By Coincidence
By:  Cathleen Faye / kimerikal@aol.com

Genre:  MSR - This is really an in-depth character study, with 
angst, humor, love, pain, and the whole damn thing.  I would call 
this a deep characterization study with a payoff of smut <g>
Rating:  NC-17 for sexual content, adult themes, and language.  
Summary:  Set in 1995 towards the end of the second season. 
Mulder's recovery from his brush with death in the Arctic Circle 
brings about a day of introspection as he struggles to get through 
a Sunday. Across town Scully and her sister discover a moment from 
Mulder's past that causes her to question whether she really knows 
her partner. Mulder would probably call it fate whereas Scully 
would call it coincidence, but either way, something draws them to 
the same place at the same time where they'll straighten it all 
out.  I would call this a deep characterization study with a payoff 
of smut <g> 
___________________________________________________________________
___________________


Sunday, February 19, 1995
Mulder's Apartment
11:30 am 



Oh God, he just hated Sundays, Mulder thought as he reluctantly 
opened his eyes.  He focused in on what he'd heard, his body tense 
and on alert as he tried to identify the sound that had broken 
apart his blessedly dreamless sleep.

As usual he'd fallen asleep on his couch the night before, or 
rather, early that morning as it'd been just after 4am the last 
time he'd glanced at the clock before sleep had finally overtaken 
him.  Now, he gazed languidly about his living room, blinking a few 
times as he mentally pushed his way further up into consciousness.  
Then the sound came again; it was just a dog barking out on the 
street somewhere.

With a deep groan, he sat up slowly and rubbed his eyes, trying to 
clear his head.  Mulder was not a morning person.  He rolled his 
head slowly to loosen the stiffened muscles in his neck and 
shoulders then stretched his arms out as far as he could reach, 
trying to loosen the kinks in his back as he yawned deeply and 
loudly.  Worn out from his exertion, Mulder flopped back into the 
couch and focused in on the clock on the side table.  He was 
somewhat pleased to discover that he'd managed to sleep away the 
greater portion of the morning.  This was good, less Sunday to have 
to struggle through.

From his sprawled position, Mulder looked slowly about his place.  
It was stuffy in the small room and the gray morning light from the 
overcast sky only added to the dreariness causing him to feel 
claustrophobic and a bit depressed even.  Every once in a while, he 
was struck by the fact that his place sometimes felt strange to 
him, as though he didn't actually live there.  It was like a dorm 
room without any of the fun that usually went with the mess.  It 
wasn't like Scully's place, which felt like a home, as if a human 
being made a life there.

He turned his face towards the window and squinted out at the dull 
sky.  He felt that that since he was awake, he really should get up 
and do something with his day.  But of course, one of the reasons 
Mulder hated Sundays was that they were filled with the necessary 
chores of everyday living.  Boring things like laundry, picking up 
dry cleaning, restocking his food supply, clearing a path so he 
could at least move about his apartment without danger of crashing 
into something and breaking his little toe--again.  However, truth 
be told, the real reason he didn't care for Sundays was because 
Scully wasn't around and he was alone.  Somewhere along the way 
over the last two years, he'd become so accustomed to her presence 
in and about his life.  Saturdays weren't so bad, but as the 
weekend stretched along, Sundays started to become interminable 
because of the separation from her.  

Sixty-four hours.  Pathetically, he'd counted it up once and 5pm 
Friday to 9am Monday amounted to sixty-four hours.  True, he and 
Scully rarely worked anything that even slightly resembled regular 
office hours.  But when not in the field on a case their schedule 
was like that of any other civil servant.  In the past, he'd often 
been able to turn Sunday in to a working day too and he liked that 
much better.  If nothing else, the American taxpayer certainly got 
their money's worth on Fox Mulder's salary.

However, he'd had many Sundays free since the end of last year.  
Scully had almost died when she'd been unceremoniously returned 
from where ever she'd been held for three months.  Her body had 
undergone serious trauma with strange, unnatural changes to her 
blood and organic structures.  Her recovery to full strength had 
not happened as quickly as she would have liked.  She'd come back 
to work full time much earlier than she should have and paid the 
price with a slight relapse in exhaustion just before Christmas.  
After that, Skinner, in collusion with Mulder, had lightened their 
workload for a short time in order to force Scully to take time to 
recover.  It'd worked too; she was completely back to her old self.  
Or rather, she was as completely back as one could expect 
considering that she still couldn't account for three months of her 
life.  

