Angel
by Anjou


Title:  Angel
Author:  Anjou  (Anjou@rocketmail.com)
Posting Date: September 1999

Rating:  NC-17 for sexual situations  
Classification:  MSR, Angst, X, AU
Keywords:  None
Archive: Gossamer, Ephemeral, Xemplary; Others please do ask
Spoilers:  slots into the US6 timeline post-One Son, assumes a
general level of knowledge of all preceding action. 
Summary: Immediately after dramatically changing their relationship,
Mulder and Scully are called to attend to a case in California. Third
in a series. "Speechless" is story one, "Perfect" is story two. 
"Angel" begins the same morning as "Perfect." 
Disclaimer:  All X-Files personnel belong to 1013 and Fox.  

Thanks to Miss Moe.
 
As ever, I wrote this story for my sister Suzanne. 

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ 

  Fox Mulder watched his partner's back as she moved through the
airport terminal ahead of him toward baggage claim.  He could have
easily matched her stride through the busy corridor, but felt no urge
to do so, preferring to trail a bit behind her to admire the curve of
her body sheathed in her navy pantsuit.  He was better acquainted
with those curves today than he had been yesterday, a fact that he
was having trouble reconciling with a professional attitude.

  Yesterday, it would have seemed normal for him to walk at her side
or just behind her, the palm of his right hand pressed into the small
of her back, long fingers curling slightly over the rise of her hip
and the indentation of her waist as she moved. It was a part of her
body he had always loved, a voluptuous reminder of her femininity. 
He had always thought of that particular curve as being his.  

  The feel of her white flesh there was burning in his memory now,
but as much as he wanted to put his hand just there and reacquaint
himself with its appealing shape, he was restraining himself. 
Actions that he would have given no thought to last week could have
different consequences associated with them now.  In this new world,
only a few hours old, Mulder was not sure how he was supposed to
behave.  

  Scully, it seemed, was not having the same sort of struggles.  He
regarded her smooth, unruffled exterior as she strode briskly to keep
pace with their Assistant Director, Walter Skinner, who had
accompanied them on this trip.  She moved precisely, efficiently,
through the foot traffic of the airport terminal, none of her
movements or actions betraying the enormous changes that had taken
place between them scant hours before.    

  Very early this morning, he had spanned her waist with his two
hands, his fingertips brushing against each other framing her flesh,
as he had fallen asleep briefly but deeply.  That had been Mulder's
last sensory image before he faded from consciousness; the impossible
smallness of her inside his hands contrasting with the strong sound
of her heart beating beneath his ear as her fingers smoothed his hair
back from his brow.  Words had long since fled him, but as the
exhaustion had overtaken him, he had turned his face to kiss her
breast, acknowledging that she held him in her heart.  

  He had been so sure as he had fallen asleep, sure of what they
were to each other.  Sure of what he was to her.  It was not perfect,
the way he had wanted it to be when they finally came together, but
it would be enough. 

  He had gone to her to explain.  He had gone to her because he
could not allow everything that they had built together to crumble
under the weight of unacknowledged emotions. They had become so
estranged that he had begun to believe that all that they were, all
that he had believed they would become to each other, was being
destroyed.  His only choice was to try and speak the truth for once,
to just lay everything out at her feet.  He had never expected that
they would end the night as lovers, had not planned farther ahead
than the things he would tell her.  But as their conversation had
spun out in the quiet room, he had felt the ennui and despair of the
last few weeks dissipating and he had been compelled to move closer
to her.  After the stony quiet of the past month, she beckoned him
merely by listening to him and he had been compelled to cross the
room to where she sat, fire bright, drawn to be near her.  It could
be perfect, for once.  Just to be near her, to be joined with her
would be an acknowledgment of what they truly were to each other.

  But as he had fallen asleep, the feeling of completion he had, the
feeling of belonging, was overwhelming.  Bliss was never a component
of the life he had lived; contentment an ideal he had never sought. 
He had been given a brief taste of both of these things and
surrendered to the call of sleep, dreaming of more.  

  And awakened alone.  Shortly before the phone had rung, he had
felt himself rising to consciousness, lacking the lullaby of Scully's
heartbeat below his ear.  In the new light of morning, he had found
her standing by the window, arms folded across her chest.  Her
expression, such as it was, had been unreadable to him, and the cold
finger of dread laid itself against his spine as he watched her,
feigning sleep.  Was that one time, that fleeting taste of
perfection, all he was to receive?

  Mulder's feet moved him mechanically to where she stood now, the
focus of all his thoughts, the focus of his life, 3,000 miles from
where they had started this day.  3,000 miles spent in the company of
their unwanted chaperone.  Their cross-country trip had passed in
virtual silence, broken only by the polite necessities involved in
passing files across the aisle where Scully sat next to the imposing
bulk of their supervisor.  Now, Mulder watched Scully listening to
Skinner, her face virtually expressionless in the mid-morning light
of LAX.   

  "There you are, Mulder."  Her voice sounded husky from lack of
sleep.  

  The sunlight shone directly into her eyes and Mulder's breath
caught in his throat at the flash of colour from underneath her
lashes as she looked up at him.  Her lips were still slightly swollen
from their kisses.  As he watched them moving, her face in the
artificially enhanced light of day doubled with its own softer image
from the fainter light this morning.  In his mind's eye, she arched
up against him, her cheeks flushed, the blue of her sensuously lidded
eyes gleaming at him as she rose to meet his kiss.  He closed his own
eyes momentarily as the shock of memory knifed into him poignantly,
not so much sensation as the realization of the intimacy of that one
moment, rippling like a living thing under his skin.  

  "Mulder?"  He opened his eyes.  Scully's lips weren't moving.

  "Mulder."  Skinner's voice sounded irritated.  Mulder shook his
head, trying to clear it, then scrubbed at his forehead, effectively
blocking Scully from his view.

  "Sorry, Sir," he apologized, not looking at Scully.  "I'm a little
out of it this morning."

  "So I noticed," Skinner said tersely.  "I understand that this is
not the kind of case that you want to be awakened on a Saturday
morning to attend to, but I think we all three of us know the
importance of what's happening here."  He paused significantly,
looking from Mulder to Scully.  Now Scully's eyes were fixed on
Mulder, her attention to the conversation fragmented.  He sighed.  At
least he had Mulder's attention this time.  "My question for you,
Mulder, for both of you," he said pointedly, trying to catch Scully's
eye, "is why are these burnings still happening after El Rico?"

  Mulder was shaking his head and shrugging his shoulders before
Skinner had finished.  "We never understood why they were happening
at all, Sir.  Our suppositions in this matter were just that, purely
speculative."  He rubbed the back of his neck unconsciously, then
glanced over at Scully in apology.  She quirked an eyebrow at him and
he turned his attention back to Skinner.  "According to Krycek,
there's a resistance of some sort going on to the colonising force
that the Consortium was collaborating with.  From Agent Scully's," he
hesitated, making a vaguely dismissive gesture with his hand, as
Scully's eyebrow rose higher, "recollections, of which you are aware,
there is some evidence to support that idea, but..." he trailed off.

  "We have no hard evidence as to whether any of those men I saw on
the bridge at the dam where human or not," Scully said firmly, with
an emphasis on the action of the sentence.  "If we ascertain that
this event is the same as the others, as opposed to some kind of
millennial cult activity, perhaps our next concern should be trying
to predict where the next one of these events is going occur."  

  Skinner shrugged elaborately.  "Any idea of how we do that, Agent 
Scully?"

  Scully hesitated, dropping her eyes to the ground.  She tucked a
piece of auburn hair behind her ear, buying time while she considered
Skinner's question.  Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Mulder
swallow again and looked up.  She tracked the movement of the line of
his throat, trying to recall the exact difference between the smooth
texture of his skin there and the rough line of his jaw.  She
suppressed a shiver at the memory of his face pressed against her
breast as he fell asleep, sated and becalmed after they had made
love.

  She could feel the tension in his body, the way he wanted to lean
into her, but was restraining himself.  He seemed distant to her, a
little dazed from last night.  Perhaps he had surprised himself as
much as he had her.  She longed for him to touch her again, to cut
through the nervous energy emanating from both of them.  If they
could just touch, they would both calm down.   But that would not
happen, at least not in front of Skinner.  She would have to wait
until far later, after what would surely be an arduous day until they
could finally be alone.  

  She tried to stifle the frustration that arose with that
realization and focused herself to marshal a response to Skinner's
almost forgotten question.  "I don't have a strategy as yet, but I do
have questions.  These callings, if that's what they are, seem to me
to be unassociated with what happened at El Rico a few weeks ago. 
The others that we have been made aware of all seem to revolve around
abductees.  That was not the case in El Rico, where the burning seems
to have been directed specifically at members of the Consortium.  The
question becomes this: if the Consortium is defeated, burned, why is
it necessary to keep calling those of us who have implants to
immolate us?"

  Skinner winced for the second time in the conversation since
Krycek's name had been mentioned and cursed himself for a fool.  Both
of his agents had seemed distracted and quiet, a fact that he had
decided was part and parcel of their recently strained working
relationship.  Reality was always far more complex than the black and
white world in which Walter Skinner would like to live.  Whatever was
going on between Mulder and Scully right now, a mass burning so close
to the events of El Rico would only serve to heighten Mulder's
paranoia about losing his partner and Scully's fears of loss of
control before losing her life.  The latter was a fear he could
empathize with far more cogently than he wanted. He sighed.  "I was
hoping that you could shed some light on that, Agents," he said
aloud.

 Mulder and Scully shared a long look.  Neither of their expressions
were happy or hopeful. Skinner had the impression that they weren't
hiding information from him, but were as yet unsure of what they
could say. He turned away from them as the luggage began to spiral
out into the terminal area on its conveyor belt. He noticed men he
assumed were local Bureau approaching them from across the crowded 
terminal. 

  "One more thing, Agents," he started, turning back to where Mulder
and Scully were still staring at each other.  Their eyes fell away
from each other sharply as he spoke to them.  Scully's normal colour
seemed a little heightened to Skinner.  "Our level of knowledge about
previous similar events is on a strictly need to know basis while we
are here.  As far as the Los Angeles agents are concerned, we are
here investigating a probable mass suicide with cult implications,
possibly a serial situation.  Do I make myself clear?"  This last was
directed at Mulder.  

  "Crystal," Mulder snapped back.  He didn't even question the
order.

  Skinner was puzzled as to the exact nature of what was going on
between Mulder and Scully but as long as they were focused on the
case, he would not seek an explanation.  Skinner was not a man to
contemplate  the relationship between his agents.  He knew that
theirs was deep and inextricably intertwined, however damaged it may
have been by recent events.  From what he understood of the
Consortium's plans for colonization, however, they didn't have time
for Mulder and Scully to heal their relationship.  He didn't have
time.  He scanned the room again carefully, looking for the hidden
form of Alex Krycek lurking nearby.  It had been weeks since he had
been infected with the nanites and Krycek had yet to contact him and
make a request.  Instead of reassuring him, Krycek's continued
absence had made Skinner more and more tense.  Walter Skinner was not
a patient man.

  "Assistant Director Skinner?" The voice was professional and calm,
with a hint of authority.  Was there a note of challenge as well? 
Skinner turned around.

  "Yes," he answered tersely, surveying the man in front of him.

  "SAC Gerard," he said, extending a hand.  Gerard appeared to be in
his early forties.  He was tall, having perhaps an inch or two on
Mulder's height.  Unlike Mulder's, Gerard's carriage was impeccable.
His blond hair was greying at the temples and in the forelock, his
face strong, handsome and aquiline in appearance.  His eyes were an
uncompromising slate grey.  

  Mulder had waited in silent misery as the three agents approached
them.  He had taken an instinctive dislike to Gerard, a man who
radiated a kind of arrogance that he associated with the moneyed
peers of his youth.  There was something odd about him that Mulder
could not put his finger on, although he did not dwell on it.

  He was conscious of Scully's form next to his, of the current that
ran between the two of them, sparking still.  Couldn't she feel it? 
Would she just be able to ignore it?  He sighed softly.  This would
not have been an easy case in the best of circumstances and today? 
Today he was feeling a little fragile.  He observed Gerard as the
introductions were made, watched his eyes and the eyes of the other
agents take a walk over Scully's form when they thought she wasn't
looking.  He felt his spine tightening in anger and he drew himself
up to his full height, while he looked, hard, at the younger agents. 
They both stepped back from their senior agent as they caught a
glimpse of his expression.  

  Mulder turned his gaze back to Gerard who was talking to Scully. 
He wasn't paying attention to the words as much as the scene before
him.  Gerard had stepped into Scully's space, making her look up at
him.  Resolute as ever, Scully did not step back, did not give any
ground.  Gerard was leaning into Scully, his expression one of charm,
the face of a man used to getting what he wanted from women.  Mulder
felt the sting of nails in his palm and realized that he had curled
his right hand into a fist, clenching on itself.  He concentrated on
making his face as impassive as Scully's as she spoke to Gerard, the
curve of her mouth not moving from its set shape as she exchanged a
few inconsequential words with this man.  She glanced at Mulder after
a second, and Mulder realized that she had introduced him to the SAC.
 
  Scully watched as Gerard's eyes flickered coolly over Mulder,
carefully noting the Armani suit and then glancing down to assess the
quality of Mulder's shoes.  Gerard extended a hand efficiently, but
with a dismissive air attached to the customary masculine greeting. 
She stifled the sigh that arose in her chest.  She was so damned
tired of the men in the FBI and their continual posturing, their need
to diminish Mulder's accomplishments and intellect.  Today was not
the day to push Mulder's buttons.  He seemed a little too unsure of
himself in light of the rapidly changed landscape of their
relationship.  This disturbed her more than she liked to admit, even
within the privacy of her own mind.  How could he have been so sure
of himself last night and so uneasy today?  She watched Mulder as
Gerard's predatory gaze moved back to her.  His jaw was set in anger,
his eyes a flat, muddied green.  He was rigid with tension, although
he would not appear that way to anyone but her.  What was going on? 
She began to review the things that he had said to her last night,
looking for clues to his frame of mind.  She frowned to herself
although her expression did not change.  

  "We're curious as to why this mass suicide is getting so much
attention from the Washington office." Gerard was addressing Skinner,
although he was mainly looking at Scully.  He had not spoken to
Mulder at all.

  "Oh, really?"  Skinner queried.  There definitely was challenge in
Gerard's tone.  Skinner did not like the way he looked at Scully or
the way he had blatantly ignored Mulder.  Glass could have been cut
against the set of Skinner's jaw as he bit off his next words
precisely.  "I wasn't aware that I had to satisfy the curiousity of
the local SAC, Agent Gerard, but if you have information about this
case, I'd be happy to take your report now."  The two agents who had
accompanied Gerard into the terminal shifted uneasily. 

  Gerard ceased his examination of Scully to look directly at Walter
Skinner for the first time.  Gerard stared at him for a second, then
smiled thinly, his jaw muscles stretching into the appropriate form
of sociability.  There was no meaning behind the gesture.  The smile
did not reach his eyes and both Mulder and Scully silently noted that
Gerard had no laughlines at eye or mouth. 

  A small snort of surprise left Mulder's mouth, although only
Scully heard it.  Mulder wondered if Gerard ever truly laughed or
smiled, since the expression looked so painfully false and odd. 
Perhaps his frown lines would be more revelatory.

  For her part, Scully was faintly revolted.  She found purely
cosmetic plastic surgery distasteful in general, particularly so when
men utilized it.  She knew this was sexist of her, but so be it. 
Vanity was not an attractive trait and she generally found it to be
indicative of a central kind of shallowness.   

  Skinner's eyes were locked on Gerard's in silent confrontation,
his expression severe, mouth turned down at the corners.  He did not
return Gerard's smile.  The only thing he noticed was the
insincerity.  His mind did a rapid and primal calculus.  'Foe,' he
decided.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ 

  Mulder watched Dana Scully steering the Crown Victoria up the
steep roadway that led to the meadow where the immolation had
occurred. Her red hair was shining in the bright late afternoon
sunlight, the illumination sparking threads of gold to gleam as it
filtered through.  She was ineffably beautiful in a way that she
ignored, challenging observers to see her mind rather than her form. 
She steered their behemoth of a vehicle with the ease borne of years
of boating experience, seemingly unaware of the stunning contrast
between the ungainly box and its petite pilot.

  It was unusual to see Scully behind the wheel with the A.D. in the
back seat, but Skinner had made a point of giving her the keys after
Gerard had said there was room for one more in his car.  He had been
openly staring at Scully while making this dubious offer.  The part
of Mulder's mind that was the investigator had wondered
dispassionately if Gerard was truly interested in Scully, or trying
to see what buttons he could push and get a response.  The
investigator suspected the latter.  Gerard didn't seem like the kind
of man who was truly interested in anything other than his mirror and
his ambition.  Although, the investigator was having a hard time
convincing the man that was also Mulder of this fact.  That man, the
primal man, had devised several painful methods of disabusing Gerard
of any idea of touching Scully.  Ever.  Lucky for Gerard that he had
enough sense of protocol to keep his hands off Scully, even as he had
continued to crowd her.

  Just then, Mulder noticed Scully strain a little to see over the
hood of the car as they began to head off the roadway.  He would not
smile.  Unbidden, the image of an older neighbor of his mother's in
Connecticut rose to his mind.  Mr. DiCara had owned a green grocery
that had become a very successful supermarket chain.  He had retired
a very wealthy man -- a very wealthy, very tiny man, who always drove
an enormous Cadillac or Delta 98, whichever was the biggest model
available that year.  He used to peer through the spokes of the
steering wheel as he drove, craning to see over the dashboard and the
enormous hood encasing the engine.  

  He would not smile.  

  Mulder looked away from his partner as she began to pull down the
rutted secondary roadway.  It was more difficult to steer here,
because of the number of abandoned cars parked on the thin ribbon of
dirt that passed for a thoroughfare.  They were in the foothills of
the National Forest above Santa Barbara, a couple of hours outside of
Los Angeles.  Normally, it would have been a beautiful locale, the
kind of place Mulder could imagine that he and Scully would spend a
day visiting if they were on a vacation together.  He amused himself
by trying to decide if Scully would willingly camp outside if they
were not on a case that required it.  Anything to avoid the thought
of the gruesome reality that awaited them up ahead.   

  "Jesus Christ," Skinner said quietly, but with feeling, from the
backseat.  Mulder caught the flickering grimace that crossed Scully's
face at Skinner's pronouncement.  It vanished as he continued
speaking in his Marine's bark.  "Is this what Gerard was referring to
when he said they had a few plates to run?"  Skinner gestured at the
dozens of abandoned vehicles that surrounded them.  The way ahead was
rapidly becoming impassable.  "We better just back up, park and walk
from here."

  Scully nodded, while Mulder remained silent in the front seat next
to her.  She caught a glimpse of his expression as she turned around
to steer their car into a less congested area.  Mulder's face had
lost the bemused look that it had held for the past few minutes and
had settled into a carefully neutral mask that she recognized.  He
was steeling himself to walk out of the car into the blackened field
that surely awaited them ahead.  Although they could not yet see it,
the sickly sweet smell of burned flesh and charred green living
things full of sap was seeping into the car despite the air
conditioning.  She shuddered, remembrance of one too many similar
scenes assailing her.

  Mulder's eyes shifted to her, although his head did not move. 
Almost involuntarily, his hand slid across the leather silently
toward her then stopped.  Scully knew that he understood what she was
thinking about.  Although she was grateful to know that at least part
of him had responded to that, she needed more.  His elegant hand lay
there on the seat, inches away from her right thigh.  She could
almost feel the gentle press of it, palm down, fingers extended
around her leg. She sighed in frustration.  She felt a little
desperate for his touch right now.  She was focusing on the tension
between the two of them when she should be focused on the case. 
Sometime between LAX and here she had realized that the last time he
had touched her had been this morning when he had kissed her goodbye.
 The tension inside her had risen to unbearable levels since then,
making her question whether or not what she had taken as a simple
kiss goodbye was something more permanent.  She was overcome with an
urge to kiss him right now, however inappropriate the circumstance,
just to reassure herself that he was not withdrawing from her, that
last night had not been a dream.  Skinner was looking at her with a
frown in his brow, facing him as she was at the moment.

  "Everything all right, Agent Scully?" he asked, tone mildly
curious.

  "Fine, sir," she answered quietly, watching where she was settling
the car near a tree.  Mulder moved his hand away from her before she
turned back around on the bench seat, the current that ran between
their bodies when they were close together dissipating as he turned
away from her.  She put the car into park and cut the engine.  "Here
we are."  Silence greeted her.  "I've got eucalyptus in the trunk,"
she said to the car in general.  "I think we're going to need it."  

  "I see Gerard up ahead," Skinner announced.  He opened his door
and began to stride in that direction.  

  Scully paused for a moment before opening her door, turning
briefly to where Mulder had been sitting.  His back was turned toward
her as he opened the car door and stepped out without so much as a
backward glance.  Her hand, which had been extended toward him, hung
in the open air for a few seconds before she turned mutely to her own
door.  Mulder was standing in the road ahead of her, waiting for her,
she supposed.  His hands were on his hips and he was arching
backwards slightly, working the kinks out after their ride.  She
wanted to call to him, to say something, but she didn't know what. 
She busied herself at the trunk, finding the eucalyptus amidst other
forensic essentials in the evidence kit that she always had on hand. 
Mulder appeared at Scully's side silently.  She felt his gaze on her
in the resonant silence.  'Touch me,' she thought.    

  "Scully?" he said, quietly.  The question hung there in the air,
the question mark nearly visible.  "Are you ready?"  

  She turned her head to the left and up to look at him.  The green
of the woods reflected in his eyes, now the colour of leaves in the
afternoon sun light.  For once, Scully gave him the truth in her
answer, an acknowledgment of the change in their circumstances. 
"No," she said, just as solemnly. "I don't want to be here."  

  She could see how startled he was by her honest declaration.  His
eyes widened as he searched hers for the meaning behind the words. 
Slowly, his mouth relaxed.  He nodded at her.  He was pleased that
she had told him the truth.  She felt a twinge of pain as she
realized that he had had no expectation that she would answer him
honestly.  She looked down at her hands holding the bag, feeling
slightly ashamed.  His right hand came down and took the bag away
from her as he closed the trunk.  They stepped away from the car and
she heard him transfer the bag from his right to his left hand just
an instant before she felt the press of his hand against the small of
her back.  Her step faltered for a second as she closed her eyes. 
She fought the sudden swell of tears that rose up in her body at the
familiar, but so longed for, sensation.  She stepped forward and his
hand moved with her, curving a bit over her right hip, his thumb
lying along her waist.  The heat of his skin seeped through the
material right into her bones.   For the first time since she had
risen from their bed this morning and left Mulder alone to sleep, she
felt warm.  

