversations was the hardest part of a new relationship--not enough familiarity or distance to avoid awkwardness. She could do as Mulder did, skipping "hello" and "goodbye" altogether, but she suspected that people would react badly to a woman who omitted the usual courtesies, and shy Scott in particular would be hurt. She shook her head and returned to memorializing the once- painful secrets of the dead. At eight, Mulder had just dropped off his part of the report; she'd put it aside for when she needed more aggravation. He probably thought that imagining himself a witness to civil war and genocide was just as rough as slicing up little children to find that, yes, Ephesian's cult was physically and probably sexually abusive. Well, let his newly risen mother comfort him. She heard Mulder say something outside her door, then Scott's voice, strained. He knocked, and she called out for him to enter. Mulder must have walked away, because she couldn't see him in the hall as she looked out. Scott had made nachos--cheese, beans, beef, tomatoes, lettuce, homemade guacamole and mango salsa. The food was excellent, and she ate more than she'd intended, which she thought he might have planned--it was hard to keep track of how much finger food she'd eaten. Scott understood her desire to avoid the subject of her report, and so he talked about the analyses he'd been doing. There's only so much tech talk that two people can pretend to find interesting, however, and eventually they lapsed into silence. He spoke again when she was chasing the last bits of mango with a chip. "Dana, what's going on with you and Agent Mulder?" Always the title. Oddly, she felt no urge to tell him to be less formal in private conversation. "We're fighting again, I guess. Or not talking because we can't fight without being truly vicious. We're always fighting, really, it's only whether it hurts or not." "How do you feel?" "I'm pretty upset. Mostly at his vision of me. I'm supposed to be Tonto to his Lone Ranger through all time." "I don't understand--this is about his past lives? What roles are you supposed to have played?" "His commanding officer in the Civil War, his father in Poland...at least. Supposedly the connection is eternal." "Neither of those sound very sidekick-like to me, Dana. The story he told under hypnosis may have been centered around him, but that's because he was telling the story. I'm not saying I believe this, but his visions don't have you in unimportant or subordinate roles." She couldn't reply. Scott was obviously right. Not Tonto at all. Why hadn't she seen it that way? The likely answer was not one she cared to contemplate, especially with their relationship stuck in its latest hole. Not to mention the gentle, perceptive man who'd just pointed out the problem with her snit. Shaking her head, amazed at her own blindness, Scully took a deep breath. "You know, Scott, you're absolutely right. I'm letting other issues spill over into this case just as much as I think he is." "What can I do?" "You're doing a lot by being here. I appreciate it. I know I don't show it well." Scott smiled and leaned over the desk to kiss her on the cheek. "I'll get out of here and let you finish up. See you tomorrow?" "Count on it." They cleaned up and he left, carrying his Tupperware. She gave him a goofy little wave goodbye, smiling despite her resolve not to pretend with him. At this point, she had no access to whether she was leading him on, hiding her true feelings, or being completely open. * * * November 10 Mulder and Scully hadn't spoken more than three words in a row to one another in days. They'd fought over cases before--over his whacked-out theories, to be precise--and they'd fought when the real issue was between them. But it had rarely been so overt. Once again, the bridge they'd been building between them had broken in the middle, sending them down to crash into the rocks on either side of the abyss. Scully had no idea how to pull herself back together, much less reach out to him. It had always gotten better before. But that was because they kept burying the fundamental issues between them, and she was out of landfill space as the bodies kept piling up. He'd destroy himself without her, she suspected: he'd get killed by some shadow person or fired by Skinner or just come unhinged, unable to separate his wild theories from the advice of the Psychic Friends Network. Could she abandon him to that? Could she walk away and confirm his belief that he didn't deserve anyone to care about him? Hell, he *didn't*, not right now. But he *had*, and might again, and a person is not a toy to be abandoned when no longer fun or a coat to toss away when torn. It was just too bad that he'd never learned that lesson... So she went home every night to Scott and lost herself in him physically, urging him to exhaust her and keep her from thinking. She'd been in town for over a week, because the Bureau needed her to field lingering questions from Congresspeople and the media about her findings; she hadn't protested when Mulder left her to go after a sighting even he would normally have called a fraud. Scott had already learned how she liked to be touched, how to switch from gentle to firm in one indrawn breath. And he never commented on the fact that, near orgasm, she had to turn her head into the pillow and shut her eyes tight. He had yet to frighten her or fail to show up when he said he would. Knowing that she didn't need him gave her tremendous freedom to enjoy him. Scott's toothbrush replaced Mulder's in the holder she kept out; she'd shut Mulder's razor in a drawer on that first night Scott had stayed, unwilling to let him see the extent to which Mulder had marked his territory. She found Mulder's possessions whenever she turned around. Missy would have said that it was a message. Missy was always credulous that way. When Mulder came back but still didn't initiate any conversation, she decided that she had to think seriously about a transfer. Teaching at Quantico again would allow her regular hours--something important if she wanted to start a family. That night she began to dream again. The cellphone startled Mulder out of the near-doze that once again was his closest connection to sleep. "Yeah, Scully?" "Agent Mulder, this is Scott Pendrell." "What is it?" He was already reaching for his keys, checking his gun, noting that it was well after two. "Dana--she's having a nightmare--I can't wake her up!--She's calling for you." He could hear faint noises, Scully's moans of terror, in the background. "I've been trying to wake her for ten minutes, but nothing happens." The younger man sounded terrified. His lover was having night terrors, maybe an abduction flashback, uncontrollable and unknown. Of course he was terrified. What did he know? "She keeps twitching, like she's trying to move but can't." The anger boiled away from Mulder in a second and fear rushed in to replace it, squeezing his heart with a grip as strong as any poltergeist's. "I'm coming over. Put some clothes on. And hold the phone to her ear." The whimpers and stifled cries got louder, killing him by degrees. "Scully? Scully, I'm coming, I'll be right over. Scully, you're safe, come back to me." He kept up a monologue of meaningless reassurances throughout the drive to her place. He had no real awareness of what he was saying, only that she seemed a little calmer while the words poured forth. He used his key rather than waste time knocking, and was gratified to find that Pendrell had donned his T-shirt and pants before he arrived. Scully was wrapped in a sheet, shuddering. Pendrell had his arms around her, with one hand holding the phone to her ear. "You should leave," he told Pendrell. "I'm not playing Cyrano for you." An unmistakable flash of contempt crossed Pendrell's face. "Help her," he said. "We'll discuss this later." He didn't release Scully until Mulder was actually touching her. "Scully?" Still no real response, no exit from the dream. Her eyes were rolled back into her head, and her body shook as if it wanted to rip itself apart, just to get some respite. He heard the apartment door shut from miles away. He laid down beside her, keeping the sheet between them, and rocked her, telling her that he was here, that he wouldn't leave her, that she was safe, that he needed her. Lies and sins of omission, but they slowly began to work, and her tremors lessened. Scully was a lot more gullible in sleep, he thought as his voice kept taking its false oaths. He began to notice other things. Like the fact that she smelled like sex. These were the sheets on which she and Pendrell had--he choked the thought to death as if it were Pendrell himself, and fought the temptation to rip the sheet away from her, mostly because he wasn't sure what he would do next. She subsided into silence and finally responded physically to his presence by slipping her arms around him. "Ahab?" she asked in a child's voice, and awoke. Something was wrong. She was in bed with Mulder, very wrong. (Though reassuring, admittedly.) She hadn't *gone* to bed with Mulder. She let go of him, wanting to ask about Scott but unwilling to hurt Mulder with the name. "What happened to me?" she queried softly. "You had an attack of night terrors. Pendrell couldn't wake you up and you were screaming for me, so he called me. I heard you over the phone. How long has it been this bad?" "This... is the first time in a while." "What do you see?" "I don't remember," she said flatly. "Ok." Ok? How unlike Mulder. His way of apologizing, asking her to come back. A promise not to pry, just to support, the way she'd done for him so often. Or maybe, she thought wryly, she was reading a little too much into a word. She smiled at him, knowing he valued her rare smiles more than he'd ever admit. "Thanks." She felt him realize that he was still embracing her, and he let her go. Aware of her nudity, she edged away as carefully as she could. "Make some tea?" she suggested, hoping to get him out so that she could get dressed. "Sure." The relief in his voice almost masked the note of disappointment. Mulder walked, a little unsteadily, out to the kitchen, and she quickly dressed in sweats and ran a brush through her hair before going out to join him. She sat on the couch, allowing him to putter around, getting used to being in not-fighting mode again. He brought the mugs over to her, holding hers out so that she could take the handle, giving himself the discomfort of holding the hot ceramic directly. It was one of the genteel gestures that he probably didn't think she noticed, the kind that kept her coming back after the larger betrayals. "Why do you think I stay with you?" He sat on the other end of the couch and turned toward her as she curled her legs underneath herself, looking down into his mug before attempting an answer. "I wish I knew... No, I ask myself why, and all I can discern is that we're much better at finding the truth together. And that you know how much I need you. I know you don't believe in... Sarah, and the rest. I think you're afraid to. But I believe we were meant to be together, in an even greater journey than I'd thought before. I'm lost without you, and I let myself hope that you feel the same way. Why do you stay with me?" "Aside from being assigned by the Great Bird of the Galaxy to be your cosmic hall monitor?" She smiled again to show that she didn't mean to insult. "I do need to know what happened to me, what the shadow men are doing. And you'll find out if anyone can. It's more than that, though. You... burn, Mulder, you're on fire in every cell. I never realized how cold I was, how cold my life was, until I met you. Every time you leave I never know if I'll see you again and I'm so afraid. So freezing back is tempting and thawing out hurts like hell every time, I'll never get used to it, but I'll never give it up if you leave me a choice." He leaned forward, eyes intent. "And are you afraid of being burned?" Some of the old teasing seductiveness was in his voice-- paradoxically, it was a signal to ignore what was passing between them. She shook her head. Not afraid, terrified beyond comprehension and longing, too. The image of fire was in her head now, and she thought of the sugary Italian almond cookies she loved to eat. They came wrapped in pastel scraps of paper, and if you lit the wrappers with a match they flared and soared up into the air, rising on the heated air they generated, burning and flying until there was nothing left, not even ash. Beautiful to watch. Undoubtedly less pleasant to be. Mulder saw something in her face and cleared his throat. "Want me to stay on the couch?" "No, I think I'll be all right now." He wanted to ask to stay, she thought, but they were a little too raw still for that. "I'm just a phone call away." She nodded. He reached out his hand and she clasped it firmly. They sat on the couch, letting the tea cool, just holding hands until he was ready to leave. The door clicked shut behind him, and Scully sagged down on the couch. She'd thought that dating Scott would allow her to talk to someone, but she couldn't tell either of them what she'd dreamed. It started normally, as her nightmares went. Strapped down, she waited in terror for the masked and gowned figures to start working on her again. She'd never told Mulder that green hospital scrubs still made her nauseous; since she'd begun dreaming (remembering?), she had to close her eyes when she was putting them on to do autopsies. But the dream changed, and she was standing with the doctors, scalpel poised over the still form of Sullivan Biddle. His eyes pleaded with her for release. She couldn't control her limbs, and she made the first incision. Blood welled, thick and sluggish. And then in a flash she *was* Sullivan Biddle, feeling her heart's blood pumping out, flat on the surgical table but also feeling the grass and mud of the battlefield under her back. Flash. Mulder was leaning over her. She thought he was going to release her, but instead he smirked and pulled the strap over her chest painfully tighter. He crushed her mouth with his, breathing sweet cigarette smoke into her lungs, stealing her oxygen for himself like the fire that he was. Flash. Back to standing with the doctors, poised to inject 8- year-old Samantha Mulder with something that glowed green in her syringe. "He couldn't save me," the girl said. "He won't save you." Filled with rage, she jabbed the child savagely. Samantha began to convulse, and the other doctors turned away, pulling off their gloves and starting to make conversation. Then Bill Mulder was in the room, holding Samantha down. Taking off her clothes and violating her twitching body with a force that Scully felt in her bones. She couldn't move, couldn't scream at him to stop. And in the middle, Samantha became Missy, whimpering. Flash. She was Bill Mulder, beating 12-year-old Fox, throwing him against a wall. She heard his ulna snap and was terribly aroused. "It's your fault!" s/he screamed, and Fox nodded through his tears, agreeing. Flash. She was herself, strapped down again. Scott stood above her, microchip fixed in the tongs he held above her throat. "I can't save you," he said. "He won't save you." Flash. An adult Mulder stood above her, tears in his eyes. He opened his mouth to speak but his face began to bulge horribly, as if insects were crawling underneath, and the skin distorted and flowed until he was Ahab. Daddy. And then her father started to rot away before her eyes, maggots frothing to the surface and boiling over the grinning corpse. Unspeakable things dropped to the gurney and the sheet that covered her. "Starbuck," the maggots hummed in a single, familiar voice. She could not move. She could not scream. She could not breathe. That was when God had granted her the gift of wakefulness. Sitting now on the couch, reliving, she prayed that He would not allow these dreams again. They'd been infrequent, and less frightening, of late. This was the worst one ever. Neither she nor Mulder came off very well. Was she really that angry at him? At Samantha, for getting taken and making Mulder what he was? She rocked herself back and forth, clutching a throw pillow. Folly: Night Visions Chapter 2: Some Work To Do It was not right, it was wrong. But often we all do wrong. ... These thoughts are depressing I know. They are depressing, I wish I was more cheerful, it is more pleasant, Also it is a duty, we should smile as well as submitting To the purpose of One Above who is experimenting With various mixtures of human character which goes best, All is interesting for him it is exciting, but not for us. There I go again. Smile, smile, and get some work to do Then you will be practically unconscious without positively having to go. Stevie Smith, "Thoughts about the Person from Porlock" November 11 At work the next day, Mulder didn't comment overtly on her washed- out appearance, but he was completely solicitous. He even submitted without protest to a cell sample from his smallpox scar and a blood sample for good measure. She wasn't above exploiting his tenderness to get a needle into him. Scully took the samples to the lab and left them on Scott's desk, grateful that he was off somewhere, giving her a reprieve from conversation. She had dressed carefully, in a suit that hid her figure without being obviously dowdy. An exacting makeup job completed the look; no one else would know that she'd spent the night on her couch, shuddering. There was a new case waiting for them. Over the past few months, the bodies of five little girls had been found in Rock Creek Park. They had been abducted from various parts of the Washington Metro area, kept alive for a night--unfed, but unmolested--then killed with a blunt instrument. The agents assigned to the case had asked for Spooky Mulder's help, and she was supposed to take another look at the forensic evidence. She spent the morning going over the file, knowing that she should run down to see Scott, but incapable of standing up to do so. They'd scheduled a lunch meeting with Agents Insolia and Kelly. More little kids. She was grateful for her soul, of course, that it never got any easier. Still she wished that the images didn't penetrate quite so easily. That she could make babies instead of destroying them. As always, it was worse for Mulder, his singular achievement to suffer every memory not over and over but always. Had she been at Calvary to see Christ crucified, she'd have seen Mulder's eyes on the man nailed to the cross. She reflected that it was easier to die for human sins than to live with them, really. That's the tragedy and the mystery of the Resurrection; that's what had made their job into the calling it was. They went to a local diner with Insolia and Kelly. She sat next to Mulder and across from Insolia, a man with a friendly face, jet-black hair, and a nose almost as prominent as Mulder's, though a tad smoother. Kelly was a slighter, blond man about her age. While they waited for lunch to arrive and made small talk, she rested her hands on her knees, relaxing a little. Mulder placed his left hand on her right, lacing his fingers in hers. She had to stare down at the yellow plastic tabletop, blinking back tears. She'd missed his touch, and last night her nerves were buzzing far too much to appreciate it. Her salad arrived along with the others' more substantial lunches, and she pulled her hand out from under his to pick up her fork, but almost missed it when he left his hand on her now-unprotected knee. A stream of heat ran up her leg to her stomach. Had she said he burned? She'd had no idea. Scully mustered all the self-control she'd ever learned and took a forkful of salad. She put it in her mouth ... and he moved his hand a millimeter up, no more. She nearly bit into the fork. Insolia was asking something ... Oh. Whether she wanted to look at the latest victim today. She nodded. Mulder's hand moved another millimeter. Coherent thought was gone, and incoherent thought was walking out the door, waving goodbye. This had to be a delusion brought on by lack of sleep. She didn't scream or make a scene, even though her body was tingling in the pleasantly agonizing way she'd heretofore associated only with blood loss. She felt as if her nerves had all migrated to the stretch of skin between her thighs and her stomach. Every time she managed to react normally, he moved up, or maybe she just thought he did. *He* was holding up his side of the conversation, and most of hers, eating and asking questions. When everyone else had eaten and she'd messed up her plate some, she glanced down surreptitiously. His hand was halfway up her thigh, fingers splayed over the curve of her leg so that if she had closed her legs she would have trapped them. He'd seen her in skirts that showed more skin than what he was touching, and yet she'd never been so turned on. Bastard. He let her go just in time to stand up. Fortunately, as the one on the inside, she had a little extra time to strengthen her legs and slide out of the booth as if she'd just had a business lunch. * * * She didn't say a word to him until they were driving back. Visibly steeling herself, she tried: "Mulder, what happened there?" "What's the matter, Scully? Weren't you paying attention?" He smirked. "Mulder ..." "You agreed to redo the autopsy of Pamela Burnside, the latest victim, and then we're checking out the crime scene." She made a frustrated noise and stared out the window. Sometimes, he reflected, not being able to talk about what was on their minds was a good thing. Yes, Fox Mulder had stepped up to the plate. He didn't plan to fight fair and he knew he might lose, probably deserved to lose, but at least now he'd know. And if she decided that Pendrell was the one, he might even survive it. As long as she didn't leave him. He was pretty sure that she wouldn't. Some things she could refuse him, but with others rationality and reasonability failed her. Luckily for him. In a way, finding out about their past lives had been liberating. It meant that he could take a chance. She'd been there for him before. This time, their relationship actually gave them a chance to see what they could learn as a couple. Right now, for example, he wanted to learn what it was like to take her down to the basement and have her up against a file cabinet. He had to swerve to miss a pedestrian--Scully didn't even notice--and resolutely pushed away that train of thought. He was inordinately pleased with himself. He was *not* going to let himself assume that it would all fall apart. * * * What could she say to him? To them? She was supposed to be reviewing her autopsy notes, but it was already three and she *had* to go talk to Scott before they went out. Every second would increase the worry and pain he must be feeling. The worst part was that he'd be understanding. Not like Mulder, who'd get vindictive and cruel. Ahab's voice spurred her on, and she headed for Scott's lab. Scott looked up as she opened the door, worry and relief scudding across his face like clouds. He rose, holding the computer disk he'd been about to insert into his disk drive... and dropped it to the floor. "I'm sorry," she said, having no idea what was on her face, though she thought it might be pity. The Ice Queen. Wouldn't being that mythical person be easier? He gulped and nodded, looking younger than ever. "I can't--" he pushed past her, hurrying down the hallway toward some more private place. Now she was crying too, standing stupidly in his office where anyone could come in and see. She took deep breaths, struggling for control. Before she left, she bent to pick up the disk he'd dropped. "FWM results," it said. After the first analyses, they'd acquired the necessary equipment to do the work in-house, so the results came in quickly. Scott must have rushed this one even more than usual. She thought that she'd better take it, at least for a little while. Scully strode back to their basement enclave and knocked smartly on Mulder's door. "Come on," she told him. "We've got a crime scene to visit." "You ok?" he asked in the elevator. "I'm fine, Mulder." "Yeah, Scully, you're always fine." "Stow it, Mulder, I'm not in the mood." "What mood are you in?" Not even trying to hide the hope underneath the leer. "Pray that you don't find out." He pouted prettily all the way to the crime scene at the edge of Rock Creek Park, but she pretended not to notice. She'd had lots of practice. The place where Pamela Burnside had been found two days before was covered with new-fallen leaves. There was no real chance of an investigator finding anything new. Except for Spooky Mulder. Mulder stared at the photos of the girl, lying like a pile of rags where she'd been found, about 20 yards from one of the riding and walking trails that snaked through the park. Tossed like garbage. No different to whoever dumped her than an empty syringe or soda can. "He did it here, Scully." "There's no evidence of that, and it would increase the risks that someone would overhear. Why do you think that?" "When you litter, you leave something where it's useless to you to take it any further. That's what he's done. He loses interest immediately after the kill. He's still functioning fairly well, so he goes somewhere pretty isolated where the evidence will tend to blow away, but where she'll be found quickly. And when he's done he just walks away." "That's an elaboration, not an explanation." "Look at how she's lying ... He takes, he drops." "Sure it's a he? No molestation. Women serial killers are more likely to go after children." "It's a he. The women who kill children are neat. They'd want the victims to be found in more dignified ways." "Sexist." "How about, I just know it's a man?" "Politically correct but annoying as hell. Actually, that's not a bad description of you in general." They drove back to the Bureau so that she could start going over the autopsy reports. She was halfway out of Mulder's office when his voice stopped her. "Scully?" The sound was husky, laden with promise. Her skin seemed to tighten around her. "Yes?" she asked, not looking back at him. "Are you doing anything tonight?" She shrugged. "Reading journals." "Would you like to see *Hamlet*? It's at Ford's Theater, only 20 feet up and 100 yards over. Curtain's at eight; we could grab a bite first." She turned to stare at him. He sighed. "The performance is supposed to be excellent. Consider your company an early birthday present for me." Scully considered her options. He clearly didn't want to leave her alone to think, but they wouldn't have to talk, either. "Sure, why not?" "Scully, you know how I hate it when you get so enthusiastic." It was the best *Hamlet* she'd ever seen, even without Mel Gibson. The director had combined several different folios and come up with an easy-to-follow but intense performance. At the intermission, they stayed in their seats rather than fight the crowds buying five-dollar sodas in the lobby. "Do you think Ophelia slept with Hamlet before the play starts?" Mulder asked. "I'm not sure it matters. Love can be just as intense when there's no physical release--maybe even more intense, for a young girl." "I never have understood what he sees in her--just a child." "Well, we see her in a bad light--through his eyes, when she's already become a distraction. Look at the poetry he wrote her: 'Doubt that the stars are fire, Doubt truth to be a liar, But never doubt I love.' She'd have to know something about the science of the day for that to be appropriately romantic." "Ophelia, the scientist?" he said dubiously. "So when he wrote that, was he lying then, or later, when he says that he did love her once?" "That doesn't matter either. Not to a dead girl." He looked away pensively. "She tried to follow him into his own personal nightmare, and it broke her." "There's no textual evidence for that," she said sharply. "He pushed her away, and he was the most important thing in her world, and then he killed her father. Even at a play, Mulder, you cannot stop pushing people away 'for their own good' when the rejection is what hurts." "Excuse me? We were talking about Hamlet." "Every generation rewrites Shakespeare and picks a favorite play. *Hamlet* was thought to be a footnote in the Bard's career not a hundred years ago. Part of the reason that Shakespeare has lasted so long is that the plays can be read so many different ways; they contain multiple available interpretations. That you and I would see it through the lens of our experiences, just as everyone else does, is to be expected." She tilted her head closer to him. "Don't look so surprised. Did you think I just took physics in college?" "Well... yes, actually." Someone behind them chuckled. They swiveled their heads in unison to see a silver-haired matron beaming at them. "I am so sorry," she said with an English accent. "I didn't mean to interrupt." Mulder smiled up at her, and Scully saw his charm working, nearly as visible as a beam of light. "That's all right," he said. "I was losing anyway." Scully watched in amazement as he engaged the woman in a conversation about American versus English actors playing Shakespeare, drawing her out and making her laugh. This was part of Mulder's seduction, in a way: he was showing her what a nice guy he could be when he tried. It was no surprise that his method didn't involve her directly. He could mix distance and closeness so aggravatingly well. When the play was over, they went out to the lobby and saw that it had started to rain. They stood on line to get their coats, listening to Washington's elites praise the performance. He insisted on holding her coat for her. As he settled it around her shoulders, she felt his breath in her ear and had to close her eyes. If he had asked her to come home with him right then, she would have. For a second, she even thought she heard the words. She stood transfixed, waiting for him to pull back. She breathed him into her lungs like fallout. There was no cure for him. And as he sighed and let her go, she realized an amazing thing. What was between them was impossible to fathom, and she might well come to hate him, or it could even fade away. But he'd given her a perfect night, a perfect moment, and for that a part of her would always be his, no matter what. She opened her eyes, and the bright warm lobby filled with happy people and the night beyond the glass doors like a wet black sheet were so *real* and complete that she thought she might disintegrate. Mulder stepped around her and took her hand. They ran out into the rain and sprinted across the street, heading for the after-hours entrance to the parking garage. Staying dry was hopeless, though, and Mulder slowed down and suddenly threw his hands into the sky, laughing. "What is it?" She was laughing, too, just from proximity. "I was hoping that if the Reticulans are watching, they're giving us the night off." "I wonder if they like *Hamlet*," she said as she looked toward the invisible stars, rain stinging her eyes. "I'm sure it's even better in the original Reticulan." He took off at a run again. Scully drove home smiling. When she entered her apartment, she quickly checked for intruders and then strode purposefully into the bathroom. Her hands went up to her ear, pulling at the tiny bullet-back of her earring. She carefully put the jewelry in the box on her bathroom windowsill before she began to lean over the toilet. Then she stopped. No, not tonight. She refused to let the nausea win this time. She rubbed a hand over her recalcitrant stomach to reinforce the command. She'd eaten plenty at dinner, enough to really reassure Mulder--he got such a kick out of watching her eat something artery-clogging--and she still felt overfull, four hours later. So little appealed to her these days, so little even stayed down, that she had resolved to enjoy herself. Eating healthily seemed hubristic; she couldn't believe that she'd actually live to an age where a healthy diet mattered. Mulder didn't see the change in her, just as he deliberately didn't see that she went to the doctor for cancer screenings as often as she could without being labelled a hypochondriac. She was almost grateful that he hadn't seeped into every corner of her life; at the same time, she resented the fact that he could suffocate her with concern one moment, then disappear when she really needed to lean on him. In any event, she had no desire to invite him into her bathroom to get another look at dinner. This, at least, she could do alone, without needing him. She smiled involuntarily. Needing Mulder. If he really was trying to seduce her, she knew better than to think that she could resist for long. Say, about ten seconds. If she were in a bad mood. The only problem was that she wasn't sure what would be left of her, afterwards. Folly: Night Visions Chapter 3: I Know What I Know I know what I know. ... The smell of the earth is good. It is apparent that there is no death. But what does that signify? Not only under ground are the brains of men Eaten by maggots. Life in itself Is nothing, An empty cup, a flight of uncarpeted stairs. Edna St. Vincent Millay, "Spring" November 12 The next morning, Mulder bounced into the office in full little-boy mode, alive and impossibly cheerful and ready to find another serial killer. Scully was staring at her laptop as if it had betrayed her worse than he ever had. "Brought you an almond croissant," he said. "I know, calories, but I got you fresh O.J. to balance it out." She cringed. He set the bag down on his desk, nearly missing the surface, and come over to her hesitantly. "What's wrong?" "Why do you think Samantha's name was over yours on that file? If they're building a library of catalogued people, why skip you?" He frowned. Of all the things he feared that she'd say, that hadn't made the list. "I don't know. What is it, Scully?" "Putting your name on was a mistake in the first place, I think. And waste not, want not." "Scully--" Frustration swelled in his voice. It wasn't like Scully to be so mysterious about something that wasn't personal. "You didn't need a genetic marker like us, like everyone else we've gotten samples from so far. You know what's pumping through your veins, shedding when you scratch your head, dying and being born with every breath?" He shook his head, already dreading the answer. This was the hollow, squeezed feeling of running outside, knowing that she was gone but needing to look to confirm the disaster. "You were looking for alien-human hybrids. Look no further." She laughed. The noise was like a metal grater scraping against his flesh. "Talk about the mote in your neighbor's eye and the beam in your own ... or in this case, the DNA. "Cells with six base pairs, Mulder. Not trace branched DNA, but in all the blood and skin you gave me. Well, now you know why They don't just kill you." Scully wouldn't look up, staring at the screen as if, for once, disbelief and distrust would just erase what made her so uncomfortable. She was shivering. He stumbled backwards, then turned and ran from the room. * * * Eventually, she calmed enough to call Insolia and Kelly to tell them that there'd been an emergency--an interruption in Mrs. Mulder's recovery-- so that they couldn't work on the case that day. Then she called both of them in sick, not caring how the gossip would fly. She went home and ate a pint of ice cream, then threw it up. Called his cellphone, his home phone, ate some more, lost it too, repeated the process. She stopped eating when she realized that she was going to be too sick to help him if--no, dammit, when--he did turn up. She waited until she could wait no longer. * * * He sat alone in the dark again. Holding his gun as close as a woman, as he'd held it then. This time, there was no Melissa ... of any description... to come for him. It would be so easy. Thwart their plans in a way he'd never suspected possible. How ironic that it had been Scully and Pendrell who'd given him the key to the horrible, beautiful truth. He'd been holding the gun for so long that it was as warm as the rest of him. It was the most comfort he could get. He really would have told her that afternoon. He'd even-- feeling stupid and giddy and, face it, wonderful--practiced his little speech in his apartment, getting dressed. Now how would that speech go? "Hey, Scully, what say you dump that boring human boy and let's go make gray-skinned babies." "Got any alien in you? No? Want one?" Propping his elbows on his knees, he raised the gun to his lips. His mouth eased open a fraction, and he tasted metal, salty and pungent as blood. It was erotic. How far would he go? Just far enough to make it feel better, he promised himself. They'd sit together quietly until he was tired enough to escape to the nightmares. He heard her turn the key in the lock, but he couldn't make himself move, not even to look at her. She gasped, and then tackled him, driving his arms to one side and the gun with them. It cracked against the side of his mouth and split his lip as it left, like a goodbye kiss. Scully lay heavily across his knees, propped up by his side-skewed arms. Her face turned up to his, a perfect mask until she blinked and her wet eyes overflowed. "What do you want from me?" he whispered. She closed her eyes, pushing the tears down her face, and scrambled awkwardly to her feet, then knelt between his parted legs. Grabbing the gun, her right hand firmly over his, she raised it to place the muzzle under her chin, pushing up until it almost prevented her from breathing. She bowed her head into his chest and he leaned on her, chin buried in her hair, as she jammed the gun further into the soft flesh under her jaw. Her finger covered his on the trigger. He felt her words against his heart. "It's a good gun, Mulder. One bullet would fix it ... Don't leave me alone again." And then the roar of the ocean in her head obscured all thought. They froze like that. His hand cramped in its unnatural position between them. Twice, he felt it begin to convulse and suppressed the spasm; once, her finger twitched on his, but he kept it rigid, even as he could not stop grinding the gun against her. Finally, he snapped and threw the gun at the far wall. He wrapped his freed hand around her neck and crushed her to him. He was painfully aroused. he wondered. He didn't deserve this loyalty, this release. It was too much, she asked too much of him, to be worthy of that. He panted raggedly until he could ask her, "What the hell was that?" She rose from her knees to sit beside him, as hunched and inward- turning as he. "I guess we decided to keep trying." "Scully?" No motion, but he felt her stare nonetheless. "Do you wish I... hadn't stopped?" "I don't know," she said, barely audible. "I don't think I've known for ages." He reached over to take her chin in his hand, tilting it up to examine her bruising flesh. "That's going to look bad in the morning." "Coming from you, Mulder, I'll consider it a lovebite." His eyes filled with bitterness. He'd broken her so well that she didn't even know what kind of love she should be looking for. After an eternity, he broke the silence. "Scully, why did they make me a monster?" "You're not a monster. You're the same person you were yesterday." "If you think you're reassuring me, you've overlooked the fact that I didn't like myself that much yesterday." "You need reassurance?" Scully stared into his eyes, crumpled in pain, as beautiful and dead as petrified wood, and slipped back into her former position, hands on his knees, kneeling between his legs. He wasn't seeing her. She reached for his belt, unbuckled it, and was working on the button of his pants before he reacted. "Stop." "It's what you wanted." "Not now." "Now more than ever." "Do you really think that a good blow job will restore my desire to live? You can't be *that* good, Scully, even if you are Catholic." She reared back, stunned by how Mulder always knew where best to insert the knife. If not for his coffee table, she would have fallen over backwards and completed the humiliation. Instead, she used the table to regain her footing. He stared at her, eyes glittering with pain transmuted into rage. One more try. "Let me help." "What would Pendrell say?" "We're not together anymore." "And how long would I last, then? I admit it appears that I'm slightly more exotic, but believe me, it doesn't show up in bed. And you know I'm used to those girls in the movies, Scully. You make a better FBI agent than you would a porn star." The pain was so great that it was almost not recognizable as pain; it was more like living. She backed toward the door, watching for any chink in his armor of anger that would allow her to go back to him, hating herself more with each second of hope. "Get out, Scully. Desperation is unbecoming." Choking, she fumbled with the door and left. She made it all of four steps from his apartment door before she collapsed against the wall and slid to the floor, sobbing. After four years he had what he wanted. It wasn't about sex, though obviously that was part of it. It was about dominion. She was like a conquered province, and not the dearest of his possessions. Now she had to decide whether to accept, obey, and be ignored, the battle over, or whether to rebel and choose punishment as the price of his attention. She might have a weapon, a doomsday device. Mutual assured destruction. She heard a familiar, silky voice in her head, chiding: . Better he had pulled the trigger. The door to apartment 40 opened and a middle-aged man came out. "Are you ok, miss? Can I call someone for you?" Like a careful Washingtonian, he stayed close to his door, away from her, while offering to help. She sucked in a deep breath and shook her head. Embarrassment gave her the strength to stand, cursing the taupe pumps that she couldn't get correctly underneath her. "Sorry," she managed. "I'm leaving." Not sobbing, exactly, but breathing with a loud hitch at the end and crying at the same time. She took a few steps toward the elevator, and Mulder opened his door and came into the hall. "Come back, Scully." She froze. The neighbor looked from one to the other, obviously hoping that his civic duty was done. "Please, Scully, not in the hall." Mulder leant against the wall as if he needed it as much as she did. Bound together in their weaknesses. He held out his hand, and she moved to its treacherous shelter