TITLE: Home From the War
AUTHOR: Khyber
E-MAIL: khyber@khyberfic.net
DISTRIBUTION: Ephemeral, Gossamer, please ask for
anywhere else.
RATING: PG-13
CATEGORIES: Withheld.
KEYWORDS: Withheld.
SPOILERS:  I think we're all fairly spoiled at this point.
SUMMARY: Khyber Versus Season Seven-- alternate episode in place
 of "En Ami." Otherwise withheld.

Disclaimer: Hurry up and make XF2, or I will. I have action
figures, a digital camera, and a dirty, dirty mind.

Author's Notes:

Produced by bugs
Edited by Cathryn Fuller

I strongly suggest reading the following vignettes (available
at http://www.khyberfic.net/Khyber) prior to reading this:

"Collapsar"
"Weret-hekau"
"How Gravity Works On Planet Spooky"

* * *
Federal Special Security Detention Unit
Arlington, Virginia
May 10, 2000
0911 AM

They were dying rapidly. It could have been that the prison regime
did not agree with them, but Mulder knew that wasn't the case. The
Englishman was crippled with Parkinson's, he'd heard, another died
of stomach cancer three months before. It wasn't the ills of their
generation, either. These were men with nothing to live for.
Animated by the dark energy of their work, they would have gone on
for decades. Without it, they were nothing.

"Special Agent Mulder." The guard nodded at him. They'd built a
special wing for them, in the end, or more properly, refurbished an
old one. America's Nuremberg, the trials had been called by
newspapers in places where a sense of history was intact. Cable
news had flailed, unable to compartmentalize and encapsulate,
Mulder remembered. It had been a newspaper story-- or, as it
happened, one for a book.

"Fox. It's good to see you again."

The man's name had never been particularly relevant and had changed
many times. Mulder knew two of them, one from the Sixties and one
from the Nineties. As part of a series of small bargains that had
to be made, he'd stood trial as Defendant Two. Mulder still liked
Cancerman: Dana's name for him from years before.

"Enjoy it. Last time."

Cancerman's hair was snow white, his skin unhealthy. He looked
tiny. There was a bandage on his neck now where a lesion had been
last visit; metastasis was setting in. 

If Mulder thought he could tell Dana he'd been there, he'd pass on
the update.

"But you so enjoy these gloating sessions."

The demon was still in the old man's dark eyes and slight smiles.

"Actually, you're right, I do." And I don't know how I'd tell her
that, he thought. Mulder fished his badge out of his jacket pocket.
"But, as of noon Friday," he said, flashing it at the cancerman for
the second time in their lives, "this goes back in the Cracker
Jacks box, and they won't be letting me in the front door anymore."

"Noon, Agent Mulder? You're slacking off." Defendant Two settled
back in his chair in an obviously calculated parody of smugness.
"It's good that you're out of the game before you soften up
completely."

"We're going up to the Vineyard for the weekend.  We want to beat
the traffic."

"Good choice. Do you still have Bill's boat out there?" he asked.
"It'll be chilly on the water this early, of course, but it's just
nice to be out." He paused, immobile in the absence of a cigarette.
"So this is the end, then?"

"Yeah. I just wanted to come by and share the warm feeling. And
maybe gloat a little."

"I assume Agent Prezwalski will be taking over the X-Files?"

From their tone of voice the two could have been mistake for
professional colleagues, never personally close but familiar with
each other.

"Technically no, he hasn't got enough years in. Skinner's going to
work something out."

"I'm curious to read your book," the cancerman said. "I've ordered
a copy over the Internet. I save a lot of pocket money now, they
don't carry my brand and I'm trying to cut down." He chuckled. It
was a grandfather type of joke, carefully thought of and used over
and over.

"Should have let me know."  Mulder gave the joke a polite nod. "I
could have signed one for you. Want to know how it ends?" The old
man nodded acknowledgment of Mulder's retort.

"So what will you do? Is Agen... Dana quitting too?"

"No, she's happy in Quantico for now. I'm going to be busy with
promoting the book for a while, but we're thinking of starting a
family." Mulder paused. "We'll adopt."

Silence hung between them for a few moments in the absence of
smoke.

"It's never over, Fox."

"Maybe not." Mulder leaned forward. "But it's over for me. It's
over for Scully. And it's over for you."

"Bill Mulder thought it was over."

"Don't even mention his name."

The cancerman grinned. Mulder had seen dozens of death's heads, the
ones taken by rivers, fire, neglect. Defendant Two retained enough
of the dark animus of his kind to light his decaying face.

"You know what Trotsky said about war, don't you."

"The war's over."

"Only a battle, Fox. The war's bigger than you ever imagined."

"You should get some new material." Mulder stood up, slamming the
chair forward. "Well, somehow I imagined this being more fun." He
shook a carton of Morleys out of the plastic bag.  "Guard!" The
young man opened the door, stepped into the room. Mulder shoved the
cigarettes into the guard's hands.  "Make sure he gets these." He
strode towards the door, face darkening. "And make sure he smokes
them all, he's got places to be."

"Fox!" the cancerman called out. "One thing. Roger, the envelope I
left for him... Thank you." The guard nodded, dropping the carton
of smokes on the table, and handed Mulder a small envelope from his
breast pocket. Mulder felt a small metal object inside.

"What's this?"

"Something irrelevant," Defendant Two said as he rose stiffly on
his side of the glass. His shoulders were slightly stooped, as if
the cancerous dissolution of his lungs was causing his chest to
collapse inwards. "A small remaining piece of a puzzle that you've
finished to your satisfaction."

"Goodbye," Mulder said through a stiff jaw.

"Goodbye, Fox."

* * *

FBI Forensic Research and Training Center
Quantico, Virginia

The woman standing at the front corner of the lecture theater opens
her beckoning cell phone, speaking a singular name in response. She
is petite, slender under a white lab coat. The coat is an
affectation, she knows, there is nothing within a hundred yards
requiring hands-on pathologising. She feels a need for slight
eccentricity, a way to remind herself (but not anyone else, no
vanity) that she was there.

"Hey, it's me... guess I missed you this morning." She smiles at
the sound of the familiar voice, rolling blue eyes a little in
response as if she were speaking face to face.

"No, you definitely said "gurmph," which I count as an
acknowledgment. Are you still at home?"

"Yeah, yeah, I'm... I slept in a little. You could say the
motivation's a little lacking. I got some great news this morning,
though. I'll tell you when I see you. It's a surprise." The woman
laughs quietly. His voice is gravelly, sleep-tinged, makes her want
to ruffle his hair. She has a longer drive to work than he does,
and lately their order of rising has reversed as his days become
more relaxed.

"Speaking of lacking motivation, my lecture hall is filling up
here. I'll see you this afternoon for the...?" A pause, looking for
the proper word.

"The mutual fuck-off party?" he offers.

"If they ask you to say any words, please don't say those."

"Okay. I'm still not planning to wear pants, though." She turns her
back to the rapidly filling classroom, keeping a secret.

"Hmm. Boxers or briefs?"

"Commando," he says, low-toned and mock-sensual. The woman grins,
glancing over her shoulder and tucking a lock of reddish-blonde
hair behind her ear. It's a complicated gesture, one she didn't
know she was characteristic ally hers until he started doing it for
her, claiming it as his own. Formerly automatic, solitary, now it
reminds her of him.

"On that admittedly inspiring note, I have to go." Dana Scully
whispers an acknowledgment to his farewell and takes her position
at the front of the classroom. "Good morning everybody, and welcome
back to Anomalous Forensic Pathology. As this is the third lecture
of the term, we should, by now, have lost the weaklings... that's
why I led with the animal decapitations last week..."

* * *

Office of Assistant Director Walter Skinner
1042AM

"Agent Mulder, you're late." His conditioned reflexes failed him,
having to take extra steps to get to his chair between Prezwalski
and... that's right, there's three of us again. Agent Peter
Petersson. Minnesota by way of California, farm parents who thought
they were funny. He'd come after Susan died. 

Mulder nodded at Prez a little sheepishly. Joe Prezwalksi was
shorter, younger, with a barrel chest and the pug-nosed, brutal
face of a minor Roman emperor. Mulder realized that his partners
and boss were staring at him, waiting for a response to Skinner's
remark concerning his punctuality. After Susan died. Susan died. It
banged around in his head, sharp-cornered and rattling.

"Sorry, I didn't know you needed to see us till Joe called me," he
said.  "What's going on?"

"It might be easier to show you than anything else..." Skinner
picked up his internal phone, punched a button. "Kim, could you
bring them in please?" Mulder looked over at Petersson. The young
blond man was trying to conceal a smirk. The main door of the
office opened and a procession of a dozen suits began, as did the
applause.

"Oh, you bastards, what is this...?" Mulder began, feeling his face
flush. Prezwalksi slapped him on the back as they rose from their
chairs. Skinner stood up and rounded his desk, picking up a
translucent object that had been concealed inside a file folder.

"Special Agent Fox Mulder," he began, "it is my deepest honor to
present to the outgoing head of the X-Files division this plaque
commemorating ten years of service, not just to the Bureau but to
your country. Your record of honesty, of absolute integrity, and
your pursuit of truth and justice have inspired many people, myself
included. I want to wish you all the best out there. You've earned
it."

SPECIAL AGENT FOX MULDER
HEAD, X-FILES DIVISION
1991-2000
Agent Joseph Prezwalski
Agent Susan Chartres – We Remember
Agent Peter Petersson

The etched-glass plaque also carried that picture, the one  that
had been above the fold on several dozen newspapers eighteen months
ago. Special Agent Fox Mulder on the witness stand, on his feet,
pointing at the man who had ordered the death of his father, of the
woman who would have been his sister, who had watched as his blood
sister wasted away in a regime of experiments that the doctors of
Dachau could only have dreamed of.

The day they won.

Mulder looked at the plaque for a few moments, gently tapping it
against the heel of one hand.

"Um, do I have to... I don't know what to say..."

Deputy Director Boson saved him, briefly, with a comradely clap on
the back and a firm, practiced handshake. 