  As they drew abreast of Skinner and Gerard, Mulder's hand drifted
silently away from her body.  She noted that Gerard had noticed their
interaction and she stared at him, willing her eyes to be as cold and
unwelcoming as the Antarctic drifts she and Mulder had blundered
across last summer.  Whatever commentary Gerard might have made went
unsaid.

  The walk up to the meadow was silent.  The dark winter overcoats
of the East Coast agents, ballooning in the breeze, presented a sharp
contrast to the mildness of the California afternoon.

  Mulder counted sixty-seven vehicles on this wooded roadway,
ranging from luxury cars to sport utility vehicles to what he and his
friends used to call shitboxes.  The Consortium, it seemed, did not
use socioeconomic criteria as a selection prerequisite for their
experimental subjects.  Not for the first time, he wondered what the
determining factor was.  It defied reason that it was simply random,
didn't it?  

  The field around them was alive with activity, the grisly
cataloguing of the dead.  Snatches of conversation reached his ears
as he passed by pockets of agents and federal forestry officials,
leaving Skinner and Scully to the niceties of greetings and
introductions.  He was involved, assessing the scene of the crime. 
To any outside observer, Mulder would appear to be intent, focused,
effectively blocking out any and all external stimuli as he moved
through the crime scene.  In actuality, the workings of his mind were
far more complex and elegant.  He was operating in a state of
hyper-awareness, one that noted the play of light through the trees,
the absence of any noise from animals in the woods, the rough
whistling-in-the-graveyard humour of a man working ten feet away from
where he stood now.  His eyes were registering burn patterns, body
positions on the ground and distances between them.

  The brain is a computer, a tool eminently capable of making
infinite inferences based on data presented to it, a fact that Mulder
had understood from early childhood.  Attention to detail was
necessary, but no detail should be overlooked.  As in all
investigations, Mulder opened his mind to all the available
information as he stalked the crime scene, his wool coat flapping
around his long legs.  

  When his sensory survey had been completed in all possible
directions, Mulder's cataloguing of the crime scene began on a
different level.  The medical examiners and the crime scene officers
had been told that they were not allowed to move any body from any
position until the signal was given by Skinner.  Mulder's arrival on
the scene and his solitary technique had caused any number of curious
stares and comments, but as he had moved farther and farther away
from where crime scene photos were being taken and measurements
recorded, they had died down.  He was an oddity perhaps, but he
didn't seem to be enough of one to maintain their attention.  This
was fine with him and would make it easier for him to move onto his
next stage of data collection.

  He began with the bodies of the victims farthest away from the
entrance to the meadow, consciously willing himself not to smell the
high, thin, sickening scent of the charred flesh below him.  He
crouched over the first two bodies, which appeared to be children. 
He blinked sharply, steeling himself, as his hands rummaged in the
capacious pockets of his overcoat.  With one hand he withdrew latex
gloves, snapping them on as efficiently as Scully did in her autopsy
bay.  With the other he palmed a heavy object, his body blocking his
actions from Gerard's long-distance gaze.  Mulder was sure that
Gerard was unaware he realized he was being watched.  He utilized his
natural grace to cover his movements.

  A large tweezer came out of his pocket next, then an array of
evidence bags which he had no intention of using.  While his right
hand made a good show of this flurry of activity, his left hand crept
silently closer to the middle of the neck of the first victim.  Only
Scully would have noted the consternation and dread in his eyes as he
waited silently for a reaction, but she was giving explicit
instructions to the Medical Examiner's staff on body retrieval half a
field away.  His left hand repeated its early motion in a vain
attempt to provoke a different result, but the exercise yielded the
same response.

  There was no pull from the metal that should have been there to
the powerful magnet in Fox Mulder's hand.  

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ 


  Several hours later, Scully entered her motel room, aware of
Mulder's brooding presence in the room next to hers.  He had been
largely silent since their foray into the meadow and determinedly so
throughout a strained dinner with Gerard and the Los Angeles Section
Chief.  His manner had been excruciatingly polite, unusually so for
him.  It was hard to remember sometimes that Mulder's training in the
social niceties of the world had been more extensive and formal than
her own.  His irreverence for such forms was so pronounced that it
was a shock when he utilized them to his own advantage.  He had been
reserved, but charming, when called upon for conversation at their
meal.  Only Scully, and perhaps Skinner, were aware of the underlying
sarcasm in his simple words.  

  They had not really had much of chance to talk about the case, but
Scully knew her partner well enough to know that he was not ready to
do so.  She plopped her suitcase on the bed, moving mechanically
through the rote activities of unpacking.  

  Skinner's room was also next to hers, but unlike Mulder's, had no
connecting door to her own.  She unlocked their connecting door and
waited for Mulder to do the same on his side.  She could sense his
hesitation.  His insecurity about where their relationship was going
after last night was almost palpable.  She had seen him bristle at
Gerard's obvious if not utterly insincere admiration of her although
he had said nothing.  In some ways, she was almost irritated with
him.  Did he think that she would have made love with him after all
these years if it meant nothing?  Did he think that she didn't
remember the things that he had said to her early this morning?  Or
did he just not know how much he meant to her?  These thought
filtered through her mind as she hung her clothes in the too small
motel closet.  She had told him that she loved him.  She had become
his lover. It was time to make him remember that.  It was time to
make him believe. Behind her, she heard the small sound of Mulder
unlocking the door.

  Scully knew she could not heal the wounds of Mulder's childhood or
how the fundament of his understanding of human relationships had
been undermined, but she had to make him believe that she could be
counted upon.  Had they only had more time this morning, before they
had been pulled from their bed, she was sure that this awkwardness
wouldn't have occurred.  

  Or maybe she was just being overly optimistic.  Of all the cases
for them to have been called on, a mass burning, a calling of the
'chosen' had to be the first one to mark this new phase of their
relationship.  Mulder's face had closed in on itself when she had
relayed the message  from Skinner.  He had known it was a case, known
that was why Skinner had called on a Saturday morning at 6:00 a.m.,
but he had been unprepared for the type of case it was.

  Scully had been watching him sleep, standing by the window of her
room.  She had needed to process what had just happened. When he had
shifted in his heavy slumber, she had slipped out of the bed, first
resuming his position in the armchair, then turning to the brightness
of the evolving day, examining the feelings overwhelming her.  It
surprised and saddened Dana Scully to know that it had been so long
since she had been happy that the feeling was not only alien to her,
but also damn near unrecognizable.  

  She was not naive enough to assume that this change in their
relationship would solve all of the problems between them.  They were
now, and had always been, two very different people.  It was their
union that made them strong and Scully wanted to believe that this
new aspect of it would make them even stronger.  Mulder needed to
know that.  Mulder needed to know that she needed him to be strong.  
She finished unpacking the few personal items she had brought with
her, taking the time to make sure that her small jewelry pouch was
securely inside the bottom of a faux shaving cream can.  Any of their
enemies would have easily found it, but the contents were of no
significance to anyone but her.  She kicked her shoes off in the
direction of the closet, then crossed the room barefoot to the
connecting door.  

  Mulder's room was fairly quiet.  The TV set droned softly from its
position opposite the door.  Mulder was sitting on the side of the
bed, his own shoes haphazardly cast aside.  His jacket was draped
over a nearby chair, his tie loosened, but he was hunched over, head
in his hands, elbows braced on knees.  His was hardly the posture of
a man who had gotten his fondest wish the night before.  Scully
picked up the remote control from the nightstand and clicked off the
TV set.  Mulder had said nothing to her, although he was certainly
aware of her presence in front of him.  He started in surprise when
she pulled his collar away from the nape of his neck and pressed a
soft kiss on the skin there.  His hands came to her waist as he sat
up straight, blinking at her in the lamplight.  Scully pressed
herself lightly against the length of his torso, looping her arms
around his neck familiarly and smiling at him.  Mulder looked
stunned.

  "What are you doing, Scully?" he whispered.  He was not at all
displeased, although he wondered momentarily if he had fallen asleep.

  She did not answer, but smoothed the hair back off of his brow,
settling herself against the right side of his body, more leaning on
him than sitting on his lap.  She turned his face toward her.  She
regarded him for a moment, her blue eyes filled with warmth.  Her
fingers caressed his jaw, then moved to circle the small mole on his
right cheek.  She placed a kiss on the worry lines creasing his brow,
then rolled her cheeks one after another against his warm forehead,
the house of the mind she loved so well.  She used her nose to trace
the sockets of his eyes, stopping to kiss the laugh lines that she
saw far too infrequently, promising herself that would no longer
remain true.  

  Mulder made a small sound in his throat as she traced the bridge
of his nose with her own, her touch light and soothing.  Her
movements were slow and hypnotic as she moved down to his mouth,
where she hovered, waiting until he opened his eyes, so close to her
own.  

  Her voice was quiet in the silence of their room when she finally
answered his question.  "I don't like to be interrupted."  She kissed
the curving flesh of his mouth, focusing her attention on the soft
promontory of his lower lip.  Her small, warm hands were rubbing
through his hair, stroking his scalp as she moved away from his
seeking mouth.  She traced his right cheekbone with her nose,
following the arch and downward line to his ear.  Her breath tickled
the tiny hairs inside of it as she traced the ridge of cartilage with
her lips.  Her hands drifted from his scalp to his neck, pausing at
his tie.  As she removed it, she kissed the flesh behind his earlobe.

  "Did I interrupt you?"  Mulder asked, his voice deepening as his
breath caught.  No one had ever touched him like this.  The sweetness
of it, the tactile reality, brought tears to his eyes.  His hands
were trembling where he pressed them into the declivity of her waist,
as he waited, suspended, for her next kiss, her next caress.

  Scully was kissing her way along the underside of his jaw line,
unbuttoning his shirt as she did so.  She moved down the column of
his throat, outlining the crevasse between his windpipe and the cords
of muscle that his pulse ran along with her nose and mouth.  She
could feel the tremors in his body as she answered her own question
from this morning, remembering the place on his skin where his beard
ended near his Adam's Apple.  She ran her nose back up to the line of
his jaw, kissing him softly along the way.  "No," she murmured,
returning to his mouth to kiss him again before turning his head to
the other side.  She moved to lean against the left side of his body,
pressing her breasts against his shoulder.  Mulder's hands tightened
on her waist, his thumbs looping around to trace half-circles on the
front of her body.  He moaned a little, a low sound from deep in his
chest that she could feel resonating inside herself.  His hands
smoothed up her back, pulling her closer.  "Skinner did."

  She gave the left side of his face and his neck the same unhurried
treatment as Mulder sat there, still except for the trembling rise
and fall of his chest against her.  His shirt hung unbuttoned now. 
Scully ran her hands up his neck into the hair on the back of his
head as she kissed him lightly, then again, then waited.  Mulder
opened his eyes, wondering why she was stopping.

  Scully ran her fingers over his face, outlining his brows and his
eyes this time, kissing first one then the other.  Her blue eyes were
focused on each part of his face that she was touching.  She traced
his nose again with her own, and then hovered over his mouth, lightly
outlining his lips with her fingers, drawing the tension between them
tight.  "Do you know," she began to say huskily, stopping to kiss him
lightly on the subtle notch that ran between his nose and his upper
lip. "Do you know how much I wanted to do this all day long?"  She
leaned up against him more fully and kissed him deeply, parting his
lips.  Her lips were warm and lush, just like he remembered, just
like he had dreamt. 

  Mulder slid his arms around Scully's back and pulled her against
him, returning the kiss with gentle passion.  His hands moved up to
capture her head as he followed her tongue back into her mouth,
sweetly dancing.  He loved kissing her.  He could kiss her forever. 

  Scully moved up onto the bed with him, straddling his hips and
pressing herself down onto him.  Mulder gasped at the contact,
suddenly realizing where they were.  He broke their kiss off,
startled.  "Scully...Skinner is in the next room." His whisper was
urgent.  He was trapping her hips in his hands, trying to keep her
from moving against him by sheer force.

  Scully arched an eyebrow at him in puzzlement.  She ran her hands
over his t-shirt, anticipating the smooth skin of his shoulders. 
"He's two rooms away, Mulder," she said firmly, but in a hushed
voice.  "He clearly said that he would see us in the morning.  I
don't think we have to worry about him bursting through the door." 
Mulder's hands were still clenching her hips.  His eyes were dazed,
but she could see the cascading thoughts behind them, even if she
couldn't read them.  Her brows resolved themselves into a frown.  She
moved her breasts away from his chest, pulling back to look at him as
an unwelcome thought occurred to her.  "Don't you want me?"  She
withdrew from him physically as she spoke, her face mirroring her
fear.

  Mulder started into motion at her words and the expression on her
face.  He released her hips as his arms followed her retreating form
and he pushed himself up and into her in answer.  This time it was
she who trembled in response.  He crossed his arms behind her back
possessively.  He kissed her softly, then more deeply when she moved
back towards him.  "Always, Scully."  Mulder was whispering against
her lips, reddened by their kisses.  "I've always wanted you."  

  Scully kissed him again, then made a frustrated noise when he
broke the kiss. "Then what is going on?" she asked.  

  Mulder went absolutely still underneath her, wondering what he
could say.  'I'm afraid,' ran through his mind over and over, but he
could not say the words, could not frame his fear.  "I just..." he
began to say, then trailed off as Scully kissed his neck, moving back
toward her thwarted seduction.  "I just never pictured this happening
here."  His hands motioned around behind her to the motel room with
its cheap and impersonal furnishings.

  Scully snorted softly in amusement against his throat, pulling
back to look at him in disbelief.  "You never imagined us making love
in a motel room, Mulder?"  Her eyebrows expressed more poignantly
what her voice didn't.  

  Mulder smiled at her sheepishly, then hid his face in the crook of
her neck momentarily.  "I can't say I didn't imagine it, Scully." 
His hands were roving under the back of her jacket, feeling the warm
muscle and skin beneath the silk. "I just never thought that when it
was real, that we would be here."  There was so much more to say, but
Mulder couldn't bring himself to articulate anything else.     

  Scully sat back a little and raised his head up to hers, looking
deeply into his eyes.  They were a solemn blue and silver tonight,
with flecks of green and gold shining in their depths.  "Mulder," she
said, her tone surprised and touched by his admission, "before last
night, I never would have imagined that you were such a romantic." 
There was no teasing in her tone, just warmth.  

  He smiled, shrugging under her hands, relaxing a little more
despite the embarrassment he felt.  She really had no idea just how
true that statement was.  The small smile that she gave him in answer
to his own made him sigh with happiness.  Did she have any notion of
just how lovely she was?  He stared at her, trying to remember if he
had told her so, and she began to blush.  She shifted a little in his
grasp, her movements clamping his eyes shut at the friction.  He
dropped his head to rest at the base of her neck in an attempt to
control himself.

  Scully rubbed her face against the smooth ends of Mulder's haircut
as she whispered to him.  "There's nothing sordid about this, Mulder.
 I don't need roses and champagne and candlelight.  Oh..." He kissed
her clavicles one after the other, then pressed his tongue into the
notch of her throat beneath her cross.  "I just need you," she
breathed, her voice caught in rough sweetness.  His mouth traveled up
the span of her neck and she caught a glimpse of green and blue
before he kissed her, bending her backwards with the force of his
response to her admission.  When the kiss ended, they sat with
foreheads pressed together, breasts rising and falling against each
other.  "I just need you," she whispered against his mouth, pushing
the dress shirt down off his shoulders.  Her hands slipped under his
T-shirt, pushing the cotton up and away.

  He could not resist her.  Her hands smoothed over his skin and he
was suddenly jealous of them and their freedom.  He had to let go of
his firm grasp on her to undress her, stopping to place his mouth and
hands on the skin he uncovered, trying to hold her as close as
possible to him.  But he could not get her close enough, could not
get near enough to her.  When he stood to remove his pants, Scully
shut the bedside lamp off as she discarded her remaining clothes.  He
bent down to kiss her in the near dark, noting the slice of yellowed
light falling on the floor from Scully's erstwhile room and the
moonlight streaming in through the half-closed drapes.  Lit by silver
and gold, they began to merge into each other.  He sat down on the
bed so he could kiss her with ease.  

  Scully reached behind Mulder to pile the pillows from the bed
against the headboard.  "Move back," she said on a sigh, as Mulder's
hands covered her breasts.  She climbed up onto the bed after him,
registering his sharp intake of breath as she straddled him.  His
hands returned to caress the skin of her hips as his head lolled back
against the pillows.

  He watched her with drugged languor from under half-open lids as
she pressed herself into his lap, the heat and hardness of him
burning against her.  The reality of sensation was too sharp for it,
but he felt as if he were dreaming as he watched and felt her moving
over him.  

  "Kiss me," she murmured, rubbing the warm skin of his chest under
her hands, feeling his heartbeat quicken.  She loved the feel of his
taut thigh muscles under her and his stomach muscles in front of her
as he quaked below her.  He lifted his head and kissed her, his hands
sliding up her back to her shoulders then down her arms as they broke
apart again.

  She rose and his hands slid down to rest lightly over hers as she
grasped his aching flesh and positioned him to enter her body.  He
could not help the shiver that ran through his frame as she moved
down and over him.  His hands returned to curl over her hips.  Her
eyes never left his as she drew him into herself determinedly, as if
she wished to absorb him into her very pores.  She sighed, a low,
pleased sound as they connected, and his heartbeat quickened with her
exhale.  Her hands came up to rest on either side of his face as she
settled herself around him and she stroked her fingers across his
lips gently.  "Kiss me," she said, starting to move ever so slightly,
and he did, his hands sliding up her body to capture her head,
enjoying the unusual sensation of being able to look her directly in
the eye.

  "Scully," he breathed, rocking up and into her.  He raised his
knees to get better leverage, surrounding her as she surrounded him
with her body.  "Scully..." His eyes were locked onto hers, the
moonlight sparking the white light like stars in the deep blue of her
iris.  He watched her as they rocked together, their bodies seeking
one another, surging and retreating.  This was beyond simple
pleasure, although the feel of her around him, the feel of her hands
on his body, his hands on her sweet skin was pleasure defined.  He
felt simple and clear.  He felt complete.  He did not want it to end.
 He kissed her throat as she arched away from him, his hands keeping
her from roaming too far from him.  "I love you," he whispered and
her movements intensified around him, her eyes ablaze with light. 
She kissed him hard, then broke away a bit, holding his head in her
hands, keeping their foreheads together as they pressed in and out. 
"Scully, I love you," he said, louder, feeling the wave beginning to
break for him as her body pulled on him, her strong muscles grasping
him, seeming to want to pull him even deeper inside of her.  "Oh,
Scully, Scully."

  He was repeating her name over and over again as they wound down,
the aftershocks rippling through them both.  He was kissing her face,
her neck, her ears, as she leaned back against his upraised legs,
feeling boneless.  His hands had never stopped moving on her skin,
painting her, smoothing her with their touch, stroking her where they
were joined and he did not stop now.  His strong arms pulled her
forward against him, holding her there.  "I love you," he whispered
again.  She smiled against his chest, feeling the quiet bubble of
laughter that rose up inside him when he felt it.  

  "I love you," she said, leaning back and moving her hips slightly.
 His hands immediately slid down her body to still them, his pelvis
tipping up to keep him inside of her, softly pulsing as yet.

  "Don't," he said urgently, and Scully caught the echo of the
unsaid end of that sentence: 'leave me.'  She looked at him and saw
the edge of desperation that he tried to cover.  She ran her hands
over his shoulders soothingly.  He sighed and his fingers came up to
trace the roundness of the top of her breast where it was pushed up
against his chest.  He was still holding her tight.   

  "We'll start to stick together soon, Mulder," she said, her voice
husky and low in the quiet of the room.  He kissed her jawbone just
behind her left ear.

  "That's fine by me," he said, half-seriously, continuing to kiss
her neck and her shoulders.  

  "But kind of difficult to explain to Skinner, don't you think?"
she rejoined.

  He sat up straighter, holding her hips still and looking her in
the eye.  "All right, new rule."

  "New rule?" she said, incredulously.  "You're making up a rule?"

  "Yes," he said resolutely.  He kissed her chin.  "Yes, I am.  Rule
No. 1: We do not talk about Walter Skinner in bed."

  She laughed at him, the sound intimate and low so close to his
ear.  Her breasts were brushing against him as they bounced with her
chuckling and he shivered with pleasure.  He searched his memory, but
this was a new occurrence in his life.  He smiled at her as she
continued to giggle.  

  "Or Kersh, for that matter."  Scully stopped laughing for a
minute.

  "I don't see why we ever have to mention Kersh again," she said
mock seriously. He tried to kiss her laughing mouth, but got mostly
teeth.

  "So be it," Mulder said, kissing her neck to seal the bargain.  He
brought his knees up a little further behind her back, carefully not
disengaging himself from her.  

  This time it was Scully that shivered from the friction.  "How
exactly are you doing that?" she asked him, wiggling a little, while
he yelped and stayed her hips.

  "Mind over matter, Agent Scully, mind over matter." His tone had
that smug, teasing edge that she so often found annoying, but more
often found challenging.  She couldn't resist.  She bore down on him
with her internal muscles, giving him a strong squeeze as he kissed
her neck again.  He shuddered and bit her neck without menace.  "I'm
old, you know.  You might give me a heart attack doing that."  Scully
pulled back a little in his arms to see his face.

  "A heart attack is not what I had in mind to give you, Agent
Mulder."  She kissed him, slipping just the tip of her tongue into
his mouth.  

  He laughed as she drew away from him, "Well, patience is not only
a virtue, it's a necessity in this case." He was looking at her
archly, talking against her lips, little kisses and puffs of air
peppering them as he did so. "Can your gift keep?"

 She laughed into his kisses, then answered him in the same fashion,
"I believe it could be characterized as the gift that keeps on
giving." It was very difficult to kiss him when he kept smiling that
way. She stopped kissing him to smile at him, her arms around his
neck, her body pressed against his long torso. "It's nice to see 
you happy." 

