TITLE: Where I End And You Begin
AUTHOR: Khyber
E-MAIL: khyber@khyberfic.net
DISTRIBUTION: Ephemeral, Gossamer, please ask for
anywhere else.
RATING: High end of R for violence and mature subject matter. If
this was TV, it would definitely have to be HBO.
CATEGORIES: Withheld.
KEYWORDS: Withheld.
SPOILERS:  Ummm... yes.
SUMMARY: Khyber Versus Season Seven. Alternate episode to
"Chimera"  and Part Two of "Home From The War." 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

This is Part Two of a two-part 'episode' that began in "Home From
The War" (http://www.khyberfic.net/Khyber/vs7.html). If you have not
read "Home From The War," I guarantee that this story will not make
any sense at all.

I also strongly suggest reading the following vignettes prior to
reading this:

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


* * *


Where I End And You Begin


* * *

Wichita, Kansas
12 May 2000

"Mulder..!"

Scully looked wobbly, watery through the back of Lorenz's shield,
lens, invisibility field, whatever.  Mulder hadn't seen the little
man since his transformation. He'd gained at least six inches and
seventy pounds, and and moved unsteadily with his new size. Lorenz
was looking around, wondering where Mulder had hidden the girls,
knew he had bare minutes to dispose of all of them before the
occultation ended and the debt for his new powers went unpaid.

Lorenz's creditors were not likely to be the forgiving type.

Lorenz couldn't make himself completely invisible, just screen
himself somehow through an arc of a hundred twenty degrees or so.
He was carefully keeping that between him and Scully as he tried
to search the room. He was moving slowly-- Mulder realized maybe
Lorenz's shield wasn't perfect, that motion might betray him.

Chance time, Mulder thought.

"Scully!"

Mulder unfolded himself from behind the oil tank, almost falling
down. He caught himself on his bound hands and scrabbled across
the filthy concrete floor in a crouch until he was about ten
feet behind Lorenz. Lorenz was moving slowly towards Scully now--
he had a sword, a fucking sword, who the hell uses a sword?

"Mulder! Where are you?" He saw her head turning, side to side,
wobbly and fuzzy through Lorenz's field. Her gun tracked left,
right, halted and dropped slightly as she saw Mulder. Lorenz looked
glued to the ground, initiative lost; part of Mulder's brain noted
absently that Lorenz probably had to keep looking in the
direction he wanted his field to work.

"Scully! Shoot at me, do it now!"

She pulled the trigger, aiming chest-high, watching Mulder flatten
himself on the ground. The shot went off like a giant snare drum in
the concrete space, short reverb ringing. Barely five paces in
front of her something shimmered, pinwheeling glitter like a
dust-filled sunbeam. Scully aimed at the heart of the flickering
space and fired three more times, each burst of light from the
muzzle quieter than the last as her hearing died. There was a
sudden flash of greenish light in front of her.

She didn't see Lorenz's bleeding, pierced body shimmer into view on
the floor, barely noticed the two little girls clinging to
each other behind the big heating-oil tank. Mulder had dragged
himself to his feet again, bruised, scraped, his hands roughly
bound and oh so very dear.

He smelled like fear-sweat and dark, unclean corners as her arms
swept around him. With his bound hands he couldn't return the
embrace but somehow that was how she wanted it, simply to throw
herself over her husband, cover him.

"Don't ever, ever do that again," she whispered, burying her face
in his neck. 

"Okay," he whispered back. "Okay."


* * *

"Mr. Aziz Haq?"

The house wasn't an ostentatious diplomatic residence, but rather a
modest split-level dating to the mid-sixties. Skinner and Spender
were dark-draped bad news on the front step.

"Yes?"

Haq was clean-cut and small, in his late thirties. He was carefully
neutral-- Skinner imagined it was obvious they weren't collecting
for the high school ball team.

"Assistant defense attache of the Embassy of Bangladesh?" Skinner
asked.

"Yes." Haq's eyes were flicking back and forth between the two men.
 Spender glanced significantly at Skinner, who discreetly showed
his badge. 

"FBI. We'd like to ask you a few questions, if you don't mind?"

Haq took one step back into his house, holding up a hand and
shaking his head with a tight smile.

"Gentlemen, I am very sorry, but I feel that I will have to consult
with my Embassy's counsel before..."

Haq staggered, tripped backwards on a child's shoe before Skinner
even noticed that the smoker had moved. Falling on the hardwood
hallway floor, Haq rolled to one side with his hands clutching at
his face. Skinner's mind involuntarily replayed what he had missed
the first time, Spender stepping forward, pushing himself off the
door frame, his elbow smashing into the smaller man's nose.

"Go upstairs," Spender growled. "Make sure we're alone down here."

Skinner grimaced but said nothing, and mounted the carpeted stairs
anyway. The house was short on décor; it looked like the furniture
was rental as well. 

Haq's broken nose smeared blood on the floor as he tried to pull
himself up onto his hands and knees. Spender's foot moved, a
practiced and accurate blow with the point of his shoe just under
Haq's ribs. The man gasped and fell prone again, writhing. Spender
applied two more blows, bruising the man's lower spine with his
heel and driving the toe of his shoe into the tricep of Haq's right
arm, limiting its usefulness if Haq considered any
uncooperativeness.

"Don't be afraid of dying, my friend. I wouldn't dream of killing
you right now. It would be pointless, and not accomplish anything."

Spender settled on one knee beside Haq as the latter gasped, trying
to catch his breath. Spender noted that Haq recognized him, was
trying to register his incomprehension. That was good; in future
dealings the man would be paralyzed with uncertainty.

"Now, pain, on the other hand." Spender took a small zippered pouch
from his overcoat, began opening it. "Your people have good
techniques for such things, for divining what lies hidden in the
minds of men, or changing it. Our methods are more crude, suited
for a larger scale."

"But I did as you asked!" Haq coughed. "They were taken, our people
are working with yours, they are undergoing the procedure as we
speak!" He watched with clear panic as Spender calmly uncapped a
syringe.

"If you had shared your knowledge before, none of this would be
necessary."

"The same goes for you," Haq gasped.

"That's possible too. But, unfortunately, that's not how it all
turned out. And right now, I'm the one with the needle." Spender
flicked the silver spike with a fingertip, dislodging a drop of
transparent fluid, and settled a knee on Haq's back to hold him
still.

* * *

Mulder moved as if he intended to flop face down on the motel bed.
She tugged at his shoulder, halting him and pushing him towards the
bathroom.

"No, you're covered in... whatever. Shower. I'm not going
anywhere." He turned to her, beginning to speak. Scully cut him off
gently. "I know you had to do it, Mulder. You saved those girls."
Still, she wanted to scream. "Those bastards from the regional
office wanted to apologize."

Scully watched his shoulders slump. He thought she was angry, which
she was, angry at him, which she wasn't. Christ, did she remember
this anger, a shattering slow-motion spiral burst pattern that
required hard-silhouette suits, fierce bras, perfect makeup and
time at the firing range to contain it. She remembered when it
left, the very second, a strangely fulfilling emptiness like the
aftermath of a sneeze. 

What she had now, listening to Mulder start the motel shower, was
just an echo of that anger-- unfocused and nasty, wanting to punch
someone. Skinner for letting Mulder go, Prez for not handcuffing
him to a Coke machine in the regional office, a Kansas City cop,
someone. 

Fuck Kansas, Mulder thought, raw wrists stinging under the hot
water. Bloody Kansas. Real rope burns are the worst, he thought.
He'd experienced police-issue handcuffs, plastic military cuffs
and about four kinds of rope, and for what was Mulder's hopefully
last non-consensual bondage experience Lorenz had gone with
old-fashioned, skin-shredding hemp. 

Even Kansas City was embarrassed to be from Kansas, and tried to
move to Missouri. He'd said "occultation" and they'd thought he
was talking about Ozzy Osbourne. No, astronomy, he'd said, dull
Midwestern nods in response. Half these guys probably thought the
earth was flat anyway. He'd run out halfway through trying to
explain that it didn't matter if it wasn't dark out, it's still
happening anyway.  He didn't wait for Prez, just like he'd almost
never waited for Scully, and it came out damn near the same.

