SHADOW by TexxasRose (a.k.a. Laura Castellano) November 1998 lauritaC@excite.com Classification: S, A, MSR Rating: R for language, violence, mild sex and some mild (very mild) sexual assault Disclaimer: If I owned Fox Mulder, I'd keep him much too busy to solve cases. If I owned Dana and Maggie Scully, they'd be my shopping buddies. If I owned Walter Skinner...well I don't know what I'd do with him, but I'd put him to good use somehow...But they all belong to Chris Carter, 1013, yada yada yada...you know the drill. Guarantee: Always MSR, Always a happy ending. Really. Trust me. This is for Julie--without her encouragement it would never have been written. ********** Chapter 1 ********** "Gimme something smaller." The old man gruffly thrust the ten dollar bill back into Mulder's hand. "What?" Fox Mulder asked vaguely, confused, taking the money because there is nothing else to do, really, when someone pokes it at you like that. Letting ten dollars blow away on the street was unthinkable. Mulder had stopped having his newspaper delivered to his door when one of his neighbors (he knew which one, or at least had strong suspicions, but could prove nothing) had taken to stealing it several mornings a week. Now he stopped off here on weekday mornings for his daily dose of world, city and neighborhood happenings as well as Charlie's irascible wit. He was used to Charlie being a little out of sorts, but today the elderly man seemed even more grumpy than usual. "I don't want no tens for a fifty cent newspaper. Uses up all my change. Give me a smaller bill or put it back." He glared at Mulder. Mulder rolled his eyes and dug through his wallet, irritated, searching for a smaller bill. "You know, Charlie, you really ought to lay off the third cup of coffee in the mornings," he cracked, handing the man a one. Charlie snatched the dollar from Mulder and practically threw his change at him. Mulder accepted it silently, wondering what had gotten into the newsstand owner. "You all right, Charlie?" he asked before turning to go. "Fine. Leave a guy alone and let me work," Charlie told him tersely, already sizing up his next customer, an attractive brunette woman. Mulder shook his head and left the stand, concerned about Charlie, but soon forgot the man and his attitude. He headed into the Hoover building down the block. Another day, same old grind, he thought. He barely noticed the woman behind him approach Charlie with a gleam in her eye; his mind was on the newspaper in his hand, searching the inside pages for stories that might be more than they initially appeared. She was tall and slender and wore a long trench coat similar to Mulder's own, her hands concealed in the pockets. The woman shook her head at Charlie, indicating that she wished to inspect his wares before making a selection, and he nodded to her and turned his back, leaning down to restock some of his better selling papers and magazines while this lull in customers continued. Unnoticed by Charlie, she closed in behind him and removed her right hand from her coat. A few seconds later, Charlie felt a sharp pain in his lower back and fell to the ground, gasping for air. He stared up into the cold eyes of the woman standing above him. She had a smile on her face. A chilling smile, one that he had never seen before. A smile of pure evil. His eyes drifted downward as his vision began to fade, and the last sight Charlie's dying eyes saw was her wiping his blood off the knife onto her jeans. She let her long coat fall closed, covering the bloodstain and when the life had gone completely out of his body, she quickly walked away, not looking back. ***** "Good morning, Mulder," Scully greeted him when he entered the office. She was wearing the dark blue suit today, the one that made her eyes sparkle. Scully would have been flabbergasted if she had any idea the close attention Mulder paid to her wardrobe. There was the tan suit that set off her hair to perfection, in his opinion, and that very pale pink silk blouse she wore with several different skirts and pantsuits always sent his heart racing--the neckline of it curved downward just enough to allow a hint of cleavage to peek out, just enough to distract him when he was sitting at his desk trying desperately to concentrate on some boring piece of necessary paperwork. Today it was the blue one, his personal favorite. It molded to the curves of her body perfectly, not too loose, not too tight, just right for tantalizing him. Mulder often thought that he should ask Scully to wear that suit when she was interrogating a male suspect. A man would have to be either gay or dead not to be knocked out by the sight of her in that outfit. If he ever made such a request of her, though, he was certain she would cut him dead, perhaps even take a swing at him if she was having a bad day. Best not to antagonize Scully. For a small person she certainly was lethal when she wanted to be. For that very reason he bit back the observation that wanted to come to his lips. Complimenting one another's appearance was something the two of them had carefully avoided since early on in their partnership, only straying outside those boundaries a time or two when the situation seemed to warrant it. Instead of telling her she looked beautiful, which was what he was thinking, he merely commented, "You're here early." He usually beat her in by at least half an hour, but here she sat, case file already open in front of her on the desk, her glasses perched on her nose, intently studying the pages in her hands. "I woke up about five this morning and couldn't sleep anymore," she told him, neglecting to mention that it was a dream about him that had awakened her. Scully couldn't remember the last time she had had such a vivid dream. And what a dream it had been...Mulder trapped, helpless, frightened, calling for her. She had sat up straight in bed like a shot, hearing his scream of terror, and then realized with a sudden rush of relief that it had only been a nightmare. She had switched on the bedside lamp hastily in order to banish the images that still flung themselves through her mind, and had lain back on the pillow, sweating, breathing harshly, forcing her heart to slow down to a normal rate. After an unsuccessful half hour of trying to get back to sleep, Scully had finally thrown back the covers unhappily. She decided to dress and go to the office early. She wanted to be there when Mulder arrived. She wanted to see with her own eyes that he was unhurt, to be able to dismiss the trepidation the dream had left in her without having to tell him about it. If Mulder knew she was having dreams about him he'd never let her live it down, even if this particular dream wasn't a pleasant one (and why couldn't it be? If she had to dream about Mulder, why not one of those pleasant, excitingly erotic dreams she often had of him while she was completely awake, huh? ). "I came in and found this on your desk. Did you leave it here?" she asked, holding it up so he could see the name on the front. He took a look at it and came closer, reading over her shoulder with interest. "No, I've never seen it before. Skinner must have put it there," he said, cracking a sunflower seed in her ear. The case in question dealt with a series of murders by a man named Gale Aspen, who had actually been apprehended--several times. Each time he had managed to escape from jail, although no one was quite sure how. The latest such incident had occurred in Dallas three weeks earlier. Aspen had confessed to each and every crime but nobody had been able to hold him long enough to bring him to trial. In each case he seemed to have simply disappeared from his cell during the night. When the morning watch came on duty they found only an empty cell, still locked, no signs of disturbance, no fingerprints, no clues of any kind. "Well what do you think, Mulder? Think Aspen has a way of walking through walls?" Scully asked teasingly. She rose from the chair, partly to face him and partly to get away from the smell of his aftershave, which was doing brutal things to her pulse rate at that moment. "Don't laugh, Scully. With everything you've seen since you were paired up with me, you should know by now that almost anything's possible," he said, taking the file from her and taking the seat she had vacated. He leaned back, cracking open another seed, gazing thoughtfully at the papers in front of him. "Could be an accomplice of some sort..." "I think that's the most likely scenario," Scully told him dryly, hoping this wouldn't turn out to be another one of those cases. "But he's escaped from jails in Los Angeles, Denver, Baton Rouge and now Dallas," he pointed out. "How does his accomplice manage to gain access to these places unnoticed? And how does he get Aspen out?" "Maybe he works as a guard," she suggested, shrugging her shoulders. "That should be easy enough to check out. These crimes all occurred within a six month period. The accomplice would have to be flitting from job to job at a rapid rate." Scully reached for the telephone and half an hour later had her answer. "While all of these areas have a fairly high turnover rate among their guards, none of them coincide with all of our crimes. It could be more than one accomplice, I suppose," she speculated, searching for some answer that would be acceptable to her scientific nature. She was perfectly aware of where Mulder's mind would be heading, if not already then soon, and she wanted to avoid a trip down Paranormal Alley today if possible. She was just too tired to try and explain away his theories this morning. "Yeah, or maybe he just bribes someone on the inside every place he's incarcerated," Mulder mused, not really believing it but wanting to cover all the bases for Scully's sake before he took her carefully-thought-out theories away from her with a yank. "I thought about that too, but it seems unlikely to me that it could happen four times. Too convenient. I also asked and found that there aren't any instances of guards leaving suddenly after Aspen escaped," Scully told him. "Except for the one in L.A. The guard responsible for Aspen's area was fired after his disappearance." "Looks like we'll have to talk to quite a few people, Scully." He sighed. "Maybe we can do most of it on the telephone from D.C., but unless we can find an easy solution we're going to have to examine the scenes. All four of them." He shook his head, weary of the travel. They had just returned from a particularly grueling case in Idaho and they were both exhausted. The prospect of flying to four major cities in the next few days appealed to neither of them. The two agents spent the remainder of the morning either talking to various officials on the telephone in the four cities or discussing possible solutions with each other. By noon they were no closer to solving the case than when they had started. None of the guards or jail employees had a clue as to how Aspen might have escaped. The man Scully talked to at the Dallas County Jail had told her they prided themselves on the fact that there had been only three escapes from their jail in the past fifty years. Including Aspen. Their discussion continued throughout the trip to their favorite nearby taco restaurant for lunch. They were sitting at their table tossing ideas back and forth, when suddenly raised voices invaded their conversation. Scully glanced over and saw that the two men at the next table had begun arguing animatedly, one of them gesturing wildly as he tried to convince his friend to see an idea from his perspective. Mulder raised his eyebrow at her, perplexed at the lack of maturity some supposedly grown people displayed in public, and the two of them stared at each other in amazement as the argument escalated. Moments later the two men rose to their feet, facing each other down fiercely. The most aggressive of the two stood at least a foot taller than the other, and his face was red and scowling as he towered over his friend. "Hey, calm down," Mulder said soothingly, trying to ease the tension between the men, but his efforts were in vain. The taller man simply glared at him while the other ignored him completely, totally bent by now on making his point through whatever means he deemed necessary. The situation ended abruptly when the man who had scowled at Mulder took a sudden swing at his friend. The smaller man staggered backwards, bumping into the table that held the agents' lunch, and fell to the floor. While Scully jumped up to assist the injured man his attacker stalked out of the restaurant. With a mumbled expletive, Mulder brushed away the ice from his soft drink which had landed in his lap and, seeing that Scully had the situation pretty well under control, headed for the mens' room to try and clean himself off. Ten minutes later, after Scully had ascertained that the victim had sustained no serious damage, the partners left the restaurant, starting for their car. Their attention was drawn a few paces down the sidewalk where a crowd of people were gathered in a circle, their voices raised in surprise and agitation. Mulder and Scully exchanged a glance and proceeded to investigate. Crowds of agitated people on a public street were almost never a good thing. Pushing their way past the onlookers they got a good look at what had attracted so much attention. "Oh my God!" Scully exclaimed. On the pavement in front of them lay the man who had hit his companion in the restaurant just a few minutes earlier. Blood pooled out from under him in a continually spreading circle, staining the grey sidewalk a deep crimson with every inch it traveled. Regaining her composure seconds later, Scully commanded, "Back off, everyone." Even before she could think she was reaching for her cell phone. "I've got it, Scully," Mulder told her, already connected with a 911 operator. "Can you tell what happened to him? Is he alive?" She shook her head. "He's dead, Mulder. It looks as if he was stabbed in the kidney," she said. "With a very large knife or some other object--he must have died within minutes." "F.B.I.," Mulder said, pulling out his identification and flashing it at the crowd of onlookers. "Did anyone see anything? Anything at all?" Most of the crowd were lunchtime people, on their way to or from their jobs, and they didn't really want to get involved; it wasn't as if murder was uncommon in Washington D.C. although this was generally considered a fairly safe area. Mulder suppressed a grim smile as the people around him began to slowly back away, almost in unison. He had seen this before. Nobody wanted to talk to the F.B.I. Except one. "I saw it," said a boy of about fourteen, approaching Mulder hesitantly. "What's your name?" Mulder questioned. The kid couldn't possibly be past seventh grade, in Mulder's estimation, and it was a school day. Probably the child of parents who were either uncaring or unaware--the boy looked as if he spent a good deal of his time roaming the streets rather than studying algebra. "Shawn," the boy replied. "Why aren't you in school, Shawn?" Shawn shrugged, glancing away from Mulder's eyes. "I ditched," he said simply. Mulder gave a small grimace but decided to ignore the indiscretion. Truancy wasn't exactly a Bureau matter and he needed help from this kid--best not to alienate him. "Can you tell me what you saw?" he asked kindly. "There was a lady." Shawn glanced nervously around at the crowd of his fellow-onlookers, but they were already beginning to dissipate. He stubbed the toe of his sneakers repeatedly on the sidewalk, almost beginning to wish he hadn't spoken up. "A lady? What did she do?" Mulder kept his voice even and gentle, hoping to put the boy at ease. Although he hadn't been one to cut classes much as a teenager, in some ways he saw himself in Shawn. The teenager had the look of a boy who was left too often to fend for himself. Mulder could remember days and weeks with little or no interaction with his parents beyond the standard "good morning" and "good night". Unlike Shawn, he had escaped into his studies, seeing them as his way to freedom. Shawn's outlet was obviously different--Mulder would be willing to bet the kid was a whiz at arcade games. "She came up behind him and stuck a big knife in him, and then she ran off. That way," he said, pointing to the left. "Do you remember what she looked like?" "She had really short, brown hair, almost cut like yours. I remember thinking it was a weird hairstyle for a woman. And she was tall, taller than me." Mulder ran in the direction indicated, calling, "Wait right here!" over his shoulder to Shawn. He hoped the woman might still be in the area. Glancing down alleys and into shops as he made his way down the street, it soon became evident to him that even were the suspect still around she would blend into the crowd perfectly. There must be forty tall women with short dark hair in the noontime rush of people, and he saw nobody with a haircut like his. Disgustedly he made his way back to Scully and Shawn. The ambulance was just pulling away with the body when he arrived. "Nothing?" she asked him, and he shook his head in frustration. The question had occurred to him during his search of whether they were actually looking for a woman at all, but when he questioned Shawn the boy was adamant. She was most definitely female. Knowing the predilection of teenage boys for noticing the feminine form, Mulder abandoned that theory. More than likely it was a woman. The police had arrived by that time, and after telling everything they knew they left Shawn to give his statement to one Officer Lowery. Both a little shaken up from the events at lunch, the agents drove back to their office to pursue some more possible leads on the Aspen case. ***** Scully sat up suddenly in bed. Gasping with shock, she reached for the lamp, flooding the room with welcome light. She wiped sweat from her brow with a trembling hand. Familiar sweat, familiar trembling. She'd had the dream about Mulder again, only this time it had been more graphic. This time she had seen what he was screaming about. Mulder, who feared fire almost more than anything else in the world, was trapped in a burning building, unable to find a means of escape. Scully shuddered. She could still hear his heart-wrenching cries of terror as he called for her, begging her to help him. Tears stung the back of her eyes--she wasn't used to having her dreams affect her so powerfully. Usually if she remembered dreaming at all it was only a vague, gossamer memory, only a hint of an image. But this--this was so detailed that she was able to see the wide-eyed look of fear on Mulder's handsome face, the trickle of blood down his forehead from some unknown injury. Shaking her head to clear it of the nightmare, Scully followed her first impulse--she grabbed the telephone. It was just after midnight; surely he would still be awake. It was much too early for Mulder to be sleeping. Often at this hour he would be battling his own nightmares, which he dealt with on a regular basis, but since they were to leave in the morning for Dallas she knew Mulder was probably up poring over the case file, gaining ideas and insights that would elude anybody else. He answered the phone absently, distantly, and Scully smiled, knowing she had been right. "Mulder," she breathed, relieved at hearing his voice sound so normal. The sound of his agonized screaming still rang in her ears. "Scully?" There was instant concern in his voice. "You sound odd. Is everything all right?" "Everything's fine, Mulder. I just--had a bad dream," she said, feeling a little foolish now that it was obvious Mulder was safe and sound. "I just wanted to hear your voice, make sure..." "Why Scully, I never knew you dreamed at all," he teased lightly. He could tell from her tone that she was more upset than she wanted him to know, and it was his hope that a little of their usual light banter would ease her out of it. "I dream all the time, Mulder," she told him tartly. "It's just that I'm usually awake when I do." "Ooh, and just exactly what--or should I say who--are these dreams about?" he asked with his very best leer. "A lady never tells," she informed him primly. Her voice softened then. "I just wanted to talk to you for a minute," she said. "I'll let you get back to work now." "What makes you think I'm working?" he demanded, trying his best to sound highly insulted. She laughed. "I know you, Mulder." "Are you sure you're ok?" he asked, already beginning to flip through papers in the case file again. She gave a sad smile into the phone. "Sure Mulder. I'm fine." After she broke the connection Scully held onto the telephone for a long time, feeling as if Mulder's energy was still coming through it comforting her. Eventually she fell asleep, but she left the lamp on. ***** Mulder was examining a rack of neckties for sale at a businessman's store in the Dallas/Fort Worth airport, waiting for Scully to return with the keys to their rental car. He had wandered around idly for a few minutes, impressed with the number and types of shops at this particular airport. He thought he had seen it all, but this place was really different. It sold everything the traveling businessman (businessperson, he corrected himself) might need. The ties had caught his eye, one in particular, and he had fingered it thoughtfully for a moment before noticing the pricetag. He smiled. This place obviously catered to corporate executives, not men living on an F.B.I. agent's salary. "Got it, Mulder," Scully said as she approach him from behind. "Fancy place," she commented, looking around the store. "Fancy prices," he answered. "Look at this tie, Scully." He held it up for her to admire. "It's nice. You should buy it, Mulder, your necktie collection is..." "Go ahead and say it," he smiled at her. She laughed. "It's awful, Mulder, really awful." The quality of his ties had been a long-running joke with the two of them. Mulder wore the nicest suits she had ever seen on a man, and then, as if to be perverse, or maybe just as an act of rebellion, he would often complete the outfit with the most hideous neckties on the planet. She was always threatening to buy him one with tiny alien heads on it, but had never quite gone that far. She refused to admit to herself that it was because she was afraid he would actually wear it, and she would be forced to face the world with an alien-clad partner at her side. He joined her in laughter for a moment, then carefully hung the tie back on the rack. "I would buy it, you know, I really would, but fifty bucks for a silk tie imported from Italy is just a wee bit out of my price range." Her eyes widened as she peeked at the price tag, as if to confirm for herself what he was saying. "Well, enough clothes shopping, Mulder, we have work to do," she said, jangling the keys in his face. He made a grab for them and she drew back quickly. "Uh-uh, not this time. I'm driving." "May I help you, Sir?" The respectful yet annoyed voice made Mulder turn, and he saw a salesman standing beside the necktie rack, none-too-subtly straightening the merchandise. "Uh, no--no thanks, we were just leaving," Mulder said, giving Scully a raised eyebrow when the salesman wasn't looking. The man acted as if he might need to send the particular tie they had touched out to the dry cleaners as soon as their backs were turned. With a smirk, Scully strode off toward the exit, Mulder following behind saying, "Oh, c'mon, Scully, let me drive. You know I get motion sickness when I'm not driving!" "May I help you, ma'am?" the salesclerk asked his next customer, still glaring at the man and woman walking away. They were not the type who normally shopped at his store, but this lady, tall and elegant looking, her brown hair styled in one of the more modern, very short styles, looked as if she could be an executive vice-president for a Fortune 500 company. He gave her his full attention. "I've never believed that motion-sickness claim of yours anyway, Mulder," Scully informed him, adjusting the seat to fit her small frame. "I think you just like to be in control and that's why you want to drive." "It's true!" he insisted. "If I'm concentrating on driving I'm fine, but when I have nothing to do but gaze out the window I get queasy. Lots of people have this problem, Scully, you really should be more compassionate." "So don't gaze out the window," she told him unsympathetically. "Maybe you could close your eyes and imagine how Aspen might have