  He stopped laughing.  "Me?" he said.  

  "You," she answered. "You're not a very happy person."

  He snorted in disbelief.  "I'm not a happy person?"  His hands
were running up and down her back slowly.

  "Is there an echo in here?" Scully rejoined.  Their noses were
resting against each other.  She shivered as Mulder's hands stroked
over her lower back.  She could feel him stirring in her body as his
desire reawakened.  He kissed her more deeply this time, his
fingertips drawing patterns on the skin near her tattoo.

  When the kiss ended, Mulder's voice was rough with longing near
her ear.  "Pot," he said softly, "meet kettle."  She snorted with
unladylike abandon.

  "I'm not unhappy, Mulder," she said, as he began to kiss his way
from her ear down her neck.  He harrumphed against her skin, then
moved her chin up with his nose, kissing the soft, sensitive, flesh
that lay hidden there.  "Really..." she insisted, then stopped
speaking as he slid his open mouth down over her esophagus, kissing
her at the base of her throat.  Her breath whistled out of her.

  Her breasts were rising and falling rapidly now with the ascending
beat of her pulse.  Mulder could feel it against his mouth as he
kissed her throat, in the pounding of her heart as he covered her
breast with his hand, inside of her body where he lay waiting still,
only slightly dislodged from her by their increasing ardor. 
"Really?" he said to her, as he bent his head forward, straining a
little to kiss her breast.  

   "Really." Scully emphasized, unsure of what he was truly asking
her.

  He drew back and looked at her, his cat's eyes glowing at her
mysteriously in the reflected gleam of the light from the other room.

  She was drawn to place her hands on either side of his solemn
countenance, reassuring herself and him of the truth of her
statement.  

   "But are you happy, Scully?" he asked quietly, after a minute. 
He drew her close against him, stroking up and down her spine
soothingly with his fingertips.  He was no longer smiling, had not
been for some time.

  "Why would you ask me that Mulder?" she responded.  

  He hesitated, unsure as to how he should answer the question.  He
traced the flesh of her breasts pressed between them, bending down to
kiss her just above her heart again.

  Scully watched him wrestling with whatever was disturbing him and
made a decision.  "All right, Mulder, Rule #2."

  His head snapped up.  "You're making a rule?"  

  "I am," she answered.  "Are you ready?"

  His eyes were worried as he regarded her.  He knew this was not a
silly rule, although he had been serious about the Skinner rule.  "I
don't know."  He dropped his gaze from hers.

  "Rule No. 2: We always tell the whole truth in bed."  She lifted
his chin up to look him in the eye, but he avoided the directness of
her gaze.  He laid his head atop the pillows regarding her from under
his lids with a guarded expression.  "Tell me why, Mulder."  He was
still, the muscles in his abdomen and thighs stretched tight beneath
her, frozen in some kind of agitation she did not understand. 
"Please," she whispered.  

  He closed his eyes against her plea, but spoke anyway, his
response rapping out through clenched teeth.  "Why did you get out of
bed, Scully?"

  "What?" she asked, not comprehending.

  His eyes snapped open.  "This morning," he said clearly, and she
saw that there was anger there, after all.  "I woke up and you were
out of the bed, staring out the window.  You didn't look happy,
Scully."

  She couldn't help herself.  She smiled at him.  

  Mulder felt trapped suddenly in the light of her smile.  Cold and
bitter remembrance washed over him, scenes of professions and
confessions to lovers past that had been twisted back on him and
used.  Weakness exposed through truth, the irony of his life's desire
used to cripple him, as ever.  He hadn't expected that from Scully. 
He felt the lump building in his throat.

  "If you only knew how ironic that statement was, Mulder."  Her
voice was rueful. She looped her arms around his head and began
playing with the hair at the nape of his neck, thinking about how to
phrase this.  Her head dropped down so that she could avoid his 
intense, searching scrutiny.

  "Scully," he said warningly, "tell me what you're talking about."

  She shook her head absently.  "I'm not as good with words as you
are Mulder."  She lowered her head a little more and her forehead
bumped against his chin.  "I'm not as good with emotions as you are,
I think."  Her voice was soft and he had to strain to hear it.  "When
you came over last night, you really surprised me, you know."  She
looked up at him, trying to gauge his reaction to her words.  He
looked confused.  "I wasn't expecting...any of that to happen and I
needed to think about it, to process it."  She laid her hands on his
chest, idly pulling at the hair that grew there.  

  "And..." Mulder said, resisting the urge to scream at her.  He
could see this was difficult for her, but what was she saying
exactly?

  "Just before, Sk..." she cut a glance his way, "the phone rang, I
realized that I was happy."  Her fingers fluttered against his chest
as she shrugged her shoulders.  She looked at Mulder.  He looked
amazed.  "Really, truly happy, Mulder.  And then I felt sad that I
didn't even recognize the emotion while it was happening to me."  She
touched his face.  "I've gotten so divorced from myself that I didn't
even know what I felt until I analyzed it, can you imagine?"  She
smiled at him, but a tear trickled down her cheek as she did so.

  "Scully..." Mulder said quietly.  He could barely hear himself
over the pounding of his own heart.

  "I know," she said, shrugging her shoulders again
self-deprecatingly. "Pretty unbelievable, isn't it?  I have to think
first about how I feel."

  His shaking hand came up and wiped the tear off her face.  "That
was not what I was thinking," he said fiercely.  His other hand came
up to cradle her face.  She brought her own hands up to cover his
wrists.  

  "What were you thinking?" she whispered.  

  He kissed her softly and spoke against her mouth in a whisper. 
"How glad I am that I made you happy for once, Scully."  He kissed
her again, but she broke away from him.

  "Mulder," she said reprovingly, "I made you totally neurotic today
and now you're thanking me?"  

  "I don't care about that," he said, his voice dismissive.  He
kissed the damp trail of her tear then gathered her up against him. 
"I want you to be happy, Scully," he whispered into her hair, kissing
his way down to the knob of her white shoulder as she sighed.  He
rolled his pelvis in a soft thrust, pleased with the small sound he
elicited from her.  He held her hips firmly against his own as he
slid down onto the bed, then rolled them over.     

  Scully lay in a pool of silver in their new position.  The
moonlight framed her white skin in a square of fey light, her red
hair glittering against the darkness of the bedspread.  He watched
her for a moment, the transformation of the woman he had known all of
these years into the woman he had so longed for still new, still raw.
 "Mulder," she said quietly, as the silence grew between them.  Her
small hand, whitened by the gleam of the moon, reached up to his face
and wiped away a tear he hadn't recalled shedding.  "No more tears,
Mulder," she said, drawing him down to cover her.  "We've cried
enough."  

  He kissed her slowly and deeply in response, then drew back up
into the shadows to watch her face as he withdrew from her, then
rejoined her, the act binding him ever more tightly to her, body and
soul. He bent down to kiss the curve of her neck as she arched up
from the bed, then planted his elbows on either side of her head and
focused on her eyes, liquid blue, regarding him.  Her hand reached up
to outline his lips with a finger as she rocked her pelvis against
his, urging him, answering him with her body.  He smiled through his
half-groan at her, watching the curve of her lip turn up wickedly at
him.

  "I want you to be happy," he said to her clearly, before he bent
himself to the task of proving it.  

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ 
     
  The light was grey ahead of him, the ground shrouded in fog.  The
sound of their footsteps was oddly muffled in the quiet woodland
environment, as if nature was holding its breath.  The kind of uneasy
quiet he had felt in the burnt meadow pervaded the atmosphere
here...wherever it was they were.  He was not alone.  He sensed
Scully's presence next to him as they walked cautiously through the
densely wooded area, but he needed to be sure.  He turned and saw
her, her face caught in an expression of concentration.  She looked
at him quizzically, but without real concern.  She patted his arm
reassuringly once, then waved her hand to direct him back to the
forward path they should be taking.  He nodded and turned back to the
task at hand, although he was unsure of exactly what that was.

  How had they gotten here?  He shook his head, trying to clear his
ears of the intermittent buzzing that stymied his thoughts. 
Suddenly, he was alone.  "Scully?" he turned to where she had been,
just seconds before.  Only the swirling mist remained.  "Scully!" he
called, his voice rising in panic.  "Scully!"  He turned completely
around, searching for some sound, some movement that would lead him
back to her.  He heard the rustling of branches nearby and moved in
that direction, stumbling over an unseen gnarled tree root.  A hand
caught him as he began to plunge toward the enveloping fog and
steadied him.  "Scully," he began in a relieved tone, breaking off
when he got a good look at the hand.  He looked up into the face of
Elvis Costello, peering at him from behind the frames of his
oversized Buddy Holly glasses.  "You better watch your step..." Elvis
sang to him, accompanied by the sound of persistent ringing.

  "Scully," he heard her voice say.  It was only moderately
sleep-slurred.  Then she inhaled sharply.  Bad news, he thought,
starting to sit up, but her arm restrained him.  

  "Yes, Sir.  Agent Mulder?"  Her eyes were wide and dark in her
sharply awakened face.  "Just a minute, sir.  I'll get him for you." 
She laid the phone down on the nightstand.  It was 5 o'clock in the
morning, he noted grimly.  What was it with Skinner and early morning
phone calls?  He was now two for two.  These thoughts were flying
through his head as he watched Scully turn back to him.

  "Shit," Mulder mouthed at her.  She nodded, watching his
half-asleep eyes pinwheel desperately.  "1,2,3" she counted off with
her fingers, as he nodded.  With the experience of years of
partnership, they rolled and got out of bed on the same side
together, trying to move exactly in cadence to minimize the noise. 
They had gotten a lot better at that synchronized, rhythmic moving
thing in the last 24 hours, he thought with a small inward leer.  He
waited until she lifted a foot, then slid his own across the
carpeting, trying to skate silently in her wake.  From this vantage
point, he was getting his first real view of her tattoo and he leaned
forward and squinted to peer at it.  This was so bizarre.

  Scully turned around and shot him a glance at the exact moment a
chuckle threatened to burble up from him.  She clamped her hand over
his mouth and that was how they took the last three steps into
Scully's room -- stark naked, Mulder with his hands around Scully's
waist, his feet under hers, her hand stopping him from making any
noise as she twisted around to watch him.  He was practically
convulsing by the time they got to the bedside.  

  "Mulder," Scully said kindly, but briskly.  She pushed him to sit
down on the bed and the bedsprings complyied by simulating the noise
he would make if he had just turned over.  She kept her hand over his
mouth, watching his green eyes dance with laughter over it.  He
pulled her close into his body.  "Mulder," she said again, a little
louder.

  "Mmph..." he managed to say when she let go of his mouth.  She
kissed him lightly, then tried to break away from him as he sucked in
a shocked breath.  "Scully?" he said, trying to sound surprised,
which wasn't difficult under the circumstances.  "No fair," he
mouthed at her.  He pulled her down to sit on his lap. 

  "Yeah, Mulder, it's me."

  "What's up?" he said blithely, poking her thigh with what was up. 
Had to put on a good show, right?  Skinner might be able to hear the
conversation from his room on the other side of the wall.

  Scully narrowed her eyes at him, trying to pull away. She wished
for the millionth time that she didn't blush so easily.   "Skinner's
on the phone for you," she answered, trying to peel his hands off of
her.  

  "Oh," Mulder said lightly, holding her with one arm while he
picked up the bedside table phone.  He wondered if Scully was
ticklish.  She jumped when he ran his fingers deliberately up the
side of her body.

  "Not that phone," she said in a strained voice, her eyes shooting
darts at him, "the one in the other room."

  "Oh," he said again, then kissed her swiftly before letting her
go.  He jumped out of the way as she swung at him, moving into the
next room.  "Hello, Sir," he said conversationally as he picked up
the receiver, only to have to cover the mouthpiece as Scully suddenly
pinched his ass.  "What can I do for you this morning?" he said
through clenched teeth.

  Scully waved at him from a safe distance away in her room before
heading for the bathroom.  

  "30 minutes should be fine, Sir." 

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ 
  
  Skinner hesitated before knocking on the door of the room next to
his.  He was reasonably certain that this was Mulder's room, but he
had clearly made the wrong choice earlier this morning on the phone. 
He didn't want to take the chance of disturbing a half-dressed Agent
Scully, although a half-dressed Mulder would certainly be no
consolation prize.  Chiding himself for his foolishness, he knocked
briskly on the door, remembering too late quite how early it was
still here on the West Coast.  

  In the bathroom, Scully was putting the finishing touches on her
hair. Hearing the knock, she gave her hair one last spray and crossed
the room, stuffing her small feet in the shoes she had discarded by
the closet the night before.  She winced as she stepped back into
them.  Since her recovery from the shooting of two months ago, she
found that her calf muscles and feet were less willing to be squeezed
into her ultra-high heels every day.  She wasn't wearing these all
day at the morgue.  She would never tell Mulder, but she missed her
comfortable, utilitarian Doc Martens.  If only they weren't so damned
ugly.  No one would notice them under the cover of sterile booties in
the autopsy bay.  She had already packed them in the large bag she
was taking with her.  As she passed the discreetly rumpled bed, she
picked up her long navy jacket.  She opened the door to the Assistant
Director saying calmly, "Sir."  She pretended not to notice his
perplexed expression as she turned away from him, pulling the jacket
onto her right shoulder.  "Good Morning."

  "Good Morning, Agent Scully," Skinner said.  Had he mixed up the
phone numbers?  He drifted over to the bedside table and noted the
number.  No.  "Where is Agent Mulder?"  His gaze drifted to the
dented pillow on the bed.  It contained a few short brown hairs, but
far too few to Skinner's liking. He ran his hand grimly over his own
shiny pate.   

  "He should be ready any minute now," Scully replied quite calmly. 
She noted Skinner's observations of the room, but made no commentary.
 Mulder chose that moment to burst through the connecting door.  He
was still tieless and shoeless, his damp hair sticking up in six
different directions.  He was brushing his teeth and reading a file
at the same time.  

  "Scully," he said thickly.  She was pulling the small jewelry sack
out of the bottom of the fake shaving cream can.  "The table in that
room is Pennsylvania and the second bed is El Rico.  Morning, Sir,"
he said to Skinner.  His mouth was ringed with toothpaste and he went
into Scully's bathroom to spit, rinsing his mouth out and leaving the
toothbrush in there.  "This table is going to the rumored sites from
Europe and elsewhere.  This empty bed will be L.A.  OK?"  He stood
behind her briefly and regarded them in the mirror as she put her
earrings in. She nodded at his reflection.  He turned to their boss. 
"What did you want to talk to me about?" he said.

  Skinner hesitated for a second and Scully crossed the room to the
bathroom to put the can back on the shelf by the shower.  She stopped
at the mirror to put on lipstick.  She could hear Skinner talking. 
Poor man, they were confusing the hell out of him purposefully.  She
hung Mulder's toothbrush up in the holder as she listened.  

  "You were exceptionally quiet at dinner last night, Agent Mulder. 
I understand your reticence to speak about this matter in front of
Gerard, but I was curious to hear what your initial thoughts were." 
He waited for a response.  

  Mulder regarded Skinner silently for a beat, standing with hands
on his hips, the folder resting on his flank.  "Why are you here,
Sir?" he asked bluntly.  Skinner's face showed a small ripple of
surprise at the impertinent question.  In the bathroom doorway,
across the distance of the two double beds, Scully appeared and
leaned against the doorjamb.  She crossed her arms in front of
herself and her grave blue eyes were levelly watching Skinner.  "I am
not being disrespectful here," Mulder said, quietly, "but I am
curious.  We both are.  In more than seven years of traveling this
country together, this is the first time you've ever accompanied
Scully and me on a case."

  Skinner nodded, feeling suddenly tired and old.  "I know," he said
shortly.  "The truth," he began, not looking at Mulder, "the search
for the truth, has suddenly become more personal to me over the past
few weeks."  He looked up at Mulder and the air between them became a
little more charged.  "I believe that I now have a vested interest in
knowing what's going on."  

  Mulder stared at him for a long moment, his hazel eyes searching
Skinner's dark brown ones, then nodded slowly in slight acceptance
and turned to look at Scully.  Her expression was far more difficult
to read than Mulder's, as per usual.  She and Mulder communicated
silently for a moment.  Skinner was unsure of whether or not he had
passed their litmus test.

  "The fact of the matter is that I don't have a working theory
right now," Mulder said quietly.  "This is the data collection stage
for us.  Experience has taught us both that it's best to just let the
data accumulate and note patterns.  Any theory that gets formulated
will present itself at the right time."

  "That's all?" Skinner asked.  His tone indicated how inadequate he
felt this answer was.

  Mulder shrugged and held his hands out straight from his sides. 
"Welcome to the X-Files, Sir.  We don't have precedents for a lot of
our cases and it pays to be open to all possibilities."

  "Or at least the ones that can be proven to be possible," Scully
said from the bathroom door.  "This case seems to me, despite
everything, a very cut and dried case of mass murder.  Mass murder
for unknown reasons, but murder just the same."  She crossed the
room.  "I need to get down to the morgue."  She checked the contents
of her unusually padded forensic sample case again.  Mulder
purposefully did not turn around and look at what she was doing; he
didn't want Skinner to notice the case and ask questions.

  Scully tried to make her motions appear nonchalant. She was well
aware of what he had not told Skinner, but nothing in her movements
betrayed it to their boss.  It was a fine line that they were
walking.    Experience had taught them that trust was a commodity
that could be bought and sold, sometimes for the best of reasons,
sometimes for the simplest.  Until Skinner's motivations were clearly
understood, he was on a need-to-know basis.  Gone were the days when
Mulder and Scully would be the pipeline of information or the means
of discovery for the Consortium or any of their pawns.  "Where'd you
hide my laptop, Mulder?" she asked without rancor.  

  "On the other sleeping bed," he said.  She nodded and moved into
the other room.  "Are you coming to the field office with me, Sir?"
Mulder said to Skinner, following Scully.  As she packed the laptop
into its case, Mulder found a tie and put his shoes on, sitting next
to the cluttered tabletop that had been designated Pennsylvania. 
Open file folders and photographs had been splayed out in a pattern
that was incomprehensible to Skinner.  It was probable that it was
only relevant to Mulder.  The other bed had a stack of folders on it
as well, although their contents were not yet distributed into a
pattern.

  "Yes," Skinner answered, casting a surreptitious glance at the
slept in bed in this room.  A lone red hair shone on the bottom sheet
just below the dented pillow.  He frowned in confusion.  Mulder's
clothes were in this room; Scully's were in the other.  But they
appeared to have slept in each other's beds, alone.  Was this an
elaborate scheme?

  Scully held up her cell phone to Mulder and waved it.  "Charger?"
she said.  

  "By Europe," he answered.  "Can you grab me my other battery?  It
should be done."  She nodded and moved through the door again.  

  Whatever it was that they were doing here, it had a definitive
rhythm and tone, one of long use.  Mulder and Scully had spent years
in the field together.  It was going to take Skinner longer than
twenty-four hours to figure out their system.  He shrugged it off.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

  In the quiet of the early morning morgue, Dana Scully mentally
prepared herself for the challenge of the day ahead.  Like many of
the older medical examiner's facilities that she had used, the
'Women's Locker Room' here was a converted janitor's room.  The
industrial drain had been converted to a shower and a stall had been
built around the toilet.  All in all, it was a thoroughly unlovely
but utilitarian set-up.  It certainly beat many of the morgues she
had worked in, where she had been literally forced to change into
scrubs in a closet or a supply room.  She locked the door to avoid
untoward surprises and tried to find a relatively sanitary surface on
which to place her things as she changed.  She had left her cup of
coffee outside of this room, on the counter of the main autopsy bay
adjacent to this bathroom.   She hoped that it would cool off some
while she changed.  She wondered why it was that coffee vendors found
it necessary to serve their coffee scalding hot.  Hadn't the lawsuits
taught them anything? 

  Scully hung her suit up carefully and covered it with a dry
cleaner's bag she had brought with her, then sat down to tie her
shoes.  A smile crossed her face as she did so.  Memories of Mulder
caressing her feet as he put her shoes on and took them off during
her long convalescence rose up every time she saw them.  He had taken
such good care of her after she had been shot.  It was hard to
imagine that anything could have separated them after that
experience, but Diana had.  Scully laced up her left shoe and
wondered how true that was after all.  Had it truly been Diana that
had separated them or had she allowed Diana to exploit her jealousy,
her insecurities?  It irked her to believe that she had allowed
herself to be manipulated by that woman.  She looked down to find her
hands unconsciously caressing the leather of the shoes that Mulder
had given her.  How many women would have considered a pair of
butt-ugly shoes to be a romantic declaration?  She should have seen
them for what they were: proof of his consideration of her needs. 
She hadn't originally.  She had allowed Diana to get the better of
her too many times.  It would not happen again.  She stood, pulling
herself up to her full height, stretching her spine as she reached
for the ceiling.  She ran through a series of exercises to center
herself in her body before she began the grim procedures that awaited
her.  She needed to be strong, spiritually as well as physically, to
withstand what she was about to experience.

  Many people who assumed they knew something about Dana Scully
would be surprised if they could be privy to her thoughts at times
like this. When she approached the autopsy bay, what she saw lying
there on the slab was not a body.  It was a person.  Despite the
objectivity she had acquired over years of doing this work, on this
fact she was very clear.  She rejected utterly the notion that had
been suggested firmly to her and her classmates through medical
school and forensic training in residency.  This was not a body, not
a thing, but a human being.  Even before she was exposed to the
dehumanizing evil that was the Consortium, to the objectifying
insanity that was the mind of a serial killer or any murderer, she
knew that seeing another human being as a thing was wrong.  It was
part of the madness that allowed crimes like this one to flourish. 
It allowed the belief that fueled the mass experimentation of the
Consortium: that the lives of the select few were worth the deaths
and mutilations of the many.  All people were equal at their most
intrinsic level.  And these bodies?  These bodies in the other room
were people, individuals who had suffered what she considered to be
the ultimate injustice.  For them, for the dreams unrealized and the
loves they left behind, she toiled.

  In her heart of hearts, Dana Scully saw little difference between
her role as an FBI field agent and as a pathologist.  When she
changed into her scrubs in these small rooms, she was exchanging one
set of weapons for another.  In this arena, her weapons were her
scalpel and her science. As always, it was her intellect that was the
source of all her tools.  As a Catholic, she did believe that there
would be ultimate justice beyond the pale of this life, but as a
human, she believed that she had been given a unique gift to ensure
that justice could be served in the earthly realm.  She firmly
believed that one was not only given burdens but gifts in this
lifetime.  Part of the job of living morally was to determine what
your gifts were and to apply them for the greater good of humanity. 
It was this simple belief that fueled her purpose.