"Agent Mulder, I'm sorry I won't be at the reception this
afternoon, but I really wanted to be able to thank you personally
for all you've done, and recognize your important contribution
to..." Blah, blah, blah. Mulder glanced around the room, trying to
think of something appropriate to say, looking at his partners.
Prezwalski who... Petersson who...

Great, I've retired at 39 and developed Alzheimer's, Mulder
thought. I can't think of a damn thing to say about any of these
people. I look like a complete asshole. Susan Chartres is dead,
damn it, but I can't remember how she died. I barely remember her
face. I remember freckles, blonde hair...? Or are those Dana's
freckles? I think Susan sailed, or rowed...? Or are those Dana's
strong shoulders, Scully's sea?

No. It wasn't water, it was horses. She knew how to ride horses.

"Ummm... you all know," he started, "probably because I've pissed
you off, or made your life impossible, or gotten you in
indescribably deep shit at some point over the past ten years, how
important the X-files are, were to me." 

No. Prezwalski, I remember, he thought.

"Look, Mulder, I respect Agent Scully's ability and her
experience." Nothing intimidates Prez; Mulder is practically
shouting, leaning forward, trying to maximize his six-inch height
advantage, and Prez doesn't even notice. "But her name is not on
the door anymore, and as I understand it, that's the way you two
wanted it."

Later, somewhere in the Midwest, after the funeral. They'd had a
few drinks, intentionally medicinal, nerve-settlers. Prez had had a
crush on Sue's youthful energy and her ridiculously long tanned
legs, hassled her for her country music and seemingly endless
parade of marrying, spawning cousins. The last couple of months
there'd been something growing in her, she was hassling back, took
the Lord's name in vain a few times. Deep down they thought she
might have appreciated a wake, even if she wouldn't have thought of
it, and so they were still drinking.

"What do you believe in, anyway?" Mulder asks. He knew how Prez
acted-- dedicated, a little hard. His jokes could come off mean. He
didn't know where Prez lived, what kind of car he drove, and they'd
never had this conversation before. Mulder's slung out in a motel
chair and Prez is lying on his back on the bed. The younger man
holds his hands up, demonstrating a dichotomy.

"On one side... there is always one more bad guy, and he's always
got one more bullet. On the other, you know the Stooges? Iggy Pop?"

"Yeah, yeah, it's been a while." The reference doesn't surprise
Mulder. On a thoroughly off the books, unofficial stakeout, Prez
and Langly had held a frighteningly academic two-hour seminar on
the history of California punk rock.

"Okay, back to the first side," Prez begins. "The bad guys always
win, because humankind is greedy and weak and self-involved and
fuckin' choking and drowning in a sewer of our own hypocrisy, and
we are taught from the day we are born that drinking each other's
blood makes us stronger."

"All right," Mulder snorts.

"And on the other, there's that moment in 'Loose' where Iggy
screams 'Brother!' and you realize that anything should be
possible."

The faces in Skinner's office all looked vaguely similar-- male,
close to his height. 

"But the important thing is," Mulder continued to his surprise
audience, "I could never have done this alone." 

And I only remember Scully. I remember her little hands reaching
into holes, I remember the conjuring scent of her close to me, I
remember every stupid fucking time I made her come find me.

"There was always someone else there to, to keep me honest, to be
the conscience, to save... to pull my ass out of slings it really
deserved to be in." 

And she's the only one I can think of right now. I'm really sorry,
guys, I'm sorry Susan, I'm sure you've all done great work. 

"And... so, thank you."

Hands in front of him, arms around his shoulders. I hate this shit,
Mulder thought, shaking hands robotically, but it'll be good
practice for doing it again this afternoon. DD Boson nuzzled up for
a picture, mouthed something about taking care, excused himself.
Mulder felt a space open around himself, moved towards Skinner.

"Sir, " he began, leaning in towards the other man, "why isn't
Agent Scully's name on here?" He indicated the plaque.

"Well, she's not with the division," Skinner replied quietly. "it's
been almost five years. Agent Fowley's not on there either." Mulder
considered a moment before speaking.

"Sir, if it wasn't for Scully I wouldn't be here. We wouldn't have
busted the Majestic. We wouldn't be celebrating anything."

"You're right." Skinner paused, nodded.  "It's been a while. A lot
has happened, I forgot. I'll make sure it gets changed."

"Thanks." 

* * *

FBI Headquarters
Reception Room 3
Late afternoon
 
Fifty or sixty people buzzed to each other over plastic cups of
soda; the Mormons' takeover of the Bureau was almost complete. He'd
leave battling that conspiracy to Prez. Maybe he and Scully could
try having people over again, do this with beer. 

She was coming in through the front door of the reception room,
scanning efficiently for him. She was momentarily distracted by the
poster at the front, carefully chosen newspaper clippings and
photos which supported the mutual decision of Fox Mulder and the
FBI to pretend for one full day that they liked each other. The
milling, socializing crowd between them seemed transparent as they
recognized each other, changed courses to intersect.

Known her seven years, been with her almost five years, five this
fall, married for almost three, and he couldn't go sixty seconds in
the same room without touching her. His fingers tingled and his
hands lifted almost of their own accord, muscle memory remembering
how the space he was allowed gradually expanded from her shoulder,
her back, to the occasional embrace, to the first time he touched
her face. The first time his hands rested on her hips, the first
time both his hands held both of hers, supporting her above him,
expression on her face mixing wonder and pleasure...

"What?" Dana glanced over her shoulder as if he would somehow be
looking at something else that she happened in the way of.

"I'm just happy to see you." Her hair was longer than in the old
days, falling just past her shoulders; a four-year abusive
relationship with hair dye and hairdressers had finally given way
shortly after the wedding. She looked slightly uncomfortable, but
not entirely displeased, with his undivided attention.

"Well, that's... fortunate." The words limped out a little; she was
a bit disoriented by his verging-on-goofy grin and the way his eyes
were roaming around on her. 

"Under the circumstances." His voice was just over a murmur as
leaned in very close to her and Dana glanced around, flushed
between closeness and embarrassment. He had, over the years,
developed a tendency to get sweet at inconvenient times-- such as
when they were surrounded by fifty co-workers. This was something,
she realized, she should have foreseen in advance. Timing had never
been his strong point.

"Okay, so you had great news." She settled on temporarily
distracting him and it worked. He fished into the inside pocket of
his jacket.

"Yeah, you're not gonna believe this," he said, handing her a
folded sheet of paper. "I got it from Erica this morning."

"Erica...?" Dana asked, nodding at him as if indicating that he was
being unnecessarily obtuse again and should just get on with it.

"Katzman? My agent? New York? Calls me baby, but looks at you?"

"Oh, right, of course. Slipped my mind," she said, looking
embarrassed and shaking her head as if to clear it. He unfolded and
handed her the printed email with a slight flourish. She read
quickly, breaking into a surprised, genuine smile.

"Mulder! This is amazing! A signing tour in France and Germany?"

"And a bunch of talk shows, which should be really funny given my
extensive knowledge of French and German. Bonjour! Ich bin ein
donut!" He mimed a big grin-and-wave. "I'm assuming they have
translators. I didn't have time to print the other one, but... she
got an advance review from this weekend's Manchester Guardian."
Mulder held up five fingers.  "Fiiiive stars. So, she might be
trying to book me some in England, too."

Dana scanned the paper quickly again.

"These start in ten days," she noted with definite excitement.
"When are you going?"

"What do you mean, when am I going? You gotta come."

"Mulder, I can't just..."

"Can't just what?"

"I'm in the middle of a session!"

"You're the best advanced pathology instructor at Quantico. But
they do have at least... five others? Even if it'll mean a cruel
end to a dozen student crushes?"

She sighed heavily, looking exasperated but knowing that he was, in
fact, right. And she didn't remember their last vacation, or whose
cell phone rang first to cut it short. Mulder leaned in close
again.

"Look, I know this is going to sound really sudden." His voice was
as quiet as it could be over the steady rumble of conversation in
the room. "But I was thinking, if you came, we could go look into
that group in Amsterdam."

"The adoption...?" 

"Yeah. Yeah." He nodded, slowly at first, then more vigorously,
breaking into a smile. "I'm done, I'm out. You've waited long
enough. Let's stop talking about it and do it."

She bit at her lower lip, ducking her head suddenly.

"Mulder... can we talk about this later...?" What she'd wanted to
say was  'not here, damn it, you're going to make me cry.'

"Okay. Okay. Later. We'll talk later." He let her step back,
collecting herself. 

"Yes, yeah, I'm okay. Thank you," she murmured, reaching down to
squeeze his hand.

Suddenly Mulder felt hands on his shoulders, flinched. He heard
Petersson chuckling in his ear on the right, heard Prez making some
comment off to the left. They steered him away from Scully, who'd
cracked a sudden grin that almost covered the slight shine in her
eyes. In his last glimpse before they spun him around, Mulder saw
her discreetly wipe a tear with the corner of her sleeve.

"Now you're gonna get it, brother," Petersson laughed.

Assistant Director Walter Skinner was sitting in a folding chair,
just finishing tying up the second of a pair of very old, very
beat-looking vintage combat boots. He rose with an exaggeratedly
serious expression.

"Agent Mulder. I just had one more piece of official business here,
in the unlikely event that I don't get another chance before
Friday... turn him around, guys... Cameras, everybody?"

"Oh, shit."

As the room roared with laughter, Special Agent Fox Mulder received
his first and last official, literal, ass-kicking.

* * *

Maryland State Highway 302
West of Baltimore

A last few wisps of foul curling black smoke streamed up into late
spring sky. State troopers waved a slow, rubbernecking single lane
of traffic on its way. Yellow tape snapped in the wind, already
whipped part loose by the stiff breeze.

"Okay, you have my attention." Skinner looked across the highway
median at the burned-out hulk of the van, then turned away to cut
the wind noise in his cell phone. Roasted plastic and burnt tire
stunk across the road; fortunately, nothing else. The van had been
empty when it was torched. The plates matched the information he'd
been given-- registered to the State Department, a State drone on
the line with the Maryland highway patrol flailing and insistent
that the plates were on a sedan. 