as he guided her back inside. The click of the neighbor's door sounded like a message: you're on your own here. "I'm so sorry," he said, closing the door and surrounding her with his arms. "I don't want to take you down with me." "Too late," she told his shirt. "I can't stand it that it's too late. If you left, I could imagine that you were fine." "Don't pretend. You owe me that." "I owe you everything, Scully." He drew her back to that hateful couch and let her cry herself to sleep in his arms, stroking her hair, apologizing, apologizing. Telling her she was wonderful, perfect, too good for him. Scully dreamed that Mulder smiled at her and stuck his hand into her chest. He pulled out a chunk of her heart, hand covered with her shrieking blood. Jolting awake, she thought that her subconscious was being a tad too obvious. It was effective in destroying her sleep nonetheless. She smelled cigarette smoke-- --and opened her eyes. Cancerman was leaning against the kitchen door, smiling that hateful smile. Not a dream. "Mulder!" Her hand went under the sofa pillow, searching for his gun. No luck. She was sure it was somewhere by the couch. Mulder woke and immediately rolled over her. He shot across the room, slamming Cancerman against the wall. "What are you doing here, you sick fuck?" "Temper, Fox. I just wanted to welcome Agent Scully to the family." "What do you know about what was done to my genes?" "I'm not sure I know what you mean." "Why was it done?" "To see what would happen. You really haven't taken advantage of your... abilities. Surprising for a man who wants to believe." "What abilities?" "Here," the smoker said, and freed a hand to push into his jacket pocket. He came out with a small vial. Mulder grabbed it away from him and held it up; in the poor light, it was impossible to tell what was inside, but it was something liquid. "Open the doors of perception, son. Your answers--your destiny--are all right here. All you need to do is reach out." "Mulder, he's just jerking your chain," Scully interrupted. She'd retrieved her gun from the floor, underneath her jacket. "Get away from him so I can get a clear shot." "What is this? What do you *want* from me?" Cancerman just stared at Mulder. "That would be telling." Mulder tightened his grip. "You might find more by looking in yourself than by threatening me. Now let me go or Agent Scully will receive a visit from colleagues of mine I'm sure you'll regret." He let Cancerman loose as if the older man were radioactive. "Anyone touches Scully and they'll never find your body." Cancerman grunted contemptuously. "I can't imagine that's a trade you're willing to make." He brushed past Mulder and walked to the door. "You should consider a burglar alarm, Fox. I'd hate to interrupt a more... intimate moment." He left them staring at each other. "We've really gone down the rabbit hole this time, haven't we?" he asked. "Got any of that cake that makes you taller?" His lips twitched, but if he started laughing it could only end in hysteria. "I don't know that I want any more of you on this couch." He returned to her, shifting his weight over her easily to rest between her and the pillows and settling the blanket over them. "My circuit breakers are blown. I can't react anymore. Can we just sleep?" She nodded, knowing he'd feel it, and stared out into the room. He settled over her like a heavy winter coat. God, she might as well be Mulder, telling himself that Dad really did love him. That he'd deserved it, and anyway it hadn't really been that bad, and Dad was sorry. Mulder *was* sorry, she believed that. And he needed her and she'd always come through for him before; was it his fault that he kept relying on that? How could she leave when it was as bad as it had ever been? Finally the din in her head died down and sleep took her again. Folly: Night Visions Chapter 4: The Problem of Complicity What of my dream--stench, smudge, and fragments? And behind it all a morning shadow, like guilt, strives. .... Did I dream of six kitten-heads staring all night at me? All try to say something--still now trying By daylight? Their blood inexhaustibly drips. Did I wake With guilt? .... Sometime we must probe more deeply the problem of complicity. Is civilization possible without it? Robert Penn Warren, "Dream, Dump-heap, and Civilization" October 13 The bray of an alarm clock woke them at 7:30. Scully groaned, realizing how she ached from sleeping on a narrow slice of couch, then hit out blindly at the source of the noise. Ultimately, she managed to smack it off of Mulder's coffee table, but it was too late--she was awake. "Your alarm's in the living room?" she asked, blinking sleepily. "Wouldn't do much good in the bedroom," the warm lump behind her replied. She swung her legs over the side of the couch and propped her head in her hand, considering. She did have an emergency suit in the car, along with her ever-packed bag of travel-size cosmetics. Never can tell with the X-Files when you're going to end up on a plane to nowhere. Or when you're going to crack entirely. Her mouth felt like her mood, raw and ugly. "Gotta go to the car." She'd slept in her hose, so all she had to do was reattach her pumps and grab her jacket and gun, puddled on the floor by the couch. She staggered out, managing to avoid human contact, and returned with a chilly bag and suit to find Mulder sniffing at the small glass vial. He held it out towards her as she entered. "It smells like licorice, Scully. What do you think it could be?" "Until we know, you should keep the cap on," she said with some asperity. "Did you have any reaction to smelling it?" "Aside from a flashback to Halloweens past, nothing," he said and put it down, heading for the kitchen. She knelt by the coffee table and picked up this new piece of the puzzle. The liquid had a faint brown tinge; it moved sluggishly as she tilted the vial, sticking to the sides rather than subsiding quickly like water. There wasn't much of it; not enough to do a full range of tests. That was probably a boon, she considered. Mulder was likely to want to try to ingest it if there was any left over, even if they didn't figure out what it was. Maybe particularly if it remained unknown after analysis. "You know, Scully, it's funny," Mulder ruminated as he began to make coffee. He was speaking loudly enough that his voice carried to where she was. "Last night-- well, you were there. But I set the alarm clock all the same, because we scheduled a 9 am meeting. Power of habit." "I consider that a sign of hope," she told him. "Can I shower?" "Sure, just don't destroy my razor." "Brought my own." She pocketed the vial--no use leading him into temptation--and walked into the small hallway between living room and kitchen and held her bag up for him to see. "Why Scully, I didn't know you planned this." He raised his eyebrows at her. Unable to form a response that would be neither hurtful nor stupidly vulnerable, she beat a coward's path to the bathroom. Despite taking the first shower, Scully was still ready after Mulder. She fixed her hair and makeup in his bedroom--someone ought to use it, after all--and returned to the living room to find him staring out the window as if he was receiving messages from aliens. Which might not be too far off, these days. "Mulder." He turned away from the window, which was blurred and sticky from old tape, as unreliable as her vision when it came to him. He had the non- look on his face: the blankness of thorough arrogance. Or was it deep, unconsolable hurt? She couldn't tell and doubted he could either. "It's not terribly comfortable being the person who cares more in a relationship" "but it does have its certainties. I need to know that you won't go running off to anyone else because you're afraid of what happened between us. I'm not asking you for a commitment, just time." He grimaced. "A relationship? Sounds sterile, Scully." "That's your decision, too. I'm--" and there was a break, like a fracture of the eggshell smoothness that was Dana Scully, in her voice. "I'm so tired. Tell me this one thing and we'll go back to not talking about it." Mulder closed the distance between them and embraced her. "Where else would I go? You're the only one I... trust." Oh, how that hesitation would torment her. She doubted he even knew she noticed it, or admitted to himself that he could control her with such silences. She allowed herself to soften into him, soaking up the contact as if it could be stored for later use. * * * They took his car to the next site. Mulder drove silently until they were nearly to the park. "What do you think Cancerman meant?" he asked without introduction. "Nothing. He meant nothing. Remember deceive, inveigle, obfuscate?" "Why would they do it if there was no point?" "There may have been a point, but it failed. You're undoubtedly at the ends of various bell curves of human traits, but no fundamental change was worked on you." "What if what they wanted was the ends of the bell curves? Not some easily-recognized hybrid, but something that could integrate into society without notice, without toxicity." Dryly: "That would imply a greater degree of control over your actions that they have, to date, achieved. And I would hardly call you unnoticeable." He grinned a little at that. "You mean they wouldn't let me be a renegade if that were true? There could be others in my situation, Scully. I'm willing to share the spotlight." "I can't exclude possibilities at the moment. But genes alone are meaningless, Mulder, the important aspect is their expression, which is in part controlled by environment. To take an obvious example, your genes enabled you to reach a variety of heights; with different nutrition and other environmental stressors, your identical genes could have produced a much shorter person. DNA doesn't make a whit of difference if the affected genes were never expressed. Whoever did this could have defeated themselves with subtlety if they made you a recessive, or failed to provide the relevant stimuli. My suggestion is a full range of diagnostic tests, focusing on the brain, where any structural differences might have been overlooked. I've seen most of your other parts, and nothing in your extensive hospitalization record suggests easily ascertainable differences." "Recessives... recessive genes are expressed when a recessive mates with another recessive." "A quarter of the time, yes. Half of the offspring are also recessive, and one quarter don't carry the recessive gene at all." "I'm going to get a vasectomy, Scully." The crunch of gravel signaled that they'd entered the parking lot near the next crime scene. "That's premature, Mulder." "What do you think the chances are that any children of mine wouldn't be born in a lab or used as hostages against--against me?" She couldn't answer. "I'm going to have the boys analyze whatever it is that Cancerman gave me," he said after some silence. "If it's supposed to trigger something latent...is that even possible?" Scully looked out the window, wanting to be able to tell him a simple truth, or a simple lie. "I can't speculate ahead of data. But some psychoactive drugs can induce disorders that, as far as anyone knows, wouldn't have appeared without the drugs. Not just the standard tardive dyskinesia--pseudo-Parkinson's--and other side effects from psychotropics; Prozac and other MAOI inhibitors have been known to trigger manic depression in people with family histories of the disorder who hadn't manifested it before medication. If you're asking whether some drugs can trigger catastrophic changes in brain chemistry, I suppose I'd have to say yes. I'f you're asking what this particular drug will do to *your* brain, about whose state I will not comment further--Mulder, I haven't the foggiest clue." The crime scene was practically a relief. * * * Wading through fallen leaves and past yellow tape again, Scully saw nothing new. "This is a week old, Mulder. What are we looking for?" "I don't know ..." He picked up a stick and began absently turning over clumps of leaves, watching bugs scurry away. "Something's here." He swung the stick as if it were some kind of dowsing rod and stopped with it pointing at the base of a tree. "Agents Scully and Mulder?" She heard Insolia's voice from the direction of the parking lot. "Over here!" she called back. Mulder carefully lifted away the leaves, revealing a tiny purple plastic umbrella. "What's that?" "Oswald Cobblepot," he breathed. "He said his name was Oswald Cobblepot." "That's a movie character..." she said uncertainly. "Yes," Kelly interrupted, coming to stand beside her. "Batman Returns, right? My kids loved it... he's the Penguin." "He steals children... the first-born," Scully continued. "Like all the victims," Kelly confirmed. "This is an action figure's umbrella. He gave her the toy to keep her quiet," Mulder spoke as if no one else were there. He pulled a pair of latex gloves from his coat pocket and, protected, reached for the tiny toy. "We should find the whole toy somewhere around here." Kelly wordlessly produced an evidence bag, watching Mulder with a mixture of awe and fear. "He hates little girls because they have everything. They have the future, they have people fawning over them, giving them nice things... He picked the ones who followed when he gave them toys. He likes tricking them, punishing them through the goodies they've come to expect. Ah, he hates them so... The world is red..." He shuddered. Kelly looked at him curiously. As if he were a museum display, or maybe a Magic 8-Ball. "But he doesn't molest them." "He wants to." Mulder was not seeing the agents in front of him. "But he won't give in to them, their taunting, their begging. He might give in soon, though. He's accelerating. Starting to think he's invincible, so he can afford to enjoy himself, she won't be able to change his mind... he'll take a really pretty one next... pretty as pie, pretty enough to eat..." Scully reached up to put her hand on his shoulder, willing him to become more coherent and to leave the killer's mind to God. She didn't understand how he entered it so fully, but at this point he might rather plunge into a human monster's mind than deal with himself. He leaned against her, almost imperceptibly, and came back to her. "How did you know that?" she demanded as they watched the techs sweep for the action figure. At the other dump sites, they were sifting the leaves for anything similar. Her trenchcoat was not quite enough to keep her warm. "That's why they call me Spooky." "Mulder, they call you Spooky because you put together fragments other people don't consider important. This goes beyond that--there were no fragments until you waved your magic wand." "I don't know how I knew." The fear in his eyes made her want to embrace him in front of all their colleagues. "Because I'm a monster myself? I know how he feels, how he hurts, how he desires. It could be me, Scully." She shoved him, hard, so that he stumbled back into a tree. "Don't say that! It could never be you! I learned that last year. Don't try to take that knowledge from me. Insight isn't sympathy." The familiar light flashed in his eyes. Insane Theories, Special Delivery, will you sign for this, ma'am? "What if that's it, Scully?" She stared at him. "What if insight... empathy... is what they wanted? I've always been good at... knowing what was going on. With Roche... And you know what cases with little girls do to me; that would trigger it if anything would... Maybe all it takes is believing that I can do it..." "Don't do this, Mulder. You know that the odds are that this man will kill again before we catch him. If you start thinking you're psychic, your usual morass of guilt and recrimination will look like self-esteem compared to what you'll be feeling. And that will do the next victim no good." * * * Scully was searching the horse trail out of a lack of anything better to do when a hand fell on her shoulder. She spun, reaching for her gun, and found herself flanked by two Men in Black, facing Cancerman. "What is it now?" "I wanted to talk to you alone, Agent Scully, away from Fox. He's so excitable lately." "I have nothing to say to you." "It's too late for a vasectomy, you know. No reason to put himself through the unpleasantness, the... feelings of loss of virility. What did he think *happened* at Ellens, really?" Like a sulky child, she turned her head, refusing to acknowledge him. His hand gripped her chin, pushing against the bruise, and forced her head back towards him. "Pay attention, Agent Scully. You're only valuable to me as long as he needs you. Your tactics yesterday were... aggressive, surprising, but effective. Keep him whole for me." "What I do, I do for me. I wouldn't *breathe* for you." "That's certainly an option. More importantly, perhaps, you *do* have two siblings. Remaining, I mean. And such lovely nephews. Don't leave him. He only rarely means those things he says." He released her, leaving her tottering on the path as the tears of rage and humiliation rose. She couldn't tell what was worse--that They knew everything that had gone on, or that They were uncertain enough of her to threaten her family, when she knew full well that she could never leave. Even They, as twisted as They were, apparently couldn't believe that she could live on the scraps he threw out to her. Even They could see how ridiculous it was for her to stay. She swallowed her bile and pushed the whole sordid conversation into the place in her where she kept all the things she didn't want to examine. Scully spent the rest of the morning sifting leaves with everyone else, and watching Mulder worriedly. He thought the killer was a police officer, maybe one who met the girls at DARE meetings--though with the victims from multiple jurisdictions, that was unlikely--and so Kelly began searching police records for DC, Maryland, and Virginia. A more detailed sweep of the area turned up the rest of the toy--the Penguin, as promised--and a matchbook for a motel near Union Station. "Planted," Mulder said when the technician brought it to him. She didn't bother to ask why, just chided, "It's a better clue than a plastic umbrella. Even if it is planted, how did the killer get it?" "Well, Scully, let's check it out." The motel was on the seedy side of Union Station, facing away from all the marble buildings visited by tourists. It was near a cluster of bus stations and equally run-down motels. The man at the desk made them as cops instantly. "We're with the FBI. I'm Agent Scully, this is Agent Mulder. We're looking for someone who might have been here with a little girl." He looked at their badges indifferently, then glanced at the photo she offered. "Was a guy with his daughter a few days ago. Didn't get a good look at her." "Can you show us the room they took?" Scully asked. "I guess." He went into the back office and shuffled some papers, returning with a husky teenager to stand guard at the desk, and led them to a room. They glanced at each other, equally dubious that this would be the right room; it would have been much easier and quicker to just pick a room to show them. He let them in and disappeared. Scully wrinkled her nose. "Well, at least our investigation benefits from the fact that they have been somewhat lax in cleaning." "Sure looks lived in." "Yes, but by what?" He fingered a plastic-covered card on the miniscule nightstand. "It says here they change the sheets every day." "But how often do they change the bedbugs?" He shuddered. "I'll call for someone to dust for prints," he offered as she used a pencil to poke through the trash, finding nothing but wadded-up tissues and sorry-looking latex. "Remember this when next you want to complain that I never follow procedure--look, here I am dialing for scientific assistance." "You're only doing that because you know it won't work. They weren't here, or he left no trace." "Isn't it the thought that counts?" He spoke briefly with a lab tech, then resumed their conversation. "He's too smart to be out in public with her like that.." "Just in case, let's show the desk clerk the pictures of the other girls." "Because he's been such a big help so far?" She made a moue of disapproval at him, and he sighed and followed her back down the hall. The desk clerk was none too happy to see them again, especially when Mulder told him about the coming plague of FBI technicians. The clerk was even snippier when Mulder told him that it could hardly make the room less pleasant to sleep in. By the time Scully got to show him the pictures, he barely looked at them. "What is it with the little girls? First the cop--" "What cop?" Mulder asked eagerly. The clerk apparently realized that he'd made a mistake in offering any information, but Scully pinned him with her best glare. "Few days ago, some cop comes in, looking for a little blonde girl. Hey, that's her." He pointed at the picture of Pamela Burnside. "DC officer?" she asked, her voice as controlled as if she were asking the time. "No, Alaska, what do you think? You really FBI, or just stupid?" "The officer came to you two days ago?" "Yeah," he said resentfully, "two, maybe three." Mulder and Scully didn't look at each other. Two, even three days ago, the investigation had already been federal. "Did you happen to see if this officer took a matchbook?" A truly offended glare. "How the fuck would I know?" "What did he look like?" "I dunno. White guy." "Could you identify him if you saw him again?" "No." He might be lying. Getting a police officer in trouble with the feds could be dangerous to one's health. "If he comes back," she said, suppressing a sigh as she handed him her card, "call this number, and try to get his name. This man may be involved in the deaths of these children." She looked back as they left to see him throw the card away. "Look at it this way, Scully," Mulder said, following her glance. "They probably won't have emptied the trashcans by the time this guy comes back." "Your police officer theory just became significantly more plausible. Though he could be an impostor." "I told you he was taking risks. He's playing with us. Using the picture of the girl to get the matchbook, that's a taunt." They reached the car, and Mulder opened the door for her. "I can't really blame the clerk for being mad about our invading colleagues, though," he said. "I feel that way about techies myself, Scully." She didn't react. "Back to the Bureau, G-woman?" "Lead on, GQ-man." His double-take distracted him, and he slammed his trenchcoat in the car; his curses were enough to bring the smallest of smiles to her lips. It was good to have a case, a reason to pretend that they were just normal agents, not that different from Insolia and Kelly. And at six they were informed that another little girl was missing, Asha Crowley. Her school photo showed a beautiful ten-year-old with mahogany skin and perfect bead-tipped cornrows. Taken from somewhere between Shepherd Elementary School and her home, not six blocks from where the last victim had been found in the park. He was teasing them. Happy birthday, Mulder. The day wasn't over yet, because they still had to drop Cancerman's strange substance off at the Gunmen's hideout for analysis. Mulder didn't trust the Bureau, and she could hardly blame him for that. She wouldn't have willingly turned evidence--if that was what the vial was--of this sort over to the SciCrime lab either. Mulder didn't comment on the fact that she'd taken possession of the vial, and she didn't offer any explanation. That night she dreamed she was surrounded by the Japanese doctors again, grotesquely pregnant. Monitoring equipment was everywhere, and beyond it, the walls were covered with coathooks. Everyone she'd ever autopsied hung from the hooks like hastily-shucked winter coats, bodies resewn with obscene neatness. The room was walled with dead flesh. She saw her first cadaver from medical school alongside one of Ephesian's children. Next to them hung Betsy Hagopian, shrunken and hairless, and then she began to see the other MUFON women scattered among her own handiwork. All of them showed the ravages of cancer. When she brought her attention back to herself, the doctors were removing something from between her legs. It was a grey- skinned horror with too-large hazel eyes, as malformed as the Peacock child but less human. It blinked and said, joyfully, "Mommy!" It reached out a paddle- hand to caress her-- And she jolted awake, wrenching herself from Mulder's grasp and running to the bathroom to retch. He padded in a minute later and held her until the heaving subsided. "Tell me?" She shook her head fiercely enough to bring the nausea back. "What can I do?" "Stay." The one thing he could never do. But he nodded and rocked her back and forth on the cold tile until she could stand and return to bed. Folly: Night Visions Chapter 5: Heroic Hearts Though much is taken, much abides; and though We are not now that strength which in old days Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are, One equal temper of heroic hearts. Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield. Alfred, Lord Tennyson, "Ulysses" October 14 He was gone in the morning when she woke up. Though she wasn't surprised, she was a little disappointed. She supposed that she'd continue to have a fantasy about making it work between them until she was able to choke those thoughts to death, and she just didn't have the time for the self- examination any such readjustment would require. The phone rang as she was leaving the shower. She hurried to it, laying her towel across her shoulders and shaking back her still-damp hair. "Scully." "Agent Scully, you'd better come down here." "*Frohike*?" "Yeah, there's been a problem with Mulder." "Where are you?" He gave her a hurried set of directions and she grabbed the first suit in the closet and sped out. She knew what the trouble was, of course. He'd taken whatever was in that vial, he'd injected it or swallowed it or whatever he thought would work. She hadn't waited to ask what sort of "problem" he was having. There was a medical kit in her car, one she'd specially assembled for successful work with Mulder. She had antiseizure medication and sedatives, bandages and antibiotics, splints and painkillers. She hadn't prayed in years, but she prayed now. * * * "Where is he?" she barked, loud enough to be heard over the thud of the door as it slammed against the wall and bounced, still moving with the momentum of her shove. Langly came over to her, distressed. "He's lying down. Um, he's...babbling." He led her through rooms choked with electronics and stacks of papers, back into a small, windowless room with a cot in the middle of dozens of cardboard boxes. Mulder was lying on the cot, almost peacefully, only a few twitches and the line of drool from his mouth to the white canvas indicating that anything was wrong. One hand lolled off of the cot, but a box for a camcorder held it up at the same level. He was mumbling words she couldn't understand; his intonations rose and fell in an unfamiliar manner. Frohike was sitting at the head of the cot, his hand by Mulder's shoulder. Scully thought that he might have been humming something, but he stopped when she and Langly came in. "We've seen something like this before," he said. "Or at least we thought we had. But I'm not so sure now. For the past fifteen minutes, he's been talking in Vietnamese." She felt her face tighten into a disbelieving mask. "What?" "It's Vietnamese," he said, with quiet confidence. "He's worried about his little brothers and sisters back in the village. There's not enough time to sleep and so little food, and if he makes a mistake and the box has to be thrown out they dock a day's pay...he's using the speech forms that a woman would use." "Are you telling me that he's channeling the spirit of a woman who works in a Vietnamese sweatshop?" She bent to examine him. He was sweating, and when she pulled back his eyelid the pupil was dilated. But the other pupil was the same size, and that was a good sign. Frohike shrugged, looking up at her with eyes that neither trusted nor feared. "I don't know. I'm just saying that he's speaking Vietnamese." "Tell me what happened." "He showed up around four, with this substance he wanted analyzed. We couldn't tell what it was, but he asked if we could identify it as dangerous, and Byers," Frohike paused to emphasize the name, "said that it didn't ring any alarm bells. We went to surf the 'net for relevant information on some of the chemical components we could identify, but then there was a crash from the lab room. He'd found a syringe...that's when I called you." She looked down at him helplessly. There was no telling what kind of drug interactions she could expose him to, even with the most standard of sedatives. She felt completely out of control, almost dizzy from fear for him. "Have the twitches been constant?" "Nuh-unh," Frohike grunted. "They're much smaller than they were. He's stopped moving a couple of times already. Are they seizures, Dr. Scully?" She ignored him and sat down on the cot by Mulder's hip. "Mulder," she said helplessly, and put her hand to his forehead to brush back those goddamn unruly bangs. His hand came up to catch her wrist, and he opened his eyes. "But I do respect you, Scully," he said softly. "I just needed to know, and I knew you wouldn't approve." "Mulder? Do you know where you are?" She was unsettled by his words at least as much as by his recovery. She hadn't said...Now her stomach was turning over in earnest. He sighed and put his hands to his sides to brace himself so that he could rise. Sweaty and panting, he looked as if he'd just come in from a run rather than an unauthorized drug trial. "Of course. I...wow." "You said that the man who gave this to you told you that it would open the doors of perception, Mulder," Byers said quietly, and Scully got the distinct impression that he approved of Mulder rather less than his unkempt colleagues. "Is that what it did?" Mulder wheezed laughter. "You could say that, I guess. I think I...need some time to assimilate what happened." "And what *is* that, Mulder?" she asked, unable to keep her voice from sounding shrewish even to her own ears. He ran his hand through his hair, making it stand up in sweaty little spikes. "I think I understand what he meant...what I'm supposed to be." He looked at his watch then. "Shit, Scully, they're expecting us at the elementary school! We've got to run," he said to the three men hovering around him, and he took Scully's arm, pulling her to her feet as he rose. Ironically, she leaned on him, and she thought that he was like one of those punching bags in the shape of a person, impossible to knock down for good, reacting to each blow with a powerful surge upwards. Where he got the energy, she couldn't imagine. He guided her to the front door and turned back with his hand on the knob. "I'll call you guys later and explain, I promise." "Mulder, what was that?" she asked as she got into the car, regretting that she hadn't had any time to talk to the Lone Gunmen and learn more about what Mulder had told them. "I think *that* was a primer, like the psychoactive drugs you were talking about, but specially designed. To open my mind." He fell silent, and she was sure that he wouldn't say more; she could tell just by the way the frown lines on his forehead appeared and his eyes scrunched closer together. He was visiting Planet Mulder again, and interplanetary communications were slow and difficult. She wasn't feeling very good herself, what with the wake-up shock she'd had. She didn't even want to stop for coffee. She had to make an effort to reach him, even as she stepped on the gas to make it to the meeting. "After we go to the school, I want you to explain this all. Or at least try." * * * They were interviewing the children and teachers who'd seen Asha last when Scully collapsed. She'd been pale all morning, but there was no real warning--one moment she was standing, quietly stunning in her green suit, questioning a teacher, and the next she was on the ground and the teacher was calling for help. She hadn't regained consciousness when they loaded her into the ambulance. All Mulder could tell the EMTs was that she hadn't been eating very well. He didn't go with her to the hospital, though another chunk of his soul crumbled into ash as the ambulance pulled away. He didn't go because he saw something on a classroom wall: photos from a recent class trip to the Kennedy Center. The children were posed in front of the bust of Kennedy's head that always looked to him as if it had been frosted by a baker with a shaky hand before bronzing. Asha was in the second row, third in, wearing a nice dress. The Kennedy Center, where Pamela Burnside had a music appreciation class. Where Tanecia Rollins had been taken to see a real orchestra (). Where Laura Hall had gone to a birthday party. Where, he knew with certainty, Zoe Kendrick and Jeanine Rhee had been, though he didn't know why. "The Kennedy Center," he said hoarsely, pointing at the board. "We need to look at all the cops assigned to the Kennedy Center. It's one of them." Kelly heard him and dragged Insolia over; he started to argue, but Kelly was a believer. Four hours later, they'd confirmed the Kennedy Center connection to all the victims. Zoe had been a budding violinist, and Jeanine had gone to a movie at the American Film Institute in the Kennedy Center with her parents just before she was taken. Not enough for a warrant to search anyone's house, and they couldn't question the men without endangering Asha, who was likely still alive. The hospital had not called. He should call Mrs. Scully, but couldn't bear to do it. They'd moved back to the Bureau for better access to the information technology that would be crucial at this stage. Mulder sat at a desk in the middle of the task force's commandeered room. He stared at the pictures of the officers who fit the profile, shuffling them back and forth. What was this gift? He'd unlocked it with the strange drug, he was sure. He'd poured it out of the container in his mind where it had lived before, giving him vibrations and hunches but never letting him see the source. *This* was what he was meant to do: to read tea leaves, not as a charlatan or a perceptive guesser but as a true oracle. The genetic experiments were logical, scientific attempts to achieve a new stage of human evolution. To achieve him. In him the possibility of predictable, controllable powers of the mind was proven, while in normal humans such powers occurred only haphazardly, with no forewarning and less comprehensibility. It was like night vision, a special access to images that others could see only obscurely, if at all. It was like being the only one of a besieged group able to understand the language in a foreign country. It was maddeningly unresponsive to his demands; the answers lurked just outside of his vision, and the world was getting darker... In an odd way, though, the news of his difference was his redemption. Unlike Samantha, unlike all the other failures and the quirks which made him the FBI's most unwanted. This revelation could explain his distance from humanity, the blank isolation of his nights. It could explain the impulse in him to seek the marvelous and outrageous at any cost. (Could proteins call out to the stars? It was no less plausible than other things he'd believed.) It could even explain the slow waltz he danced with death, as it confirmed what he'd always somehow known: there was no place for him in the natural order of things. It legitimated his despair, and then some. He laughed out loud, no doubt further decreasing his status in his fellow agents' eyes, thinking that the first part of "freak" is "free." And perhaps, just perhaps, he could use the material that had come unfathomable distances, only to be used in human manipulations and deceit, to save a little girl. He reached for the Penguin again, found at last by a young and patient officer. As he touched it, he saw a face, so much larger and more authoritative than it looked in the ID photos. Looming above her, trying to be gentle but still terrifying, *enjoying* being terrifying despite the pretense at solicitude. He dropped the plastic toy as if it really had taken him back to being a child, helpless before adult commands, and searched through the pictures again. "Kelly," he said urgently. The agent hurried over. "It's this man. Officer David Nexon." "How do you know?" Kelly was helpless before his intense gaze. "Don't know. But this is him." Insolia, whose frustration at being dependent on Mulder's insane leaps of faith was growing more apparent by the minute, snapped, "They don't give warrants to psychics, Mulder!" He leapt up and advanced on the other man. "Don't you think I know that? Don't you think that, if I could tell you how I did this and let you do it, I would be happier than you, because they wouldn't need to roll me out like the fucking freak that I am whenever a case turns into a nightmare? Asha is waiting, she's in that man's house, and we can't go in because I have *no* *idea* how I know. You think I like that? If she dies, it's because I can't even convince *you* that I know. But I know." Kelly put a hand on his arm. "We're sorry, Agent Mulder. We're scared, too. I know you're that little girl's only hope. Don't hate your gift. It saves lives." "Gift? Wanna know from whom?" Mulder's head was going to explode. The momentary acceptance of his deformity was rapidly dissipating. The smaller man shook his head. "That's not the point. Insolia, let's get some agents watching Nexon's house. If he moves, if he takes a piss, we'll know about it." "Are we going to stop investigating the others?" "No, but we're going to use as much manpower as we need to sew up Nexon. If that means we go a little slower on the others, so be it. Mulder got us this far." Insolia nodded shortly and left to start giving the orders. "How come you don't resent me like the rest of them?" Mulder asked Kelly. He was drained, and being without Scully made him feel as if he was trying to walk on a phantom limb. "I resented you when we worked together a few years ago on the Davis kidnapping, I'll admit. You made all the other agents look like kindergartners, putting together the pieces so that it looked obvious when you were done. This is different. This is frightening, but it's not based on something that I stupidly overlooked. You're just lucky that we don't burn warlocks at the stake anymore." Mulder stared at the other man with depthless eyes until Kelly dropped his gaze. "Come on, Mulder, we've got to get over to Nexon's. I'm sure you want to be there when he goes down." Near ten, Nexon left the house, carrying Asha as carefully as if he were her father, about to drive her to her mother's house for the weekend. Catching him was anticlimactic; no doubt many of the agents would have preferred an excuse to shoot him, but in fact he gave up as soon as he saw the first gun. He wouldn't live a year in prison anyway, Mulder could tell by looking at him. He'd get himself killed one way or another. The girls were just faint- hearted, half-assed attempts at suicide, and being a police officer confined to a cell would increase his bravery. Or narrow his choices. Sometimes Mulder thought that those two things were the same. Mulder was on his way to the hospital before the police car carrying Nexon left for the station. They wouldn't let him see her. Instead, they told him that she was going to be fine, that she was resting and that he could come back tomorrow. Finally, settling into his plastic chair for the night, he called Mrs. Scully and broke the news as gently as he could. He dissuaded her from rushing over, repeating phrases until she agreed to wait. She'll be better soon, they said. Exhaustion, they said. We've had bad hours for the past few weeks, and you know Dana's the one in the hot seat for this whole Ephesian business. And children, children are especially hard, Mrs. Scully. I'll be here in the morning; they don't expect her to wake until the afternoon because of the sedatives on top of the exhaustion. He was glad that Mrs. Scully didn't ask why they had to sedate an exhausted woman; he regretted asking himself. Even exhausted people can have nightmares in which they scream and thrash and tear their IVs out. He stared at the tiles and imagined that the flecks of black in them made pictures. There a spaceship, there a forest fire consuming a bear, there a spray consistent with a high-caliber pistol... Not healthy. He'd taken Rorschach blot tests when he was young, after Samantha. He'd seen slavering, whipped dogs, drowned fishermen, empty houses. He'd told the psychologist about rabbits playing pattycake. It took him no formal training to know that you didn't tell the men in white coats what was really in their blots of blood and corruption. So floor tiles were bad. He dragged his gaze up to the rerun of *Cops* playing in the far corner and waited. * * * October 15 He was ready at 9 am, but a petite black woman stopped him before he could go into her room. "Who are you?" she asked him. "Special Agent Mulder, FBI. Dana Scully is my partner." "Good," she said, putting her hand on his arm to keep him from turning the handle on the door. "Then you can give me some information. Why weren't you here yesterday?" "I was catching a serial killer who had kidnapped a little girl. What were you doing yesterday? And who are you?" "I'm Roxanne Singleton, a patient counselor. I help victims of violence and abuse, and people who need counseling." "I doubt Scully would call herself any one of those things." "Did one of your recent cases involve a suspect holding a gun at her throat?" He blanched. "You can identify that?" "You'd be surprised at the bruises we can identify. Is that what happened?" "... Yes." Sort of. "You sound unsure." "I'm not. Why is it important?" "Because the bruises are also consistent with the behavior of someone considering suicide." "What! You want to destroy her career and make her truly miserable? Just go spreading that around. That's ridiculous." He renewed his attempt to open the door. "Calm down, Mr. Mulder. No, that's not a formal diagnosis. Your partner is dehydrated and malnourished. She has hardly had anything to eat for weeks." He looked away. He hadn't known, because he