  As she prepared herself for what would be an undoubtedly grueling
day, she felt more alive in her skin than she had for years, possibly
ever.  As she stretched and bent her body, she felt the satisfying
soreness that was the result of her new relationship with Mulder. 
Those aches and pains were welcome, the happy result of a desire that
she had long feared would consume her whole.  She had never been so
glad to be wrong in her life.  For she had not been consumed,
although she was not the same person that she had been little more
than a day ago.  She felt sure now, sure of her place in Mulder's
life, in his heart.  There had always been something quietly radiant
in the way Mulder would look at her with love, the way his voice said
her last name with a tone like a caress in the inflection of it.  It
had been a promise all the years that they had spent together, a
promise that she had felt would never be realized after the harsh
words of the last month.  At the Gunmen's, she had felt the hope that
she had held onto resolutely, despite all of their travails, die
within her.  Mulder did not love her the way she thought he did.  She
had nurtured the belief that she occupied a place of primacy in his
heart, but saw, in his cold and childish refutation of her proof of
Diana's complicity, that she was wrong.  In her anger and pain, she
had never stopped to consider what the circumstantial evidence of
Diana's duplicity would mean to him.  Only now, in the light of the
things that he had said to her the night before last was she really
beginning to comprehend how few allies there had been in Mulder's
life.  

  If she was brutally frank with herself, Scully had to admit that
she had liked the romantic image of the position she occupied in
Mulder's life, that of sole female companion and partner.  She had
wanted to believe that she had always been the only woman for Mulder,
even as she would have railed at him for harboring such a jealous and
limiting belief about herself.  She would have found it insufferably
possessive of him, obsessively so.  At the same time, she had always
loathed being confronted with the possibility of other women in
Mulder's life.

  She wondered if he understood this fact about her, if he
comprehended how insane the idea of Diana had made her over these
past months.  Looking back now from the perspective of being Mulder's
lover, she could see how easily Diana had exploited both her jealousy
and Mulder's insecurity over his position in her life.

  The last thought jarred her still, even as she acknowledged its
truth.  She was culpable here.  Diana could not have exploited that
which did not exist.  Scully had been egotistical and presumptuous
about Mulder's feelings, masking her own from him for years.  She had
depended on the fact that he was in love with her, even as she held
him at arm's length by keeping the barriers up.  She had been equally
sure that Mulder knew how much she loved him, but after yesterday she
had to wonder how much she had truly managed to keep hidden from him.

  The image of Mulder's expression when she touched him last night
was fresh in her memory.  His face had been full of wonder and
surprise.  She had seen the tears standing in his eyes as she traced
the features in his beloved visage, felt the trembling in his hands. 
It had not been just desire that had caused it.  Ultimately, there
was a kind of amazed joy in Mulder that it was she who was touching
him this way.  Mulder's very reaction to her told her that no woman's
touch had ever conveyed the love hers did.  Despite her essentially
jealous nature, this fact did not please her.  If anything, it made
her hate Diana Fowley, and any other woman who had ever touched
Mulder, all the more.  They had used him, either for his beauty or
for other more nefarious reasons, but they hadn't loved him.  It made
her ache to know that she was the first woman to really love him,
just as he was.  She had wanted to be preeminent, but she had not
thought about that in terms of the isolation that it meant Mulder had
suffered.  She had a lot to make up for, both for her own sake and
for his.

  As she crossed into the autopsy bay, she heard echoes of the
things that Mulder had said to her over the course of the past day. 
He wanted her to be happy, had wanted their lives to be perfect. 
What did that mean exactly?  She took a sip of her coffee as she
pondered this, her eyes scanning the long list of people to be
autopsied today.  

  "Gruesome, isn't it?" a voice at her elbow said cheerfully.  

  Scully didn't jump at its proximity.  She had been aware of the
fact that the Assistant M.E. was nearby from the minute he entered
the room.  He had been flirting with her at the crime scene
yesterday.  She nodded and took another swig.  "Good morning," she
said quietly, her voice still a little husky from disuse as she
looked up at Mark Sanderson.

  "Good Morning to you," he said enthusiastically.  Scully swallowed
her smile.  God help them, but Californians were a cheerful lot,
generally speaking.  'Sandy' as he was known, had a mass of unruly
brown curls atop his head.  In his mid-forties, his face clearly
showed the marks of a life spent in the sun and his friendly brown
eyes were lined with laughter freely given.  His scrubs were standard
blue, but his autopsy bay clogs had a psychedelic pattern scored into
the leather.  He was hardly the standard issue coroner.  "Did you
have a good sleep?"  He leaned in a little as he asked.

  Scully did raise a brow at this inquiry and his posture, but she 
dropped her head so that it was not so visible to Sandy.  She nodded.
 "Yes, I did, thanks.  How are we going to proceed here this
morning?"  

  She raised her head and straightened up so that her posture was not
relaxed at all.  Mentally, she shook her head.  She hadn't been asked
out on a date in more than a year, couldn't think offhand of the last
time an attractive man other than Mulder had hit on her, but within
hours of sleeping with Mulder she was attracting them from all over. 
She must be exuding some sort of sexually satisfied pheromone or
radiating her desire for Mulder.  Nothing, after all, succeeds like
success.  In the animal kingdom the most attractive female was the
one that was ready for copulation.  Her mouth turned down into a
small frown.  That was kind of an icky thought.  She forced herself
to pay attention to Sandy and tried to project the idea that she was
involved in a committed relationship at him.   

  "Well, I thought we'd do what you suggested yesterday and begin by
taking X-rays of all of the corpses so we can get dental
verification, then move onto the forensic exams.  Truthfully, I can't
see why we're doing this.  It's obvious what they all died from and
it wasn't smoke inhalation, as per usual."  He laughed a little,
waiting for Scully to make some commentary.  She turned a corner of
her mouth up at him, not wanting to encourage this particular line of
conversation.

  "I know, Sandy," she began, "but for the sake of their
families..."   

  "Oh, I know," he said earnestly, shaking his curly brown head at
her, "but it's just so hard some days to come into work and deal with
stuff like this, don't you think?  I mean, it's hard to feel sorry
for the adults -- they chose to get involved with a cult, on some
level, but the kids..." he shuddered.  "Just awful, don't you think?"
 
  She nodded and turned her back to him to put down her coffee. 
Some things still cut too close to the bone.  "Let's get to it," she
said, beginning to move out into the bay.  "I'm going to start by
making cursory physical exams for gross distinguishing features. 
What time is the X-ray tech getting here?"   

  "Oh, hey," Sandy said, catching hold of her arm, "you don't have
to do that.  Let the residents take care of that kind of stuff."

  Scully smiled briefly.  It was important that she be able to
retrieve as many of the implants as possible before the X-rays
detected them.  "I don't mind, Sandy," she said, pitching her voice
low and resisting the urge to grit her teeth and yank her arm away
from him.  "We have a lot of work to do and I'm only here for the
next couple of days."  

  "I know," Sandy said, a little ruefully, "I was kind of hoping we
would have a chance to hang out, get to know each other a little
better."  He smiled at her, sincere in his admiration of her.

  Scully smiled a little as she extracted his hand from her skin. 
She would be nice, although she hated it when strangers touched her. 
"Oh," she began, putting a tone of regret in her voice, "that's
really nice of you, Sandy, and I appreciate it, but I'm afraid that's
just not possible.  I'm not available."

  Sandy's features drooped a little as he shrugged his shoulders,
"Well, you can't blame a guy for trying.  Since you don't wear any
rings, I just thought maybe.  But I should have known that a
beautiful woman like you wouldn't be alone."  He smiled sadly. "I
hope he," a question mark crossed his face as he regarded Scully,
"your friend, realizes how lucky they are..."

  Scully smiled at him.  He was nice, even if he wasn't Mulder. 
"He," she said firmly. "And it's my job to make him realize that." 
She moved away from him to the largest autopsy bay.  "I'll be taking
some tissue samples of the burns to return to the lab in Washington. 
We have some concerns that this tool that they are using for the
burning seems to be unknown."

  Sandy was all business now.  "Yeah, I noticed that.  Massive
tissue damage and very high heat over a short period of time.  Are
you telling me there is no accelerant being used here?"

  "Unknown," said Scully.  "I have seen cases where it turned out
there was an accelerant that came from a combination of sources.  For
evidentiary purposes, we will be the independent testing source for
your labs."  

  "Good enough," Sandy said briskly.  "Let me know what you need. 
I'll be in the office.  My paperwork beckons."

  Alone at last, Scully opened the first of far too many drawers and
began the arduous process of cataloguing the dead.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

  In the slightly stuffy interior of the interrogation room, Mulder
read the contents of the folders stacked before him.  He was not
surprised at all by what he was reading.  Each of these folders had
the very simple records of the choice selection of the dead: DMV
records, some birth records, some criminal records.  An astonishing
majority had had contact with mental health organizations and many
were on medication for control of delusional behaviour.  There were
few marriage certificates and absolutely no listing of surviving
dependent children.  Mulder wondered what had been done to the men
that they had not produced progeny either.  

  He flipped the folder onto a pile on the table. These were the
typical records of abductees that he had seen over and over again. 
Digging into their backgrounds would reveal memberships in groups
like MUFON and NICAP in some cases, the joining of religious
organizations in others.  Individuals who had been taken and
remembered their experiences spent a great deal of time looking for a
place they could be accepted or a methodology that would explain what
had happened to them.  For some there was a downward spiral into
paranoia, for some there was validation in knowing that they were
believed and for the rest, there was respite in the belief that there
was a plan, that after this life was over, there would be a just
reward.  

  Mulder was sure that these folders would correlate to the bodies
in which Scully would find implants.  For the sake of Gerard, who was
observing him through the one-way mirror, he read through all of the
folders one by one as he decimated the bag of sunflower seeds he had
brought with him from D.C.  He had to hand it to Gerard -- subtlety
was not his strong suit.  When Mulder had commented that the folders
handed to him seemed too few, Gerard had told him blandly that they
were still working on the others, but that only a scant half dozen
were missing.  He had stifled an urge to laugh in the other man's
face.  It was clear to him that Gerard's true employers were not the
Federal Government.

  That was probably the only thing that Mulder had in common with
Gerard.  Fox Mulder didn't truly believe he worked for the government
either, despite his I.D.  He considered himself a servant of the
truth and of the people that empowered the federalty to govern in
their best interest.  He was certain that concept was alien to Gerard
and the men of his ilk -- if Gerard was a man, which was not yet
proven.

  It didn't really matter.  What was clear was that Gerard had
either not read Mulder's file or that he had disbelieved it.  There
had been sixty-seven cars at the site that were not bureau or
California state issue.  Mulder had been handed forty-eight folders
this morning when he checked in at the field office and had been
brought six more over the course of the time that he pretended to
read these folders.  That brought the total of abductees to
fifty-four.  But Scully had eighty-eight bodies in the morgue for
autopsy.  

  At no other scene where there had been an immolation had abductees
arrived in pairs or threesomes, with the solitary exception of El
Rico.  There, where some of the members of the Consortium had burned,
there had been an occasional implant found in some of the women and
children post-mortem.  These were the relics of the 'bargain' struck
by their fathers, but it was the exception not the rule.  At El Rico,
the number of cars was far lower than the number of bodies.

  Gerard must believe him to be either very stupid or very
unobservant.  None of the more high-end vehicles that he had seen
were listed in the DMV records he had perused.  To screw with
Gerard's head, he was sorting the folders in a random order on the
tabletop.  He was sure they would be disturbed when he got up to get
coffee, but the order was as meaningless as the files he was reading.
 It didn't matter.  He had memorized all of the license plates. 
Assuming that any e-mail from this building would be as trapped as
the phone calls, he had shipped the list to the Gunmen last night
while Scully slept.  The Gunmen were continuously upgrading Scully's
laptop so that it was fireproof to hacking assaults.  Her wireless
modem was scrambled and encrypted so extensively that Gerard's
cohorts were probably still searching for the transmission.

  Mulder stood up and stretched, walking over to the window to look
out at the bland California day.  He wondered how Scully was doing,
sure that his thoughts in this regard would give his visage the kind
of contemplative expression that would drive Gerard nuts. She would
never say so, but being so close to so many of those implants made
her very nervous.  She was still, and always would be, suspicious of
the technology that sustained her.  At what cost, he wondered.  If
the chip was a kind of neural receiver and tracking device, wasn't it
also possible that it was a transmitter as well?  Just how much
information did they know about Scully, about him?  If the bearer of
the chip died, was it deactivated by the lack of electrical impulse? 
Could its secrets still be downloaded?  Mulder hoped that Scully
would be able to collect as many of the implants as possible so they
could ship them to the Gunmen for study.  As much as the three men
were nervous about having such dangerous items in their possession,
their curiousity outweighed their paranoia in this situation.  It had
taken them more than a year to construct what they hoped was a
dampening case that the implants could be transported in without
being detected by the Colonists.

  Or the Rebels.  Mulder rubbed his chin and pretended to re-read
the file he picked up from the tabletop.  Was Gerard a member of the
Resistance?  The Rebels were a puzzlement to Mulder.  Why were they
so dead set on stopping the production of the hybrid?  Were they
enslaved by the Colonists?  Would they be extinguished if the
Colonists found superior slaves?  Or were they merely the competition
for the Colonists, another kind of voracious race come to dominate,
rape and plunder their world?  Mulder had no answers to any of the
questions that rumbled through his consciousness.  It seemed to him
that murdering the minions of the Consortium, as well as the
abductees, was overkill.  He feared for Scully, controlling a shiver
as he remembered the predatory gleam in Gerard's eye when he looked
at her.  Clarity beckoned him sharply.  He had been wrong to see
anything in Gerard's overtures to Scully beyond its application to
this case.  Gerard, if he was a member of the Resistance, saw Scully
as an abductee and therefore as the enemy.  He slapped down the file
folder and left the room, suddenly concerned that Scully was alone
and without a weapon in the morgue, surrounded by the handiwork of
the men for whom Gerard could be working.  As he opened the door into
the hallway, he noticed that the doorway to the adjacent room was
ajar.  He hurried over to it.  An agent in there looked at him rather
sheepishly. 

  "Hey," Mulder said sharply, completely ignoring the other man's
discomfort, "where's Gerard?"  The agent hesitated and Mulder
squelched the urge to shoot him.  "Agent," he said curtly, trying to
imitate Skinner, "I do not have time for this.  Where is the SAC?"  

  The Agent hesitated an instant longer, straightening in fear when
a soft voice came over Mulder's left shoulder.  "I suggest you answer
Agent Mulder's question before he asks a third time."  Skinner's
voice brooked no argument.  

  "He said he was going to the morgue," the Agent responded swiftly,
practically saluting.  

  Mulder wheeled and began running down the hallway.  

  "Mulder!" Skinner yelled, as he disappeared into the bullpen. 
"What's going on here?  Ah, shit.  Bring my car around immediately,"
he barked at the stricken Agent.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ 
  
  Scully was studying the X-rays of one of the dead, comparing the
dental X-rays of Molly McAfee with the dental X-rays of Jane Doe No.
26 when Gerard walked up behind her.  She wondered if he realized
that his aftershave was overpowering rather than seductive.

  "Agent Scully," he said, intruding on her personal space, "your
report?"

  "Excuse me?"  Scully answered coldly, turning around to face him. 
She folded her arms across her chest and stuck out her elbows,
extending the pocket of space around herself.  

  "Your preliminary findings," Gerard responded impatiently. "What
are they?"

  Scully stared at him without responding.  

  "Agent," he said menacingly, "are you defying me?"

  Scully let out a small sound that might have been a disgusted
snort.  In the back of the room, Sandy and another of the coroners
entered quietly.  

  "Agent Gerard," Scully answered, "I have nothing to report."  She
paused.  "Preliminary or otherwise."  She turned back to her X-ray
examination.

  "I don't believe you," he said, "and I will not be left out of the
loop on this investigation.  This is my town.  I want a full
recitation of the facts as they stand now."

  Scully turned and looked back at him.  "As it stands now, we have
eighty-eight dead humans."  She said this quite deliberately.  "Of
these humans, fifty-six were female, with as many as a dozen of those
being juvenile.  Of the remaining thirty-two males, only six were
juvenile."  She stopped speaking.

  "And?" Gerard asked impatiently.  

  Scully stared at him.  "And what, Agent Gerard?  We have not
confirmed any identities at this time and cause of death, while
supposed, has not been documented as of yet by the Medical Examiners
here."

  Gerard stepped in closer.  "What about your findings?"  

  Scully did not even bat an eye.  "I am working in collaboration
with the Medical Examiners here and, as such, am not prepared to
present any findings until our work is done."  She stepped in a
little closer herself, pushing back against Gerard.  "That is the
fact of the matter and not only do I resent your intrusion into what
is a long and meticulous process, I find myself more than a little
curious at your consistent insertion of yourself into the
investigation.  What exactly is it that you are looking to find,
Agent Gerard?"

  "Your questions are insubordinate, Agent Scully."  Gerard snapped
back.  "I am the SAC on this case, not Agent Mulder and certainly not
you."

  "Oh, really?"  Scully said.  "I believe there is another SAC
assigned to this case and it is to him, and him alone, that I will
'give a full recitation of the facts'."  She produced her cell phone
from her back pocket.  "Why don't I give A.D. Skinner a call and find
out what his point of view on who the SAC on this case is?"  For a
moment, she thought Gerard was going for the phone.

  "Agent Scully, are you all right?"  Sandy interjected from across
the room.   

  "I'm fine, Sandy," Scully answered, her eyes never wavering from
Gerard's.  "Agent Gerard is on his way out."  Gerard blinked at her
words, then spun on his heel and slammed out of the autopsy bay. 
Scully turned back to the X-rays, only to have Sandy come across the
bay immediately.

  "Are you sure you're all right, Dana?"  Sandy said worriedly.  He
put a hand on her shoulder, just as Mulder burst in through the back
door.  She nodded at him.

  "Mulder," she said, looking over Sandy's shoulder, "we have to
talk."

  "Where's Gerard?" he said raising his eyebrows at the tableau in
front of him.  His right arm was bowed out at the side, his hand
resting on the butt of his gun.  

  "You just missed him," she said.

  "He was extremely rude to Agent Scully," Sandy said, turning to
face Mulder.  He was earnest even in anger.  "Very disrespectful."

  Mulder's face showed a certain amount of bemused surprise at this
recitation, but any commentary he might have made was cut off by the
hasty arrival of the A.D.

  "Agents," he growled, curtly. "What in the hell is going on here?"

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

  In the quiet of the motel room, Mulder hovered between sleep and
wakefulness in a warm, blurry place.  It was unusual for him to
resist the lure of sleep when it beckoned him so openly, but he found
himself loath to surrender to it when he was holding Scully. 
Actually, he had her lying atop him, the warmth and sweetness of her
skin stretched along his.  Her toes were pressed against the tops of
his shins and occasionally she rubbed them against the skin of his
calves causing him to shiver from the titillation.

  It was odd to be reminded of just how small she was, compared to
him.  In Mulder's mind, Scully was so important that it had been a
sharp surprise to be reminded of the physicality of her, of the
dysmorphism between them that went beyond sexual differentiation.  He
traced the bones in her spine with his fingers, noting with disbelief
that even his little finger was longer than the biggest vertebrae at
the base of her spine.  This was everything in the world that he held
dear, truly, housed in the tiny bones and fierce heart of this woman
he held clasped to his chest.  He tightened his grip against some
threat, real or imaginary, ever-threatening to take her away from
him.

  Scully made a small noise in her state of repose that was
something between a murmur and a purr of contentment.  Mulder was far
more calm now than he had been when they had returned to their rooms
for the day.  He had reached for her the instant they heard Skinner's
door closing on his anger and foul mood with finality from two rooms
away.  Mulder had backed her up against the wall with his kisses. 
Gone was the sweet impassioned seduction of two nights ago, the
tender movements of the night before.  Tonight there had been an edge
of desperate wanting, a need for her that was awesome in its rawness.
 Here, unmasked to her, was the Mulder that she had known lurked
under the surface.  In his kisses, his urgency to be inside her,
Scully caught the undertone of a need for reassurance, an affirmation
that this was real.  "I love you," she had whispered to him as he
trembled over and inside her, "I love you."  She had smoothed his
brow with her hands, forcing the connection between them to spark as
she'd held his fevered gaze.

  Now, in the aftermath, she lay replete atop his body, wondering
what the cure was for this display of insecurity.  

  She opened her eyes as his fingers traced up and down her spine
lightly.  He thought she was asleep, she reasoned, but he couldn't
stop himself from retaining the new connection that touch brought
them.  In all those years of silent communion, aside from the few
tactile statements they allowed themselves, she had often considered
the wide array of statements they conveyed with just their eyes. 
They had, after all, perfected this communication system of emotions
conveyed wordlessly, but without physical contact.  A psychic bond of
sorts, if she believed in that sort of thing.  But when Mulder
touched her now, with the force of his love and longing no longer
held at bay, she felt her senses open and snapping in a way that she
had never dreamed possible.  She could read his intentions, feel the
love he felt for her, not just on her skin and inside her body where
he could touch her, but in the places he could not.  He was inside
her mind, inside her heart, in a way that was real in a physical
sense.  A divorce from him now would be fatal to them both.  She
smiled against his chest at the ludicrousness of that thought.  It
would never happen.  They were indivisible now.       

  Scully regarded the strewn clothes on the floor between the door
and the bed, an unruly, staggering trail of passion, then turned her
head to regard the instigator of tonight's chaos.  "Talk to me," she
whispered to him, resting her chin on the short stack of her fisted
hands placed one atop the other.  

  "Hmmm?" Mulder murmured quizzically, running his hands through the
tumbled brightness of her hair.  Scully could feel the rumble of his
murmur in his chest throughout her own body.  

  "Tell me more about what you wanted for us," she said, "if things
were perfect."

  Mulder tensed at her words.  When he spoke, his tone was guarded. 
"This is perfect," he said.  'Isn't it?' The question hung there
unstated as Mulder repeated her words from yesterday morning.  His
body was rigid under hers.  