It was just as Spender had said it would be, at least so far. Just
as Spender had described exactly what had been on the gas station's
security video: three or four men scuffling with Mulder and Scully,
Scully firing at least one shot. But the torched van was a cheap
decoy, if that's what it was. It would take days for the FBI labs
to figure out if there had been so much as a single dyed-red hair
or sunflower seed shell in there before the flames.

"It was as I said?" the smoker's voice crackled over the line.

"Close enough. Have you got a point here, or are you just providing
play-by play?"

"I can help. I want to help, Mr. Skinner."

"What do you want?"

"We need to co-operate. I have the information, but under the
circumstances I have limited resources to act on it."

"What's in it for you?"

"This is a personal interest. We need to meet, soon."

"I'm needed here."

"That trail will go cold. It'll take you days to verify that Mulder
and Scully were in that van, and by then it will be too late.
You're about to hit a diplomatic brick wall. You will find it
difficult to pursue this investigation through proper channels with
the speed required."

Skinner sighed inwardly. Too late for what? He'd been waiting for
that. The flustered State man had told the Maryland highway cops
that the plates were leased out to a foreign embassy; he'd held
out, wondering if Spender knew as much as he pretended. It appeared
that he did.

Spender's voice on the line was surprisingly urgent.

"I already know who's responsible, Walter. We just need to find out
where they are."

"All right, fine. Where do I meet you?"

* * *

They'd parted to make the appropriate connections. Mulder needed to
shake hands, and Scully needed to remind people that she was, in
fact, still alive. Quantico was, for all intents and purposes, a
parallel universe. Mulder was finding a rhythm to the niceties,
found something to say to everyone. It wasn't going nearly as bad
as he'd imagined things like this would. 

Then he saw Scully across the room and remembered Susan dying, the
imperious 'fwump' of the bomb. There's no such sound as 'boom.'

They'd unknowingly, partially thwarted it through classic X-Files
disorganization. Prez said it was a miracle the three of them could
manage to end up in the same state. As usual, they'd arrived in
Dallas separately, renting too many cars so the only one they got
at was Susan's. It had been white, and the back end had bounced six
feet in the air like a hotrod as an orange and black blossom
flowered out the windows.

Susan's eyes were blue. The rest of her was gold tarnished with
soot, but the eyes were sky-blue like Scully's. She was shaking,
and shared the look of horrified surprise that had featured in
dozens of Mulder's nightmares. Even with (god don't look down, keep
looking at her face don't let her know) one of her legs gone
Susan's body, with all her cowgirl muscles, was so much heavier
than Scully's. But the dead weight of Scully would have sucked the
whole world down, a black hole at the heart of the universe, and
when it was Susan all he could think of was how glad he was that it
wasn't her.

But he still couldn't remember Susan's face. Just the eyes, whose
eyes? and the impression of gold.

The Bureau is a notoriously whitebread, colorless bunch, Mulder
considered, but I never forget a face even if I want to. Skinner,
Prez, Petersen, Danny, Luis, Cindy, I see people I recognize,
but...

He'd started to like this feeling less over the years, his antennae
going up, his internal hounds baying as the chase began. Mulder had
had to sit down for a minute, finding the blur of people around him
slightly exhausting. Everyone looked unfamiliar; it was like going
to the mall on Christmas Eve, on Mars. He remembered his swooping
in-and-out trip to Hong Kong, the guilty days-without-sleep
thought-- 'I'll be damned, they all do look alike'-- and how madly
disorienting it was to know no one. He'd had a mission, then,
someone to find, something to follow. 

Now it felt like he just had her, a little golden connection across
a room filled with blabber and churn.

"So this is it." He started a little as Prez sat down next to him.

"Yeah, so it seems," Mulder replied after a second. When Susan
died, he remembered, Prez took vacation leave the next day. He had
a brother and a sister who ran some sort of vegetarian hippie pizza
joint in Austin. They were the only other human beings Mulder had
ever heard Prez talk about, and that's where Prez went every single
vacation. He'd come back and say he'd spent two weeks chopping
onions and roasting eggplants, as though he'd been to a mountaintop
in Tibet.

"I wish she was here to see... no, fuck seeing this. I just wish
she was here."

Back in the grieving motel, Mulder snorts a harsher laugh than he'd
meant.

"The Stooges as the embodiment of hope? So what's that, sort of
optimistic nihilism?"

"No, man," Prez lies flat on the rented bed, talking to the
ceiling. He could drink lying down. It was a weird trick. "I'm here
for the fight, brother, win, lose, whatever. They put me up against
the wall, I'll be singing 'White Riot' 'cause they can't beat that.
Someday, end up like Susan, either like that, or metaphorically
speaking, fifty-year-old guy break my neck stagediving." Prez's
blunt head lifts, and a hand. He points at Mulder,  a half-inch of
warm beer wobbling in the bottom of the dangling bottle. "You, you
actually think you're gonna win. Should figure out what you're
gonna do if that ever happens."

The reception room seemed to quiet slightly as Mulder concentrated
on Prez. The celebrants all seemed to fade, except for the flare of
brilliance he knew was there, just out of sight. "Yeah." 

Mulder knew this should the time for some kind of private
torch-passing, some way to tell Prez that it was all his now. How
do you explain shared experience; how do you remind each other of
the things that only you know?

Their work on the X-Files themselves had been short, barely a year
before they got their big break, the tip that turned Blevins as a
Pentagon plant, and from there blew the military's "alien
abduction" conspiracy wide open. Since then it had been all-out
war, in a bureaucratic sense-- interviews, counter-interviews,
secret meetings, surveillance, hearings-- but had he and Prez ever
gone neck-deep in a sewer? Had it ever rained frogs on them?

And where was the gap? Where was the time without her? He could
feel her voice over the phone, alone in a motel bed in the middle
of the night. They drift, into and out of the X-file, whatever case
she was working on, something about home. He flirts with her and
she gets quiet, choosing words carefully. She lets him play, spin
himself up, and then with a soft husky sentence or two she cuts him
loose, stuns him with something he'd be surprised to hear her
whisper in a heated bed, much less crackling over fiber and
switch. 

But what number did I dial...?

"So Prez," Mulder began. "Out of all of them, out of all this shit
we went through."

Mulder packaged up the sentence in his head, repeating it to
himself twice, letting it absolutely fill his mind. The question.
Nothing else. Think of nothing.

"What's the worst one?"

Prez didn't respond, sipping from a plastic cup of cola. Mulder
waited five, ten seconds, pressing down hard on his own mind,
trying to think of nothing. The room seemed to still.

"Anyway, I'm gonna go kiss the hell out of Scully in front of fifty
co-workers and see if she punches me out."

(Red dress and watch for the left? Why am I thinking about...)

"Go for it." Prez was suddenly animated. "Watch for the left."

* * *

"Hey Scully."

She found that she liked hearing it that way now, that slightly
distracted greeting. He can't wait to get to the good part. I know
he's got something to tell me, Dana thought, something that isn't
about our life, something that might come with slides and aging
reports that someone misinterpreted. 

I can't, and probably never will, she realized, decide if I really
miss it.

"Mulder," she says, a bit of a tease of how she'd have said it back
then.

"Who were you just talking to?" He nodded towards the woman she'd
been with.

Scully glanced sideways. 

"What do you mean?"

"Who was that woman?" he asked.

"That was Amy." He shakes his head.  "Petersson's wife Amy?" she
reminds him.

Mulder's met Amy, probably a hundred times, she thought. He'd seen
her, I'm sure, before she and Peter ever met. I'm certain that I
did.

"What's she doing here?"

"She works here, in technical services. She's a network
administrator, something." 

"Scully, the Amy I think I know is Japanese, and she's a chef."

She glanced around the room before stepping closer. This was Spooky
distance, what gave them away to the casual observer. "Either
you're sleeping together or you're both Greek," someone had said,
years back.

"You're not making any sense," she murmured into the little space
between them.

"Yeah, I know. Can you help me prove I'm just losing my mind?"

She looked down at the carpet for a second, then back up at him.

"Why stop after all these years?"

He chuckled in spite of his tension.

"Okay. Everyone else you talk to, I want you to try and remember
how you met them."

"What?" She glanced around again. Of the old ways, being the
interpreter for that first moment when one or more people decided
that the tall guy was probably crazy was the one she least wanted
back.

"Please. Just do it."

She can feel her cheeks flush as he closes the remaining distance.
Something's gotten into him, she thinks. It's been four years but I
remember this. I saw him scanning the room; he has a picture in his
mind of something happening somewhere else, and it's where he's
trying to be.

Except that he's not moving, not taking that step past her and
forcing her to turn around and decide whether to follow or not.
He's standing right here.

So it's not exactly like it used to be, she thinks. Mulder's
decided to say goodbye. Her professionalism loses out because he
looks like he wants the kiss so badly. She tries to keep it light,
sweet, something you could do in front of the children, but he's
determined. It's lovely and deep, not chaste but not something to
make onlookers uncomfortable--  a means of communication between a
mated pair. It's the way an old movie might end, and when they
break apart she leans her forehead against his chest for a second.
She tries and fails to hold in a smile as she hears scattered
applause and good-natured encouragement.

"Agent Mulder, what are people going to say?" she whispers, only
half-joking.

"Why?" He kisses her again, gently on the forehead this time.
"You're not married or something, are you?"

"You don't have to come to work on Monday," she says with gentle
reproach.

"I have to go do something. I'll call you in a bit."

Fox Mulder walked out of his own party and, for old times' sake,
left her behind to explain.

* * *

"Mr. Skinner. Nice to see you again."

Skinner wondered where clandestine meetings had taken place prior
to the invention of parking lots, with their distracted anonymity
and easy cover. He looked at the older man. Old man, he realized.
Spender's hair was going silver-grey, his face starting to fall.
His skin was yellowed.

"You're not well," Skinner said. He had no intention of favoring
the old killer with a greeting. 

The older man looked thoughtfully at the stub of cigarette between
his fingers. 