He felt his calves shaking, tension release and being hunched for
an hour in a crawlspace behind a furnace with two terrified
nine-year-olds. Scully had been a half-scale Valkyrie, sweeping her
fallen, gun-dropped, rope-burned, greasy-dusty warrior to the
ambulance. She was all bright hard voice and bright sharp Sig,
sleek and oddly deadly-looking next to the hulking, heavily
equipped tactical goons wondering what they'd missed as she
brushed by them. 

Scully was even sleeker naked: woman-muscled shoulders, finely
rounded breasts, neat small delta arrowing south. She caught and
tugged the end of the towel as it flipped off his shoulder, leading
him over to the bed.

* * *

The boy spun around from his computer, drop-mouthed. He was eleven
or twelve; the screen showed something with guns. Must be Haq's
son, Skinner thought. He'd heard an unpleasant sound from
downstairs, wanted to keep the kid up here.

"Quiet," Skinner growled. "Keep your mouth shut and it'll be okay."
The boy's face was comically slack, hypnotized by the gun. Skinner
remembered shouting at kids, barefoot kids crouched down in
hooches. Back then, he was all fired up, hoo-ah, locked and loaded.
Now he just felt slightly sick. Back then, you didn't realize you
were fucking up until it was over.

* * *

"I think we've got them." Parvi smiled. Her fingers traced down the
LCD.

"Nice." Ian nodded, looking between the two displays. "Simon, check
this out... this is unreal."

"Amazing." Parvi did her stretch again, long legs arrowing out from
the chair and her back arching up. Ian glanced carefully sideways.
She caught him, and gave him a little grin with her eyes downcast. 

"Not following." Simon intruded.

"It's not even crosstalk," Ian said contentedly. "Check it out.
Full collaboration, or at least I think it is. It's... we may be
the first to ever see this."

"Too bad we can't publish." Parvi flicked between two windows on
the screen, shaking her head.

"Maybe someday," Ian said. "Things change, y' know. If this was
fifteen years ago, we'd be working on Russian spies, thinking this
is the be-all and end-all." Parvi nodded, as if it was worth
considering.  Ian indicated the half-open door, Alice and Bob
behind it. "What do you think happened in there?" 

"I'd love to know," she said. "It's something we're just learning
to do, how to... just push the deepest buttons, let the subject
decide what it means." Ian thought about how it was without Parvi--
the ten or twelve mindless repetitions of the same dumbass story
they shoehorned into all of them, the subjects drugged and drooling
in their own laps while some failed shrink stuffed bad TV into
their heads. "I'd love to talk to them, after. Find out where they
were."

"After we apologize, I guess." Ian regretted that as soon as it
came out. That was a sensitive-guy thing to say, maybe better to
save for later when Parvi wasn't surfing on sheer possibility.

"Don't ruin my fantasy, okay?" Parvi said quietly. "Imagine the
applications of this, someday."

Ian decided to cut his losses.

"Look, I have a theory here, if you're willing to listen."

"Shoot."

"Not that I was trying to reverse engineer your methodology here or
anything," he grinned, and Parvi returned it.

"Of course not."

"But," he said very quietly, glancing over to where Simon had lost
interest, "I was looking at Bob's readings and I think he's onto
us. I think he knows he's not really where he thinks he is. He may
not know this, consciously, but I don't think the programming is
gonna stick."

"Based on...? How are you pulling that out of these readings?"

"I'd stop short of saying it's a mature methodology, but..." Parvi
laughed, soft and clear. Okay, she was saying.  You win. Ian
continued. "I've gotta go to the other site and make sure their
travel arrangements are covered. Aaaand, when I get back, maybe
I'll show you some of mine if you'll show me some of yours. I'll
hit Sub Street, taking orders?"

"And they say H1's never get benefits." Parvi grinned at him. It
was good to be here again. She'd never quite understood what
exactly happened that winter; she'd been in Karnataka on the
project there, and one day the four American civilians there had
simply been escorted out of the compound.  "Veggie on wheat, the
regular cheese, everything except black olives."

"Jalapenos if they're fresh, otherwise banana peppers?" 

"You got it." She saluted him with a pen. 

"Drink?" he asked, pulling on his Padres cap.

Parvi picked up an empty plastic soda bottle and waved it at him.

"I got on the Code Red train this afternoon. The monkey, it claws
at my back. Feed the monkey."

"Baby. Let's talk monkeys."

"You, go, food, monkey boy," she laughed. "Don't take too long. I
want to go over all this data with you before we have to blast the
tapes, see if we can memorize our future Nobel Prize."

Ian smiled as he got in the van, pumped up the Foos on the crappy
rental stereo. He had been imagining himself and Parvi in a slow
descending and narrowing spiral for the past few days, slipping
closer and closer together. Tonight they'd be up until four in the
morning going over the data; he could imagine the regret in he'd
see in her big brown eyes as she hit the red button on the magnetic
bulk erase. That was what put him in her league; you wouldn't know
to look at them, but he'd put in the months, a year of lunches in
the R&E at the Fort, weird hours on ICQ when she'd gone to the
project in India and the emailed uneasiness since Stuff Changed At
Work last year. 

He knew that look in Parvi's eye when she saw the future, something
one of the doctors her parents kept threatening to marry her to
would never see.

Four in the morning they'd drive back to the hotel, wired on geek
magik and Code Red. They'd talk about Alice and Bob, what brings
people together like that.

And. 

* * *

"Is he still alive?" Skinner asked.

"Very much so," Spender said, straightening his jacket, "and will
be none the worse for wear in a few days."

"His son's hiding upstairs," Skinner mumbled.

"I said, he's alive."

They closed the door behind them. Spender's casual air made Skinner
want to shoot him, just on general principles.

"What am I supposed to say about where I got this information?"
Skinner asked as the car door slammed.

"You won't need to say anything," Spender replied, clicking his
seatbelt. "We're acting on this ourselves."

"You and me." 

"Yes." Spender looked surprised. "Is that a problem?"

"How could it not be?"

"Walter,"  Spender said, chiding. "How many deals have you made
with how many devils? Drive, by the way, just get us back on the
95. This is a funny time to get squeamish, Walter."

"Look, assuming.... that you really do, for some reason, have
Mulder and Scully's interests at whatever passes for your heart,
give me the information and tell me what you need in return."

"That's not how it works." Spender was dismissive. "We have to play
by the rules."

"What rules?"

"Escalation, Mr. Skinner. Proportional response." Spender
rearranged his hands oddly, obviously missing the cigarettes
Skinner wasn't allowing in the car. "The people we're working
against today are people we may have to work with tomorrow. They
have escalated the tension by involving Mulder and Scully, who they
know perfectly well are of special interest." The smoker settled
for a weird, nervous gesture of smoothing his hair. "If you blast
in with the full force of the law and expose their operations,
well, then you have escalated tensions further, inviting reprisal.
If we simply make it clear that we consider this particular
activity intolerable..."

"So I'm supposed to trust you to go rescue them?"

"Of course not," Spender said. "You're coming with me."

* * *

The sunlight was no longer leaking through the motel blinds. Mulder
felt dozy, pleasantly dulled, pushed under by the warm weight of
Scully's upper body on his chest, surrounded by the girlsweat
post-sex scent of her. 

"You're lucky you're the hero of this movie, and not Prez," she
murmured, her words slurring together.

"Why?"

"The old-guy partner, last day on the force, one last call? We'd be
cutting to me sobbing, in a black hat with a veil."

"Old guy?" He feigned hurt. "I don't see Keanu Reeves playing Joe
though." He felt her chuckle, squeezed her closer with one arm. You
don't realize how tiny Scully really is until you have her in bed,
he thought, her naked shoulders barely wider than his forearm. 
"Fortunately it's my movie, and I have my own action hero."

"Mmmm." She tapped on his breastbone with a finger. "They may have
to cut out that last part."

He moved his fingers up, gently caressing one nipple. She gave a
little sniffly giggle, wiggled her shoulders in lieu of swatting
him.

"I'm gonna hold out for the unrated version, I hear she gets
naked." He felt her settle against him, shifting to outright lying
on him, one little ear on his chest. He knew she was listening to
his heart.