escaped from his cell so that we can go home sooner." He sighed. "I wish I could, Scully, but unless we find some obvious answer I'm afraid L.A., Baton Rouge and Denver are in our immediate futures." She shuddered but said no more. ***** "I just want a shower," he told Scully wearily, putting the key in the lock of his motel room and opening it, allowing her to enter first. "Meet you for dinner in half an hour?" "Sounds good," she replied just as wearily as she entered her own room through the connecting door. The investigation at the jail had turned up nothing, and everyone was still just as baffled by Aspen's mysterious disappearance as before. Scully knew that Mulder got somewhat irritated at himself when he couldn't work out a puzzle, and he was having a terrible time with this one. Of course, the several theories he had advanced were completely unprovable, as were so many of Mulder's theories. Sometimes she wished he would learn to be a little more...well, discreet about his unusual beliefs, but backing down was just not Mulder's way. Not at all. He would continue to insist on his bizarre conclusions in the face of any number of people who thought he was crazy, never retreating, never embarrassed, and the hell of it was that most of the time he was at least partially right. She smiled affectionately as she thought of Mulder going nose-to-nose with the Dallas County sheriff that afternoon. Nobody could ever call Mulder a coward, that was certain. Scully heard the water start to run on the other side of the wall as Mulder entered his shower and decided it was a wonderful idea. She grabbed some clean clothes and headed for her own shower, pausing to kick off her shoes beside the bed. She cursed and damned the person who had invented heels for women to wear at the same time she privately laughed at herself for succumbing to the vain practice of wearing them. When you go through life barely breaking the five-foot mark at the side of a man who would fit in with any professional basketball team it was bound to give you an inferiority complex about your height, she decided. To compensate, she had developed a tough exterior that intimidated most people, male and female alike, which was exactly the result she desired. Scully preferred to keep people at arms' length anyway. She stepped under the warm spray and concentrated on relaxing, allowing the water to sluice over her body, washing away the grime and tension she had accumulated during the long morning and afternoon. She was starving, having had very little breakfast and only a quick burger for lunch, and was looking forward to a nice, relaxing dinner with Mulder. Maybe she could even keep the conversation off Aspen for five minutes, but she doubted it. Once Mulder got his teeth into a case he lived and breathed it until it was solved. Twenty minutes later, when she emerged from the bathroom fully dressed and feeling much better, she heard him call her name in a questioning voice. "Yeah, Mulder, what is it?" she asked absently, putting one last touch on her lipstick. He entered her room. "You decent? Aw darn, already dressed," he kidded. She smiled at him in the mirror, and her eyes widened perceptibly when she saw what he was holding in his hands. "Where'd that come from?" she queried. Unless she was mistaken--and Scully was rarely mistaken, her powers of observation were legendary--it was the fifty-dollar necktie they had admired at the airport. His look of surprise almost made her laugh. "Didn't you put it in my room?" he asked, confusion clouding his beautiful eyes. She shook her head, wondering what on earth her partner was up to now. This had to be one of his pranks, and she really wasn't in the mood. Between the exhausting case they had just finished and the unfruitful day they had just spent, as well as the sleep disturbance she had suffered the last two nights, Scully didn't have much sense of humor left. "Mulder, you've been with me the entire time, how could I have bought that without you knowing?" "Likewise, Scully," he answered, and she realized it was true. Neither of them could have made the purchase because they hadn't been separated for an instant. "It was lying on my bed when I came out of the bathroom." They stared at each other, puzzled. "But how--?" she asked. He shook his head grimly. "I don't know, Scully, but unless you're playing a really rotten joke on me, I'd say someone other than the two of us has been in my room in the last half hour." The tone in his voice told her he almost hoped she was pulling a prank on him. "I swear, Mulder, I'm not responsible for this. How could I be?" Her eyes were honest and sincere, and he had known, anyway, that she wasn't behind this. It wasn't her style. He shrugged his shoulders tiredly. "I believe you, Scully, it's just that I have no other explanation and right now I'm too bone-weary to try and think of one. Let's just go eat," he said, tossing the tie down on her dresser and turning for the door to his room. She picked up the tie and neatly folded it, laying it down where he had tossed it. No need to let it get ruined just because they had no idea where it had come from. A few seconds later she heard his voice again, this time with an unmistakable tinge of uneasiness. "Scully? My keys are missing!" "What?" she demanded, going to his room to find him standing beside his nightstand desperately searching behind it, underneath it, and in every drawer. "My keys, they're gone. I laid them right here," he insisted, indicating the space on top of the nightstand next to his wallet. "They must have fallen behind. Did you toss them down? Maybe they slid off," she suggested helpfully, getting down on her hands and knees to help him look. "I didn't toss them, I laid them here right beside my wallet. They were here when I went into the shower," he argued, pulling the nightstand away from the wall so they could get a better look behind it. After long minutes of a fruitless search the agents decided they would think better with food in their systems. Mulder would never admit it to Scully, but he wanted to get out of that room for a little while. It gave him the creeps knowing that possibly an intruder had been there while he and Scully were both taking showers, vulnerable and unaware. "Shouldn't we call the management, Mulder?" Scully asked as they exited his room. She watched as he made double sure the doors to his room and then hers were securely locked. "Let's do it when we get back," he told her. "I'm starving and worn out, and it's not as if this person tried to hurt us. In fact, that's what has me confused. Why break into my room and leave a gift? I can understand them stealing my keys, maybe they thought I had a car in the parking lot they could make off with. But the tie? Now that's weird." "It's as if this person saw you looking at that particular tie," she agreed. "Did you notice anyone at the airport following you around?" "Nope. But it's not like I was on the lookout for that sort of thing." That made him a little angry with himself. He should have been more aware of his surroundings. He was a trained F.B.I. agent, damn it! It wasn't like him to be so negligent, but he'd been on the verge of exhaustion and his attention simply hadn't been focused like it should have been. He supposed someone could have seen him admiring the necktie, even overheard his conversation with Scully, and escaped his notice. Vaguely he thought he could recall another person standing nearby, but he couldn't say if it had been a man or a woman. He couldn't even swear there had been any such person. In a crowded, busy airport people came and went all the time. "Well I think we should both be on the lookout now," she commented as they reached the rental car. "If someone is following us we need to be more careful. Here," she said, tossing him her own car key. "You drive." He caught the key easily and smiled his gratitude. When Mulder pushed open his motel room door an hour later, feeling much better than the first time he had entered it now that he had a full stomach and had been able to rest a little, the first thing that caught his eye was the glitter of his keys. They were lying on the floor beside the bed. The side of the bed that faced the doorway, not the side that was next to the nightstand. "What the...?" he demanded of no one in particular. "Well, that's one mystery solved," Scully said brightly. "If only we could be this successful with Aspen!" "Nothing's solved, Scully," he told her grimly. "All this means to me is that the person who took my keys returned them while we were out." "Oh come on, Mulder, why can't you just admit that you dropped them on the floor? Not everything is a conspiracy, you know!" Scully was tired and she was getting angry. They had argued his theories about Aspen all through dinner, in spite of her efforts to draw the conversation toward more normal topics, and she had completely lost her patience. His most productive idea so far was that Aspen was releasing himself from jail through psychokinesis. Scully was searching for a solution far more banal. Mulder's jaw tightened. He was beginning to lose patience as well. He'd spent the last hour trying to convince her that Aspen wasn't simply being released by an accomplice; there was absolutely no evidence to support that theory. Unfortunately, there was no evidence to support his own, either, and none was likely to surface considering the nature of his suspicions. "Even if I could be so careless without being aware of it, unless you're about to confess to leaving that necktie in my room, Scully, it still means somebody was in here that didn't belong." "It's probably just a coincidence. A big one, I'll admit, but did you ever think that maybe it was left here by the previous guest in this room? When we arrived we were both so tired we just headed for our showers. I didn't notice if there was anything lying on your bed, and I'm willing to bet good money you didn't either." He couldn't argue with this logic; he knew it to be true. The two of them stood glaring at each other for a moment, and then Mulder's face softened. "Come here," he said gently, pulling Scully to him for a quick hug, which after a moment she returned. "We're both edgy, we just need to get some sleep." Scully wrapped her arms around his waist and tightened them for a moment, then released him, nodded agreement and bid him goodnight. She entered her own room and closed the connecting door, but not quite all the way. She liked to leave it open just a crack when they shared a suite like this. It made her feel more secure in a strange town in a strange bed to know that Mulder was just in the next room, close enough to call for help if she needed him. Not that she ever would, she assured herself, but it still felt better. Mulder watched her go with a small smile. He adored his partner and could never stand it when they were angry with one another. Anytime Scully got mad at him nothing else would stay on his mind until they made up. He just couldn't stand to be on her bad side. Luckily for him, Scully always forgave him quickly when he screwed up--which he did a lot, he told himself ruefully. Mulder turned away from the connecting door and began to undress for bed, never realizing that his impulsive hug had just saved Scully's life. ***** He awoke, disoriented, staring around him in the half-dark, the glow of static from the television partially illuminating the room. For a second Mulder couldn't identify what had awakened him--some sort of noise--but then he heard it again. It was a low moan, as if from a person in pain, and it was coming from Scully's room. Like a shot he was out of the bed and through the connecting door, kneeling beside her bed. A cursory visual examination indicated that she wasn't hurt, and he breathed a short-lived sigh of relief. Scully was sleeping, apparently in the throes of a nightmare, thrashing her head from side to side and muttering, "no, no." He shook her lightly, wanting to waken her gently. "Scully," he whispered. His partner didn't answer, she just kept flailing her arms about murmuring "no" until a moment later he was sure he heard his name on her lips. The look on her face was still one of terror and he couldn't imagine what it was about himself that could be frightening her so. Whatever it was, he decided, it had to end, now. He shook her harder. "Scully, wake up!" he ordered firmly in her ear. "Mulder!" One last cry tore from her lips before Scully's eyes flew open and she stared up into his face. "Mulder?" she asked, unsure for a moment that he was actually sitting safely in front of her. Nightmare and reality melded together for an instant of disorientation. Then her thoughts cleared and she realized that she'd had another dream. She put her arms around his waist and pulled him to her, wanting to feel the solid mass of him, to reassure herself that he was unharmed. "You ok, Scully?" he asked, lightly rubbing her back as he held her. As they did every time he got this close to her, Mulder's nerves began playing havoc with his sanity. Holding her like this, clad only in his underwear, was not a good idea, he decided. Definitely not conducive to his future peace of mind. She nodded against his chest, still clinging to him, unwilling to give up his warmth. Her grip tightened on him momentarily as she recalled his panicked, screaming face in her dream. Suddenly, as if remembering who and where they were, she pulled back from him and took in the scene. She was wearing a t-shirt and panties, and the sheets were down around her ankles. He was sitting on the side of her bed dressed only in a pair of blue boxers, his hair mussed from sleep, beard stubble on his face, and Scully thought she had never seen him look so good. "You want to tell me what that was about?" he asked, rubbing his chin thoughtfully. "You were having another nightmare, weren't you?" She nodded, not meeting his eyes, busying herself by pulling the sheet up to her waist. After their dinnertime conversation about the paranormal, the last thing Scully wanted to do was give Mulder a reason to believe that she was having psychic dreams. But Scully couldn't remember ever having dreams like this in her life--the same dream every night, growing more and more vivid and detailed with each repetition. "Was it about me? You called my name before you woke up." She nodded again, her eyes filling with tears that she tried to blink back before he could see them. He saw. "Oh, Scully," he said, pulling her to him again. "It was only a dream. It's all right now." He held her, gently rocking her for a few minutes, until he felt some of the tension drain from her body. "What was the dream about?" he questioned again, hoping he could get her to talk about it. As a lifelong veteran of this type of nighttime horror, Mulder knew from experience that one of the best ways to recover from a particularly bad episode was to talk it out with someone else. Scully had provided this service for him on countless occasions, and now it was his turn to repay her in kind. "It was about you," she confirmed and he was silent, waiting for her to go on. "You were screaming--" her voice hitched and he rubbed his hands up and down her spine again soothingly. "You were trapped in a building--there was a fire--you were--tied, handcuffed...I'm not sure, but you couldn't get away." He closed his eyes for a moment and swallowed hard at the mention of his being trapped in a fire. It was too close to one of his own regular, horrific dreams for comfort. "It's just a dream, Scully, it's not real," he reminded her again when he felt her small hands clutch at his arms. "I'm right here, I'm all right, nobody's hurt me." Scully pulled her head back and looked him in the eyes for the first time since he'd entered her room. "Mulder, it's not the first time I've had this dream." She hadn't intended to tell him that but she had blurted it out in spite of her best intentions, and now it seemed easier to just tell him the whole truth. She knew of no one more acquainted with nightmares than Mulder, and if anyone could tell her how to go about ridding herself of this unwelcome nightly occurrence it would be her partner and friend. "How often?" "This is the third night in a row," she said, her voice barely above a whisper. "And each time..." "It gets worse and worse?" She nodded again. Mulder smoothed her hair with one hand and gave a small sigh. It felt so good to hold her like this, and he knew that pretty soon he was going to have to leave her alone here and go back to his own room, where the memory of her soft body pressed against his would effectively destroy any chance he might have had for more sleep that night. His heart jumped in his chest when a moment later she said the thing he wouldn't have dared ask of any god that may or may not exist. "Mulder, would you stay here the rest of the night?" she asked in a small voice. "I don't want to be alone, and if I should have the dream again...I want to wake up and find you here, see that you're safe." Mulder smiled up against her cheek. "Sure, Scully, what're friends for?" he agreed, hoping she couldn't feel his quickening heartbeat. "I can doze off in the chair over there." "No, Mulder, lay down here beside me, please," she asked, and he knew there was no way he could refuse her even though common sense told him to get up, get up and get out of here right NOW, boy! and go back to his room, preferably to take a very cold shower. Suppressing the excitement his body insisted on feeling, he gently pushed her back against the pillow and covered her, forcing himself not to look below her neck. No need to add fuel to the fire that was starting in his groin. He stretched out on top of the blanket and turned on his side to face her. He was really trying to keep some appropriate distance between them--appropriate for two people who cared for each other deeply in a purely platonic way, he reminded himself, but were forced to turn to each other for comfort because neither of them had anyone else. If he didn't know better he would have sworn that Scully was determined to undermine all his efforts, because when he had settled himself comfortably and was convinced he had gotten his pulse rate under control she reached out for him and wrapped her small arms around his neck, burying her face once again in his chest. There was no way she could avoid hearing and feeling his respirations deepen, and Mulder prayed that she wouldn't press herself up against his lower body. If she did, she would discover his most personal, closely guarded secret--the fact that he wanted her so badly at this moment he could taste it. If she felt his arousal pressing into her soft flesh he would simply die of embarrassment. Mulder lay his arm across her, his hand on her shoulder, and rubbed the back of her neck to help her relax. He just hoped she would fall asleep soon so that he could extricate himself from her embrace. He knew he wasn't going to be able to breathe normally until he did. Half an hour later, when he was certain she was asleep, Mulder quietly and gently tried to remove her arms from his neck. Scully murmured "Mulder" in her sleep and tightened her grip on him. Defeated, he let her continue to hold him, grateful that at least she was unaware of the difficulties she was causing for him. Closing his eyes, he began to silently conjugate Latin verbs--anything to take his mind off the woman pressed against him. Hours later, he slept. When Mulder awoke the following morning, Scully was already in the shower. He could hear the water running and imagined it splashing off her body, making its way in tiny rivulets down her face. The image was more than he could deal with at the moment, and with a muffled groan he rolled off the bed and started for his own room. A shower was definitely in order. Very cold. It had been one hell of a night. When they met for breakfast Scully seemed reluctant to talk about the previous night's events, and Mulder respected her wishes, not mentioning it again after her first slight rebuff. It had hurt a little, really. She had no inkling of the endurance test she had put him through during the past eight hours, and he had no intention of filling her in. Knowing Scully as he did, Mulder realized that she was probably keeping him at arms length because she was embarrassed by her perceived show of weakness. Scully valued strength and control in herself and viewed any lack of them as evidence of a personal failure. He knew he just needed to give her space until she came to terms with it. He could do that. ********** Chapter 2 ********** They arrived back in D.C., fatigued and irritable, late in the afternoon several days later. They had examined each and every crime scene thoroughly, making no progress on the case at all, and both agents were heartily sick of going over and over each tiny facet of it trying to puzzle out answers. They'd barely spoken on the plane ride home, not because they were angry with one another, but because they'd exhausted every possible avenue of thought that they could explore. Scully was almost ready to agree with Mulder's theory of psychokinesis just so they could close the case. She'd had the dream every night. Mulder opened the door to his apartment with his right hand, his left occupied with his carry-on bag and a sack containing greasy fast food, the aroma of which was making his stomach talk rather loudly to him. All he wanted was to eat a quick meal and crash on his couch for the next three days. Unfortunately he still had to be at work the next morning, but at least for a few hours he could relax. He kicked the door shut behind him, took one step toward his couch, and froze. Mulder stared around his home in amazement for a moment. He actually checked the front door to make sure that he was really in apartment 42. He was. With a dazed expression he took in the sight of his apartment again. It was clean. Not just straightened up, but spotlessly, sparklingly clean. Never, in the entire time Mulder had lived at this address, had his place looked and smelled this wonderful. Mulder sniffed and could smell the faint scent of pine. It reminded him of spring days on the Vineyard, before Samantha was taken, when he would come home from school to find the entire house freshly cleaned and aired and his mother waiting for them with home-baked cookies and milk. She had, he thought, actually been quite a good mother up until the time her daughter disappeared. Then she had simply seemed to lose all interest in life, as well as in the life of her son. He inhaled deeply again, letting his eyes roam over the entryway and living room. There was no mistake. Sometime during his absence someone had come here, unauthorized, and cleaned his apartment. The thought that his uninvited cleaning service might still be there caused him to quietly slide his belongings to the floor and reach for his weapon. Stealthily he walked throughout the small apartment, checking each room carefully. Nobody was there but him. There was plenty of evidence that someone else had been there, though. He shook his head at the sight of the newly made bed and freshly laundered towels in the bathroom. Even the pile of dirty clothes he usually tossed in the corner of the bedroom had been washed and put away. Walking back into the kitchen, he absently opened the refrigerator, unable to remember but fairly certain he had one last beer left. God knew he needed one after this. When the door opened his jaw dropped. It was completely stocked with food, as, a quick check revealed, was the freezer. Mulder knew for a fact that when he had left town earlier in the week there had been two slices of cheese, a decaying apple, a pitcher of iced tea and possibly one beer in his refrigerator. He had been desperately needing to make a trip to the supermarket for days, but had kept putting it off and buying take-out because he was too busy to give it any thought. Apparently his mystery housekeeper, while scouring his apartment, had decided that he needed some assistance in the shopping department as well. With one more look around his shining kitchen, Mulder backed out of the room, grabbing up the telephone and dialing Scully's number. This was too weird to deal with on his own. Scully was the one who always had a reasonable explanation; let her make what she would of this incident. It was a good thing, Mulder thought, that he didn't really believe in fairies. Scully would certainly