"Funny, that." He dropped the cigarette on the pavement. Spender
had looked smaller when he was healthy. Now he gave an impression
of ruined physical power, a man who knew fists and knives as well
as triggers. It was as if the illness-- cancer, Skinner imagined--
was burning him down to his essential element.

Skinner glanced around the lot. It was a vast sprawl fronting on an
expanse of big-boxes, hopelessly banal and clogged with cars and
suburbanites. They, or anyone else, could hide in plain sight
anywhere.

"All right. What else do you know?"

"Why don't we go for a drive? It'll be quicker that way." Spender
gestured to their two nearly identical sedans-- which one? They
were driving the same damn car, Skinner thought. He jerked his head
towards his own.

"I'll fill in what I can, but I warn you." Skinner locked his own
car after retrieving a briefcase. "You're going to have to endure
some of my ramblings. There's nothing a man of my age likes more
than a captive audience, and I've missed the chats we used to
have."

* * *

Craddock Marine Bank
Washington, DC

"Scully, it's me, I'm going to be another, I dunno, hour or so, I
got something to finish up here."

"If Joe and Peter have you at a strip bar to celebrate, tell them
I'm getting Danny to trace this call and coming down there
packing."

"Hmmm... if that was, hypothetically speaking, the case, what would
you wear?" He could practically hear her eyes roll. "No, look, are
you on your way home?"

"No, not yet, I'm finishing something up too. Mulder... I did what
you asked this afternoon, and uh, we need to talk."

"Yeah. I'm thinking that too. Okay, first one home calls for
dinner?"

"We were gonna stop doing that."

"It's either that, microwave burritos again, or that ham in the
freezer that we bought, like, last year. Besides, we cooked on the
weekend. It's a start."

"Hi..." Mulder began. He had been last in line, and the young
receptionist at the information desk appeared to be giving him a
bit of indulgence on account of a fondness for tall guys with big
noses. "Look, I'm sorry to be the guy who makes you stay late, but,
uh, is this one of your safety deposit box keys?"

"Let me see..." She looked at the tag number, clicked at her
keyboard. "Yes, there's an instruction on this one. Can I just..."
He already had his badge out and ready. She seemed impressed. "Yes,
Mr. Mulder, or Agent Mulder is it?"

"What kind of instruction?" he asked.

"Well, you," she said significantly, "are the only person allowed
to open it."

"Well, that's... that's convenient."

"If you just want to wait over there, I'll have it brought out."

* * *

Dana Scully and Fox Mulder's Home
Evening

"Korean?" she mouthed silently at him, phone on hold on her
shoulder, as he came in the door. She hadn't been there long, was
still wearing her jacket, little shoes carelessly discarded in the
hallway.

We're not painting it five different shades of white, he'd said.
Eggshell Dust. Vacant Nothingness. Bolivian Powder. Arctic Baby
Ass. (Babies are pink, Mulder.) To his surprise, she'd agreed with
an unusual vengeance. The living room turned out red, the kitchen a
sandy gold. She looked glorious, unconscious of her brilliance.
That was why he'd wanted to do it, paint the house a bunch of crazy
gemstone hues. He loved seeing Scully against color, seeing her
pale skin and bright hair, eyes clearly blue from ten paces. She
brought a different light to every room.

"Hey." She clicked the phone off, meeting him in the living room.
He switched on the lamp beside the couch after she came in, as if
he had done it only for her benefit and would have stood here in
the dark otherwise.

"Hey," Mulder said distractedly. He took off his jacket, looked as
if he was thinking about tossing it across the back of the couch,
changed his mind. He brushed gently past her to hang it on the end
of the banister instead, running a hand down her arm as he went. 

"Mulder, what's wrong?"

He had left an envelope sitting on the stairs. He handed it to her.
It was slightly yellowed and had the dry feel of age.

"I need you to look at this and tell me what it is. I'm not going
to say anything." The enveloped had never been sealed and bore no
markings. She pulled out the single sheet of paper inside. It was
typewritten, the arrangement of numbers and letters arcane to most
but not to her.

"It's a... it's a paternity test, an old one, dated 1975." Her eyes
widened. "My God, Mulder, you're the child listed here. According
to this, your father is a... CGB Spender." She snorted. "That's a
funny choice of names. CGB. Isn't that some bar in New York? Did
you show this to Prez?"

"No, not yet. Is it fake?"

"Well, I mean, obviously, but it's well faked. It may have been
faked at the time." She studied the paper again. "These HLA tests
are yours, or at least they're statistically very likely to be
yours, but that doesn't mean anything. Give me an old typewriter
and I'll make Elvis your father as long as no one checks his HLA. "

"Why obviously faked?"

"Mulder, where did you get this?" she asked, her voice digging
gently.

"I... went to see the cancerman." He stared at his socks. She
leaned against the wall, collecting herself, eyes closed.

"Why?"

Mulder responded with a surprising earnestness.

"Honestly, Scully, I think I wanted to gloat. I took him a carton
of goddamn Morleys, told him to smoke himself to hell. I wanted to
tell him I was quitting, that I was going to dump all this shit
forever, and go home to my wife while he spends the rest of his
life hacking up blood in a cell. That I won, and now I was
collecting."

"In your favor, that was admirably self-centered of you, Mulder. I
didn't think you had it in you. I wish I had thought of it myself."
She shook her head, choosing her words and clearly trying to
control her anger. "Of course, I haven't completely lost my mind.
What, did you think he wouldn't have one last parting shot for
you?"

"Why would he? It's over."

"Why wouldn't he?" she shot back, incredulous. "He's a bitter, sick
old sociopath. Look at all the things he did to us or tried to do
to us over the years. He probably had this cooked up years ago, for
some scheme he never got to pull and he's just throwing it out
as... as one last banana peel, to try and trip us up for a twisted
laugh. You knew your father."

"Did I?"

She held up the yellowed document.

"This is one piece of paper, Mulder." She didn't want to slip back
into this, into her versus him, and tried to redirect her anger.
"From the cancerman, no less. It's part of some personalized
psychological warfare."

"Scully..." Here it was again, she thought. Years ago, so many
times. It's the need face, though he looks more ashamed than he
used to. He doesn't want to prove this to me, not this time. "The
cancerman's sick. He's dying. He's probably undergoing treatment at
the prison. Is there any way you could...?"

"That's crazy, Mulder." She moved close. The paper rustled as she
placed her hands on his biceps. You know who your father is."

"What if I don't?" His voice was almost a whisper. "Scully, I know
he knew my parents before I was born. I... I know my mother had an
affair, at least one, a long time ago. It's... it's possible. I'm
not saying I'm part flukeman. And I know he's fucking with me,
whether it's true or not."

"And you're letting him."

He closed his eyes. She felt his voice deep in her bones.

"Let me do this. Let me drive one last stake into the bastard."

Scully sighed, then spoke quietly.

"I'll pull a couple of strings. It'll have to be completely off the
record, so you'll be out of luck if you're looking for child
support."

"Thank you." Mulder's arms wrapped around her, pulling her close.
She felt tension releasing from his body. "Could you really make
Elvis my dad?"

"On paper."

She gently leaned out of his embrace, moved to sit down on the
couch. He recognized that it was her turn now, sitting down next to
her.

"Mulder," she began, breathing deeply once. "I had the strangest
experience in class this morning. I knew the name of every single
student, first try, all forty-two of them."

"Is that... oh, wait a minute..."

"Right. The intake just started last week. I haven't marked
anything, I've barely checked the class list. I don't remember ever
speaking to or meeting any of them except three or four really keen
ones."  Mulder didn't make a comment about the first round of
crushes, which she was half expecting. 

As Mulder watched, Scully clearly made some sort of internal
decision, her face taking on a slightly defeated expression.

"I did what you asked," she said. "And I feel like there's gaps.
Gaps I can't explain. I feel as if I recognize people, I know a few
things about them, but only in a very few cases can I remember how
I met them, or why it is that I know them."

"Who do you remember?"

"I know who my coworkers are, but if you asked me to put a face to
a name, or tell you what kind of clothes they wear, it's... it's
strange. I can't, unless I really think about it, and then I'm not
sure that I'm not... not just making it up." She'd finished the
entire sentence without looking him in the eye.

"I know what you mean," he said warmly.

She looked at him warily.

"Mulder, why are you smiling?"

"No matter what else is going on,  I'm just very glad you're you."

* * *

"After the incident at El Rico, things fell apart. They did not
eliminate the Consortium, merely beheaded it. Over the past months,
factions have developed. Work continues, some of it productive,
some of it... less so."

They were clunking through the last vestiges of rush hour traffic,
back north and west towards Alexandria. Spender hadn't lit up
again, at Skinner's insistence. Instead, the old man had offered
him a cherry Life Saver after taking one himself.

Skinner took it. It had the desired effect-- Spender seemed
surprised.

"I was wondering why you weren't slithering around anymore,"
Skinner said. "You're powerless."

"Diminished. I prefer diminished. I like to think, possibly
delusionally, of the lion in winter. But the work remains, no less.
It must continue."

"Why, so you can re-establish yourself? Become the shadow power
again?"

"Because it represents the only hope for the human race," Spender
said with what sounded like tired conviction. It was the sound of a
man who was sick of explaining.

"I forgot about all your noble motives." Skinner changed lanes
harder than he needed to, nearly skimmed the bumper of a minivan.

"Survival is the noblest of motives, Walter. You fought in Vietnam,
didn't you?"

Skinner snorted. The smoker knew that damn well; they'd had parts
of that discussion before over the years.

"A classic example," Spender continued. "Fighting a war over mere
ideology, over a theory based on child's toys? To keep the dominoes
standing? Survival would have dictated we keep our blood and our
treasure out of such a foolish quagmire."

"You were there yourself, weren't you?"

"Many times. " Spender looked out the window, silent for a few
seconds. Skinner knew the feeling. "I admit I was a true believer,
at the beginning."

"Weren't we all. What'd you do, anyway?"

"I started out as an errand boy." Spender popped himself another
candy. "I ended up as a grocery clerk."