* * *

Rizwan followed Parvati down the hallway. He was a big man, broad
in the chest and thick-armed. He'd just finished getting two other
men out of the country, gotten a third moved to a safe house in
Michigan where he could rest up. He could feel his own feet
lightening. When he was close to an operation, either just before
or just after, it felt as if he was walking in glue, leaving
footprints that anyone could see if they knew to look. Right now
his shoes felt almost clean.

"Where's Ian?" he asked. 

Thirty hours ago Rizwan and his three men had gotten out of a van
at a gas station on a Maryland interstate. One target had been
filling up the car, the other inside it, fiddling intently with the
radio. It was a bad start; they'd hoped Two would get out and go to
the washroom or buy cigarettes-- he thought she looked like a
smoker, lean and made up-- but no luck, so they'd have to get her
out of the car somehow. Things continued to go wrong when Jai
didn't get into One's line of sight, so the targets didn't realize
they were outnumbered four to two. Target One had his weapon out in
fine time, but he hadn't seen Jai, and the gun clattered to the
ground as Jai tasered him from behind. One hurled himself forward,
landing a wobbly but heavy blow across Rizwan's cheek, and they
stumbled together into a pile as One shook and gasped from the
shock of the taser. Rizwan remembered frantically trying to throw
the man off him as he heard a gun barking-- he was the only one
with a gun, so he realized it must be Two. He saw Sunil stumble and
fall to his knees against one of the pumps, streaky blood smearing
from his arm onto the cheerful yellow metal.  He heard a female
howl of frustration and popped his head up above the hood of the
car to see Jai dragging Two out the open driver's side window, his
arms under her shoulders.

"Logistics." Parvati replied. 
 
"Where's everybody?" Rizwan said, disgusted. "This is a mess.
Chimney should have more security on the site here, I wouldn't have
left if I'd known it was just the three of you." He settled his
hands on his hips, huffed with displeasure. "Things do not feel
right."

"We're in Maryland. It's his garden." Parvati dismissed him. "
There's probably a satellite or something right over our heads. Did
the shipment go through?"

"Left Los Angeles this morning in a special dip bag to Mumbai,"
Rizwan replied. "Is it working here?"

"We've had some bumps, but nothing with the technology."

"Look Parvati, two years ago when I was here on another job, there
was barely time to sleep with all the meetings and security was so
tight I could barely go to the bathroom alone. Chimney had an army
of his own. Now he's got what, Ian and that other guy?"

"The subjects have badges, they're FBI," Parvati offered. "I think
this operation might be outside official channels, low profile."
Technically she was in command of the program's mission here, but
her authority was purely official. She would have a very hard time
getting Rizwan to obey an order that he thought was a bad idea.

"Oh, I've got no doubt of that," Rizwan chuckled, cold. "But
there's low-profile and then there's low-budget. They might not
have taught you this in university, but this is not how these
things are supposed to work." Parvati gave no indication of having
heard the slight. She was used to push-back from the intelligence
guys back home; the older ones had even expected to be called
'Uncle' sometimes. 

"Look, we got the boxes, right? We've got fifty neural transceivers
now that the Pentagon group wouldn't sell or trade us on account of
the brown." Parvati pointed at her face with a fake, pinched grin.
"And it's perfect, because we didn't have to give up a thing, just
prove that we have the capability. This is exactly where we want
the Americans."

"I still don't like it."

"Riz, I've got the thinking covered. You, you worry about the
hitting." 

* * *

"Scully, what were you doing with the tactical team?"

She stirred against him; she'd been Scully-drowsing, still open to
sensory stimuli but to all appearances out of it, usually with her
little mouth open. He knew the difference was that a merely dozing
Scully was silent, while a truly sleeping Scully had a wee
occasional snore.

"I... I asked?" she murmured, blinking widely. "Joe, or
Skinner...?" She felt Mulder's shoulders tense, felt him sit up.

"The vest you were wearing... it fit you. They never fit you."

They both sat up completely, Scully looking puzzled. Mulder was
rubbing his hands in his hair, staring at the far wall.

"You're right. How did I find out...?"

"Your gun, Scully," he said, hands frozen on his head. "You had
your Sig, the silver one. I thought you got rid of it after..."

(after pulling the gag down from my mouth, feeling glass cuts on my
feet and my back an aching mass of bruises, I'm in the living room
and Mulder's mouth is on the "uuhhhhh" of my name, and...)

He watched her face go faraway, sad.

"Do you remember?" Mulder asked.

"We were in my old apartment," she said, her voice rough. She
paused, looked around the motel room. "Mulder, it's happening
again."

"No, it's still happening," he spat. "Someone's trying to distract
us. That was all bullshit." Mulder looked up at the ceiling, gaze
flicking around as his lip curled. That was Bug Hunt, the search
for the omnipresent Them.  "They put us in this, this situation.
Hey! Hey, are you having fun, you sick fucks?" he shouted. "You
like to watch, is that it? Dammit!"

* * *

"Okay," Parvati said, flicking between two windows on her screen.
"I'm going to have to go in and figure out what's going on." There
were readings on there she'd never seen before. He knew, she
thought. Ian was right. Bob is onto us, somehow, even if he doesn't
realize it. 

"Go in?" Simon replied skeptically.

She'd looked at Ian's work after he'd left, trying to figure out
what he was seeing. She still wasn't sure how Ian was analyzing
Bob's patterns, but there was a tremendous amount of action early
on in the procedure. She had a theory, a very weak one.

"Real time. Voice of God. Or however they choose to interpret it."

That was what Parvi really wanted to know. Who do you think I am,
she thought, and what do you think I want? And can I make you want
that too? 

"Fuckin'... why?" Simon gestured at the screens. "This is a total
mess, we should just rinse them out and bail on this."

"I've never seen anything like this before, just theorized it might
happen." Parvati's fingers drummed on the desktop as she took her
bearings from the LCDs. 

"Well, fuck, at least wait until Ian gets back."

She crushed the end of the pen in her teeth, said something
non-English under her breath.

"No... no, I have to get these guys back on some kind of track or I
don't know where they might end up. Ian could be a couple of hours,
and who knows how far they'll go in that time. " Parvi spun her
chair around and rolled over to a silver travel case, pulling out
several coiled sets of wires and electrodes.

"Um, who cares? Let's just fuckin' leave 'em." Simon jumped out of
his chair, leaned in front of the young woman. "That's the
protocol."

"Don't mistake it for sentimentality," Parvi said. "It wouldn't be
the first time I messed up and made salad. If they come out with a
bunch of memory glitches, it would be relatively easy to sort out
what we were doing, and how, if the right tests get done on them in
the next week or so. And that would be really, really bad." She
rose from her chair, began clipping cable connectors together.
"Rizwan!" she called. The big man had already hung up his cell
phone, hearing Simon and Parvi's disagreement.

"Fine," Simon shook is head in frustration. "How does this
work...?"

Parvi remembered Ian's crack about meeting them, apologizing. Well,
depending on how this went, she might get a chance.

* * *

The motel blinds rattled inwards, the tinkling cry of shattered
glass behind. It was as if they had been blown inside by pure
light, a slow strobe of red and white that poured into the room and
cut harsh sharp shadows behind them. Over the hum, like a billion
bees

bees?

Mulder could hear Scully, sobbing, crawling behind him, felt her
movement pulling at the sheets.

The blinds waved frantically, sucked outside the window towards the
howling bright. The light was a thing, a place, and it had gone to
pure morningstar-white with shadows moving slowly inside. He froze,
as if his nervous system had submerged in the hiss and buzz.

No, no, no, no, nononono not her not again

"NO!" He heard Scully shout, heard the brittle snaps of her weapon,
frequencies altered somehow like they were in a metal box. The mass
of shadows in the light flailed, he saw what had to be a slender
arm and a head, too narrow at the jaw, too large at the top.

* * *

She wanted to move, but she couldn't. She thought of her weapon,
but no, she'd checked it with the Wichita police for the routine
ballistics test. She was naked, tangled in bedsheets, hiding
helpless behind Mulder. His muscles were straining, frozen, she
could feel the vibration of a strangled growl in his bones.

The men came in through the window without ducking somehow. The
suits were white, with the puffy booties and dark windows for
faces. They had cases, silver, a little cart. There were things on
the cart, things she recognized, things for her body.