flip out if he presented that theory to her. Smiling, he actually considered it for a moment, just to get a rise out of her, but quickly abandoned the notion. She was exhausted. She would be irritable. Safer for his health not to get her riled up. "Hey Scully?" he said when she answered the phone in a low, weary-sounding voice. A stab of guilt struck him but he suppressed it. He really needed her to see this. "I know you're really tired, but could you please come over here? There's something I need to show you." He heard Scully's small sigh of exasperation and tamped down on that old guilt-devil once more. He knew she would do it for him. She would leave her comfortable apartment, possibly having to change into decent clothing after donning her pajamas, and drive the twenty minutes to his apartment--just because he asked her to. Mulder made a mental note to bring Scully a chocolate covered eclair from the donut shop in the morning. She was going to deserve it. When he opened the door half an hour later, he felt still more regret at dragging her out this evening. She hadn't even changed, had just thrown her long coat on over her pajamas and come immediately. Her face was pale and drained looking and there were dark circles under her eyes. She entered the apartment, a question on her lips, and stopped in mid-sentence. With a wide-eyed look she took in the condition of his apartment--a condition she had never seen it in during the entire five years they had known each other. "What the heck--what happened here, Mulder?" she asked, turning her blue gaze on him. Then her eyes narrowed slightly. "Please tell me you didn't drag me over here to show me that you hired a cleaning service." "No," he told her flatly. "I didn't. And this isn't all, Scully. Go look in the refrigerator." He gestured toward the kitchen and she walked toward his fridge, looking back at him questioningly. A few seconds later she returned to the living room, a worried look on her face. "Fruits, vegetables--Mulder, now I know this isn't your doing. I'll bet you've never had such healthy food in your refrigerator in your life." "You're right," he admitted. "But Scully, how did it get there? Who cleaned my apartment? What the hell's going on?" He sank down on the couch, his legs suddenly no longer able to bear up under his weight. After the stressful week they'd had, coming home to this surprise was just too much. Why, he asked himself, couldn't he have a normal nine-to-five job sitting behind a desk or maybe even a computer, coming home at the end of a long day to a wife, dog and 2.5 children living in a nice, brick, three-bedroom middle-class suburban home? Why, in other words, couldn't his life be ordinary? Nobody else of his acquaintance had housecleaning fairies visiting them. They all had to pay for that service. "Could it be the Gunmen?" Scully ventured. "Maybe they hired someone to do it. Maybe it's meant to be a practical joke." It was a good idea, but her eyes told him she didn't really believe it. Not that they were above this sort of thing, but it would never occur to the guys to have Mulder's apartment cleaned for him. It would never occur to them that Mulder's apartment needed cleaning. He rubbed his face tiredly with his hands. "It could be, but as paranoid as they are, I don't think they'd send somebody into my apartment." An idea occurred to Scully. "Was there any sign that the door was forced?" she asked, walking over to open it and give it a thorough examination. Mulder hadn't considered that possibility, and he went to join her in scrutinizing the area around the lock. There were no signs of forced entry--no fresh ones anyway. "Whoever did this had a key," he mused. "So, who else has a key to your place?" "You," he told her flatly. "And--Scully! A key! My keys were missing from the motel room--I know you don't believe that, but they were," he continued, holding up a hand to stop her objection. "What if--what if that person who took my keys had a copy made of my apartment key? What if they came back here yesterday and did...all this?" he asked, his arm sweeping to indicate the mysteriously tidy apartment. Scully thought carefully for a moment. "If that's the case, Mulder, then the necktie--" "Probably wasn't a coincidence," he finished. Their eyes met, exchanging a look that was at once puzzled and frightened. Of all the odd things that had happened to them, this was by far the strangest. Not threatening on the surface, but--creepy, somehow. A thought occurred to Scully, in fact, she thought later, it had occurred to Mulder at exactly the same time. "A stalker?" she questioned. He shrugged somberly. "Could be. I don't know what else to think." Scully was galvanized into action at the thought. "You're coming home with me," she stated firmly, bending down to pick up his carry-on bag which was still on the floor by the entrance where he had dropped it earlier. "I don't want you staying here alone. Not with the dreams I've been having." She flushed slightly at the mention of the dreams but stood her ground. She might not be able to explain them, any more than she could explain the state of Mulder's apartment now, but they made her uneasy nonetheless. Scully didn't like things that made her uneasy. She liked order in her universe. Since she'd met Mulder, too many things had been disordered, unexplained, or just plain out of control. Mulder opened his mouth to disagree but thought better of it. When Scully was this determined, all the arguments in the world wouldn't deter her from her goal. If she intended him to go home with her, then he would be going home with her. No use prolonging the inevitable. He couldn't, however, keep from pointing out the obvious. "Scully, if this person has my key, they probably also have yours as well as keys to both our cars. All those are on my keyring. So we may not be any safer at your place than here." She realized that he was right, but she wasn't about to back down now. She wanted Mulder to be safe and in her mind, that meant being under her watchful eye. After the night they had spent in the same bed, if not in each other's arms, she had been reluctant to part from him anyway, but protocol demanded it. They were not lovers, she reminded herself. They couldn't be. "All the same, we're going to my place. We know they have a key to your apartment, we're only speculating that they have access to mine. And there is no way I'm leaving you alone tonight," she told him, practically pushing him out the door. He tried one last protest as they started down the hall. "Scully, I'm a big boy now." "That's right, Mulder, you are," she affirmed, putting her hands on the small of his back and propelling him toward the stairs. "And I plan on keeping you that way--a very exasperating, irritating, adorable, alive and kicking big boy." "Adorable?" he questioned teasingly as they started downward. "You have your moments. Just don't let it go to your head," she giggled, playfully slapping at his arm. Scully shook her head in amazement at herself and her behavior. Was she, Special Agent Dana Scully of the F.B.I., actually flirting? Or, if she was, did flirting even count with Mulder? She'd seen him in what could be termed compromising positions so many times it hardly seemed awkward at all anymore to come upon him in some state of undress or another. Seeing him the other night in his boxers hadn't bothered her in the least--it was him seeing her in her underwear that had made her blush. Mulder drove his car to Scully's apartment with her following, carefully keeping an eye out for anything suspicious. When they reached her apartment she pulled her car up behind his at the curb and climbed out, her eyes darting around the street while he remained safely in his car as per her instructions. Seeing nothing unusual, she motioned for him to exit his vehicle, which he did with a roll of his eyes. he was certain Scully was taking this too seriously. Admittedly someone stealing his keys and cleaning his apartment was weird, but it didn't seem as though the culprit intended him any harm. If he had to have a stalker, this was definitely the one to have, he decided. Maybe he could arrange for her to come in once a week. His apartment could definitely use the attention. He wondered if she would take over his shopping on a regular basis, a task he abhorred, if he paid her a little extra attention. Only problem was, he had no recollection of having paid her any attention at all. Or any idea of who they were dealing with. He tried to point out to Scully when he was safely ensconced in her spare bedroom that she was letting this bother her too much. "You know, Scully, maybe I should be making the most of this opportunity instead of running away from it," he joked, emerging from the bedroom to take a seat beside her on the couch. "After all, if someone wants to clean up after me and buy me gifts, who am I to complain?" "Very funny, Mulder," she commented. "We'll see how much you feel like joking when your stalker turns nasty." Of course Mulder was versed in the standard Bureau information about stalkers, but he'd never dealt with a case involving one. Unless the perpetrator turned into a kidnapper or murderer it really wasn't an F.B.I. matter anyway, and most of the time stalkers seemed--to Mulder at least--to stop short of those two extremes. Most of the time the were just nuisances. Weren't they? "You really think he or she will?" he asked seriously. Scully regarded him carefully, aware that he was not according this matter the gravity it deserved. She searched her mind for an analogy that might get through to him, and at last hoped she had hit on just the right one. A horror movie. Right up Mulder's alley. "Mulder, did you ever see a movie called 'The Fan'?" "You mean that baseball one that came out a couple of years ago?" he asked, confused. "No," she replied, "although that one was bad enough. This was an older movie by the same name. It was about an actress who had a crazy fan who was stalking her. Although instead of making subtle contact the way your admirer has, he sent her letters. Guess you're more accessible than a famous actress," she smiled. "Anyway, the letters were admiring at first, then they became angry and abusive, and finally they were serious threats. The stalker went from adoring this woman to trying to kill her all in the space of a few weeks. And do you know why?" "Because she didn't return his affection?" Mulder guessed. "Exactly. The only problem was that she never even knew the guy existed until close to the very end. You're the psychologist, Mulder. You know these people aren't rational. If this person is buying you gifts and cleaning your apartment and you're not properly grateful, she may get angry with you and try to hurt you. And how can you be properly grateful when you don't even know who it is?" Mulder stared at her. "Do you really, seriously think that's what this is, Scully? Someone stalking me? Why? Why me, for God's sake? I'm nothing--I'm nobody--I don't even have that many friends!" Scully squeezed his hand to calm him down, sensing that his agitation was getting the better of him. "I won't lie to you, Mulder. Yes, I do think there is someone stalking you, and I think it's a woman. Probably someone who has a crush on you and imagines that you are in love with her, or that you should be. Other than that, I have no clue, no idea as to who it might be." Mulder thought desperately but was unable to come up with any potential suspects. Of course there was the main floor receptionist that he flirted with outrageously on a regular basis, but she was married, apparently happily so. She had a picture of her husband and three children on her desk, and Mulder often saw her talking to her husband on the telephone when he passed by. Surely it wasn't her. "We don't even know for sure that there is a stalker, Scully. It's all just conjecture at this point," he insisted, anxiously running his fingers through his hair. He was trying to remain calm for Scully's sake but his inner voice was repeating over and over, this can't be real, this can't be happening to me! Mulder could deal with the threat of the bad guys, and he could deal with the dangers of day-to-day living, and he could even deal with the constant presence of Them in his life, but this unseen, unknown danger freaked him out. He fought against the desire to hide under the bed like a child. "All the same, I'd take it as a personal favor if you would just be a little more careful for a while," she told him, patting his shoulder lovingly. "It would really ruin my day if anything happened to you," she said, rising from the couch, stretching and yawning. "Now if it's all the same to you, I'm going to get some of that sleep you interrupted when you called earlier." "Sorry about that, Scully," he apologized, walking toward his own bedroom. He found himself fervently wishing Scully had a one bedroom apartment, then realized that only meant he'd end up sleeping on her couch anyway. And Scully's couch, unlike his own, was not built for those six feet tall and above. Best to simply make himself comfortable in her guest room. "No problem, Mulder, it was worth the drive just to see your place looking that pristine. It was a sight I never thought to see." "Ha ha," he mouthed, beginning to close the bedroom door. "Mulder?" He stopped. "Would you mind...leaving the door open a little? It would make me feel better." "Sure, Scully," he jibed. "Anything for someone who think's I'm adorable!" Scully pulled a face at him and closed her own door partially, yawning again as she climbed into her comfortable bed. She felt much safer, somehow, with Mulder nearby. ***** He was hearing it again. That small, distressed moaning sound coming from Scully's room. He had suspected the nightmare had disturbed her sleep several times that week, but other than the first night of their trip he hadn't been called on to render assistance. Which was just as well, since he would have had a difficult time hiding his desire from her if he'd been forced to spend another night in bed with her. He considered not going to her--after all, she'd handled it without him before and she hadn't seemed very happy about the one night he had witnessed her terror--but her cries grew more and more heartbreaking until Mulder could no longer stand to listen. This time at least he knew what he was dealing with, and he had the presence of mind to take a few seconds and throw on a pair of sweatpants before softly entering her room. Mulder switched on the bedside lamp and found Scully, her face flushed and sweating, her hands clenching the sheet up around her shoulders, repeating over and over, "Mulder, no, no!" He placed his hands on her shoulders and shook her firmly, saying, "Scully, wake up," in a loud voice. She gasped as she opened her eyes and saw him there, then quickly realized he had seen her weakness once again. Scully sat up in the bed and drew her knees up to her chest, burying her flaming face in her arms. It was simply unbearable that he had seen her in this situation for a second time. She wanted to be so strong for him, was always pretending to be tougher than she was; it had never occurred to her that Mulder wasn't fooled by her act. "Scully?" he asked tentatively, one hand sneaking out to raise a tendril of her hair so he could see her face. She turned her head away from him. "Please go away, Mulder. Please..." Instead he gathered her small body up close to his and encompassed her in the warmth and strength of his embrace. "It's all right, Scully," he whispered up against her soft hair. "Don't be embarrassed with me." "I'm not embarrassed, Mulder!" she snapped, wiping away a tear that had begun to slide its way down the side of her face. The only thing Scully hated more than him seeing her terrified from her dreams was for him to see her cry. He brushed back her hair from her eyes and forced her to look at him. "You are, but you shouldn't be. You've helped me so many times in my life, Scully. Now you need help from me--let me give it to you. It's the least I can do for you. It's what we do for each other." The sincerity of his words touched her heart in a way she hadn't expected, and she found herself leaning into his embrace, seeking out his warmth and comfort. She allowed him to hold her for a time, gently rocking her, until she began to relax. "Was it the same dream?" he asked softly, not wanting to drive her away. He felt her head nod against his shoulder. "But it was even more detailed this time." She raised her face toward his. "I could see very clearly that you were in a room--I think it was an upstairs room--in a very old house, and there was an iron ring mounted in the wall. Your hands were chained behind your back around the ring and you were screaming my name. Then I saw the outside of the house and there were flames shooting out of every window on the first floor, making their way up--" She stopped and raised up a little, staring at him in surprise. "You're in the attic," she stated. "You're being kept in the attic of that house and somebody has set a fire." "Where is the house?" he asked curiously, wondering just how much detail she might have gotten from this dream. If she could tell him exactly where it was located, or who was doing this to him, he would have a better idea of how to protect himself. As things stood now, his stalker could be anyone. He realized with a sudden rush of surprise that he didn't even question the validity of Scully's dreams or their relation to the mysterious person who had left him the necktie and cleaned his apartment. He knew they had to do with one and the same. She just hadn't turned nasty yet. Scully screwed up her face as though trying to remember some tiny detail that was just out of her reach, and finally gave up, shaking her head. "I don't know where it's located, but I can see it. I can see it as clearly as I see you right now. If someone showed me a picture of that house I would immediately know that was the one." She paused a moment more, a faraway look in her eyes, and then said, "Briarwood. I saw a streetsign. It's on Briarwood Street." Now it was his turn to stare. "Briarwood Street? Briarwood Street where? Do you know of a street by that name anywhere around here?" She thought for a moment and then said, "No, I can't remember ever seeing a Briarwood Street anywhere." Slumping against him with a yawn, she told him, "Right now I'm too tired to even think about it anymore." Mulder made a mental note to consult some maps in the morning, and tried to pull away from her with the honorable intention of going back to his own room; there he could at least make a pretense of sleeping. He didn't want to spend another night like he had the last time, having to endure the torment of lying so close to her and not being able to touch. He didn't think he could stand it again. Much too hard on the heart. As before, when he tried to pull away from her she held him there. "Scully," he said in a voice that was almost a moan. "I need to go back to my own bed." "Why?" she asked plaintively. "Why can't you stay here with me?" As soon as the words left her mouth she realized the double meaning of what she had said, and in the next instant realized she didn't care. She wanted that, too. Unfortunately, Scully was much too by-the-book to risk the consequences of beginning a relationship with her partner. Mulder, on the other hand, had reached the end of his endurance. By-the-book was no longer a phrase in his vocabulary. After all, 'They' never played by the rules, why should he and Scully? The sound of her asking him to stay with her snapped the last thread of his self control, and even though he knew she wasn't asking him to stay and make love to her--only to watch over her while she slept--the images she conjured up in his mind forced him to give in to one urge that had been uppermost there for a long time. He lowered his mouth to hers and kissed her full on the lips. Mulder felt her small hands pushing at his chest for a moment, trying to prevent the kiss, but he had gone too far to stop himself. He could no more have broken off that kiss than he could have taken his own life. He would have regained control soon--if she had continued to push him away he would have bowed to her wishes in the next instant, but seconds later he felt her hands at the back of his neck, actually pulling him closer to her, and suddenly she was the one kissing him, her tongue frantically seeking entrance to his mouth, her lips claiming ownership of his with an urgency that he hadn't known--hadn't dreamed--she could feel. It hit him like a ton of bricks that Scully, the woman he had wanted for so long that he had forgotten a time before--Scully wanted him. With this knowledge came the relief of knowing that if she felt this way, she probably wouldn't be filing a sexual harassment complaint against him the next morning. He had known that was a possibility--albeit a remote one--when he had kissed her but at the time the threat of a full-blown rape charge could not have stopped him. Mulder easily lowered her to lay on the pillow so that his upper body was above hers, all the while raining kisses all over her face and hair. "Mulder," she moaned, taking his face between both her hands and pulling him back to her lips for another passionate kiss that left them both breathless. She ran her hands down his bare back to cup his buttocks inside his sweats, and pulled his hips closer to hers. Responding to her urging he covered her entire body with his own and she ground her hips upward, wanting to feel him against her. "Scully!" he gasped when he felt her heat through his clothing. Her only answer was to pull his mouth back to hers for another breathtaking kiss. Mulder began running his lips, tongue, and fingers down her body, and she strained upwards trying to hurry his hands but he would not be rushed. At last, after long, torturous moments, his lips grazed her most sensitive parts and she felt all the breath leave her body. Scully threw back her head and abandoned herself to sensation for the next few minutes while his mouth toyed with her until she was almost in a frenzy of wanting him. She opened her mouth to tell him to stop wasting time and get on with it when her eyes fell on her badge and weapon on the nightstand beside her bed. Reality hit her like a splash of cold water. "Mulder, stop!" she tried to command him, but it came out more as a plea. He raised his head to look at her and she could see that his eyes were green with passion. She wondered if the look of naked desire she saw on his face was reflected in her own. The last thing she wanted was for him to stop, but they couldn't do this. They simply couldn't. It was breaking every rule. "Scully?" His voice left the question not quite asked. "Mulder...we...we can't..." she stammered, unable to form a coherent sentence. "Scully, we already have," he told her gravely. "We've been leading up to this for a long time. Tonight is just the culmination of an affair that's been going on for years." Scully tried to push his head away from her and instead found her fingers running through his soft, silky hair, gently twining themselves into it. "I'll stop... Scully," he told her, punctuating his words with feather soft kisses on her lips, "...if you...tell me...it's...what...you... really want." Scully moaned again as his lips continued to rain tiny kisses on hers, arousing her to a level she had never felt before. "Mulder...I...I want..." "Yes...?" he prompted, shifting his hips so that the length of him was pressed right where he knew she wanted him to be. If Scully insisted he would stop--he certainly was no rapist--but he was absolutely sure that this was what they both wanted and in his opinion the Bureau could go to hell. "...please...I want...please Mulder...now..." she whispered in surrender. Resisting him was more than she could manage, and even though she knew there could be a huge price to pay later on, Scully wasn't about to give up what she wanted most in the world now that it was literally within her grasp. "Are you sure?" he asked, stopping his kisses and drawing back a fraction, giving her time to really make up her mind. He didn't want any regrets or recriminations in the morning. If they stopped now, difficult as it might be, they could go on working together, continue their successful partnership, but once that chasm was crossed there would be no going back. Things