didn't *want* to know, wanted to believe that her behavior in front of him was an aberration even as, deep down, he knew that it wasn't. "I'm going to discuss voluntary participation in our eating disorders program with her when she's feeling a little better." "Eating disorders?" "Miss Scully is over twenty pounds underweight, her teeth show signs of acid damage consistent with frequent vomiting, and she collapsed on the job. These are not healthy behaviors." "*Agent* Scully will be fine once she gets some rest." He would not show her how shaken he was by this information. "Enabling her decline won't help her." "Look, Ms. Singleton, we've been through... a lot recently. If she needs help, I'll help her. But she won't respond to lectures by strangers." "I'm not your enemy, you know." "Then stop behaving like one and let me see her." "She'll sleep for a while yet. You should know that, if she won't eat when she wakes, we'll insert a nasogastric tube. And I *will* hurt her career to save her life, if she resists feeding and won't join our program voluntarily." "I'll be sure to give her the message," he said with as much grace as he could manage--about an atom of it--and pushed past her to begin his vigil. He watched her sleep. But even that guilt was arrogance and denial underneath, resistance to the idea that--thanks to him--she had plenty of her own troubles to justify the penance. Profilers had problems with eating on a fairly regular basis; he'd seen plenty before. He'd spent his fair share of nights in motel bathrooms, letting it happen, or just skipping meals in the first place because that was easier. You can't control the images that enter you, but you can control the other things you consume. Showers don't make you clean when you're in that place, down among the dead and the faces trapped in the walls, feeling the horror of normalcy. That people sell insurance and bag groceries, and flowers bloom, and dogs chase sticks, because nothing is wrong, while you're trailing a killer who cuts his victims up alive--who might be bagging groceries, even, as he waits for his next chance--that people can behave normally in such a world is almost too terrible to contemplate. They have the privilege of unknowing, and you hate them for it. And you hate their habits and their needs and sometimes you see why the killers think of them as prey. Then it's hard to tell which makes you dirtier, that sympathy or the charade of complying with all the rituals of "sanity" that they demand of you. Nothing will make you clean when you're touring that scenery, but complete inner emptiness can come close. But most profilers took time to recover when they needed to. Even he had left. Most of them carried some weight they could afford to lose. For them, it was connected to a particular case, not a general condition. He shuddered a little as he realized that for her it *was* connected to a particular case; it just so happened that the case was her own. It didn't take an Oxford degree in psych to realize that he shouldn't say any of that to Scully. But what to say? That the world in which the faces in the wall give orders to quiet men and aliens take little children is the same world in which moms buckle their kids in car seats, and Scully needed to get used to it? That people are generally nice, but nice is different than good? He'd learned these things early, but she'd had a more gradual introduction to the facts of life. He could still see her image, burned into the wall outside of his apartment like a shadow from Hiroshima, thrown there not by his fist but by his words. When she woke, he hadn't found anything to say, but he was still sitting beside her, leaning forward to catch every detail of her face. "So." "So." "We caught the bad guy. You know, you have to stop being indisposed like this. You're never around when I need you." "Mulder, you never need me when I'm around." "When did you stop eating?" "When did you stop noticing?" "I never stopped noticing. I just pretended I hadn't. It hurt too much to admit what I've done to you." "This old fight?" Something very much like affection tinged her voice. "I'm tired, let's skip the next few lines." "Are you bulimic?" "I don't try to throw up, if that's what it means. I've just gotten used to it; I'm not surprised when nothing stays down." "So do I get to take care of you now?" "No," she said in her you-know-better tone. "Watch over you?" "Maybe." "Closely?" She smiled, clearly against her better judgment. "Is that how you like your women--invalids?" "You never understood why I ended up in the hospital so much, did you? I was trying to get you to play doctor." "I never *play* doctor." "I do." He ducked his head and gave her his deadliest combination: seductive near-pout and eager-puppy eyes. He was rewarded with her slow flush, an incredibly welcome contrast to her pallor. The door opened and Mrs. Scully came in. "Dana! Fox," she said, relieved and worried at once. He could see that she too had been upset by a conversation with Ms. Singleton. "I need some coffee," he said and left them. Folly: Night Visions Chapter 6: Keep the Briars Out Romance has no part in it. The business of love is cruelty *which*, by our wills, we transform to live together. ... Just as the nature of briars is to tear flesh, I have proceeded through them. Keep the briars out, they say. You cannot live and keep free of briars. William Carlos Williams, "The Ivy Crown" When he returned, forty-five minutes later--he'd tried to stay away, but couldn't stand it any longer--they'd obviously both cried and reached some resolution. Scully, he saw with relief, had eaten most of her bland hospital meal. "Fox will stay with you, won't he, dear?" "Always," he said. Mrs. Scully melted--wrong Scully, unfortunately. He could tell that Scully thought that he was just reassuring her mother, and was a little hurt that he'd make a promise like that in jest. Ah, miscommunication. Would they ever speak the same language? Hell, he was the weird one; he should be doing the translations. Mrs. Scully kissed her daughter goodbye, then grabbed Mulder for his own peck. He hugged her gratefully. She wouldn't be on his side if she knew why Scully was so ill, but no one was going to tell her. "I'm sorry I didn't come to the hospital with you," he said, reclaiming his chair by her bed. "What happened to Asha?" He told her the story and of his own growing conviction that his "abilities" involved some sort of low-level telepathy, some ability to seize thoughts and images from the residue of human interaction. He described his reaction to the unknown drug, how the world had exploded with a thousand points of information, his shirt screaming to him about the person who'd sewn it and the one who'd put it on the rack at the store, his hand trailing on the camcorder box in the Gunmen's hideaway and transporting him to Vietnam. How he'd been able to sort it out, to push most of the awareness away, when she'd come for him. He even suggested that Melissa Ephesian's troubled mind might have reached out to his, confusing him about his own past lives. She laughed when he proffered that theory; at his hurt look, she said, "It's just funny that you've provided a theory I hate in order to counteract a theory I hate even more." He took her hand. "I'm glad you like this theory better." She looked at him speculatively, trying to decipher his meaning, then got the wounded look in her eyes that told him she was giving up because she didn't want to be hurt by hopefulness. "Do you think it's possible that I'm right?" he asked to distract her. "Now I really think you need to have your head examined-- probably in a university setting, where they're looking for structure and not only for damage they already know how to treat or categorize." Practical Scully. "But you still don't believe." "Not exactly. They did something to you, I can't deny that, and it's plausible that the... power... you've described would be something a government would want in its agents. And I can't even begin to speculate about whatever it was you took yesterday morning. Though I wouldn't rule out hallucinations." "Vietnamese-speaking hallucinations?" She looked away from him, unready to accept all the implications of what he was saying. "You've always had these hunches; they're disconcerting, but it's still not impossible that they're based on subliminal clues and experience." "The name David Nexon didn't come from subliminal clues, Scully." She could be extremely irritating when she disbelieved beyond all reason. "Want to play a game?" She changed the subject, and he let her. "A game?" "They tell me I've got to keep down three meals before they'll let me go, so we've got some time to kill. If you don't mind staying, I mean." She hesitated. "If it's Spin the Bottle, I'm definitely staying." She pursed her lips in reprimand at him and pulled a deck of cards from the table beside her. "This is Set. It's a four-dimensional matrix with three points on each axis." "It's a what? Scully, I agreed to play a game, not take a math test." "Sorry. Mom got it for my nephews, but decided that I'd like it better. I guess she's getting used to having a hospital visiting kit all prepared." She stared sadly at the sheets for a moment, then raised her eyes to him again. "It's a set of eighty-one cards; each is unique. There are four different attributes: color--red, green, and purple; shape--oval, diamond, and squiggle; number--one, two, and three; and shade--hollow, striped, or filled in. The point is to make a set, which is a group of three cards in which, for each attribute, the cards are either all different or all the same. If I had a hollow red squiggle, a solid red squiggle, and a striped red squiggle, that'd be a set where color, shape, and number were all the same, and shade was all different. Get it?" "Maybe," he said, intrigued by Scully's evident enjoyment. She smiled the kind of open, sunny smile that must have been common to her as a child. "You can tell this green and this red apart, right?" She held out a solid green oval and a red triangle. "Yeah, it's only certain shades and intensities that give me trouble." "Ok, so don't try and wiggle out of it with colorblindness when you screw up while we're playing." "So what's the point?" "You lay out twelve at a time, take off sets, and add cards to replace the ones that are gone. If you're playing alone, the point is to make every card into a set; if you're playing someone else, the point is to make more sets than the other person." "Is that a challenge?" "I'll be gentle; it's your first time." "Are you coming on to me, Scully?" She beat him soundly the first game, less soundly in the next, rallied in the third, and finally lost the fourth. He quickly discovered that an eidetic memory didn't help much against her sense of pattern and lightning-fast hands. The fourth game was a fluke; at six and one, he called a break. "Can we try something I might do better at?" She gave him a suspicious glare, and he laughed, reviewing his question. "Such a dirty mind, Scully. I don't know what *you're* thinking. But I'll try to live up to expectations." She waited for him to continue. "You know, perhaps oddly for a believer, I never had myself tested for ESP. These cards are close to the ones used for ESP testing; why don't you shuffle and I'll see how I do." How he did was about sixty percent accuracy drawing from the deck, a percentage that obviously rattled Scully. If getting three out of four attributes correct was added in, he was at almost ninety percent. Then he asked her to pick and look at the cards, and he got them completely right over eighty percent of the time. He was fascinated, but he stopped as her distress became more apparent. "Scully, it's ok. There's even a scientific explanation for it. Really." "It's not an explanation until we know how it works. Right now saying it's your genes is like saying that it works because we have the words of the spell right." "But we *can* find out. And we will, I know it. Do you realize what this means? I can catch killers, but I don't have to *be* them. It doesn't make me sick, or twisted--well, obviously you can't be unaffected by close contact with evil, but it means that my special insight is *not* the product of whatever's wrong with me. I've lived with that fear, that certainty that I'm a product of the abyss and am destined to return to it, for so long." "Mulder"--she reached up to caress his cheek with the back of her hand--"I'm happy that you can be more confident of your essential goodness. I've known that for a long time. But the law is the law and reports are reports; we'll still need hard evidence to back up your hunches, or insights, or whatever. I just don't want you to get your hopes up that the world will change because we have one more piece of the puzzle--a piece we don't even understand." "It'll make it easier to find the truth." "If you can sort out what you perceive from what you believe. It was past lives last week, Mulder. I don't mean to be cruel." "Yes, you do. But you've passed on a lot of turns at that, so it's ok." "Mulder ..." "I know you think I don't love you as much as you love me." Silence. Couldn't that have been left unspoken? "And maybe it's true that the part of me allowed to be happy is broken, or that my quest has consumed parts of my soul that should have been devoted to you. I don't know how to quantify love or categorize it. But I could never feel anything stronger than what I feel for you, Scully. I need you to get better and come home to me." She tried to speak, looked away, then turned back and tried again. "There's a difference between caring about me as much as you can and caring about me as much as I do for you." "I don't love *myself* as much as you do, Scully. Dana. That's what I have. Can you live with that?" She turned away again, fighting the tears that threatened to consume her. "Mulder, I--yes, I can." Tension drained from him like water swirling down a drain. He leaned forward to chuck her affectionately on the chin. "What do you think they'd do to me if I got in bed with you--on the side without the IV, I mean?" "Nothing good. Probably make you wear one of those shorty hospital gowns in retaliation." "Ooh, kinky. Can I try?" "If you really are psychic, you'll know the answer." "I don't think I'll ever really know what goes on in your head, Dana. I'm too close." She swatted a wandering hand. "Damn straight you are!" More seriously, she continued, "I need some mystery, Mulder. It's my only defense." "Someday, maybe, we won't need defenses against each other." "I'd like that." She was already slipping back into sleep as he settled in next to her, reassured by his presence. When he thought she slept, he whispered, "Forgive me" into her brittle hair. Her soft voice, rich as melted butter, answered: "Not yet. But put on that black turtleneck and ask again..." He moved back until the tears that suddenly shook him had passed. He held her, pressing his face into the back of her neck, and prayed for her. His God was cruel, only sometimes fair, but she was so faithful. *Adonai, take care of this second Job. Give her, too, the redemption she deserves, the comfort and family she's owed for facing the incomprehensible so fearlessly. I don't believe, but she does--though she's all confused with that Trinity business, a strange gloss on a perfectly good concept--and that must be worth something. Let me be part of it, if it's Your will, but give her some solace in this journey.* And Mulder slept, too, so peacefully that the nurses and the nightmares took pity on him and let them stay together. For a while. END Part II Folly: Dies Irae Chapter 1: A Bit of Blood There is a charge For the eyeing of my scars, there is a charge For the hearing of my heart-- It really goes. And there is a charge, a very large charge, For a word or a touch Or a bit of blood. --Sylvia Plath, "Lady Lazarus" December 13 It started so simply. Not even an X-File. A consultation in Maryland on a maybe-serial killer. As usual, Agents Mulder and Scully worked later, longer, and harder than everyone else, and only gave up at two in the morning. Oddly, Scully wasn't bothered by doing autopsies in the middle of the night. He could have stared at the pictures and reports at home, but they'd come together, and he waited to drive her home. "Why don't late-night autopsies bother you, Scully?" Mulder asked as they headed toward Mulder's car, hurrying slightly because of the misty rain in the air. "Dead people are much more reasonable about working whatever hours you want to work. And they're generally less dangerous than live ones, Mulder." "Well, so long as you admit that there are exceptions." Scully snorted and then the world went black. * * * "Agent Scully! Wake up!" Someone slapped her. With a groan, she opened her eyes. She was sitting in a metal chair--handcuffed to it, in point of fact. There was nothing else in the room, and the door looked sturdy, as if they were in an institution. Grey cinderblock walls completed the impression. "What is this?" "Your worst nightmare." The person who had slapped her was a woman, tall and dark. "Sorry about the cliche," she smiled, revealing dimples, "but you seem to be the kind of person who thrives on melodrama. Such a record, Agent Scully. Going to jail to protect your partner when you were *supposed* to control him is a little extreme. Did you think they wouldn't get tired of you?" "Which they do you mean?" "Ah, yes, you've managed to alienate--just a little joke!--several sets of 'them.' Well, let's say you've convinced at least one group that you should be taken again, despite the negative repercussions. And luckily for me, I have a particular need for intelligent, highly articulate guests to help me with a drug I'm testing.. "All right, enough gloating. This will be much less painful if you hold still." She produced a needle and prepared it, squirting a few drops of fluid out to prevent air bubbles. "What are you giving me?" "Ooh, I can't resist--I believe my line is, 'That's for me to know and you to find out.' But count your blessings: at least you're awake this time." The woman took Scully's handcuffed arm and expertly injected the unknown substance into a vein. She moved to the door, opened it, and waved three orderly types in. "Take her to Observation Room 3." Two of the big men moved to Scully's chair, and one produced a key, unshackling him, and then they grabbed him and hauled him up. She was roughly escorted out the door and down a hall. Even through her growing fear, Scully couldn't help but wonder why Observation Rooms 1 and 2 were in use. * * * Observation Room 3 turned out to have a cot and a toilet with a small sink next to it. Same bomb-shelter walls, same blank floors. And another woman cowering in a corner. Scully noted a closed-circuit camera in the corner, and saw that the fluorescent lights didn't have an off switch in the room. The orderlies shoved Scully in, then closed the door. "Who are you?" the other woman asked, her voice thin with fear. She had long red hair caught in a loose braid and brown eyes, and she was wearing casual slacks and a stained white shirt. "Special Agent Dana Scully, FBI. I'm here against my will. Were you told what is happening to us?" The woman shook her head. "I've been given an unknown drug. Has anything been done to you?" "They gave it to me too." The woman eased away from the corner, struggling to regain her composure. "I'm Dr. Ruth Lehrman." "What kind of doctor are you?" "An obstetrician." Scully couldn't think of a medical reason to pick a forensic pathologist and an obstetrician on which to test a new drug. "How did you get here?" Scully slipped easily into the reassuring rhythms of interrogation. "I was working in my office, then I left. I went into the parking lot--I don't remember anything else." "How long were you in here before I arrived?" Dr. Lehrman glanced at her watch. "Half an hour. I just woke up a little while ago, and a woman was waiting for me with--whatever. What's happening?" Scully shook her head slowly. "I don't know. I've been--involved in investigating our government for a while--and I can tell you that there are people in power who are willing to experiment on citizens without their consent. May I examine your neck?" "Why?" To restore some trust, she bent forward and flipped her hair off of her neck. "Do you see this scar?" She looked up to see Dr. Lehrman's curious nod. "Several years ago I discovered that I had been implanted with a kind of computer chip. Many people on whom experiments have been performed have similar implants. If you have an implant, or an instance of missing time in the past few years, that would suggest that these people are related to my investigations." Scully saw the look of horror that crossed the doctor's face with the words "missing time," and then the resolve to avoid talking about it. She could hardly blame the other woman; she did little enough talking about it herself. Scully didn't want to tell even Mulder the things she was asking this stranger to reveal. It's much easier to pose questions than to answer them. Investigators enter a life disrupted and ask the questions people couldn't even answer in their own hearts: so, how did you feel about your husband's affair? Do you think you were abducted by aliens? As an FBI agent, it was her privilege to avoid the answers she expected from others, to stand in shadow while training the light on people who accepted the name "victim." Her musings had given the other woman time to consider her assertions. "Would you look at my neck?" Dr. Lehrman asked, wide- eyed. Scully walked over to the corner and knelt down. She gently pushed the other woman's braid to one side. "You have a scar," she informed Dr. Lehrman. "I wish I could tell you what it means." "When we get out, I'll make sure you're kept up to date on our investigations." Dr. Lehrman raised her hand to the back of her neck uncertainly, then to her temple. "My head hurts," she said. "Why don't you sit down on the cot?" Scully asked and guided her over. The doctor was at least six inches taller than she was, but Scully was able to walk straight. * * * Scully's repeated prodding finally got Dr. Lehrman talking. She'd gone to Georgetown Medical School and stayed nearby when she got out, practicing in Falls Church with several older men who were thrilled to have a female obstetrician, which every pregnant woman seemed to want these days. She was telling a funny story about her colleagues' outdated attitudes when she stopped and winced. "Are you all right, Dr. Lehrman?" Scully asked quickly. "Call me Ruth," she said. "Looks like we'll be getting to know each other well. The headache is worsening," she admitted. She wouldn't say anything more, but after a few minutes Scully could tell from the lines on her face that the pain was almost unbearable. Soon, she lowered her head between her knees, curling into herself, her hands knotted into fists. She was trying not to make any noise. Scully was afraid, and felt guilty that she was worrying more that she was next than that Ruth was suffering. "Agent Scully--" "Dana, please." "Dana--I--don't--feel--so--good." The seizure started, almost before the sound of her voice had died away. Its violence was terrifying. Her head jerked back as if a spirit had yanked suddenly on her hair. Her arms and legs thrashed randomly. Scully had to restrain Ruth to keep her from slamming into the wall or falling off the cot, and Ruth would have bruises from Scully's grip. As Ruth jerked around, it felt almost as if the cot itself had risen and crashed back down to the ground. After, she seemed to slip directly into sleep, or unconsciousness. Scully didn't want to disturb her, since she seemed to be breathing evenly and her pulse slowed back to normal. Looking around the room, she noticed some disturbing stains on the floor by the cot. Old blood, and maybe less pleasant fluids, had been cleaned off not too long ago. She decided not to point out the variations in decor to her companion. According to her watch, the seizure had been over for half an hour when Ruth blinked and awoke. Through her own growing headache, which she dearly hoped was psychosomatic, Scully saw that the force of the seizure had burst many of the blood vessels in Ruth's eyes, so that the clear brown irises were surrounded by red instead of white. "What happened?" "You had a seizure. What do you remember?" "Not too much." "I'm about due for the same thing. You may have to restrain me to keep me from hurting you or myself." The pain was building like the tide coming in. She bit her lip to distract herself, and drew blood. The wound barely throbbed. She felt as if someone had removed her brain and was rubbing it with handfuls of sand and cut glass. The seizure, when it came, was almost a relief. Instead of grinding pressure, the pain transmuted into fierce stabs and flashes of white light. When she regained consciousness, Ruth was holding her hand; her head was propped up in Ruth's lap. Scully took an internal inventory--she didn't think that she'd strained any muscles, but she felt drained and weightless. "Am I ok?" she asked quietly. "I think so," Ruth replied, "if you don't count a bad case of red-eye." "How long did it last?" "Only a few minutes. You've been out for fifteen minutes--you recovered faster than I did." The door opened, and the goons and their leader appeared. "More drugs!" she said cheerfully. Ruth snarled at her. "Do you have a name, or will Dr. Mengele do?" Meanwhile, Scully struggled to get upright, but was not fast enough to avoid being jerked up by one of the bulky men. "Don't make this difficult, dear." Ruth held still for the injection, assisted by her personal masher; Scully did the same, fearing the effects on her aim if the unknown woman were to pop a vein and weaken her arm. When they'd been injected, one of the guards brought them a tray of vending-machine food. Not really on her meal plan, but she was in no position to argue. And, surprisingly, she was ravenously hungry; she didn't have to make it a personal goal to eat. * * * And they waited. She sent out a half-hearted mental message to her partner. The smallpox-scar cataloging project she and Scott Pendrell had been working on had been derailed when they'd discovered that Mulder didn't have the genetic tag they were expecting. Instead, he had a set of undeniably alien genes, which he now insisted were responsible for his recent visions of crime scenes. It should have been a ludicrous contention, but she couldn't otherwise explain how he knew the things he'd discerned about their past few cases and, at the moment, having a partner with some version of second sight seemed as if it would be useful--scientific or not. The second time, the seizure seemed even more impossibly violent. She thought that, even holding Ruth down, the other woman would strain or even tear muscles in her arms and legs. At the height of the seizure, Scully felt a great wind grow, spinning in the center of the room. The tray jerked off the bed and swooped around the room, threatening to slam into them. It was just plastic, but when it bounced off her back, she knew she'd added a large bruise to her collection. And the bed was starting to shake. The phantom wind tore at her, threatening to toss her from Ruth, leaving Ruth completely vulnerable. "Ruth!" she shouted, over the howl of the winds (generated from the static in Ruth's mind? she refused to think about it). "Wake up!" When the storm stopped, blood began to pour from Ruth's nose. Not like the short, spontaneous nosebleed of the girl on her very first case: this was a steady stream. Scully dragged Ruth's body into a sitting position and tilted Ruth's head forward, pinching her nose. When the flow slowed, Scully dared to dash over to get some tissue from the roll by the toilet. She tried to clean off the worst of the damage so that Ruth wouldn't be too upset when she woke, but Scully didn't want to irritate the weakened flesh, and so did an uneven job. * * * When Ruth returned to consciousness, Scully described what she'd seen and felt, and pointed out the tray lying skewed on the other side of the room. "I think I know what that drug's supposed to do now. It somehow releases the telekinetic abilities of the mind in people who don't normally have access to them." The other woman stared at her as if she'd sprouted fangs. How Mulder would laugh to see her taking the believer's stance. "We know so little about brain chemistry. I've seen things that can only be plausibly explained by accepting the existence of mental powers beyond those that we consider normal. Such abnormalities could also possibly be induced by drugs. We don't even know why Prozac and the other MAO inhibitors do what they do; we just know that neurochemistry matters. It's possible that these people have developed a drug which releases normally untapped telekinetic potentials, even if we don't know why or how it does so." "I never believed in anything like that," Ruth said, not looking at Scully. "But I've never been a guinea pig before, either. If the people holding us here *think* they're doing something like that, it's pretty much the same for us as really doing it." Already Scully's headache was asserting itself. She was surprised that it had held off so well until now, as if waiting for her to share her theory with Ruth. "You might be able to add to my observations in a few minutes," she said, then had to clench her teeth while her brain tried to expand beyond the confines of her skull. She was never completely clear when or how the seizure started, but somehow through the light and the noise and stomach-twisting motion, she heard Ruth's voice: "Dana, if you're doing this, can you control it? Can you keep it away from us?" Barely conscious, she was perhaps less of a skeptic. She could imagine herself raising her hands as a shield and willing the pain to stay back, to go away. Her brain felt bloated, battering itself against its bone cage with every beat of her heart. The pressure was so intense that she almost hoped her eyes would burst and release the contents of her head. Her body tingled as if she'd lost too much blood and was about to faint. A wave of dizziness rushed and rolled through her head like nitrous oxide. Suddenly the pain was gone, a cloud breaking up into wisps of fog, and she sank into blessed oblivion. * * * Scully's next conscious thought was a decision not to open her eyes just yet. Even the fluorescent seepage through her eyelids was enough to resurrect some of the pain. "Ruth," she asked, "what happened this time?" "I think you busted some tiles in the ceiling. You also got a pretty bad nosebleed. I'm sorry; I think your blouse is ruined." "Believe me, my drycleaner has seen worse." She leaned against the cool wall. The industrial-grey paint was thick and smooth over the pitted concrete. It reminded her of a thousand jails and labs she'd been in before; some, perhaps, that she could not consciously remember. What did that woman know about what had happened to her? The noise the door made opening was almost too painful to bear. "How did you control the power? And remember, you don't need fingers for my purposes," the woman threatened. Scully wanted to say that she didn't know, but she suspected that such an answer would not be approved. "I felt something tear loose, then it was...outside of me." "How did it end?" "It just did. I lost consciousness simultaneously with the cessation of the...phenomenon." "Well, this hasn't been terribly helpful yet, but we'll give it a few more tries. I'll let you in on a secret--you're doing pretty well. Keep up the good work." Holding Scully's arm, their captor depressed the plunger of the syringe as she spoke. "This is all for the greater good of science, you know." "*Science* doesn't involve kidnapping." "What, you think gibbons and white rats volunteer? Think they get a government pension if they survive? The path forward always moves through death." "You don't have the right to make those decisions," Ruth interjected. "'Right' is such a judgmental word. I prefer to think of it as 'power.' Which I clearly do have." She left the room, trailing her silent men behind her. * * * Ruth sat in silence next to Scully on the narrow cot for some time. Scully watched her, concerned. She'd been first injected, but Scully seemed more deeply affected by the drug. Were they adjusting the dose for relative weights? A stupid mistake not to do so, but torture science was generally bad science. "Dana?" "Yes?" "If I tell you something, will you promise not to freak out? We might be here a while." "What is it?" she asked cautiously. "Well, um, I was wondering. You didn't mention a man in your life." "The man in my life, sort of, is tearing heaven and earth apart to find me, if he's able to stand up. I was with him--my partner, I mean--when I was taken." "So there is someone." Ruth sounded disappointed. "Well..." she fell silent. It was too hard to explain. "That's too bad, because I've always had a real thing for redheads." Scully swallowed. "Dana," and Ruth moved her hand to brush the hair away from Scully's ear. Scully thought about the normal physiological consequences of danger and adrenalin, and tried not to jump or make any embarrassing noises. Ruth's breath was warm against her ear. Her words barely vibrated against Scully's skin. "I think I might be able to move something without a seizure. Cross the room and if it works, play with your hair." Scully practically levitated off of the cot and scrunched herself down against the opposite wall, not having to act nearly as much as would have been politically correct. She pulled her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them. "I'm sorry," she said creakily. Ruth smiled. "Don't worry, Dana, I don't go in for crushes on het girls. Sure road to heartbreak." Then she closed her eyes and tipped her head back against the wall. Scully saw that various items had slid from Ruth's pockets and landed under the cot at some point-- a pen, what might be a key card for her building or garage. Nothing that would be visible to the security camera and its view of the tops of their heads. She watched and the pen twitched. Slowly, it rose from the floor, nearly to the underside of the cot, and bobbed towards the head of the cot--twelve inches from cover, then six--she almost called out a warning, but then it dropped. Ruth's eyes sprang open. Remembering her job, Scully put her hand up and slowly twirled a strand of hair around one finger. She considered and stood so that her back was to the camera. Concentrating, she closed her eyes and tried to believe. She felt the tug of her cross on her necklace moving, contrary to gravity but consistent with her wish, slowly up from the center of her throat to the side of her neck. The half-noticed rush from the power was stronger this time, since it wasn't competing with the pain. It was almost erotic, almost like, well, touching herself. Not something a good Catholic girl should enjoy. Then again, good Catholic girls don't move objects with their minds, either. She opened her eyes, trying to decide how to communicate this conclusion to Ruth, and saw her curled up in pain, hands pressed against her temples. The progression was beginning to become depressingly familiar. At least it wasn't any worse than the last one, which was bad enough. Nosebleeds looked messy, but they generally weren't dangerous. Unless you kept getting them by the hour. * * * "Ruth?" "Yeah." "This is awkward, but, uh--I really need a hug." Ruth smiled invitingly and held her arms out. "I'm not a sex maniac, Dana. And I know all about needing comfort." Scully gave Ruth a quick, tight hug and moved her lips by Ruth's ear, turned away from the camera. "Next time they leave"--there was a hitch in her voice--"We should try to hold the locking mechanism of the door open. We'll give it a few minutes, then rush out and surprise the guards." "I'll be ready," Ruth murmured. They were still on the cot together when Scully's next seizure began. Scully screamed this time as her head jerked back against Ruth, battering Ruth's chest. A force threw Ruth off of Scully, onto the floor. She landed hard on her back. "Dana!" she screamed. The wind in the room made it impossible to keep her eyes open, so she crawled towards Scully blindly. "You've got to push it out again! I know you can do it--" and Ruth reached the convulsing woman just as a gout of blood erupted from Scully's nose, spattering Ruth, stinging her eyes. "You've got to do it yourself," she said into Scully's ear. The cot began to bounce up and down. "We don't have much time--" Her eyes opened and she seemed to see Ruth. "Push it away, I know you can, Dana, I--" Scully gasped, breathing in some of the blood coursing down her face, and threw her hands up. The vortex of air hit the opposite wall, pulsed once, slamming the bed back against the wall, and disappeared. There didn't seem to be anything for Ruth to do but hold Scully's head forward to stop the bleeding and wait for her to wake again. She took over twice as long to return to consciousness this time. * * * When the woman and her escorts returned, Scully wasn't surprised by the question. "What did you do to control the wind?" "I don't really know." "Agent Scully, don't force me to use any of my means of persuasion." "I *don't*! Don't you think I would have done it a lot sooner if I understood? I just... it felt like I was putting my hands up, but I know I wasn't. I tried to push..." "Did you want it to go into that wall?" "What wall?" "When you pushed it away, towards the wall across from the cot, our instruments registered 5 tons of pressure on that wall. Were you aiming for the wall?" "No. Just away. That was away." The woman smiled, revealing again that incongruous dimple. "Good. We're making progress. Try to get more control of it next time. If you can push it into the ceiling for us, we'll let Dr. Lehrman go." If there was one thing that Scully had learned about her invisible adversaries over the years, it was that they *never* let anyone useful go. That their captor would offer such a blatant lie was a sign of terrible trouble, Scully thought. "Please." It cost Scully more pride than she had thought she had left to beg. "Please don't do this again." "Agent Scully, how charmingly futile. Hold out your arm." When Scully made no move, the woman grabbed her hair and pulled back sharply. "Agent Scully, hold out your arm or we'll start double doses on Dr. Lehrman, since she's not responding as well as you are to the regular amount, and you can ride out the residual seizures while she's swallowing her tongue in front of you." Eyes distant, she raised her arm. An orderly stepped forward to hold it steady, but the woman waved him back. "No, let her hold still on her own. If you move, Agent Scully, if you so much as twitch, your new friend will learn all sorts of interesting things about brain damage." "Just do it," Scully ground out. As the woman pushed down on the plunger, tears slipped from her eyes, tinged with blood. Her face was immobile, expressionless. She stayed that way until their tormentors left, when she sagged into Ruth and let herself weep. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry," she chanted again and again. "I couldn't... I'm sorry." She meant that she couldn't try to jam the door open, and hoped that Ruth understood. Ruth had obviously had no success on her own, and tears of frustration slid down her cheeks, falling on Scully's hair. * * * Ruth's next seizure was no different, neither worse nor better. She was plateauing. The blood loss would be serious, if they kept up this pace, within a day. When Scully said those words out loud, Ruth simply looked at her, then asked, "And how long for you?" Scully didn't reply. They both knew that the answer might be hours, or less. And Ruth watched Scully's head jerk back as the next seizure began. Folly: Dies Irae Chapter 2: Beware Herr God, Herr Lucifer, Beware Beware Out of the ash I rise with my red hair And I eat men like air. --Sylvia Plath, "Lady Lazarus" Scully groaned and wished that she could have stayed unconscious longer. She heard Ruth shift on the cot next to her. "What happened?" she asked. "No windstorms or bouncing beds this time, just convulsions. So maybe we won't get a trip to the interrogation room out of this one. You had another nosebleed. It took a while to stop." "And?" Ruth's hesitancy had not boded well. Scully felt a weight on her arm, but it was as if the limb were asleep; she could feel pressure, but not sensation. "And there's some, um, bleeding from the ears." "One more of these and I'll have permanent brain damage, I think. Right now I'm still in pain, but I also feel...like I'm insulated from the rest of the world. I can't...I can't really feel you even touching me.." She didn't tell Ruth that, even with her eyes open, she was seeing bursts of light, darting from her peripheral vision to the center of her sight. What Ruth didn't know couldn't hurt her. She felt Ruth's shudder as a vibration against her, and squeezed the other woman's hand, which was wrapped around hers. she thought. "Right," Ruth said, as if she'd spoken aloud. She got up and went over to the toilet, and came away with an empty toilet paper roll. Moving to the camera, she thrust it towards the lens. "Hey! Hey up there! Agent Scully is still bleeding, and we need more toilet paper!" "Do you think they care?" "I know they don't want the camera smeared with--anything unmentionable, and if they won't give me toilet paper I can't answer for the consequences." Amazingly, Scully could still smile, though it hurt her chest almost as much as if she'd had a broken rib. After an eternity--five minutes, according to her watch--the door swung open, and an orderly with an automatic peered in, a roll of toilet paper in his left hand. He tossed the roll at Ruth and closed the door. Scully imagined her hand holding the locking mechanism in place, preventing it from locking like a wad of gum stuck in the door. She could almost feel her hand there. It felt more real than her numb physical hands. She thought she might be going into shock. But Ruth needed her, and she needed to get back to Mulder. So she sent her awareness out, still not fully believing that she was doing this, and felt the guards outside the door. Two of them. The orderly with the toilet paper had disappeared down the hall. Ruth was watching, waiting for her sign. She shook her head--*hang on*--and tried to figure out what to do about the camera. *What I wouldn't give right now to know video technology instead of physics.