But nonetheless, she'd forged ahead in her inimitable Scully-way.  

Mulder had been irritated with, although not surprised by, her 
insistence on returning to a full caseload.  Jesus, she was a 
doctor; had she worked with only corpses for so long that she'd 
forgotten that it takes time for the living to heal and regenerate?  
As much as he loved her, the fact remained that, on occasion, 
Scully also just irritated the ever-loving shit out of him.  But in 
a good way, he was quick to append mentally.  Her determination and 
independence were two of the things he admired most in her and yet, 
if he was honest, at times, they were also the same things that 
exasperated him to the point of beating his head on the wall.  All 
he'd wanted was for her to be completely well; he had things to 
tell her.

Of course, tracking him down to the frozen wastelands at the top of 
the world probably hadn't done much for her stamina.  He'd 
deliberately left her behind for a variety of reasons, some 
selfish, some not.  But of course, Scully wouldn't be dismissed so 
easily and Mulder was left torn between feeling grateful that she'd 
followed him--for there wasn't a doubt in his mind that he'd be 
dead otherwise--and feeling guilty that she'd taken such a chance 
because of him.

And so, over the last two weeks, he'd been the one who'd needed 
time to recover.  The retrovirus that would have killed him but for 
Scully's intervention had raged through his body, leaving him 
decimated, and forcing him into the idle time he hated.  Although 
the last series of blood work had shown that Scully's prescribed 
course of antivirals had eradicated the virus, he was still weak, 
and Mulder hated feeling weak--hated it worse than almost anything 
in the world.  He'd refused to give into it, pushing himself and 
Scully had nagged at him daily to rest more, just as he'd done to 
her.  

The irony was not lost on him--they were indeed, an oddly matched 
set.  God, what other sane person would have either one of them he 
thought, smiling slightly and shaking his head.

Mulder stood up slowly and made his way to the bathroom.  He 
started the shower as he peeled off his sweaty T-shirt and the 
boxers stained from last night's little adventure with his video 
collection; a crude reminder of the inferior satisfaction he turned 
to when the tension and aloneness would overwhelm him.  He wondered 
absently if he would ever have sex again with anything except his 
right hand or perhaps his left when he was feeling kinky.

That thought naturally brought his mind back to Scully and his 
brain went all foggy again as he wondered about what she did to 
relieve her tension.  He rather liked the picture that appeared in 
his mind.  But then again, maybe she didn't do anything; maybe she 
was just storing it all up.  Maybe she was just going to explode on 
her 35th birthday.

He opened the bathroom windows hoping the fresh chilled air would 
help.  Stepping into the shower, he let the hot, steaming water 
pour down over his aching back muscles for a very long time, 
finally feeling them loosen up slightly.  He washed his hair then 
began to soap down his body, standing under the pulsating flow.  A 
shower was one of the great inventions of mankind.  Now if only 
Scully were here to enjoy this with him.

He closed his eyes against the warm water flowing down over his 
head and shoulders as he hauled out a now-familiar fantasy.  As his 
hands moved slowly over his body, gliding through the thick lather, 
his imagination changed them to Scully's hands, soothing his skin 
and stirring his blood; touching him everywhere he wanted, stroking 
softly and then firmly, as the steamy water coursed over his body.  
He'd gotten so good at indulging this daydream that he swore if he 
leaned back just slightly he would feel her body pressed into his 
back as her hands moved around to touch him.

Suddenly, the hot water began to fade, replaced quickly with cold, 
which was just as well given the direction his thoughts had been 
taking.  Mulder slowly opened his eyes, abandoning the story in his 
head as he stood under the cooling water, cooling down himself, and 
then finished rinsing off quickly.  As he stepped out of the 
shower, he shook his head like a dog, just beginning to feel human 
again.  He shivered slightly because now of course, he was chilled 
from the open window and the cool water.

 Mulder wrapped himself in the seldom-used thick terry robe that 
hung on the back of the door--a birthday gift from his mother a few 
months ago.  Granted, the robe had been delivered by UPS the day 
after his birthday and accompanying card that said, "Best Wishes on 
your special day," had had a printed signature, but hey, at least 
she'd remembered.  But somehow though, he was also very sure that 
the kid who delivered his mother's newspaper probably got the same 
card on his birthday too.  Although, he supposed that Mom's 
personal shopper had picked out a more appropriate gift for a 13-
year-old.