would change. They had to be sure it would be a change for the better. "Yes," she said, meeting his gaze squarely. "I want you to make love to me, Mulder. Now." That was all he needed. Their lips met again, more frantically now that permission had been sought and granted, and each explored the other's body exhaustively, answering questions long unacknowledged, discovering secrets too long kept. Soon Scully began running her tongue slowly up his chest, swirling circles across his skin, occasionally taking tiny, light nips of his flesh--not enough to hurt, just enough to drive him crazy. Finally, when he could stand no more, she reached his mouth and he pulled her to him for a hard, savage kiss, forcing her easily onto her back underneath him. He positioned himself over her and had one last lucid thought before abandoning himself to her entirely. "Scully," he said through gritted teeth, "we can still stop if that's what you want. It's not too late." Even as he spoke the words he knew they were a lie for it was already too late, had been too late for years. "Mulder, if you stop, you die!" she whispered fiercely, pulling him to her, and they gave themselves up to their passions. What seemed like a lifetime later he felt Scully kiss the top of his head, felt her arms and legs tighten around him in an embrace that had nothing to do with passion. He raised his eyes to look at her and she said simply, "I love you, Mulder. I've always loved you." Scully's eyes closed in defeat. She had given up the last brick in her wall of self defense, given it up to this man who she trusted above all others. He held the key to her very soul now, and he could use it to uplift or destroy her, as he chose. The thought of being so much at someone else's mercy made her shiver. "Scully," he whispered, willing her to look at him. She opened her eyes again. "I..me too," he said, offering her his own key. She accepted with a smile and he knew that his heart would be safe in her keeping. Scully realized with his words that mercy was a two way street, that she had the power to uplift or destroy him as well. Such a responsibility was a frightening thing to her, but he calmed her fears with his gentle touch. She knew Mulder would never hurt her, and she vowed never to hurt him either. "Tell me, Mulder," she said softly, pulling him down to her chest. "I need to hear you say the words. I'll never be able to believe it if you don't." "I love you, Scully," he said in a barely audible voice. "You're everything to me." Smiling, satisfied, she nuzzled her face into his hair and closed her eyes again. Now all she wanted was to sleep here in his arms for the rest of the night. ***** When Scully awoke in the morning Mulder was already in the shower. She snuggled back down into the covers for a moment, then with a playful grin decided to give in to her impulse. She rose and went into the bathroom, pulling aside the curtain and joining Mulder under the spray of the water. He didn't hear her enter, and he started in surprise when she put her arms around him from behind, but as soon as he realized it was her he relaxed back into her embrace. Scully took the soap from him and began slowly and sensuously running it up and down his chest, teasing him until he could stand it no longer. He crushed her against him, his mouth claiming hers as the water beat down on both their heads. "Mulder, we have to hurry or we'll be late," she whispered against his lips. "Yeah?" he answered, nibbling on her ear. "What's your point?" ***** "I'll follow you to work, Mulder," Scully told him when they finally got downstairs. He stood beside her as she unlocked her car door, her eyes glancing around the neighborhood, searching for anything or anybody out of the ordinary. "Scully?" he said, putting his hand on her shoulder and turning her around to face him. She opened her mouth to answer him and suddenly found herself up against the car, his body firmly pressed against hers, his mouth descending toward her own. The kiss was drawn out and intense, and long before he ended it Scully felt her knees buckling. She clung to his arms to hold herself upright, wondering at how he could make her go so light-headed and weak with such a simple act as brushing his lips to hers. "See you there," he told her, grinning, as he helped her into her car. The way she responded to him flattered his ego greatly, and he felt completely satisfied after their activities of the morning as well as the previous night. He climbed into his own car and they headed off to work. Down the block someone was watching. ***** "Where's Charlie?" Mulder asked curiously. He had gone to purchase his newspaper and found an unfamiliar face at the newsstand for the first time ever. "Didn't you hear?" The vendor stared at him. "Hear what? I've been out of town for a few days. The last time I saw Charlie was Monday." "Monday's the day it happened, sir," the man said solemnly. "What happened?" Mulder demanded, becoming exasperated. Dimly he wondered what was wrong with people who couldn't just come to the point. "Charlie was murdered. Somebody came up behind him and knifed him in the back. Right in the kidney. Killed him almost instantly, they said." The man shuddered at the memory, and glanced surreptitiously around as if fearing the phantom killer might be lurking nearby. Mulder felt his face whiten as the newspaper he was holding slipped through his fingers. It was the same as the man from the restaurant. "Hey! Be careful!" the salesman said, grabbing at Mulder's newspaper before the wind could catch it and blow it all over the street. He missed an ad circular, and the brightly colored red paper skittered and danced along the sidewalk as the wind took it on its unknown journey. "You ok?" "Yeah, fine," Mulder said absently, his mind already working. "Did they catch the killer?" "Nope. Nobody even saw anything. Weird, too, here on a crowded street." The man turned to his next customer, pointedly looking around Mulder who moved aside to let a small, wiry man purchase the latest copy of the Wall Street Journal. "Sometimes the best place to hide is in a crowd," Mulder commented, almost to himself, as he took his paper and turned back toward the Hoover building. He was accosted on the front steps by Agent Tom Rickerson, the Bureau's offensive-creep-in-residence. Mulder sighed when he saw that Rickerson was apparently waiting for him. Rickerson was one of those people that Mulder always tried to avoid at any cost--the type who took great pleasure in unpleasant teasing and insults. He was an unpopular man, largely due to the fact that he appeared to suffer from low self-esteem and was unable to consider himself successful unless he was putting someone else down. "Hey, Spooky!" Rickerson called, sneer evident in his voice as Mulder approached. Mulder's jaw tightened imperceptibly, but he managed to answer pleasantly enough, "Morning, Rickerson." He hoped to walk on past and avoid a confrontation but Rickerson obviously had a bone to pick with Mulder. He stepped in front of Mulder, blocking his way. Mulder sighed again. It was going to be a long day. "You want something?" Mulder asked, still hoping to deter any unpleasantness. It wouldn't do to upset the man, and besides, it would only irritate Scully. Then he would get her standard lecture about how he needed to work harder at fitting in with the other agents in the Bureau. "Yeah. I want to know what you're doing with my case." The hostility, indeed downright anger coming from Rickerson was almost tangible and Mulder briefly wondered if the man knew how bad this was for his heart. "Your case?" Mulder had no idea what Rickerson was babbling about. His mind was still on poor old Charlie and how similar his death had been to the man who had punched his companion in the restaurant earlier that week. "The Aspen case. I guess that ass-kisser Skinner wasn't satisfied with my normal, rational approach to solving it so he turned it over to you and the little woman." Mulder felt his blood pressure rise at Rickerson's slighting of Scully and her abilities, but reminded himself that punching the guy out would only serve to get him in trouble. Besides, Scully had certainly heard that, and worse, said about her before. It was impossible to be a female F.B.I. agent and completely escape the attitudes of some of the more unenlightened men. He told himself inwardly that if Scully were here now she'd be putting a calming hand on his arm and telling him not to let this person drive him to lose control of his temper. He could almost feel her soft touch below his elbow. "I wasn't aware that it was your case." Rickerson pushed on as though Mulder hadn't spoken. "So what's your theory, Spooky? Think Aspen is in cahoots with the little green men you're always chasing? Or maybe he's some kind of shape shifter that can slip between the bars of his cell, is that it?" Mulder decided at that point that his best option was to simply walk away from the man. He shook his head in annoyance and tried to push past Rickerson but the other agent moved, again blocking his path. Mulder felt his tenuous hold on his anger slipping. "What do you want from me, Rickerson? You want the case back? You can have it. You just go on up and tell Skinner what you think of his delegation skills, tell him he's assigned 'your' case to the wrong pair of agents. I'm sure he'll see it your way. However, Skinner is still my direct superior and until he tells me differently, Agent Scully and I," he said, stressing Scully's title, "will be working on the case assigned to us by that direct supervisor. Now if you'll excuse me..." He turned and walked into the building, leaving Rickerson standing on the sidewalk still hurling verbal abuse his way. Mulder told himself it didn't matter that Rickerson hated his guts for no apparent reason except that he had a different way of thinking. He told himself that people like Rickerson didn't like anybody. It didn't matter. He had Scully. Nothing else mattered. "What's the matter, Agent Mulder?" A voice broke through his mental litany and he looked up, startled, into the face of the lobby receptionist, Angela. Mulder tried to muster up one of his usual flirtatious comments but all his mind could hear right now was //So what's your theory, Spooky?.// He sighed, shrugging his shoulders. "It's nothing, just Rickerson being his usual charming self." Angela frowned. She saw a lot more deeply into people than most would suspect, and she knew how easily Mulder could get his feelings hurt no matter what kind of front he put up. Mulder was one of her personal favorites, always ready with a kind word if she was feeling down or to ask about her family. He and Agent Scully had been the only agents out of the entire Bureau to express sympathy to her when her father had recently, and quite suddenly, died, and she still had the card that had been attached to the flowers they sent her. She doubted if most of the other people who passed her desk every day even knew she had lost someone dear to her, or had even noticed her change in mood for the first couple of weeks after his funeral. It was for that reason that she now leaned toward him with a sympathetic smile and a wink. "Don't let Rickerson get you down, Mulder. It's people like him that give assholes a bad name." Mulder barked laughter. "Thanks, Angela," he grinned, grateful that someone had managed to make //So what's your theory, Spooky?// disappear from his mind for a moment. Angela was truly the cream of the crop, he decided as her, "No problem, Gorgeous," followed him down the hall to the elevator. "What's this?" Scully asked when he plopped a paper bag he had been carrying on the desk in front of her. There was a stain on the outside of the bag that looked suspiciously like chocolate. "Chocolate eclair." "Really?" she asked happily, digging into the bag. "To what do I owe the pleasure?" "The pleasure was all mine, ma'am," he leered, wiggling an eyebrow at her. "Believe me, Mulder, the pleasure wasn't all yours!" Scully laughed around her mouthful of eclair. He grinned. "Scully, something strange happened a few minutes ago--" His sentence was cut short by the ringing of the phone and he answered it with his usual, terse, "Mulder." "Agent Mulder, this is Angela, upstairs." Her voice sounded strange, and it was immediately apparent to him that something was wrong. His first thought was that something had happened to her husband but he realized instantly how ridiculous that was. Why would she be calling him if that was the case? "Angela? What's happened?" he asked, concerned, and Scully perked up at the mention of Angela's name. The receptionist was a favorite with both of them. Angela's voice came back, sounding oddly detached. "I think you'd better get up here, Mulder. Agent Rickerson is dead." ********** Chapter 3 ********** "Did you see or hear anything unusual, Agent Mulder?" Skinner sat behind his desk, implacable, questioning Mulder more as a formality than anything else. Even though Mulder had been the last one known to have seen Rickerson alive, it was obvious to Skinner that his most brilliant agent had had nothing to do with the death. Angela had reported, almost reluctantly, that Mulder had had a disagreement with Rickerson moments before his death, and Skinner instantly decided he'd better question the agent first, before any of his enemies took the opportunity to turn up the heat on Mulder. "No Sir," Mulder replied, still a little dazed at the suddenness of Rickerson's death. "He was ragging on me about the Aspen case, but that's just Rickerson's personality." He gave a wry grin. "It certainly didn't warrant murder." "He had a complaint about the way the case was being handled?" Skinner questioned, ignoring Mulder's comment. Mulder shifted uncomfortably. "He was upset that Scully and I had been given the case," he said carefully. "I see." "Sir, there's something odd about his death," Mulder told him thoughtfully. "Odd, Agent Mulder? Odd how?" Skinner groaned inwardly. He didn't want to have to pry information out of Mulder this morning, but to his surprise the usually reticent agent was uncharacteristically forthcoming. Mulder related to the A.D. what he knew of the other two similar murders and Skinner sat back in his chair, astonished. Lord knew, Agent Rickerson didn't have many friends in the Bureau, perhaps even less than Mulder himself, and Skinner had even thought for a moment that Rickerson's murder was a plot to frame Mulder but had dismissed the notion after realizing that it wasn't clean enough for 'Them'. Too many loose ends. Besides, those people worked under cover of darkness, never in the broad light of day. "What's your connection to these murders, Mulder?" Skinner inquired impassively, and Mulder looked up, startled. "My connection, Sir? I don't understand." Which was a lie; he had made the jump in logic as soon as he'd heard how Rickerson died. First Charlie, then the restaurant-man, now Rickerson. For a second his heart sank into his stomach. Surely Skinner didn't suspect him of being a murderer! Skinner knew Mulder was lying but decided to overlook it for now. "It seems to me, Mulder, that you've had some contact with each of these three people just before they died," he pressed. "I suggest you investigate these deaths further. I'm taking you and Scully off the Aspen case for now. If you can't come up with any better ideas for me than psychokinesis--" "Sir, I really do think that's how he--" Mulder's protest was cut short. "Save it, Mulder," the A.D. said, raising his hands in the air to stop his young agent. He didn't feel up to listening to any of Mulder's paranormal beliefs right now. He had a dead agent on his hands. "I want you and Scully to find this killer. It shouldn't be too difficult." The ghost of a smile almost graced Skinner's face. It was gone before Mulder was certain he had seen it. "He seems to be following you around." Mulder stared at him for such a long time the A.D. finally asked, "Will there be anything more, Agent Mulder?" //So what's your theory, Spooky?// Mulder shifted and came back to reality. "Um...no...no Sir, it's nothing," he mumbled, rising and almost tripping over a chair in his haste to flee Skinner's office. He had to get to Scully. The thought that was taking shape in his mind was frightening in its scope and he needed her sound rationalization to tell him he was wrong, please God please let her tell me I'm wrong! ***** "Don't you see, Scully?" Mulder's eyes gleamed in their intensity. "I've had some sort of unpleasant incident with each of these three people, and ten minutes later they were dead!" "But Mulder, you didn't even talk to the guy in the restaurant!" Scully protested half-heartedly. She wanted to help him out, to assuage his guilt and let him know that there was no way, no way on this green earth, that the deaths had been in any way linked to him. Nope, sorry, just a coincidence, not enough to get you a guest spot on Jerry Springer. Not even on Sally. Come back later, buddy, maybe when you've discovered you're in love with your wife's cousin's dog. "No," her partner agreed, "but when he hit his friend and knocked him into our table it spilled my drink in my lap. You probably didn't even notice because you were too busy checking out the victim, but I had to go into the restroom and clean myself off. Didn't you see that funny stain on my pants for the rest of the day?" he joked. "I was trying very hard not to look below your waist, Mulder," Scully answered, smiling, in a very quiet voice. She was rewarded when a gratifying flush colored his face. Then in her normal voice she asked, "So what are you thinking? That somebody's following you around and killing anybody who's rude to you--" Her eyes widened as she reached the same conclusion he had arrived at in Skinner's office. "Your stalker!" she exclaimed. He nodded somberly. "And Scully, that means anyone who talks to me could be in danger. Agent Rickerson was a pain in the ass, but I certainly never wished the man dead. And the other two incidents..." he shrugged. "Well, they were just annoyances. The kind you forget about in half an hour. Apparently someone thought these people deserved to die for some reason, maybe because they were a little discourteous to me--or in the case of the guy in the restaurant, because they caused me a little minor discomfort." He took a deep breath to steady his nerves and quietly, fruitlessly told himself that he wasn't responsible for the deaths of three innocent people. There was nothing he could have done to prevent them. Somehow it didn't help to lessen the burden he was feeling. Scully spoke suddenly, shaking him out of his reverie. "Mulder, we've got to stop this person, and soon. If we don't, you could be in greater danger than we thought." "Or you could," he reminded her. "What if my avenging angel catches up with you after one of our more heated arguments?" The thought made him cringe. If anything happened to Scully because of him guilt would no longer be a problem. It would simply kill him. "I suppose we should both be more aware of exactly who is nearby when we're out somewhere." Scully agreed. "One thing's for certain, I'm not letting you out of my sight until this woman is caught!" she declared. "You're absolutely sure it's a woman?" "Well Mulder, it could be a gay man, but I think that's unlikely." She smiled at his look of discomfort. "Usually these types of cases revolve around a sexual desire, so yes, I do think it's a woman." "How do you know so much about stalkers, Scully?" he asked. Her face clouded for a minute. "When Missy first started college--before she went on her wild tour across the country--there was a guy who wouldn't leave her alone. He would send her notes and flowers, call her in the middle of the night, that type of thing. She told him as politely as she could to buzz off, but he wouldn't give up. Finally he turned mean. He broke into her dorm room looking for Missy, and when she wasn't there he took her roommate hostage. He threatened her for several hours before they managed to subdue him. As they were taking him off to jail he kept hollering that Melissa deserved to die because she wouldn't love him. I did some reading up after that experience. That seems to be the conclusion that many of these stalkers end up with--that the object of their affection deserves to die because he or she doesn't fall in love with this insane person who's been making their life miserable." She stopped, breathing heavily. If there was one subject that could make Scully climb onto her soapbox it was violence against women, and the memory of Melissa's experience could still make her blood boil. The idea that an innocent young woman had almost died because of one man's obsession--well it wasn't the only time in Scully's life she had encountered that scenario, but it was the closest she had ever been to it personally. And now her Mulder was being threatened by the same sort of sick person. Seeing her agitation he embraced her, rubbing his chin against the top of her head familiarly. "It'll be all right, Scully. We'll catch her." He wished he could be as certain as he sounded. She pulled back to look him in the eye. "Mulder, if this woman manages to get her hands on you..." She shuddered at the possibility. "There won't be any reasoning with her, because she's past the point of reason. You have simply got to be careful and not let her capture you." "I think you're getting too worked up about this, Sully," he objected. "Nobody's even tried to capture me. We're not nearly to that point yet. It's all the people around me that she's going after. She's like some sort of twisted guardian angel." She pushed back from him, angrily wiping away a tear with the back of her hand. "Haven't you been listening to me, Mulder?" she demanded. "This is a progression, and how quickly it progresses is entirely up to the individual. One seriously disturbed individual, I might remind you. Today she may be killing anybody she thinks has hurt you, and tomorrow she could decide that you've been unfaithful to her and it's time for you to die!" "Or you," he admonished. "You need to be just as careful as I do, Scully." She nodded, turning her back to him so he couldn't see the tears in her eyes. Taking a deep breath, she fought for self control. He knew what she was doing and really tried to allow her some space, but when Scully felt that she had herself in check again, she turned to find him right in front of her. No matter his intentions he wasn't able to stay away from her when she was in need of comfort, however vehemently she might deny that need. He pulled her to him again for a quick, bracing hug. "We'll be all right, Scully. Both of us. We'll work together like we always do and we'll find this woman before she hurts anybody else," he promised. ***** They returned to Scully's apartment late that afternoon with a pizza and a couple of movies they had rented. Mulder had wanted to take her out to a real restaurant, but Scully was afraid for him to spend very much time out in the open. She had wanted to get him safely into the confines of her apartment as quickly as possible. She had consented to the movie rental store only under pressure from him ("We can't sit around all weekend just doing nothing, Scully!" "Mulder, nothing was not what I had in mind!") and she breathed a sigh of relief as he safely locked the deadbolt on her front door behind him. Her lips curved in a smile as she remembered the look he had given her, telling her with no words exactly what he had in mind for their evening. They had no sooner put down their things than he had her in his arms, kissing her wildly. "Mulder!" she squealed as he reached down and unzipped the skirt to her suit, having already divested her of her jacket. She felt the fabric of the skirt slide down her legs and found she was standing in front of him wearing only her blouse, underwear and pantyhose. It was wildly erotic. Scully had never had a man as anxious to undress her as Mulder. Nor one as good as he was at doing the things he did once she was undressed to his satisfaction. There was something terribly exciting in knowing the power she had over this man, the things she could do to him with a kiss or a caress. And the things he could do to her. "Do you know how tough it's been, being this close to you all day and not being able to touch you?" he groaned into her mouth, his hands feverishly working the buttons