The floor had gone from motel carpet to a sterile white shine, and
the bed seemed to be shrinking under them. The walls had pushed out
into a large, poorly defined space. And she was naked, so awful
awful can't move naked 

She cried out, and Mulder moved then.

* * *

The tall man rolled off the cot, electrodes trailing. He lunged
forward in a crawl, a roar erupting from his throat. Parvati,
kneeling at the head of the cot, had time only to fall back on her
hands before he was on top of her, his knee smashing down on her
chest and sliding off to one side so he straddled her. One huge,
furious hand pushed down hard on her neck, choking and restraining,
the other rising and falling, a blur of violence starting at
Mulder's waist as he threw his body into the terrible blows. The
woman gasped desperately for air as his fist smashed at her face.

"How do you like it?" Mulder roared. "How do you like this? Where
are they? Where are they?"

Simon threw himself at Mulder, lacking the body mass to knock him
over completely but taking his attention away from the helpless
woman beneath him. Mulder landed a glancing blow across Simon's
chin as the other tried to push him backwards. Mulder suddenly
pushed himself back, knocking over the cot behind him. He looked
over at Parvati, who was slowly rolling over, hands pressed against
her face, whimpering and gasping hoarsely. Mulder's eyes widened in
horror. Rizwan thundered into the room, knocking over a crate as he
blew through the swinging door. He neatly leapt over the kneeling
Simon and landed on his knees, sliding forwards to clothesline
Mulder with one big arm and drive him onto his back. He threw his
torso over Mulder's and forced his arms to the floor. Simon fumbled
for the hypodermic needle in the kit Parvati had been carrying. He
yanked off the plastic tip and drove the needle into Mulder's
thigh. Mulder looked woozily around the room for a few seconds and
then stilled, breathing suddenly slowing.

"Parvi! Parvi!" Simon huddled over the young woman, brushing her
hair back from her face.

"Oh... oh..." she sobbed. "Okay. Haaaa... ribs, think... broke
ribs, chest...."

"Can you stand?"

"Help. "

Rizwan rose slowly, looking at the unconscious man. He was
breathing hard, a vein standing out on his forehead.

"I say we fucking kill this fucker, piece of shit..."

"No! No one dies!" Simon shouted. "It's over. Go call Ian, get us
out of here, get help." As he waved Rizwan out of the room, Parvi
whimpered, gasping painfully. "Parvi! Stay with me, Parvi. You stay
with me."

Rizwan hissed a stream of obvious curses that Simon didn't
understand. He nudged Mulder with his toe, jerked his head towards
Scully.

"What about these two?"

Parvati was trying to drag herself into a sitting position with
Simon's help, screwing her eyes shut.

"Leave them..." The first phrase ended in a near-sob. "It might
work anyway... can't do anything else now..." 

* * *

"Mulder, God, I'm so sorry, I just froze, I just..."

Scully heard her voice flutter roughly through the darkness like a
broken wing. Or perhaps she heard it; she wasn't certain that its
damaged flight hadn't just been in her head.

"No, you were shooting," she heard him mumble. "I saw you.
What...?"

Mulder was trying to raise his uncooperative head to look around.
She could see him only in flashes, as if wherever they were was lit
by a failing fluorescent light. She gathered him in, feeling his
chin settle on her shoulder.

"Are you all right?"

"I don't know, Scully." Mulder sounded weak, dazed. "I don't
know." His arms hung at his sides, useless. "What's happening?"

She tried to look around, but there was no around. Stabs of gray
light revealed nothing. Scully was conscious that she was on her
knees, but she couldn't tell what the surface was, and she didn't
want to let go of Mulder to touch the floor. Her knees might have
been bare; she couldn't tell. Dust. She thought of dust.

"I don't know, Mulder. I don't know." she replied, feeling how deep
the quaver in her voice started. Mulder stirred against her, trying
and failing to raise his head from her shoulder. Scully felt him
manage to get one hand moving, felt it brush woodenly against her
back. She couldn't tell whether it was skin or clothing he touched;
more just the sense that Mulder had touched her.

"Where do we go now?" he asked.

* * *

Skinner found something reassuringly mundane, verging on sordid,
about the waiting. Spender had two men joining them within the
hour; he said he hadn't expected things to move so quickly and had
had to improvise, pulling them from somewhere else.

"I always had the impression you had unlimited resources."

They sat in Skinner's car, in another mall parking lot. Skinner
realized how rarely he left the city, and wondered what the hell
people in the suburbs were doing going to Home Depot at ten o'clock
at night. 

"You don't have fifteen per cent fewer people and twenty per cent
less budget than you believe you really need to do the job
properly? I always thought that was as true of the janitorial staff
as it is of the most elite tactical assault unit or research
laboratory." He flicked the end of his cigarette out the car window
and chuckled. "If that's not the case at the FBI, I'd be pleased to
submit my resume to your superiors for their consideration."

What would you need to fix at ten o'clock? Skinner thought. Skinner
had long ago tried to define a limit of concern for Mulder and
Scully, if he was reasonably certain they were in the same place.
There was a limit to how far you could go; he'd tried, and then
Mulder had managed to redefine that to include Antarctica, and all
reasonable comparison had ceased. 

"Janitorial staff might be hiring."

Mulder and Scully were professionals, and beyond. At this point, he
only had the evidence of a gas station security camera and the
smoking man that Mulder and Scully weren't just off on some errand
of their own. He'd given up trying to keep track, if he'd ever been
able to.

Yet, here he was in the parking lot.

* * *

"How's she doing?" Simon asked, slamming the latches shut on an
equipment case. Rizwan grunted angrily.

"She's busted up, some ribs broken but I think her lungs are clear.
 Fucker pounded on her, may have a concussion. Needs a doctor now
to make sure." Angry and distracted, he had a thick accent.

"I've almost got this stuff shut down... I hope..." Simon watched
the database server chattering away as it merrily erased itself.
"The software shit is Parvi's and Ian's department."

"So we're just leaving them?" Rizwan indicated the open door into
the other room. Mulder was still slumped against the wall in
half-sitting position, Scully left on her cot. The equipment and
electrodes had been removed; they looked like they were taking some
kind of fugitive's desperate rest in a sparsely appointed hideout,
Mulder gallantly giving up the one narrow bed to her.

"I so can't make that call," Simon said, shutting the last machine
down. "Ian and Parvi are the only ones with the operational
contacts and Parvi's busy fuckin' being unconscious." He yanked
cables out of the computer's back. "I'm not even supposed to be
here, I was just doing Ian a favor. Just chill, Ian said he would
be right here."

"I should call my people," Rizwan said. "We can clean this right
up."

"Yeah. I know. Wrong country, man." Simon knew enough about
operations to know that he didn't want a bunch more 'third party'
goons running around 'cleaning things up.' Never add extra
complications. "Besides, Parvi's your boss and she'd fucking own
you. This is all going to work out. There's Ian now."

"Fucking time," Rizwan cursed, disappearing down the hallway at a
jog.

A few seconds later, Simon was confused-- Ian had really brought
the cavalry. There were four guys straight out of Counterstrike,
full black tactical kit, goggles and MP5s. Two headed for the far
door where Parvi was-- wow, they are right on the ball-- and the
other two pointed their snubby weapons right at him. Whoa, okay,
they're on, he thought. He raised his hands, stood up, this is just
how these guys work, he thought. A fifth man entered from the
hallway-- no Ian and no Rizwan yet, though. The new guy was
lean, with short hair and a leather jacket and a pretty-boy
face. Simon didn't recognize him, but he looked like... like this
was not turning out at all like it was supposed to.

* * *

Maine
27 September 1997

It was a woman's dress, for a woman who would walk down the aisle
with thirty-three years less two weeks of life and a double
lifetime of experiences behind her. No one would hold her arm, her
father dead, her brother unwilling to give her away to her chosen.

It was a rich, deep ivory, sleek and fine, touched with hints of
lace and pearl. Cut closely to Dana's small waist, baring her
strong arms and shoulders, it was elegant yet still carried an
undertone of sexual promise. She carried roses, in red and orange
and yellow to suit the deepening autumn.