Mulder wiped the steam off the mirror and stared at his 34-year-old 
face.  The dark bruising around his eyes from the retrovirus had 
faded, but the reflection that stared back at him still looked 
tired and a bit older than his actual age.  After a moment's 
debate, he decided to forgo shaving, opting instead to put his full 
effort into brushing his teeth.  He styled his wet hair by running 
a hand through it and contemplated a nose job for about 3 seconds.  
Finally he padded back into the living room and resumed his spot on 
the couch and propped his feet up on the coffee table, exhausted 
from his efforts of doing almost nothing.  He glanced over at the 
clock again.  Wow--he'd managed to kill 40 whole minutes.  Now 
what?

He surveyed his domain again with a certain dismay.  The apartment-
cleaning fairy had not made an appearance while he was in the 
shower.  I should get a maid, he thought before he rejected the 
idea immediately.  No way.  He couldn't have a maid, he had way too 
much stuff for her to get into and mess with.  Mulder hated people 
messing with his stuff.

Scully had tried to mess with his stuff once, he remembered.  Just 
after she'd been assigned to the X-Files, she'd offered to help him 
organize.  He'd looked at her with complete horror and assured her 
that he knew exactly where everything was.  It was a lie of course; 
he knew it, and she knew it.  But the offer had come very, very 
early in their relationship and the truth was he hadn't trusted her 
then.  Of course, he thought affectionately, now that he trusted 
her with life and heart, the little bitch hadn't volunteered again.  
He'd blown that one big time.

Mulder sighed and looked in the general direction of the kitchen.  
There was coffee in there--it was calling out to him.  The only 
problem was that getting it from the kitchen to the couch would 
require some movement on his part.  What was the deal with that, he 
thought resentfully, not yet ready to stir from his spot.

He wasted a few more minutes contemplating his feet a bit.  He 
wondered why was it that some people's second toe was longer than 
their big toe.  That didn't make any sense and while he was at it, 
who came up with the word "toe" anyway?  It was one of those words 
that when said repeatedly in one's mind, as Mulder was 
unfortunately doing right that moment, it became completely non-
sensible.  He decided to ask Scully her medical opinion about toe 
length on Monday, if only to see the look on her face.  He just 
loved to do that.  In fact, tweaking her was one of his few joys.

Now he closed his eyes and hauled out his other fantasy--the living 
room one.  Truth was that Mulder had a rather large repertoire of 
fantasies.  One for every room in his apartment, along with the 
hallway, the elevator, his car, and that dark area in the very back 
of his office.  But he liked his living room one.  In this one, 
Scully was curled up on this couch, wearing his robe and fresh from 
her shower with her hair damp and her body sweet-smelling.  She'd 
sit at that end over there and put her feet over in his lap so he 
could massage them.  He thought about the deliciousness of tickling 
her slightly and getting that smile back and maybe a laugh as she 
wiggled her toes.  He suddenly wondered if she giggled.  God, he 
didn't even know if Scully would giggle given the right 
circumstance.  Shouldn't he know that about her?  There seemed to 
be a lot of things he didn't know about her.

But one of her secrets that he did know was that she painted her 
toenails as he'd seen her naked feet on several occasions when 
they'd changed shoes after slogging through the mud somewhere.  
He'd found that fact rather intriguing in light of the fact that 
she never painted her fingernails.  He supposed that if he asked 
her why, she'd give him "The Look" or perhaps even some sensible 
explanation having to do with the chemicals she worked with.  But 
he suspected that she just did the toes in some strange homage to 
femininity that she did to please herself and no one else.  Mulder 
liked that.  In fact, he liked that a lot.  In fact, the thought 
was something of a turn-on.  God, maybe someday she'd even let him 
paint her toenails.  It was a weird little thing he had a strong 
desire to do, just as he'd always had stop himself from brushing 
her hair off her face when it flopped down.  

Returning to his musings about Scully's toes, Mulder thought about 
how he would hold her foot on his lap then bend down and suck 
Scully's big toe deep into his mouth as his hands moved up....