of her blouse. He finally gave up in frustration and, taking the flimsy material in both hands, pulled it apart, ignoring the button that popped off and bounced to a corner. All the rest of the fasteners remained intact and Mulder slid the blouse down her arms, kissing his way across her smooth shoulders as he revealed them. She tossed the remnants of silk away and began working on his tie with equal fervor, trailing kisses down his chest as she unbuttoned his shirt. Scully considered returning the favor by ripping the shirt completely off his body but decided against it. She already had one button to sew on and she was fairly sure Mulder wouldn't be handy with a needle and thread. "Maybe that's why the Bureau has that pesky rule about partners getting involved," she told him, unfastening his belt with a gleam in her eye. "Scully?" he whispered, kneeling before her and yanking her panties and pantyhose down, removing them as she lifted each leg for him. "Hmm?" She pulled him back up so she could nuzzle the hair on his chest. "I'm applying for a transfer tomorrow," he gasped as her she sent waves of electricity coursing through his body. Her fingers froze. For a second Scully thought he was serious and her heart stopped in her chest. The she saw his teasing smile and reached around, smacking his bottom in mock anger. "Don't scare me like that!" she scolded. "Oh, Scully," he moaned, "I'd love to play your kinky sex games, but I really don't think I can wait that long." Without warning Mulder picked her up and carried her quickly into the bedroom, depositing her on her bed and attacking her mouth again. After ridding her of her pesky clothing, Mulder began peppering tiny kisses down her body, beginning at her forehead and working his way slowly down over her nose and mouth. Agonizingly slowly down her chin. Excruciatingly slowly down her stomach. His tongue dipped into her belly button and she gave a small scream, unable to hold back any longer. She could hear his chuckle of delight and for a second wanted to strangle him. "Thought processes a little muddled, Scully?" he asked teasingly. "Is an incoherent scream the best you can do?" All at once they both froze as the ringing of the telephone beside her bed rent the air. Mulder buried his face in her stomach with a strangled groan, and Scully grabbed the phone, quickly trying to get her breathing under control. "He--hello?" she asked, priding herself on the fact that she sounded only a little breathless. "Dana, honey?" Maggie Scully's voice was concerned. "Is anything wrong?" Scully flushed scarlet from head to toe at the thought of talking to her mother while Mulder lay with his body covering hers. "No, Mom, everything's fine," she choked as Mulder watched her with a wicked gleam in his eye. "I hadn't heard from you in several days and I just wanted to check on you, dear. How's Fox?" Mrs. Scully never talked to her daughter without inquiring about the health and well-being of the man she had come to think of as her future son-in-law. "Fox is fine, Mom. For now," Scully told her, giving Mulder a threatening look that he didn't see because he had resumed his feather soft kisses, now working his way down her right leg. She kicked at him with her foot and he promptly trapped both her ankles between his knees and continued his assault on her. "Mom? I'm kind of in the middle of something right now. I'll--I'll call you later, ok?" she gasped as he began sucking on each of her toes in turn. Scully threw the phone on the floor after hanging up. "You are such a shit!" she stated, trying to look menacing and failing miserably. "I just didn't want to break the mood, Scully," he insisted with a mischievous grin. With a growl Scully launched herself at him and he found himself on his back, lying sideways across her bed. "Oof!" he grunted as she landed on his stomach, her hands on either side of his head, her face almost in his with her hair hanging down and tickling his nose. "Are you trying to hurt me, Scully?" "I should hurt you after a trick like that, but I there are other things I'd rather do to you, Agent Mulder." Lowering herself onto him, Scully proceeded to demonstrate just what other things she had in mind. When Scully emerged from the shower an hour later, it was to find Mulder taking the pizza out of the oven where he had been warming it up. He had set the table with plates and glasses and was about to put the pizza down on the table when her voice stopped him. "Mulder, don't wear that shirt!" It came out sharper than she intended, and she saw from his surprised look that it had sounded as strange to him as it had to her. "But Scully, it's the only clean one I have," he insisted, setting the warm pizza down and turning to stare at her. "What's wrong with it?" Her face softened into a smile which quickly faded as she explained, "I'm sorry, Mulder, it's just...that's the shirt you're wearing in--in my dream." He looked down at himself for a second, then at her worried expression. "You think if I wear this shirt something bad will happen to me?" he queried. She shook her head slightly, as if to clear the image from it. "Look, just humor me, ok? Please? How many times have I gone along with some weird idea of yours just to keep you happy?" She knew Mulder would do as she asked. She also believed it was a foolish, silly thing to request but she couldn't shake the image of him wearing that particular shirt, a small bloodstain on the left shoulder, screaming in pain and fear as the fire crept closer and closer to him. "Ha! Never that I can recall, Scully!" his voice came back to her as he headed down the hall to the spare bedroom. He returned a minute later wearing the t-shirt he'd changed into the night before when she had brought him home. "I'm going to have to get some clean clothes from my apartment," he stated. "I only have what was in my carry-on bag when we got home, and they're all dirty except for that forbidden shirt. Maybe I'll run over there after we eat." "We'll run over there," she corrected firmly. "I told you, I'm not letting you go anywhere alone until this person is caught." "We'll go," he conceded, sitting down to his meal. ***** Mulder stared around his apartment, more stunned than the last time he had been here. His eyes were wide and shell-shocked, his brain unable to assimilate the sight it was being required to process. He gazed at his living room, into his kitchen, and around the corner where his bedroom lay, almost afraid to take another step into his home. The last time he had seen it, just twenty-four hours earlier, it had been in immaculate condition. Now it was destroyed. Destroyed was really to mild a term to describe the total devastation that lay before him, he thought. Perhaps annihilation was more appropriate. Apparently his guardian angel from hell had returned, only this time she was pissed off. Royally. His computer was on the floor, the monitor screen shattered, the keyboard crushed as if by a person bent on grinding each individual key into the floor with her foot. All of his books and papers were scattered everywhere, their pages torn and wet from the water that had spilled over them when the fish tank had been smashed. He allowed himself a moment of relief at the fact that the tank had been currently empty of fish. Mulder saw with dismay that his collection of UFO photographs and abduction stories had been, literally, shredded. Every picture had been taken from the walls, the glass broken and the print ripped into small pieces. Odds and ends were thrown helter-skelter about the living room, but the most heartbreaking sight was his wonderful, comfortable, much-loved couch. Its cushions and back had been slashed beyond repair, the stuffing ripped from it and flung about the room, as was his easy chair. He turned to enter the kitchen and stopped, his face white. Every item of food in his kitchen was either on the floor, walls or ceiling. Cupboard doors stood open, evidence that there was nothing edible left on their shelves. Open boxes of cereal, rice and other assorted food products lay on the floor, their contents spilled out and mixed together in a giant mess. What appeared to be every breakable dish he owned was now smashed on the floor. Making his way carefully through the shards of ruined crockery Mulder crossed the room and opened the refrigerator. It was empty. Crushed fruit and vegetables decorated the walls, as if someone had violently thrown them there in an incredible fit of temper. The floor in front of the refrigerator was sticky with partially dried juice, and an entire six-pack of beer had been shaken up and then opened, spraying every bit of his kitchen with the foamy brew. The smell almost made him gag. "Mulder, I think you'd better take a look at this," Scully's voice called from behind him, and he turned away from the destruction that had once been his kitchen, grateful not to have to look at it any longer. He entered the bedroom and stopped cold. The first thing to catch his eye was the bed. The mattress was in the same condition as his beloved couch, leaving him now with no place to sleep at all. Tufts of its cottony stuffing littered the entire room. Pictures on the walls had met the same fate as those in the living room, and Mulder closed his eyes and swallowed hard when he realized what had become of his vintage, collector's edition 'Invaders from Mars' movie poster. The closet door stood open, as did the dresser drawers, and it soon became apparent to him that he was going to have to go shopping. Soon. Every article of clothing in his bedroom had been cut into small pieces and the fragments of what had once been expensive suits and comfortable sweats and jeans were all tossed in a pile on what remained of his bed, a shiny pair of scissors stuck blade-first into them. He now owned the clothes on his back and the ones at Scully's place, in addition to a colorful jumble of fabric remnants. With a small sigh Mulder forced himself to enter the bathroom, knowing already what he would find. Sure enough, shaving cream, shampoo and toothpaste swirled together on the floor, leaving odd designs as they ran from the center of the puddle, dispersed by the water from the overflowing toilet. The shower curtain was ripped from its hooks and the mirror over the sink was smashed. His towels had met the same fate as his clothing, except for the one that was used to stop up the toilet. Mulder was in a daze, his body numbed by shock at the magnitude of the destruction. He stared at the wall of the shower, where shaving cream letters spelled out the words 'I HAtE yoU!' He felt rather than heard Scully approach him from behind and put her small hands on his shoulders. He didn't move at first, so she forced him to turn around and face her; his stunned expression made her want to cry. "Mulder, it's just stuff. It's all replaceable. Even your precious couch." He gave a tiny smile at that. "I'm just thankful you weren't here when this happened. I'd hate to have found pieces of you flung every which way about your apartment," she joked, trying to take that awful look out of his eyes. "Scully, why?" he whispered. "How can this person go, in the space of just a few days, from leaving me gifts and wanting to protect me to...to this?" he asked, his arm sweeping to take in the entire apartment. "I told you, Mulder, there's no rational thought involved." Scully gave a slight tug on his arm and he allowed her to pull him from the bathroom, giving one last look at the message on the wall (I HAtE yoU!). They made their way carefully toward the front door. There was not one item in the apartment worthy of salvage. "Looks like you'll be staying with me longer than originally planned," she said gently, reaching up to kiss the side of his mouth sympathetically. She didn't want Mulder to know how much this event had shaken her. Even though Scully had known the mentality of stalkers on some level, seeing the havoc in Mulder's apartment really brought home the fact that the person they were dealing with was truly deranged. She allowed a small shudder to shake her body as her mind touched on what might have happened had her partner been at home when his own personal demon came calling. Quickly she shoved the thought away. No sense in dwelling on that, she told herself. "But why?" he persisted. "What do you suppose set her off? What was the catalyst that made this happen?" "It could be anything at all or nothing at all, Mulder," Scully said impatiently. "Maybe she's just decided the time has come for you to fall at her feet and worship her and you're not complying. Maybe she wrote you a letter that she never sent you and she's upset that you haven't answered it. You're still looking for rational explanations. I never thought I'd have to tell you not to do that!" "Or maybe," he continued, turning to her as they entered the elevator, "she saw us--together." "How could she have?" Scully demanded. "I don't know, Scully, maybe she uses binoculars, maybe she had a clear view through your window last night--or perhaps she saw us outside your apartment this morning." He looked thoughtful. "We know she's been following me, so it makes perfect sense. She must have hidden outside your building and either seen us together last night or when I kissed you this morning. That would be enough to make her turn on me, wouldn't it?" "Absolutely, Mulder, more than enough." "That means you're her next likely target," he said grimly. "I could be," she agreed as they climbed into his car, each peering carefully around them and seeing nothing unusual. "But she could just as easily decide that you need to be punished." "Do you think she'd try to harm me?" he asked, phrasing the question delicately. "Yes. I think she would. But not right away. I think she'd want to keep you around for a little while first, see if she could bring you around to her way of thinking." He gave her a sidelong look. "Does that mean that if this woman somehow does manage to get her hands on me, I should pretend to be attracted to her?" Scully grimaced at the idea, but had to concede, "I think that might be your best chance of staying alive in a situation like that, Mulder. Although I'd really prefer it didn't come to that." He reached over and took her hand. "It won't come to that, Scully. We won't let it." ***** Scully's nightmare that night was the worst ever. She could clearly see the fear on Mulder's face as a shadowy figure leaned over him. She could even hear his voice saying, "No! Leave her alone!". She knew, even in her dream, that Mulder was talking about her, that the shadow had threatened her in some way, and with no regard for the fact that he was at the mercy of a madwoman himself he was demanding her own safety. Then the shadow left and Mulder's look of terror grew until he began screaming her name, jerking frantically to free himself from the massive iron ring in the wall that he was chained to. He struggled to rise to his feet and she could see the iron manacles that held his wrists imprisoned behind his back cutting into his flesh, trickles of blood running down his fingers and dripping to the floor. Wisps of smoke were visible in the air and Scully knew the fire was creeping closer to the room where Mulder was being held captive. This time when she screamed herself awake Mulder was already there, sitting beside her in her bed, arms wrapped around her comfortingly. "I thought I'd never get you to wake up!" he said, relieved that she was finally released from the horror of the nightmare. He had been holding her and trying to rouse her from the dream for several minutes, growing more alarmed with each second that passed; Scully had been more than dreaming--she had been in an almost trance-like state. "Mulder, we absolutely cannot let that woman get her hands on you," Scully told him urgently, wrapping her arms around him and pulling the warmth of him closer to her. He allowed her to burrow into his embrace and tightened his hold on her. "Of course not, Scully," he told her, kissing her hair. "I'll be fine." "No, you don't understand. She's planning to set the house on fire and leave you there, trapped in that attic to burn to death--" She stopped suddenly and stared straight ahead for a moment, just as she had before, then raised her eyes to his. "She threatened me in this one," she declared. "You were telling her to leave me alone, and then she was gone and you were screaming and the house was filling with smoke and flames--" "Please stop, Scully," he interrupted, "or you're going to give *me* nightmares." The images she was painting in his mind were almost too real, and he shook his head slightly as if to dispel them. "Sorry," she murmured into his shoulder, trying to snuggle even closer to him. Somehow she felt he was safer if he was pressed close to her. Mulder held her and rubbed her back and arms soothingly until the tension drained from her body and she slept again. He lay awake for a long time, just holding her, wondering if the dreams were truly prophetic, and, if so, how they could avoid the prophecy. ***** He took the first shower in the morning. Since it was a Saturday, and Scully had been sleeping so badly, he wanted to let her catch as much rest as she would. She had been dozing peacefully, her red hair splayed out across the pillow, when he entered the bathroom and she had not moved an inch by the time he emerged. He was already dressed in his jeans when she awoke to find his wonderfully shirtless body leaning over her. "Time to wake up, sleepyhead," he grinned. "We have to buy me some new clothes today. I'm down to wearing the forbidden shirt, everything else is just too rank to inflict on the general public." Scully yawned and stretched, looking so feline that Mulder had to suppress ten different urges to crawl into that bed with her and make her purr. They had done plenty of that the night before, and he really wanted to get started on this shopping excursion from hell. Also, he hoped to be able to locate someone brave enough to tackle the destruction in his apartment. He had already decided he would pay any amount necessary as long as he didn't have to face it himself. "...shower..." he heard her mumble as she started for the bathroom. Mulder smiled and went back to the spare room to finish dressing. When he had donned The Shirt as well as his shoes and socks, he started for the kitchen to make Scully some coffee. He didn't know what she would do without that particular substance, but he shuddered to think of a morning-Scully sans caffeine. He was standing at the sink, filling the coffee pot with water, when a voice behind him ordered, "Don't move." Mulder stared straight ahead, feeling the press of cold metal against his neck. He could feel her breath on his skin, could even smell a faint hint of cologne and with a start realized it was men's cologne--the same scent he always wore. Mulder closed his eyes for a second and prayed this was not happening, that Scully would magically emerge from the bathroom with her service weapon at the ready, but he knew it wasn't to be. Why is it nobody ever steps in at the last second to rescue the good guys in real life? he asked himself silently. //What's your theory, Spooky?// "Turn toward the door and walk," the woman commanded. "If you try anything at all I'll shoot you and then I'll shoot Dana. Don't think I won't do it." He hesitated for less than a second. Only the thought of Scully's body lying on the floor, bleeding life away, propelled him toward the front door. He had never felt so helpless in his life, having a pretty good idea what was in store for him if his kidnapper managed to escape with him. He glanced down at the Forbidden Shirt in which he was clad and thought suddenly that Scully's dreams had been prophetic. He quelled the realization that, to his knowledge, Scully hadn't dreamed his escape or rescue. That didn't mean anything. Nothing at all. It could still happen. He considered making a sudden move to throw her off balance, willing to risk injury to avoid the horrific death Scully had foreseen in her dreams. Maybe he could take her by surprise and manage to subdue her, thereby saving himself and Scully from whatever awful plans this psychotic might have for them. As if reading his mind, the woman made another small movement and he felt the pin-prick of a knife at the small of his back. "I can arrange it so that it takes Dana a very long time to die, Fox. I might even make her watch me kill you," she whispered, and at that moment he gave up all hope of escape. He might risk his own life, but he would never, never risk Scully's. Whoever she was, this female obviously knew it. "Into your car," she said when they were outside, nudging him down the sidewalk, and he darted his gaze around the area frantically, hoping to catch the eye of someone who might at least be a witness to his abduction. The street was deserted. It was still early on a Saturday morning and most people were apparently sleeping in. Mulder wanted to laugh at the absurdity of the situation. She had put the knife away but here he was in broad daylight, being marched to his car at gunpoint, his abductor making no attempt whatsoever to conceal her weapon, and there was nobody around to see it happening. Nobody to help out the good guys. //So what's your theory?