It had been a mad gamble to do it here on the coast at the end of
September, but it was where he'd asked. They'd been more than
lucky, almost improbably so. The tiny town church stood ready, just
in case, but a fine morning drizzle had burned away and the
afternoon sun was clearly approving of the proceedings.

Scully moved slowly down the aisle, her head held high, her
red hair, longer than she had worn it since she was a girl, swept
up gloriously. Mulder first saw a glimmer above her forehead,
realized she was wearing a fine, almost ghostly tiara. Then he saw
her eyes glimmering with tears. She was trying to keep from
bursting into a full and undignified smile, or doing some equally
undignified bawling. Scully approached the front row, passing
between two empty chairs with a single yellow rose on each--
Samantha and Melissa. As she glanced one way, then the other, at
her mother on her left and his on her right, he saw that her tiara
was composed of tiny, delicate translucent white stars in a lattice
of gold. It seemed as fine as her hair, almost a part of her, a
sign of enchantment. Scully's eyes met his as she saw him noticing
it, and she smiled. He started to smile in response, and then his
eyes crinkled slightly and his mouth moved, one of the tiny signs
she recognized in him-- a realization.

My mother's dead, Mulder thought.

* * *

"Well, fuck me." The sergeant stood half in and half out of the
double doors, looking at the woman on one cot and the man collapsed
on the floor.

"What?" Krycek entered the room, knelt beside Mulder and checked
the pulse at his neck. He looked down, lifted up Mulder's right
hand by the wrist and noted bruised knuckles.

"That's Parabola and Hyperbola, right? Haven't heard of these two
in a while. Never thought I'd actually see them." The sergeant let
his weapon drop slightly. "They're right, she's pretty." He'd had a
little rush coming the door, and it all went away when the Asian
kid had held his hands up like it was a western.  It was janitor,
cleanup shit after that. "I thought maybe they went down with the
rest of their gang at El Rico.  Are we doing them?" he asked, with
a slight hesitation. 

Honestly, the sergeant fucking hoped not. He'd had to shoot one
pretty girl already today, the last bit of cleanup, injured in the
little room at the back. Stearns had gone into the room first,
frozen up and kind of goggled at him, so he'd pushed the young
grunt out the door and done it himself. He'd put two through her
heart. Though he doubted anyone who cared would ever see her dark,
fine-lined face again, he didn't want to do that to them if they
did.

Krycek snorted, shook his head and stood up. He'd forgotten the
Pentagon codenames. They were backwards, of course, Scully getting
the one representing the greatest extremity.

"Not today, soldier," he said. "That is way above your pay grade.
We're just going to dump the lovebirds here somewhere comfortable."

"Did you know they were here?" the sergeant probed. 

Krycek rummaged through the plastic crate containing Mulder and
Scully's belongings. He took the badges and propped them up on the
newly vacant cot as the sergeant lifted Scully's unconscious body
in a fireman's carry.

"Nah. This is just a bonus. Get them out to the truck."

* * *

"Scully, Scully, Scully." He stepped forward, into the aisle. She
looked at him curiously.

"Mulder, what's..." she began. He came close to her, gathering her
in with his arms. He heard her make a small noise of confusion,
waited and felt her warmth under his hands for a few moments. Her
left hand gently stroked the back of his neck. Mulder ducked to
press his cheek against the side of her head.

"My mom's dead, Scully," he said, his voice just above a whisper.
"I remember. She killed herself, in her apartment. I went to her
funeral. You came with me." He heard a rustle, and realized it was
the sound of roses dropping to the ground.

"Where are we...?" She gently pulled back from him, looking at the
unfamiliar collar of his dress shirt, at the fabric of his tuxedo
jacket. Scully looked down at herself, at unimagined elegance,
beauty embraced rather than harshly cultivated.

"It's slipping, Scully. It's starting to come back to me."

A look of horror crossed her face.

"I remember cold... being so cold. You came for me," she said with
something like surprise. Then something else, eyes closed, return
to horror. "Fire. Their faces... they have no faces..."

"Scully, oh no..." He knew somehow that it was coming to both of
them. She had never awoken that night, though she suspected that it
had happened. She felt the hospital floor under Mulder's knees, saw
a small shape in the dark, felt Mulder's elbows on what was to be
her deathbed, felt her own frailty under his light touch and
the peculiar sense of her own presence. She felt tears well up in
Mulder's eyes and the awful, inchoate nothingness that faces
the man who realizes in a moment that he is not an atheist, but
cannot say what it is that he believes in. She realized what it was
like to want to pray and not know how. Why...?

"I remember..."

(For all the times I have said that to you I am as certain of this
as you have ever been. I have cancer. It is a mass on the wall
between my sinus and cerebrum. If it pushes into my brain,
statistically, there is about zero chance of survival.)

One drop, two drops, four crimson spatters across the lace of
Scully's dress, one on the pale soft skin above. She reaches up to
her face, fingers pressing against her upper lip and coming away
stained.

"No, no, nononono" he whispered. The telltale droplets vanished;
the color sucked out of them before they disappeared altogether.
The light took on a strange, grayish-yellow cast and lost its
direction, as if smoke was filling the sky and diffusing the sun.

"I think it's coming apart, Mulder." They were alone on the grass,
empty chairs randomly patterned around them, the arbor behind
Mulder hanging devoid of flowers for a despairing second before
disappearing. "It's not real."

Mulder leaned towards her, one hand slipping around her back, the
other to her cheek, running back through her hair. She met him,
eyes open by mutual unspoken agreement. Their lips came together
softly at first, then harder, their eyes closing in shared reflex.
Mulder felt the soft exhalation of surprise and pleasure from
Scully as the kiss deepened, her breath between them. 

I know. I remember, and I don't, but it was never like this.

This is what it's really like.

Scully?

Mulder. I hear you.

They broke apart, arms still encircling, just wide enough to see
each other's faces. He smiled sadly, his hand tracing the line of
the tiara across her brow.

Stars.

She smiled at him, feeling tears form as fuzzy half-formed
impressions floated up. Yes, stars. Dana that's so beautiful, I
don't care if he sees the dress, Mom, but he can't know about
this... The vague image wavered as noise rose around them, a
thunderous rush as if they were trapped in the beating of wings.
The green grass of the beautiful day turned first gray, then white,
then fell away beneath them. There was nothing else to be done, so
they pulled close to one another.

Hold on.

* * *

"Do you think they did this?" the smoker mused as he lit a
cigarette. The bodies had been pulled into the centre of the room,
no care taken to cover the blood. One, a big dark-skinned man, had
been pulled in from the hall. The others were a young Asian man and
a pretty Indian girl who looked as if she'd been beaten before
being shot. Her long hair had mopped up blood from the floor, and
rolled up in a gory rope.

"And just left? And left their badges? They're federal agents,"
Skinner said. He looked around the room. Not enough blood, he
thought, and the room had been cleaned out to some extent. There
were cables, cases, but no equipment... and again, not enough
blood. There was blood from three bodies. Mulder and Scully,
presumably alive, had been part of the prize here.

"If they were abducted..." the smoker said, studying the empty eyes
of the large man dead on the floor, "if Agent Scully were
abducted... do you really know exactly what they'd do?"

"Not this." The young man had been shot in the chest twice, then a
control shot to the head when he was down. Skinner couldn't see
that as either of their style.

Not as long as they were both still alive, anyway.

They'd arrived a few minutes after Spender received a frantic call;
Skinner assumed it was probably the young man who was now outside,
late twenties with a shaved head and seeming way out of his depth.
They'd abandoned their wait for Spender's men, Spender terse and
nervous as Skinner drove recklessly. 

Spender had been cagey about why the young man was there; he'd
mentioned surveillance but the guy didn't strike Skinner as someone
you'd send on surveillance alone.

Ian had been sitting against a wall when they arrived, left the
room and went outside the moment they entered. Skinner could tell
in the two seconds he saw the young man that this was his first
time-- he remembered that from war. Intelligence guys, reporters,
young officers who knew about these things in an abstract sense,
had maybe taken fire but had never really seen aftermath before. 

"Your guy... you knew these people." Skinner jerked his head at the
bodies on the floor.

"They're not familiar to me but apparently they are to him,"
Spender said. "That's why they call it an intelligence community,
Walter, or they used to. You can't have a conspiracy of one."