The resulting picture in his mind snapped his eyes back open and 
stirred him into action.  Jesus, if he kept going he was going to 
end up needing another shower he thought as he put his hands up to 
rub his temples as though to push away the thoughts.  Coffee, this 
digression had all started with coffee.  With some effort, he 
managed to unfold his bones to a standing position and gravitate 
towards the kitchen and his new coffeemaker.  Another heart-felt 
gift from mom left on his doorstep by UPS, this time to mark 
Christmas.  The printed card said, "Best Wishes on this Happy 
Holiday."  Mom's printer was apparently very big on the Best Wishes 
thing.  But hey, he bet that at least the paperboy hadn't gotten a 
coffeemaker for Christmas.

He dug through the cupboards.  Shit, he was out of filters--he'd 
have to remember to buy some, yet another one of those mundane 
things he hated remembering.  Making do with a paper towel, he 
dumped what seemed to be an appropriate amount of coffee in and set 
it to brewing.

Fox Mulder made truly shitty coffee.  His fine, keen mind was able 
to hypothesize the most elusive of metaphysical concepts but for 
some damn reason the correct ratio of coffee to water just 
completely eluded him.  When Scully was there and they were going 
over files together, he could often con her into doing it and it 
always tasted wonderful.  On the other hand, he thought, maybe it 
was just the fact he was sharing it with her that made it 
wonderful.  Maybe there was just the illusion that Scully's coffee 
was better than his was.

Mulder wandered to the front door to pick up the paper and then 
headed back to the couch to wait for the coffee to finish brewing.  
He read the comics and he wondered if poor Charlie Brown was ever 
going to nail that cute little red-headed girl who followed him 
about.  Then he thumbed through the TV guide.  Oh joy; they were 
re-running that God-awful alien autopsy special.  Yet another 
reason to live, he thought sarcastically, echoing Scully's words 
spoken to him a few months back.  Yet another reason for people to 
look at him as though he was insane.

Within a few minutes, the coffee was ready and he shuffled back to 
the kitchen where he rummaged around to find his last clean mug.  
He poured the coffee and then added the usual immense amounts of 
sugar and cream necessary to turn it into something he could 
actually stand to drink.

His stomach rumbled slightly so he stood in front of the open 
refrigerator a few minutes searching for something to eat--
something that didn't look alien with green fuzz.  After a moment, 
he settled on the two-day old leftover ravioli.  He briefly 
considered popping it into the microwave, but then decided the hell 
with it and carried it along with the coffee back to the living 
room.  He resumed his position on the couch and ate cold ravioli 
out of the Tupperware as he drank his too sweet coffee while he 
read the paper.

Wow, he thought acerbically, life just doesn't get any better than 
this.  Scully just didn't know what she was missing.  He wondered 
what she was doing right this moment.  He wondered if he should 
tell her the things he wanted so badly to tell her or if he should 
just shut the hell up and leave it all be.  He really didn't like 
having all this free time to think about all of that.  He glanced 
over at the clock again.  Another 20 minutes down. 

God, he just hated Sundays.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=


Sunday, February 19th, 1995
Simon's Used Bookstore
Alexandria, Virginia.



It was really by coincidence that Scully and her sister, Melissa, 
ended up in Simon's Used Bookstore.

They'd gone for brunch at their favorite place in Old Town 
Alexandria.  That part of the city was beautiful, with its 
historical brick buildings, quaint streets and stores.  In the last 
couple of months, she and Melissa had taken to meeting up on 
Sundays whenever they could, to catch up on sister talk and just 
spend some time together.

Since the day had turned very cold and dreary, they'd planned on 
taking in a movie.  However, they'd ended up talking so long at 
brunch that they missed the start time and now had to kill a couple 
hours.  After leaving the restaurant, they wandered a bit, browsing 
in the stores when they happened upon the old store stuffed to the 
ceiling with old books, magazines, and newspapers.  Melissa wanted 
to go in as the window sign promised a large New Age section.

Once inside, they each went their separate ways.  Melissa watched 
fondly as Dana wandered over towards the science books, just 
feeling so very pleased that she was even there to share the day 
with her.  Like many adult siblings, the sisters had drifted apart 
a bit since childhood.  Not though argument or design, but simply 
by chance and laziness.  But since Dana's return months before, 
Melissa stuck closer to her than she had in recent years.  After 
months of absence, she'd given her sister up for dead.  Then she'd 
almost lost her again when they had acquiesced to Dana's wish that 
her life not be maintained by artificial means.