  "Yes."  Scully said firmly, dropping her head to his chest and
hugging him fiercely, wrapping her arms around his upper ribcage as
far as she could reach.  She would make him believe this.  "I'm just
curious."  

  Mulder's hands glided up her body to cradle her head, turning and
lifting it so that he could look in her eyes.  "About what, Scully?" 
His warm voice was puzzled.
  
  Scully leaned forward and kissed the mild frown of his mouth
softly.  "What you dreamt about.  The perfect plan you were telling
me about the other night."  She nuzzled his nose with her own, looked
in his eyes deeply, then lay back down on his chest to wait for him
to talk.

  Mulder hesitated for a few moments, thinking.  His hands continued
their leisurely rounds up, down and around Scully's back, the
touching lightly hypnotic.  He was lulling her to sleep with his
hands and Scully fought to stay awake, to stay present enough to hear
what he was truly saying.  Her head rose and fell on his chest as he
swallowed and she could almost hear him trying to formulate a neutral
place to begin.  'Talk to me, Mulder,' she pled silently, 'talk to
me.'  

  "I've never really liked the suburbs," he began hesitantly.

  "I didn't think you grew up in the suburbs," Scully said, when the
silence had spun out a little in the room.

  "I didn't," he agreed, with a smile in his voice at her tone. "The
Vineyard is a collection of really small towns, beaches and wild
countryside."  He was surprised to find himself talking.  He began
rubbing his hands back and forth across the smallness of her waist,
wanting to shelter the womb inside of her as he approached the issue
of children.  "It is beautiful there," he said, almost as if he had
forgotten that fact.  Perhaps he had.  The raw beauty of the terrain
of his childhood home was not something he contemplated often. 
  
  "Hmm..." Scully murmured in response, hoping that by not setting
up a dialogue, she could get more answers, more detail about what he
wanted.  Maybe if she knew what it was that he had wanted, she could
give it to him.  She waited, fighting the warm feelings of sleep that
were fast encroaching.  

  "Anyway, everyone seems to think that when you get married and
have kids, you should move to the suburbs."  Scully smiled against
the skin on his chest at this confirmation of his thoughts.  Mulder
was secretly a traditionalist, just as she had suspected.  He
hesitated again before his next sentence, trying to decide how much
to risk saying aloud as she waited.  "I never thought about myself as
a father."  Scully made a small, sorry sound at that idea, unsure of
whether she should say anything, but Mulder stopped her from speaking
with his actions.  Rubbing his face against the top of her head, he
pulled her up on his body so that her head was nestled into the
column of his throat.  "Except for our children."  He whispered this,
wondering if she realized now how much that was a shared sorrow.

  Scully lifted her face to his, placing her hand on his cheek.  For
wordless moments, she looked into the pained green depths of his
eyes, letting him see that she understood this, that it hurt her to
hear, but it was a sweeter pain for being shared.  "But in our
perfect world," she said minutes later, urging him to continue.

  He stared back at her, trying to gauge the expression in the
darkening blue of her eyes.  In them he could read very little of the
abiding sorrow he had come to associate with her countenance these
past years.  Maybe this was as close as Scully could come to a direct
conversation about the subject of children.  He was reminded of the
role-playing games that he has been forced to participate in on
team-building exercises, of long ago conversations he had had with
Samantha when they would fantasize about where they would be at the
turn of the Millennium.  'Let's pretend, Fox,' Samantha would say to
him, 'You play pretend the best.' He had never considered Scully as a
little girl, wanting to play pretend.  Biting back his own pain and
taking a deep shuddering breath, he dropped his head to press his
nose next to Scully's little one.  

  "I didn't want our children to grow up in the suburbs, places
where everybody has the same car and the same house.  I didn't want
them to be ordinary."  Against the side of his face, he could feel
the curve of Scully's smile at his words.  

  "Fat chance, Mulder, with us as parents." Her tone was light and
there was laughter in her words as she said them.  Scully snuggled a
little closer to him, tucking her face back against his throat.  

  Mulder rocked them a little from side to side as he chuckled and
answered.  "Oh, I don't know, Scully.  We're not half as strange as
all the stuff we've seen."

  "Humph." She snorted against his throat.  She didn't want him to
wander away from the topic.  "So, we wouldn't live in the suburbs,"
she prompted.

  "No.  I thought we'd have a house in town in D.C.  Send them to a
good school," he paused for a minute.  

  "How many children are we talking about here, Mulder?"  Scully
murmured against his neck.

  "How many did you want?" he said quietly. 

  "No, Mulder," she pressed back. "How many did you want?  One? 
Five?"  A tense kind of silence filled the room as Mulder wondered
what to say next.  His fear of hurting Scully with his secret desires
was almost as strong as his fear of being hurt by their revelation. 
His throat was fast closing in panic.  

  "Why do you want to know this, Scully?"  His tone was deceptively
mild, but the question was loaded with worry and fear.

  "I want to know you," she answered simply and without hesitation. 

	
  After a small pause, another little piece of Mulder's soul slipped
out from between his lips. "I always thought kids who had brothers
and sisters were better off than only kids."  Scully wondered if he
realized how he was touching her, how his hands told her how precious
she was to him.    

  "Only kids get all the presents at Christmas," she pointed out.

  "Only kids are lonely," Mulder answered calmly, far too
reasonably.  "Presents don't help that."  Scully could feel her heart
breaking as he hurried on to the next statement,  "So, I thought it
would be better to have at least two kids, that way they could always
talk to each other about how weird and uncool their old man is."
  
  Scully laughed sleepily as an unbidden image of a middle-aged,
potbellied Mulder wearing high-rise pants assaulted her senses.  "Are
you intending to be weird?"
	
  He chuckled underneath her.  "I never intend to be weird Scully. 
It just happens that way."  His hands continued their journey up and
down her spine, back and forth across her waist.  Her last cogent
thought, before she drifted into oddly shifting dreams about Mulder
and their teenaged children, was that he had lulled to her sleep
before the conversation was over.

  In the darkness of the motel room, Mulder cried soundlessly for
dreams that would not come true.  After he had calmed somewhat, he
listened to Scully's breathing and, with his eyes closed, tried to
imprint the feeling of her body pressed against his into his memory. 
 

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

  Mulder's eyes were gritty from lack of sleep and his nerves were
tightly wound.  He swallowed half of a cup of coffee in one gulp as
he and Skinner waited for Gerard to appear.  He paced up and down the
confines of the interrogation room while Skinner stood, staring out
the window at the non-existent view.  The files of the unavenged dead
lay on the table, their labels accusing Mulder as he passed back and
forth in front of them.  It had been a long and thoroughly unfruitful
day.

  "What do you think is going on, Agent Mulder?"  Skinner asked
finally, as Mulder passed by him on a circuit.  Mulder stopped and
looked through the open door into the adjoining room, ascertaining
that it was empty before he began speaking.

  "The usual," he answered curtly.  "Cover it up and move along."  

  Skinner turned and looked at him, expectant of more than this for
an answer.  

  "You have to know that these are not all the bodies in the
meadow," Mulder began, waving his arm in the direction of the
folders.

  "I can count, Agent," Skinner cut him off sharply.  "My question
still remains: What do you think is going on?"

  "I think somebody is cleaning house," Mulder answered, the
frustration evident in his voice.  "But I don't know who.  Is it
internecine warfare between different factions of the Consortium?  Is
it the Resistance that Krycek spoke of, destroying the collaborators?
 I just don't know."

  "Do you know who the other dead were?" Skinner's voice was pitched
low.

  Mulder nodded slowly, eyes on the ground before he looked at him. 
"Some DOD.  Not very high level so far, but the verified identities
from DMV records indicate that they either held scientific research
positions or were satellite communications specialists.  Spouses and
children complete the picture."  His face was a mask of disgust.

  Skinner nodded and turned away from the window, blocking any
observer's view from the adjoining room.  "Is that all?"

  "I think it's going to be," Mulder answered shortly.  Their voices
were barely audible in the room.  "The going's getting tougher. 
Records that existed 48 hours ago don't anymore.  Original data from
DVM, computerized birth records, mortgages.  These people are being
expunged."

  Skinner nodded.  "There has to be a mole in the Consortium. It's
the only thing that makes sense.  But is the mole getting rid of the
collaborators?  Is there more than one faction in the Consortium?"

  Mulder shrugged.  "Your guess is as good as mine.  The mole could
be a Rebel or the mole could be a Colonist plant.  The mole could
just want to take over everything in a power grab.  I just don't know
anymore."  The tenor of his pacing increased.

  "What is it, Mulder?" Skinner snapped at him.  Mulder was fast
becoming a blur and his nervous movements were exacerbating Skinner's
own tension.

  "It's happening," Mulder said flatly.  "This is the beginning of
whatever the hell is going on."  He watched the blood draining from
Skinner's face.

  "Are you sure about that?"  Skinner's voice sounded hollow and
hoarse to his own ears.

  Mulder laughed, a brief and bitter sound in the small room.  "I'm
not sure of a damn thing, but I feel it.  I feel like the end is
near."  

  He could feel Skinner's careful scrutiny after his last words. 
Everyone was always watching him to see if they would be able to
discern that last thing, the one thing that would push him over the
edge into the yawing pit of insanity.  He turned his back on Skinner
in defiance of the scrutiny.  "Whatever is happening, there is a plan
and a pattern to it."  He stared out the window, hands on hips, then
spoke through gritted teeth.  "I just can't see it all."

  Silence filled the room until Mulder could hear the ticking of
Skinner's watch as he flipped aimlessly through the folders of the
already forgotten dead.  He continued to stare out blindly at the
haze of the early spring California day.

  "Where the hell is Gerard?"  Skinner asked suddenly, annoyance in
his voice evident.  "That twitchy bastard is late."

  Mulder snorted.  "I wouldn't be surprised if he doesn't show up at
all."  He turned to face Skinner.  "He's in it up to his neck, you
know."  

  Skinner nodded grimly.  "You think he's the one who got the
non-implants to that meadow?"

  "Somebody did," Mulder said.  "And they didn't put out the bat
signal to get them there.  There were scorch marks on the ground from
suitcases and other items that were removed before we got to the
site."  Skinner's face registered surprise.  "I doubt the Rebels
looted before they left."  He stopped speaking at the sound of
footsteps in the hallway.

  "Assistant Director Skinner," Gerard said from the doorway. 
Skinner turned and stared at him, pointedly looking at his watch. 
"My apologies.  The Section Chief's budget meeting ran over a little.
 Are you getting all the assistance that you require?"  His smooth
countenance was calm, unruffled.  

  "What I require," Skinner bit off, hands on his hips, "is that you
stay away from my Agents when they are pursuing avenues of inquiry
relevant to this investigation."  Gerard looked at him blandly. 
"Would you like to explain what you were doing at the morgue
yesterday?"

  "I'm sorry, A.D. Skinner," Gerard said, coolly.  "I wasn't aware
that I was restricted from speaking to the Agents investigating a
crime in my jurisdiction.  It's this office that is under pressure to
explain this crime to the panicked public, this office that is
getting calls from the District Attorney looking for explanations.  I
was merely looking for confirmation of what had been discovered so
far."

  Skinner's lips thinned out even more as he began to speak. 
"Perhaps I was unclear in my earlier instructions to you, Agent
Gerard.  You have no responsibility or obligation whatsoever to this
investigation.  You are not to ask for or receive any reports from
either of my Agents.  You are to turn over ALL of the information
that you are withholding to Agent Mulder," he gestured in Mulder's
direction, "now.  You are not to visit Agent Scully at the morgue or
to call her on the phone.  You are not to speak to the press or the
District Attorney about this case.  All inquiries are to come to me
or Agent Mulder as my designee.  I have tolerated your territorial
behaviour up until this point out of deference to your position as
SAC of this investigation prior to our arrival.  That is over now. 
An official reprimand will be placed in your file in regard to your
performance at the morgue yesterday.  That is all."

  Mulder was watching Gerard's face carefully during Skinner's
disquisition.  Gerard was relatively calm, although there was anger
sparking in his eyes at the dressing down.  There was something in
his demeanour that was so smug, so 'I have a secret' that Mulder was
suddenly sure which side of the fence Gerard was operating on.  He
wasn't concerned about a reprimand being placed in his file.    

  "Is it?"  Gerard echoed Skinner's last words in an arch manner and
turned to leave the room.

  "Resist or serve," Mulder said quietly.  Gerard stopped short,
then turned to face Mulder.  "You made your choice long ago, didn't
you?"  Mulder smiled coldly at Gerard's momentary lack of composure,
belied by his rapid eye blinking.  "I mean, before you changed your
mind."  A red flush crept up Gerard's neck.  "I'd watch my back if I
were you, Gerard.  Turncoats always need to sleep with one eye open."
 He regarded Gerard for a long minute.  "You won't make it."  He
turned back to the window.  "Hubris is always a fatal flaw."

  "Only in fiction, Agent Mulder," Gerard said tightly, turning to
leave.

  Mulder turned from the window to regard him, his eyes silvered in
the fall of light across his face.  "Said he, so totally in character
that he's practically a stereotype," he quipped.  He crossed to the
table and began sorting the folders.  "Oh, and Gerard?"  

  Gerard stopped and turned from the corridor.  "Milton, Irving J.,
42, Santa Monica, satellite systems communication specialist, his
wife Monica, 41 and their daughter Brittany, 7.  Martinez, Aida G.,
35, biochemical engineer studying the effect of genetic manipulation
and cloning in near human mammalian species.  Her husband, Adelberto
Garcia, 38, molecular biologist with a specialization in virology. 
No children."  Gerard was paling.  "Shall I go on?  I can name them
all.  Their phone records searches were very revealing."  He clucked
his tongue.  "You were very careless."

  Gerard's forehead had become shiny with sweat.  "You know
nothing," he said emphatically.  "It means nothing."

  "Keep telling yourself that, Gerard," Mulder answered.  "Watch
that back, 'cause no one else will."

  Gerard wheeled around and stalked down the hallway casting
suspicious glances at passersby as he made his way back to his
office.

  "What was that about, Mulder?"  Skinner growled.

   "I was playing a hunch," Mulder answered. He turned to gather up
the files on the table, filing them in alphabetical order
automatically.  He bitterly resented the fact that these fifty-four
murders would be marked as unsolved, when he knew who the killers
were.  And who had led them to their deaths.  He was so damnably
tired of all of this.  He straightened up the folders and passed them
to Skinner.  "I'm going to see Scully," he announced without
preamble, then walked out of the interrogation room without another
word.  

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

  The lingering sense of unease that Scully had felt upon awakening
this morning had not abated as the day continued. Her lower back
ached from wrenching apart the chests of the seemingly endless stream
of people requiring autopsy.  In most cases, she was able to separate
herself from the caseload that she was carrying, but here and now she
found herself stretched to the breaking point by the myriad emotions
of the past week.

  Maybe that was really the problem, Scully mused to herself,
emotion.  She was unused to the rollercoaster of emotions that she
had been riding on all week.  She had begun the week divided from her
partner, sure that he had given up on everything that they had worked
and sacrificed so much for.  And now?  Now, she was his partner in
every sense of the word, sure of the love she had so lately doubted. 
But she was surrounded by the bodies of people she could consider
kinsmen on some level.  She might not be biologically related to any
of these people, but they had shared experiences that no one else
could understand.  It was almost too much to deal with in the span of
a few days.  

  Scully had had a friend in college that was fond of theories of
convergence.  Mary had believed that one would go through periods
without any crises. Then suddenly, there would be a convergence of
events that would be nearly simultaneous.  You only got dumped by
your boyfriend, Mary would say, on the eve of your hardest final
exam, when you were frightened that you might be pregnant.  Then your
parents would call and announce that they had arrived for a surprise
visit. 

  She sighed as she tried to saw through the heat-toughened
cartilage of a man's sternum.  She wondered if he had been happy in
his life, if he had remembered what had happened to him.  She said a
prayer for his soul and wished that he were at peace now, reconciled
to all of the inexplicable things that had occurred in his life.  She
had a moment of sharp self-doubt as she began to fish around in his
chest cavity for his primary organs.  Who was she kidding?  She
didn't remember what they had shared in common, didn't want to
remember.  What they really shared was represented by the case that
she had stored on one of the shelves below the workbench adjacent to
where she stood.  She shivered at the thought of all of those
implants, waiting patiently in their case for their secrets to be
revealed.  They sustained the wearers' life, but they had been the
instruments of their death in the end.  She could see them all, like
the shadows of the memories she had from Pennsylvania, the light
above them and the hands reaching up toward the sky, so trustingly. 
Why would they reach for their captors, their tormentors?  She had
not reached, had she?  

  Think about something else, she firmly instructed herself. 
Something other than the burned smell of death that surrounded her
here, the paranoid thoughts of her own death looming in her
subconscious.  All of her anxieties were being exacerbated by the
emotions released by her new relationship with Mulder.  That was all
it was.  She stubbornly pushed away the other subconscious clues that
were clamoring for her attention.

  Last night, she had dreamt about her father for the first time in
months.  She had been sailing in a twenty-foot sailboat on the ocean.
 It seemed like it was the Atlantic when she thought about it, the
colour of the water in the bright summer sunshine still green and
gray along with the swirling blues and purples of the depths.  She
could hear the creak of the timber in the sail as the boat glided,
majestically, slowly, through the water.  There was barely a wind
blowing and Scully was concentrating on the myriad currents below the
surface, trying to stay in the channel that would bring her to the
shore.  Despite the work of the dream, she was enjoying the day
itself, the smell of the salt, the feel of sailing, the clear skies. 
"Isn't it beautiful?" she had said, turning to her father.  She had
known as soon as she spoke that she was not alone and reveled in the
ability to spend time with her Dad, so long dead now.  When she
caught sight of his face, she was surprised by the seriousness of his
expression.

  "You surprise me, Starbuck," he had said to her.  "It's not like
you to ignore all the evidence and just see what you want to see."

  "What?" she said to him, unsure of what he was talking about.

  He pointed to the horizon.  "There's a storm coming.  Why are you
ignoring the signs?"  

  "I don't see it," Scully said, shaking her head.  Why was he
trying to ruin her beautiful day?  She could feel her chin setting in
a gesture of childish stubbornness.  She did not turn to look at the
horizon. "I don't see it," she said.

  "No, Dana," her father said sternly, "you won't see it.  There's a
difference between do not and will not."  

  That was the last thing she remembered before becoming aware of
the small, terrified noises coming from Mulder.  He was holding
himself tightly, arms wrapped around his frame.  "No," he said
clearly. "No."  There were traces of tears on his face, dried salt
stains visible in the low light of the early morning.  How long had
he been dreaming?  When she had spoken to him softly, calling his
name, patting his face and hair soothingly, he had woken sharply, his
reaction startled and fierce.  In the instant it took him to focus on
her, Scully had watched his face move from the tense mobility of his
dreaming to a kind of wariness.  He had startled when she kissed him,
then pulled away from her abruptly.  She had thought that he was not
quite awake and moved to put her arms around him, a move the Mulder
seemed to grudgingly tolerate.  He wouldn't tell her of what he had
been dreaming and he seemed distant from her, almost angry.  Her
movements to soothe and reassure him, to bring him back from the
place he had been, seemed to not be what he wanted.  He had wrapped
her in his embrace to quiet her, to stop her from trying to provoke
any kind of response from him.  He would not talk to her.  She had
fallen into a dark and uneasy sleep finally, and awoken to find him
already showered and dressed.  She could hear him talking to Skinner
in the other room as they reviewed folders from this case in
comparison to the others.  They both excused themselves and left for
the field office when she stumbled into the room wearing the pajamas
and robe Mulder had left on the end of the bed for her.  

  She had tried to convince herself that Mulder had not rejected
her, but was reacting to the stresses of the case.  It had worked for
the most part, but she was still hurt that he hadn't really accepted
her comfort, hadn't allowed her to make love to him.  What wasn't he
telling her?  

  Distracted as she was by these thoughts, she failed to notice
Sandy coming up behind her.  When he asked her about her progress on
this latest case, she startled, slicing the scalpel through both the
glove and the tender webbing of her finger between her thumb and
forefinger. 

  "Damnit that hurts!" she said sharply, applying direct pressure as
Sandy circled around to the front of her.

  "I'm so sorry, Dana," he said sympathetically.  "I thought you
heard me coming because of my clogs.  I should have spoken sooner. 
Do you need stitches?"  He pulled the light over to shine directly on
her hand as Scully peeled the ruined glove off carefully.  He opened
a packet of gauze for her, pressing it against the messy bleeding as
they both bent over the wound, heads practically touching.

  "I don't think so," she said, cleaning the wound off.  She could
hear footsteps out in the hallway and the squeak of the door as it
opened, then a sharp intake of breath.  In the time it took her to
peer around Sandy to see who had started to come in and stepped away
so suddenly, he was already gone.  Only the still swinging door
betrayed the fact that she was not imagining things.  She didn't
bother to run to it and confirm who it was.  After seven years, she
well knew the sound of Mulder's tread, walking away.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

  Mulder welcomed the burn of the alcohol as it bit the back of his
palate and scalded its way down his throat past the seemingly
permanent lump of grief and anger that was lodged there. It had been
months since he had allowed himself this indulgence of selfishness.
In Mulder's experience, both as an adult and through the eyes of a
child, to be drunk was to wallow in self-pity and recrimination,
lashing out to blame others for one's own faults. I am not my father,
he reminded himself. I am not. He regarded his choice of drink, the
clear shot glass of tequila in front of him. His father had loved his
whiskey, cradling the large glasses of scotch between his trembling
and damp palms like something precious. Mulder picked up the small,
insignificant glass and tossed the liquid back in a short, almost
contemptuous motion, rapping the hollow container against the bar
sharply. He stared at his now empty and cold hands that rested palms
up against the blonde wood of the bar. He clenched them into fists as
the memory of Scully's breasts filling them overwhelmed him, feeling
the rounded smoothness of her warm skin pressed into his hands. His
eyes closed against the surge of emotions the memories brought up as
he remembered the sweep of her hair against his skin while she
trailed
kisses across his face, her serious blue eyes filled with love. 

  She did love him, he knew that, but for how long?  She must have
looked at other men that way at some point and he hated them, hated
the idea of that more than she could ever possibly understand.  

  He didn't truly believe that the M.E. he had seen touching her
today was any real threat to him, but he represented what was to
come.  The man that Mulder would envy until the day he died.  The man
that Scully would marry.