* She imagined herself tracing the camera feed to its destination, and saw a room with many screens, monitoring other rooms that she couldn't afford to think about. The other rooms were a blessing, as horrible as that was, because while the two technicians on duty were looking at someone else having a seizure, she put the camera for Observation Room 3 on pause so that it would show the two of them cowering on the cot. she thought distractedly. It was so good to use the power, direct it. She thought that "runner's high" must be like this, pleasure exacted from pain, converting the pain itself to pleasure. Then she focused on Ruth. And nodded. They both stood up and moved to the door. She reached for it and put her hand where the knob should be and *pulled,* thinking of her hand as a magnet, as a vacuum. The door moved smoothly open and she darted through. The guards raised their weapons-- she thought, and *grabbed* and threw one gun at Ruth, snatching the other for herself. As soon as it was in her hand she shot the guards, one in the stomach, one in the shoulder. Meanwhile, Ruth had dropped her gun. "Pick it up," she snapped as the guards started to scream. She waited a moment for Ruth to comply, then headed down the hall. She knew that somewhere in her head the former Dana Scully was appalled, but the new and improved Dana Scully didn't care. Truth be known, the new and improved Dana Scully planned on bringing the whole building down if she could, so whether the guards died then or shortly thereafter was a matter of indifference to her. "Which way?" Ruth asked, reduced to childlike compliance by the horror of the whole experience. Scully threw part of herself out of her body, down the corridor and tried to find an exit...there. She paused a moment to swipe at the fresh blood staining her shirt--hadn't waited long enough before moving, apparently. "Follow me." What followed was an eerie mix of standard procedure and lunacy. She went through first at each door in perfect Bureau stance and then waved Ruth through. Finally, they reached a fire exit. Then they were through the door and the alarm didn't go off. They emerged into a bright winter day. She was almost surprised that it wasn't dark; what they had been through didn't seem possible in the light. "That's far enough." They spun around. The woman and her three stooges, spread carefully apart so that they couldn't all be watched at once, were pointing guns at them. "It was a nice trick with the camera, but it lost its effectiveness when you started appearing in the *other* security cameras in the building. Put the guns down." Scully hesitated. Could she disarm them all as she'd done with the guards? The woman smiled, though her dimples were no longer apparent. "I know what you're thinking, but I have a little more experience with this than you. You're tired out, you won't be able to control the power. And you're about to have another seizure. Given the amount of mastery you've shown, you're now very valuable to me. Put down the gun and I'll give you drugs to control the seizure. You'll survive; you'll even be able to think. If not, when the seizure starts I'll just shoot Dr. Lehrman then--I have my successful subject now, I don't need her --and I'll still give you drugs, but by then there might be more brain damage. You'd live the rest of your life with us, but you'd be a moron. You want that?" She could be bluffing. Scully could barely think--and whether by suggestion or because the woman was telling the truth, she felt the headache building. It arrived like a tsunami. She lowered the gun, determined not to go with them, but fearing a gunfight for Ruth's sake. It was obvious to everyone that Ruth's gun was essentially a prop; she'd get no help from that corner. This time she felt the power rising in her with the seizure. As the woman and her helpers moved toward them, the woman produced another syringe and double-checked the dose. The power --the seizure--the pain--the buzzing lack-of-oxygen feeling that felt so good--they were the same, they were the world, they were unstoppable, but she had to hold on, she had to control it so they could escape. In a moment she would be helpless, and when she was they would shoot Ruth for sure. All this went through her mind while her body was still in the process of realizing that her knees weren't working anymore, and she gave up trying to block the whirlwind inside her. She opened herself to it, let it ravage through her--and aimed it. Something roared from her, past the woman, *through* two of the goons, who wavered as if she were seeing them through waves of heat and then collapsed, blackening, and into the building from which they'd emerged. Nothing happened. Scully fell to her hands and knees, unable to react to her failure, thinking crazily, She knew the woman, the one person she'd really liked to have crisped, was moving closer, and she hoped Ruth would take the chance to run away; all they really needed was Scully and the woman wouldn't waste her remaining guard on Ruth. She felt a needle prick at her neck... The world exploded. The seizure enveloped her, familiar, almost an escape really. She couldn't distinguish the pain in her head from the world, which seemed to be whirling around her and hitting her with fists of earth. And then, before the darkness she knew was about to take her away forever, she managed to send out a last prayer. * * * Scully came back to consciousness slowly, hesitantly. Memories welled up. She felt bruises all over her back and legs, felt like at least a bone bruised in her left arm, burns on her shoulders. She must be a mess. She began to remember, and the pain seemed more comforting. What she'd done to others was a lot harder to face. The faint smile that curved her lips signalled the man waiting in the room that she'd returned to him. "Scully?" He took her hand in his. "Mulder." She looked up at him with unguarded eyes. "Isn't this really *your* job?" He had a yellowed bruise that stretched from his left temple to the corner of his mouth, and above that some hair had been shaved away to accommodate a bandage. "I did mean to ask you whether you were trying to sneak up on my record," he replied. "You're more graceful about getting out. Somehow they never realize they've let you out of the hospital far too soon, whereas I have to restage the Battle of the Bulge to get let out." "Whoever said that doctors make the worst patients never met you, Mulder. How did you find me?" "I heard you." She accepted that. Given her own situation, she could hardly quibble with claims of odd mental powers. "I should have been there before--I was unconscious for a while, and then they thought there might be brain damage because I kept talking to you--they wouldn't let me out because they thought I didn't understand that you were gone." Of course it had been exactly the opposite. Poor Mulder would do better with the rest of the world if he would keep what he thought to himself more often. The frustration must have been terrible. "So what *did* you do?" "I started with the file folder you were holding when we were attacked," he said. "Don't ask me why I need an object, I know it doesn't make any sense. But it helped me see a license plate. And another thing to add to my own X-File." He unbuttoned his right sleeve and rolled it up to expose his mottled forearm. "Sympathetic bruising, Scully. I look like a drug addict, but I didn't even get the rush. You wouldn't believe the trouble I had convincing anyone to take me seriously. Well, maybe you would. So I came alone to the drug company that owned the van whose plate I'd seen. "I got there just as you came outside. Guess you didn't really need my help. I should know better by now, shouldn't I? I was trying to get a good shot at the woman before I broke cover, so she couldn't use you as a hostage. "I saw those two men get flash-fried, Scully. I saw the building blow up. And I talked to Dr. Lehrman before she clammed up--I guess you said good things about me. She told me what happened." "What happened, officially?" There had to be an official story. "Apparently," he grimaced, not hiding his sarcasm, "the pharmaceutical company there had been storing some rather volatile chemicals. When a fire broke out during your escape--a fire which is as yet unexplained--those chemicals ignited, and the building was almost completely gutted. Including all the records, of course. Since we were just outside of the building, the edge of the blast caught us and tossed us around a bit. You got the worst of it. Ruth Lehrman, who says she was held captive with you, made it." Scully nodded, relieved. "And the other woman, the one with the gun and the syringes, survived. She says her name is Roberta Kennedy, but she's not saying anything else." "Mulder, there were other people in there. Other...test subjects. There was someone having a seizure when I--when we overpowered the guards; I saw it in the video feed." "No bodies were found in the building. They got out. Or our friends couldn't afford to leave the bodies behind for autopsy. You can't blame yourself. They were dead when they went into those rooms, Scully. Just like you." She was silent for a moment, thinking about what she was willing to live with. "What did you tell the doctors here?" "I was worried--Scully, you stopped breathing for a while. We were both a little toasted from the explosion, but you were--grey. I gave you CPR. I thought--when the EMTs arrived, Dr. Lehrman told them you'd been injected with an unknown drug which triggered violent seizures. In the hospital since then, you had two mini-seizures--nosebleeds, they had to give you some blood, but--nothing else happened. Dr. Lehrman and I agreed not to say anything more until we do some investigation of our own. They weren't able to identify what was in your blood; by the time it was analyzed, it was broken down too much. The samples from Kennedy's syringes, shockingly, disappeared from the hospital. And, by the way, they think being knocked unconscious by the blast might actually have helped dampen your seizure." Her mouth quirked up. "I guess if it wasn't for bad luck I'd have no luck at all." He shifted his weight uncomfortably. "I convinced them not to maintain you on anti-seizure drugs because it was a drug reaction, not organic. If you don't have another in the next few days, you'll still be a field agent. I, uh, went by your place and brought you some journals you had stacked up. Some JAMAs, a Physics-C, a Pathology. How do you keep up with all that?" "I rely on my increasingly frequent and regular hospitalizations to catch up on my journals. It's been working pretty well. Let me look at your arm," she ordered. He did look as if he'd been injected. The telltale bruising caused by incautious use of needles stood out: broken purple veins underneath the more general brown. She glanced at her own arm. The IV and tape obscured some of the damage, but her bruises resembled his--not exactly, because his blood vessels were laid out differently, but the puncture points were all in the same places. She shuddered and looked back up. They observed each other in silence. "Scully, I *saw* you--I felt you do it. Can you still--?" In response, she glanced at his belt buckle. Nothing happened for a moment, and then it flew open. Using the power--she was just going to call it that, intellectualize it later--still felt good. He smiled, a hint of the familiar leer in his eyes. "Is this going to be a regular occurrence, I hope?" "I don't know, Mulder. I don't know anything right now. Let me see my chart." "You need to rest now. This is the first time you've been awake in five days." He went to the foot of the bed and picked up the chart nonetheless. "Mulder, give me my chart!" Not even thinking about it, she *grabbed,* and the clipboard and its contents flew from his grasp and thudded into her hands, hard enough to bruise. She felt lightheaded, and she saw something deadly in his eyes. Fear. She shrank back into the bed in horror. He was at her side instantaneously. He knelt awkwardly to take her in his arms as best he could without disrupting all the tubes and wires. "Scully, I'm sorry, I'm sorry," he crooned, stifling her own attempts to apologize against his chest. "We'll get through this, I promise, just us. You're just tired, you need to rest, please, don't be upset," and the anguish in his voice stunned her, "I can't bear it." Scully calmed herself. They would be together; he trusted her enough to keep her secrets. He was crouching against the hospital bed. She dropped the chart over the other side. At that moment, she didn't care if she ever saw it again. Eventually he relaxed and drew away from her carefully, checking to see that she was calm. He sat back down in his hospital chair--he must be nearly as sore as she if he'd spent the past five days in one of those torture devices. "Want to just talk for a while? We could tell each other our favorite fantasies." He spoke gently, trying to lighten the mood. She appreciated the attempt more than she could say. "Like the one where you're quiet for ten minutes straight?" "Depends on what you have in my mouth." To avoid her jab, he moved his chair back a foot. "C'mon, I guarantee you'll enjoy it." He lowered an eyebrow and gave her his most suggestive look. She felt her skin color and radiate heat. The past month's news had so disrupted what might have been the natural progression of their relationship that he hadn't made a real pass at her since that day in the diner. The Day Before. And since then, his mood swings had made talking to him a precarious venture. When he was up, he was unreliable, even flighty; when he was down, he willed her not to approach so as not to have to rebuff her overtly. She'd respected those failings, so it was up to him to change the status quo, if he even wanted to anymore. Flirting was good for both of them right now, whatever the future held. "I'd do anything to be in that bed instead of you, you know," he whispered, voice heavy with anger at his own helplessness. "How about with me?" She refused to let him sink into his private realm of guilt, not after all they'd been through. "That was nice, before..." As he settled in, she wondered what Fox Mulder would have been if things had not gone so horribly wrong that long-ago night. With his genes, the shadow government would have had something in store for him no matter what, but could he have lived in blissful ignorance until that day? Could he have been happy? Much as she loved him, she knew that *she* could have lived a perfectly content life without him. It wouldn't have been as deep or real, but the deepest cuts did the most damage, after all. She felt him adjust himself so that she'd feel his warmth without him pressing against her injuries, and let herself drift away. * * * December 22 "Assault?" she said in disbelief. "That's it?" "Unfortunately, Agent Scully, there wasn't enough evidence for anything else. The DA agreed to let her plead to assault on a federal officer. You should be glad to avoid a trial." Skinner paused. "I know Roberta Kennedy tortured you and Dr. Lehrman, and that whoever was pulling her strings got away clean. I'm sorry. But without proof, we cannot act. You know that. And you wouldn't want to be an agent of a government for which that was not the law." Skinner left the office, gently closing the door behind himself. Scully's rage rose up in waves, shuddering through her body. It would be so easy. For a doctor, especially. A heart attack or an aneurysm--sorry, we don't know why, these things just happen. People choke to death on their food every day, too. Probably one faction of the MIB would think some other faction had done it. Just tidying up loose ends. No one would ever have to know. Not even Mulder. Poetic justice--from the pain Kennedy gave her would come Kennedy's own death. she realized, The rage flowed out of her and she imagined it seeping into the ground, resting with the dead. Where it belonged. * * * January 2 They didn't speak about what had happened to her for almost two weeks. Scully knew that they would have to do so at some point, so one day she left a note on his desk before he got in. After working for an hour in silence, he left to do the task she'd set him and returned shortly thereafter. "Well, we're gonna have to watch out for spies," he said, "but I've gotten the keys. And you owe me big for bearing the brunt of speculation." "Surely they don't think we're going to do it on the *firing range*," she said, sounding mildly scandalized. "It's a unique place, it would make a great story," he replied. "And stop calling me Shirley." She threw a bag of sunflower seeds at him. He let it bounce off his shoulder and caught it before it hit the floor. "Thanks," he said and opened the bag to get a seed. She grimaced. Nearly a smile. These days, it was the best she could give him. The headaches were with her almost constantly. She replaced the bottles of analgesics in her briefcase with dismaying frequency. She wouldn't prescribe anything for herself. That would be admitting weakness. There were more practical reasons, too. A drug strong enough for her headaches would slow down her response time. Most of the appropriate pharmacologicals were habit-forming over the long term. And, though she would never admit this to Mulder, it's a lot easier to tamper with a prescription filled with loose pills than with anonymous, interchangeable over-the-counter drugs. She never bought the same brand twice, even when that meant ibuprofen instead of Aleve. He probably wasn't aware how much of his own paranoia had rubbed off on her. Scully kept quiet these days. Walled off. Even when he was sure that they were safe from being overheard and allowed himself to drop hints that they should have a real conversation, she wouldn't talk about what was going on. He must have been incredibly relieved by her note, she thought. At least she'd referred to her new powers. Of course, she believed that there could be a scientific explanation for what had happened--injections seemed so much more logical and quantifiable than mysterious physiological anomalies, even if the former had produced the latter. But she seemed incapable of offering any theories, however lame, or even hardheaded skepticism. She was shellshocked. She looked up from her paperwork and caught him staring. "We'll go at 9," he said hastily. He returned to browsing through missing persons reports, looking for patterns. VICAP was supposed to take care of that, but the computer would never catch most of Mulder's "patterns." She'd heard rumors that the programmers evaluated the software based on how well it replicated the correlations he'd found. At 7:30, Mulder got them food from Burrito Brothers. He delivered hers with such hesitancy that she could barely look at him. He didn't have too much experience taking care of other people. His protectiveness in the past had centered on keeping Scully away from danger, rather than on doing anything positive for her. Usually he got to be cared for; Scully thought that he hadn't realized before how frustrating it was when the person on the receiving end resisted. Turnabout was fair play. To be honest, a large part of the silence between them was Mulder's fault. She was sure that he was deeply uncomfortable with the change in her. He was used to being the protector and to the subtle reassurance of his own power at the sight of her head nearly a foot below his. Shallow, macho, even piggish; still true. It's hard to feel in charge when your partner can deflect bullets with a harsh look. Sure, he'd say that he'd always thought that about her eyes, but being confronted with the reality made the metaphor seem a bit...flaccid. She was a freak now too. Even Mulder, whose mind was so open that his brains were in constant danger of falling out, had trouble with it. And Ruth, the only other person who might be trustworthy in this, wouldn't talk about it. She, too, retained the telekinesis (as if naming it made it any more scientific) induced by the drugs, albeit at a much lower level than Scully's. Scully had met with her several times to discuss the case, but they made each other uncomfortable and there were no strong leads to follow, so their meetings were brief. He had not made casual conversation all day. Respecting her limits; he'd sensed her need for privacy as she readied herself to try out the powers she still did not fully accept. It was even frightening that he would do that. For over four years, he had just assumed that she didn't have any limits he was bound to respect. "Ready?" he asked, grabbing a piece of cardboard and a roll of masking tape. She nodded. They traversed the darkened halls in step, nearly touching. She found it reassuring that they could still automatically maintain the same pace. At the range, she picked up several clips of ammo as he carefully taped over the window that let observers look in. "I checked the security blueprints," he said. "No cameras listed. Not a guarantee, but..." She handed him the loaded gun. "Just hold it. Let me try to aim and fire." They put on ear protection, and he held his arm out toward the target, gun loose in his hand. She watched him fight the instinct and training telling him to aim. She *reached* out and pulled the trigger. The bullet missed the target completely. Way too high. She moved away and studied the situation. Tried again. She was a quick learner; the physics of targeting came naturally to her. It was probably not much different from being a gunner in a plane or tank. When she was hitting the target's heart or head five times out of six, she started trying to fire while she moved around him. It was exhilarating, like riding a roller coaster: there was a sense of motion, a gravitational pull. She had to struggle to stay upright, but it was an enjoyable struggle. She dimly felt the headache rising up from the back of her neck towards her eyes, but for now it was only a promise. When Mulder used up the last clip, he turned and looked back at her. His look of fear made her glance down at herself. Blood was dripping from her nose, creating bright red roses on her blouse. The fabric was soaked and ruined. He removed her earguards and took her by the shoulders. "Lie down." She tilted her head. "On this floor?" Now the headache had arrived completely. He pushed her gently down, and knelt to cradle her head. "You have to promise me you won't use this power to try to get me out of danger." Scully glared at him past the hand pinching her nose closed. "I'd keep that promise as well as you keep the one about not leaving me alone when you think that it's too dangerous or that you might find out something if you don't wait for me." She sounded as if she had a serious cold, but there was nothing funny about the content of her words. "Scully--" "This wasn't my battle to begin with, but it is now. Not just because of what happened to me, and to Missy. Because I've chosen to look for the answers. This isn't a quest limited to one person." He shook his head. "They won't leave us alone," she insisted. It was hard to form the words with the pounding in her head, but this had to be said. "The next step is coming, and we have to be ready. Especially since we know that whatever They did has varying degrees of success--look at Ruth, she gets a nosebleed when she moves a salt shaker. They'll want something I doubt I'll want to give. "Mulder, there is no protection for me but the truth. You can't leave me out, because you're not the only target for Their planning." She could see his face through the haze of her watering eyes. It was drawn and sad, and she could see that he agreed with her, though he would not speak. He blamed himself for making her a separate target; he always had, and he might well be right, for all she knew. Not for the first time, she thought that it was a pity that she had so few other people in her life. Mulder was the lens through which she saw the rest of the world, and the intensity she focused on him was hard for both of them to sustain. The nosebleed tapered off. He took her home in silence. * * * January 10 Scully was looking through the files on his desk for a report on a UFO sighting in Minnesota. Mulder got all sorts of reports because he was Spooky, and people knew to send him anything sufficiently weird. He'd read and ruminate and once in a while come back with an appropriately eerie theory or even a patently obvious (to him) solution. The files she found hidden under some expense reports all centered on a particular phenomenon. Lately, there'd been a spate of deadly fires and other unexplained deaths around the country with one unusual characteristic: near the carnage, within sight of it, another dead person would be found. The deceased had all disappeared from their lives a few months before they turned up. Autopsies concluded that they'd died of heart attacks. And they'd all had intense nosebleeds at the time of death. Also in the file were copies of Mulder's requests that the bodies be examined for implants, or scarring consistent with the recent removal of a small object, and one diligent coroner's reply asking him how he knew to ask about the scar. She knew what he was thinking, and agreed. The dead people were fellow victims--first implanted, then reselected for the drug tests later--who hadn't had the luck and resolve to escape, who'd been turned into disposable weapons. Unable to refuse their captors' commands, their hearts had given out. By whatever mechanism the drug-induced power operated, it appeared to place too great a strain on the body to be maintained long. The victims had most likely been used just as research. She almost wished that the secret government would stop testing and start *doing*, so that the patterns wouldn't be so hard to find and the deaths wouldn't seem so pointless. She didn't tell him that she'd found the reports. Folly: Dies Irae Chapter 3: Partial Fires Not to have fire is to be a skin that shrills. The complete fire is death. From partial fires The waste remains, the waste remains and kills. It is the poems you have lost, the ills From missing dates, at which the heart expires. --William Empson, "Missing Dates" March she thought upon waking. Her head hurt, not how it did when she moved things, but as if she'd been hit. She was sitting upright in a chair. The familiar pressure of her gun at her back was gone. She heard someone shuffle in the room, and smelled that peculiar smoke. "Dr. Scully?" She opened her eyes. Cancerman stood not two feet from her, looking down with a fatherly concern. She flicked her eyes around the room. Two enforcers in black bracketed the door, hands folded in front of themselves as if they were propped-up corpses. She didn't recognize them. Ruth was slumped in a chair beside her, still unconscious. Mulder was lying in the corner. Funny. Usually *he* warranted the VIP treatment while she got shunted aside. When last she'd known the date and time, it had been Friday night. No one would know they were missing until Monday. She tried to use curiosity and anger to push away her fear. "Why are they always different?" She got a raised eyebrow in response. "Your lackeys, I mean. Don't you ever use them twice? Are they grown in tanks? Are they descended from some primordial bully and bred like the Samanthas?" The cigarette came down from his lips and he smiled insincerely. "Dr. Scully, every time I see you I'm reminded why I had you returned." She did not shudder. "What is it this time?" "We have a job for you." Jocular, almost, and definitely smug. "Doctor Lehrman?" He pinched Ruth's forearm, and her eyes flickered open. Cancerman nodded at his men. One came over to Scully and held his gun under her chin, grasping her face with his free hand. "Don't move and don't look away from me." His eyes were dead and blue. The metal of the gun was cool, welcoming. It would be so easy to lean into it and let go. Then she heard the shot and for a moment wondered why she wasn't dead. Her captor released her and she looked wildly around. Mulder was still on the floor, but now he was surrounded by a rapidly-growing pool of blood. Gut-shot. She rose and threw herself to his side. He was still unconscious. She heard Ruth whimper; it seemed a suitable background. "What do you want? Help him, I'll do whatever it is." She should be proud that her voice didn't shake. "I think you know what I want." Did his voice ever lose its oiliness? She swore she'd find out when this was over. "No, I don't!" She applied pressure, but the hole was large and she couldn't do much without equipment. "Bring your bounty hunter, whatever, please!" "Dr. Scully, you know better than that." "Stop playing games!" "You're the one fiddling while your partner bleeds to death." Through her desperation, she looked at him, and saw that he knew. The motherfucking bastard had known since the start. He smiled. "Go ahead. No one will stop you." she thought, hoping he'd understand. She was glad that he was unconscious, escaping the pain and his inevitable resistance to her decision. "Ruth, I need your help here." No response. "Ruth, you're a doctor! You swore an oath!" The other woman shook her head frantically. "I can't! I could have died," she wailed. "Mulder *is* dying," Scully gritted out. Then she was too busy to talk. The bullet had passed through him, so the first thing to do was to control the bleeding. She made her mind a microscope. Saw his cells dying, arteries bleeding out. Told them to do otherwise. Some of it, the things his body could do naturally with more time, was easy. The familiar near-arousal began to build in her, except that it wasn't mild at all. She dimly realized that she might not have to worry much about Cancerman when she was done. This was the finest control she'd ever attempted, and a lot of work in any event. Scully pushed her energy into him, urging the torn flesh to reunite, the ruined organs to reknit, the bone marrow to push out new blood cells to replace his grave losses. Only a few minutes of strength left. She felt rather than saw the new blood on him, and realized that it was her own with sickening relief. But it was not enough, not enough. He was still dying, only more slowly. The world seemed to fill with water, rising past her shoulders, into her ears, over her eyes. She leaned to the side to avoid falling on Mulder and undoing all her careful work. Was that someone moving her out of the way? Was it Ruth? * * * The stars exploded in her head, brighter than Mulder's UFOs. They sang to her in voices laced with barbed wire. She was lying down, but she could have sworn she felt the earth spinning violently in space, preparing to throw her off. She groaned and tried to press the heels of her hands into her eyes, but couldn't convert the intention to action. The lights slowly began to fade to an acceptable level, and when she tried again her hands responded. She rubbed at her face, feeling the dried blood that had cascaded over her mouth and chin. Tentatively, she checked her ears, finding dried blood there too. "Don't worry, Dr. Scully, a few days' rest and you'll be back in working order." Shit. She hadn't even smelled the smoke. Or maybe she couldn't stop smelling it. "Mulder?" she croaked without opening her eyes. "Back in his own bed, as you should be soon." "Why did you do this?" "We needed to know if you could combine your new skills with your old ones, Dr. Scully. You more than lived up to our expectations." "But *why*?" Why all this pain? An exhalation of sickly-sweet smoke. A needle pricked her arm, and she slid into welcome sleep. * * * And woke again in Mulder's bed, just after dawn. They were spooned together, fully clothed. The stiff fabric she felt around his midriff suggested that he was still in his blood-drenched clothes. The arm pinned underneath her was wrapped possessively around her waist, and his other hand was even more possessively cradling her breast. Squeezing it a little, really, in time with his even breathing. His erection poked into her back. Who was he dreaming about? Probably someone from his movies. Probably a little disappointed at the size of the breast he was holding, thinking it looked bigger onscreen. Her shudders intensified. She needed to get out of the bed without waking Mulder, and now she was getting angry because of what she imagined him dreaming. Why was it that she found it so much easier to be angry at him these days than to feel anything else? Not counting arousal, of course, but then she never counted that. None of which was getting her any further away from him without terminal embarrassment. She pushed up with her arm experimentally, attempting to dislodge the hand causing the most trouble. He sighed and slid his thumb over her nipple, causing a shock she felt through two layers of clothing. Scully slowed her breathing through sheer force of will and pushed harder. He released her with a little whimper of protest, and she rolled away as fast as she could, then sat on the side of the bed until she felt ready to stand. Avoiding some nameless pile of clothing, she walked to the bathroom to splash water on her face. Someone had wiped off most of the blood, leaving her hair a mess. There was some bruising around her inner elbow-- more than a needle; she'd been given an IV. She didn't feel too much like passing out, so it had quite likely been a transfusion. Her hose were shredded to hell. She pulled off the remaining fragments. Her most mundane fear rose up--that, while she was unconscious, some man in black might have molested her. The kind of man who'd work for Cancerman might well find the idea tempting. There were no signs...but she couldn't be absolutely sure. Her body was telling her that something was wrong, as it had done so often since her long disappearance. She just wasn't sure that her body was trustworthy anymore. "Mulder?" she called out, returning to the bedroom. He started, then woke at once. "Scully! What--?" "We were taken again, this time by Cancerman himself. You were unconscious, no missing time," she reassured him. "But we have a big problem. Look at your clothes." Horror and disgust mingled on his face as he began ripping at his shirt. "What happened? Did I hurt someone?" Some of that blood was hers. It all looked the same dry, though. "No. They shot you." He wrenched the ruined shirt off, cuff buttons popping, and began to struggle with his undershirt, which stuck to his skin. "Shot me? But I don't feel--" then grimaced in pain as his hand found the half-healed wound. "Did one of those bounty hunters do this?" "No, Mulder, Ruth and I did. Cancerman knows, they shot you and I had to--" She checked herself. "Let me look at the wound." She returned to the bed, leaning over him to examine his injury. "It looks weeks old. Shouldn't even hurt soon. Just don't do too many crunches for a while." Mulder caught her hand as she ran it wonderingly over the pink skin. "Scully? Look at me." He pulled her down until his face filled her vision. Far too close, without a case between them. He used his free hand to tilt her face up, away from him, then from side to side. "Nosebleed. And from the ears again," he said without any emotion. "Headache?" She shook her head, pulling away. "Cancerman said they needed to see if I could combine my medical training with...whatever this is. But he wouldn't say why." "You already had the headache, then." She nodded. "So it's been over 24 hours," he continued, glancing at the clock. "And then they knocked you out and we woke up here." "Yes," she said, absentmindedly checking the wound again. "Oddly enough, they left me on the couch and you in here. You'd think they'd know that..." "Scully," he interrupted the lie whose motive she didn't want to examine. He rose to a sitting position on the bed, "We'll get through this." "How, Mulder?" she asked bleakly, and left the room. "Don't shut me out here," he said as he entered the living room, pulling on a clean T-shirt. She was sitting on his couch, staring into space, a pillow clutched tightly to her stomach. "Why not, Mulder? I owe you a few." She'd always known since she was taken that they'd be back. They wanted something from her, something that would require her participation. No one could keep this from happening. All that was left was to wait. "I think I should leave the X- Files." She stood up, letting the pillow slide into the general mess around her. "No, you can't--" "Sure I can. They shot you this time, Mulder, and that was just for practice. What will they do next time they want to test their little creation? Whose life do you think they'll ask me to trade for yours?" He simply stared at her. It was almost as if her words of concern for his safety dropped to the floor and dissolved before they reached his ears. "We've never beaten them; we've always ended up serving their goals without even knowing it." She watched him struggle for speech, and it infuriated her. "Anyway, it's not like you really need or want me on the X-Files. You ditch me constantly, you don't listen to my perfectly respectable scientific theories, as far as I know you don't even *worry* about that thing in my neck, and you never talk to me, just *at* me. I'm not a partner, I'm a sidekick." His eyes widened. "That's not true. I trust you, Scully." "That's not what I said, is it? Of course you trust me to come bail you out of trouble when you call like some faithful St. Bernard. You trust me, but you don't respect me. Maybe you trust me because you don't respect me. And you didn't trust me enough to tell me about all those files on the dead people with nosebleeds-- or maybe you didn't make the connection to my situation, is that it?" He gaped at her. Shocked that she'd discovered this deception; usually, he didn't bother to hide his infidelities to their partnership. He must have assumed that she wouldn't expect subterfuge from him. "And you're always on your best behavior after I get hurt. Learn that from Dad, Mulder? I'll give you credit, you never laid a hand on me in anger. Then again, with what you get us into, you don't need to." He looked away. He knew she wasn't fighting fair, but he thought he deserved it. It was as if he could only interact with two people, Samantha or Dad, no matter whose forms they took. She struggled not to be either one. "Say something, dammit!" "I don't know what to say." "Of course not," she said, voice rich with contempt. "How would you know what to say to me when you don't even know who I am? Well, fuck you, Mulder. Fuck your silent treatment and your condescension and your running off to God-knows-where and your *fucking* fish." The anger left her voice, leaving only despair. "I'm invisible to you. I stayed so long because I'd begun to believe that only pain tells you that you're alive. I wonder who taught me that? He was a really good teacher." She turned and left the apartment. * * * Cancerman had kindly left her car there for her in her usual parking space. She didn't bother to try to preserve any prints; there wouldn't be any, at least none that any database would recognize. Polite yet thorough, these MIB. As she started the car, she wondered what she'd done. It was all true, more so than she'd thought when she started to speak. She'd thought that playing on Mulder's guilt and making him angry would let him accept her decision to leave--he would never stand for being protected, but he was much more comfortable with rejection. And, really, she'd wanted to say those things for a long time; protecting him was a great excuse. She wondered if that was part of why he ditched her so often--protection, combined with punishment for needing protection, all at once. Somehow she made it home. And then she ran to the bed and screamed into her pillow. She refused to cry, so she raged around the apartment, throwing out anything that was at all out of place. She undressed wildly, tossing clothes around randomly in defiance of all her habits. In the shower, she cursed him every way she knew how as she scrubbed her face free of the last dried blood. Part of her wanted to cry; if she gave herself over to the pain, eventually she would come through it and it would be gone forever. She would be a real Ice Maiden, mummified inside, dry and impermeable. Then her life could divide cleanly into Before Mulder and After Mulder, stable and flatlining, and she'd just remember During as...as what? An object lesson in apology as policy and napalm as a social good. Now she knew why Mulder didn't kill himself. It seemed so feeble a punishment for living. When she left the shower, she put on one of Mulder's dress shirts that he'd left sometime he'd stayed over. It smelled like him, and she curled herself into a ball on her bed, shaking with rage, until, exhausted, she slept. She woke to the pounding on her door. Dazed, she walked through the apartment to let him in. He closed the door behind him and eyed her warily. "We need to talk." His hair was a mess, his face shiny and unshaven. Well, she must look like a chipmunk. She couldn't criticize. "You have something to say, finally?" "I was too scared to show you those files." "Is that supposed to be some kind of apology?" "No," he said, stepping forward so that he could rest his hands on her shoulders. She looked up at him. "This is." And he bent to kiss her, eyes never leaving hers. She leaned into him, trying to memorize the moment. His tongue flicked over her lips, testing them, making her shiver. His hands moved down her back, pulling her up on her toes. Then she wrenched herself down and back. "Jesus, Mulder, is that what you think this is about?" "In part...I wasn't all on my own there." "You think if you fuck me well enough it'll make up for all the times you've fucked me so badly before?" He started backwards. Wasn't it going as well as he thought? Good. Bastard. She saw anger rising in those chameleon eyes. "I don't know, we can always try. Why are you wearing my shirt, Scully?" Without visible movement, he was suddenly in her personal space again. "You're the profiler, you figure it out." "I think if