Melissa was grateful that she'd been given a second chance to 
rebuild the closeness they'd once had and she wasn't going to waste 
it.  Today had been so nice.  During lunch, she'd teased Dana 
gently as she had when they were young and was pleased to see that 
somewhere in the ensuing years her little sister had learned to 
give back as good as she got.  Dana had always had a sense of humor 
but few outside the family had ever seen it.

But other things were different too.  Once unbending almost to a 
fault, she'd become less rigid in the last few years and more open.  
At brunch, Dana had actually listened to her as she'd talked about 
some of her spiritual beliefs without either giving her The Look or 
just outright dismissing them with a sound of derision, as she 
would have once.  No, she wasn't going to see Dana at one of her 
spiritual gatherings anytime soon, but at least she was willing to 
look at other possibilities, she wasn't so closed off.  In 
Melissa's mind, she had a ways to go, but she had to give her 
credit because she knew better than most why Dana didn't often let 
people near.

When they were young and moving from base to base with their 
parents, she'd made new friends easily, but it had been much harder 
for Dana.  Fair or not, being very smart was often tough on a girl 
socially and somehow, Dana's confidence in her intellect was often 
mistaken for arrogance.  Melissa knew her little sister was often 
passed by or left out, but she wasn't about to tell her to pretend 
to be less than she was in order to fit in.  Sadly, by the time 
Dana made a friend or two who could appreciate her, it was often 
time to move on again and leave them behind.  Their father didn't 
help matters.  He was often a loving but tough taskmaster, rarely 
praising and often finding just the one little thing that he 
thought could have been done better.  Somewhere along the line, 
Melissa just realized that it was useless and learned to let it all 
slide, but she saw that Dana struggled for his approval even 
harder.  She never seemed to realize that she was his favorite and 
if he was harder on Dana than the rest, it was because he thought 
the most of her.

But the end result was that Dana had grown up far more serious and 
introspective than she had.  She protected her feelings because she 
felt inadequate sometimes.  That's why it was so nice to see her 
laugh and be happy now.  Melissa could tell that she loved her work 
and she felt she'd finally found a place she belonged.  There was 
no denying that Dana's years at the FBI had definitely changed her 
for the better and Melissa was certain some of it was certainly due 
to that partner of hers.

Melissa often had insights that she couldn't explain any more than 
she could explain to Mulder just how she knew not to call him, 
"Fox."  The minute Dana's handsome partner had walked into the ICU, 
she'd sensed that there was more going between Mulder and her 
sister than met the eye.  She didn't suspect anything as boring or 
conventional as an office love affair.  Rather, she sensed a deeper 
communion between them, something that was far more rare.  She 
wasn't even sure if they understood it themselves.  Mulder, for all 
his outlandish beliefs, certainly hadn't realized the power his 
heart held for her sister.  When she'd come to him with the grim 
news that Dana was slipping away, his refusal to return to the 
hospital had infuriated her.  Nevertheless, in the end, he'd given 
up on his futile earthly struggle for justice and had come to stay 
Dana in a kind of spiritual battle.

Melissa wasn't sure if she could attribute Dana's restoration to 
any one person, entity, or thing, nor was she even particularly 
interested in doing so.  All she knew was that by the next morning, 
her sister's conscious mind had been restored to the body that had 
been useless without it.  All she knew was that had happened after 
Fox Mulder had come to Dana that night.  All she knew was that her 
sister was whole again and Melissa Scully did not believe in 
coincidence.

From where she sat, Melissa looked down the long aisle saw Dana 
looking though stacks of books.  Her sister, feeling her glance, 
looked up and smiled a bit in return.  Things were good now, 
Melissa thought.


=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=


Scully glanced briefly up at her sister who was now happily sitting 
on the floor next to a stack of books on crystals, astrology and 
other things that didn't fit into her ordered world.  She wandered 
to the back of the large store where the medical books were 
stacked.  As she squeezed down one aisle, she noticed that the 
store had a large section on UFOs and other paranormal phenomena.  
She half expected to see Mulder standing there pouring over some 
obscure reference with excitement in his hazel eyes because in 
spite of the many things they didn't share, one of the things they 
did was a love of books and learning.  He didn't live too far from 
here so chances were good that he knew about this place, but in 
case he didn't, she'd have to remember to mention it to him on 
Monday.