// He climbed into the backseat of his own car as she ordered, and she quickly bound his wrists and ankles with ropes that she pulled from the deep pockets of her coat, fastening him securely to the metal where the front seats attached to the floor so that he was unable to raise his body enough to see or be seen out the window. She then stuffed a piece of cloth in his mouth and tied it firmly around his head, killing any hope he might have had of talking her out of this course of action during their journey. Journey to where? he wondered frantically. Scully had never been able to come up with anything more conclusive than 'Briarwood Street' from her dreams, and his perusal of local maps had been in vain. As far as he could tell, there was no Briarwood Street in the D.C. area. The woman's last step before climbing behind the wheel was to pull a quilt from the trunk of his car (Where the hell did that come from? She must have stashed it there!) and toss it over him, covering him entirely from view. As Mulder felt the car pull away from the curb he began to thrash his body around as much as he could with the limited movement the backseat area allowed. He had maintained a dim hope that he could attract someone's attention, but all he heard was her voice telling him pleasantly, "I can drug you if necessary, Fox. I hope it won't come to that." Drugs! Shit, no! Taking a deep breath--as deep as he could take around the cloth in his mouth--he forced himself to calm down. He would have a better chance of escape if he worked on the ropes binding his wrists than by antagonizing her into knocking him out, he decided, and resolutely set to work trying to free himself. He had made very little progress when, some time later, he felt the car slow and eventually stop. The quilt was jerked off him and he strained to look around as he heard her voice say brightly, "We're home!" ********** Chapter 4 ********** Scully emerged from the shower longing for the smell of hot coffee, but there was nothing. She poked her head out the bathroom door and called, "Mulder?" Silence was her only answer. Exasperated and concerned that he may have done something stupid--she didn't even want him stepping outside for the newspaper--Scully pulled her robe from the back of the bathroom door and slipped it on as she walked into the living room, calling his name again. When she didn't find him there either she opened the front door, hoping to find him just outside, and felt panic rise in her when she noticed his car was missing. "All right, Dana," she told herself aloud. "I'm sure he has a perfectly reasonable explanation for going off by himself, and when he gets back he'll give it to you, and then you can kill him." As she spoke, trying to calm herself, she padded on bare feet into the spare bedroom, hoping against hope to find Mulder crashed on the bed there. Instead she saw his gun, wallet and keys lying on the nightstand. Keys. His keys. She struggled to wrap her still-fuzzy mind around that fact, and then her eyes widened in terror as she made the connection. The woman had stolen his keys, had copies made. She had a key to his car. If his keyring was still here and his car was missing, that must mean... "Oh, no, Mulder!" she moaned, tearing to the bedroom to throw on some clothes. While she buttoned her shirt with one hand Scully pressed number 2 on her telephone speed dial, again hoping that it was all a misunderstanding and that he would answer his cell phone, safe and sound. She threw the handset across the room and almost screamed in vexation when she heard the ringing of his phone coming from his suit jacket which was thrown over the chair next to her bed. How could she have been so stupid! she berated herself. Mulder had warned her that the woman had a key to her apartment as well as his own and she hadn't listened. They should have changed the lock on her front door as soon as she had brought Mulder home. She should have refused to let him out of her sight for even a moment. She should have-- Well, none of that would help Mulder now, she told herself angrily. The only thing to do was find him. By any means necessary. She carefully and quickly searched her apartment for any clue as to where he might have gone or in what condition he might have left, but found nothing. Outside was the same story. Reluctantly she dialed Skinner's home number from her cell phone as, with a huge sigh of frustration, Scully began doing the only thing she could think of at the time. She began going door-to-door, questioning all her neighbors, grabbing at the slim possibility that one of them just might have seen something that would aid in her search. Or at least give her a place to start. ***** His captor opened the car door and untied his feet but, after releasing his wrists from the metal of the carseat, bound them behind his back. She took him by the arm and gently guided him out of the car, even shielding his head with her hand so he wouldn't bump it on the doorframe. Mulder thought she was taking an awful lot of care considering what she was probably planning to do with him. When he was standing, frantically looking around trying to get his bearings, hoping desperately to see someone who might be able to help him, she again jammed the pistol into the back of his neck and told him to go inside the house. He hesitated once again until she pressed the steel gun barrel into the soft skin beneath his ear and hissed, "Get moving!" Mulder thought seriously about trying to run, risking injury from a gunshot, but fear for Scully's safety once again prevented him from taking the chance. If she managed to hurt him badly, or even worse, kill him, Scully would be left defenseless and unsuspecting. If missing his chance of escape from this madwoman assured him that Scully would be kept out of danger then it was worth the sacrifice. Mulder wasn't at all surprised to see a house exactly like the one Scully had described from her dream. For a moment he wished she was there so he could point out the validity of psychic dreams to her and watch her face as she tried to come up with a rational explanation, but shook off that thought immediately. He didn't want Scully here. He wanted her safe. He looked up at the house as they approached it; it was two stories--two and a half actually, if you counted the attic. He already knew that he would be taken to the attic, if not right away then eventually. And there would be an iron ring mounted to the wall. And he just might die there. He paused at the door while she reached around with her key to unlock it, never taking her eyes off him. The woman swung the door inward and motioned him inside. For a moment he was almost unable to force himself to take that step over the threshold into what would almost certainly become an inferno sometime in the near future. Again, the feel of her gun pressing harder into his flesh gave him the necessary impetus, and a moment later he was inside a dimly lit hallway, blinking his eyes to help them become accustomed to the lack of sunlight. He barely had time to notice that the house was sparsely furnished and smelled of mildew and dust before she began forcing him up the stairs, past the second floor landing to a smaller staircase down the hall. Attic steps. With an inaudible sigh, Mulder made himself climb them. It was difficult, but the alternative was something that didn't bear thinking of. He could almost accept the idea of his own death at this point--certainly dying from a bullet wound to the head was preferable to slowly choking or burning to death in this house--but once again the thought that Scully would be vulnerable to this madwoman made him cling to whatever chance of survival he had left. When they reached the attic, Mulder glanced around quickly. Sure enough, there embedded in the wall to his right was Scully's iron ring, just as she had described it. Other than a few boxes stacked in one corner the attic was completely bare, and the dust made him feel like sneezing. He was in the process of turning to face the woman when he saw a quick movement out of the corner of his eye, felt an incredible pain in the side of his head and the world went black. ***** Scully sat in Skinner's living room, having just related the events (well, most of them, she thought) of the past few days to the Assistant Director. He had listened silently to her story and then sat, thinking for a moment. She had begun to think he wasn't even going to speak, that perhaps he didn't believe her, when he reached for the telephone. Within a quarter of an hour he had summoned a team of hand-picked agents and told them to meet him and Scully at F.B.I. headquarters immediately. Only then did he speak to her. "We'll find him, Scully," was all he said. An hour later the entire team assembled in Skinner's conference room and he had Scully tell them the entire story. To her relief, there were no comments about "Spooky" Mulder running off to chase little green men. On the contrary, Skinner had picked the most compassionate agents, those who also had a reputation for attention to detail; agents he knew would take this situation seriously for what it was--the kidnapping of one of their own. "I know it's strange," Scully told the men in front of her after she had explained the dreams as well as the events of the past week, "but I think we need to concentrate on finding this Briarwood Street. I have no idea what city or state it's located in, but I just feel certain that's where this woman has taken Agent Mulder. I know you don't understand it--nobody knows better than I do how odd this is, but so far it's the only thing we have to go on." The agents were assigned in pairs by the A.D. and left to carry out their respective orders. Scully went to the basement office--she wanted to take another look at the maps Mulder had been checking. She hoped that by starting with the D. C. area and searching in ever-widening circles she would be able to locate the mysterious Briarwood Street where she was certain Mulder was being held prisoner. She stopped at the coke machine to stock up on caffeine and shook her head sadly when her fingers automatically strayed to the button that would dispense the iced tea Mulder often drank. Bowing her head, Scully offered up a quick prayer that, wherever he was, he was unharmed. Five hours later she lay her head down on Mulder's desk and let the tears of exhaustion and despair flow. She had city and town maps from four different states and had been going over them meticulously for hours. She had made telephone calls, most of which were unfruitful because it was a Saturday afternoon and everyone else was at home enjoying time with their loved ones. It only made her more determined to bring Mulder safely home, but as the hours passed she had grown more and more discouraged. She prayed again that the woman hadn't hurt him. Yet. ***** He awoke, a mild throbbing in his head, to find her bending over him with a tray of food in her hands. Mulder blinked several times, wincing as a trickle of blood made its way into one eye. She took the napkin from the tray and gently wiped it off, smiling as she did so. His mouth felt dry and he realized suddenly that the gag was missing. He took quick stock of his situation. Not much to take stock of, actually; it was exactly as Scully had said it would be. Exactly. Down to the last detail, as far as he could tell. Even the blood on his forehead was accurate, and now he knew of the injury that had caused it. Apparently his kidnapper felt she had to knock him out cold in order to fasten him to the iron ring in the wall. Carefully he moved his hands and could feel the ring as well as the manacles binding his wrists. No ordinary handcuffs here, these were some serious bonds. He wondered briefly how she had come into possession of such a thing, but there was another question even more uppermost in his mind right now. "Who are you?" he rasped. She gazed at him sympathetically, as if to convey that she was terribly sorry for causing him any discomfort but was convinced it had all been in his best interest. The look chilled Mulder. Her words chilled him even more. "My name is Nancy, Fox," she told him. " I'm going to kill you." She stated it matter-of-factly, as if saying 'I'm going to prepare a meal.' Mulder felt a knot of panic in his stomach. Not yet, he told himself. It's not time to lose your head, not yet. After all, he had known this, hadn't he? It was no news to him that his death was the end of the road, but the real question was how painful would the journey be and how long would it take to reach that destination. Somehow he felt the answers were not forthcoming. His stomach rumbled loudly as he tried to decide the most constructive thing to say--the thing that would not cause her to decide hurting him now was a good idea. "Why? Why would you want to kill me?" he asked her gently, eyeing the contents of the tray as he realized how hungry he was. There was a bowl of vegetable soup, crackers, and a banana. He felt a vague hope that she would unlock the manacles in order to allow him to eat, but it was dashed when she picked up the spoon and held it, full of soup, to his lips. He opened his mouth and allowed her to feed him the soup, swallowing it gratefully. He really was starving. "You were unfaithful," she chided, wiping a dribble of juice from his chin with the bloody napkin. "The penalty for adultery is death." The penalty for...? The chill he had felt at her earlier statement was nothing to the shivers he was attempting to suppress now. Scully had been right, this woman was beyond reason. "Adultery?" he managed to ask, eagerly accepting another spoonful of the soup. It was delicious and he hadn't eaten in what he estimated to be at least eighteen hours. "You were unfaithful," she repeated childishly, obstinately. "Who was I unfaithful to, Nancy?" he pressed. "I couldn't have committed adultery. I'm not even married." He was walking a tightrope, not wanting to feed her delusion but reluctant to risk angering her while he was helpless. When she stared at the bowl, sulkily stirring the spoon around through the vegetables, he decided to push a little harder. "Who was I unfaithful to?" Too hard. "Me!" she screamed, throwing the bowl of soup suddenly across the room. He jumped, surprised at her sudden change, and watched in horror as the bowl hit the wall and shattered, sending shards of glass flying and creating an orange stain speckled with bits of celery and potato on the wall and floor. He remembered suddenly, with a detached clarity, that he had read this in a Stephen King novel once. He certainly hoped she wasn't going to cut off his foot. "You slept with her! With that red headed bitch!" she ranted. Nancy grabbed the front of his shirt and hauled him up nose to nose with her. "I'm going to make you both pay!" she hissed in the most evil voice he had ever heard. Mulder shivered involuntarily at the venom in her words. Desperately he tried to defuse her anger. "I--I'm sorry," he muttered. "I didn't mean to upset you." "Upset me? You didn't mean to upset me?" She released his shirt and sank down on the floor, half crying and half laughing. "How did you think I would feel, Fox, when I saw you kissing her? YOU KISSED HER RIGHT IN FRONT OF ME!" she screamed suddenly, in his face again. She grabbed his hair and forced his head painfully back. He felt a thud as she banged his head against the wall and nausea threatened to overwhelm him. Mulder fought to retain consciousness as she screamed at him, slamming his head against the sheetrock with every few words. "You knew I was (slam) watching and you (slam) FUCKED her and you (slam) KISSED her and you didn't even (slam) care about me!" she yelled. Her fingers were still wound tightly in his hair and he closed his eyes, willing the pain and sickness to subside. In the next instant her mouth was on his, devouring, punishing, brutalizing him. There was no tenderness or affection in her kiss, if it could be called a kiss at all; it was more like a rape of his mouth. It was a mark of pure ownership. As suddenly as it had begun, her tirade ended and she was stroking his hair gently, her face a mask of devotion. Mulder opened one eye and was immensely relieved that she had settled down a bit. "Nancy," he managed through his bruised and swollen lips, after struggling to remember her name. "Please forgive me. I'm sorry for hurting you." It seemed absurd to Mulder to be apologizing to her when his entire head was a mass of agony, but he sensed it was what she wanted to hear. //What's your theory, Spooky?// Maybe if he could convince her he was properly contrite she would let him live long enough for Scully to find him. She had to find him. She was his only hope. "I know you're sorry now, Fox, because you're in trouble," she said tolerantly, much as a parent speaks to a naughty child. "But the fact remains that you were unfaithful. Adultery must be punished by death. Ideally you should be stoned to death, but I don't have the heart to make you suffer that much. Although you will have to suffer, I'm afraid." He opened his mouth to protest and she pressed her fingers to his lips gently. "No, don't speak anymore. It's getting late. You need to sleep now." She rose, taking the tray, ignoring the mess on the floor from the soup bowl she had thrown earlier, and started for the stairs. "Oh, and Fox, there's nobody around nearby to hear you if you feel you must scream for help, but I'd appreciate it if you wouldn't keep me awake all night with it." She smiled at him affectionately and disappeared down the stairs. He heard her footsteps fade away and leaned his head carefully back against the wall, trying to avoid the spot she had injured. He hoped he wouldn't have another concussion. Scully would want him to try and stay awake, just in case. "Shit!" he muttered after Nancy was gone. His head was splitting in agony, he was afraid she might return at any moment and decide to shoot or stab him to death, and he had only had two bites of the soup to eat. She seemed to have forgotten all about feeding him once her fit overtook her. "Scully, you've got to find me, I am in so much trouble!" he whispered to the empty room. His only answer was silence. ***** Scully trudged up the front steps and entered her empty apartment. She hadn't wanted to give up the investigation for something so mundane as sleep, but Skinner had ordered her to go home and get some rest. He assured her a team of agents would be working round the clock to ascertain Mulder's whereabouts, but Scully knew that it was ultimately up to her to find Mulder, no matter what anyone else's intentions might be. She stripped off her clothing as she walked through the apartment, uncaring of where it fell, intent only on getting into a hot bath and relaxing her tired body so that she could get her mind working again. She saw the message light on her answering machine blinking as she passed and quickly backtracked, pushing the button to retrieve her messages, unable to squelch the hope that Mulder may have been able to get to a phone and call her. She slumped as the one and only message replayed itself. Mom wondering what was up, please call. That was it. No Mulder. The loneliness of that phrase hit her as she began to run water in the tub. No Mulder. Her life up until the time she had been paired with him was a hazy memory, a series of unrelated events, almost as if it had been only a prelude to the important phase of life spent with him. Every recollection of Mulder was crystal clear in her mind, treasured moments she stored in her memory, to be replayed whenever she was feeling down. Usually they served to cheer her up but tonight the recollections only made the tears she had so carefully kept under control all day begin to fall against her will. Settling down in the water, as hot as she could stand it, Scully gave her sobs free reign. The sound of the water running would hide them. When the tub was full and she had again managed to subdue the loudest of her cries, she toed the faucets off and lay her head back, closing her eyes. It wasn't long before she was asleep, but she was too tired to dream. She started awake an hour later, disoriented for a moment until she remembered where she was and why. Her face crumpled as she realized that she was facing a long night without Mulder at her side. Funny how quickly she had become dependent upon his presence. They had only spent two nights together but already the apartment felt empty and frightening without him. She climbed out of the tub and threw on some sweats, studiously avoiding looking at the bed. Scully wandered into the kitchen, stared absently into the refrigerator, reached for an apple, put it back. She knew she didn't have the stomach for food right now, no matter how much the rest of her body might require it. Her thoughts strayed to Mulder and she wondered briefly if that woman had given him anything to eat. Furiously she pushed the thought out of her mind. There was no point in dwelling on what might or might not be happening to him. Worrying about him wouldn't help him, a situation like this one required action. She began prowling the apartment like a cat, her eye catching so many things that screamed Mulder to her. His dress shoes on the floor by the couch, an open bag of sunflower seeds on the kitchen counter, his leather jacket hanging by the door. Finally her gaze landed on the clock on her desk. One in the morning. With a resigned sigh, Scully turned to the bedroom. As unappealing as it might seem, she knew she had to get some of the rest Skinner had ordered her to get. If she didn't, she would never be able to function in the morning, and she planned on being in the office very early. Swallowing hard, Scully turned back the sheets and climbed into bed, pulling his pillow close to her. She buried her nose in it, inhaling his scent, and felt the tears welling up in her eyes again. Giving in to them, since nobody was there to see, Scully hugged the pillow tightly and sobbed herself to sleep. It was not a restful sleep--every little while she would awaken, sure she had heard Mulder's step in the other room. She would sit up and turn on the lamp, listening for another sound from him and would finally admit to herself that it had been only wishful thinking. Around four in the morning she drifted into a dreamless state of semi-relaxation, one where her mind drifted in and out of reality but never really settled on sleep. When she next opened her eyes it was ten o'clock. It was the first night in a week that she hadn't had the dream. That fact scared her more than anything. ***** Mulder opened his eyes to the dim light of early morning beginning to make its way into the attic room, illuminating the dancing particles of dust in the air. He groaned aloud as he attempted to stretch his cramped muscles, slowly working the feeling back into his wrists and hands. He was relieved to note that the pain in his head had subsided to a dull ache. Maybe he wouldn't have another concussion after all. His fingers were aching and bloodied from his attempts to loosen the screws that held the iron ring to the wall. It was maddening to be able to feel them but not budge them at all. He had tried, oh how he had tried, all during the long night. He'd broken every nail and was afraid one had ripped completely off, as sore as that particular finger was, all to no avail. The screws had not loosened a fraction of an inch. There would be no escape that way. Looking around, he tried to get an idea of where he might be, but was unable to see much from his position on the floor. All that was framed in the one window the room offered was blue sky and the top of a nearby tree. An occasional bird flew by in his field of vision and he found himself gazing longingly at them; they were free, they could fly away. Mulder knew they had driven for about two hours, because he'd been able to catch a glimpse of her watch when she had unlocked the front door of the house. It was afternoon when they had arrived, it had been early evening when she had brought him the soup, so now it must be Sunday morning, he reasoned. He wondered how Scully was holding up, and how she had managed to get through the night. He had rested his head gingerly against the wall, in between efforts to unscrew those damned screws, and lain awake thinking about her long after Nancy had left him for the evening. How ironic it was that after all their years of friendship they had finally admitted their love for each other only to have it snatched away two days later. In his more desperate nighttime moments he had been convinced he would never see her beautiful face again, and he'd had to fiercely blink back tears on more than one occasion. The pain in his head had been awful, adding to his misery, but it had thankfully lessened while he finally slept, somewhere close to dawn. His sleep had been brief but merciful. He only hoped Nancy didn't plan on inflicting any further injuries on him before Scully came to rescue him. He refused to let himself consider the possibility that she might not arrive in time. He'd been awake for about an hour, shifting uncomfortably from time to time, wondering if he could convince Nancy to release him long enough to use a bathroom, when he heard her footsteps on the stairs. He tensed immediately, expecting the worst but hoping he was wrong. Mulder also sincerely hoped that this time she was bringing him a meal that he would get more than two bites of. His stomach had been complaining nonstop for hours and he was getting tired of listening to it. She was. She had another tray, this one containing eggs, toast, bacon and juice. His mouth watered when he smelled the food. He cringed when he saw what else she was carrying. It was a urinal jug just like the nurses forced him to use every time he was hospitalized. He didn't want to use it, certainly not with her assistance, but with a sigh he realized he really had no choice. She smiled a good morning at him and set the tray down on the floor beside him. His eyes followed it, lustfully regarding the food on the plate. Wordlessly Nancy picked up the urinal and Mulder closed his eyes as she reached for the buttons on his jeans. This was too embarrassing. He felt a blush darken his face as she pulled the fly of his jeans open and reached for him. Her touch, to his relief, was purely clinical. Turning his face away he just completed the horrible task as quickly as possible. He finally opened his eyes when she had his jeans buttoned up again, but refused to look at her. That she should steal his dignity from him like this was really too much to bear. Nancy didn't seem pleased or displeased by his actions; she was simply attending to a necessary function. She held out a piece of toast to him, and he devoured half of it in one bite. Mulder ate ravenously, as quickly as she could get the food into his mouth. He hadn't realized quite how hungry he was until the first delicious bite crossed his tongue, and then he couldn't get enough. He was glad she didn't want to make small talk, because all he wanted was to get the food into himself as quickly as possible before she decided to dispose of it against the ceiling or something. When the plate was empty, she wiped his face with the napkin and put the tray and the filled urinal aside. Only then did she speak. "I don't think I'm quite ready to kill you today," she said conversationally. "I'm really glad to hear that," he replied after a few seconds of forcing his breathing rate to slow. Another day of this torment meant another day of life. Every minute that he could