you're going to leave me I should at least get my stuff back." He began to move forward, and she backed up to match every step. "I'll leave a box on your desk Monday morning." "Scully. Take. It. Off." As her fingers reached for the collar button, she remembered a line from *A Streetcar Named Desire*. "We've had this date from the beginning." If not from the beginning, then after Barry. After Modell. After someone, something. She thought fleetingly of the birth control pills she'd started taking again, only in part to control the lingering physical effects of her abduction that she never wanted to think about. After Barry, most likely. Then a wave of heat enveloped her, obscuring her vision. They moved down the hall, then into the bedroom, as she worked her way down the shirt, hands as steady as if they were performing an autopsy. His eyes would lock with hers, scan down her body, then return. She could smell him, almost taste him, in the air. Carefully, she kept the edges of the shirt together so that only a sliver of skin was revealed. She didn't take her eyes off him--to do so would be a defeat, she knew--while she hiked up the material to reach the bottom buttons. The shirt fell nearly to her knees, and she finished only as she bumped into the bed. "Don't stop," he said tightly. His roughened voice lapped against her as if his tongue were already on her. She shrugged the shirt off and stood in front of him. He inhaled sharply and quickly stripped out of his shirt. She'd always liked his arms, liked to watch the play of muscle under smooth skin whenever she could afford to sneak a look. Then he pulled off his jeans and boxers together as he kicked his shoes off. She only had a moment to react; he pushed her down onto the bed. His hands slid over her as if she burned to the touch. She grabbed at him relentlessly, determined to leave a mark. Yes, his arms were as smooth and solid as they looked. Yes, his narrow waist and hips were perfect for holding on to. She tasted the skin of his neck, salty and dark, and bit down a little just to hear the moan she knew he'd make. He lay almost on his side, one hand propping his body above hers. His fingertips traced designs on her collarbones, her breasts, her stomach, the skin under her hipbones where her legs met her torso. She arched up into his touch, wanting more than the teasing he was giving her. "Now," she commanded him. She felt his erection between her legs, hot and demanding. "Still on the pill?" he said into her ear. The moistness of his breath made her moan even as she nodded her head frantically. And then there was nothing but the rhythm of their bodies. * * * March 10 She woke again sprawled across her bed. The bottom sheet had gotten pulled off one side of the bed at some point, and she was lying directly on the stiff mattress. On the floor, underneath a blanket, she saw the collar of his shirt sticking out. So she would need to leave a box on his desk and hope no one else saw it. You see, Director Skinner, I need a transfer away from Mulder and I dumped all that stuff in his office not because we stopped sleeping together but because we started. Yeah, right. Lying to herself was useless. She'd orchestrated this. He'd helped. They'd both known that nothing but the excuse of pain and anger could get them in bed together, let them blame it on the adrenalin and the need for comfort and not on some constant, greedy desire. And people thought that unspoken understandings were a blessing. Mulder was a black hole of need. She'd wanted to protect him from his own pain, and had gotten caught in his event horizon, unable to leave or to reach his center. Sex couldn't change that pull, any more than her threat to leave. It was just that he made it so hard to watch over him, and that she was afraid that he was no longer the only one who needed protection. She was afraid that they would be safer apart. Sighing, she pushed herself off the bed and headed for the kitchen on shaky legs. Breakfast first, then the rest of her life. Mulder was sitting on her couch, dressed again, holding his head in his hands. He looked up as she came into the room and she blushed, though he'd seen her naked from much closer up last night. "You're still here," she said needlessly, then fled to get something to wear. She chose sweats, as much protection as she could find, then ventured back into the living room. "Can I make tea?" he asked, and she nodded. He went into the kitchen while she collapsed into an armchair. She heard him opening doors and running water. "So what happens now?" he asked, still in the other room. She rubbed her eyes wearily. "I don't know. Is there really anything to say?" "I've been thinking about it." He returned to the couch, holding a Pop Tart. Cherry frosted, the kind she kept just for him though she hated and feared the things. Who was she kidding? She wouldn't need a box to get him out of her life, she'd need a damn trailer truck. And a lobotomy. He began to speak. "You're right that a lot of times I try not to pay attention to you, because it hurts so much when you're in pain. Which is always. I think last night you wanted me mad so I'd let you go without noticing that you were leaving to keep me safe." She opened her mouth, but he gave her a cautionary let-me-finish look and she subsided. "You meant what you said, I know that. But there's other things between us, things you're no better at saying than I am. You want it to be my fault so you can forgive me and still be perfect even if you're not happy. But you don't really forgive, do you, Scully? "I don't want your forgiveness. It doesn't help. I want your friendship." "And what comes next?" She didn't remember deciding to speak. But she couldn't stay frozen forever. "We'll find out what's going on with these experiments. I'll come when you call and say you need me. But I can't make myself cheery and sweet, and I think you'd spit on me if I were." Scully stared at him. It felt as if a great weight was alternately descending on and lifting from her chest. He bowed his head. "I need you so much." In his face she saw again all his traumas and imagined sins. She knew him well enough to list them, too: Please come back, Sam. I'm sorry, Dad. Phoebe, please. I didn't find him in time, and he killed again. Mom, get better, I miss you. Now she was leaving him too. It was the Pop Tart crumbs on his mouth that decided the issue--they made him seem like the ultimate little boy. The ice around her heart broke with a nearly audible crack. She rose and moved to the couch, offering herself to be held. He swept her into a painfully tight hug, which she returned with all her strength. She thought that she could be completely content to watch his eyes go from green to brown to gold and back for a lifetime. His face drew closer to hers--who was moving, she couldn't tell-- and then the whistle of the teakettle shocked them apart. "I'll get it." She stood quickly enough to make herself dizzy and went to pour the hot water into the mugs Mulder had set out. He'd chosen cinnamon apple, a good comfort tea, with a master manipulator's touch (he was a psychologist, she reminded herself). They drank tea, and he left, and the next day they returned to the usual unusual cases. Things were fine for a time, until April Fool's Day. * * * April 1 Scully knocked on Mulder's door and reached automatically for the knob, but the expected invitation didn't issue forth. "Go away," she heard instead. His voice, muffled by the door, sounded strained. "Mulder, it's me." "Scully--" She took her name as a permission and entered. His desk had only one thing in the center--it looked like a Hallmark card. She came closer to lean over his shoulder and saw that he was furious. "If they think I'm so crazy, why do they come to me when they're stumped?" She reached to pick up the card and the paper folded in it. The card was a standard April Fool's Day card with a lame joke about a promotion, signed by many of the other agents in VCS. She opened the paper and gasped in outrage. It was a notice from Goodrich Rebecca Ingrams Pearson, a British insurance company, that Mulder had been insured for a year against alien abduction and impregnation. He could collect upon proof of abduction or birth of a part-alien child. "Those *assholes*!" she breathed, crumpling the paper in her hand. "Next time they bring down some unsolvable case for me to improve their arrest records, I think I'll just tell them aliens did it." "No, you won't--not unless you think that aliens *did* do it--which is not impossible where you're concerned. You care about the victims too much. That's what they'll never understand." Scully hadn't been feeling well since she woke, and the incident with Mulder left her even queasier. She headed to the bathroom on the main floor. She didn't want to see any of the other agents' snickering faces, so she kept her head down and walked as fast as she could. Speed was a mistake. Her mouth started watering and she knew that she was about to throw up. She made it into a stall just in time. As she leaned over the toilet, gasping for breath and willing the spasms to subside, she felt ashamed--just adding to their list of worries--and hoped that it was just the flu. What was it that her counselor, that woman whose voice she'd fled as fast as she was able, had said? "Because you're a woman, they assume this is a woman's weakness. Men get to call it post- traumatic stress disorder, but women--it's just a failure of control, or too much control, or whatever. Such a worthless thing, a woman's body, why shouldn't it be easy to control?" But permission to be ill was not what she had wanted, so she'd abandoned the counselor and her hotlines and programs and been fine, just fine. Then she heard the snick of a cigarette lighter, and smelled something worse than the acrid smell of vomit as she turned. "I didn't know that you were a pervert," she told the man whose cigarette smoldered not four feet from her, wiping her mouth with scratchy government-issue toilet paper. She rose from her crouch to gain some dignity. "I just wanted to speak to you in private, Dr. Scully. I'm sorry that you're feeling unwell, but that's the price we pay..." "What are you implying?" She was beyond outrage. She wanted to burn him alive. Only the thought that she could probably do so made her exert the familiar control over her emotions. "Why, nothing. I'm glad to see that you and Agent Mulder worked out your differences. That policy was a funny idea, wasn't it? Too bad your colleagues chose to get it for the wrong person." Suddenly she needed to lean on the cold metal of the stall. "I've had enough of your lies," she said when she trusted herself to speak. She shoved past him and left the bathroom, breaking into a near-run as she headed for the lab. Folly: Dies Irae Chapter 4: As Through Triumphal Arches She whom the god had snatched into a cloud Came up my stair and called to me across The gulf she floated over of despair. Came roaring up as through triumphal arches Called I should warm my hands on her gold cope Called her despair the coping of her fire. --William Empson, "Letter V" Two hours after the soul-chilling visit from that nameless, cancerous bully, Scully returned to Mulder's office. For once, she didn't knock, and she caught him staring blindly into space, seeing whatever haunt was screaming most loudly. "We have to talk where we won't be overheard," she said, surprised at the dullness of her own voice. They settled on the Mall, surrounded by chatty tourists. She sank onto the bench like a balloon deflating, and waited until he was seated to begin. "I saw Cancerman this morning. He implied--that I was pregnant. I did a test; he's probably wrong. But my birth control pills aren't--they're fertility drugs, according to our lab. After all that skulking around with Advil, God, I could have been popping Darvon all along. It's funny: after half a century, we know next to nothing about female hormones. Ever read the package inserts on birth control pills? No, I bet you haven't. They say that the pills can make you gain weight, lose weight, get acne, have your acne clear up, grow hair, get headaches, bleed more, bleed less...Anything can happen. So I didn't pay any attention when the side effects changed, and of course weight fluctuations affect the cycles too...And at this weight I shouldn't be able to conceive easily, so I'm probably okay." She realized that she was rambling. Mulder was too stunned to interrupt, so she tried to organize her thoughts. "Then Ruth called. She had a visitor too. She was pretty upset, she's not as used to them as I am. She *is* pregnant. Pregnant with something that they think needs her--our--powers to survive. *That's* what Cancerman was after when he had you shot--an extra test right before we were inseminated." Mulder's fists tightened convulsively at the last word. "Was your mother's pregnancy difficult?" she continued. If he really was part of an experiment, then Ruth's child was likely part of the same line, and he might know something that would help treat her. The question hit him like a cannonball. He blinked, then opened his mouth, but nothing came out. She waited. "...Yes," he finally said. "She lost a lot of blood. They thought that she might not be able to have more children. Samantha was their miracle..." Scully was unable to avoid thinking about just who else's miracle Samantha might have been. * * * Ruth drove in from Virginia to meet them at the National Zoo after work. They stood in front of monkeys whose hooting and screeching sounded exactly like car alarms. "I'm going to have an abortion," she announced, tight-lipped, as soon as they were within speaking distance. Scully couldn't help but frown. "What you're talking about is murder." Mulder put a restraining hand on her arm, but she shrugged it off. "Does that have any resemblance to what you did to those guards?" Scully looked away. Ruth barrelled on. "You can stick with your morality if it works for you. But you're not the one with the monster inside her." "It's not a monster! It's--" . "Mostly human? Close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades, Dana. Take a look. Take a look at what it's doing to me and tell me that it's just a baby." Mulder gave Scully a questioning glance. "I'd prefer to look at an ultrasound," she said, trying to be reasonable. "I don't think the zoo has that equipment. Before we say anything more about this, you look and you see." Hesitantly, Scully reached toward Ruth's body. Her hand stopped inches from Ruth's belly and her eyes closed. She made a surprised noise, then fascination flooded her face, which seemed to disgust Ruth. Slowly, Scully returned to normalcy, shaking her head a little to stave off the oncoming headache. Ruth began to speak again. "I love babies, you must know that. I'd hoped--well, it doesn't matter now...I've been invaded, and I can't let this happen. We don't even know if it's dangerous." Ruth caught the guilty look on Mulder's face. "Or do we?" "There's a risk--" he began painfully. "It's possible that this has been tried before," Scully interrupted. "In a potentially similar case, the mother and baby survived, but she had a difficult birth. And we can infer that the people responsible for this think that medical training and our drug-induced powers will improve the odds of a successful outcome." "There's a surer way to improve my odds. It would be a lot safer with your help--I can barely do parlor tricks, checking myself out gave me the usual nosebleed and my head hurts so bad everything I see has haloes. Will you help me?" Scully looked at the monkeys, captive and carefree. She'd killed before, possibly with less reason. But this was a baby--for all she knew, it could be Mulder's. Or it could be much more alien than that. She'd gotten a look at the fibers emanating from Ruth's womb to her major organs, and thought that Mrs. Mulder would have had more problems than blood loss delivering a baby like that, unless it disconnected shortly before birth as preparation for independent life. There were too many unknowns. So many opportunities to advance scientific knowledge. And above all, a unique being; whatever unnatural acts brought it into existence, from now on nature would inexorably bring forth a sentient being--unless Ruth killed it. Mulder had been trying to talk to Ruth while Scully thought, but he gave up and moved back to her side. "What would you want her to do if it were you?" "But it's not me, Mulder," she told him, hoping to make him understand. "The church teaches that abortion is murder. It's not a random clump of cells. It's a genetically distinct individual, undergoing a gradual developmental process. If it's not a life deserving of our protection now, is it in ten weeks? Ten months? There's no bright line." "Even so, I can tell an acorn from an oak tree." "It's an old argument. I doubt that we can resolve it." "I think we have to." Ruth was standing close enough to overhear, but she didn't attempt to join their consultation. "If it were me, I would try to have the baby. That's what I am. But it's not me, and I can't pretend I'm unhappy about that. If it were me...I'd want you and Ruth to accept my decision, even if you hated it, and I'd want your help if it were important. And I have the feeling that it will be. Mulder, there are wire-fine chains of cells linking the fetus to her heart, lungs, liver, kidneys, and several major glands. I don't know what they're doing or will do, but this is not going to be a normal abortion." "So you'll help?" Ruth stepped closer. "I want to do tests first, get cell samples, and I won't tell you that I think you're doing the right thing. But you're the one at risk." She winced as a stab of pain penetrated so deep into her brain that she almost expected a visible point to stick out of the back of her skull. She reached for the painkillers stashed in her purse. Mulder took the bottle from her after two fumbles, when it became obvious that the child-proof cap was temporarily beyond her capabilities, giving her his hangdog I-did-this-to-you look along with the pills. She dry- swallowed and replaced the nearly empty bottle in her purse. "Let me get in touch with some discreet friends of mine," Mulder said to Ruth, his eyes never leaving Scully. "I won't mention your name, but we might find a surgeon we can trust. Does your practice do abortions?" "In Virginia, if you do five or fewer a month, you don't need to be licensed as a clinic, so yes, we do a few from time to time for women who are already clients," she replied. "We can use our facilities if that's possible- -if we think there's a low risk of serious complications." "Let me take Dana home and we'll call you in a few days." They walked towards the exit. Mulder's hand at her back was for once less a courtesy than a necessary means of guidance and support. As they waited in the line of cars trying to get on to Connecticut Avenue, Scully stared out of the window, trying not to think. She was hardly the most observant Catholic. She believed in the death penalty, and that was as wrong as abortion to the Pope. She used birth control, or thought she had, even though contraception was also a sin and even though the pill might sometimes prevent implantation of a conceptus. Did that make her a hypocrite? She knew herself to be strict and judgmental, but there was a difference between what she had done and deliberately setting out to kill a life that hadn't proved itself dangerous in any way. "Scully, am I a monster?" Mulder's question surprised her out of her reverie. "No. Many things, but never a monster. But--your mother was not kidnapped and subjected to dangerous, almost deadly experiments. She loves you." Mulder grimaced. "I wonder. She's loving now, but she doesn't remember everything. They both loved Samantha best--don't argue--and when she was gone there was no love left in that house. *Something* was done to my mother. Possibly the first generation of what's been done to Ruth. They're getting more ambitious so they needed their wonderdrug for Ruth to monitor her own progress and maybe correct any problems that might arise. "And Mom--she may have loved a monster. Hell, she loved my father for a while." "A rapist's child is innocent of any crime," she said softly. "But this isn't about a normal rape. This is about colonization. Ruth is being colonized. And to go through all this-- they must have tried it before with...unmodified women who didn't live. You hedged with Ruth, but you must know that." She bowed her head. "I do. We didn't evolve to gestate like that. If it doesn't let go easily--she won't survive the birth, and maybe not even an abortion." "We've met the enemy, and he is I." The headache had by now given her double vision, but she found his hand by touch and held on tight until he absolutely had to use it to drive. They were silent the rest of the way to Scully's apartment. Mulder parked in front of her apartment building. Spring was exploding around them; there were daffodils lining the sidewalk and brilliantly green leaves clinging shyly to the trees. The beauty of new life, of hope and promises. She turned her gaze back to her hands. "I have a proposal, Scully. I just had the car debugged, so I think we're safe from prying ears." She looked at him curiously. "We need to stay in one place for a while, limit our exposure, before we figure out what's going on with Ruth. ISU renewed their standing request for me to return to Profiling and Consultation, even knowing about Roche. Hell, it probably made me more attractive to them. We can put the X-Files on hiatus, except for Ruth's, and work from Quantico. You could come on as a pathologist assigned just to ISU. Right now we work with consultants and borrowed MEs, which is slow and inefficient. It would be good for the program and it would let you stay in town until you and I figure out what to do for Ruth." It did not escape her that he'd referred to ISU as "we," nor that he was carefully referring to Ruth and not to Scully herself, who was obviously part of the same plan. "I thought you'd never return to ISU." Sixty feet underground, in a former emergency shelter--deeper than the dead ever got, he'd told her once. "It's a brothel. We don't get to say no to the clients, they usually show up with something kinky, and they don't respect us in the morning. Witches and whores, that's what we are in ISU. But we can't afford to be looking for Bigfoot, much as I'd enjoy the vacation, and we need to understand how we fit into the Consortium's plans before we chase anything unrelated. No pun intended. Let them think we're running scared. "You'd also have a chance to do profiles, if you wanted," he continued, surprising her. "I mean, when this is over, it's a great opportunity for career advancement. I'm the only ISU graduate ever to move downwards, career-wise." "I can't think that far ahead right now. Will *you* be all right?" Doing profiles constantly had wrecked him before. "I'll hate it," he admitted. "Patterson was right, you know. People died--are still dying--because I left." "But others are alive. And the lies the government has told us--if they don't stop, if we don't stop them--the danger could be greater than anything we've seen yet." "I know." He took her hand again, staring into her eyes, his attention focused like a searchlight, seeking the core of her. "It won't be forever. Just for a while. If you're there, I can do it." Scully closed her eyes. What reason was there to resist a temporary hiatus in their endless visits to crop circles in cow towns? It was a reasonable plan, if they could stay focused on their extra-curricular goals. "Let's do it," she said, unhooked her seatbelt, and quickly leaned over to give Mulder a peck on the cheek. He held on to her hand as she opened the door, forcing her to turn back to him. "While we do this," he said huskily, eyes black and gleaming, "I won't technically be your supervisor." She swallowed and pulled away, then walked into her building to implement her own plan for dealing with this situation. * * * Scully woke when Mulder came into her bathroom. The chilly tile drained away any urge to snap at him for violating her privacy. She realized that she was curled up into a ball in front of the toilet, her back pressed into her clothes hamper hard enough to leave wicker marks. There was blood on her knees from her nosebleed. She'd have to get a new multivitamin, one with plenty of iron in it, she thought fuzzily as she realized just how much her head and abdomen hurt. With every heartbeat, the center of agony switched back and forth between the two sources of pain, as if the worst of it were the ball in some game of catch between brain and womb. The bathroom was too white. It hurt to be near so much colorlessness. Mulder was murmuring something, but she couldn't understand the words. She concentrated, and finally heard "--miscarriage?" She opened her mouth in a soundless laugh, then found her voice, though it was weak and thready. "No." "What happened, Dana? Can I move you?" "Bed," she said, and let him carry her into her bedroom. He put her down as gently as he could, but she felt the rasp of the bedspread against her like steel wool, and couldn't suppress a moan. "Tell me what to do." He loomed over her like the Angel of Death, his figure distorted by her foreshortened perspective and the tremors that shook her vision. "Unhh...I think I have some codeine pills in the bathroom. At least, they look like codeine--have to take the chance." The speech exhausted her. She watched the multicolored static behind her closed eyelids while she waited for him to return. He brought the pills, a glass of water, and a washcloth dampened with hot water. After he'd held her head up enough for her to swallow, he started to wipe off her face and legs, where most of the blood was. "Are you able to tell me what happened?" "After today--I decided that the world couldn't afford any uberScullys. I performed a tubal ligation--it's a genuine medical miracle; that's got to be the first time the procedure's ever been self-administered. Guess I should have used a local anaesthetic, but I didn't have one, and I didn't want to wait. They would have tried again soon, you know." His face reddened with anger and embarrassment as he deciphered her meaning. "Oh, Dana," he said, ever so gently. He brought his hands up to frame her face as he leant over her, blocking the light. Then, amazingly, he burst into tears, and it was as if he'd given her permission to follow. He sank down onto the bed to take her in his arms, cradling her head against his chest, and she held onto him with all her strength. His warmth was the only thing combatting the coldness that permeated her. The body will not allow its owner to cry forever. When they were both done, she realized that her headache was gone. Regretfully, she reached up and touched Mulder's ruined lapel. "I'll pay for the dry cleaning," she said in a barely audible voice. "Then I guess I have to pay for the shampoo," he replied. She raised a hand to her hair, but he caught it--"No, too gross." Her answering smile was infinitesimal. Mulder stood first, then helped her up. She saw her reflection in the mirror over her dresser with dismay. Her hair was plastered with her own sweat and Mulder's tears and--there was no delicate word for it; catharsis was overrated, particularly its romantic aspects--snot. She went into the bathroom and turned on the sink, bringing handfuls of water up to clean herself, but succeeding mainly in getting her shirt soaked. "Here," he said from the doorway, "let me help." He moved to her and adjusted the water until it was pleasantly warm. "Let me," he repeated, and she bent down, allowing him to place his hand on the back of her neck and guide her head under the water, protecting it from the metal faucet, making sure he got all the bad spots. She could barely breathe. "Why did you come back?" she asked as he carefully towel-dried her hair. "I just had a feeling you needed me." "I should have asked Ruth to do it--I can trust her, at least. I panicked, Mulder, no excuse." "You didn't ask Ruth because it would have been cruel, and you'd rather let yourself get hurt than be cruel. Somehow I always manage to do both; I should learn your secret." She leaned back against him. The scrape of terrycloth against her skin crowded out all other input to her drug-dampened senses. "You put all the stuff at the office on hold," he told her. "I'll get the wheels turning. We'll be at Quantico by Monday." * * * April 2 She made it in on time the next morning. Mulder was nowhere to be found. She assumed that he was out dealing with ISU. The business of cleaning off their desks was mind-numbing and bittersweet. She realized that she regretted--slightly--postponing the trip to investigate the strange lights in Montana and the unexplained apparitions in upstate New York. She regretted the suspension of Mulder and Scully versus the world--nearly a fair fight when they worked in harmony. All at once, she was seized by the conviction that she'd never work the X-Files with him again. The wave of relief that washed over her at the thought was disturbing. It felt disloyal. And it was not sensible to want two opposite things at once. She'd left the door open while she worked, so she felt the light from the hall change and looked up. It was Scott Pendrell. He came in and sat behind her desk, while she was at Mulder's. Somehow it seemed appropriate. She needed to start talking. "I warned you," she said. "I never made any promises." He looked at her, and she saw pain and a little humor in his eyes. "I know that, Dana." She would have expected him to be nervous around her again, but he wasn't. More evidence that she hadn't bothered to get to know him. "I was wrong." "Probably," he acknowledged. It was his honesty that had made it possible to open up even minimally to him in the first place. She stared down at the desk, fiddling with a stray sunflower seed husk. His voice cut through the dusty air. "I'll get over it eventually, Dana. Maybe soon. I'll stop hurting. When will you?" "Scott..." She paused, breathed carefully in and out. "I'm sorry I didn't answer your cards. They were nice." "Nice," he repeated, making it sound ridiculous. She felt worse. This was a man who'd always be nice. Words exploded from her. "It seems like there are only two ways to handle being hurt. You can be a victim or you can turn around and hurt someone else. I don't want to do either...I don't want to be taken care of. I don't want to be obligated..." She trailed off, defeated by her inability to put words to her thoughts. "You're more weighted down with obligations than anyone else I know," he said gently. "At least take care of yourself." He suppressed whatever else he might have said and rose, leaving her to the dimly-lit silence. She hoped she hadn't changed that last part. She thought that she hadn't. Perhaps at first he could have imagined that there was some molten core to her that he could find and release. But he had to have known after she let him into her bed that there was no more of her to give. Didn't he? She shoved the rest of the random clippings on Mulder's desk into a file folder and left. * * * The Lone Gunmen came through for them. When Scully got home, she found a message from Byers: the doctor they had found would only speak to another doctor. She didn't bring Ruth to that first meeting, late at night in a section of Georgetown University Hospital she'd never before had occasion to visit. Dr. Jenny Koh was a plump Asian woman with a short, neat haircut and a smile that nervousness made wide. They shook hands and Scully got to the point. "My friends say that you can help me with an investigation." "Did they tell you my specialty?" "No." Scully looked at Dr. Koh expectantly. "I'm a surgeon, specializing in fetuses and neonates. I met Mr. Byers as a result of some work I did on aberrant animal fetuses and their mothers. I got my hands on the bodies by accident, and right after I did the dissections all the samples, photos, and bodies disappeared, but I have a good memory. The fetuses showed the same abnormal development Mr. Byers described--quasi-umbilical fibers, seeming also to involve some nerves, running to the mothers' major organs through the womb." "How did the mothers die?" She was proud that no waver marred her voice. "Organ failure. We aren't supposed to have holes punched in our hearts and livers." "Could you have saved the mothers if you'd performed surgery to sever the fibers earlier?" "I don't know." Dr. Koh studied Scully's face; she was short enough that she actually had to look up to do so. "This isn't a hypothetical question, is it?" "No," Scully admitted. She opened the folder she'd brought and pulled out the ultrasounds of Ruth's abdomen. Even with her OB-GYN rotation years in the past, she could tell that something wasn't right, and it must have looked much stranger to Ruth and Dr. Koh. There was silence while Dr. Koh studied the pictures. "What did this?" Scully looked into the surgeon's confused, curious eyes. "I wish I knew," she said fervently. "Will you help me?" "I'm a surgeon," Dr. Koh replied with a trace of humor. "Cutting up things I don't understand is my specialty." They arranged to make an initial attempt in a week, when Dr. Koh had a chance to study the ultrasounds and other tests they'd already performed. Folly: Dies Irae Chapter 5: The Startled Spirit His eyes are quickened so with grief, He can watch a grass or leaf Every instant grow; he can Clearly through a flint wall see, Or watch the startled spirit flee From the throat of a dead man. --Robert Graves, "Lost Love" April 1997 Mulder was right. Their transfer came through like a thunderbolt, in defiance of all rules of bureaucracy. Skinner called her at home to ask what Mulder was up to this time, and she suspected that he'd written her off entirely when she told him that she couldn't really say. Ruth knew that they needed to wait some weeks before attempting an abortion: products of conception couldn't reliably be extracted until ten weeks, and they were still hoping to perform a semi-normal abortion. Until then, she agreed to Scully's various tests, and brooded. Working in Profiling & Consultation meant that Mulder had to see other agents constantly. Many were highly suspicious. He shouldered their mockery and resentment without using his customary acid tongue in their presence. Instead, he would come up to Scully's office by the labs and skewer them with devastating imitations. Afterwards, she could hardly keep from laughing when she encountered them. There was no question about it: he got results. Most reliably with cases involving children--his emerging talent (she still hadn't used the word 'psychic,' and neither had he, probably from mortification) kicked in fairly easily with children. ISU profilers had both regional and crime-based specialties, so he was quickly forced into a caseload almost entirely composed of child killings and disappearances. Scully was glad that he was able to tell her a little about how it felt to look at those pitiful scenes every day. She made it her goal not to let him suffer in silence, and to hold him while he shook. He called her after the nightmares, and she listened until he was willing to risk sleep again. Often, she was up before he called, trying to avoid her own demons. Her nightmares were remarkably standard: finding Missy, finding Mulder when she hadn't arrived in time to save him, watching Ruth scream in agony as the invader clawed its way out of her--nothing too baroque. Being together made it easier. When he was in ISU before, she deduced, he'd never had anyone to talk to--the other profilers were jealous or broken in their own ways, or both, and Patterson discouraged commiseration and saw therapy as a weakness. Mulder's assumption that he deserved to suffer couldn't have helped, either. Cases did take him out of town, despite his hopes. But he called her every night. As always, she was his sounding-board, helping him decide not only what he thought had happened but also how to explain it to others credibly. The latter skill hadn't mattered when he was Patterson's golden boy, or when he'd given up all concern for credibility with the X-Files, but it was relevant to him now. Scully didn't exactly understand why it was so suddenly important to him to regain some status in the Bureau, but she accepted it. She was using her medical degree on a daily basis and her gun only on the firing range, so she could hardly complain. * * * April 30 One night he insisted on taking her out to dinner, and she seized on the chance to discuss his behavior. They went to a crowded Vietnamese restaurant in Alexandria and sat in a corner, surrounded by red and orange wall hangings and rice-paper lamps. "So," she said after the waiter had taken their orders, "do you want to tell me why you're playing so well with others these days?" "We're too vulnerable right now, Scully, you know that." She stared at him. It was more than that. Vulnerability had never bothered Mulder; indeed, he often seemed to prefer it. He sighed and gave in. "If I'm going to use my ability to find the truth, I need to learn how to make it work, and that means lots of practice. I have to distinguish it from normal hunches or wishful thinking." "Have you learned anything about it yet?" Even if his talent couldn't produce verifiable evidence, any hope of learning the truth would keep him going. It was a miracle of reasonability that he had decided to hone the talent rather than grabbing Cancerman at the first opportunity and trying to suck his skull dry of information. "Profiling is always about getting inside the UNSUB's head. The victim's, too. But I've always visualized the world from a participant's perspective. With this talent, it's different--I see an *external* perspective, as if I were an observer. With Roche my dreams were a mixture: first from his perspective, like I was used to, and then from my own when they got mixed up with Samantha--" he couldn't go on. She could hardly bear hearing him say the name; the sound was so wounded, so lost. "With Nexon, the first time I really thought about it, what I got from the objects was also external, along with flashes of what he was feeling. With you, again there was an object, and I saw images I didn't understand. I don't think I saw what you did; I saw *around* you. "What comes next is to move away from cases my training helps me on, and to try to extract information from an unwilling subject. Like what we did with the cards while you were in the hospital, only more information-intense." "Do you want me to help with that?" she asked hesitantly. "No," he replied, and she relaxed. "I know you too well--I couldn't separate inference from insight. No, I'm trying to get invited to an interrogation of a lieutenant in a drug ring. You wouldn't believe how nicely I've been behaving, Scully. I've been hanging out with the DEA agents training at Quantico and I think I'm about to snag this invitation." "After Roche, it will be hard to get you into an interrogation room," she said carefully. "I know.. Maybe no one will tell them," he said without real conviction. Conversation paused as their appetizers arrived. Scully dipped her spring roll in the sweet sauce and watched him. He looked tired. The constant flood of new evils was draining him, and she knew he considered it a diversion from his true goal. But he was also hopeful, fixed on a short- term goal with identifiable steps to take, rather than waiting helplessly for revelations to fall into his lap. Mulder waited until she stopped evaluating him and was ready to give his words full attention. "I've been a good boy for a while now--well, longer than my usual spells, anyway. I talked to Skinner about the DEA--I said I wanted to prove myself. I told him that I'd done a lot of thinking, that I'd watched you give me such unflinching support and act like an adult through all my tantrums and that I wanted to repay you and stop fighting the people who aren't my enemies." Scully looked down, poking idly at the flakes of spring-roll wrapper that remained on her plate. That certainly qualified as one of the nicest speeches Mulder had ever given her, even couched as a somewhat misleading plea to Skinner. "And if it works?" "If it works, I go after Cancerman to find names, identities, records." "What do you mean 'I,' white man?" "I think it's supposed to be the other way around, Scully." "Mulder." She reached out a hand to prevent him from snaring another bit of pork. "Promise me you're not going to take off on your own this time." He didn't respond, staring at his plate instead. "After all," she said, nervously, "you can read minds, but I'd make a hell of a lockpick." Still he was silent. Suddenly the warm buzz of family conversations around them seemed ominous. "Mulder, damn you. We're together on this. You've got to promise me." His head slowly came up, heavy with the weight of his decision. "Yes," he said, hazel eyes locked on hers, "I promise." She closed her eyes and let out a sigh of relief. "You don't think that Cancerman will hide what he knows from you?" she asked in a more normal tone. "Don't think about elephants. Impossible, right?" He smirked at her frown, just like old times. "I think if I can get my hands on him, I can make it work." "You'll only get one chance." "Then I'll only do it when I'm sure I can get as much out of him as possible. And there are others who know parts of the puzzle." "Oh, yes, like your Uniblonder." "Meow, Scully." His eyes twinkled. "I'm just wondering where you're planning to put your hands on *her*." Their banter was interrupted by the arrival of their entrees. She took a healthy portion of both, knowing that he was watching --as surreptitiously as he knew how, but "subtle" was just about the antonym of "Mulder." Plowing through the chicken with hot peppers, Mulder paused for a moment. "If Skinner lets me go, will you come with me?" "Why?" "I need a witness who'll say that the guy talked. Or really that he told me what I asked, which I hope will be true, under a sufficiently expansive definition of 'told.'" Scully thought. If she said that someone gave Mulder the information he'd extracted, was that a lie? It would certainly be closer to the truth than some