"He going to be all right?"

"We never really get a choice about that, do we?"

Skinner's phone beeped, begging attention.

"Skinner."

"Hi, Walter. I told you I could help." Skinner looked at the dead.
That seemed like Krycek's idea of help. "Don't tell the smoking
man."

"What's going on?" Skinner asked, turning away from Spender.

"I picked up some friends, gave them a ride somewhere safe." The
lack of emotion in Krycek's voice never ceased to amaze him. There
was this vague earnestness; nothing else. "I imagine you'll hear
from them pretty soon. You saw I left their badges behind for
verification."

"I need more than that."

"You got everything you want. I got what I want." Krycek's voice
didn't change; it was a statement of fact. "I'll present it as a
success; it'll move our cooperation forward."

Krycek hung up. Skinner avoided pausing, avoided studying his
phone.

"I have to go," he said. "We may have a lead." Skinner glanced at
the bodies. "Do you... do you need a hand?"

"No, no, thank you," the smoker said with a strange, distracted
politeness. "I've done this before, and it's time he learned."
Skinner turned to leave, mentally going over whether he'd touched
anything in the room. "Mr. Skinner... keep me posted."

"You won't find out on your own?"

The smoker paused before replying.

"It's always good to find out from someone you trust."

Ian brushed past Skinner in the short hallway, eyes downcast,
running his hands over his head. Skinner thought about saying
something, out of general principle, and realized that he actually
just couldn't bring himself to give that much of a fuck.

"Who was that guy?" Ian asked. Spender recognised the voice. No
intonation, emotionless. This is what is meant by 'in shock.' "Why
aren't we telling him this was our op?"

"Someone who doesn't need to know the whole truth. As of an hour
ago, this is not our op. You have no idea whose op this was.
Now, what happened?" Spender asked coldly. Ian had had his moment;
he was entitled to it, the first time. Now it was time for the
work.

"I don't know," Ian said shakily. "When I left to check on the
exfil for Bob and Alice, everything was fucking copacetic,
everything was working. Then Simon called and said we'd had a
problem, but I was out in Annapolis and by the time I got back...
it was too late, I found this. It wasn't Bob and Alice. Rizwan's
guys took their guns. I don't know what happened."

"So it's a failure," Spender said evenly.

"Yeah, it's a fucking failure," Ian looked disgusted. "What the
fuck does it look like?"

"Did they get the technology?"

"I don't know." Ian kicked at a dismembered cable. "They took the
terminals; they didn't get the transceivers, which is a big part of
it but depending who it is they might have that already..."

"You couldn't recreate this operation?"

"On those two? No, no, hell, no, not... not without Parvi, even if
I could source all the equipment somewhere." Not without Parvi, Ian
thought. His inner geek had initially stuck its head up out of the
hole at the sound of a challenge. Then it smelled blood-- smelled
blood, he realized, that shit is real, you can smell blood-- and
ran away. "Look, are we going to... what are we going to do with
them?"

"We're going to put them in the van," the smoker said, removing a
pair of leather gloves from a coat pocket, "and you're going to
drive it to the office in Richmond where the bodies will be
disposed of in a secure fashion. I don't suggest speeding. I'll
take this young man's car and dispose of it." He looked directly at
Ian. Ian looked back, dumbly, his head trying to scan around the
bloody floor. "Do you understand?"

"Yeah, ye-... yeah."

"No, I don't think you do." Spender said, pulling on one glove.
"This is part of the game, son, this is not that chess club they
have for you in La Jolla. You do an operation, there is a risk you
will fail." He flexed his hands inside the leather. "Everything,
anything you work for, anything you desire... there is a risk you
will lose."

* * *

Two days later


Mulder didn't like the idea of the bar.  It had a ridiculous
faux-pub name, the Arrow and Barrel or Drinky McAlcohol's or
something.  After ignoring him for thirty-six hours, Scully had
called and suggested it with a forced, vague cheerfulness, like 'we
should talk' was some sort of special event. He knew that what it
really meant was neutral ground, someplace where she knew the
boundaries of things. 

He'd spent the previous two nights on the couch, old school, where
he knew the boundaries of things, where he'd fucked his partner a
few times a few years back but that was complicated and we don't
really talk about it, we're adults and it was just something that
happened. Or maybe that was her side of the story, the one that
left out remembered hair-scent and the sound of breath, a
discussion about whether an artificial intelligence represented by
timed patterns of photons could be transmitted through a black
hole, and good-natured arguing over who got to mow the lawn,
because they both liked the mindless white-noise focus of it.

"So what are we going to tell them?" By 'them' he meant the small
team investigating their brief disappearance. Skinner had handed it
over to another unit who had seemed to be taking it the way DC
police would take a report of a stolen bike-- come down and make a
statement and we'll let you know if we come up with anything.

"I don't think I remember anything that's relevant to the case,"
Scully replied. He fought the urge to respond to Scully's attempt
to define the term 'relevant.'

"What do you think happened?" he asked. 

Scully studied her drink, pushing a lime wedge down with a straw.
She'd woken up in his arms. Bad dream, she'd thought, strange
dream, not the first one like it. She'd press up against him,
half-wake him, nuzzle for a minute until her heart slowed. 

Then she'd felt shoes on her feet, bra straps pulling, no skin on
skin. It was a motel bed, and they were lying on top of it. It was
not a place, not a way, they were supposed to be.

"I don't know. I don't think we know any more than anyone else. We
were abducted. We were drugged with a fairly common sedative, for
unknown reasons. We showed no signs of having been physically
molested."

He was awake, had been watching her sleep. As she'd slowly pulled
away from him into their now he looked so very sad, almost
apologetic.

"Scully, you were there, I was there."

Have you called Skinner yet, she asked. No, he said, I didn't want
to... I needed to get my head together first. Are you okay? She
didn't answer him. Do you remember, he asked. Yes, and found
herself squeezing his hand. She pulled away as quickly as she could
without hurting him any more.

Head hung over the table, fingers knitted together in front of her,
Scully let herself nod very slowly. Yes, Mulder, I was there. I had
a living room and a wedding dress and vacation time and once we'd
tried to have a barbecue like normal people. I smacked you on the
ass with a metal spatula. Joe ended up cooking because we were both
hopeless and he's really good and loves to do it, and I sat in your
lap and drank bourbon and ginger ale. I know how to make a
hamburger, Mulder, but you don't know that, and I don't know how
bourbon and ginger ale tastes, so that must have been your story.

Is that what you want me to say? Do you want to swap stories about
things that never happened?

But she remained silent, and Mulder continued.

"I think somebody wanted us to do something, needed us to be..."

"You think it was hypnosis, suggestion." Scully paused. "The
adoption?" she asked quietly. 

"Maybe," he said.

"Do you think that's... relevant to the case?" she asked, not
really inviting an answer. Mulder realized that the warning sign
Scully was throwing up with this statement would be visible from
Baltimore. He let it go, as she had carefully instructed him to,
simply nodding noncommittally.  She continued. "It's all fading so
fast. I don't know what might be relevant."

"Maybe none of it was. Maybe it was just..." He trailed off,
resisting the urge to push his point. She was still trying to
control 'relevant', he thought, define out everything else.

"Telepathy, Mulder?" It wasn't a snap, but it was quick. "Shared
out-of-body experience?"

"Scully, we've got a connection. We've got something very few
people have."

This response, though, took time. She constructed it in her head;
an opening, a middle, and an end. It had clauses, subclauses, and
included a lot of wording which she hoped was carefully,
noncommittally sincere. She would not deny or disavow anything that
had happened in the past, nor say anything that could be taken as
an immediate invitation to radically reconfigure the status quo,
while not ruling out the eventuality of that happening. It was a
good response, and she was proud of it.

"I know," was what came out of her mouth.

"Scully, do you... do you remember, in the hotel room, there was
someone, in a suit, a containment suit, and I..."

"Yeah," she said quietly. And I was frozen, I was screaming, I was
crying like a little girl and I just wanted you to save me.

"I think that might have been someone real, really there. I, uh, I
think I remember a woman, looking down and seeing a woman, dark
skin, dark hair and, uh, I think I hurt her, Scully." Mulder
flexed his right hand. The knuckles were raw, red, swollen on the
two smaller fingers. She automatically reached out, gently
touching. He winced but didn't pull back.