stay alive was one more minute that Scully had to get to him. Nancy reached out a hand and ran her finger along his face, feeling the stubble there. "I like you with this unshaven look," she announced. "I was going to shave you, but I think I'll leave you this way. It's quite sexy." Since Mulder didn't want her getting anywhere near him with anything as sharp as a razor, he simply nodded acceptance. He wasn't exactly comfortable with the idea of her finding him sexy, but no comment seemed called for. Instead, he thought he would begin trying to draw her out. If he could make her see him as a real person, perhaps, just maybe, he could begin to reason with her somewhat. "Do you think I could ask you a question?" he queried softly, hesitantly. She looked uncertain for a minute, then her face brightened. "You can ask, but I don't think you want to make me angry again," she said easily, gesturing with a jerk of her head at the stain on the wall and floor from last night. He shook his head with a slight smile gracing his lips. "I don't want to make you angry, I would just really like to know something. Just to satisfy my curiosity." He kept his voice low and soothing, not wanting to risk sending her into a frenzy again. The last thing he needed was to awaken her rage while he sat here at her mercy. "What would you like to know, Fox?" she asked, brushing back the hair that had fallen in his face. He locked his eyes with hers. "Why did you kill those people?" She looked startled at his question for a moment, and then her face flushed. For a moment he winced inwardly, the thought 'I'm fucked!' crossing his mind, but a moment later she cast her eyes downward, and Mulder thought in a flash of realization that she looked embarrassed. Not remorseful, not even angry--just embarrassed. She was actually proud that he had noticed her...accomplishment. Her gift to him. Like a small child accepting praise for a job well done. "I wasn't sure you knew about that," she commented shyly, the blush tinging her cheeks a light pink. "Well I didn't at first, but eventually I figured it out," he said carefully. He was sailing in unfamiliar waters here, uncertain how to tread the fine line between giving her false hope and pissing her off. False hope, he decided, was much better for his well-being. Who cared what she thought of him if only Scully would arrive soon? Her face looked as if the sun had burst upon it suddenly. "I knew you would!" she told him joyfully. "You're such a brilliant man, I knew you would realize how much I had done for you, how much you owed me." Thunderclouds appeared then, instantly blocking out the sunshine on her face. It turned from a somewhat pretty countenance to one that was twisted and mottled with rage. Mulder marveled at the rapidity of the transformation. "But you went and slept with her anyway," she said angrily. "After all the sacrifices I made for you, you betrayed me!" Mulder was shocked and frightened at how quickly her moods could change. He'd seen people like this before, but he had always been the doctor, the counselor, the one in authority; never had he been helpless in the presence of such psychosis. There was no way to predict from one minute to the next--hell, from one second to the next--what she would be like. "I didn't realize it at first, Nancy--how much you had done for me. Please forgive me." As he spoke the words he realized they were just what she wanted to hear. They were bitter in his mouth, hard to spit out even though he knew they may be a key to his freedom. Not that those words alone would persuade her to release him, certainly, but those words coupled with whatever actions may be required... It may be too little too late, but she wanted him to beg her forgiveness for his "unfaithfulness". She smiled again, a sad smile this time. "It's all right, Fox. I understand--she tempted you and you were weak. Such as it was in the Garden, such as it is today." Her voice took on a weird, sing-song quality. "The woman is the temptress, and she must die, but she will go quickly. You, I'm afraid, must suffer more. In suffering you will be purified, you see. And he who is purified will reach eternal salvation. She will die for her sin, but for her there is only darkness." He shook his head, desperately willing her to listen to him. "Nancy, please, punish me if you have to, but leave her out of this." He gave her a searching look. "This is between the two of us, isn't it? We're the ones who were meant to be together. I just...didn't see that before. You have to give me another chance." "No. It's too late. The time for it is past." She cupped his chin in her hand gently, the smile never leaving her face, her eyes filling with sorrowful tears as she answered his question of many minutes ago. "I did it because they were mean to you, Fox. They deserved to die." ***** Scully sat dejectedly at the desk in the basement office. She was still searching maps, but in her heart she knew it was fruitless. Unless she had more to go on than the image of a house and the name of a street she would never find Mulder. And she just had to find him before that crazy woman hurt him. The images from her dreams tried desperately to replay themselves in her mind and she kept forcefully pushing them away. Nothing would be served if she let herself get upset by them now. She needed to take the bits of what might be useful information from them and shove the rest aside for now. She would dwell on them later, though, she knew, torment herself with them when she was alone and the tears could fall unheeded. Where no one could see. She had been at this for hours and was still no closer to finding a clue than when she had started. Scully lay her head on her arms, unbelievably weary. It had been a very long couple of weeks, what with the case they had finished in Idaho, then trekking all over the country chasing down nonexistent clues about Aspen, and now this situation. She felt as if she hadn't slept a full night in months. Her tossing and turning of the night before had done nothing to alleviate her exhaustion and she knew she was slowing down, becoming less effective every minute. Still she kept plodding onward, knowing that if she gave up Mulder would surely die. Scully wanted to scream in frustration at the feeling that she wasn't accomplishing anything. Sitting around this office poring over map after map hadn't brought her one inch closer to Mulder, and she ached with the need to be out doing something. Mindless activity wouldn't locate him either, though, and that knowledge was what kept her where she was, pursuing the only slim lead she had. At nine o'clock Skinner poked his head around the door of the office to gently break the news to her that the search teams had had no luck, either. He took in her haggard appearance and knew that his order of the night before for her to get some rest had not really been obeyed. Knowing Scully, though, she had at least tried. Mulder wouldn't have even--Skinner pushed thoughts of Mulder away. He didn't want to think about Mulder right now. The man was his friend and the knowledge that he was in danger was too personal. There was no room for emotion right now. Skinner knew that in order to head up this investigation he had to keep his own feelings in check. The time to give in to them would come later. When Mulder was safe. "Scully..." he began. "I know, Sir," she sighed, pushing away from the desk. "Get some rest." "We'll find him, Scully," he said gently as she brushed past him. It seemed to be all he could think of to say to her these days, constant, empty reassurances that they would locate her partner. Skinner had no doubt that those reassurances were accurate--sooner or later they would find him. Whether or not they found him alive depended upon their speed. She just nodded, not trusting herself to speak. There was no way in hell Scully was going to let herself break down in front of the boss. No way in hell. At home she again tried to find something appetizing to eat and again gave up when her stomach began to do flip-flops. She wandered the apartment some more, desperately trying to recall any vague memory of a Briarwood Street that she and Mulder may have seen on one of their investigations, but she knew they hadn't. Mulder would have remembered. With his photographic memory he would have been able to recall it immediately, she thought, and the vision of Mulder standing in front of her busily calling up stored memories as easily as one accessed a computer disk almost made her break down and cry again. Stop! she told herself angrily. You can't do Mulder any good if you keep crying, you have to THINK! Eventually her wanderings led her into the bathroom. She gazed around the pink and cream decorated room, not really seeing the walls and floor and vanity. Her eyes strayed to the shower and she turned away, fighting back memories. Next her gaze fell on the small closet where she kept extra towels and rolls of toilet paper and bottles of shampoo and any other thing that seemed to belong in the bathroom but didn't really have a defined place. Unthinking, Scully absently pulled opened the door. Her eye was caught by a pill bottle shoved back behind the extra tubes of toothpaste, (for Scully believed in always being prepared, stocking up) and she reached for it, curious. Dalmane. Sleeping pills. Left over from the time right after her abduction when she had been having trouble getting any rest due to the nightmares she'd had--she shuddered, remembering them. They had been unreal, hideous, and somehow she could never remember them the next day, just the creepy feeling they left her with. She hadn't taken very many of the Dalmane tablets because they had made her sleep too soundly--it's harder to escape a nightmare when you're drugged, she had found--and she had just never gotten around to throwing them out. Eventually the dreams had gone away on their own. Scully picked up the small bottle and fingered it thoughtfully. The pills were horribly out of date and had probably lost their potency by now, but still-- She saw the idea coming from a mile away and her thinking side, Practical-Scully, tried to stop it but wasn't able to deter Emotional-Scully, the one who would do anything under the sun to save Mulder. So far, Emotional-Scully reminded her, everything she knew about Mulder's disappearance had come from her dreams. The dream had not come to her last night, but she had been so upset that she had never fallen into a deep, dreaming sleep at all. Maybe...just maybe this could work. She needed to sleep anyway, and the worst thing that could happen if she took one was...nothing. That it would be so old it would have no effect on her at all. Practical-Scully countered with all the reasons why one should never take out-of-date medications, reasons she had given to people many times herself. Then Desperate-Scully got into the fray, and reminding the other two bickering Scullys that Mulder was going to die soon if she didn't do something, took over. It was Desperate-Scully who opened the bottle, shaking out one of the pills into her hand, and Scully would tell herself that later--that it was desperation and nothing more that made her finally decide to try this offbeat experiment. How's this for a new investigative technique, Skinner? When searching for clues, GO TO SLEEP! She allowed herself one more second of hesitation, then decisively threw the pill to the back of her throat, dry-swallowing it. Too late now, she thought grimly, crossing her fingers and praying that this extreme measure would work. Twenty minutes later Scully had no doubts whatever about the effectiveness of the medication. She realized suddenly, while sitting blankly in front of the television, that she was so woozy she could barely hold her head up. Taking the pill on an empty stomach had only increased its potency, apparently, and Scully stood up carefully, holding on to furniture, praying she would make it to the bed. She did arrive there safely, eventually, and crawled under the covers still wearing the comfortable clothes she had changed into after arriving home. Scully again pulled Mulder's pillow to her, the scent of his hair and skin comforting to her, and closed her eyes, beseeching God to let her please, please have another nightmare with even more terrifying detail than the previous one. ***** Mulder had been dozing against the wall again, and he jerked awake when he heard Nancy's feet treading up the stairs. She was empty handed this time, he saw, and he ignored the twisting feeling in his stomach. He hadn't had anything to eat since breakfast this morning, because Nancy had decided that as part of his 'purification' he needed to suffer the pangs of hunger. //Fasting is good for the soul, Fox.// He figured by now his soul must be almost perfected, because his stomach had settled on a steady sharp ache whenever he allowed his mind to wander toward food, which was often. It was funny, he thought. He often went for hours on end without eating when he was involved in a case, and in times of intense stress (and what was more intensely stressful than being abducted by a madwoman who had promised to kill you soon?) Mulder had always been one to lose his appetite. By all rights he should be thoroughly uninterested in food at this moment anyway. But let the food be denied him, rather than voluntarily ignored, and it became all his body craved. His mouth watered as he recalled the last meal she had fed him, and for a moment he thought he smelled bacon and eggs again, but his rational side told him his nose was playing tricks on him and, as usual, his rational side, when he bothered to access it, was correct. He wondered what she wanted now. She had brought the urinal to him again late that afternoon and Mulder had again turned his face away in shame while he performed the necessary function. When he was finished she had gently re-fastened his jeans and left him alone again, never saying a word during the entire episode. Now she had no reason to come to him--no food, no bodily wastes to dispose of--and he felt a touch of fear. Was this it? Time to pull the plug? Take the plunge? Light the fire? Mulder swallowed hard and made himself sit up straighter. If she was going to kill him now he was going to try and at least go out with an ounce of his dignity intact. Although he didn't really see that it mattered much. If Scully's dreams proved correct there wasn't going to be any dignity or mercy or anything like it for him. There was only going to be fear, pain and death. By fire. God, why did it have to be fire? Nancy crossed to where he sat against the wall and knelt before him. "How are you feeling, Fox?" she asked kindly, stroking the side of his face gently. The absurdity of the question struck him. He marveled at the insanity that could wonder how he was feeling with such apparent compassion, all the while planning a horrible death for him, date and time unknown but still certain. He also wondered, briefly, if she would tell him when he was to die or if she would merely set the fire without his knowledge, making sure that he only found out about it when the flames and smoke began to creep closer and closer to his attic, when the heat and the smell of the smoke were upon him. //What's your theory, Spooky?// Shaking his head angrily, partly at himself and partly at her, he demanded, "How do you think I'm feeling? I'm hungry, I hurt, and I want you to let me go." He jerked at the chains holding him out of frustration, and then winced as the abrasions around his wrists began to ache once more. Bad idea, Mulder. Hope they don't start bleeding again. "I told you why I can't let you have anything else to eat," she explained patiently, as if to a small child. "And the pain won't last much longer." Mulder felt the breath leave his body."How--how much longer?" Did this mean she was going to set the fire? Now? Maybe she had already set it! Was that the smell of---? "Tomorrow, I think," she mused in a faraway voice. "Of course, I'll have to kill the temptress as well." "No, leave Scully alone," he pleaded. "It wasn't her fault. She didn't tempt me. I--I was the one." He cast his eyes downward in an attitude of repentance, hoping she wouldn't decide to end his life then and there at his confession. "I tempted her. She wanted to resist me but I wouldn't let her." He held his breath for a moment, waiting to see what she would do. A few seconds later he heard her soft laughter as her hands continued stroking his face and hair. "So gallant, to try and take the blame for her," Nancy smiled. "But I know the truth, Fox. You can't endure someone else's punishment for them, no matter how noble you are. We all must suffer for our own sins. You are a true gentleman, Fox." "How did you get into my motel room in Dallas?" he asked suddenly, wanting to change the subject before she went into another spell of total insanity. "I never was able to figure that out." Truth of the matter was, it had been driving him crazy. When she revealed her secret to him he wanted to kick himself. Of course, so obvious. Her face clouded as he pulled her from her reverie. She shrugged. "It was a simple matter to steal a key from the housekeeping room and return it later. Nobody even noticed it was missing. And I wanted to leave you my gift." The necktie. "It--it was a very nice gift," he acknowledged, swallowing hard. The back of her hand suddenly smacked him across the face, cutting his lip on his own teeth. Mulder's head rocked back and bumped against the wall again, making him wince as his eyes teared up. It had come out of nowhere. "Don't lie to me," she said in a deadly voice. "No, honest, I loved it!" he forced himself to say, hoping to appease her anger. This time she punched him square in the stomach, driving the air completely from his body. "If you LOVED it so much, why didn't you ever WEAR it?" she screamed, getting right into his face, droplets of spittle from her mouth flicking over him. "You HATED it. Just like you hate ME! Like you've ALWAYS hated me!" He felt her hands gripping his hair again (no!nomorenomore!) and she resumed her attempts to rearrange his brain by slamming it against the wall. Mulder felt bile rise up in his throat from the nausea the pain caused him and he fought valiantly to control it. He knew he had to stop her before he lost consciousness. There was no telling what she would do to him if that happened. She might decide to finish him off. He did not want to be unaware in this woman's presence. He said the first thing that came to mind, struggling to get the words out. "I didn't want to mess it up!" he stammered, confused, between blows. "Please--Nancy--I wanted to keep it nice. I don't hate you! I don't! Honestly, I don't hate you!" He was yelling now, trying to get through to her, and she seemed to lose her rage with the next heartbeat. She kept her hands on either side of his head, but now their touch was gentle. She cocked her head to the side, regarding him carefully, as if wondering whether or not to believe him. "In my line of work," he went on in a calmer voice, hoping to soothe her, "you wouldn't believe how many of my suits get destroyed. I've never owned such a nice tie--I didn't want it to get ruined. I was saving it to wear for a special occasion." Inwardly he winced at his choice of words. Special occasion? Such a common term. He hoped he sounded sincere enough to her. Apparently he did, because she drew back and her assault seemed to be over. For now at least. Smiling tenderly at him, she smoothed the hair down where her fingers had mussed it. He forced himself not to draw back in horror and revulsion when she leaned over to kiss his forehead. Nancy rose to her feet and walked toward the exit. "I'll let you sleep now, Fox. We both have a big day tomorrow," she called over her shoulder as she descended the stairs. Mulder shivered at her words and began again to frantically think of what might be the magic word or phrase to get her to release him. As he thought, he unconsciously began working again at the screws that held the iron ring to the wall, unmindful of the pain and the blood. Oh please, Scully, please hurry! he begged silently. ***** Scully opened her eyes, waking herself with her own cries of helplessness. She had just watched Mulder die. He had not gone easily, either, not been overcome by smoke as she had always been told that most victims of fire were. No, he had died horribly, burning slowly to death, his worst nightmare and hers. Nothing was ever easy with Mulder. The thing that hurt her the most was that through it all, to the end, he had been begging, pleading for her to come and save him. She wiped away the tears that still clung to her face and lay back on the pillow breathing heavily. There was something more. This time there had been another voice, a woman's voice, before his screaming had started. The voice of Mulder's captor. "Here in Centerville," she was saying, "we keep to ourselves." Centerville. Mulder was being held in a town called Centerville. A generic name. There could be a thousand Centervilles near Washington D.C. Somehow she had to find the right one, and soon. She sensed that Mulder didn't have much time left, possibly only a matter of hours. Throwing on clothes and brushing her teeth quickly, not bothering to shower, Scully raced to the office and began frantically pawing through her maps again. Her eye was caught by any similar looking name--she bit her lip in frustration as she rejected Center Point and Centerton and several others. Eventually she found she had three Centervilles to choose from. Maryland, Rhode Island, Delaware. Determined now, Scully reached for the telephone. Twenty minutes later she had her answer--at least part of it. She had made telephone calls to some area Chamber of Commerce offices. Maryland was out. Centerville, Rhode Island and Centerville, Delaware both contained a Briarwood, although the one in Rhode Island was an Avenue, not a Street. She only hesitated a moment, deciding between the two states. It had to be Delaware. The sign she had seen in her dream clearly read Briarwood Street, not Avenue. Grabbing her jacket Scully left the office, telling nobody where she was going. Later she would look back on her actions and berate herself for running off with no backup-- something she was always scolding her partner about--but at the moment her mind was focused only on Mulder and the fact that she had to get to him as quickly as possible. ***** It was morning again. He shifted painfully, trying to ease the ache in his shoulders that came from having his arms restrained behind his back for the last forty-eight hours. Who thought it was a good idea, he wondered idly, to keep prisoners in this condition? Was there a book of 'kidnapper rules' out there somewhere that covered this? Chapter Three--Keeping Your Victim Restrained: Handcuffs or Ropes--Pros and Cons. His arms felt as though they had been wrenched from their sockets no matter what position he gingerly attempted. No relief was in sight, either, because according to Nancy this was the day he was going to die. Him and Scully. He clenched his eyes shut at the thought of his innocent Scully falling victim to this madwoman. I'm sorry, Scully, he thought helplessly. I tried to talk her out of it. I used every psychologist's trick I know, but nothing worked. I tried, Scully. He sat there, awake, for a long time before she came to him, a mass of aches and pains and nervousness. Surely she would appear one last time before she set the fire. If she did, it meant he had one last chance to dazzle her with his brilliant psychotherapeutic bullshit and save Scully, if not himself. If only he could make her see him as the guilty party instead of Scully he might have a chance at saving his partner, but so far Nancy had treated him as Scully's victim. It didn't make any sense to him that the victim had to die a more painful death than the victimizer, but hey, she'd already told him, hadn't she? She was saving him. She was doing him a favor by letting him suffer. Purifying him. Hell, don't want to face death in an impure state, now do we, Mulder? He grinned mirthlessly. //Gotta be squeaky clean to burn to death, now, none of that nasty lustfulness allowed. If you're gonna die, you're gonna do it right, boy! Is that it? What's your theory, Spooky?