things she'd said to protect him. If he succeeded, he'd be light-years closer to finding Samantha and peace. Ultimately, there was no question. "I'll come, if you can think of a good reason." "We're still partners when we're not doing ISU work. What does the DEA know? Hell, I'll tell them that I get carsick if you're not around." Mulder drove her home and accepted her invitation to stay for a while. He sat on her couch and hunched his shoulders, resting his hands between his knees. "What is it?" "How do you feel, Scully?" "I'm fine, Mulder." He looked up and rolled his eyes at her. "No major headaches, no nosebleeds..." "What about your little adventure in home surgery?" "That's all healed too." "But how do you feel about it?" She tried to choose her words carefully, but had to give up and just open her mouth. "Shitty. I feel shitty. I'm angry and depressed and it's just not fair." She did not want to cry, not in front of him. There was too much weakness in her life. It would get easier with time. "Scully?" She jumped. "Yes." The hostility in her own voice disturbed her, a little. "Can I hold you?" She nodded and went over to the couch, where they stretched out together and she let him cry for her. She held him and told him that it wasn't his fault, and even when she saw that he believed her (for the moment) he still mourned her lost children. He let her be the strong one, the one who wouldn't ever fall apart, and the enormity and simplicity of his commitment to her helped relax some of the killing tightness around her heart. He was keeping his promise, she thought, and discovered that she was very aroused. She observed his face while his eyes were closed. No single feature was particularly attractive, but the whole was somehow sensual and magnetic, vulnerable and inviting. Take care of me, his face promised, and I'll show you how to live. He was not asleep; his breathing was too irregular. But he was letting her watch him. She came to a decision. When he felt her lips against his throat, he shuddered and wrapped his hand around her shoulders to pull her close. "Is this okay?" she asked, the words vibrating against his skin. He grabbed her face with both hands, tilting it up towards his own. She saw some strange resolve guttering in his eyes like a candle in a stiff breeze, and determined to snuff it out. "I want this, Mulder," she said fiercely. "I know that we don't have forever and we don't have always. But we have now. And I haven't had enough now in my life. I haven't had enough of you in my life." "You might regret it," he said. "Not this," she swore. His eyes closed, and when they opened again they were clear and sad and radiant with desire for her. His kisses came like falling leaves; she let them bury her. He did not stay the night. * * * May 1 Mulder called just as she was getting out of the shower the next morning and told her to meet him at the Federal Detention Center in DC-- Skinner had, reluctantly, agreed. When she arrived, Mulder was feeding the DEA agents some line (that might even be true, she concluded upon reflection) about ISU's attempts to expand from rape, murder, and arson to other significant federal crimes. The offender interview program had been most extensively used for sexual murderers, but, Mulder said, ISU hoped to replicate that success with, among others, drug traffickers. Scully realized that the logical question was why they'd want to interview an uncharged, *alleged* drug dealer when the protocol called for interviewing convicted criminals, but no one asked. She chalked it up to Mulder voodoo and was grateful that she was actually more immune to it than almost anyone else she met. After ten minutes of DEA agents shouting at their suspect, a man named Cardenas, alternately cajoling and threatening, Mulder asked if he could try without them. They balked initially, but one of the agents--who'd held on to Scully's hand just a fraction too long at their introduction--asked what it would hurt to let their visitors try, and soon they were alone in the room with the drug dealer. What trick the DEA had used to keep a lawyer away, Scully didn't even want to know. "Mr. Cardenas, I know you're afraid of what will happen to you if you give us the names and places we're after," Mulder began. "But we can protect you." Cardenas gave him a contemptuous look, obviously wondering why they'd let this geek try such a kindergarten tactic on him. "Here's the thing," Mulder said, scooting his chair a little closer to Cardenas, then closer again. "I'm an FBI agent, not DEA." Closer still. "We can work a different deal." Now they were almost touching. Scully thought idly that the ill-fitting prison greys on the smaller man were a striking contrast with the tailored elegance of Mulder's suit; Mulder's ease made the prisoner look out of place even surrounded by cinderblocks and security glass. Cardenas watched Mulder as if he were an approaching snake--the criminal didn't understand what was going on, but he feared that he wouldn't like it. "You can just whisper in my ear." Mulder leaned forward so that his face blocked Cardenas' from the security camera and put his hand on the other man's wrist. Cardenas gave a low gasp and fell silent, though Scully saw his eyes roll like a spooked horse's. Did it feel as if Mulder was rifling through his mind? Could he be aware of what was happening or was he just weirded out by Mulder's odd proximity? She wished that she could ask him when it was over, but her chances of getting useful information were low indeed. One minute passed; Mulder's eyes closed. She saw his eyes moving beneath their lids as if he were experiencing REM sleep. she thought. When his eyes snapped open, a glance at her watch told her that over three and a half minutes had passed. "Thanks," Mulder said. "You've been a big help." His tone was triumphant, and he gave her a genuine smile. "Wait," Cardenas said, confusion and a tinge of desperation in his voice. "I didn't say anything." "Tell that to Luis Urquidez," Mulder said, and Cardenas nearly fell out of his seat. "I did not tell you that name!" Cardenas all but screamed. The door opened and DEA agents boiled in. Some started throwing questions at Cardenas, who was babbling and crossing himself and denying everything, while others targeted Mulder. "I'm really not the one you'll have to convince of that," Mulder said gently through the cacophony, then got up to go report on what he'd 'heard.' Once outside the interrogation room, he reeled off names, dates, and places with a better Colombian accent than he should have had and then struggled to make a quick exit. "What did you tell him?" one of the agents--Scully couldn't attach a name to him--asked, almost worshipfully. Mulder shrugged and looked sheepish. "Nothing special. I guess he just liked my face, or felt the need to ease his conscience." Scully thought about how well he lied. "He's saying he didn't tell you anything." "Where else would I have gotten all those names? He told me, right, Scully?" She nodded. "I was with Agent Mulder and I expect that Cardenas told him the truth." "He has to know he'll be a dead man when his bosses find out." Mulder looked a little guilty, but managed to sound unconcerned when he said, "Hazards of the profession." He signed his affidavit and pushed his chair back.. "Give me a call to let me know what happens, all right?" "Sure," the agent said, looking slightly confused. Scully didn't blame him. They walked to the parking lot together. "So we'll...finish things with Ruth, then go after the men behind it all?" she asked, trying to determine if he was satisfied with the morning's work. He nodded shortly and swung towards his car. She wondered what she'd done to annoy him. Was it her unwillingness to use the word "abortion"? They disagreed on the issue, but that should be no surprise. * * * Mulder walked Scully to her office. She put her key to the door, but it swung open, and she reached for her gun. "I didn't lock it," she mouthed, and he nodded, taking his position on the other side of the door. On the count of three, they went in together--she aimed low, he aimed high. Cancerman was holding up a picture she'd kept of herself with Queequeg. Queequeg's doggy, indiscriminate eyes looked happily out at the man holding the frame. "Don't shoot," he said. "You wouldn't want to break the glass and scuff your lovely picture." "What arrogant perversity brings you here today, you bastard?" Mulder moved forward as he spoke, but the grey man put his free hand up as he put the picture frame on her desk. "Please, Agent Mulder, a little distance is required to preserve my essential mystery. I'm here to talk to Dr. Scully--I have a few suggestions for her one living patient." He motioned to a yellow envelope in the center of her desk. "Just some thoughts about possible vitamin supplements; you'll find that the mother has some unusual needs these days." "Don't tell me," Mulder said. "She'll have sudden cravings for raw meat." "You've watched 'V' too many times, Agent Mulder." Scully carefully took the envelope and shook out its contents --a few printed sheets and some pills, presumably vitamins. She'd have them tested later. "What's your interest in all this?" she asked, genuinely curious. "Why is it important to have this baby live?" "Why, variety, of course. Do you know how many kinds of hybrid roses there are, Dr. Scully? That's how many kinds of hybrid people we want. Planned evolution." "Or mix and match weaponry." "Because of what we've done, humanity can for the first time control its own destiny by transcending its physical limitations." Mulder glared at him. "You mean, *you* can control humanity's destiny." "Someone has to. People without guidance are worse than sheep." "Transcending physical limits happens every time we get on an airplane," Scully said. "You don't have to torture and kill to achieve that." Cancerman puffed idly on his cigarette. "Many of the greatest advances first appear as weapons of war." "Covert assaults on American citizens don't constitute part of the national defense," she insisted. Mulder had his own view, of course. "Or are humans really setting the agenda here?" "Well, Agent Mulder, it can be awfully hard to tell the difference--as you ought to know." Cat-swift, Mulder lunged for their adversary and grabbed his wrists. Scully moved to the side for a clear shot if Mulder seemed to be in trouble. Not that she knew what would happen if she shot a man whose mind Mulder was--what? Probing? Raping? His cigarette dropped to the floor, still smoldering. She edged forward to stamp it out, leaving an ugly smear on the carpet. His face was a rictus of agony, wrinkles contorting on wrinkles until she thought that he'd look this way while burning in the fires of Hell. He jerked a little in Mulder's grasp as her partner rocked back and forth on the balls of his feet. Of all the strange tableaux she'd witnessed over the years, this was certainly the most personally satisfying. She hoped it hurt. She hoped it felt like being onstage in front of millions and screwing up so badly that people were embarrassed to laugh, but laughed anyway. She hoped it felt like being a lab animal. Whatever Mulder was doing took an eternity. Or nearly ten minutes, to be more precise. She had to lower the gun to keep her arm from cramping, but she remained ready. Finally, Mulder released the now-sobbing man. "You know, you're a putrid writer," he said conversationally. "I can and have done better in an afternoon than you could do in a year. Get out." "This isn't over," he choked out through his tears. "It never is," Mulder replied. Their adversary, suddenly a beaten old man, scurried out of the room. They looked at each other, neither knowing where to start. Eventually, she raised a querying eyebrow at him. "He's a puppet. A lapdog, a gofer, a front man. He knows only what he's told. And he knows they lie to him sometimes, just to keep the truth concentrated. But I saw enough to keep going." "What did you see about me, when I went missing?" He hesitated. "Eugene--that's our boy's name, though he almost forgot it these past few years--was lying when he said he knew. Men in white coats, that's all he saw. He's not a real scientific type. I'm sorry, Scully." "And Samantha?" "They won't tell him. He...thinks he might be her father. I wondered why my mother recovered so well from the stroke--he had her fixed by his shapeshifting associate...I didn't want to know this." He bowed his head, mourning the end of the illusion that his family had once been perfect, before the world changed forever in a flash of light. "What about Ruth?" Good grief, she could go on listing names all night. Perhaps they should have had a telephone book handy, just for cross- referencing purposes. "He's hoping you'll save her life. No one else carrying a fetus with that much alien DNA has ever survived, as far as he knows. It was his idea to combine the telekinesis project with the breeding program. He was very proud of it. "On the bright side, I can tell you what really happened to JFK. He knows a lot more history than you'll find in textbooks. He used to be more important than he is now. The Gunmen will love this--they don't care how ancient a conspiracy is; if I came to them with information on George Washington's crypto-Masonic rites they'd be thrilled. But it's not so useful to us." "So that's it? They do whatever They want and we clean up the mess?" "That's the plan." "Now what?" Scully asked. To give herself something to do, she picked up the frame Cancerman--Eugene, that was; how disappointing --had left on her desk and returned it to its shelf, positioning it carefully so that she could see it from her desk. "I'll need a few weeks to figure out how to deal with this information." "But won't his masters use the time to destroy the evidence?" "Most of it is gone already. They don't know everything that he knows or suspects--and some of his most valuable knowledge is their names, faces, and particular weaknesses. I doubt the men in power will kill themselves to prevent me from meeting them." "They might kill you." "I'll watch my back. But we have a secret weapon: I don't think old Gene out there will tell anyone that this happened. He's too fond of the illusion of power and control his job as errand boy for the real masters gives him. He uses his position to fix the Superbowl, for crying out loud. Talk about megalomaniacal cosmology." "So you want to wait a while." "Yes. I also need to get some money--the Gunmen will help, I think. This goes beyond what we can investigate for the Bureau, even under the X- Files label. If we do it right, everything will come out: the alien visitations, the government conspiracy to aid and abet them, the covert experiments... "It was a bad bargain made by the visitors. They didn't understand that the first group of people they met didn't speak for the whole world. But even when they'd figured it out, they didn't try to renegotiate. We--or more accurately, you--humans don't have a monopoly on evil." * * * May 1997 Scully didn't fully trust Mulder's stated intentions. Planning and waiting was so unlike him. But she was busy settling into her new routine and reassuring Ruth, who called every day. Ruth would not, of course, take the pills that Eugene had given Scully, because taking them would imply some intent to let the pregnancy go to term. She contacted Frohike and told him that she'd never forgive the Gunmen if they let Mulder take off without her, and reminded him that Mulder would be safer with someone to watch his back. Frohike promised to keep her informed. It was the best she could do. The day they'd scheduled for surgery, Scully left work in plenty of time to make it to Ruth's office. The irony of going from tracking killers to becoming one in the course of a day was not lost on her. To everyone else involved, of course, Ruth's abortion didn't involve taking a human life. Possibly it was morally worse for her, a believer, to be involved than it was for them. They knew not what they did, so to speak. Was the fetus human, for all its odd attributes? Maybe it would be better for its alien aspects; not even Mulder had suggested that his current targets were anything other than respectable examples of the genus homo sapiens. They couldn't do a simple vacuum aspiration because Dr. Koh had no idea what effects the fibers would have on the organs with which they were intertwined if they were just pulled out. She planned to cut the fibers first, then try a semi-standard abortion. The first thing that they noticed when they opened Ruth up was the kidney damage. Where the fibers had penetrated, the tissue was inflamed and discolored. The liver was in even worse shape: the fibers had made puckered holes in it, as if they were consuming its very substance. Dr. Koh attempted to sever one of the fibers that led to Ruth's heart, cutting as it emerged from the womb. Scully watched in horror as the other, uncut fibers convulsed, cutting through Ruth's flesh like a wire whisk, and the heart monitor screamed in protest. Dr. Koh hurried to cauterize the bleeding and pulled the scalpel away. "We can't do this today," she said, looking at Scully over Ruth's torn body. "I don't know if we can do this at all. But if that's the way it reacts to a threat, she's going to need to be in better shape than she is now. I don't know how to fix the organ damage, though." As Dr. Koh neatly sewed up Ruth's torso, Scully considered what she could tell Dr. Koh, and what she could afford to do. "I have an idea," she said finally. "Give me a few weeks." If she and Ruth did only a little healing at a time, they could probably manage to repair the worst of the damage without endangering themselves. It was now painfully obvious why Cancerman had thought that shooting Mulder would make an excellent test of their suitability for the breeding program. They seemed to have little choice but to follow his wishes for the moment. Now all she had to do was figure out how to break the news to Ruth. Waiting for someone to wake from surgery was never without anxiety, but she discovered that it was much worse when the procedure had failed. She spoke to Mulder briefly on the phone and turned down his offer to come wait with her. Ruth needed privacy. She hadn't even told her family about her troubles. Upper-middle-class Jewish families whose daughters became doctors didn't believe in abduction or implants or secret government laboratories, and Ruth didn't want to frighten them into thinking that she'd gone insane. As she'd said earlier to Scully, lesbian was bad enough. The first thing Ruth said when she opened her eyes was, "It didn't work, did it?" Scully shook her head. "You've sustained some internal damage from the fetus," she said. "We need to fix it before Dr. Koh tries again." "We meaning you and I? We meaning headaches and nosebleeds?" "I'm afraid so, Ruth. I don't know what else to do." "Why did they pick me?" she said plaintively. Scully gave her the only answer she had. "Because They can." Folly IV: Under the Skin Chapter 1: No One Escapes Some there are found in the hands of a demon a demon who tears and takes and makes you something you were not before. No matter the nature of the demon the details of what was done or when or how. No matter, in fact, if you escape. No one escapes. --Dorothy Allison, "Demon" May 20 Scully was sitting at her desk, trying to assimilate recent events, when her cellphone rang. It was ISU's criminal personality profiling manager, telling her to go with Mulder to a warehouse in Arlington to look at a body. She wanted to be off investigating Mulder's new information about the men who'd ordered her taken, but he hadn't told her any concrete details. Besides, she couldn't simply abandon her job, so she complied. They arrived to find Virginia police and FBI agents milling about. Some looked fascinated; others horrified; at least one had gotten sick just beyond the side entrance to the warehouse. Scully hoped that it wasn't one of theirs. They stepped inside and she did not at first understand what she was seeing. They walked closer, towards the spotlit thing that had been carefully displayed in the center of the concrete, debris- strewn floor. From a distance, it looked like a monument that had yet to be set in the right DC traffic circle. Then they neared it. It resolved into a man on horseback...mostly. Only one thing was missing, one organ, on each. The skin. What little conversation had existed stopped while everyone waited for Spooky to react. "Fragonard." The foreign word caused heads to turn toward Scully. "Um, ma'am?" A fresh-faced young woman spoke up. "I was an art major, and that doesn't look like a Fragonard. Generally...there are cherubs." "Not *that* Fragonard, his cousin--Honore, not Jean-Honore. Honore Fragonard ran the world's first veterinary school in the late eighteenth century. And he did this," she indicated the object before them. "In fact, this is a reproduction of his most striking work, as far as I can tell, though we'll need to check to make certain." Mulder was giving her a look that said clearly: 'What the hell is this? I'm the one with the photographic memory.' She gave him a chiding look for his underestimation of her, then suppressed it and turned to her attentive audience. "I had an anatomy professor who was a big fan of Fragonard," she explained. "What *is* it?" the woman who'd spoken before asked. "Fragonard preserved his cadavers by soaking them in alcohol mixed with pepper and herbs. He skinned them, then injected arteries, veins, and bronchial tubes with dyed tallow or wax mixed with turpentine. When he'd arranged the bodies to his satisfaction, they'd be dried on a frame. His work was popular among aristocrats right before the Revolution. They displayed his 'sculptures' in their homes. One could say that Fragonard was part of the decadence against which the people revolted." Mulder, who had regained his voice, asked, "You said this is a replica of a particular work?" "The galloping horse and rider, yes. It was rumored that, for this sculpture, Fragonard disinterred the corpse of his fiancee, who'd died of grief after her parents barred their marriage on the grounds that Fragonard was mad. But the original in Paris is a man's corpse--is this one male or female?" "Who'll get close enough to check?" No one moved in response to Mulder's question. Scully frowned and walked forward. "Is there a chair I can stand on?" Mulder spared her the trouble by getting closer and standing on tiptoe. "Male," he reported, turning slightly green. "Fragonard did all his work with corpses that were dead before he got them. It's not impossible that we have a grave robber here, not a killer." "Do you believe that?" Mulder had the most amazing ability to shut out the rest of the world. As far as he was concerned, the room held two flayed bodies, two FBI agents, and empty air. "Not for a second. And correct me if I'm wrong, but grave robbers with tastes this elaborate usually escalate." Mulder nodded, waiting for her to continue. "If we're lucky, we can identify the body from dental records." She circled the bizarre sculpture--it was hard not to think of it as art-- looking at the marbled brown flesh, shot through with the red, yellow, and blue traceries of the circulatory system. It was at once unmistakably an assemblage of two corpses and also beautiful. It was an homage to the machine of the body, human and equine, a mute demonstration of the miraculous complexity of biology and the genius of discovery that impels people to look for answers under the surface. It was life as the only true source of art--or was that death? "Lovely, isn't it?" Mulder's voice in her ear was low, almost respectful, a museum-goer's voice. "You can see why he does it." She half-nodded. "Have you...picked up anything?" She whispered, feeding an old rumor rather than risking being overheard talking to Mulder as if he were a Magic 8-Ball. She was actually beginning to believe that Mulder's unarguably altered DNA could have given him 'psychic' powers; as a hypothesis, it did fit observed facts better than 'really good intuition.' There was a point at which skepticism became stupidity. "No. I have a theory about that, I'll tell you later. Look, Scully, you seem to know what's going on. Mark Gershom is the profiler assigned to this case; he should be here soon. He's still in the two-year training period, so he gets to write profiles under me. Lucky him. I'd like you to work closely with him to find our anatomist. You know, wipe behind his ears, help him out. He's a nice guy, but--" his voice became mocking--"he thinks I'm spooky." Pulling a pair of latex gloves out of her trenchcoat pocket, Scully approached the bodies. "Do they keep dental records on horses?" she wondered aloud. "Ask Mark to check," Mulder suggested. "Here he is now--Mark!" he called. Mark Gershom was about five foot seven, with sandy brown hair in an unruly cut that resembled Mulder's and what appeared to be a rather carefully cultivated five-o'clock shadow, impressive for eleven in the morning. He had brown eyes surrounded by smile lines and good cheekbones. Scully guessed that he was approximately her age. She held up her gloved hand to apologize for not shaking as Mulder introduced them. As Mark circled the bodies, Scully touched the horse for the first time, running her finger down its brown foreleg. It felt like beef jerky, and smelled faintly of alcohol. She suspected that she'd be a vegetarian throughout this case. "I'll look at the horse in the lab after I examine the victim," she said. "Tell me your first impressions," she heard Mulder say. "White male, mid-thirties to forties. Highly organized, functioning well enough to have the money to rent this warehouse. He phoned in an anonymous tip, so he wants attention and will try to involve himself in the investigation. He'll drive a carefully maintained black or blue car that looks official, works or has worked in a law-enforcement type of job. Would he need medical training to do this?" "Medical or veterinary," Scully interjected, "or he could be a very experienced hunter." "He's proud of his work. There are probably earlier attempts he's too ashamed to show us. Planning it is a lot of the fun for him: planning the crime, making the kill, then keeping the bodies around for--how long would this take, Dr. Scully?" "If I remember correctly, several weeks minimum. If he had the wax and dyes ready. I'll know more after the autopsy." It would not be a normal autopsy, more like an exhumation. Mulder's voice seemed to issue forth from the darkness, serious and intense. "Good start, Mark, but that's all standard. Look at the bodies. Imagine him doing everything necessary to create this look--not just the bodies, but the lighting, the warehouse rental, the phone call, everything. What did he *have* to do to make it happen right? What's just convenience, and what does he need? Be him, Mark. Get Scully to help you find out about Fragonard, the man our UNSUB might be imitating." She heard the agent swallow nervously. Mulder went off to make arrangements to have the sculpture shipped to Quantico--they'd need a truck; she didn't want to pry the two figures apart, potentially destroying evidence, in an uncontrolled environment. * * * That night, she was finishing up several reports and trying to prioritize others. Unlike the X-Files, where their obscurity and irrelevance to the rest of the Bureau usually allowed Mulder to pick cases and work through them one at a time until they were closed, ISU received thousands of requests each year. Agents in Profiling and Consultation had up to twenty-five cases open at once, and now that they had a forensic pathologist dedicated to their unit, they were asking her for reports on, it seemed, every last one of them. They were wise to do so; in many places, especially small towns or rural areas, forensic pathology was essentially unknown. There were only a few hundred board-certified forensic pathologists in the country. In many places, coroners were elected, and were about as well- trained as funeral directors. It wasn't a big problem, unless death came unnaturally--but when it did, the results could be disastrous. To know the criminal, a profiler had to know the crime. If the crime was misdescribed, the profile could be worse than useless, leading investigators down the wrong trail. Her job was critical to their success.. The case she was looking at when Mulder came in was a perfect example. "What are you doing?" "A case for Agent DeFalco." "He's a good man. He was here when I was, before. Come here." She looked up, surprised. Mulder had a fey, almost devilish gleam in his eyes, and the slight smile on those full lips meant trouble. He curled his finger at her and, uncertainly, she stood and came around her desk. He locked the door, then moved so that they were no more than an inch apart. She had to tilt her head up so sharply to see him that she felt dizzy. "Are you--?" He silenced her by drawing two fingers across her lips, then sliding them into her mouth as it opened involuntarily. Her eyes drooped shut as she let herself be pushed against her desk. He wasn't her supervisor. They were off the clock. Maintenance wasn't due for another few hours. "The window," she said sloppily, before she forgot herself completely. Mulder went to close the blinds and she straightened up slightly while he was away. "Sorry, forgot," he said. "You lab rats are actually above ground, whereas I'm *never* going to have a window." She reached for her jacket button as he returned to her, but Mulder put his hand up to stop her. "Keep it on." She looked at him expectantly. "When I see you all business...I want to be able to think about you like this..." He stooped and ran his hands up her thighs, bringing her skirt up to her waist as he went, then reversed course, hooking her panties with his thumbs on the way down. It was an impressively executed move, and his fluid grace made her shiver and almost stumble as she stepped out of them. "This feels...wicked," she told him as he rose and pushed her back on the desk. "So tell me what you're working on for DeFalco," he said, sliding his fingers into her and beginning to stroke her with his thumb. She gasped--a good thing, or she would have burst out laughing. If that's the way he wanted to play it...this seemed like a fairly harmless fantasy. She thought for a moment. He was unbuckling his pants as she started to speak in her best enigmatic Dr. Scully voice. "This is a federal prisoner. He came in as a death by falling. The prison doctor reported an abrasion at the front of the neck consistent with impact against stairs...Unhhh." She grabbed his back underneath his jacket and shirt as he thrust into her. The man she saw in front of her was proper and formal: tailored jacket, crisp white shirt, terrible but beautifully knotted tie, hair in as much order as it ever got, eyes completely focused on her. Except that he was also *inside* her. All right, this was a turn-on. God only knew how she'd keep a straight face saying the same things to DeFalco the next morning. "Upon examination I found a patterned ligature abrasion from a belt with a rectangular buckle approximately one and a quarter inches wide. The belt was slightly narrower. Oh God." She paused for breath as he groped her breast through her clothes. "There were also petechial hemorrhages of the skin of the eyelids and orbits and the conjunctival surfaces, suggestive of complete venous obstr--obstruction with incomplete arterial compromise." "In English, Scully," he said, in moving against her in rhythm with his words. She stretched her neck and whispered into his ear. "Because of the ligature, blood flowed into his head but couldn't get out, causing the hemorrhages. Definite homicide. Oh God," she said, surprised, and arched against him in release. He moaned, "I love it when you talk dirty," and she felt him speed up. His mouth clamped down on her neck and she wondered vaguely if she could get away with a turtleneck in late spring, but it didn't seem all that important as she felt him spasm and he collapsed on her. She devoted herself to imprinting the moment into her memory. She needed careful attention to preserve the things that would not last for future reference. After resting a minute on her, he pulled back with a sigh of regret. "Wow," he said, and his dazed, little-boy look of wonder was enough to make her burst out laughing. "What?" he asked in mock annoyance. "You don't know how long I've waited for that." "And was it worth the wait?" she asked, still laughing. "You bet. Now I can't wait to see how the others go." "What others?" She glared at him as severely as she could manage with her skirt still around her waist. "I thought you'd never ask." She hoisted herself back onto the floor, pulling her skirt down while he fixed his own clothing. She bent to retrieve her panties, but he took them from her hand and raised the fabric to his lips, kissing it gently and smiling at the shudder that visibly ran through her. "Come on," he urged. "Let my fantasy run its course." Scully thought about her discreet and effective dry cleaner and decided to give in gracefully. She gave him a full, open smile as he tucked his prize into his jacket pocket. "Just don't mistake them for a handkerchief in public, or you'll never live it down." "I'll guard them with my life." They looked at each other. "Scully--" "I know, Mulder." He gave her a wistful look, as if he'd really wanted to say more, but didn't persist. "So tell me your theory about why Fragonard didn't make you see anything." He shook his head at the change of subject. "You're really something." "Best leave that vague, Mulder." He perched on the edge of her desk and stretched his arms over his head, cracking his spine. "I think that organized serial killers with strong sociopathic personalities like Roche and 'Fragonard' give me distorted images. They're unreliable because of the force of the killers' worldviews. Such men live to dominate and to remake the world in their own image. That's why Roche was able to confuse me-- essentially, he used the force of my own mind against me. In the field these past weeks my greatest success in picking up images has been with the disorganized, more impulsive killers, though I can still do it the hard way for the others. "Then, with Cardenas--not terribly bright, but no notable mental defects--it was crystal clear. Just amazing. I can't describe the feeling, Scully, but his entire being was there, available to me to see. And old Gene- -he might be a sociopath, too, so I'm not entirely sure I can trust all the things he thought he knew--but he's a relatively powerful sociopath; things he wants to happen generally do." "But he could be drawing you into a fantasy world, a shared delusion." He frowned, not wanting to concede the point. "Look, Mulder, I'll accept that you saw into his head. Which is a serious concession on my part, though not unsupported by recent events. But the truth is not what one person thinks, even if he is a skulker in high- placed shadows." "Then how are we supposed to know when we find the truth?" "Confirmation," she told him. "Find that E.B.E., or a working secret laboratory even." "*I'm* not the one who blew up the last one," he teased. "Point taken. But, Mulder, it took you four years to convince me that some of what you believe is true. The sun will have cooled by the time you enlighten the rest of the population, at that rate. That's why we need confirmation." He nodded thoughtfully. He was capable of listening to reason, of a sufficiently paranoid type. Folly: Under the Skin Chapter 2: An Undisclosed Beginning Swung by the road from bend to bend, I was aware that blood was running down through the delta of my wrist and under arches of bright bone. Centuries, continents it had crossed; from an undisclosed beginning spiralling to an unmapped end. --Jon Stallworthy, "The Almond Tree" May 21 The next morning, she started in on 'Fragonard's' work. The brightly- lit lab was crowded with equipment, tables, and instruments. There was hardly room to walk between all the metal and ceramic strewn around. She'd finally separated the horse and its rider, with the assistance of several brawny evidence techs, after making sure that the full sculpture had been swept for trace evidence. She began her work on deciphering the dead man's story. "Dr. Scully?" She turned to face her questioner. His nametag identified him as Dr. Matthew Andrews, an instructor. "We have some doctors here for a few weeks for forensics training, and we were wondering if we could look in on what you're doing." It was a routine request; she'd already shown three groups around the morgue in the six weeks she'd been there. Quantico was a beehive of law- enforcement cooperation; people from all over the country were constantly in and out to learn the latest techniques. "I don't see why not. But I warn you, it could be disturbing." "These doctors want to be medical examiners; they'll get used to it." She shook hands briefly with the group of five. Dr. Andrews seemed vaguely familiar, and she hesitated. "Dr. Andrews? Do we know each other?" He was short--not much taller than she was in her heels--and had thick, dark hair that was receding at the sides so the widow's peak at the top was being left behind like an eroding island. He seemed thrilled by the recognition. "We were in the same class at medical school. I was a coroner out at Reston for a few years, then they took me here." "Great," she said, knowing that it was a silly response. "Would you care to assist me with the photographs?" He agreed, and she gave him the equipment gratefully. Everything had to be photographed, since she was going to destroy the body as it had been discovered. Hairs and Fibers had already been sent the minimal trace evidence on the body; there was essentially no hope of finding latent prints because of the roughness of the surface of the corpse and its porousness, which absorbed the oils that might have held prints. Fragonard's method had the virtue for him of eliminating the risk of leaving latent prints on skin--until recently, finding such prints had been thought impossible, but the Sci-Crime lab had proven that it could be done. The instructor's habits kicked in quickly, and she started to tell them about Fragonard as she worked. Her instructor's lectures had been gruesome enough to remember easily, and she'd done additional searching on the Web the previous night. "Anatomists wouldn't be anatomists if they weren't morbid, in the true sense of the word. William Harvey, whom you probably know better as the discoverer of the circulatory system, autopsied the bodies of his own sister and father. But Honore Fragonard was special." She gave them a version of the story she'd told the agents the previous day. As Dr. Andrews photographed, she examined the preserved organs. She began the recitation of measurements, speaking into a recorder but letting her observers watch and hear as she removed and weighed organs, searching for a cause of death. The victim was an adult male, somewhat malnourished. The condition of the organs did not suggest major organ failure prior to death, though she worried that the preservation method had destroyed possible evidence. No obvious wounds that had gone beyond the skin, no noticeable damage to the neck or chest. She'd send tissue samples to the Chem/Tox lab, but she doubted that they'd be able to find anything underneath the preservatives. Then she took samples of the vitreous fluid in the eyes. There wasn't very much of it, but she knew that it would have remained unaffected by embalming and, she hoped, by Fragonard's outdated method as well, though she did not know enough about the method to be certain. The vitreous fluid could be tested for drugs. Finally, she took samples from each of the dyed systems to determine the materials used, which might very well prove to be their best clue. Scully wished that the visitors hadn't come in on such a difficult case. She could hardly show off FBI expertise when she couldn't figure out what had happened. Fortunately, as the information she recorded began to get less interesting, the instructor led them off to a seminar and left her in peace. She began to analyze the waxy samples she'd taken. With Mark Gershom's help, she'd read up on the real Fragonard's methods. That long- dead anatomist had used beeswax mixed with animal fat or spermaceti from whales for consistency, then added coloring before injecting the mixture into the targeted body systems. White lead and turpentine made white; arsenic trisulfide and turpentine made yellow; red lead and turpentine made gold; verdigris made green; crushed coal made black. He'd worked in a time when there was no line between Art and Science, and he and his cousin the painter had used the same materials. She'd read about an artist who'd just won a top English art prize for slicing a cow and a calf in half, preserving them behind glass, and alternating the parts--"Mother and Child Divided," or something like that. Thousands of pounds had been awarded for that "art." The sensibility that had driven Fragonard had not been lost in the intervening centuries. The tests quickly determined that beeswax and animal fat were present (and then she wondered what animal, and had to force herself to note that it could be human; Mark would need to think about that). But their Fragonard wasn't using the older colorings. He used modern dyes like the ones they used in the pathology lab. They were widely available from medical supply companies. She made a note to get a list of the major companies so that Mark could check for orders unconnected with an institution, though she was increasingly confident that their UNSUB had some medical or veterinary training. The skin removal had been incredibly proficient, done with a scalpel and perhaps even a laser pen at tricky points. She thought that there was evidence of cauterization at a few points-- between the toes, around the genitals and the ears--but she wasn't entirely sure how the preservation medium had affected the quality of the tissue. Probably the best solution was to skin a rabbit, replicate Fragonard's "eau de vie," let the bunny stew for a week or two, and compare the results. At least she'd be able to make Mulder ill by recounting the process the next time he annoyed her. She went to lunch and sat with several of the profilers, including Mark. They chatted amiably; most of the people in the unit seemed to be intense workers who desperately needed human contact to rebuild the parts of themselves the job ate. Mulder joined them when she was almost done eating. He didn't say anything beyond a cursory greeting, but his presence unnerved Mark, who abruptly wanted to hear about her findings. He asked about evidence of sexual activity. "There was no evidence of semen on the bodies. I'm having the wax in the blood vessels analyzed, just in case, but we probably won't be able to pick up traces of semen even if it was present, because the mixture was subjected to relatively high heat and because the concentration would be so low." "Was it sexual?" DeFalco asked. "What could be more sexual than cutting someone's skin off?" she replied without thinking. The frightening thing was that they all nodded understandingly. "He's an artist," Mulder said. "What standard of beauty does he have? Who is his audience?" "Us," she surprised herself by saying. "We have to investigate when he does this. He wants us to be impressed. He's ensured himself a more attentive audience than he'd find at any art gallery." "Does he want to be caught?" Now she was nervous. This was not her job. Would he embarrass her in front of all these people, her colleagues? He rested his hands on the table and leaned back, waiting. "No," she ventured. "So far, we don't have any strong evidence. The risks he took--calling us in--was for the thrill. And...he's too good at this for it to be his first time. He practiced until he got it right." "But he wants us to see what he does?" "Do you know what Fragonard said when he was asked to explain himself? 