"So," Skinner said curtly, needlessly adjusting the rearview.  "One
of these other... factions. They have Mulder and Scully?"

"That's correct. You should have played dumb longer, let me explain
more. You'd learn, I'd enjoy myself."

"Why were they taken?"

"I'm afraid I can only speculate, and I cannot share those
speculations at the moment."

"What's the diplomatic connection? Why did that van have dip
plates?"

"The project had branches, separate operations in many countries.
Local arrangements were required. As the authority of the project
was necessarily separated from the authority of the executive
branch, the... managers of the individual operations grew in power
and authority."

"A bunch of warlords."

Spender nodded as if to indicate that Skinner was not entirely
incorrect.

"Not all planned for succession. Some died. Some were usurped by
local lieutenants. As you guessed, we are dealing with such a
faction now."

"So where are we going?"

"Dinner."

* * *

They talk in or on beds. Theirs, motels', Mulder's old couch as a
substitute. They'd established that on their first case together,
forgot about it, re-established it when beds took on a new
significance.  It put him at close range, where he was reassured
and less likely to pontificate or be cocky. She couldn't pose,
strut, cross her arms over her chest. It tied in with the single
piece of useful advice from either of their families, Dana's
mother's admonition to 'never go to bed mad.' That did, however,
occasionally mean going to bed at four in the morning.

"If you like that, you'll love this." The thick hardcover was lying
on the bed beside him; the jacket was stark, almost
official-looking. "When did I write this book?"

"What are you talking about?"

"When?" he shrugged. "I cranked out, like, 120,000 words sometime
in 1999, while working on the X-files, and it's been edited and
published already?"

"Well, it is pretty topical, the trial just finished last year and
it's been all over the media..."

"Yeah, but do you remember me writing it?" He stressed those last
two words.

"Of course. You were in here day and night... I think... I..." I
know what I want to say, she thought. You were in here day and
night. But that's just a saying, it's shorthand, a way to describe
something without thinking about it.

"That's about all I got, too, Scully. Do you remember reading over
my shoulder? Did I ask you for advice? I wrote over half my
dissertation in longhand on a legal pad, I can't think on a
computer or a typewriter. Do you remember that? Because I don't."
He picked up the volume, holding it in both hands in front of him.
"How about this? I know this is the first copy, so what did I do to
it?" He held it forward, leaned it against Scully's forehead as if
she would read it psychically. She brushed it aside with
good-natured irritation.

"Well, you signed it. I'm sure I remember you signing it."

"Uh-uh." He opened the book towards himself, to the frontispiece,
turned it around and placed it in her lap.

'Forever yours - Dana,' the neat, rounded, slightly girlish
longhand read.

"Oh, Mulder..."

Mulder's self-control seemed to loosen at her exclamation. His
speech became rapid.

"Someone's doing something to us... the cancerman, somehow, those
fucking papers he gave me, he's got people on the outside..." He
got up from the bed, as if to begin pacing the room, then darted to
the window and tugged open a space between two slats of the blinds,
the way one would look for stalking black sedans or helicopters.
She rose quickly, took his hand and turned him away from the
window.

"Mulder, stop. I need to say something." She tugged him back to the
bed. He sat down on the floor beside it-- close enough-- and
wrapped his arms around his knees.

"Okay."

"That's it," she said, gently pulling his hands into hers. "Maybe
we're... not okay."

"What do you mean?"

"We have been through a lot. Separately, together. And we've never
really... we've relied on each other for support. It's not in our
natures, either of us, to ask for help, or admit we might need it,
or even accept it when it's offered."

"What are you saying?" He uncurled himself, climbed onto the bed to
sit cross-legged.

"We're war veterans, Mulder. Both of us." Dana looked at the
careful, caring face of her husband, the tiny movements that marked
his emotion. She climbed across his lap, straddling him. The
difference in their sizes had become something that marked the way
they fit together, big and small losing relative meaning and
becoming a set of possibilities and familiarities. "Just because we
have closure doesn't mean that everything is better now. Maybe
we're suffering from some kind of post-traumatic stress syndrome,
now, when things are changing and we have to adjust. And maybe by
turning to each other so much, we're making it worse."

Dana leaned forward into him, her arms stretching around his body.
She felt deep breaths, dissipating nerve.

"Is there a psychologist in the house?" he asked.

She chuckled into his shoulder.

"Physicians, heal thyselves."

"I'm a little out of practice, in terms of practicing anyway." 
There's a jumble in her head, a clatter of recollection. Dana it's
Walter, should go home, Mulder, suspended, held a gun on New York
ASAC, fit for duty, counseling. "It's nice to know you think we're
both crazy this time."

"I think we're both something," she said very carefully. He
chuckled once, leaning down so their foreheads touched.

"Yeah. It's time to move on."

"Past time." 

"Dana, what I was saying earlier, about Amsterdam..."

"Maybe we just need a little more time," she said.

"No, no, no. This isn't the consolation prize. I want this life.
We've been through this before. If I wanted to stay at the Bureau,
I would. I'd have found a way. We've earned this life, we've paid
for it. I mean, look, we're paying for it right now. I don't want
to wait, Dana. I want to see you... see you have what you want, not
have to wait for me to be ready."

A long silence followed. Mulder had often reflected that it was a
good thing he was relatively comfortable with his masculinity. When
it came to Having Serious Relationship Talks, Dana Scully and her
natural reserve wore the monosyllabic, wary male pants. He could
almost hear her trying to formulate what she wanted to say.

"Mulder... what if I said I wasn't so sure what I want anymore?"

* * *
 
"This is wrong, this is all wrong... how long has this been
happening?" A label across the top of the ruggedized laptop's
screen read BOB. Parvati Kushraj's  voice had a trace of an accent
that went with the long, straight black hair and dark skin. Her
dusky coloring and fine features spoke of breeding, careful
high-caste marriages. She had a straight, regal nose, elegant
cheekbones, slender fingers.

"What?" The young man who peered over her shoulder had shaved his
head the day his hairline started creeping back, but was still
short of thirty. Ian was white, not quite living-indoor-pale but
clearly of a technical mindset.

"This, here, and here. They're correlating." She tapped at the LCD.
Her nails were efficiently short.

"No they're not." Ian rolled his chair over a few feet, tapped at a
second laptop labeled ALICE. "They're on totally separate streams.
They're not on the same transceiver, they're airgapped." Parvati
rolled over beside him with a practiced little push off the floor
that spoke of deep geek DNA. 

"That's crosstalk. There. Look." She leaned in close, tracing a
waveform on the screen.

"No way." They were joined in the LCD glow by a third young man,
standing behind them. Simon was Japanese, but his accent was pure
SoCal. He was compact, strong-looking, fidgety and quick. He didn't
roll chairs around, hopping between them instead. 

"No, Parvi may be right." Ian rolled back to BOB. "This shit is
fucked up." Simon leaned in behind him. "There, see, that's a good
indicator of memory activity. With the state we put him in, that
should be virtually flat, he shouldn't need or want to go there.
Parvi gave him a coloring book and he should be going through just
filling in the pictures like a good boy. According to this, he is
coloring way, way outside the lines."

"Is that a problem?" Simon asked. Simon was hardcore engineering.
He liked things linear, sometimes needed the possibilities pointed
out to him.

"Uh-huh! He's probably got a very, very strong memory. Someone who
makes a lot of subconscious leaps based on that." Parvi spoke
slowly, tapping the end of a pen against white teeth as she paused
in thought. "Inconsistencies will develop in any storyline we can
come up with, that's why they don't take in the long term. 
Generally it takes subjects weeks or even months to figure out that
anything's wrong, and by that point our storylines are fading,
they've done whatever we needed them to do, and their original
memories are coming back."

"But... Mr. Big Brain Bob here is probably already experiencing
significant dissonance," Ian added.

"That doesn't explain the crosstalk, though, right?" Simon asked.

"No, but it makes it a lot worse."  Parvi rolled back from the
terminal, arched and stretched in the chair. She was slender and
long-legged, discreet curves and refined angles.  "The truth is a
virus; if they're communicating somehow it's likely that she's
going to start sharing his dissonant state, if she's not already."

"How are they gonna communicate?" Simon shrugged. "They're right
out of it. Are you saying one or both of them is, like,  a
telepath?"

Ian snorted.

"Everyone's a telepath, man, even if it's only with his cat. It's
just a question of degree." Parvati shook her head slowly.

"I don't understand the dissonance, though. We were really, really
subtle." She looked at Ian significantly. "I wasn't even sure it
would stick at all."

* * *

FBI Headquarters
May 11, 2000
0910 AM

Mulder noted that he seemed to have the run of the place in his
last days. Kim didn't even pretend to check Skinner's schedule
before waving him in with a smile.

"You wanted to see me, sir?"

"Agent Prezwalski's not around today, correct?"

"No, he's... he's not."

Mulder felt his antennae twitching desperately. Couldn't think of
where Prez was. What did they have going on right now? Maybe he
didn't know-- it didn't really matter at this point.

"I'm supposed to have you look at this," Skinner began. "It came
down from the attorney general's offices." 

Mulder stood in front of Skinner's desk, took the sheaf of papers
and began skimming through it.

"What's this?"

"Nondisclosure agreement," Skinner grunted.

"This standard?"

"Not exactly."

Mulder flipped a few pages ahead.

"They don't want me talking about anything that was in any of the
X-files? Closed or otherwise?"

"Might affect national security," Skinner said evenly.

"Still."

"Apparently." The older man's lack of enthusiasm was clear.

"Fuck 'em." Mulder tossed the papers back on Skinner's desk. "They
already pulled my secret clearance years ago. What are they, gonna
fire me?"

The AD smiled thinly.

"I was hoping you'd say that." Skinner scribbled on the unsigned
agreement with what Mulder thought was probably a degree of quiet
satisfaction. He gestured for Mulder to sit down. "It really
shouldn't be ending like this, you know."

Mulder shrugged, taking his seat. "You wouldn't know," he said.
"Plenty of handshakes going around. Nice plaque. Boson said we
should play a round of golf sometime." He and Skinner both smiled
at the prospect.  Fox Mulder. Golf. "I don't really care at this
point, it's... it's over, let people remember things how they
want."