// Slowly and carefully, wincing as he moved aching muscles, Mulder strained to try and get a look at his watch. He failed. He just couldn't coax that much movement out of his arms or his head at this point. Common sense told him it must be about noon. He hadn't eaten in over twenty-four hours and he was weak with hunger and fear. Mulder wanted to be brave, he really did, and had it been anything but fire he probably could have, but this phobia from his childhood reduced him to a quivering bucket of terror. He tried very hard to maintain his outward composure, though, at least while Nancy was around. He didn't want to give her the satisfaction of seeing him cower. He'd lost everything else; might as well retain a little pride if possible. He heard her step on the stair and turned slowly to face her. She was holding a familiar-looking red plastic jug, the kind sold in every gas station in America. Gas can. Full, from the way she was carrying it. His stomach suddenly felt as though it was filled with lead shot. For a moment he was afraid she was going to pour it on him and set him afire directly, but he breathed a sigh of relief when she put the can down near the attic entrance and approached him empty-handed. "Good morning, Fox," she said pleasantly. He took in her appearance; for the first time since she brought him here she had come to him fully dressed. Usually when she had come up to 'visit' with him she had been barefoot and wearing some type of comfortable, lounging-about clothing. Today she was wearing jeans, a nice blouse, and shoes and socks. Her hair and makeup were neatly fixed. It was apparent that she was prepared to go out. To find Scully, the thought occurred to him, and that idea made him jerk at his bindings again, causing the sores around his wrists to begin bleeding once more. His hands felt nasty from the dried blood and sweat that had accumulated there over the past couple of days. There were dried traces of blood matted in his hair from the pounding she had done on him the night before, as well. He was certain he was a sorry sight. "There's nothing good about it," he growled, struggling uselessly to pull away from the wall. She smiled indulgently as she watched his pathetic attempts at escape. Poor Fox. He simply couldn't give up, wouldn't calmly accept his fate. He just didn't realize that it was better this way, that he would be so much happier when it was all over. She knelt down beside him and took his face in her hands, kissing him gently on his swollen lips. "Don't be afraid, love, it will all be over soon," she whispered. "I'm going to go to the Temptress now and take care of her. When she opens her apartment door this evening she will be blown to bits. Simple. Easy. She won't suffer, I promise you." Her eyes were kind, understanding. Insane. Mulder closed his own eyes and tried to pull away from her grip. He didn't want his last memories to be of this lunatic woman kissing him, touching lips that belonged only to Scully, claiming love that belonged only to Scully. As if reading his thoughts, she nodded understandingly and stood up. "Do you know what this is, Fox?" she asked, holding up a glittering something that could only be the key to his freedom. His eyes grew wide with longing. Had she changed her mind? Was she going to let him go after all? Like a fool, he allowed himself to hope. He wanted to give up and cry at her next words. "I'm going to hang this key right here on this wall where you can look at it," she continued, sliding the key over a convenient nail. "That way you can think about your sin, and what it brought you. Your atonement will have more meaning if you come to a complete realization of your guilt." She walked toward the exit and then turned back to him. "Yell all you want to, Fox, nobody will hear you, and if they do, nobody will come. Here in Centerville, we keep to ourselves. This will be the last time you'll see me. I'm going to set the fire downstairs and then go to take care of her. When I return it will be all over and you'll be happy, you'll see." With that she disappeared down the stairs. "Nancy, wait!" he called desperately, frantically pulling at his chains. "Please, Nancy, don't do this! You don't have to do this! Please, I'll be what you want me to be, I'll do whatever--" He forced himself to get a grip. It was no use. She was gone. Mulder fixed his gaze on the key hanging on the wall. He could have sworn he had read this same scenario in one of Sam's old Nancy Drew mysteries when they were kids. Nancy--he laughed at the irony and then wondered if he were crazy already. In the story Nancy had shown up at the last minute to rescue her father. His Nancy wasn't likely to have a sudden change of heart and come back to release him. Scully was his only hope of rescue, and where was she? He was sure she was looking for him, but-- Mulder decided he would have given his right arm for Aspen's psychokinetic ability right then. ***** Scully had broken every speeding law ever written on her way to Centerville, Delaware. At one point a highway patrolman had flashed his lights at her and she had ignored him. Adrenaline flowing at the prospect of making an exciting arrest in his deserted patrol area, he pulled up beside her, motioning for her to pull over. His eyes had grown wide when he saw the identification badge the red-headed woman in the speeding car held up for him to see, and he had waved her on, slowing down from the eighty-five miles per hour he'd had to maintain to keep up with her. He might be green but he wasn't stupid enough to mess with the F.B.I., not even when she looked like that. Scully pulled into the tiny town of Centerville at a little after noon, noting with relief that it couldn't be too hard to locate Briarwood Street in a town this size. It couldn't possibly have a population of more than six or seven thousand and the downtown area looked like any small, sleepy town one might see on television. This, however, was not Mayberry. Scully spotted two teenage boys standing on a street-corner, boys who obviously should have been in school, and she approached them determinedly. They had given her wolfish grins until she flashed her badge at them, and then had lapsed into attitudes of helpful respect with comical speed. Within minutes she had complete directions to Briarwood Street, and even a confirmation that there were several big, old houses matching the description she gave them out that way. Scully thanked them, favoring them both with a sweet, if insincere smile, and screeched her tires pulling away from the curb. One of the boys whistled admiringly as she flew off. "She sure can drive!" he commented, and his friend nodded agreement, his eyes still on her disappearing vehicle. Less than ten minutes later, Scully found the house. It really wasn't hard to spot. It was the only structure on Briarwood Street that had smoke pouring from the ground floor windows. ***** Mulder tried not to panic. He told himself over and over again that panic would get him nowhere. Sometime before he completely lost his head he reminded himself that not panicking wasn't getting him anywhere either. About ten minutes after Nancy had gone downstairs he had heard her car start, and the diminishing motor sounds as it drove away leaving him here alone. Alone with the fire. Only for a little while he wondered if there really was a fire. He didn't smell anything. He didn't hear anything. If she had a smoke detector in that house it should have been screaming by now. With wishful thinking born of desperation and despair, Mulder had almost managed to convince himself that she had lied to him, that there was no fire at all, she was simply pulling a cruel hoax on him to frighten him. A few minutes after that the first whiff of smoke reached his nose, very faint, and he tried to tell himself he had imagined it. He told himself that right up until the time the first visible tendrils of it began to make their way up past the window. There was definitely smoke coming from the lower levels of the house. No mistake. And he could smell it now, stronger, no longer deniable. That was when he began to panic. Yanking at the chains that imprisoned him, unmindful of the blood that once again began flowing freely from his wrists, Mulder beat his feet on the floor, screaming and screaming for Scully to come and help him. He called her name over and over, knowing that there was nobody else he could count on, nobody else who cared, nobody else who could save him. Once or twice he thought he heard an answering yell but finally decided it was just the fire and his own imagination playing tricks on him. He screamed until his throat was sore and his voice was so hoarse that no intelligible sound would come from it. ***** Nancy drove southward, full of satisfaction at the way her plan was working. She had taken care of the Adulterer, and now she would finish off the Temptress. She would keep her promise to Fox not to make the redheaded bitch suffer. She didn't need to suffer. She only needed to die. She needed to die for hurting Fox, for leading him down the path of temptation so far that now he was going to have to suffer to atone. His agony would cleanse him of his sin, though, and the Jezebel didn't deserve to be cleansed. There would be plenty of burning for her, too, but not at Nancy's hands. She would deliver the woman up to He Who Burned--Jezebel would have her own fire to face--and then return to Fox. She had already decided that she would bury what was left of his body out behind the charred remains of the house, under the apple trees. He would be happy there. It was a beautiful place. As she thought of Fox her body grew hot with longing. They had never even been able to consummate their love because of the interference of the woman. She could have taken him while he was at her mercy but she wanted him to come to her freely. Now she felt cheated. She wanted Fox, and she deserved him. He belonged to her. As she drove, an idea came to her. Why not keep him and play with him a little before he died? There were no rules against it, and the more pain he suffered, the more complete his atonement would be. When she was certain that he was fully, completely cleansed, then she would end his life so he could be happy. It would really be doing him a favor, she reasoned, although she was certain Fox wouldn't see it that way. She smiled indulgently. Men were such babies when it came to pain. He would cry and plead with her, but in the end he would be better off. He would be happy. Making a decision, she swung the car off the road and turned it around. She had to get back to Fox before the fire found him. ***** Scully had the presence of mind to hide her car in a copse of trees a quarter of a mile down the road from the house. She ran faster than she had ever run in her life back to the house, hoping against hope that the fire hadn't reached the upper floors yet. When she reached the front porch and ran up the steps, Scully put her hand on the door and knew it was hopeless. The door was hot and she could see the fire, glowing orange, through the glass. There was no way she could get in here. With tears of fear and frustration pouring down her face, her breath hitching sobs, she ran quickly around to the back of the house. The door was cool here, and Scully knew the fire hadn't made it to this room yet. She tried to turn the doorknob. It was locked. Suddenly a heart-wrenching scream pierced the air. "Scully!" She blanched when she heard him. It was the same sound that had jarred her from sleep almost every night for the past week. The sheer terror in his voice pierced her heart. She had to get to him in time. Losing Mulder was not an option. "Mulder, hang on, I'm coming!" she yelled as she stepped back and looked around for something to break the glass in the door with. She didn't know if he could hear her or not, but she had to try. Spying a large rock on the ground at the foot of the steps Scully grabbed it and within moments she was inside the kitchen of the house. She made her way quickly, ignoring the glass on the floor, to the living room, where the worst of the fire seemed concentrated. She saw her immediate goal, the stairs, on the other side of the room. The smoke was heavy but Scully could see that the flames were just beginning to lick at the bottom step. Hesitating only for a second, Scully threw her arm across her nose and mouth, using the fabric of her coat to try and filter the air she was breathing. Before she could chicken out, she ran for the stairs, jumping for the third step and almost missing it. Her heart stopped briefly when she felt herself slip, but she threw out her right arm for balance while her left hand grabbed at the bannister. She drew in a deep breath without thinking and instantly regretted it when she received a lungful of smoke. Halfway up the stairs, Scully sagged against the wall for a moment, coughing and trying to get her bearings. When she felt that she was in control once more, Scully turned her gaze upward. Refusing to look back, where the heat from the flames was already beginning to singe the hair on the back of her head, Scully pushed onward up the stairs. Time was quickly growing shorter. ***** He thought he heard a voice call to him and then glass breaking, but convinced himself that in his terrified state he had imagined it. Mulder had fought a rough battle with his fear and had finally managed to regain some semblance of self-control. Now it was getting harder to hold onto with each passing second and he had all but given up hope that Scully would find him in time. It comes to this, he thought sadly, leaning back against the wall in extreme fatigue. He'd used up all his energy fighting, but then, wasn't that the story of his entire miserable existence? Constantly fighting an enemy he could smell and hear, but not quite see and never really prove the existence of? Mulder had always thought that his end would come either quickly, from a bullet wound received in the line of duty, or through slow torture at the hands of his enemies. Never in his wildest imaginings could he have come up with this. Trapped like a rat in a cage, helpless while the world was ending all around him. //Mom, Dad, if you wanted to name me after an animal you picked the wrong one. *I* should be Ratboy.// It was ironic that Krycek should outlive him, considering all the times Mulder had spared the man's life, he thought. Dimly he recognized the signs of impending delirium, but decided it really didn't matter. It didn't even matter what was causing it--fear or his many injuries. Death was death was death, and lo, here it came for him. He could hear it on the stairs now--or was that a footstep? Nancy? Had she come back? No! As the steps drew rapidly closer he began to struggle again, shaking himself back to reality. Scully! It was her! He would know the sound of her footsteps anywhere. "Scully!" he yelled with all the strength he could muster, "I'm up here! Please hurry!" Her head emerged through the opening and he knew he had never seen a more beautiful sight in his life. "Oh, Mulder!" she cried, running to him and cradling his head against her for a second. Thank God he didn't appear to be badly injured, but he wasn't in very good shape either. On the other hand, that head injury might turn out to be more than it appeared. No time for a thorough inspection now, though, she had to find a way to get them out of here. She pulled his body away from the wall to get a look at his restraints and almost screamed in frustration. He wasn't held with ropes, as she had hoped, or standard issue F.B.I. handcuffs, as she had thought. These manacles were thick and strong and there was no way she would get Mulder out in time without the key. And the fire was creeping closer. "Mulder..." she said helplessly, and he interrupted her, nodding toward the opposite wall. "Key, Scully, over there!" he panted. "She wanted to torture me with it!" Scully turned and saw where he was indicating, and in a flash she was back beside him working the iron restraints loose from around his wrists. She cringed inwardly at the amount of blood coating his wrists and hands, but the cuts didn't appear to be deep enough to cause trouble. Mulder cried out in pain as his arms shifted position for the first time in days, but there was no time to be gentle with him. Scully took his arms and, with his assistance, was able to pull him to his feet. "We've got to get out now, Mulder, the first floor is almost completely ablaze," she told him urgently, tugging him on unsteady legs toward the stairs. Mulder held on tightly during the climb down, feeling weak and dizzy. His legs were only cooperating with the most adamant of protests. This was no time to lose his balance, he knew, and the attic stairs were steep, almost like a ladder. They reached the second floor hallway and Scully dragged him toward the stairs leading downward to the first floor. They were engulfed in flames. For a moment both agents stared in horror at the sight before them, then Mulder sprang into action. He forced his aching body to move in the direction he pointed it. "This way!" he hollered, tugging Scully back down the hall the way they had come. There was a window at the end of the hallway, and his hope was that they could climb out onto the roof and lower themselves safely down. Noting with relief that there was a slope of roof outside rather than a sheer drop, he tugged at the window. It wouldn't budge. "Damn!" he cried in frustration, pounding on the glass weakly, feeling his strength giving out as his adrenaline rush began to subside. "Let me," Scully commanded, seeming to understand his predicament. She strained at the window but was unable to make any progress with it. It simply was not going to open. "Stand back, Scully," Mulder said, anxiety clear on his face, and a moment later his elbow crashed through the glass, shattering it. The glass cut his skin and fresh trickles of blood began to make their way down his arm, but he barely noticed. Trying not to cut his hand, he quickly removed as much of the glass as he could and then proceeded to climb out onto the roof. "Be careful, Mulder," Scully pleaded, sudden visions of him plunging to the ground and breaking his neck after all he had been through coming unbidden to her. She resolutely shoved them away. "Don't worry, Scully, I'd rather break a few bones than burn to death," he told her grimly as he slowly inched his way downward toward the edge of the roof. There was a drainpipe along the rim of the house, and he tested its strength for a moment, then decided to take the risk. Grabbing it with both hands he carefully lowered himself over the edge. When his entire six-foot frame was hanging from the gutter he faced about a four foot drop to solid ground. Not too bad, he thought, taking a deep breath and letting go. Just as he released his grip, the first floor window next to where he was hanging exploded outward, sending glass and debris flying everywhere. The force of the blast threw Mulder backward a couple of feet, ruining his carefully planned landing. As he went down he felt his right ankle twist painfully under him and he hissed, not wanting to cry out and frighten Scully even more. It was too late. She had seen Mulder's fingers disappear just a split-second before the blast and now she feared the worst. With a glance behind her Scully realized that her own options were limited. The fire had reached the hallway and she could feel it's heat burning her back. She had to get out now. Taking a deep breath she crept out the window over to the edge of the roof and was relieved to find Mulder waiting for her, still alive if not kicking. "Drop down here, Scully, I'll catch you," he told her, and she wasted no time in obeying. He was able to grip her ankles as she hung downward and he pulled her to relative safety. She was no sooner on the ground than Mulder went down again, the weight of them both too much for his sprained ankle. ***** Nancy pulled up in the driveway and stared in awe at her house. The entire first floor was burning, and the second was well on its way to being consumed. For a moment she considered abandoning her plan, but she had already made her decision. Fox must be saved for another day. They had to consummate their love or he would never be happy. That was all she wanted--to make him happy. Nancy took a few deep breaths, then ran up the front porch, threw open what was left of the door, and entered the inferno. ***** Scully again helped Mulder to his feet and made him lean on her shoulder. They made their way slowly toward the front of the house, him hobbling with her support, both weak with relief that they were finally safe. When they came around the corner of the house there was a car in the driveway. At the same time they both caught sight of Nancy standing, staring toward the front door as if wrestling with a decision. Mulder moaned in fear and pulled Scully back around the corner, but Scully peeked around to see what was happening. Why had the woman come back? Her jaw dropped in surprise as she saw Nancy make a run for the porch and disappear inside the house. For a split second she considered trying to save the woman, but a quick glance at her partner changed her mind. He needed her now, and he came first. ***** Two days later Mulder stood at the door of his apartment as Scully and the Lone Gunmen opened the door for him. They claimed to have a surprise for him, but Mulder closed his eyes for a moment. He wasn't up to facing this mess, not so soon after everything that had happened. Scully had kept him at her place for the last two days, forcing him to stay off his ankle, taking care of him, and generally hovering. His lips curved in a smile as he thought of Scully's varied, wonderful ways of taking care of him. She was very good at what she did, he had to give her that. When at last he found the courage to open his eyes, he stared in amazement at what met them. His apartment was empty, but most importantly it was clean. All the debris and destruction that had been there the last time he had seen it was gone, cleaned up, disappeared. With a sense of deja vu he checked the number on the door. 42. He really was in the right place. "Thanks, guys, I don't know what to say," he began, turning to his friends, but Langly stopped him. "That's not the best part, Mulder. Look what Frohike managed to find!" With that Langly pushed the door open a little farther and Mulder saw what the real surprise was. A leather couch. His couch. Well, not his, because his had been destroyed, but one so much like it that he could barely tell the difference. He stared at it for a moment, then turned to Frohike as if seeking confirmation. The man nodded. "I always thought it strange that I had two friends who had almost identical couches, Mulder, and he was as attached to his as you were to yours. Fortunately for you his wife recently went on a redecorating spree and told him he had a week to get rid of it. When I told him what had happened to you he was happy to donate it to a good home. It's all yours." Blinking back the mist in his eyes, Mulder limped over and sat down on his new couch. It molded around his body as if it had been made for him. He turned and stretched out on it in his favorite position, settling his head back on the new pillow that he was certain was Scully's contribution. "Mmmmm," he murmured, closing his eyes. A moment later he opened them again. "I don't--I can't--" Mulder stammered, at a loss. Nobody had ever cared this much for him in his life, at least not that he could remember. "Go to sleep, Mulder," Scully told him, stroking the hair gently out of his eyes. "You need your rest, and I'll be right here with you." He was still exhausted from his ordeal, and the temptation to do as he was told for once was too much for Mulder, even if it did involve sleep--and those dreams he kept having. The stress to his body coupled with the pain pills Scully had been making him take were too much for him to fight, suddenly. "Thanks, guys," he muttered sleepily, sinking happily into his new couch. He heard Scully quietly shoo the men out of his apartment, thanking them and telling them he would call them later. Then he heard her footsteps cross to where he was almost asleep and settle herself on the floor next to him, leaning her back against the couch. His hand found her hair and wound a tendril of it softly around his fingers and he slept. He knew she would be there when he woke up. Scully would always watch over him. ********** THE END