"Not broken, but it wouldn't hurt to tape those for a few days."
She withdrew her hand; there was no linger. "Mulder, from what I
remember, when they took us, you went down fighting. It's not
surprising."

"I don't know, it was different." He seemed to almost be talking to
himself. "It... there was a room, a different room."

"Mulder, I... I want to ask you something." Dana felt a little stab
as she said it. We don't need to know this, a hard voice in the
back of her head whispered. "What gave it away?"

"Just... feeling, I don't know." Oh, Mulder, she thought. He was
even giving her a chance to change her mind about asking the
question, and for some reason she didn't.

"Really, Mulder."

"I tried to think about what I was supposed to have accomplished,
and how I could have done it without you there, right beside me
like you've always been. I tried to remember you leaving the
X-Files, what you, we decided, and I just couldn't." He paused.
Dan... Scully's face was carefully controlled, but he could see in
her eyes the impact he was having. She might be regretting asking
about irrelevancies, but couldn't stop. "How about you?"

"I remember being in our, in the bedroom and..." her voice dropped
to a secret tone, "You asked about our, uh, our first time, and
when you told your story, I realized that I had both memories,
and... yours was the right one. That was how it actually happened."

"That was... how I knew it was really you, it wasn't, I wasn't
alone." Mulder said. "I hadn't been sure, but there were things...
things about our life, that I knew weren't mine, that didn't come
from me. I didn't know if it was real, but I knew that it was you,
it was from you. I knew you'd picked out most of the furniture." He
laughed quietly at the memory.  "I knew... whatever was happening,
you were there with me."

"What aren't you telling me?" And why am I asking? she thought. 

"I remembered how things happened, back then. Modell, and that
while after, when we..." Mulder couldn't finish it; she wouldn't
have known what to say either. 'Broke up'? Sounds trivial,
highschool, like we'd been 'dating,' or maybe it overstated things.
Maybe 'stopped' would be better. "And I, uh, I couldn't sort out
how we'd gotten from back then, to... to where we were. Together,
married... whatever. I couldn't figure it out, but I, uh, didn't
want to." He trailed off.

Scully's face burned furiously. 

"I liked it your way." Mulder said it almost shyly. "Maine sounded
really nice." He avoided her eyes for a long pause, and took a deep
breath. "I mean, if I honestly believed that all I had to do to
keep you from Donnie Pfaster, or Antarctica, or... or anything
was..." She saw him trying to make a joke out of it, a sweet one,
one she couldn't possibly riposte without cutting him deeply.

"They manipulated us, Mulder." She had to head him off before he
finished. "They played with our minds. It was all a setup, like you
said, some kind of false memory implanted..."

"Then why didn't they set us up with the same false memory?" Mulder
cut her off. She looked like she'd felt it, her mouth closing
tightly.  He resolved to dwell guiltily on this moment. "Scully,
I... yes. There was a setup. They had a plan. I don't know what it
was. But the cancerman could not make that up. There were things in
there that no one would know, no matter how many bugs they've
planted over the years." 

She avoided his eyes, mouth set in a straight line. It
pissed him off. Right, Scully, straight to the sex. That's
your greatest failure, the one you're most ashamed to admit,
opening your legs. 

"That's not what I mean." It pissed him off, and it hurt. "I
mean... can you tell me that you haven't wondered what it would
have been like if things had been different? Because now you know I
have." He heard a sharp intake of breath, shoes scraping on the
floor. He reached quickly across the table, grasping her hand to
stop her attempt to rise. She slowed, settled. He understood,
releasing his grip but still leaving his hand on top of hers.

"Scully... 

"Mulder, I can't." She held up her free hand as if to quiet him, a
gesture he'd never seen before. "Don't... just, please..." She
began to rise, and he didn't try to stop her.

"Okay. I just, I need to say this. I think... the cancerman tried
this on me before. In the end, no matter what they gave me,
something was missing."

"No." She got up from the table. "I'm sorry, Mulder, I can't do
this right now." 

If anyone had noticed her leave they would have had to make up
their own story, something to explain the welling up in the small
woman's eyes and her determined autopilot stride. The story would
probably have to involve the man she'd left at the table, with his
face in his hands.

He remembered stars.

* * *

Parking garages again. Skinner thought that he was going to get Kim
to start scheduling meetings in his car.

"That was good work, Walter," Krycek said from the back seat.

"Fuck you." Saying 'fuck you' to Krycek was satisfying in its own
way, but a weak substitute for pounding the living shit out of
him-- weaponless, getting well-earned scraped knuckles, maybe even
dislocating a finger. It would be worth it. He imagined waiting
here for Krycek, smashing his face against the edge of the car's
roof.

"You're starting to understand how this whole thing works," Krycek
said. "Everybody looks out for their own interests and we all know
where we stand."

"Why did you kill those people?"

"Too complicated not to. Disappearing people is expensive. Corpses
in DC are very cheap." Krycek gave a small shrug. "Besides, had to
send a message. There's a new sheriff in town. People have been
freelancing, and that's not allowed anymore."

"Who's the sheriff?"

"The military always felt like it wasn't getting its share of the
Consortium's successes. Technologies. Toys. They never gave a shit
about the project. They just wanted the toys." Krycek chuckled.
"Now that the Consortium's gone... mostly gone... the Pentagon's
hoping to pick up the shinier pieces."

"And you're helping them."

"I'm looking out for my interests," Krycek said. "Same reason I'm
here talking to you."

"So who took Mulder and Scully in the first place?" Skinner asked.

"Who knows? Maybe Strughold's people. Maybe the French, or one of
the Russians. Some local player. Spender's probably not the only
holdout. Most people think Mulder works, or worked, for Spender
anyway. Probably related to that somehow." Krycek opened the rear
door, and gave a polite nod in the rear-view mirror. "I'll be in
touch."

Skinner wanted to say 'fuck you' again, but settled for imagining
slamming the door on Krycek's hand, twice.

* * *

The gun was an automatic gesture, a product of near-instinctive
reasoning. It was after midnight; the knock wasn't Mulder's, though
she was half expecting it to be. Possibly even half wanting it to
be. She thought she probably should have turned on some lights, in
case it had been Mulder. Nothing says 'yes, Mulder, this is a good
time for a mature, straightforward discussion regarding increased
acknowledgment of our emotional intimacy' like sitting alone in
your apartment  in the middle of the night with a half-empty bottle
of red wine and all the lights off. 

But it was after midnight, and it wasn't Mulder, and there was no
one else.

So, the gun.

She darted towards the door to peek through the spyhole and then
step back; quickly, in case someone smashed in the door and
flattened her. There was one man, youngish, with wire-rimmed
glasses and a shaved head. Glancing nervously down the hallway, he
didn't look like the door-smashing type.

"Look," he said in an urgent murmur loud enough to carry through
the door, "I know you're going to be holding a gun on me, just let
me in."

"Who are you?"

"My name's Ian," he replied. "Look, I know you, but it's going to
take some explaining. Um, this is going to sound weird, but do you
know the name Spender? Guy smokes a lot?"

"Take two steps back from the door," Scully instructed. "When I
tell you, come in, close the door, put your hands behind your
head." She stepped back into the entryway, slightly to the right
and in a position that would allow her to dart behind the couch if
he made a run at her. "Okay."

Ian entered slowly. He still didn't look overly threatening,
shoulders slumped, in an untucked short-sleeved shirt, t-shirt and
jeans. He looked like someone who might know the Gunmen, though a
bit younger. He did as she had asked, closing the door and placing
his hands behind his head as he turned to face her. His eyes
focused on the gun, in the way of a hostage. Scully realized that
the upper hand was clearly hers for the time. 

"Talk," she said coldly.

"I worked for Spender until... well, until now, I guess.
Technically I work for NSA. That's where I met Parvi, and that's
why I'm here. Um, I don't know how much you remember, but, uh,
several days ago you... you're probably missing a day or so."

Scully was silent.

"And you don't remember what happened."

Neither her gun nor her face showed a trace of motion.

"Or you have memories that don't make sense."