'Venez et voyez.' Come and see. He never published, which was extraordinary for French intellectuals of the time, most of whom couldn't hiccup without recording it for posterity. He only cared about the opinions of a few, the few who could see into the body as he could. That's how our Fragonard sees himself." Mulder nodded, evidently satisfied. She relaxed, trying not to show that she had ever been worried. "Any luck on the warehouse?" he asked Mark. "Rented electronically; paid for by cashier's check. They're looking for the check, but by now it's unlikely to retain any useful prints." * * * When she got back to her desk there was a large package addressed to her. She didn't recognize the name on the return address. It had been X- rayed as a matter of course, but she was still a little nervous as she used her letter opener to slit it open. Before she opened the flaps, some impulse compelled her to pull out a pair of gloves from the box that sat on her desk where most people's tissues would have been. Inside she saw the tops of three jars, nestled in styrofoam peanuts. She sighed, knowing that they'd get all over her office and she'd be finding little mint green balls in everything for weeks. Then she pulled the first jar out and it didn't matter quite as much. In the jar was a pale blue fetal pig. It had been injected with something--mercury, she thought, recalling her Fragonard homework--to highlight its blood vessels, and threads of silver floated in the liquid around the tiny body. It was an anatomy lesson, enabling the dedicated student to see the circulatory system in all its intricate glory. It was almost magically beautiful. Delicate, ethereal, perfectly formed and tinted. Perfect in death. Ideal in its stillness, inviolable because it had been violated already when it was reborn from flesh into art. If it was seen as grotesque by others, it would only be so because people are trained to find death horrible. But she was a pathologist. Death was neither mysterious nor romantic to her, and she knew that death's beauty needs assistance. The kind of assistance Fragonard had given this fragile corpse. Scully turned the jar on her desk, viewing the body from multiple angles, not for any insight but simply to appreciate the simplicity of form. Silver spun in the jar like tear tracks. She left the middle jar for last on instinct. The second jar she removed was another fetal pig, though it took her a moment to identify it because it had been halved from head to tail. The flesh was translucent, nearly transparent, and glimmered ghostly under the office lights like an exotic deep-sea fish. She recognized the process: diaphanization, done with a witches' brew of chemicals to make the organs almost transparent. It had been a teaching aid in Fragonard's time, allowing students to see all the structures of the body layered together. The secret made visible, the machine exposed in all its parts. The third jar was the worst: a human hand holding an eye by the optic nerve, between thumb and index finger. The hand was grey and the eye had been brown, and fragments of flesh, nerve endings and blood vessels trailed from the severed parts. Perhaps because the jar had been ill-sealed, mold had invaded the little scene inside and was consuming the preservative. Life out of death, world without end, amen. When she had looked long enough, she took the jars and their box to be dusted for prints, though her artist was certainly too clever to have made such a silly mistake. She was trying to determine how he could have identified her-- computer espionage, or had he been watching at the warehouse?--when Mulder burst in, wild-eyed. "You need to go into protective custody," he announced. "That's ridiculous, Mulder." "He knows you're the pathologist on the case, and he's interested enough to send you gifts. I'd say that constitutes enough danger to justify moving you to Quantico's guest quarters until we catch him." "That could be months...or years...or *never*. We don't have any leads, just speculation. I can't disrupt my life for the indefinite future. Anyway, Fragonard wants attention; he wouldn't hurt the best audience possible. There's still so much to see." "And you think you'll know when that changes and he comes to make you his next featured attraction?" "I thought you told me this was about visualizing, empathizing, trusting my instincts." "Those are the kinds of instincts that get you killed." "Good--then they're a lot like yours. Wasn't that the point of bringing me into ISU?" He frowned at her, running a distracted hand through his hair. "Then Mark or I will stay with you every night until we catch him. I sent Mark back to the warehouse to see if Fragonard might have been watching us yesterday." "Thanks for inviting yourself over, but I can take care of myself." "Not an option. It's Quantico or houseguests, unless you want to change your locks. Look, Scully, *I* won't be able to work unless I know you're not alone. If not for you, then for me. Please." She considered him, pacing back and forth in front of her desk, one restless hand rubbing the back of his neck as he stared at her floor. That was the problem with working with psychologists--they *managed* people. 'I feel afraid for you' was so much harder to dispute than 'You're in danger.' "If this lasts more than two weeks," she said, "I'm going to charge you rent. Not all of us are independently wealthy." He grinned widely in relief, and she thought that she might have agreed just to see that smile. Folly: Under the Skin Chapter 3: Behind You Swiftly "O what was that bird," said horror to hearer, "Did you see that shape in the twisted trees? Behind you swiftly the figure comes softly, The spot on your skin is a shocking disease." --W.H. Auden, "Five Songs" May 23 Dental records identified the corpse on the horse as Rory Decker, a homeless man who'd been a teacher before mental illness struck him down in his late twenties. It was impossible to tell exactly when he'd disappeared. Scully talked to his mother and advised her to have the body cremated without looking at it when the FBI released it, and then had to explain that it had been "mutilated." She knew that Mrs. Decker's animal moan would haunt her dreams. Materials Analysis found nothing on the warehouse floor that couldn't have been tracked in by the investigating agents. Mark went off to contact the French embassy to see if they could get a list of frequent visitors to the National Veterinary School in Maisons-Alfort just outside of Paris, where Fragonard's work was kept, because their Fragonard would have to have made a detailed study of the corpses. But how had their target known to contact her? On a hunch, she returned to the warehouse. Materials Analysis had swept clean the area where the bodies had been displayed, but that wasn't what she was interested in. The room seemed bigger without the bustle of others. The light was brownish and thick with the promise of a muggy summer. She looked around the walls, up in the darkened corners of the ceiling, until she saw what she'd expected. A video camera trained on the spotlit display site. A nice one, as it turned out when she got up to it, state of the art, with a directional microphone to pick up what they'd said while they admired his work. Unbidden, some sick part of her brain spoke in Mulder's voice: . The man who'd rented out the warehouse knew nothing about the camera. She trailed the wires to a smelly workroom behind the main storage space, and found a VCR without any tape. So he'd seen them. She wondered if he'd managed to catch whoever vomited on tape--that would have been a thrill, she was sure. He could look at them, at her, every night. When Mulder found out, she knew, he'd blame himself for setting her up as the target, identifying her as a crucial person right in front of the killer's watching eyes. She noted the serial numbers on the machines, then went back to Quantico. They'd look for prints, however unlikely, and stake out the warehouse in hopes that the (potential) killer would return, but she suspected that he would not risk returning for the equipment. * * * May 24 The next morning, she got email from an anonymous remailer directing her to a storage facility. 'Fragonard' evidently had money, but not unlimited amounts--renting the whole warehouse had been an extravagance limited to his opening show. In a small cubicle rented to a 'Fred Jenkins,' whose address listed on the rental form turned out to be a Metro station, they found more bodies. Or perhaps she should call them 'body parts.' On the report forms for VICAP, one had to indicate just how much of a body was left, but no one had ever told her at what point body *parts* became bodies. She recognized her thoughts as those of a person on the thin edge of hysteria, and forced them into a semblance of control. The skeleton was curled around what might have been a newborn, or a full-term fetus. The body had been placed on the skeleton's nonexistent belly, as if it were still encased in an invisible womb. That suggested extraction before birth; she thought that 'Fragonard' might have put the baby in a nursing position if it had been born before he got to it. Examination of the lungs might be useful, because even with the embalming fluid as a contaminant, there should be evidence to indicate whether or not the baby had ever breathed before it was skinned. She was convinced that the skeleton had been the baby's mother. A quick examination showed that the teeth were loose and the pelvic bones spread more than normal, as a result of the hormones produced just before delivery. * * * June 1 Mulder kept including her in the case conferences with Mark, urging her to try to profile their killer along with him. Visualize, imagine what must have happened, he reiterated, making them tell him how it must have been again and again. Her nightmares began to feature skinning and preservation techniques, carried out on all the important people in her life. When the next site was discovered--fortunately, 'Fragonard' seemed willing to share the joy of his revelations with others besides her--Mulder arranged to pick her up in the morning and take her there. He arrived early and made himself coffee in the kitchen while she finished getting ready. She waited for him at the door while he rinsed out his mug in the kitchen. Scully glanced in the hall mirror for a quick appearance check and was frozen by the image reflected at her: her face, spattered with blood--not a nosebleed, but a fine spray from some external source. She put up her hands to touch her cheeks, and it smeared. It was salty and metallic on her lips, stinging her eyes. It could not possibly have been on her. she thought, but couldn't tear her eyes from the mirror. Mulder came up behind her and gently took her wrists, guiding her hands down to her waist. "What do you see?" "Blood. There's blood on my face." Horror, denial. "He's inside you now, Scully. You can get all the answers, you just have to be willing to ask him. Why is the blood there?" "Because they're alive when he does it," she whispered. "At least for a while. He lets them see him. He needs to breathe them in...They die of blood loss and shock, the pain is unimaginable..." "All right," he said, giving her a little shake. "He's in you, but you're not him, you're not his. Go wash up; we have to get moving." Numbly, she followed his orders. It had to have been a hallucination brought on by stress. Even if it was a valid insight, its expression had taken fantastic form because she'd been listening to Mulder's theories on visualization. But she thought--she *believed*--that the water with which she rinsed her face ran pink down the drain. She didn't ask Mulder what he'd seen because she didn't know which answer she dreaded most. * * * This sculpture was the corpse of a short, powerfully built man with one hand upraised. In it was a mandible, brandished like a weapon. Bone and skin, brown flesh and ivory. It was raw and powerful, much like Fragonard's original. Looking at it made the world seem several degrees off true: the corpse appeared to have forgotten its own death. It looked as if it were just about to start moving again, cutting down anything in its path with its bone sword. She stared at the dead man's face. There was a blood vessel that went from the center of his forehead down the side of his nose, crossed the cheek and dove into the neck below his ear; it stood out from the rest of the flesh and almost seemed to pulse in the fluorescent light of the U-Stor-It. Other arteries and veins were more deeply embedded in the flesh, but they were still visible, sliding in and out of his hardened tissue like worms. Scully flashed on a slide her anatomy professor had displayed: A lithograph of a flayed man holding his own skin, with holes for eyes, nose, and mouth, in one hand and his cutting tool in the other. He'd skinned himself, investigating in the service of science. Looking for the secret of life, but finding that it could only be revealed in death. When she looked away from the corpse, all the agents looked pale and far too smooth. They got lucky with the identification of the body--John Yoder, a runaway teen whose parents had kicked him out when he told them he was gay, but who'd stayed at a halfway house long enough to have some dental work done and to be missed when he disappeared. Again, all the trace evidence Materials Analysis turned up probably came from the investigating agents, tracking in Virginia soil and shedding fibers from their stereotypical dark suits. There was a minor breakthrough when Scully identified the skeleton that had been found with the fetus. Sara Sanford had worked at a bagel shop not far from Quantico. She'd disappeared half a year before, when she was over eight months pregnant. No one had paid much attention: her job was high-turnover, and the fact that she didn't show up at the free health clinic for her scheduled check-up was unremarkable (indeed, as one of the nurses Scully talked to remarked, showing up for every appointment over the course of nine months *would* have been surprising). A coworker told Scully that Sara had found a new boyfriend just before she vanished. He'd had lots of money, Sara said, but she thought that he was married though he wouldn't say so. But, pregnant women don't get many dates, especially not ones who pay for everything. Sara had said that he was 'nice,' by which her coworker assumed she meant 'ugly,' and Sara had at one point mentioned that he was losing his hair. No name, but it was better than nothing. The date of her disappearance indicated that 'Fragonard' had been planning his barrage of horrors for a long time, and that he might have much more in store for them, to be revealed at his convenience. Mulder came to her apartment that night. "You know," Mulder said conversationally as she reviewed the latest findings with him, "I see them all the time." "Who?" She was confused. "My...siblings, cousins, whatever. The ones whose creation Cancerman supervised. They had to try for a long time to keep the changes all internal. As it happens, alien DNA seems to be highly teratogenic. And he saw every little body. Wouldn't let the technique be used on the lovely Christina Mulder until he was sure that the baby would look human--but he can't forget the first tries, and now I see them all the time. There's one sitting in the corner." He pointed, and she turned involuntarily, knowing that she wouldn't see anything. She should be admitting him to a psychiatric hospital. But then she should also admit herself, while she was there, since she'd experienced something similar. He could tell what she was thinking. "I know it's not there, of course. It's just a projection of a memory. I've always been a visual thinker. The only difficulty is trying not to react while other people are around." She didn't know what to say to that, so she said the first thing that occurred to her. "Did you know that the anatomists of Fragonard's time were also particularly concerned with monsters? They didn't have any idea what caused them, of course, but half of what they embalmed were bodies that were somehow deformed--two-headed goats, clubfooted men, babies without faces." "Too bad Cancerman didn't have 'Fragonard' around all those years ago; they would have made a great partnership. One makes monsters, the other displays them." "I would say they're more alike in *being* monsters. They both think they're getting to the heart of things, the secret truth, by controlling and destroying lives. But it's never enough; they can never go deep enough because there is nothing inside *them* that could recognize what they want to see." "Why, Scully," he said, using the teasing tone that meant that he didn't want to think about something, "you're a philosopher." "I'm many things," she said, smiling and hoping that he'd take the opportunity to segue into a more pleasant topic. And he did. * * * June 4 The next package addressed to her arrived several days later. The box was enormous; it looked big enough to hold a wide-screen television set. Again it originated from a fake address. She opened it in the lab, Mark at her side. Inside was a tiny stage like a display window from Hell. In the center was a toddler's skeleton, surrounded by what looked like sere, leafless trees- -and then she refocused and they were dried tracheobronchial tubes and aortas. The rocks around the tiny bones were preserved viscera and gallstones. The skeleton itself held a handkerchief made of something she tentatively identified as peritoneal membrane and a small, elegantly lettered sign. "Vita quid est? Fumus fugiens et bulla caduca." "What is life? Transient smoke and perishable bubble," Mark translated. Scully stared at the skeleton, cut off so far away from its full potential growth. Still mostly spongy and cartilaginous; the bones of the skull barely touched, decades away from fusing into what would have been their final unity. With a skeleton that young, they'd be able to identify its age within forty days, because kids' teeth grew several microns a day. He was not supposed to kill children, she thought. They weren't ready for death; they had no idea what it was. This was not a thought-provoking contrast between death and the illusion of life, it was a travesty. The mother and child had not affected her quite so much, because taking the two together seemed fitting, in a sick way, and because the bodies had not been sent particularly to her. But this, this was a joke, a mockery. To kill a child in order to put a placard in its bony hand--it was unimaginable. "Can all of these be from his victims?" Mark gestured at the "trees." She blinked several times and concentrated on his question. "We can't even prove that he had living victims. Though with no obvious causes of death and given that the two full corpses we have were too young for natural death to be likely, I'd guess that they died when he skinned them alive. He'd have to work himself up to be able to do that. It wouldn't be surprising if he'd experimented on earlier victims and kept their organs. Then, when he was making up his care packages, he might have thought that they'd make excellent scenery." This man, their new Fragonard, was a monster, as much as he pretended to be an artist. She'd been dazzled by his skill, but this last present had gone too far. Underneath the pretense of aesthetics was only death-love and cruelty. He could be walking down any street right now, looking for the next victim. No one would notice anything unusual about him. Even if he were skinned, nothing would be special about his revealed flesh. He'd mistaken blood for truth. She could not let herself do the same. She *knew* that she was missing something, something important. "Mark," she said, "what's the difference between the packages for me and the bodies he doesn't send here?" "The packages are smaller." She was sure that he wasn't trying to be facetious, but still she was annoyed. "No, beyond that." "Until now, we've had to go to all the full bodies or skeletons." "And they've been...complete in themselves, without scenery or messages. I think--could he be sending me parts of his personal collection, things he made for himself as a distraction? I think the jars and this *thing* were not part of his original plan, but he decided to send them to me when he saw me. The pigs, the hand, the moralizing skeleton...they're more *frivolous* than the other bodies, more playful. If he is courting me, he's showing me that he's more than just a butcher--he *thinks* about his art." Mark nodded. "It's possible, certainly. But I think he might have planned to show off to someone, and you just had the bad luck to be the one--so there wasn't necessarily a change of plans." Scully disagreed, but she couldn't explain why and Mark was the one with the psychology degree, so she didn't pursue it. Folly: Under the Skin Chapter 4: The Old Warm World ... he must have felt that he had lost the old warm world, paid a high price for living too long with a single dream. He must have looked up at an unfamiliar sky through frightening leaves and shivered as he found what a grotesque thing a rose is and how raw the sunlight was upon the scarcely created grass. --F. Scott Fitzgerald, "The Great Gatsby" June 8 The next few days passed without incident. True to his word, Mulder traded off nights with Mark, who was painfully polite about the arrangement and about respecting her privacy. He wouldn't even venture past the living room to use the bathroom without her permission. It was a bit annoying, because she felt that the living room was therefore off-limits to her, and she had to work in her bedroom, which she preferred to reserve for sleep. While Mark searched for U.S. residents among the faxed copies of the French National Veterinary School's guestbook, Scully tried to find veterinary or medical schools that would teach Fragonard's outdated embalming method, perhaps as part of a history of medicine course. She tried to contact her old professor, but he had passed away a few years before. When the next package arrived for her, Security immediately took it to be lasered for prints and found only those traceable to mail carriers. When they brought it to her, she called Mark in to see.. Scully resented being at the mercy of this anonymous gift-giver, and she also resented the excitement his gifts to her engendered among the profilers. As frightening as it was to her, to them it was a fascinating example of a killer involving himself in the investigation. At least if she were being stalked by someone she knew, she could confront him, get a restraining order. But no, this was *evidence* and it was good that 'Fragonard' kept sending gifts. Each one might offer the mistake that would give him away. This package proved to contain two boxes, one long and narrow, the other cubical and gift-wrapped. She opened the first and found only a dried rose, once scarlet, now velvety and fragile. She put it on her bookshelf, between the fetal pigs. The other box was covered in red paper dotted with little white hearts. She contemplated it, wishing for Mulder's gift with snide throwaway lines to ease the tension. "Scotch tape is good," Mark finally said. "We might get fingerprints." "Shall I do the honors?" Scully asked him. He motioned her on as if he were letting her proceed first through a door, as if it were gentlemanly to do so. She slit the paper open, preserving the tape, and found a white cardboard box stamped, 'Anatomical Chart & Model Co.' "It's a standard anatomical supply company," she told Mark, her own puzzlement evident in her voice. She opened the box, peered in, and saw a human heart. "What did he do to it?" Mark asked her. It was a uniform brown and looked as if it had been dipped in wax. She reached into the box to lift it out. As she brought it up, she paused in confusion. That smell-- She held it to her nose, sniffing with total disregard for Mark's appalled expression. "It's...chocolate," she reported. "Chocolate?" His voice was incredulous. "Yes. I've read about these--the company made them as a joke but doctors loved them and so now they're a big seller. He sent me chocolate and a rose," she said, a little shocked. Mark thought. "Are you sure that it's all chocolate? Could there be something else--underneath?" The events of the next hour were, in her opinion, better than the 'alien autopsy' fiasco only in that no one made a video record of them. Every person with a remotely plausible excuse to be in the morgue stood around the autopsy table, blocking her light, while she dissected a chocolate heart-- slowly cutting through the candy, a millimeter at a time, after each pass checking to see if the latest shaving revealed anything untoward. Every time she raised the scalpel, she tensed, expecting oozing blood or tough flesh, and every time she was surprised when nothing changed. When she'd reduced the heart to fine curls suitable for topping a cake, a collective sigh of disappointed voyeurism broke out, leaving her disgusted with human bloody-mindedness just as her hands began to shake. She braced herself on the table in front of her to disguise the tremors. With the chocolate strewn about, the shiny silver table looked as if it belonged in a fancy kitchen rather than a morgue; the grooves for carrying blood away might have been designed for beef juices. On a whim, she picked up a fragment in her still-gloved hands and popped it into her mouth. Medium-quality chocolate. She could have told him, girls go for Godiva. A giddy sense of unreality swept through her. Mark's voice brought her back to herself. "This is our big breakthrough." "What do you mean?" The crowd had been dispersing, but stopped to hear how this farce could be put to good use. "Look, as anatomical apparatus goes, I'm sure this is a best-seller, but how many can the company have sold in the past few months? Especially in this area? We'll get a list and work our way through it." * * * Later that day, the ever-helpful Dr. Andrews knocked on her door. "Dr. Scully?" "Yes?" "I, um, took a look at John Yoder's body, just to see what it was like, and, well..." "Yes?" she repeated, less warmly. "Did you leave the note in the abdominal cavity on purpose?" "Note?" she asked woodenly. "I saw a small, folded-up piece of paper at the lower edge of the abdominal wall...You didn't see it?" "No," she said. "Let's have a look." They returned to the morgue and opened the door to the storage compartment for Yoder's body. When she pulled the stomach muscles aside, the whitish gleam of paper was immediately apparent. She reached in with tweezers and pulled it out. Though stained in spots from traces of preservatives, the paper contained a perfectly legible inscription in tiny, impossibly neat handwriting. "God commands all fags must die," it read. "He told me that this one must be first, as a sign. He fondles bone in death as he fondled flesh in life." Scully looked up at Dr. Andrews. "Thank you," she said, all questions about why he was cutting open *her* subject leaving her head. "I made a grave oversight and I'm truly grateful you caught it." "Could it really help catch the killer?" he asked eagerly. "It may very well." He swaggered away while she cursed herself for an idiot and a blind woman. * * * "I can't believe that I missed it," she said numbly to Mulder after she told him the story that night. "It was completely incompetent of me--a kindergarten mistake." Mulder was not one to coddle her failures--he respected her too much to do so. "Be glad Dr. Andrews caught it," he said instead. "Oh, I am," she replied. "But it's so confusing. It suggests that everything we've thought so far has been wrong; we were heading down a blind alley." "It is anomalous. Being called by God to target particular people--" "It just seems *wrong*, Mulder. These victims had nothing to connect them. They were the right physical type for him, so he took them." "Or maybe he just replicates those works of Fragonard that he considers appropriate for the person. His presentation is showy, but that doesn't mean that it's his primary goal." Mulder had only seen the first-discovered corpse; without looking at them all, she thought, he couldn't appreciate the importance of the artistic arrangement. But he was Spooky Mulder, the man who solved cases by hearing *descriptions* of the crime scenes. She was only resisting because accepting the importance of this evidence meant that she'd carelessly overlooked a critical clue, when she'd felt that she was performing well. And now the first victim's body was ashes, along with whatever message it might have contained. "I should be spending more time with Ruth," she said. "The whole situation has obviously been taking too much of my attention; I can't do an effective job while I'm really thinking about her and about what happens next." He nodded and left it at that. * * * June 5 The next morning, Scully redid the autopsy of Baby Sanford. She went over the body with total attention, but found nothing.. It was a relief to her; it meant that she hadn't missed another message, and also suggested that she might not have sent invaluable evidence to be cremated along with the first victim. That reassurance, however, came at the cost of slicing a baby's body into its component parts, and the process was dreadful. They were lucky that no one wanted the body--Sara Sanford's parents wouldn't even come from their small-town Kentucky home to claim the body or their daughter's bones, because they had disowned Sara when she got pregnant. Mark came into her office just as she'd finished her notes and caught her staring at the arrangement on her shelf--the rose trapped between the delicately formed pigs. "It is beautiful, isn't it?" she asked. "How sad that he's decided to take his art to the extreme of killing." "Beautiful?" he asked. "A window into the stunning complexity of life. Those tiny hearts, those lungs waiting forever for air--that's God's work, and he's showing us. Nature is the basic source of beauty and sensation; he's reminding us. If you didn't know that these were fetal pigs, if they were plastic sculptures, wouldn't you think that they were exquisite?" She admired the contrast: the one still slightly pink where the mercury didn't show through, gracefully suspended among the silver; the other luminous and only half-seen in the shadow cast by the shelf above--in that light, the diaphanized pig looked like the manifested ghost of the mercury-traced one. "Even if they were, there'd still be the corpses." "He thinks that human life is worth less than the art that can be made from it. So did Picasso, really, it's just that our Fragonard is more proactive." Mark shook his head. "I just don't see it." "You'll have to, to catch him." She hadn't meant to sound chiding. Still, their work could not be done by people innocent of the pull of evil. Uncomprehending disdain would get them nowhere. * * * June 10 She circled the corpse like a carrion-bird waiting to take her bites. If Fragonard was an artist, she was a vandal, she concluded. He gave her his work to appreciate, but her appreciation was its destruction. The woman had been about Scully's height, she thought, though in that position--kneeling to put the leash on the dog--it was hard to tell. Though the preservation solution had discolored the irises, Scully was fairly sure that they had been blue. She was dressed, unlike the previous victims, and that was the most disturbing part. It was as if 'Fragonard' were embarrassed. The dog had been about the size and shape of Queequeg, from what she remembered when he was wet. Dogs looked very different without the halo of their furry skins. The leather leash was the only skin remaining on either of them. Fortunately, Dr. Andrews was in the morgue again when she brought in the latest corpse, and helped her with the photos again. He watched her technique avidly. It was obvious that he was just as excited to be an FBI agent as Mark. They were both her age; why did they seem so innocent? When had she lost the excitement of solving the puzzle? With his help, she finished the autopsy just before she was supposed to meet Ruth for lunch. Dr. Andrews walked her to the cafeteria together. She was pleased that she got an opportunity to try out the cover story she and Ruth had concocted to explain their association--a chance meeting, a joint research project on the effects of certain drugs on sensitive tissues. Which was not entirely inaccurate, when she thought about it. Dr. Andrews made appropriately interested noises, and when she arrived she successfully gave him the impression that she wanted to be alone with Ruth. Eager beavers and Boy Scouts were great, but sometimes she just didn't want to have to deal with them. * * * Mulder dropped by to discuss the latest victim. She spoke as soon as he closed the door. "It doesn't resemble any of the Fragonards of which the French government is aware. But we knew that, really. I think I should move to Quantico now." "Shall I go by your apartment to get some clothes?" Scully looked up, and saw what he'd look like without any skin. He looked at her with concern; at least, she thought his eyes were concerned, but it was much harder to decipher them without the little wrinkles of skin that usually surrounded them. She ground out an answer, turning away from his raw red face. "I'll go after work. You wouldn't know how to pick outfits." "Scully, I remember every outfit you've ever worn," he said, sounding miffed. "I can replicate them rather than subjecting you to my twisted tastes. I doubt you even *own* clothes suitable to my twisted tastes." She dared a glance and saw muscles working wetly in his jaw. She agreed with Fragonard: images like this were much easier to look at in the stillness of death. Nothing that moved and, oh God, gleamed like that could be borne for long. She struggled to recall the conversation, to avoid letting him know what was happening to her. "Maybe that's why I don't want you rummaging through my drawers--so you won't find out." "Well, I don't *have* to bring underwear." When she missed the five-second window of opportunity to respond, he made a small victory noise and left. She looked again at the pictures. Red arteries, yellow ligaments, blue veins. Brown, arid flesh. So much more of the eyeball was visible than should have been--almost half the orb, instead of the narrow slit that most people thought of as eyes. The eyes were one of the small variations that were just a little bit off, that drew the gaze back to the forms again and again. Mulder had at least refrained from stating the obvious: this latest corpse was a love letter. Her size, her age, her eyes; an absolute original, unlike anything he'd done before; and politely dressed, which suggested that he felt a personal connection. Less extreme killers would cover the faces of their victims when they felt bad, but 'Fragonard' had to do something different, since his victims no longer had any faces. His overtures were escalating. All told, she'd preferred having her pigtails pulled. * * * Because of his heightened concern for her, Mulder insisted on dropping her off at Ruth's office and waiting for her to finish. He came inside to see Ruth at Scully's insistence. They didn't have much to say to one another. Scully had the impression that Mulder was uncomfortable with women he couldn't charm. "How are you?" he asked gently. "Not great," she said. "Any more news from your conspiracy- hunting friends?" "No. Trust Scully, Ruth, she's the best there is." He laid a gentle hand on her arm and gave her his most soulful look. Scully was almost jealous. Ruth just looked at him and turned to go back into the exam room. His face was motionless, but Scully could feel the tension radiating from him. She shot him an apologetic glance and turned to follow Ruth. Together, they worked at repairing the damage done by the fetus, clearing out the poisons in Ruth's kidneys and restoring the damaged liver cells. Her heart and lungs seemed fine for the moment, and blood tests showed that her hormone levels were about right for a pregnant woman, so they hoped that they weren't missing anything important. Scully felt as if she were involved in a twisted variation on the story of Prometheus, whose punishment for giving fire to humanity was to have his liver torn out and eaten by vultures every night; it was rebuilt just to be consumed every day. But Ruth had stolen nothing from the gods to deserve this fate. She was just a puppet--a puppet with an alien hand inside. She and Ruth were eating like an entire police force, a result of the caloric drains caused by near-daily use of their power. Whatever its source, it was no more efficient than any other method of power generation, and so they had unbelievable appetites. Scully's headaches lasted for hours after each session, leaving her cranky and drained into the next day. She tried to stop before the nosebleeds began, but Ruth's abilities were so much weaker than hers that she often pushed herself too far. She knew that she couldn't keep this pace up much longer. One welcome side effect of the pregnancy was a severe drop in Ruth's blood pressure, which would have been dangerous if not for the countervailing effect of the physical changes resulting from the experimentation, which pushed her blood pressure back up when she used her 'talents.' She hadn't had a nosebleed in weeks, though headaches still bothered her. Scully had prescribed various painkillers to see what worked best. Scully still felt uneasy about prescribing strong narcotics to a pregnant woman; she knew that she continued to entertain the fantasy that Ruth would change her mind. But Ruth was resolute. When Scully came out, Mulder was sitting in the car, shoulders tense, hands clenching and unclenching on the steering wheel. He spoke without looking at her. "I can't have been like that thing. I can't have been. It's not...No. There is no God, Scully. If there was, He died when someone thought of that thing." "Did you...sense it? You can't be telling me that it's evil. It's a *fetus*! Brain function has begun only in the most rudimentary way." "I don't know if it's evil. But it's not--not what you would call 'sane.' They don't know what they've done. They have no idea." Folly: Under the Skin Chapter 5: Ambiguous Gifts All those large dreams by which men long live well Are magic-lanterned on the smoke of hell; This then is real, I have implied, A painted, small, transparent slide. ... Imagine, then, by miracle, with me, (Ambiguous gifts, as what gods give must be) What could not possibly be there, And learn a style from a despair. --William Empson, "This Last Pain" June 12 As Scully approached Mulder's office, she heard Mark's voice drift from the open door. She slowed when she realized that they were discussing her. "I just don't understand why he'd pick her. She's not even really a profiler." "No, she's better. What he does, she dives inside. And don't try to tell me you don't understand why someone might--fixate on--Scully." She could picture the amused condescension on Mulder's face, and was embarrassed for Mark. "In any event," Mulder continued, "I have to go to Texas tomorrow, so I thought I'd give you the night off, since you two are going to be on your own until I'm back." Scully decided that she couldn't let this conversation continue, and walked through the door. Though windowless, the room was much brighter than their old office, probably because it had actually been designed as an office and not as storage space. They looked up. "I'm at Quantico now," she reminded the surprised men. "I don't need babysitters anymore." "Humor me," they said in unison. Mark looked at her sheepishly. Mulder just looked annoyed. she thought exasperatedly, * * * Mulder showed up at her room on Quantico's security floor just after nine o'clock. He held a blue case--a rented VCR, on closer inspection--and two videos. "Want some company?" She chuckled and stepped aside. "Welcome to my palace. What did you bring?" "*Little Shop of Horrors* and *The Arrival*--a good movie that suffered unjustly from an unfortunate release date." "Says the man who liked *Species.