  Scully never talked to him about the future.  In truth, she barely
spoke to him at all.  Instead, she asked him about his dreams, his
desires and he gave them to her, let her gather them up from his
empty hands.  She never said what she wanted from him, just listened
and smiled.  She never told him what she dreamed for them.  He forced
his eyes open to regard his empty hands again.  He needed to get used
to this.  He needed to accept the fact that he was going to be
emptier than before.  Life was not perfect.  It was not going to be
perfect.  Their quest was not over and they were not satisfied or
healed.  There would be no children.

  The pain of that thought closed his eyes again.  He didn't believe
Scully understood how much that killed something deep inside of him. 
When he made love to her, there was a refrain in the back of his
mind, not a constant one, but a subtle undertone chanting 'maybe,
maybe, maybe.'  He knew she wanted a baby.  He wanted it to be his. 
He wanted to be able to give her a child without drugs or
intervention, to just love her and watch her blossom with his child. 
His child.  Their children.  He had imagined a house filled with
them.  Maybe they'd adopt some too, because he didn't want to be too
selfish, even in his imagination.  Besides, he knew the pain of being
an unwanted child.  He had waited to be rescued all these years.  He
had thought this would be the thing that would finally save him,
thought Scully would be his refuge.     

  It would not be.  Scully would love him and then she would leave. 
This inevitability grew not out of his old insecurities, foes that
were so familiar that they were easy to recognize, but out of the
facts of the case.  She didn't love him the way he loved her.  That
was clear to Mulder.  She seemed unchanged by this new phase in their
relationship, moving through her day as before.  It had been a shock
when she had come to him the night before last and made love to him. 
But when he thought about it, it seemed that she had just opened up a
corner of her life, a slot in her day for him.  For now, he got the
nights.  He got the parts of her that she chose to give him.  But he
wanted it all.  He wanted the ceremony, the ring, the house, the
babies.  He wanted it all.  And not to have it all left a taste like
the ashes of cigarettes in the back of his throat.  It would have
been better to have had nothing, than to have come so close to having
it all and be left with nothing to hold onto.  He had no commitment,
no promise of forever. He knew that if she had given it, he would be
changed forever.  He would be purified, transformed, reborn.  He
would never be alone again, because if she gave that promise to him,
Scully would not leave him.

  He could have asked her, he supposed, but her continued silence in
light of the change in their relationship spoke volumes to him.  Last
night, she had made no commentary about his visions of a perfect
world for them, never said 'But I want to live in the suburbs...' or
told him what she envisioned.  She only wanted, it seemed, what they
had right now.  It was not enough.

  He felt desperate, hungry for as much of her love as he could get
because his fear of losing her was overwhelming him.  He had to open
all his senses and let himself drown in what was happening when they
made love because it blocked out the pain of what would inevitably
occur.  He listened to his own thoughts with a ritual and savage
dislike of what they exposed.  He sounded like an addict, grasping
and crazed for a fix.  That was how he had felt last night when they
had gotten back to their rooms, like he would die if he couldn't have
her.  How would it be when she finally walked away from him without
looking back? 

  The bartender was looking at him strangely.  He must have asked
him if he wanted another.  Mulder nodded and pointed mutely at the
shot glass.  He avoided the bartender's eye, choosing to look around
at the furnishings of this too bright bar with its plants and light
wood, its brass fittings and the roar of the chattering crowd at his
back.  The bar was full in the late dinner hour, with couples waiting
to be seated at tables in the adjoining restaurant and a few
post-work groups laughing and drinking convivially.  This had been
the best choice he had come across after walking endlessly to find a
place to have a drink.  He had been looking for someplace quiet and
dark, but it seemed that was not to be found here in California. 
Even the bar was dotted with happy people sharing hors d'oeuvres and
drinks.  There were lots of blondes, lots of tans, lots of light
colours.  Mulder, sitting alone at the bar dressed in sober colours
and drinking himself into a state of insensibility, had little in
common with them.  No wonder the bartender had looked askance at him.

  He wondered about the 'happy' people around him.  Did they have
any understanding of how the vagaries of Fate had worked in their
lives?  He doubted it somehow.  He was far more suited to the East
Coast, to the wild, cold waters of the Atlantic and its mysteries. 
In New England he could have found the kind of bar he liked to have a
drink in, bars full of dark wood and age, the floors pitted and
dented by the feet of the workingmen that had walked and stood there.
 Those bars were different; a man alone drinking would not have
seemed so out of place.  Sometimes, in situations like this, he
wished he were invisible.  He was careful to make eye contact with no
one as he perused the bar, his posture and his countenance inviting
no conversation, but a certain amount of curiousity.  It was nothing
new for him to be perceived as the oddity.  The trick was in learning
not to care anymore.  His eyes scanned the furnishings of this place,
lighting on the small carved stone figure of a cherub that graced a
bracket, its rounded belly and dimpled knees contrasting oddly with
the tip of the wing that peered out from behind its body.  He snorted
derisively and tapped the bar for another shot, then knocked it back
when the bartender complied.  

  Mulder had wanted to believe in angels when he was little, but
these little fairy babies had never appealed to him.  Because he had
been raised in such an irreligious household, religion held a kind of
fascination for him in the same way that the occult did.  Not
necessarily in the manifestation of the belief in God, the kind of
faith that he believed Scully had, but in the trappings of the
religion itself.  He'd always had a fascination for churches and
other houses of worship, one that had begun when he was very little.

  He had gone with his father on business to Boston in the fall of
his fourth year.  Samantha had just been born, so Fox had gone to
town with his Daddy, driving to the ferry and crossing Nantucket
Sound to Woods' Hole, then driving for hours to Boston.  He'd fallen
asleep several times during the long trip and had awakened to the
sights and sounds of Boston.  His father was sitting on a bench in
front of the largest building Fox had ever seen.  He opened the car
door and stepped out onto the broad city sidewalk.  It was a clear
fall day and the sky was the sharp colour of blue it got when the
leaves were just at their peak.  Piles of them had blown up against
the great strong building, with its massive ribs of gray rock.  Its
tower reached to the sky, up past the elevated tracks of the train
that ran in front of the building.  Just then, one rumbled and
squealed overhead and Fox realized that the noise was what had
awakened him.  His father called him over and introduced him to his
friend.  After he had shaken hands with all the courtly aplomb and
shy charm that a four-year-old can manage, he had climbed up onto the
sun-warmed slats of the green bench, his father's hand resting
companionably on his thigh.  He had craned his head back to look for
the trains as they whipped by on the magic rail.  Eventually, he had
grown bored with this pastime and wandered off to the open door of
the church to peek through it, looking back to see if it was all
right with his father.  His father had nodded and waved a hand at
him, and Fox had stepped cautiously into the vast interior of the
church.  

  The sunlight did not illuminate the intense, penetrating, cool
darkness of the high vaulted room, but there was light everywhere. 
At the front of the church, high up above the altar with its candle
flickering in a red glass urn, there was a blue stained glass window,
shaped like a rose.  "Oh," he had said aloud, starting to move toward
it.  It was so high up and far away that it was hard to see.  As he
moved down the long central aisle of pews, their carved end ornaments
higher than his head, flashes of light assailed him from both sides. 
Fox turned and looked, first left, then right.  There were more
windows, windows everywhere he looked.  He could feel his eyes
bulging in their sockets.  This was such a beautiful place!

  The windows seemed to be telling stories, but he couldn't figure
out what they were, exactly.  The same man seemed to be in many of
them.  In the ones nearest the door, the man lay limp, wounds
bleeding from his head, feet, hands and side.  Fox shivered and moved
to the other side of the church.  In these windows, there seemed to
be a war going on, but the people in them were so strange.  Their
upper bodies were covered with armour, their faces covered by
helmets.  They carried swords, but they wore gowns and had enormous
white wings growing out of their backs.  They were fighting beings
like themselves but with dark wings.  The dark creatures were flying
up out of the split ground at the light creatures; their swords
rained lightning and fire where they clashed together.  He wandered
down the aisle trying to figure out what the story was that the
pictures were trying to tell him.  The words below the story were no
help.  The letters were all there, but they formed words he could
never remember reading before.  He was puzzled, but not unhappy,
trying to figure out the story from the great illuminated sheets of
glass.  As he moved past the benches, he stopped abruptly in front of
one window, his breath drawing out of him in a gasp.
 
  In this window, a beautiful woman stood staring out into the
church.  Her sword was bloody and her armor was golden over the top
of her long white gown.  Her great wings were arching over and above
her as she took flight from the ground.  At her feet, one of the dark
winged creatures lay broken and limp next to her discarded helmet. 
On her free arm, clasped to her breast, a wounded white-winged
creature hung, gown torn, bleeding.  She was the most beautiful thing
he had ever seen, with her solemn blue eyes and shoulder-length
golden hair.  She was sad and fierce and magnificent and Fox found
himself wandering back down the aisle to see if she had been present
in the other panels.  She was there, fighting with the other
white-winged creatures, but this was the only window where her face
was uncovered.  He sat on the red velvet cushion of the pew and
absorbed the beauty of her, trying to remember exactly how the
afternoon sunlight streaming in through her onto him looked and felt.
He sat there for a long time, until he heard his father calling him
from the center aisle.

  "Over here, Daddy," he answered, unwilling to stop looking at the
great creature.  He felt his father come up behind him.  "What is it,
Daddy?  I can read it, but it doesn't make any sense."  

  "It's a language called Latin, Fox.  You remember we talked about
language."

  Fox nodded.  "Like Yiddish, or German, or French," he said.  
  
  "Yes," his father answered.  "That's Latin.  You'll start learning
how to read it soon."

  "But what is she, Daddy?"  Fox asked impatiently.  He didn't want
to know about the Latin, just what it said.

  "She, Fox?  I don't think that's a she.  It's an angel, an
Archangel.  I think the angels are all men."  Fox turned a
disbelieving face to his father.  
  
  "It doesn't look like a man, Daddy.  She's too pretty.  She has
long hair."  Bill Mulder had chuckled indulgently at his son's
naivete and stubbornness.  

  "I know that he doesn't look like a man, Fox, but he's an angel,
not a man.  Besides, girls don't fight with swords, do they?"  His
hand waved down to sweep over the other windows.  "Girls don't fight
in wars."  

  The rational argument had stopped Fox's protests, but not his
beliefs.  He knew what he saw when he looked at the window.

  There had come a day, far later in his life, long after the time
when he had rejected all of his father's beliefs, along with the name
that he had been given as a boy, when the grisly scene before Mulder
was one far more dreadful than the sanitized horror of a cathedral's
stained glass window.  The aftermath of a firefight spread out on a
city street around him, not the first, nor the last he had been
involved in.  In the heat and humidity of a Washington summer's day,
the light a molten gold around him that hurt to breathe, he had
started at a cry of anguish behind him.  Dreading what he would find,
he had turned to see Scully crouched in desperation over the body of
a fallen Agent.  She was lit from behind by the relentless light of
this long and awful day.  Her hand was pressing against the chest of
their colleague, ineffectively trying to save him from an inevitable
fate.  At Mulder's voice she looked up, her angular and avian
features solemn and pale in the shadows.  The sunlight cast her
shadow across the ground to where he stood, the angle of light vastly
expanding her form.  Her expression was fierce and tender at the same
time.  "I don't understand why these things have to happen," she
whispered in a voice full of sorrow.  Her gun clattered to the ground
as she brought her other hand up to bring pressure on the burbling
wound.  There was blood on her kevlar vest.

  Mulder snapped back to the present when the woman who had seated
herself next to him began to speak.  He blinked at her, trying to
work his mind around the words.  He wasn't that drunk, but he didn't
care to speak to her.  He stared at her in the too bright light of
the room, at her mauve coloured lips as she told him her name.  Her
lipstick was drawn onto her faux-tanned skin in a poor attempt to
make her thin lips look voluptuous and lush, like Scully's.  "I'm
married," he announced to her suddenly, forestalling further
conversational attempts, then felt a sickening stab of pain at the
truth of that statement. "I'm married," he whispered again,
over-emphasizing the first word.  He stood up and nodded for the
bartender, settling his bill with shaking hands, then turned around
and walked away without a backward glance, wondering what it all was
supposed to mean in the end.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

  Scully's eyes passed over the article in her forensics journal. 
Absently, she flipped the pages, looking for something remotely of
interest or, at the very least, distracting.  She would not look at
the clock, would not verify that it had been hours since she had last
seen Mulder at the morgue.  She should be angry with him for thinking
that she was so faithless, but in light of her own jealous nature,
she couldn't sustain it.  She knew exactly how he felt, however
unjustified his beliefs.  All she could think was that she should
have heeded her father's warning, should have known that he never
visited her dreams for trivia's sake.  Even if he was only a
manifestation of her own psyche warning her that something was wrong,
she should have listened. 

  She would not think about how she had lied to Skinner, telling him
that Mulder was out chasing down leads.  She had no reason to feel
guilty about that.  She had lied to Skinner before and Skinner had
most certainly lied to her, but she did feel guilty about one thing:
her assurance to Skinner that she was sure everything was fine.  She
was not sure.  Her faithless mouthing of those words had left her
feeling cold and stricken inside, a hollow ringing like a death knell
reverberating through her body.  'Please Mulder,' she begged him,
wishing he could hear her across the distance between them, 'please
come home and tell me what's wrong.'  

  Scully was not sleeping when she heard the click of the
keycard-turned tumblers of the lock opening, merely staring in the
direction of the muted TV.  She flicked it off before Mulder walked
into the room with his head down, shoulders slumped, his expression
grey and grim.  She caught the mild expression of surprise that
crossed his features before his face closed in on itself.  She was
clearly the last person he had expected to see, sitting in his room,
in his bed, wearing his T-shirt.  She said nothing, merely waited.

  Mulder stared across the void of the room between them, then said
the first thing that came to mind.  "If you're waiting for a good
night story, I have none to tell tonight, Scully."  His voice sounded
harsh and weary at the same time.  He was tired of playing pretend,
tired of trying to live their relationship on her terms.  'Fuck it,'
he thought.

  She blinked at him, her face registering a shadow of pain and a
question as she regarded him.  "Are you drunk, Mulder?" she asked. 
There was an edge to her tone; judgment rang in it.  He reeled back
slightly, as if from a phantom physical blow.  An expression of shame
flitted across his face and she saw the echo of her words rattling
around in his head, realizing the kind of resonance they must have
for him from overheard confrontations from his childhood.  She was
almost sorry that she had said it.  Almost, but not quite -- it was
late and she had been very worried and scared.  And she had never
given him a reason to doubt her in the first place. 

  "Not enough, evidently," he said, mildly.  I am not my father, he
reminded himself.  I never was.  He turned his back to her, flipping
his keycard onto the bureau, then crossed the room to shed his
overcoat.

  "Mulder," she began, wishing that she didn't sound so imperious,
but unable to soften her tone, "there is no reason for you to be
jealous of Sandy."

  Mulder's laugh was short and bitter as he shoved the coat onto the
attached hanger in the closet.  "Ah.  Now jealousy needs reason, as
well."  He stripped his suit coat off and kept his back to her so he
could not be reminded of her beauty, of the ease with which she could
slip her little fingers into the cracks of his soul.
 
  "What?"  Scully said, not comprehending.

  "In my experience," Mulder answered slowly, sitting down at the
table to shed his shoes, "not everything requires a reason. 
Jealousy, perhaps, least of all."  He was gritting his teeth in
anger.  He was tired of being made to feel irrational all the time
just for feeling.

  Scully regarded him silently for a moment, not sure if this was a
slap at her behaviour about Diana or her normal method of dealing
with evidence.  Did he understand that she was a jealous person after
all?  "Mulder."  He continued undoing his shoes, not looking at her,
jaw set.  "Mulder," she said again and he lifted his head finally,
eyes flashing at her.  "Don't you trust me?"

  He laughed at her again.  "You see, Scully, there's the rub."  He
stood and pulled his shirt out of his slacks, unbuttoning it with
short angry motions.  "I do trust you."

  Scully put her back against the pillows and watched him moving
around the room, tossing the shirt over his shoulder and toeing off
his socks.  She hated it when he was cryptic.  Inspiration struck her
with an awful thought.  "You don't believe that I love you."

  Mulder looked at her stricken face in the mirror above the bureau
and turned around to face her.  He would not lie, not about this. 
"No," he said, "that's not true.  I believe that you love me."  He
paused and looked down at his feet for a moment, his voice dropping
to a whisper, "Just not beyond reason." 

  "What?" Scully said.  "What does that mean?"

  Mulder shrugged, then turned and took his pants off, hanging them
in his closet.  
  
  "Mulder!" she said in frustration.  "Talk to me!  Tell me what is
going on."

  "Talk to you," he said as he turned around and took some swift
steps toward her.  His voice rose with the anger he had been holding
on to for days. "Talk to you.  I've been talking to you, Scully! I
talk all the time, it seems to me."  He stopped and ran a hand across
his face roughly, trying to stave off the tears that were so close to
the surface.  "I just want..." he shuddered, trying to contain
himself, "I want you to tell me something."  His hand was on his
chest, patting himself to emphasize the point.  He drew in another
breath as Scully waited, hanging on his next words, anything that
would mitigate her confusion.  "Are you going to tell me when you
decide to leave this time?" 

  "What?" she whispered, her mouth hanging open.  

  "Because, you know, of the two ways that you've done it so far, I
think I prefer knowing that you plan to leave, rather than you just
walking away from me."  The threat of tears was past him now, but not
the pain.  His eyes were glittering with a hard rage that Scully had
not seen directed at her very often.

  "Mulder," she began, her voice strangled with emotion.  "I
understand that you have been left by a lot of people in your life,
but I would think," she drew in a breath to slow down the rush of
words coming out of her lips.  "I would hope that seven years,
Mulder, seven years of me being here, day in and day out, would have
proved something to you."

  And then he laughed, incredulous at her words.  "I'm not talking
about work!"  he said.  "I'm talking about us!"  His hands were
gesturing back and forth between the two of them.  "I'm talking about
you, walking away from me."

  "Me?"  Scully said, her tone equally disbelieving and dismissive. 
"Oh, that's rich, Mulder.  When have I walked away from you?"  

  He stared at her.  "I can't believe you just said that to me. 
Would you like a list, Scully?"  His hands cut off her protests as he
struggled to focus his thoughts.  "You know what?  I'm not going to
do that.  Let's just get right down to the most recent, and I think,
if I do say so myself, the most painful and inexplicable example,
OK?"  He stared at her, at her flushed cheeks and flashing eyes, her
arms crossed tightly across her chest.  He tossed the bomb.  "Dulles
Airport, anybody?"

  Scully's arms sagged a little against her chest as he said those
words aloud and her eyes dropped away from him.  

  "I thought so," he said.  A clean hit to the target. 

  "Mulder, I..." she began weakly, her voice trailing away.  She
wanted to reach out to him, but she couldn't.  Her hands pulled at
the comforter in misery.  "I was..." Oh God, she was so ashamed.  How
could she say this out loud?

  "What?" he asked, in frustration. "What were you?  'Cause I'll
tell you what I was, Scully.  Confused.  Confused as hell.  After
everything that had happened the previous night, you just turned
right back into professional Agent Scully and then you walked away
from me.  Without a word.  And then," he emphasized that last word,
"you pretended like nothing had ever happened, like you hadn't come
to my room and slept in my arms."  He flung his arms out wide.  "You
just walked away from everything, like it had meant nothing."

  She was watching him speak, feeling divided from herself,
dispassionate but grieving all the same.  How could she have failed
to see how badly she had hurt him?  For the first time, Dana Scully
acknowledged to herself that she had power over Fox Mulder.  She was
no longer independent, but interdependent.  And she was like those
people in Mulder's life that she had despised, his parents, his other
women.  She had callously disregarded his feelings.  Suddenly, all of
his actions, his childish behaviour of the past month came into sharp
focus.  She reached for something to hold onto, proof that she could
give him of her feelings.  "What about this?"  Her arm waved around
to encompass the room, the bed she sat on.  "Do you think that I
would make love to you and just walk away?"  

  Mulder's head dropped and he sighed.  "Why is it, Scully, that I'm
always the one who has to answer the questions?  Why is it always me
who has to make the first move?  Just once, just once, would you
please tell me what you want from me?"

  Clarity washed over Scully like a cold wave.  "I thought you knew
that."  Her voice sounded hollow.  "I told you that."

  His head shot up.  "When?"  

  "The other night.  I told you the other night."  She was watching
his expression carefully.  "I just want you."  She saw the shadow
passing over his features and wondered why on earth that would hurt
him.  "Mulder, I don't know what you want me to say.  I don't know
how to prove to you..." He interrupted before she could finish her
thought.

  "I don't need proof!" he yelled at her.  "I just want you to tell
me why you left!"  He was trembling with anger.  

  Well.  There was no getting around it now, was there?  Scully drew
her knees up to her chest, embarrassed before she even began to
explain.  "It was because of her," she said, quietly.

  "What?"  Mulder said, not understanding at first.  Silence reigned
for a few seconds and then Mulder blinked as he realized to whom she
was referring.  "Diana?  You left because Diana showed up at the
airport?"  His voice was rich with disbelief.

  Scully's jaw was clenched.  Now he would begin to put it all
together.  Mulder was finally going to figure out what a neurotic
mess she really was.  Another one of their myths was exploding around
them--that Mulder was the insecure one in their relationship, not
she.  

  "Scully?  I know that you dislike her, but..." Scully's head
snapped up, astonished.

  "Don't you dare defend her to me, Mulder.  Not after everything
that's happened between us."  She had come up out of the bedclothes
from where she had been hiding.

  "What are you talking about?" he yelled again.  "I'm not defending
her, I don't understand what you're talking about."  His frustration
was evident in his posture.

  "You know, Mulder, you are the smartest dense man I have ever met.
 You never saw her for what she was and you still don't, do you?" 
She held up her hands to forestall an imaginary protest, but Mulder
was silent.  "She wanted you back, Mulder.  I could see it, everyone
could see it but you."  She fell silent and Mulder watched her again,
beginning to comprehend.

  "Maybe that's because I wasn't interested, Scully.  I haven't been
interested in anybody else in years.  What did I do to make you think
I was interested in her?"  His voice was firm.

  Scully sighed.  "Didn't you say that jealousy doesn't need a
reason earlier?"