"There's still a lot of work here that needs someone like you. I
told them that."

"No, I'm sorry, I don't mean to sound bitter, 'cause I'm not. I
know you did, sir. I'm sure if I wanted to, I'd have found a way."

"You always do."

"It's different now, even at BSU or VICAP or something, consulting,
whatever. I just... not how I work. I wouldn't be able to stay
away. It wouldn't be any different."

"The way you do things, Mulder, it's because you live for them. You
have a hell of a lot to live for outside the Bureau, Mulder. Go do
it. That's an order."

* * *

Dana barely remembered what her office looked like. It reminded her
a little of her old apartment, set up like a stage for a show on
which the curtain never lifted. She spent her hours in the lab,
playing fire brigade on everything that didn't fit the profile.
"Send it up to Scully at Quantico" meant that it was inexplicable,
and desperately needed to be understood. Her students knew to find
her there, and it gave her a chance to show them real-world
examples based on whatever was bled out, charred, crunched, or
mutilated on her counter at the moment.

Something today had made her want to see it, though. It was as
she'd barely remembered, and she wouldn't see it again for a while.
Mulder had bought the tickets to Europe anyway, one-way for now
because his tour dates kept changing. 

And, she was going.  Dr. Banner had insisted on getting the leave
form right then and filling it out, as if he was afraid Dana would
change her mind.

"You have enough vacation leave, family leave, personal leave and
whatever piled up that you could probably retire before me. Get
lost, Dana." He signed with a flourish. "Au revoir. Auf
wiedersehn."

"One thing," he'd said, handing the form back to her. "You need to
promise me that you will walk along the Seine, go to the Eiffel
Tower, and do at least one other thing that might allow you two to
be mistaken for normal people."

She started slitting open ignored mail while trapping the phone
between head and shoulder.

"Hi Mom..."

"Hi, sweetie. Are you at work?"

"Yeah, I... I just, we got some good news, and I wanted to share it
with you."

Her eyes ached slightly. They'd had a long, weird night with little
sleep. She had told him very carefully that she was rethinking
wanting to adopt, having children at all. He assumed that meant
he'd ruined her life, a not entirely unfamiliar subject which, on
average, took forty minutes to work through. He'd admitted going to
see the cancerman four, five times including that afternoon. She'd
forgiven him. Then he'd told her about his conversation with Joe,
how Mulder felt he could guide his partner's responses. It hung
between them, too light and strange to dent the pillow. She found
herself unable to make any suggestions, and it had brought her
here.

It was a crazy idea, of course.

"What's that?"

Blank. Blank. Oh, this one was too easy for her. Just be fine. A
name, what's a good name?

"How are Bill and Lucille?"

"They're fine, honey."

Blank, white, flat. Think about snow. She counted seconds in her
head, thought about the structures of the human ankle and foot and
how it would turn back into a flipper if we ever changed our minds
about dry land. It's one of her classroom digressions, leading off
from a crucifixion. 

"How is your teaching going, honey?" 

* * *

They had kept the basement as a point of pride, even though they
could have moved to a floor with windows. But Prez couldn't stand
clutter, and they really did need more desks, so things had been
reconfigured considerably. The old desk was gone; the filing
cabinets had moved into the old lab space. The ceiling had been
redone, and pencils no longer stuck in the tiles.

The flying saucer poster stayed; it was a signature. In fact,
Mulder had had the idea of signing it, leaving some kind of message
behind for the guys, but the fact of it was that he was a lousy
coach and a worse mentor.

"Hey, Peter."

Peter said it was a little more like visiting your crazy uncle, who
has a hot girlfriend and you're not quite sure exactly what he does
for a living, than having a boss.

"Hey, boss."

"I'm just starting to get used to that. Can you say it, like,
fifteen more times in the next two hours?"

"Not a chance. All the love you're getting the past couple of days,
your head barely fits in the door anyway." Peter had an open,
simple face, blue-eyed and Minnesota-blond. He had a cheerful
aversion to formality, a friendlier version of Prez's and Mulder's
constant, calculated insubordination.

"How's Amy doing? Cooking up a storm?"

"I'm gonna tell Dana you said that, Flintstone." Peter turned
around from the computer terminal.  "Amy should be up in her office
later this afternoon, you should drop in before they throw your old
ass out of here."

Mulder leaned against the wall, crossing his arms across his chest.

"Listen, I was just up in Skinner's office and he showed me this
bullshit non-disclosure agreement they want me to sign."

"Yeah, the national security one." Peter nodded. "I signed mine
last week."

"You what?"

"I didn't get the impression it was optional," Peter chuckled.

"Did Prez?"

"Yeah. Of course. I think it was his idea. He was the one who was
talking to CIA..." Mulder nodded at him to continue.  "I just
really, really fucked up." Peter had the look of a man who realizes
he's in over his head.

"Yeah, yeah, I think you did," Mulder said quietly. Peter sighed
heavily.

"It's access," he explained. "We do this, we get access to their
classified files. Lots and lots of files. Did you know that CIA had
their own version of the X-Files? Goes back to the mid-fifties."

"And you guys were going to cut me in on this when?" Mulder crossed
his arms over his chest.

"It's recent, Mulder, it's..." Peter stood up. He was practically
kicking invisible shame-dust with the toe of his shoe. "Look,
everybody knew you were winding things up and, it's complicated.
For, seriously, millions of people in this country you're a hero.
But there's still a couple of thousand who'd like to give you a
free midnight brake job just for old times' sake. And we're still
going to have to deal with some of those motherfuckers to do our
work."

Mulder stood silently. The younger man looked as if he wanted to
put his hand on Mulder's shoulder and decided against it. The
dynamic between them was wrong; at some level, Mulder really was
the boss.

"I'm not you, Mulder," Peter continued. "And I don't want to be
Susan, either."

Mulder looked at the floor for a second, clearing his mind.

"Yeah. Look, I'll, uh, drop in on Amy at the restaurant."

"Do that, man, she'd love to see you."

Mulder closed his eyes, and forgot about Peter Petersson; about the
row of three computer terminals on the far wall; about as much as
he could. He thought about the sound of her heels down the hall;
she's just left. He thought about pencils, and newspaper clippings,
and that big old desk.

He opened his eyes, and a pencil clattered down from the ceiling.

* * *
Dana Scully and Fox Mulder's Home
5:27 PM

"Dana?"

"I'm in here." Her voice drifted from the kitchen.

The wine surprised him a little, both for the time of day and the
fact that she had by all appearances put away more than a half
bottle herself, from a plain tumbler. In his experience, Dana
tended to get girly and a little kittenish after two glasses, so
she'd made herself almost exclusively a special occasion drinker.

She was still dressed for work, black pants and a soft, tight green
sweater.

"Prez's out of town next couple of days," Mulder started, leaning
in the doorway. "He's testifying down in Raleigh. I, uh, left him a
message, but didn't really know what to say over the phone. He
might call tonight."

"Mulder..." She looked up at him, smiling faintly, looking down
again. "You might want to sit down."

"Do I need some of this?" He gestured at the bottle.

"You might," she replied quietly. He was a little surprised that
she didn't sound drunk. She tilted the glass towards herself,
looking distractedly into the dark liquid. "I did the PCR myself,
Mulder. I can't explain it. I crosschecked against... against your
father's autopsy records. I'm sorry, Mulder. God..."

The scent of wine reached him. No, what am I thinking? She drinks
wine almost every day, she admits she has terrible taste, likes
grape-jelly-flavored Australian crap like all the other yuppies. He
can hear her saying it.

She stood up from the table, avoiding meeting his eyes, looking out
the kitchen window at the fine late-spring afternoon.

"It's possible that something was changed at the prison, that those
test results have been falsified somehow. So I crosschecked. And, I
can say that the overwhelming probability is that you... Bill
Mulder was not your biological father. The, ah, the test results
from the prison, compared with your medical data... it appears that
the, that this man Spender, which is the name he appears to have
been using in 1975, is.... Damn it, Mulder, it has to be a setup."

"He's my father. Cancerman." Mulder said it like he'd observe that
it was raining.

"No, Mulder, the results could have been faked at the prison, you
said yourself he knew your parents, he may have known of your
mother's affair, he may have even known that you weren't Bill
Mulder's child, and he's playing on this, he's trying to get some
kind of revenge on you."

"Just look at it this way. He was at the scene, he had motive, he
had opportunity." Mulder chuckled bitterly. "We're not talking
about an X-file here. We're just talking about a goddamn selfish
woman who manipulated and didn't know how to love and..." He
clenched a fist, looking distracted. He tried to think of when he
had last spoken to his mother.

"Mulder," she said, calmingly. "We'll figure it out. We'll figure
it out."

"What about Sam?" he asked. "You checked her, didn't you."

Scully nodded, silently at first. She'd barely needed to check. She
knew her sister-in-law well, broken collarbone to blood type to
DNA. Samantha had a handsome escort when Scully met her, a young
Air Force captain who looked, as so many of these men had, deeply
sorry. It was as though he'd only just realized that he was keeping
an inventory of corpses for future reference, a dead encyclopedia
of horrifically misguided science. Scully had taken the pen and the
clipboard and signed for Samantha, while wondering if the young man
would still look sorry with the ball point seeking his heart
between the third and fourth rib.

"Samantha was your half-sister, Mulder. She was your parents'
child."

It hit him then, seeing Samantha's bones arranged on the table.
Scully had tried to keep him out, gently, standing in his way just
inside the doors of the morgue. We're sure, Mulder, we're sure this
time.

Sister, Scully remembered, my other little lost sister, what kind
of person does this make me that I'm glad you're at peace I'm glad
he's at peace my god I'm glad you're dead...

"This is insane," Mulder shook his head. "I can't even believe
this."

"There's an explanation, Mulder. I'm sure it won't be a simple one
but there will be one. I'm sure it was part of some larger
deception like I said, and he knew the groundwork was still out
there..."