Ian saw her expression change slightly in the dark. He'd only seen
her unconscious before. Awake she looked older, harder, seemed
taller.

The gun changed things, too.

"I've been involved with the group that created those memories.
I'm, uh, I'm an engineer. My friend Parvi was a neurologist. She
was responsible for creating the scenarios." His hands dropped a
little and she motioned them back up with her weapon. Ian complied
quickly. "Um, on Thursday night, uh, look, the whole procedure was
a failure.  I was away from the site, and Simon, one of the other
engineers, called me to come for a cleanup. I got there with the
van, and they were all dead. They'd been shot. I called Spender and
he showed up with this other guy Walter and we, uh, we cleaned up.
I was supposed to take Par... the bodies to one of our offices,
but... I couldn't. I took off, took care of it myself."

"Why didn't you go to the authorities?"

Ian shook his head.

"Did you miss the part about 'NSA'? We're supposed to be the
authorities."

"That's a good one."

"Look, believe it or not, as far as I knew, everything we did up
until things went to hell that night is completely legal. Way past
top secret, but legal. The executive authorizations for that
program go back to Johnson." His hands had dropped, and she wasn't
threatening them back up again.

"That was a hell of a, what did you call it, a scenario? The job.
The house. Whole new life." 

Ian's eyes flickered downwards in the dark. He looked thoughtful.

"No... no way, that's not Parvi's style. That's something we, I
mean Americans would try. Just change your whole life, drop
everything. It never works, not for more than a week or two. Parvi,
uh, she always said it's the small things that make the difference,
that you can't make someone do something they can't imagine. She
said you just try to shift the context a little, so that whatever
we want lines up with something you want. Imagination takes care of
the rest." 

"How did you shift our context?" Ian noted that her voice had
changed, but even if it had been in his nature to try to read what
it meant, he was a little distracted by the gun. Guns made holes,
holes and blood.

"We talked about it a little, but she got most of it from Spender.
We knew that you, uh, that you and Bob... sorry, I don't know his
name, your, Jesus, I don't even know if you guys are married." A
nervous laugh escaped, "I don't know your name, I just had the
address from your file." Ian looked at the floor. "Spender told us
that you guys can't have children. She... worked from there, with
the adoption agency in Amsterdam. It would probably have been
worked into a vacation. She always liked using vacations, everybody
loves vacations."

The way the woman's big blue eyes narrowed terrified him.

"And what were we supposed to do?" Her voice was cold, a little
shaky.

"As far as I know, just go to Amsterdam. Parvi might have known
more." Ian heard his own voice stumble, trying to make nice.

"So what went wrong? Why are we not in Amsterdam?"

"Spender gave Parvi bad information, probably. Underestimated your
intelligence, got something important wrong. We just don't plan for
people like you two. It's not supposed to happen in the wild."
Scully heard a familiar tone, the scientist. Still a sense of
wonder with a very angry lab rat pointing a nine millimeter at your
chest. "I've heard of it with siblings. Parvi said she saw it once
with a married couple but they knew they were undergoing the
procedure and were actively trying to influence each other."

"Influence each other how?"

"We don't know. Telepathy," Ian said. "It's like gravity. You can
only prove it exists through observation. Whatever happened, you
guys went into your own world there."

She was silent for almost ten seconds. Ian wondered if her gun arm
would get tired.

"Where were you planning to go?" she finally said. Ian shrugged.

"Dump my car somewhere, probably grab a bus south. Buses are
impossible to track. Play fratboy and walk across the border into
Mexico. Vaya con Dios. And with that..." Ian nodded at her and
started to turn around.

"You're not going anywhere. I'm calling my partner. If you've been
working with Spender, you've got useful information. And we, for
the record, are the authorities."

"Sorry, forget it. I'm outta here." He continued, his hand on the
doorknob.

"Don't move." Ian's shoulders sagged. Scully adjusted her aim to
correct; just below the collarbone. She took one rapid step back as
he suddenly turned around.

"You know, shoot me." He stepped forward again, and Scully
continued to backpedal. "I was a pretty happy drone until two
nights ago. I was blue team, good guys, I took the blue fucking
pill. Biggest problem I had was trying to figure out how to keep
Parvi from marrying some doctor friend of her brother's back in
India. Now she's dead, everything is just fucked, and I just don't
fucking care, so if you want to shoot me," Ian slapped himself on
the chest, "just do it. Shoot me." 

Her elbow bent, raising her gun to point at the ceiling. 

"You know what?" he said, tugging at the fabric of his shirt.
Scully could see his eyes tearing up. "I tried to burn her, because
I know that's what her family would do, I thought it would work."
His voice cracked. "I used fucking gasoline, you'd think that I'd
know that wouldn't work. I had to bury her, I had to bury what was
left."

The safety clicked as she bit her lip and sighed.

"I'm going." Ian swallowed hard and turned around, heading for the
door again. "Tell your partner I'm sorry, 'cause... I think I am."

"Wait... wait." Scully said quickly. "Who else? There was the
cancerman, Spender. You said there was another man."

"Cancerman." Ian grunted. "Awesome. We just call him Smokey. Parvi
had some Hindi word that meant 'chimney.' At the end when... when I
got there with the van. This other guy was the one who went in to
get you and Bob."

"This other guy. What did he look like?"

"Big white guy. Fifty, maybe. Bald, glasses, military-looking kinda
dude. Smokey called him Walter." 

Ian watched her stare at the floor, her gun dangling at her side.

"Why did you come here?" Scully eventually asked.

"I dunno," Ian said. "Retroactive conscience. Something I said
once, figured I'd carry through. I'm, uh, not feeling like I got a
lot to lose right now."

"Go." Scully waved her gun in a bizarre, careless gesture, rubbing
at her forehead with her other hand. "Get out of here." Ian didn't
need the prompting. He opened the door, stepped halfway out.

"Wait." He didn't turn back to face her as he spoke. "I got a favor
to ask you."

"Really," Scully snorted.

"If you ever see me again," Ian said. "I'm probably not really
myself. So, uh, shoot me, okay?"

"Just get out."

Scully looked at the door. She looked at the ceiling, at the chips
of Donnie Pfaster's skull she knew were in the plaster. She saw
movement through the blinds, probably Ian leaving. Duane Barry came
through there. It took her almost a year to find every last shard
of glass. She smelled gasoline. Ian had smelled of gasoline and
greasy fire, bone and carbonized flesh that stubbornly resisted the
flame. Her throat constricted suddenly, choking up sick like she'd
bit into a rotten fruit.

Scully dropped her gun on the couch and rubbed at her temples.
Breath one. Her body lowered, bending at the waist, the knees.
Breath four. Her elbows rested on her knees, crouching, perched on
her toes, forehead resting in the palms of her hands. Breath
seven. Her face raised, looking absently into the corner of her
dark room. Her eyes closed. Breath nine. She stood quickly. Ten. 

"Mulder, it's me. I had a... visitor. I'll tell you about it..."
She took a few pointless steps, paused. "We need to talk." Paused
again. "I'll, uh, come over."

* * *

epilogue

"Imno'sleep." 

It's a weird reflex from somewhere in the past, an artifact of a
personality given to dutifulness. I'm not asleep, as she blinks
slowly, looking surprised that her feet are curled up under her,
not propped on the coffee table where she'd left them. He's been
listening to soft occasional snores and mumbles for the past half
hour with the television muted; he knows the end of the movie
anyway, and was just enjoying the time.

"Of course not," he whispers.

"wedinn'tpack."

"Flight's not till evening, eight-thirty or something." His nose
and lips press gently against the top of her head, kissing her
softly.

"'ssgood."

She hums with satisfaction as he rises beside her, swoops down to
scoop her up in his arms and begins to carry her. Her arms slip
around his neck, and he maneuvers her to catch the lightswitch with
one little bare toe. She giggles sleepily at their shared
dexterity. The lights fall in the red room.

The stairwell and the upstairs hallway are a rich aged ivory color,
the most normal one they have. He neatly swings her around the
little corner at the top, and she takes one hand from around his
neck to catch the second lightswitch as he bears her down the hall.
The hall falls dark, and the golden light from the bedroom door
beckons them.

* * *

finis

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Next on Khyber Versus Season Seven:

"all things", as originally broadcast.