  "You're jealous of Diana?"  Scully's head shot up at his tone of
incredulity.   

  Scully couldn't help herself.  "I hate her."  She said, bluntly. 
"Every chance she got, she flaunted the fact that you had been lovers
in my face.  Every chance.  She figured out early on just where my
buttons were, then she just kept pushing them."  

  Mulder sat down on the chair next to the table, hard.  His mouth
was hanging softly open.  
 
  "I can't believe that you didn't see that, Mulder."  Why was she
so annoyed that he hadn't noticed her discomfiture?  "Even Frohike
noticed."

  He stared at her for a moment longer, then said,  "I thought it
was a professional thing, Scully.  A territorial thing.  I thought it
was because of the X-Files, because you were afraid she threatened
our partnership."  He shrugged. "I just didn't think that it was
personal.  I thought you knew that I could never, I would never..."
He trailed off, the hand he had been waving in the air as he spoke
falling limply onto his thigh.  He paused for a long moment and
Scully waited, holding her breath a little.  The emotions that were
seething in Mulder were passing over his face, shining in the turmoil
of his evocative eyes.  When he spoke his voice was choked.  "So you
walked away because she showed up?"  There were tears in his eyes. 
He looked across the room at her and Scully started at the naked pain
in his glance.  "Do you know how crazy that made me, Scully?  I had
been so happy and then...you just..."  He dropped his head into his
hands and covered his face.  His shoulders were shaking with the
effort to keep the tears at bay.

  Scully leapt out of the bed and crossed the room to him, wrapping
her arms around him and drawing him close.  He resisted her, turning
away so that his left shoulder was the only part of his body she
could press against her.  "I'm sorry," she said.  She could barely
wrap her arms around him from this angle, but he wouldn't let himself
be moved.  When she touched his head, he flinched away from her as if
her touch were painful.  She felt the tears rising up inside her. 
"Mulder," she said again, "I'm sorry.  I'm so sorry."  The tension in
his body did not ease as she searched for something, anything that
she could say.  "I'm not going to leave you, Mulder."  She was
whispering through her own tears, running her hand along the corded
muscles in his neck, his shoulders.  "I promise, Mulder.  I won't
leave."  She could feel the shudder that ran through his body when
she said those words, feel the gasp of air he took into his lungs.

  Mulder turned his body toward hers, burying his face between her
breasts and pulling her between his legs so that he could surround
her.  She had finally said the one thing that made the difference to
him.  He was behaving needily, responding neurotically, but he was
past caring anymore.  She had said she wouldn't leave him.  He was
trembling from the force of the emotions he had been trying to
contain.  He felt weak and ridiculous, but she was rubbing his head
and his back soothingly.  She had said she wouldn't leave him.  

  Scully tried to convey calmness to Mulder through her touch, but
inside she was roiling.  When most of the storm had passed, she drew
back, but Mulder stopped her from moving away by picking her up and
placing her on his lap.

  "Mulder?" she said, gently wiping the tears off his face, "most of
the time I really hate it when men pick me up because I'm little.  It
makes me feel demeaned."  He sighed and looked at her with
exasperation evident in his gaze.  "You said you wanted to know how I
feel."  She looped her arms around his neck.  "And, I said most of
the time.  I don't feel that way right now."

  "How do you feel, Scully?"  Mulder's voice was as tired as he
felt.  Between the last few days and all of this, not to mention the
alcohol, he was done in.  She continued to look at him with an
unreadable expression, soothing him with her touch as she ran her
hands over the cotton of his T-shirt.

  "I'm kind of mad at you, actually," she said matter of factly. 
"I'm angry that you think that I would make love to you and that it
wouldn't change anything between us.  You might as well have said
that you think that this doesn't mean anything to me."  

  "Scully," Mulder began in protest.  She covered his mouth with her
hand and he sighed, a little frustrated.  

  "I know that's not what you said Mulder, but that's the crux of
it, isn't it?  You thought I got up out of bed the first morning
because I wasn't happy about what we had done and you think that I'm
going to get tired of this and just walk away someday, don't you?" 
She had uncovered his mouth, but Mulder didn't say anything, just
looked at her.  "And, yes, I admit that I acted badly after Omaha,
Mulder.  I know that I haven't been entirely truthful with you." 
Mulder looked at her significantly with his eyebrow arched, "But I
wasn't being truthful with myself either, if that's any consolation
to you."  He didn't say anything at all, but his eyebrow remained
arched.  "I would really appreciate it if you wouldn't make my own
faces back at me, Mulder.  It's kind of weird.  It makes me think
that when we're old we're going to look alike, like some couples do."
 She wrinkled her nose at the thought.  "It's kind of creepy."

  Mulder wondered if she could feel his heart pounding, because he
felt like it was just going to burst out of his chest.  "Are we going
to grow old together, Scully?"  

  This time it was her eyebrow that arched at him quizzically.  "I
hope so, Mulder," she said.  "I hope we figure this all out and then
retire when we're still young and lay on a beach somewhere for about
a year until we figure out what to do next.  You know?  Just being
fat and happy."  Mulder had a strange sort of half-smile on his face.

  He hesitated before speaking again, running his hand over the
T-shirt of his that she was wearing, outlining the curve of her torso
underneath it.  "Was that your perfect plan, Scully?"

  "Are we still operating on our rules system, even though we aren't
in bed?"  Scully asked thoughtfully.

  Mulder nodded silently.

  "I didn't have any perfect plan for us, Mulder," Scully said,
quietly.  "Somewhere along the way, I lost the ability to dream about
what life could be like."  She looked down at her lap for a moment. 
"Actually, I don't think that's true."  She looked up at him again,
her eyes clear and blue, despite the shine of tears in them.  "I've
been afraid to dream, afraid to wish for anything.  I convinced
myself that it was better not to dream about things that I couldn't
have, so I didn't let myself think about you, or other children, or a
life someday after this.  After Emily, it just hurt too much,
Mulder."  

  Mulder could feel himself bleeding, could feel her words ripping
at something inside of him.  He wrapped his arms around her, trying
to seal her inside of himself, as if that place was free of pain.  He
could not speak for the lump in his throat and had no idea what he
could say in response to such a heartbreaking revelation.  

  "That's why I wanted you to tell me what you dreamt, Mulder.  I
like the fact that you dreamt a future for us."  He could feel her,
inexplicably smiling against the rough skin of his neck.  

  "What?" he said, truly curious, drawing back to look at her.

  "You're such a traditionalist, Mulder."  Her tone was ironic, but
not sarcastic.  

  "I prefer to think of myself as a romantic," he said, just the
tiniest bit huffily.  

  She chuckled and ran her hands up the smooth muscles of his arms,
tunneling under the sleeves of his T-shirt.  "Are you going to plan
the wedding, too?" she asked, laughing, then felt the sudden
stiffness in his body, the withdrawal.  "Mulder?"

  "Is there going to be a wedding, Scully?"  He was holding his
breath. 

  "If you want one," Scully said cautiously, watching Mulder's face
carefully.  "Mulder?"

  He nodded.  "You don't want one, then."  His face was bleak.

  In the momentary silence, Scully clearly understood what was going
on for the first time in days.  "I didn't say that, Mulder," she said
quietly, "but maybe I wasn't as clear as I should have been."  She
put her hands on his face and tilted his head so that she could
clearly see into his eyes.  "I consider myself married already,
Mulder."  She saw the hope mingling with the confusion in his eyes. 
"I've felt committed to you, to our quest for a long time.  But I've
felt married to you since the other night when you came to my
apartment.  You made me feel that way.  I don't need the ceremony to
validate that."  

  Mulder wondered if his face registered the shock that he felt at
her statement.  He found himself speechless again. 

  "Maybe it's a Catholic thing, Mulder."  She watched his brows draw
down in puzzlement.  "Catholics believe that marriage is the only
sacrament not conferred on the participants by the Church.  The
couple marrying confers the sacrament on each other by their words,
their bond, the love they feel for each other.  The Church only
blesses the vows they make to each other.  The reality of the union
is between the people."  She kissed him softly and ran her fingers
through his hair.  "The Church would definitely disagree with me
skipping the public ceremony part, but that's how I feel.  I'm
married to you, Mulder.  All the things you said to me the other
morning before we made love?  That was like a ceremony to me.  I
thought you understood that I felt that way.  I won't leave you,
Mulder."  She kissed him, a little cautiously, unsure of what was
going on inside of his head right now.

  His lips were parted under the sweet pressure of her mouth, but it
barely registered at the moment.  "Mulder?" she said.  He felt as if
he was watching her from the end of a long tunnel, although he could
feel the small weight of her on his legs, feel the place where she
was touching his face.  He was on information overload, that was it. 
Everything that he had convinced himself was right was wrong.  Up was
down, white was black.  He could have what he wanted.  

  He could have what he wanted.  His hands, which had slackened and
stilled on Scully's frame, suddenly grasped her, registering the fact
of her in his brain.  "Mulder?" she said, startled.  He felt his
thoughts coalescing, felt the pulse surging under his skin, the
warmth of her breath against his cheek and he stared at her, as he
felt the dawning of an emotion inside him that he had all but
forgotten.  

  "Say that again, Scully," he ordered.

  She stared at him for a moment longer, reviewing the things she
had just said to him.  "I feel married to you, Mulder," she said
quietly, watching the small delighted smile curve the edges of his
mouth and make its way up into his eyes.  His eyes turned from the
stormy grey brown of the past day to green and gold while she
watched.  His hands were circling her waist tenderly.  "I love you,
Mulder," she said to him, just getting the words out before he kissed
her, his lips full and warm.  

  "Scully," he said into her mouth after he kissed her.  He folded
her up in his arms and held her against himself.  "You'll never be
able to comprehend just how much I love you," he said into her neck
as his hands ran over her back. 

  "I feel it, Mulder," she said.  "I feel it when you look at me.  I
feel it when you touch me."  

  The room filled with quiet as Mulder inhaled and exhaled in long,
slow cleansing breaths.  His trembling had passed and in the closed
in world of the two of them, Scully could feel the thudding of his
heartbeat as it began to slow down.  She slid her hands up and down
the ridge of muscles that lined his spine, feeling the tension ease
from them as Mulder murmured against her.  She remembered him
soothing her to sleep last night, lulling her with his touch.  She
hadn't realized how powerful it felt to know that your touch could
calm someone so entirely, how she could feel his yearning for her
touch as he surrendered to it.  She continued stroking him, lost in
her own thoughts, until she noticed the heavy slackness of his torso
pressed against hers.  

  "Mulder?" she said.  His murmur was barely intelligible.  "Mulder?
We're not going to sleep in this chair, Mulder."  She pushed him back
away from her and he grumbled a little, sleepy and still a little
drunk.  "Mulder?"  She patted his face.  "Mulder, you stink."  He
cracked a mock irate eye open at her.  "You smell like tequila and
cigarettes."  He groaned.  "Go take a shower.  C'mon."  She struggled
out of his heavy grasp and stood on semi-bloodless legs.  She tugged
at his wandering hands.  "The faster you do it, the faster we can go
to bed."  Mulder's head came up and he waggled his eyebrows at her
suggestively as he stumbled to his feet, bending to give her a loud
smacking kiss before he entered the bathroom.  

  Scully stood in the room for a few seconds, trying to process
everything that had just happened.  It was still so unusual for her
to feel so much.  She had convinced herself that feeling was
synonymous with pain, that revelation of her feelings was to be
avoided at all costs.  It was a strategy that she had employed for
years as a woman in a man's world, ever since a medical school
professor had snidely responded to her protests about a lower than
expected grade she had received on a test.  'I can't talk to you
about this right now,' he had said to her officiously as another
professor stood by silently, approving. 'Not while you're having such
an obvious emotional response.'  She had been speechless with fury
and shame at his remark, but it had marked a turning point in her
life.  Never again did she allow her colleagues in science to see her
as anything other than dispassionate, despite how she really felt. 
She would not give them weapons to use against her.

  That self-discipline had come in handy at the FBI where gradually
she had realized that she had to harden herself for the sake of the
ever-present prying eyes around them.  She and Mulder were always on
display; if she disagreed with him on a theory, she had to make it
seem as if she believed the discussion was rational, not as if she
were making fun of him.  She couldn't afford to give them ammunition
to use against him.  Then, somehow, it had mutated to the point where
she couldn't give Mulder ammunition to use against her.  She hadn't
wanted him to know the depth of her feelings for him.  She had become
so used to hiding her feelings from herself and from others that the
fear of exposure had become the greatest fear of all.

  She should have known that her fear would be the one thing that
hurt him the most.  His fear had almost undone them tonight,
compounded by her own.  She was going to have to learn how to talk to
Mulder, really talk to him.  She shuddered a little.  The idea was
somehow still frightening to her.  She wasn't sure she knew how to be
truly intimate with someone else.  Did she even know how to be honest
with herself?  She sighed heavily and crossed into the adjoining
room.  She heard Mulder turn the shower off as she went into the
bathroom for the pain relief that she wanted him to take tonight. 
She took one herself for good measure, then refilled the water glass.
 She wished there was some way that she could just get beyond her own
fears, some way to avoid hurting Mulder with her silence.  She
regarded herself in the mirror, hearing her father's voice in her
mind from her dream of yesterday morning as an idea occurred to her. 
She smiled suddenly, the gesture transforming her face from that of a
long-tired young woman into one filled with hope.  

  Mulder loved seeing Scully laying in bed waiting for him to join
her, even if he was too tired to do anything about it.  He smiled at
her as he crossed the room. 

  "What?" she said, pointing at the water glass and the pills next
to it.  He took them silently, then slipped into the bed next to her
in his boxers.  

  "You look better in my T-shirt than I do," he said, plucking at
the torn corner of the pocket that had FBI emblazoned on it.  She
smiled softly, looking at him with an indulgent expression on her
face as he curved his palm around the swell of her breast and bent to
kiss her, only to stop in confusion.  "Scully, what's that?" he
asked. 

  Scully smiled enigmatically as she pulled the circlet of gold out
of her breast pocket, letting it slide down her forefinger.  Mulder's
eyes grew wide as he stared at it and her.  "It's a promise, Mulder,"
she said, separating herself from him and sitting up in the bed next
to him.  She dropped the ring into her palm, holding it out to him. 
She took a deep breath, centering herself, trying to abate her
nervousness.  "This was my father's wedding ring," she said quietly,
touching the ring with love.  She heard Mulder's sharp exhale of
breath and glanced up at him.  It wasn't often that she really
surprised him.  

 "It's inscribed with my parents' wedding date, 4.24.58 and the
letters M-H-W-L-M-T."  She held the ring up to the light, running her
nail under the script.  He peered at the inside of the ring, barely
making out the letters by squinting.  He had taken out his contacts. 

  "What does it mean?" he asked quietly.

  "'I know without a doubt, my heart will lead me there'," Scully
recited, pointing to each letter of the second phrase.  "From 'Beyond
the Sea.'"  He nodded.  "It was their song."  She paused.  "My father
left this to me in his will."  Mulder could see the tears in her eyes
as she looked at the ring, hear the quiver in her voice.  "He had
planned it that way in case he wasn't there when I got married."  A
single tear fell from each of her eyes as she looked at Mulder, but
she was still smiling, although her lips were trembling a little.

  "Scully," Mulder said, his own voice shaking.  She reached up and
wiped a tear from his cheek as his hands went to her face at the same
time, for the same reason.  

  "I want you to have this ring, Mulder," Scully said after a
moment.  "I want you to keep it until I can give it to you in a
public ceremony.  It's my promise to you that we are going to have
the life that you dreamed of for us."  

  Mulder could feel the smile on his own face, despite the tears
that were still working their way down to his chin.  "Are you asking
me to marry you, Scully?"  His voice was warm with delight.

  Scully ducked her head a little and smiled shyly, then rose to her
knees in the bed and asked in her quiet, serious voice.  "Will you
marry me, Mulder?"  

  "Yes," Mulder said firmly.   He pulled her down to him and kissed
her, then rolled them both over so that she was underneath him.  He
cradled her face in his hands.  "You name the day, Scully," he
whispered, then kissed her again.  He buried his face in the crook of
her neck and just held on to her.  

  "Mulder," she said, nudging him, "don't go to sleep yet."  

  He lifted his head. "I wasn't," he said.  "I'm memorizing
everything about this."  She smiled at him, then brought her right
hand around to touch his face.  He felt the cool metal of the ring
pressed against his flesh.  

  "Give me your hand, Mulder," she whispered.  He rolled them over
onto their sides so his left hand was on top, then watched as Scully
slipped the circle onto his ring finger.  She looked at him, then
picked up his hand and kissed it.  "Now, it's official," she said. 
She wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him, then rolled him
over onto his back.  

  He could feel her stretching across him to shut the lamp off. 
"Now we can go to sleep, Mulder," she said tiredly, resting her head
on his chest.  She pulled his arm up around her, as Mulder's thumb
turned the ring on his finger.  

  "Scully," he said after a minute, "this has been the strangest day
of my entire life."  He kissed the top of her head as she snorted. 
"Thank you." 

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

  Mulder awakened to the sound of Scully snoring.  She had rolled
over onto her back in the middle of the night and was lying flat on
the mattress without a pillow underneath her head.  Her snoring was
fairly soft but distinct in the pre-dawn.  He felt surprisingly good
for the amount of alcohol he had consumed. After he returned from
using the bathroom, he contemplated what to do with Scully while
drinking a glass of water. In the few minutes since he had left the
bed, Scully had changed her position.  She was now lying in the exact
center of the bed, sprawled over as much area as her frame could
cover.  When he got back onto the bed her head rolled toward him as
the mattress dipped, but still she snored away.  He was smiling as he
gently urged her over onto her side, trying to tuck a pillow under
her head, which she rejected, choosing to use him instead.  She
wrapped her arms around him, murmuring m-sounds that might have been
the beginning of his name as she burrowed her head against him.  She
stilled after a minute, her muscles loosening their grasp on him as
she returned to deep sleep.  Mulder could feel the movement of her
right eye against his chest as she slipped back into REM sleep.  He
stroked her hair gently, careful not to disturb her. 

  He raised his hand slowly in the morning light, feeling the weight
of the too-large ring settle back against the base of his finger. 
Only the width of his first knuckle had kept it from sliding off in
his sleep.  That and his desire to keep it put.  He had fallen asleep
with his thumb pressed against the ring.

  Mulder dropped his left hand onto Scully's back and rubbed his
knuckles lightly over her in a soothing motion as she stirred against
him.  "Subclavian," she said distinctly.  He frowned.  She was
performing autopsies in her dreams.  That seemed odd, but then
again...Mulder himself frequently dreamt of doing paperwork or of
meetings where he had to justify his expense reports.  Sometimes, he
was reasonably certain, he dreamt entire imaginary and thoroughly
fantastic case files.  The idea of dreaming about performing
autopsies was grisly to him, but Scully was just dreaming about work.
 He returned his hand to her hair, ruminating on how difficult this
case must have been for her.  He wondered if she had dwelt on how
similar her fate might have been to that of the poor souls that she
had labored over these past days.  He had been so caught up in his
own thoughts, in his own pain, that he hadn't stopped to consider how
she was doing.  Had he even asked her?

  He regarded the ring again, the visible symbol of the bond between
them now.  Scully had produced her proof for this case, finding the
one thing that he secretly longed for and making it real.  Even if he
couldn't wear this ring in public as yet, it didn't really matter.  

  He spun the ring on his finger and thought about the many things
it represented.  It was a promise from Captain Scully, the promise of
a loving and forgiving father to a child whose life choices he had
disapproved of.  He had given her this ring to let her know that
whatever choice she made, it would be one that he would support, even
from beyond the grave.  Mulder felt the weight of the honour that the
ring conveyed on him, the honour of being the one Scully had chosen,
particularly since he had previously decided that he was not even in
the running.  The ring represented her faith in him to be her partner
in every sense of the word. 

  Mulder turned his head and squinted at the clock on the
nightstand.  It was 5 o'clock, too early to wake Scully to find out
how she really was, outside of all of the matters that they had
settled last night.  Settled.  Mulder snorted briefly and Scully
murmured in her sleep.  The last thing he had ever expected in his
life was to feel settled, especially when there was still so much to
do.  He sorted out his feelings and found that, despite the
complications of the past few weeks, that settled was how he felt, in
a simplistic sense.  He felt very clear for the first time in years. 
For a long time, the idea of justice, the pursuit of the truth, had
been the guiding light in his life.  When he had been confronted last
month with the idea that perhaps the truth was immutable, that the
scope of what he had been seeking was far too vast for him to contain
or to change, he had felt defeated.  In his hubris, he had never
considered that the solution might be beyond his control.  He had
planned on that solution being forthcoming, in the kindness of a fate
that would mitigate all of his and Scully's suffering, and reward
their hard work with an uncomplicated life together at last.  

  When it had all fallen apart, it seemed that everything he had
believed in was a lie, even the dreams in his own mind.  He had
reached out for Scully with the desperate grasp of a drowning man and
she had saved him.  But he was so unused to getting anything that he
wanted that he had almost ruined everything by assuming too little of
Scully.  Because he hadn't believed in himself, he hadn't trusted in
her love for him.   

   He wouldn't doubt that again, but he knew that he was going to
have to change, to be a better partner, a better husband.  He was
going to have to learn to listen to what was being said, not to
interpret the silences between Scully's words.  He owed that to her. 
He owed it to himself, because if he ever wanted to achieve that
dream life he had longed for, he was going to have to work harder
than he ever had before.  

  This time, he would not be alone.  He slid down a little in the
bed so that he could hold Scully closer.  He kissed her on the
forehead, caressing the smooth skin of her hip under the T-shirt she
wore.  She sighed and quivered against him as he traced the bone
under her skin.  He peered into her sleeping face.  A small smile
curved on her lips.  She wasn't dreaming about autopsies anymore.

  Echoes of her words these past two days reverberated through his
mind.  Scully had forgotten how it felt to be happy.  She had
forsaken dreaming because it was too painful.  He traced the line of
her brow with the tip of his index finger, glad to see that it was
not furrowed in sleep as it so often was.  He turned himself gently,
pulling out from underneath her and easing her head onto a pillow so
that he could look at her.  Did she know how beautiful she was?  Had
he remembered to tell her, to show her?  