"That's not what I mean, Scully," he began. "I can believe that,
that he's my real father, at some level I can't describe it almost
makes sense to me, but..."

"What else are you suggesting?"

"I don't know." He rapped his fist lightly on the table. "It's all
got to be tied together somehow. Why else would this all happen at
once? This cancerman bullshit? Neither of us knowing who signed the
bestselling book I apparently wrote?" Scully could see him ticking
off the list in his head, forming the connections. "You somehow
knowing every student in your class, but not how you met any of our
friends? Me being able to convince Peter that his wife has two
different jobs? Me not being able to remember Susan Chartres's
face? I have a dead partner and I can't remember her face, Scully."

She looked at him strangely.

"Mulder... Susan...? I've never heard that name before."

"Oh, shit." He leaned his head back against the wall.

Scully exhaled hard, taking another surprising draught from the
tumbler of wine. She stared blankly into a corner of the kitchen
for a moment, as if gathering her courage.

"My turn," she said, with a touch of false levity. "Have you met my
brother Charlie?"

"No. No, I still haven't." Jesus, Mulder thought. She hasn't
mentioned Charlie in years. Wedding. He would have been at the
wedding, wouldn't he...?

"Neither has my mom." Her eyes screwed shut and she pressed the
glass against her forehead, her other arm wrapped around herself
protectively as she leaned against the counter.  Mulder rose from
his chair and went to her, resting his chin atop his wife's head
and his arms around her body.

He felt Scully pull away from him slightly. She looked up at him
with a strange expression on her face. Concentrated, yet surprised.

"Mulder... Susan... she knew how to ride horses."

* * *

Spender knew Chinese, apparently, or at least enough to be polite.
Cantonese or Mandarin, Skinner couldn't tell. He handled chopsticks
well, too, shoveling food from a small bowl right into his mouth.
Skinner tried to play along, conscious of being the tallest,
biggest, and apparently whitest man in the large restaurant.

"Mr. Liu has a good position here. The Chinese do things
differently. They say that if the sand on the beach in Madagascar
held all the secrets in the world, the Americans would sent a robot
helicopter to get it, which would never be heard from again. The
Russians would send a submarine full of commandos, and the sub
would sink. The Chinese would open a resort there, and every
Chinese family that came there would take a few grains back in
their sandals. In ten years they'd have the whole thing."

"This is the resort on the beach?" Skinner asked.

"A small part of it."

"We're tourists?"

"Sharks in the water, Mr. Skinner. But we can be satiated, and
we'll leave the guests alone until we're hungry again. He has his
business, and we have ours."

Mr. Liu called Spender Charles, or Charr'. He was in his late
sixties or early seventies, barely taller than Scully,
glossy-skinned and lean with a small round belly. He asked if they
were enjoying their dinner, and made a minute or two of small talk
with Spender in the smoker's halting but apparently functional
Chinese. When they were nodding at each other, Liu giving the signs
of a busy host planning to move on, Spender said something else.
Liu halted, nodded.

"Oh, certainly, you come in back, come for a drink."

The door of Liu's office was security-grade, Walter noticed, with
two expensive deadbolts and an alarm. There was a notable absence
of restaurant-industry magazines in the small room, which was
well-appointed though windowless. The nodding, smiling Liu was
heading towards an intricately carved liquor cabinet.

"The Bangalore group. They're operating here. Doing work."
Spender's voice was like a car bomb, demolishing the chummy, clubby
politeness of the scene. Liu stopped short of the cabinet, turning
towards them with a neutral, pleasant expression.

"Really! Oh, even with things as they are, that wouldn't be a very
good idea."

"No, it wouldn't." Spender said, pretending distraction with a
framed photo of Liu and some state politicians. It would be an
equally bad idea to withhold any information regarding their
activities."

"Oh, yes, I can imagine."

"Who's their front here? Who does their arrangements?"

"Oh, Charr' my friend, I don't really know." Liu had turned around
from the opened cabinet. "I have nothing to do with them."

"Of course you don't." Spender took a seat, uninvited. "That would
be very dangerous. You've got a good life here." He gestured around
the small room, its hints of connection and expense. "Your daughter
lives here, doesn't she, with your grandchildren. Making the wrong
kind of alliances is like catching a virus, isn't it. The sickness
spreads."

The man's lips tightened in something less than a smile as he
nodded silent agreement. He glanced quickly, frantically at
Skinner. 

Skinner imagined himself as a shark.

* * *

8:57 PM

Forgotten lights and half-history are scattered through the house,
reverberation of questions echoing through the craters they left. A
filing cabinet pulled open in the upstairs office, papers pulled
out, one pile neat, one scattered. One examined wine glass outside
a small china cabinet, three mates inside. Two gold-chased
champagne flutes as well, untouched, not wanting to know.
Photographs. One is of her, it's his favorite, autumn, her eyes are
bluer than the sky and her hair shames Vermont's October leaves.
She looks beautiful and wise somehow, and he imagines these eyes in
a graceful old woman.

He didn't know, did he take this?

Up the stairs, more photographs on the wall, unexamined in the
dark. There is a window at the end of the hall and she remembers
seeing him silhouetted in it, hands on hips, looking proud of
himself for laying down the long carpet runner on the hardwood. He
said he'd never actually moved in anywhere before, just kind of
dumped his stuff. Almost nothing had come from his old apartment
except the couch, now in the den-- there was a little too much
private history on that couch to allow guests to sit on it-- and
the coat rack.

The second door down the hall spills gold light into the darkened
way, bright-seeming but surprisingly dim inside once eyes adjusted.
The room is comparatively untouched, where they turned inside once
the possibilities and familiarities of the rest of the house had
been exhausted. They sit in the middle of the bed, both
cross-legged. Dull, uncrested swells of nerve and exhaustion roll
slowly back and forth between them.

His head is tilted forward, face down slightly. He completes his
sentence, his hands resting on her knees. He looks up, meeting her
eyes. Both their faces show streaks, signs of tears several times
begun and ended. She nods slowly, negatively, in response and his
face drops again. She leans forward, wiggling towards him slightly,
her hands reaching forward to rest on his forearms. He can't raise
his face, he can't see another negative, see another flash of
dismay in blue eyes.

"Do you remember how we got together?" His voice sounds rough, as
if emerging from a beating. "Not when Melissa died. After."

"Of course, but..."

"No, I mean... tell me, describe it. When."

"I don't know what you mean, Mulder. Missy... Missy was still
alive." 

Samantha's bones rise in her mind, a little sister, we could have
been four or even six maybe more with kids, yours and hers and
maybe even ours but if you and she were here would there be a we...

"It was a couple of days after we got back from Missouri. The
detective, BJ... Morrow. You had a mild concussion, and you spent
the night at my apartment so I could wake you up. Otherwise it
would have been the hospital. We flirted very, very hard, even by
our standards at the time. You," she says with a quiet, playful
accusation, "made a comment about potential suitors needing to get
hit in the face with an oxygen tank to get into my bedroom. I woke
you up once by kissing you on the cheek, and you said my name
before you even opened your eyes. I would have gotten into bed with
you right there if you hadn't been drugged. That was a...
Wednesday, and then... it was crazy, on Friday you said, 'let's go
to Maine for the weekend,' like it was the most normal thing in the
world. It rained and rained but we, uh, we had some lost time to
make up."

Breakfast in bed. He thinks of holding a strawberry for her fine
teeth, a maple-flavored kiss, pulling open a lush terry robe to
expose her trim body. 

He didn't remember that, but he wanted to so bad.

"It was after Modell," he began hoarsely. "We stayed in Virginia
that night, we were both just fried. We checked into this crappy
hotel, we got a double, just figured we'd crash for a few hours and
drive back early in the morning. But we couldn't sleep, we were
talking and you, uh, you went to get us a couple of sodas or
something. I lost it, I just curled up in a ball, I was crying
and... how I'd almost killed you. And you, ah," he motioned
abstractly with his hands, "you lay down with me on the bed for a
while, until I got hold of myself. I went and took a shower, and I
heard the door open, the bathroom door. It was one of those
glass-door showers, hazy, and I could see you through it. You were
naked, I could just see the colors. You were beautiful, Scully, you
were so beautiful I was speechless. You got in with me and you said
'we're alive.'"

"Oh my God, Mulder, what's happening to us..."

His movement was sudden and decisive, startling her as he turned
and slid off the bed. He went to the doorway, his hand resting on
the edge of the door for a moment and then pushing it closed, the
latch clicking. He turned towards the bed, turned to her.

"Scully, I'm gonna sound crazy again. I want you to come with me.
We're going to go to the door, and open it, we're going to go to
your old apartment." She opened her mouth to question, and Mulder
held up his hands to silence her. He spoke slowly. "When we open
that door, it'll be the front door of your place. It's summer,
about eight in the morning. It's very bright. It looks like...
remember when your car broke down, and I came to pick you up four
mornings in a row? It looks just like that."

Car. I drove to work today, she thought. What color is my car?

"Are you with me? This is only gonna work if we're both in it." 

Scully nodded.

"There's no place like home," she whispered.

Mulder opened the bedroom door.

She'd always liked how that place lit up on a summer morning.

"Well, here we are."

"Wherever 'here' is."

* * *

"That does it, we'll have to take them down and start over. Look."
Parvi waved at the screen and leaned back, rubbing at her eyes with
the heels of her hands.

"What's that?" Simon leaned in. She was clearly frustrated. Ian was
tapping away at another laptop, referring to the screen marked BOB.
He shook his head. 

Parvi sighed.

"I don't know," she grumbled.  "If it was just one, I wouldn't be
so worried, but both of them, here," she pointed, "and the
crosstalk again, here... this isn't good, or at least it probably
isn't good. This is what we'd expect to see from collaborating
individuals, actually talking to each other, in an eyes-open test."

"Like, people who are awake. Talking." Ian added. "In, you know,
audible words."

An indicator on the screen jumped. Two patterns overlaid,
interlinking.

"There, that spike, there's no way of knowing for sure, but I would
bet that what we just saw is him communicating a dissonant memory
to her and then they jointly implement it."