*" "That's different. Not five minutes without a naked woman or an H.R. Giger monster onscreen. You can't blame me for liking that. C'mon, Scully, Charlie Sheen plays a loner who can't convince anyone that the aliens are already here. Great arctic and desert scenes." "Let no one ever accuse you of taking your work home with you," she said, deadpan. She watched him search for a comeback, then give up. She shut the door and took the VCR from him, walking over to the television perched on the desk to keep visitors from total boredom. "Let me hook this up. I don't need a refresher in treating electrocution." "You wound me." "Not recently," she replied absently as she tugged at cables. He sat on the bed, long legs hanging off the end, and watched her work. The movies were about what she'd expected. By the time the little blood-thirsty plant poked its head out of Audrey and Seymour's yard, she was dozing, head pillowed against Mulder's shoulder. She felt him ease her down onto the bed when he went to turn off the TV, then return. "Can I stay?" he whispered, sitting on the edge of the bed near her shoulder. Without the bluish emanations of the TV, the room was mostly dark, lit only by the gray-green light spilling in the reinforced glass window from the parking lot lights. She rubbed at her eyes, wrinkling her nose and trying to think. "Mulder, everyone knows which suit you keep in your office." "I don't think they pay *that* close attention." "Are you kidding?" She was awake now; it was a subject dear to her heart. "Those fine, fine suits that they'd never see except behind a shop window or when they go bust some Mob don were it not for you? They'd never admit it, but they pay more attention to your clothes than to mine--and Bureau men are tough on the unofficial women's dress code." "If you say so," he conceded. "It's a good thing I'm all packed and I can leave for my flight without anyone seeing me." "Why do you want to stay?" He smiled lasciviously until she blushed. "But it's not just that, is it?" He shook his head and turned her over so that he could rub her back. "I know you can take care of yourself. But I need you to know--if anything happened, you'd know that I didn't *want* to leave you. Wouldn't you?" She nodded, relaxing against his skilled hands. He stayed silent for a while, just touching her. As his hands began to stray from her back, he whispered in her ear. "This is the last road trip I'll do for them, I promise." She had a dream in which Missy's corpse waited in her lab for autopsy. Except that, when she touched the skin, it sloughed off and it was her mother underneath. Then that skin, too, came loose and she saw Ruth. Under Ruth, Samantha; under Samantha, herself. She touched her smooth, vacant face, then pulled off her latex glove and noted that she had been skinned. Tendons and blood vessels braced themselves on their framework of bones as she flexed her exposed flesh. Reaching again to her skin on the table, she prodded the face, and it fell to pieces, leaving nothing but pale flakes of epidermis on the metal table. She woke, moaning, as Mulder was leaving. He held her for a moment, but he had a plane to catch and so she didn't protest when he left, though her heart was still pounding. * * * June 13 Now that Ruth's health had stabilized, they had decided that it was time to try again. The plan was for Dr. Koh to do a D & C, with Scully monitoring and suppressing any bleeding from the severed connections, holding them steady if they tried to lash around as they'd done the first time. Regular surgery was out of the question: to get at the tentacles, as Scully found herself naming them in her thoughts, would require opening Ruth up in far too many places. They'd be ready to cauterize the fibers by the womb, but no one really knew what to expect. If she could get through this, the constant drain on her energy would end, and maybe she could do some long-term thinking. The procedure was scheduled for the next Saturday, so they could be fresh and rested, and so that they'd have as much time as possible to deal with possible complications. Scully hadn't explained to Ruth what was going on with 'Fragonard.' What could she say? 'Ruth, you know how the secret government is monitoring you to check on the health of your part-alien fetus? Well, sorry, I can't give that my full attention because a serial killer has me on his wish list, so good luck. But hey, I'm sure that it will all work out for the best.' Ruth still had a slightly idealized idea of what an FBI agent did, and Scully did not want to disabuse her of any confidence that being with people who carried badges and guns could give her. But, for Scully's safety, she'd agreed that Ruth would have to come to Quantico for their regular meetings. They'd do their repair work in Scully's room. Only one more session to go before it would be all over--one way or another. Ruth, Scully had concluded, really was willing to risk death to prevent herself from being used in such a vicious way. She admired the other woman's strength. She could only hope that she would have been able to do the same thing, if it had come to that. * * * She answered the cellphone with an economy of motion based on long practice. "Scully." "Dana, this is Mark Gershom." "Mark?" "I just got an email from Zenith's lawyer about who the registered owner of the camera you found in the warehouse. He wanted to know if Zenith was being brought into some internal investigation or audit. Dana, the Bureau bought that camera." She squeezed her eyes shut. All at once a circuit closed in her mind and she knew. She blinked, and saw the small picture of her and Queequeg she still kept on her desk out of some nostalgic impulse. She hadn't made the connection because Queequeg was gone--only 'Fragonard' didn't know that. "He planted the note," she said expressionlessly. "What?" "He knew he'd made a mistake when he heard us talking about the chocolate, so he planted the note." "I'm coming to your room," he said. "Stay there and don't let anyone else in." "I've got to make a call," she said and pressed the disconnect button. She hit the third memory key, the newest addition. Someone picked up on the second ring. "Hello?" "Ruth, you've--" "Dana, I thought you'd forgotten about me--" "Where are you?" Ruth's tone was admonitory. "In your office, of course. That nice colleague of yours drove me over here." The line went dead. Scully was out of the door before the dialtone began, vaulting down the stairs and towards the lab building. She managed to call the guardhouse and rouse a sleepy veteran. She didn't know if she'd impressed him with the seriousness of the situation, but hoped that the words "killer" and "hostage" got through to him. There was a light on in her office. Dana Scully had never feared labs. Death is quiescent, and a competent investigator should be able to control whatever threat lurks among the dead. The building she entered that night, though, was suddenly unfamiliar, its sounds alien, its angles not quite right. Would he kill Ruth to force them to kill him in one last gout of blood? She pounded through the darkened corridors. There was no color left in the world, but for the buttery light spilling through her opened office door. "Here I am," she called out as she edged forward, stopping several feet from the bright swath on the floor. "What do you want?" "My God, Dana, what is *in* her?" Matt Andrews said, sounding shaken. "I heard it--it told me to set it free from her. It's not like the rest of us. It wears its truth on the outside, doesn't it?" She staggered against the wall--only a foot apart from Andrews, possibly, but she could not stand. Her suddenly dry mouth impeded her first attempts at speech. An eternity later, she managed: "Is she alive?" If he'd cut her--she might still live, if Scully got to her fast enough. If. "Nothing ever really dies, Dana, don't you know?" He was regaining confidence, reminded of the power he held over her. She used the one insight that she thought might shake him. "When you look in the mirror, there's no skin on your face, is there?" She heard him suck in a breath. "So you can see it. I thought you would--I can see it in your eyes. They bent the rules for you that they wouldn't bend for me and that was wrong, but I can see why the Bureau wanted you. I was wasted on all those stupid heart attacks and ODs." "Let her go and you'll walk out of here alive." Faint noises in the hall behind her suggested that back-up had arrived. She hoped for seasoned veterans temporarily assigned as instructors; she could hardly have been in a better location to find talent and experience. He chuckled. "Let her go and I'll come in to you." "Now that's tempting. But you're a good agent, and you know full well agents aren't allowed to make themselves hostages for civilians. It's against the rules. Too bad...I had such plans," he said wistfully. "I don't care!" She let desperation show in her voice. Ruth's life was trickling away as she spoke. She felt a hand brush her shoulder and didn't bother to look back to see who it was. The man behind her whispered something about gas, and keeping the killer talking, and meaningless reassurances about her 'friend' in there with the madman. What if she stopped talking and reached through the wall to give Andrews an aneurysm? Would her silence doom Ruth? "Going somewhere, Dana?" Her eyes snapped open. No, he wouldn't give her time to concentrate. "I'm coming in to you." She laid her gun on the cool tile floor. Her companion hissed, trying to dissuade her--Andrews was right, this was not allowed--but she shook him off. As she stepped from darkness into light, hands upraised to show her vulnerability, her vision dimmed for a moment, overwhelmed by the brightness of the office lights after the unlit hall. Then she saw Ruth. It was like a snapshot, frozen and somehow distant. Ruth's eyes were terrified and staring. The scalpel he'd used had cut so far into her throat that her head was folded over to the side like a bent straw. Her chin was bloody, and her lab coat, and Scully's desk and the floor and the walls and Andrews and his scalpel and even his pristine fetal pigs were misted with it. Around her fallen form, the carpet was sopping with it, and he'd left sloppy, bloody footprints walking away from her to greet Scully. Underneath the film of blood, Ruth's stomach had been slit open and something had been pulled out--a glistening red lump like a golem, with tendrils furring its form, stretching back into the emptied cavern of her body. A strobe went off inside Scully's head. In the next frame, her hands were halfway down and he had stepped towards her to relish the fullness of his triumph. His face was spattered with blood, and it was just like her face in the mirror had been--for a moment, his face *was* hers. The picture changed. He was in midair now, actually leaving his shoes behind, a ridiculous detail soldered onto her brain. A stream of blood from her nose had not yet hit the floor. It was a red sword cutting the air in its wake. He had not yet noticed the indentation in his stomach. His spine probably did not burst out of his back until he was already through the window. She heard the crash, but by then she was staring down into the blood--Ruth's, and hers on top, propelled as if through a high- pressure hose. She pitched face-forward, towards that lifeless tide. Folly: Under the Skin Chapter 6: What We Shall Believe I have mislaid the torment and the fear. You should be praised for taking them away. ... Lose is Find with great marsh lights like you. Those that doubt drugs, let them doubt which was here. When this leaves the green afterlight of day Nor they nor I know what we shall believe. You should be praised for taking them away. --William Empson, "Success" June 14 She woke, and they murmured things about hysterical strength and bravery. She woke, and they didn't want to let her go, not with a head trauma like that, despite her lucidity. She woke, and Ruth was still dead. * * * The sun rose, light bleeding over the treetops as if from a torn scab. It came through the lab windows and made her blink, but she didn't stop working. When Mulder found her, she was putting the contents of Andrews' desk and locker into neatly labelled evidence bags. The evidence had been flaunted in front of them, if they had been paying any attention. Dyes and scalpels from the Quantico labs; his detailed notebook containing descriptions of his early experiments and increasingly grand endeavors--not even under lock and key!--his trophies, small personal possessions of his victims and samples of skin; it was all there. His journals, written in the same neat hand as the note he'd planted in John Yoder's body, recorded his hatred for Dana Scully, successful at everything, who got into the FBI two years early because they bent the rules for her. His conviction that he deserved her place, and that she would be his masterpiece, his final revenge. Her hands were steady in the latex gloves, dried by the faint shaking of talc inside. They could not be more dry than the arid wastes of her soul. "Stop, Scully," Mulder said, coming up behind her, not quite touching. He must have flown all night. "Let someone else do this." "Would you?" "Yes, I'll do it," he answered, deliberately misunderstanding. "I killed her. I should have known--he was interested in the investigation. Wanted to involve himself, just like you said. He had reason to make me the target, he even met Ruth--I killed her." She felt his labored breath on her neck as she continued to bag and label. Her handwriting was perfectly neat. The evidence techs would add it to the Ice Queen legend--not ten hours later, and it didn't bother her a bit. "And Ruth's body is gone. It was gone when I woke up. Her family won't even be able to bury her decently." She continued to work, more hurriedly now, wanting to finish. "Dana, it's my fault. I gave you to him, I wanted you with me so I made you work on ISU and you could have been doing anything else and he never would have noticed." "Stop it!" she screamed. The noise was shrill in the empty lab. "Just stop it! Why does it always have to be you? Why do you get to control everything? I had a choice, damn you! I could have said no! But I didn't and I'm not your puppet! I read Mark's profile, I should have seen how Andrews fit it!" "He didn't, Dana. Even the most organized--they can *never* sustain a real law enforcement job that long. It's unthinkable that he made it through the screening. No one would have known." He was on his knees, still not touching her, speaking urgently. "You would have. Wouldn't you? Wouldn't you?" He hesitated long enough for her to know the answer. He didn't insult her with a lie. "I should have stayed with you as soon as you were targeted. I could have tried harder--" "Don't. Just don't. Leave me alone." "I'm not leaving you here." "Don't bother to make an exception to your usual policy." She said it with real venom. He hung his head in defeat. "I love you, Scully." She stopped working and looked at him. "What good has that ever done us?" She left all the bags where they lay and went back to the security floor. He did not follow. * * * Scully went to her mother's, as she always did in troubled times. She would not describe what had happened beyond the barest details, but the cold of the grave was in her and her mother felt it. "She died because she knew me and she was in the wrong place at the wrong time. I just--" She stopped and waited for the tears to come, but they withheld themselves. "What was Ruth like?" "That's the stupid part, Mom. I don't even really know. We were always in such trouble when we were together. She was beautiful, and scared, and sometimes she wasn't very nice because she was frightened. But she tried hard to understand what was happening to us. She was sick but we were going to beat it. I was going to help her. Only I got her killed instead." Her mother swept her into fragile arms, cradling her. Eventually she managed a few dry sobs, but they seemed forced even to her. Her mother stroked her hair and hummed softly. "What did Fox do?" she asked after the silence had grown grim and weighty. "He said it was his fault, of course. Like he's the only one who could have seen. I worked with this man, I let him take the pictures of me cutting up what he'd already done. How could I not have seen it?" "Honey..." "God, I should have been a pediatrician. That's harder to screw up. Ruth was an obstetrician. I think she was good...I never saw her work, but she must have been good...She was so honest about herself." She pressed her face into her mother's stomach, thinking about Ruth's gaping belly and about how much she'd give to return to the womb, to go back three days or three months or three years. She was almost surprised when her mother's stomach didn't open up to admit her. After hours had passed, when they were just sitting together in silence, the knock on the door came, as she'd known it would. She let her mother answer it. She saw the back of her mother's head, heard the steady words. "I'm not sure you should come in." "Please, Mrs. Scully. Ask her if I can see her." She walked into the hallway and said, "It's all right, Mom." Her mother shot her a worried glance, but gave in. "I'll be in the kitchen," Mrs. Scully said, and left them standing, watching each other. They stepped forward simultaneously. He didn't bother to close the door. She grabbed him hard enough to bruise and buried her face in his chest. His hands swept over her body, checking to see if she was real--arms, back, hair, as if she would disappear if he stopped touching her. "Will it ever get better?" she whispered. He stilled. His pulse against her forehead hammered out some indecipherable message. Slowly, he brought his hands up to her face and tilted it up to look at her. "It should. But it doesn't always." * * * June 17 Scully walked into her temporary office. They'd moved everything of hers that hadn't been ruined by the bloodstains into this grey room. Someone--probably Mulder--had taken care of the move over the weekend, while she'd been staring at her apartment walls thinking about Ruth. She'd barely remembered to call Dr. Koh to tell her not to bother to come to Virginia. Paperwork--she'd never loved the thought of paperwork so much. Respite. She only saw the pictures when she sat down. Five women, each in a bathtub, exsanguinated. Mulder came in without knocking. "Baltimore, Scully. I thought you'd appreciate something close to home." "What is this, Mulder? I just finished with Andrews, I have to write it all up..." "This isn't the X Files. We have a wonderful AA whose job it is to do all that pesky stuff so *you* can get back into the field, where you belong." "I *can't*, not yet. Don't do this to me. Isn't there someone else?" "No, there isn't. Not who's free and could do what I know you can. This one's a forensics case mostly. It's perfect for you. If you want, take more time off, go shopping, it doesn't matter to me. But he's due to kill again next week, and he's not going to break his schedule because you want a vacation. Take whatever time you think you need, but I'm sending you to talk to the next victim's family, and they'll wonder why she wasn't your *priority*!" His voice had been rising throughout the speech as she cringed away from him, and he was nearly screaming by the end. Agent DeFalco knocked and entered. "For a minute there I thought we had Patterson back," he said mildly, not looking at either of them. "Mulder, the AD is waiting for you in the conference room." Mulder grunted and pushed past the other man. DeFalco stayed in her office. "Management by guilt trip was a bad Patterson habit. I'm afraid Agent Mulder didn't have a very good role model." she thought. "I am new to the job," she said, defending him as always, even though he'd made her look bad. DeFalco shook his head. "You're an excellent addition to the team. Uh, this is awkward, I hope you don't mind my saying this, but if you're worried that anyone thinks that--I mean, people try really hard to get into this unit--but we can all tell that you're good at your job, and that Agent Mulder's sole dedication is to solving cases." "Oh, I'm well aware of that," she said, more bitterly than she'd intended, then flushed. "He may feel the need to be hard on you to prove it to everyone else. It's--not a good thing, but it's the truth that it's easier to have a protege who's the same sex as you are." She nodded. "That wasn't a real problem for us when we were doing X Files. Mulder didn't have any coattails then." "Well, I for one am glad you're here," the older man said. "If anyone gives you trouble, come to me. Even if it's *him*. And today's bad--with the program manager back, Mulder has to pick up new cases, because he doesn't have anything active. That could make anyone upset." "Thank you," she said sincerely. It was nice to think that she could have allies, maybe even friends, among the other agents. The absence of isolation came as a pleasant surprise every time she experienced it anew. He smiled back and left her. She squared her shoulders and began to read. * * * Mulder showed up at her apartment late that night with Chinese food, a movie, and a very serious expression. She let him in wordlessly. "I want so much for you to be strong," he said. "I thought that if you just kept working, you wouldn't feel it as much. But I can't...I have to...Dana..." His eyes were bright. She let herself be held, and put a hand up to his cheek as she leaned into him. Scully had already decided that she couldn't blame him for taking the victims' side. He expected his cruelty to find a match in her coldness, and he was not so far wrong. Both of them had such prickly exteriors, so many traps for the unwary. Mulder didn't plan on staying, she knew: he hadn't brought a suit in, and he'd taken all the ones he normally kept at her place to be drycleaned. They simply had dinner and watched his bad movie. When he began getting ready to go, she got an autopsy report DeFalco had asked her to review out of her briefcase. She settled down on the couch, planning to read until she was exhausted and able to sleep. But Mulder didn't leave immediately. Instead, he stood, watching her work, until his steady gaze unnerved her and she looked up. "Anything wrong?" She stood and went to him to straighten his jacket and pick a few of her stray hairs off of the grey fabric. "Nothing," he said, letting her hover. His proximity was reassuring. He did something extraordinary then: he leaned down and kissed her. His mouth was warm and gentle. He held her as if he wanted to crush her to him, but was refraining so as not to hurt her. She was pleased, but confused. Sexually, their relationship was almost exclusively feast or famine. A tender kiss on the way out was not Mulder's style. Realization hit her like a baseball bat in the stomach. A talk with the AD? No active cases, an impossibility in ISU. No clothes at her apartment...She moved out of his embrace, closing her eyes. He was going to break his word and leave her to find his truth, a truth in which she had no part. She couldn't even go back to the X Files without him. They'd laugh at her request: Mulder was a seeker, she'd just be a widow. Even that unfairness, that entrenched sexism, he'd use to keep her 'safe.' What was worse than his betrayal was what it demonstrated: that he'd never really believed that his quest had become hers. No loss of hers, no immersion in the shadow world, qualified her to be his equal in taking on the ghosts of his past. He thought that love was the only thing keeping her with him. He thought that she didn't exist when he wasn't with her. His incomprehension was not her fault. But she shouldn't have allowed herself to imagine that he understood. He held on to his pain as if it were a gift too precious to share, as if isolating his pain from the world meant that no one else would experience any trauma. After all that they had been through, he still thought that this was about him. She'd known that he was still a self-centered, wounded child in many ways. What she hadn't let herself acknowledge was that he wanted to stay like that. She'd been sent to rein him in. But the hunter had been captured by the game. She'd entered his world, seen from his eyes. He hadn't been willing to do the same for her--he'd rather live in some twisted killer's head than in hers. Or his own. She knew then why he'd been unable to sense the danger near her: he'd been pulling away in preparation for his final departure, paying attention to form but not substance. After all his agonizing over trust, he'd been the one to betray her. How...unsurprising. At least 'Fragonard' had seen something in her that really existed, however incomplete his perceptions--Mulder had looked right through her. "Scully?" "I'm fine," she said in a distant voice virtually unrecognizable as her own. "Here," she continued, fumbling with her necklace, fingers slipping on the tiny clasp, grateful to have something with which to be legitimately furious. "I want you to wear this for a while." He almost protested--his mouth worked, his eyes bunched up-- but she stared him down. "Will you put it on me?" he asked finally. She stood behind him, almost touching. She missed getting the clasp on right once--twice--then it was done, and she stepped closer and buried her face in his suit jacket, breathing in the scent of fine wool and Old Spice and Mulder, Mulder, Mulder. "You always wear such beautiful suits," she said, her voice hoarse with unshed tears. "I know," he said. His back was tensed, shoulders slightly slumped. she begged him silently. "Dana...I've got to go. Long drive home." He sounded as if he'd just run a marathon. She nodded into his back and let him leave. Returning to the couch, she stared listlessly at the autopsy report. Dead was dead, did it really matter whether the victim died of strangulation or bled to death first? Then she walked into the kitchen and punched the wall by the sink with all her strength. * * * She'd just finished the bandages when someone knocked on her door. What an odd sound. No one ever knocked on her door these days; Mom and Mulder both had keys. She fought the undertow of depression pulling at her and rose to answer the door, gun at the ready. She'd had the foresight to damage her *left* hand; she thought darkly that even in self-mutilation she was practical, unless that was an oxymoron. "Who is it?" she called out when she was close enough to be heard but still far enough to duck and roll away if there was trouble. "It's Mark." She let him in. He didn't speak at first, but she'd outwaited stronger and more experienced men. "Mulder said...he gave me a letter for you." "And you needed to give it to me now?" God, the last thing that she needed was Mark and his crush. "What are you, my nice parting gift? My methadone maintenance program--not quite the same rush, but at least I can function if I'm getting some?" He drew in a hissing breath. "Mulder certainly taught you how to stick the knife in." "What makes you think I didn't already know how? Jesus, I'm not his outgrowth. I'm a person. All by myself." Maybe Mark heard a plea in her voice; maybe he just wanted to hear it. He hugged her, stiffly at first, then with greater conviction. She didn't relax, but she didn't push him away. "Do you want the letter?" She sat down and considered her options. "I'd like you to hold onto it until--until chasing conspiracies finally kills him. I can't forgive him for leaving me this way. I won't let him break me." "He said you might say something like that. He asked you to read it anyway." She pulled away and held out her hand. Mark produced an unmarked envelope. She slit it open with a fingernail as she turned her back on him. Dana: I'm sure it's obvious what I've done. Please don't be angry at the Gunmen; they wanted to tell you where I was going, but I convinced them otherwise. What can I tell you? I thought that if I could love you, it would prove that I wasn't irrevocably damaged. But it didn't change anything. I was the same fucked- up person. I was still a monster and I still woke up screaming and it didn't fill the hole where she was. I still needed to know the truth about all of us. I never meant to take you along. It's too dangerous. I wanted it to be different. I'd like to wax philosophical and tell you that I'm Ahab, and you shouldn't go down with me. Word games that don't matter to you. The only thing I can do for you now is to let you hate me. FWM There was a black dot on the paper below the last line, as if he'd had more to say but had given up on writing. As always, Mulder had been paralyzed by the importance of words when things got tough. Scully showed Mark out and put the letter in a box in her closet. She chose clothes for the next day and laid them out, then lay in bed until her alarm told her that it was time to get ready for work. The next day, she did her job. * * * 1997 And as she promised herself, there came a day that she didn't think of him. There came a night that she didn't dream of him, dying or dead or making love to her or killing her all the ways he knew how. Then a week. Then a month. And one night, walking to her car, staring up at the stars glowing in the black sky above Virginia, her breath white in front of her face, she felt herself let go--let go of the great weight in her stomach, the great hole inside her through which she'd been pouring herself out. It was as if someone had changed the lens with which she saw the world so that she suddenly perceived it as it was meant to be. The world was clean and cold and balanced, and everything had crisp edges. Even her hands almost glowed in the starlight. She knew what had to be done. She'd been immobilized in her reconstructed life too long. The truth was Out There. Not in the past, but waiting to be discovered. Waiting for her. She went out to meet it. Note: Fragonard really existed, though for simplicity's sake I've attributed some work of a contemporary, Ruysch, to him as well. Epilogue September 25, 2000 "Hey, Spooky," the young agent said as he tossed the Washington City Paper down on the desk. "What's up?" The agent he'd addressed merely grunted in response, nose buried in the latest report from Vienna. The one in Virginia, that was, not Germany. There was plenty of work close to home and no time to discover what the latest European atrocities were. Vienna was only one of many cities and suburbs wracked by the tribulations of the millenium; Vienna's particular burden was to suffer a rash of spree killers, each of whom professed total ignorance of why they'd decided to slaughter everyone around them. The FBI was looking into the possibility of chemical testing. After the past few years' revelations, finding drugs in the water or secret messages encoded in digital readouts wouldn't have surprised anyone. "Didn't you used to have a partner and someone wrote a book about the two of you? Diana Liscky and Reynard Muldrake, right?" A terse nod. Spooky's shoulders stiffened, but there was no stronger reaction. "Well," the man teased, drawing the word out to prolong the anticipation, "someone's running an ad in the City Paper for you. 'Diana Liscky--I need to see you. RM,'" he read, and then Spooky grabbed the paper from him. The report she'd been reading spilled to the floor, unnoticed. Pictures of blood were everywhere, but all she could see was the smeared black type on the cheap newsprint. There was no contact information, but then when had Mulder ever made it easy? * * * October 13, 2000 She placed the response in the Washington Times rather than in the City Paper, trusting Mulder's ability to think sideways like that. She'd learned paranoia well; he'd taught it to her and the nation over the past few years. At least she'd always imagined that the series of revelations that had attended the birth pangs of the new century stemmed, in some indirect way, from Mulder's investigations. He'd won no Pulitzers and captivated no Congressional committees, and yet the information that had filtered to the public had the flavor of a Mulder theory, only this time with the facts. One by one, the scientists and their tests had been exposed. The men (and occasional women) who'd ordered the experiments, who'd stood by smiling as people were ripped apart in the name of freak science, were dragged into the public eye, their activities halted. She did not doubt that there were more of them waiting in the shadows, making Mulder afraid to come see her. For one thing, there had never been an adequate explanation for the source of some of the most advanced technology used in the secret trials--the eerily advanced microchips, the toxic green plasma that replaced or coexisted with blood in the various hybrids. Evidence of alien encounters, at least, remained only a dream. Perhaps, she thought, Mulder had finally found his aliens, his sister. And he'd chosen her to convey the final truths, making her the capstone of his life's work. He'd appreciate the circularity of it--to return to the FBI, his protection and his betrayer, and drag his former partner once more into the great quest. She'd made the message as simple as possible: "Ahab: Omni Shoreham, 10/13, 7 pm. Starbuck." She wondered, idly, as she sat in George Hale's rented room, which had been waiting when she asked at the counter, whether she'd hoped that making her reply cryptic might discourage him from understanding that she was agreeing to meet. Then they would have been ships passing in a night of their own making. But she'd known Mulder would find her response, as easily as he'd gotten the message to her. It was just his way. George Hale had enough money to travel in style. He'd taken a double, and she sat on the bed furthest from the door. Her hands were slack on her legs, and her gun was resting on the bedspread, barely denting the firm mattress. Dana was not sure who she expected to come through that door. She was no longer the shell-shocked woman he'd left behind over three years before. He couldn't possibly be the same either. What do you say to a man who'd cracked open the world and sucked out its secrets? All else would have to pale in comparison. The despair settled around her like a familiar garment. The Dana Scully he probably expected lived only in the vanished past and in whatever he'd carried around in his head all this time. He would not understand who she was now, SAC of the Metro area ISU--head of the law-enforcement equivalent of an expansion team--trying desperately to keep up with the bloodbaths of purely human monsters. She'd seen more death since Mulder had gone than she might have in a lifetime of X Files. The bodies at the Hanson's disease facility she'd stumbled upon so long ago were nothing compared to the junkyard outside of Reston last year, or what Max Staunton kept in his industrial-size refrigerators. The green light over the door handle flashed in the dimness of the room, shocking her from the blood-crazed memories. She took the gun from the bed, carefully, and aimed it at the entrance. The metal knob turned, and in the brighter light of the hall she could not see anything but a form looming in the opened door, hands empty and waiting. "You wouldn't shoot an unarmed man," he said, and his voice was as rusty as if he'd spent the entire time mute, waiting to see her before he'd speak again. "Close the door," she ground out. He did, and stepped forward. She couldn't tell, in the poor light, whether his hair had gone grey. His face was barely more lined than when he'd left. He'd always been unreachable that way. "Do I need to bleed to show you I'm human?" She shook her head. "No impostor would need to resort to subterfuge to see me. And from what I read in the papers this morning, Fox Mulder has to be in town handing out secrets again." He took another few steps into the room, clearing the tiny hallway and passing the first bed until he was only a few feet away from her. "So," she said, angry that she had to initiate the conversation but unable to wait, "are you going to tell me where you've been this time?" The gun, which she'd known from the beginning was a useless toy, returned to its place on the bedspread. He glanced at the other bed, and she motioned him to sit down. He tugged at his pants legs as he sat, and she had a sudden memory of him doing the same thing in countless hotel rooms. Her male colleagues all did it; it had something to do with the way suit pants pulled on them when they sat, but she'd seen it first and most often with Mulder. "You know that I've been searching for the truth," he began. "About what happened to you, to Samantha--to everyone who's suffered because we've lived under two governments, one aboveground and inefficient, the other covert and deadly. I chased leads and sprung leaks in the conspiracies, as I guess you already know if you've been watching the news. Sometimes they managed to kill everyone who could confirm what I was finding out, but I got them pretty good in the end. "After the Senate hearings last year, I had a kind of breakdown. This...empathy, telepathy, whatever you want to call it, it isn't a known quantity. Maybe there's someone out there who's experimented enough to know how to control it, but I couldn't. I started hearing...everything. Some hallucinations, other things I'm sure were real thoughts, but I just couldn't filter it. It was like staring at the sun for too long--I went blind. "So I checked into an inpatient facility just outside of Detroit. It turns out that when you're officially labeled 'crazy,' people treat you very differently than when they're just joking about your mental competence. When I responded to things the doctors hadn't said I was fantasizing again. I never thought I'd say it, but I missed the ISU--there, when I did something spooky it was all part of the mystique. "Now I'm better, and I've done as much as I can to expose the people behind my sister's death." Scully must have started, because he paused in the story and looked down at her with a sardonic gleam in his eye. "It's possible that finding her grave had something to do with my breakdown too. But I like to think it was the accumulated weight of all that I'd discovered." He waited for a reaction, but when she maintained her silence he shrugged and began again. "I just sent the last evidence to my contacts at the Washington Post and the New York Times. From now on, the battle is public, and I'm not part of it anymore. I was made--my abilities were intended--for secret, illicit purposes. That ends now, even in the service of the truth." "What are you going to do?" she asked, finding a voice that sounded ancient and detached. He leaned toward her, nearly bridging the gap between the two beds. "I was hoping to come back to you." She felt her mouth drop open. Did he think he'd just left her cocooned, unchanging, while he went on his grand quest and got ready to deal with her again? Did he think that there was no problem in a three-year ditch? "I know you're angry," he said, and the understatement made her laugh out loud. "Mulder," she paused, because there were no words that could say more to him than her recitation of his name could. "I don't know what you want from me. I have a job, I have a life..." He reached over and took her hand, lying limp over the forgotten gun. "Is there any room in it for me?" She looked down at their joined hands. Her own looked so small. She always tried to forget that she was not an imposing person, and she did such a good job of forgetting. Except that Mulder could always make her remember. "You're never going to let me go, are you?" she asked, hearing the regret and something more strained in her tone. "I promise," he vowed, and she raised her eyes to his, and fell inside them. * * * October 14, 2000 "Agent Wright, meet Fox Mulder. He's going to be joining us again after a three-year leave of absence from the Bureau. He's been in ISU before, back in the 'eighties. Before things really got strange." The two men shook hands. "Has Spooky given you the welcome speech yet?" Mulder raised an eyebrow at Scully and mouthed, "Spooky?" She shook her head, annoyed. "You'll find out why soon enough. Let me listen in, will you?" the younger man begged. He was a fairly plain-looking blond, but his eyes had the intensity of a true believer. People who didn't watch his eyes carefully would be likely to underestimate him. "What's the welcome speech, Scully?" He sounded eager, energetic. She closed her eyes and began. "To do this job right requires dedication, even passion. But it requires more than that: it requires faith. We see things every day here that would not make plausible stories in the Weekly World News." The mug of coffee on her desk had long ago cooled down, and she picked it up, holding it out on the palm of her hand. "To solve our cases, you have to open your mind to extreme possibilities." The mug jiggled a little, then rose to hover an inch above her palm. "Can you open your mind?" she finished, staring into Mulder's eyes. He smiled delightedly at her. The sparkle in his eyes and the curve of his lips took ten years off of his age, and suddenly he was the same man she'd met at the very beginning. He'd been so unharmed then, though he'd thought himself a real survivor. They'd both learned since then, and his smile dimmed as she let the mug fall back into her hand. "I've always wanted to know how she does that, but she won't teach me," Agent Wright said, oblivious to the sudden tension. "That's nothing," Mulder said easily. "It's when she reheats it that's really impressive." Wright looked at him, certain that he was being teased. Scully shrugged and put the mug down, looking at the half-cup of coffee that remained inside. After a few moments, it began to steam, and she took the handle and held it out to Mulder. He toasted her silently and took a sip. "You--what--no," Wright said, and Scully almost smiled. "Do you two already know each other?" was the question Wright eventually settled on. "Just call me Mister Spooky," Mulder said smoothly, taking Scully's hand and deliberately running his index finger down it. Scully's outraged glare bounced off of him, and Wright blushed and rose to go. "Well..." the younger man stammered, "it's nice to meet you. Always glad to get more help." Mulder nodded pleasantly as Wright hurried out of the office. "You didn't need to do that," she chided. "I hoped that if I made it public you wouldn't be able to deny it in private." She sighed. Mulder hadn't lost any of his arrogance over the years. And when had she ever been able to deny him anything? "Well, then," she said, conceding the point, "let's get to work." END