  'I feel it when you look at me.  I feel it when you touch me.' 
Her words from earlier this morning, reassurance that she understood
how much she meant to him.  He ran a fingertip lightly down the soft
skin of her cheek, wondering.

  He had vowed that he was not going to doubt her words anymore, but
about this one thing Mulder knew she was wrong.  Loneliness had
become Scully's companion only later in life; it had been Mulder's
true sidekick for far longer.  Mulder wondered if it was egotism to
enlarge  the isolation of his years since adolescence into something
more poignant than the solitude of Scully's recent life.  He had,
after all, chosen this path in life, chosen to isolate himself from
the rest of the world by striking out on this quest.  She had been
shocked by the massive cruelty of the men whom they sought to
destroy.  He was hardly surprised by anything.  

  Except for her.  She had consistently challenged and surprised him
from the first case they had investigated together.  She had changed
his worldview by defying his expectations of her, then forcing him to
work for each and every answer.  He hoped that he had done the same
for her, enlarging the world in which she had lived in ways that were
worth all of the things that had been torn from her, but he wondered
if he truly had.  He felt the need to give her tangible things beyond
the love he had to offer her, something that would make up for the
loneliness and the losses she had suffered.  He had not meant to drag
her into this dark world with him, even as he had selfishly sought to
keep her from leaving at all costs. 

  It was fruitless trying to reason his way out of this conundrum. 
If he was truly honest with himself, he would admit that he would
have done or said anything to keep her from looking at him with the
cold, assessing stare that she had fixed on him in the Gunmen's lair.
 Her eyes had spoken to him of betrayal, branded him a traitor to
their quest, their very partnership.  He'd had to eradicate that look
from her eyes or lose everything.  

  And she had let him.

  He ran a finger over her lips, remembering the soft sensuality of
her touch the other evening.  Scully was like a breeze on a hot
summer evening, cool and welcome, the brush of the free air against
his skin creating the desire for more.  The love he felt in her touch
fed something long starved inside him, made him feel cherished, made
him feel real.  He had lived his life in dreams for so long.  All the
years since Samantha had disappeared, he had lived as if waiting for
his real life to begin. He leaned forward and gently touched his lips
to the skin just below her left eye where a tumour had tried to rob
her of her life, her intellect.  He traced the line of her jaw with
his finger, feeling the warm pulse steadily thrumming near her ear. 
This was his life.  

  Scully sighed as he touched the line of her graceful neck, the low
sensual hum causing him to shiver.  She had made a noise like that
the other night when she had settled him inside herself, a low,
pleased sound of satisfaction.  No other woman had ever taken him
into herself like that, radiating longing just for him.  He had been
a fool to mistake it for anything other than the gift it was.  He ran
his nose down the line of her throat, luxuriating in the sleep-warmed
scent of her skin.  

  "Mulder," she said, her voice barely a whisper in his ear.  Her
sleep-heavy hand came up and landed on the back of his head.  

  "I'm sorry," he whispered, "I didn't mean to wake you.  Go back to
sleep."  

  "Hmmm..." she murmured, rolling onto her back.  She put her other
arm around him and pulled him toward her sleepily.   

  He propped himself over her on his elbows and watched her face,
her features lax and peaceful with somnolence.  Her eyes opened only
a fraction and he could see their serene blue between the tangle of
her auburn lashes.  Her hand came up to touch his face gently and a
smile lifted the right corner of her mouth.  He caught her hand and
kissed the palm tenderly, kissing the pulsing veins of her wrist when
she shivered gently.  He kissed his way up the inside of her arm,
laying it bowed, over her head.  

  "Gomez," she said, in a rough early morning whisper, "is that
you?"  Her eyes were closed again, but she was smiling softly as she 
felt his laughter against her skin.

  Mulder kissed her neck and ran a hand over the curves of her to
find her other hand.  "Oui," he answered suavely, before giving her
other hand and arm the same treatment.  The hand he had lain on the
pillow came down to caress his head as he drew closer to her neck.

  "Mulder," she said, her voice heavy and breathless.  She was
floating in that ethereal space between sleep and true wakefulness,
relaxed and unhurried.  

  "Are you too sleepy?" he whispered, moving to cover her with his
body.  "Do you want me to stop?"  He kissed her neck, covering the
skin with tiny kisses, keeping his movements slow and hypnotic.

  "No," her voice eased out above his head in a sigh.

  "Have I told you how beautiful you are, Scully?" he murmured.  He
saw the pink colour rising along the column of her throat.  She
opened her mouth, but didn't say anything.  It disturbed him that she
didn't believe in her own beauty.  He ran his hand down her torso to
the hem of her T-shirt and moved to draw it off, picking her up and
holding her against him to do so.  "I love your skin," he whispered,
cradling her. "I loved it before I ever felt it."  He laid her down
on the bed, noticing that she was watching him from under her lashes.
 He put his hands just below her shoulders splaying the fingers out,
liking the image of the ring she had given him pressed against her
flesh.

  "I want to find all your freckles and memorize them, like the
constellations."  He kissed her, slipping his tongue in between her
lips and then sucking on the tip of her tongue as she followed it
back.  He broke the kiss and nuzzled her nose with his own.  "There's
a stellum right there," he said, kissing it.  "Did the boys at school
tease you about your freckles, Scully?" he asked, not waiting for an
answer as he kissed the small points of gold on her brow.  "More the
fools they," he said, dropping kisses on her shoulders.

  He moved his hands down to her breasts, covering them entirely. 
He put his face down into the valley between them, his mouth pressed
over her heart.  "These past days," he said, "at the oddest times,
I'd remember this, remember the feeling of your breasts in my hands."
He could feel her sharp intake of breath, feel her heartbeat
pounding under his mouth.  He covered her breasts with kisses,
reveling in the arch of her back off the mattress when he drew her
nipples into his mouth.  

  "Mulder," she said, shifting under him restlessly.  All of her
senses were wide-awake now.  She could feel the blood surging through
her body as he kissed his way down her torso, engaging all of her
nerves with his caresses.  His hands slid down the fabric of her
underwear, tugging gently, and she raised up to help him divest her
of it.  "Mulder," she said, reaching her hands down for him as he
began kissing her hips.

  "I love your hips, Scully," he murmured.

  She could feel her face flaming and was grateful for the low
light.  He caressed the curves of her flesh from her thigh to her
waist, running his hands slowly up and over the bend of her.  He
kissed her lightly, making her shiver.  

  "So smooth and rounded.  You are this tiny, perfect little
hourglass.  I love watching you walk, Scully."  He rubbed his face
over the juncture of her thighs and she stopped breathing entirely. 
"That's why I always had to put my hand here, Scully," he said,
circling under her to touch the spot where the world snake coiled low
on her back.  "I couldn't help myself."  His hands slid down
underneath her to caress her, then lifted her thighs, pushing them up
and outward.  

  "Mulder..." she moaned.  She felt his murmured quizzical response
against her body as he continued his tender exploration.  Her
trembling escalated as the sensations threatened to overwhelm her. 
It was too much, too much feeling.  Her hands closed ineffectually on
air as she tried to find something of him to hold onto, to ground
herself while he melted her with his kiss.  In answer, one hand slid
up her torso, warm and real.  She grasped it, centering herself as
she dissolved into the morning air.  "Mulder," she gasped, when he
rose up in the bed over her, "Mulder."        

  He rested his elbows on either side of her face, smoothing the
hair off her brow while her breaths rained on his cheeks in uneven
pants.  "I love you," he said quietly.

  She raised her head off the pillow and kissed him.  "I know," she
said, when she could speak.  She wrapped her arms around his ribs and
shifted underneath him, reaching a hand down between their bodies to
caress him before she urged him inside her.  She smiled up at him as
he trembled and arched above her.  A fiercely possessive sigh escaped
her as she felt her body begin to engulf him.

  He smiled at her, his face tight with longing and lust at the
sound.

  "What?" she said.

  "You just told me you love me," he said.

  She squeezed internal muscles around him.  "What did I say then?"
she asked mischievously, as he groaned her name.  He used the weight
of his torso to try to still further movement while he gained his
composure, then surprised her by scooping her up into his arms.  He
got up on his knees and sat back on his heels, enjoying the gasp he
drew from her at the change in angle.  "Mulder," she panted.

  "I want to kiss you," he said, bending his head to capture her
lips.  "I can't reach you in that position."  He sighed into her open
mouth when she kissed him deeply in response, then drew his lower lip
into her mouth as he began to move.

  His eyes were soft and unfocused with desire as she rested her
arms against his shoulders, trying to gain leverage.  He rolled and
thrust into her and she sighed with pleasure, her head dropping back
and her body relaxing as she let her weight rest against the arms he
had braced behind her back.  One of his hands slid up her spine to
cup the back of her head and the other slid across her waist.  She
could feel his wedding ring, pressed into her skin.  She opened her
eyes after a moment to find him watching her avidly, his expression
full of hunger and something else.  There was a kind of satisfaction
that she had never seen on his face before.  She ran her hands over
the muscles in his neck and shoulders, trusting him to bear her
weight as she looked into his mercurial eyes, trying to ascertain
what he was thinking.  He moved within her steadily and she had to
ask, had to know now before she melted again.  "What are you
thinking?"

  Mulder's eyes widened at her question.  He wondered how deeply
their unspoken communication extended.  This time it was his turn to
blush a little as Scully trailed a finger down his cheek.  He
adjusted his grip on her and pulled her a little closer, kissing her
instead of speaking.  "Mulder?" she asked, when they had broken
apart.  Her solemn voice gently demanded a response even as she
sighed and moved with him.

  "I'm not thinking," he said, breathlessly. "I feel," he emphasized
this with a thrust, his chest brushing against hers in a wave of
motion.  "I feel home."

  He had closed his eyes as he said it, momentarily unwilling to see
her expression.  He felt exposed, vulnerable.  In answer, her small,
powerful hands closed around the nape of his neck and the back of his
skull.  He could feel the possession in her grasp, the finality of
it.  He opened his eyes and her blue eyes were all he could see, the
love that she felt for him as clear as the colour of the ocean on a
sunlit day.   

  "You are home," she said fiercely, and felt the surge of his body
inside hers as he responded with a cry.  She wrapped her arms around
his torso and held him tightly as he began to shudder, startling when
like the crosscurrent of a breaking wave, his desire pulled her into
the tumbling dissolve right after him.   

  Panting, breathless and shaking, they clung to each other, smiling
weakly in the aftermath.

  "I love you," Scully said.

  Mulder nodded against her neck and she whispered it again.  "I
know," he said, stroking up and down her back. "I know."  He moved to
lay them down on the bed and his knees popped as loud as gunfire in
the early morning.  

  "Ow," she said worriedly.

  "It was worth it," he said.  "I'll take a bunch of Advil later." 
He kissed her, then laid down behind her, pressing his face against
her neck as he pushed one arm under the pillow her head rested upon. 
He draped his arm across her stomach, settling her back against his
chest.   

  Scully pulled his arm from where it lay and kissed his knuckles. 
She began to run her hands up and down his forearm gently. "Mulder?"
she said speculatively, "are you sleeping?"

  "Not yet," he murmured.  
 
  Scully played with the ring around his finger.  "Mulder?" she
asked again.  "Do you know it really?"  He opened an eye to find her
head turned and her looking at him earnestly, "Do you believe me
now?" she asked him, concern etched in her expression.  "I don't want
to make you feel insecure."

  He smiled and laughed at her ruefully, kissing her cheek.  He
snuggled up closer behind her.  "Scully, it wasn't you who did that."

  She shook her head, disagreeing.  "It was me this time, Mulder. 
You shouldn't be so fast to forgive me when I hurt your feelings."

  He raised both eyebrows at her quizzically.  "Why?  Because you
don't forgive me that easily?"  He put a finger over her lips to
still her protest.  "I'm not accusing you, Scully.  I didn't give you
a reason to forgive me.  I've been so mad and so hurt for such a long
time that I just couldn't see straight.  After El Rico, I just felt
like I had lost everything.  Everything."  He sighed heavily.  "I
thought that I'd made you hate me finally.  The things I said to you
-- I just wanted to hurt you as badly as you had hurt me."  She
nodded at him in acknowledgment of what he was saying.  "Scully, you
have to talk to me, too.  You can't make me guess what you're
thinking and feeling all the time.  Obviously, I'm not very good at
it."

  She shook her head vigorously.  "No, Mulder, that's not it.  It's
not that you don't know me, it's that we've lied to each other for
such a long time about this."  He was listening to her carefully.  "I
really thought that Diana was a threat to our relationship because I
didn't know how you felt about me.  I thought you were tired of
waiting."  Now he was the one shaking his head.  "I know," she said.
"I believe you."  She turned over to face him, wrapping her arms
around him.  They held onto each other, rocking a little.

  "We can learn how to do this, Scully," he said in a determined
voice.  He kissed her forehead.  "Right?"  

  She nodded against him.  "As soon as we wake up, Mulder," she
said, yawning. "It's too early to learn anything yet."

 ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

  Scully muttered an ancient and particularly foul curse as she
stubbed her toe off the wooden frame of the closet door.  She fumbled
for the cellphone, turning it on with a savagely pointed finger. 
"Scully," she said through gritted teeth as her toe throbbed.

  There was a momentary hesitation on the line, then a voice spoke. 
"Agent Scully," A.D. Skinner said, "Good Morning.  Isn't this Agent
Mulder's cellphone?"  

  "Yes, it is," Scully answered shortly, without explanation.  

  "And you answered it..." Skinner said.

  "Because it was ringing, Sir."  Scully said sharply, examining her
toe.  "Would you like me to go and wake Agent Mulder up?"  She
glanced over at their bed, where Mulder was sitting silently,
squinting at her myopically.  

  "You probably should, Agent Scully," Skinner said.  "I've had
news."

  "About the case?" Scully said.

  Mulder got out of the bed quietly and walked soundlessly over to
the open adjoining door.  He knocked on it, then said in a voice loud
enough for Skinner to hear, "Scully, was that my phone?"

  She waved him over.  "Agent Mulder's here, Sir."  Skinner made no
comment and Scully shrugged at Mulder then put the phone between both
their ears.  "He says he has news about the case."

  "Go ahead, Sir," Mulder said, bracing himself. 

  "Agent Gerard is dead," Skinner said flatly.  

  "What?" Scully said softly, surprised.  

  Mulder didn't say anything for a moment.  "How?" He asked
speculatively.  

  "Suicide," Skinner said with no affect in his voice.

  Mulder exchanged a glance with Scully.  "How?"  Mulder asked
again.

  "Gun under the chin," Skinner said.

  Mulder said nothing, but shook his head at Scully.  

  "Agent Mulder?" Skinner said.

  "Just thinking, Sir." Mulder answered.  "Next steps?"

  Skinner hesitated.  "Why don't we meet in 30 minutes and figure
out what they are."  

  "Yes, sir," Scully answered.  

  "Agents," Skinner said, "pack."

  "Suicide," Mulder said, after he shut the phone off. "More like
assisted suicide."

  Scully nodded.  "It's time to go home, Mulder."  She moved past
him to her room and returned a minute later, wearing a robe and
carrying a small sack.  She sat down on the bed.  "Are you brooding?"
she asked.  "Or just trying to figure out who did it."  She dumped
the contents of the sack on the bed and began rummaging through it.

  "A little of both," Mulder answered.  "It all seems like such a
waste, Scully."  She looked up briefly at him.  "So many people. 
What if the timeline is being altered?"  

  Scully's hands stopped their movement.  "What do you mean,
Mulder?"

  "I think Gerard was working for the Rebels."  Scully raised an
eyebrow.  "That he flipped on the Consortium.  He's not the only one.
 We know Krycek can turn on a dime.  What if this whole burning thing
is just a ploy to consolidate power?  What if the Rebels want to
colonise us themselves?"

  Scully was shaking her head.  "I don't know, Mulder.  I can't
fathom what the Rebels are trying to gain."

  "War is always about power or money, or both," Mulder rejoined. 
"We were just as ruthless on this planet when we colonised less
technologically apt cultures."

  Scully sat for a moment, her motions stilled.  "I just don't know
what to believe, Mulder."  She shook her head, not looking up at him
at first.  When she did, her expression was troubled.  "But I think
that you're right about one thing.  It's happening.  Whatever is
coming, it's beginning."  Mulder could see the fear in her eyes
before her gaze dropped back to her lap.  She returned to sorting
through her jewelry bag.

  Mulder nodded grimly, carefully keeping the surprise out of his
features.  The fact that his skeptical Scully believed her last
statement to be true was sobering.  His hands clenched into fists as
he quite deliberately changed the subject. "What are you looking
for?"

  "This," she said, holding up a long thin gold chain.  "It's really
too long for me to wear, but I thought it might work for you."  She
pointed at his ring.

  Mulder crossed the room to her side and knelt down next to her. 
"I don't particularly want to take it off," he admitted.  She smiled
and kissed him, rubbing his prickly face under her hands.  

  "You should though," she said.  "At least this way you're wearing
it, even if only you and I know it."

  He nodded and gave her his hand.  The ring slipped off easily. 
"I'm getting it sized when we get home," he said.  She nodded and
threaded the chain through the circle, then fastened it around
Mulder's neck.  His hands were resting on her hips, rubbing the silk
robe over her skin in a desultory fashion.  "Did I say 'thank you'?"
he asked, moving in for a kiss.

  "Yes," Scully said, kissing him once, then trying to push him away
as he moved in relentlessly.  "Mulder," she said as he caught her
mouth again.  "Skinner expects us to be packed and ready in
twenty-five minutes."  

  He sighed and broke away after kissing her neck one last time. 
"Shower?" he asked, hopefully.  

  "Alone," she said.  "There's not enough time."  She touched him
gently where the ring lay against the smooth skin of his chest.

  She looked very pleased with herself, Mulder thought.  "What were
you just thinking?" he asked, observing her expression carefully.  He
watched in amusement as she blinked twice rapidly, then blushed
lightly.  "Scully," he said, drawing her name out as she moved
forward trying to block herself from his laughing eyes.  "Tell me."

  She hid her face against his throat as Mulder nudged her cheek
with his nose.  "Mine," she said quietly, then cleared her throat. 
"I was thinking that you're mine."

  Mulder hugged her, delighted with her answer.  "You really are
possessive, aren't you?"  

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

  Thirty-five minutes later, Scully and Mulder joined a mildly
irritated Walter Skinner in the hall.

  "Sorry, Sir," Mulder said.  "We didn't mean to keep you waiting."

  Skinner looked carefully at the smooth countenance of his Agent. 
He looked only slightly less tired than he had been yesterday but
there was something different about him today.  He glanced over at
Agent Scully.  Her imperturbable expression was the same as always. 
Yet, they both seemed different to him.  

  "What do you really think about Gerard?" Skinner asked, bluntly.

  Mulder answered without hesitation.  "That he was far too vain a
man to blow his face off.  Psychologically, that method of suicide
makes no sense whatsoever.  Somebody who knew him killed him."

  Skinner looked at Scully. 

  "I concur with Agent Mulder's assessment," she said succinctly. 
"I could perform an autopsy to establish causality for that thesis."

  Skinner shook his head.  "There's not going to be an autopsy," he
said.  "It was ruled at the site."

  "Note?"  Mulder asked.

  "Typed on the computer screen he was sitting in front of.  Job
stress, with an allusion to a pending disciplinary action." Mulder's
eyebrows rose, while Scully looked confused, "His recent divorce,
etc.  Only his prints on the keyboard."  

  Mulder nodded.  "Dictated.  Did you file the reprimand before you
left the Field Office yesterday?"

  "No." Skinner said shortly. 

  "So," Scully said after a brief silence, "are we going home?"

  Mulder looked from his partner to Skinner, fingering the ring
under his tie until he caught Skinner looking at him oddly.  "I would
imagine so," he said.

  Skinner's expression was full of frustration.  "It's just wrong." 
He watched as his agents exchanged a glance and then Scully spoke.

  "We understand how you feel, Sir, but there's nothing else to do. 
The dead have been identified, at least as far as we're concerned. 
We can't make the state of California release the bodies of people it
says don't exist.  Gerard is dead.  The trail is cold."

  "We still don't know what's going on here," Skinner said, his
voice rising.

  Mulder urged Skinner down the hall toward the elevator bank as a
sleepy and irate denizen of one of the rooms stuck his head out the
door.  He picked up the case that housed the implants and handed
Scully a banker's box full of files, then slung his garment bag over
his shoulder.  As Scully moved in front of him burdened with the box
and her own bags, he placed his hand on the small of her back,
catching a  glimpse of the fleeting smile that curved her cheek when
he did so.

  "This is really unsatisfactory," Skinner said in a low, urgent
voice as they arrived at the elevator bank.

  "As we said before," Scully said in a dry tone as the elevator
opened, "welcome to the X-Files."

  They checked out of the hotel in silence, then went outside to
wait for their car to be brought around.

  "Now what?" Skinner said, looking out at the commuter traffic.

  Mulder looked at Scully.  "We think that it would be a wise idea
to be prepared," he said.

  "For what?" Skinner asked, blinking at Mulder's deliberate use of
the plural. 

  "Survival," Mulder said in a low voice as the car drew up to the
curb.  He opened the passenger door for Scully.  "If you plan to
survive, you better be prepared."  Scully turned and looked at them
before she got in the car, her expression grave.  She didn't say a
word, but her eyes seemed to be assessing whether or not Skinner was
listening to her partner.

  She wasn't disagreeing with anything Mulder had to say, Skinner
realized suddenly.  Her very posture indicated that she and Mulder
had come to a joint agreement on this point.  

  That frightened him more than anything that had happened so far on
this long, strange weekend.      

  "Are you ready, Sir?"  Mulder asked.  He had the driver's door
open.  Skinner looked around.  The luggage had been stowed in the
trunk while he had been standing there, stunned.
 
  "Yes," Skinner said, his voice tight with strain.  He opened the
door of the backseat and got in, stopping to look once more for the
watcher he expected to pop out of the bushes.

  Inside the car, Mulder and Scully sat in silence in the front
seat.  

  "I guess I better be," Skinner said suddenly, finishing his
thought from earlier.  

  "Yes, you should," Scully said, quietly.

  Mulder glanced over at her with a faint smile before he pulled
their Lincoln out into the stream of humanity traveling toward their
everyday destinations, unaware of what could be coming.

  Alone in the backseat, Walter Skinner wondered if he was the only
one in the car who envied them.                 


End

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