Simon's eyebrows went up.

"One more time for the engineer here, okay?"

Parvi's fingers poised over the keyboard. Then she gave up,
withdrawing them.

"Pure guess? They've jumped right off the rail and they're making
up a new storyline as they go, based on some kind of shared
memory."

Ian rolled his chair over, brought up a different window in the
display of Parvi's laptop.

"Look at this. They're both basically in creative overdrive here;
this is what I would expect to see from, like, Jimi laying down
'Machine Gun.' They're not just off the rail, they are On. The.
Fucking. Holodeck. They're probably ballet dancing on Pluto right
now."

Parvati snorted, chewing her thumbnail, and gave Ian a significant
glance. He snickered.

"Yeah, that's a possibility. What would that look like?"

"Ian, man, we don't have time to start over," Simon said urgently.
"This is Smokey we're talking about. We are on a serious
operational deadline here."

"We have a couple other reference points we can try to jump ahead
to," Parvati said firmly, glancing at Ian. "Increase the intensity,
hopefully make them a bit less curious."

"Is that going to work?" Simon asked.

"I don't know, okay?" Ian said. "This should have been really
straightforward if somebody had given us something even remotely
resembling proper goddamn psychological profiles. That maybe
y'know, mentioned 'oh, Bob has an eidetic memory, Alice has an IQ
of 150, and they're both all lateral-thinky.'" Ian leaned back,
rubbing both hands through nonexistent hair. "Look, I mean, does
Smokey want it cheap, fast or good? We can try some stuff but it's
gonna suck. They might keep it more or less together for a week, a
couple weeks at the outside."

He looked over at Parvi, and she nodded an affirmative.

"I mean, Parvi is the best there is but we just don't have the time
or the background to put a good scenario together. This isn't that
Air Force rinse and replace shit. We got, what, another fourteen
hours? The problem is that the less of a backstory we can build the
less the new memories will take, both in intensity and duration."

"This isn't rocket science..." Parvati began. 

"...it's much, much harder." she and Ian finished in unison. "Why
don't you go crash for a couple hours," Parvi nodded to Simon.
"When we get this sorted you can monitor while I curl up in a ball
and shake."

"Great." Simon slapped his hands on his knees and stood up. "As
long as it's meatware and not hardware, it's your guys' problem.
I'll be in the crash pit." He headed off to the makeshift rest area
in an adjacent room, closing the door. 

Ian glanced at the door before whispering urgently to Parvi.

"What are you talking about? Reference points? Intensity?"

"I just needed to get Simon out of here because I'm making this up
and I'd rather Duamkasha didn't find out I'm experimenting on his
people."

"Experimenting...?" Ian said cautiously. Parvi nodded.

"There's no scenario, no storyline. The post-procedure suggestion
will be there, the trip to your facility in Amsterdam. The rest
is... we've been working with things at a lower level. The theory's
pretty amazing; I'll fill you in on what I can. It's more... we
define the endpoint and let the subject decide what they need to
believe to get there."

"And this works?" Ian asked. She nodded again, firmly.

"I'd stop short of saying it's a mature methodology, but the trials
have been very promising."

"Trials. Is this the first time you've done this live?"

Parvi gave him a little rueful smile.

"Yeah."

"So we don't know what Alice and Bob are doing in there. Besides
that they're apparently communicating."

Parvi shook her head slowly.

"I've got an idea, though," she said. "They're in this together,
right? Somehow?"

"Okay."

"I'm going to go in raw, direct stimulation, just to Bob. I'll give
him a danger cue, barely linguistic, right to the lizard brain. I
don't know what it'll come out as, but I bet he'll go running to
Alice, or vice versa, and they'll get all hung up and be less
curious. I think we have the basics in there, maybe we can scare
them back on track."

"No scenario at all. Nothing. This is amazing shit."

"Nope. Pure fight or flight. It sure isn't rinse and replace," she
said with a note of pride. Parvati rose, heading for the double
doors on the far side of the room. Ian followed. He tried not to
look at her ass; he'd memorized it anyway. The doors were propped
partially open with squashed-up bits of cardboard from computer
packing cases, to make room for the two large cable harnesses
snaking from the server machines.  Bob lay on the left, tall and
dark, Alice on the right, small and bright. Brown-eyed boy and
blue-eyed girl, she knew-- their eyes did open, at intervals.
"We'll make it all up to them, and see where they go."

* * *

Skinner's phone demanded attention, and Spender paused in what had
become largely a monologue.

"Skinner."

Liu had given them a name, an assistant defence attache with the
Bangladeshi embassy, and Spender was now waiting for a call with an
address. Liu had seemed deflated when he and Spender left his
restaurant, barely responding to Spender's pleasantries.

"Walter. How's it going?"

Krycek. Skinner turned away from Spender as much as the confines of
the car allowed, trying a frustrated expression to put the smoker
off. The older man stayed carefully, almost respectfully
disinterested.

"I'm busy, Agent." Skinner said. "What's going on on your side?"

"You with Spender?"

"Do I actually need to answer that?"

"Just testing. You two make a cute couple," Krycek said. "Spender's
practically alone, and desperate." Skinner fought the urge to look
over at the smoker. "He's almost out of the game, needs you more
than you need him. He can't help you, or them. Make sure to leave
your phone on and maybe I can."

"Fine, I'll look into it when I have a minute."

Spender politely displayed no interest in the call as Skinner hung
up. Skinner tried to think of some lame, dismissive line he could
use, but had a vision of Spender actually sniffing, smelling a lie.

* * *
Dana Scully's Apartment
Date and time unknown

"I think we're hypnotised, or in some sort of deep trance state,"
Mulder said. He wandered into the middle  of the living room,
leaning against the back of the couch and looking around. "We've
been given a series of strong suggestions, or storylines, and left
to ourselves, we just fill in the details that we want. We don't
notice the inconsistencies until we hear each other's version of
the truth. You think your bedroom's blue, or yellow?"

It seemed to him that she was temporarily following his lead, as
she would if she had her own theory but was hearing him out anyway.

"How are we in each other's deep trance state? And where are we
really?" She looked around her apartment, peeked back out the door
they'd just entered. Outside was the familiar old hallway;  there
was no sign of the bedroom of their house.

"For all we know," Mulder said, flopping himself over the back of
the couch and lying down, "we're sitting next to each other in
matching straitjackets having this conversation."

"That's a romantic and not entirely implausible thought." She moved
over to the couch and sat down carefully, perched on the edge
beside him. " But we can't have been abducted, Mulder, you blew the
program wide open." 

He chewed on his lip for a second, glancing around the room. It was
perfect-- or, it was just as he remembered.

"Even if I did, there's still a couple of thousand people who'd
like to give me a brake job. But did I?"

"What are you saying?"

"Scully, what's the last case we worked on together, officially, in
the field?"

She began to speak, then waited, looked puzzled.

"Well... this is... I remember being in autopsy bays. I remember
working together." She rested the flat of her hand on his chest. "I
remember several instances of extremely inappropriate Bureau-funded
sex in motel rooms..." Scully paused, her eyes downcast. "Don't I?"

"I don't either, Scully. I was thinking about this yesterday like I
told you, when I was talking to Prez. The more I think about it the
more it feels like a blank until we got the break on Blevins, what,
three years ago. You'd already been off the X-Files for almost a
year."

She nodded slightly.

"Modell," she said with sudden certainty. "Of course, it was
Modell."

"Let's not let him waste another minute of our time," he said
quietly.

"We left the hospital," she continued for both of them. "I was
driving, in your car."

"And then... I know what I remember," he said.

"Do you think we were abducted that night and..."

"No, it doesn't make any sense, it's not consistent with any
abduction account," Mulder said, "except for that one Next
Generation episode."

Scully reached down to take his hand, pulled it up to hold it, both
their hands resting again on his chest. She looked past him, out
the bay window. Her old Mac was on the desk in front of it, little
faint daylight shadows of the leaves outside rustling across it.

"Mulder," she began, voice soft,"what if we're dead?"

"Scully...?" She could feel him starting to sit up.

"As long as we're entertaining extreme possibilities."

Mulder gave what could be qualified as a slightly nervous laugh.

"So, this is, what, the 'Last Temptation of the Spookies'?" He sat
up, disengaging his hand from hers and sliding it back along her
neck and jaw to tangle long fingers in her hair. He looked slightly
incredulous. "As we speak, we're squashed like James Dean in my old
Taurus in a hospital parking lot?"

Scully rose, Mulder's hand brushing down her shoulder to squeeze
her fingers. She stood and walked to stand in front of her desk--
examined it for a moment, then looked out the window.

"'Where are you hurrying to?" she said, tugging idly at a curtain.
"For you will never find the life which you seek; when man was
created he was given death, and the gods retained life to
themselves.'"

Mulder padded up behind her.

"Scully, did you just quote Gilgamesh at me?"

She allowed herself to slip back into the presence she could sense
inches behind. Mulder's body supported her, the back of her head
resting just below his collarbone. It was a position, a familiar
way they fit together. His hand was about to... yes, there it was,
his right arm sliding around her body just above her waist.

"That I did."

"Well, if it turns out that we're not actually married," he
chuckled, "remind me to marry you."

Scully gently pulled out of their pose and turned to face him,
leaning back on the desk. She looked down, away from him.

"Mulder... what you said before, how you remembered that our first
time, really, was the night after Modell." She turned her face up
to meet his eyes. "I have both memories now. Your way and mine."

Suddenly she stumbled, her hands catching behind her on the desk.
Scully lowered herself clumsily into a sitting position as Mulder
fell to his knees.

"Scully, what's wrong?" His concern seemed to be for her, though it
was clear that his own collapse was involuntary as well. Scully
tried to pull herself to her feet, one hand fluttering up at the
edge of the desk.

"God, just... suddenly exhausted..."  She managed to get to her
knees before falling forwards into Mulder's arms as Mulder was
gradually lowering himself into a sitting position. He woozily
managed to lower them both to the floor, side by side. "Mulder,
wha'ss happening...?"

"Me too... Scully..."

* * *

TO BE CONTINUED