Scully paused and looked through the stacks thinking maybe there 
was something she could pick out for him.  She and Melissa could 
drop it off on the way home in fact, she thought.  Would it be too 
strange to get a gift for no reason?  Would it seem too obvious 
that she was looking for any excuse to see Mulder?  Was it pathetic 
that she counted down the sixty-four hours of a weekend?

Scully sighed and shook her shook her head.  Not a good idea, it 
was a pitiful pretext at best and anyway, she reasoned, she could 
be pretty certain that he already owned most of the books there no 
matter how outrageous or far-fetched.  She glanced back up the far 
end of the aisle at her sister again.

Melissa was so like Mulder, she thought.  In many ways, they were 
far better suited to each other than she and Mulder were.  Each of 
them had different, but nonetheless passionate beliefs in things 
that were often without the hard scientific proof she needed.  In 
Melissa and Mulder's view of the world, two and two didn't 
necessarily need to add up to four.  But it was so hard for Scully 
to make that same leap of faith--something in her just demanded 
that the addition work out right.  She was willing to listen, even 
willing to suppose on occasion.  However, she wasn't quite able to 
believe openly, not yet anyway.

Scully moved on down the aisle.  She'd forgotten how much she had 
loved these dusty, disordered places.  A voracious reader during 
childhood and her high school years, she'd spent many afternoons 
wandering places such as this, looking for a special find or 
author.  Later, during medical school when she'd hardly had the 
time to waste on sleep, let alone something as frivolous as 
pleasure reading, so she'd been forced to put such little joys 
aside.  In those years, her main topics of reading were on the 
forensic sciences and chemistry.  While those had certainly proved 
helpful as she now navigated the labyrinth of the amazing and 
unique ways that people managed to die, they did little to feed her 
soul.

During her first years at the FBI, she'd had little time for 
reading either.  She'd concentrated on teaching and she'd had an 
active social life.  It had been a fun time and her star was rising 
fast within in the bureau.  But then came the X-Files assignment.  
And by amazing coincidence, her private life took a dumper about 
the same time she was directed to watch over the investigations of 
one Special Agent Fox Mulder: Boy Genius and FBI loose cannon. 

Scully hadn't been happy about the assignment and she definitely 
didn't view it as a promotion.  In spite of their assurances that 
it was all in the interest of scientific verification, the 
underlying tone had been very clear: discredit the man she was 
being partnered with.

She wasn't naive; she was aware that all agents' actions were 
scrutinized due to the sensitive nature of their work, including 
her own.  Nevertheless, while she hadn't known Fox Mulder except by 
reputation, she didn't like the idea of being assigned to spy on a 
fellow agent.  That wasn't her style and certainly not why she'd 
joined the FBI.

She'd never understood why she'd been picked for the job.  There 
were other individuals within the FBI with the scientific and 
medical backgrounds just as suited to the Official Version of the 
assignment.  The answer that had made the most sense, of course, 
was that because she'd been so clearly ambitious they'd thought she 
could be manipulated.  Perhaps they'd thought that in order to work 
her way up the FBI hierarchy she could be induced into delivering 
the Unofficial Version they really wanted.

And had Fox Mulder been a different kind of man, had he been what 
they claimed, that scenario might even have happened.  However, the 
more she observed her new partner, the less she was inclined to 
believe the rumor and innuendo that she'd been carefully fed.

At the time, Scully had known that Mulder had, at one time anyway, 
all the makings of a brilliant career with the FBI.  Entering 
Oxford at an early age, he'd graduated with highest honors before 
moving on to gain his Ph.D. in Psychology.  After joining the FBI, 
he became a masterful and brilliant ISU profiler, whose insights 
into deranged minds had been the downfall of many brutal criminals.  
His move to the Violent Crimes Unit only brought more 
accomplishment.  True--there was no doubt in anyone's mind that 
Mulder had skipped the class at Quantico on working and playing 
well with others.  But his string of successes had, in the 
beginning anyway, made it easier for his superiors to overlook his 
eccentricities.

That was, until he'd discovered the X-Files.  Once he'd encountered 
the long-neglected cases, Mulder's meteoric rise crashed back to 
the ground like a defective test rocket.  By the time Scully was 
assigned to his entire investigation division of one, the FBI 
scuttlebutt was that the guy was completely off and he'd been 
without a partner for sometime.

However, his obsessions were only a small part of the much bigger 
issue that Melissa had recently nicknamed, "The Mulder Problem" 
several months back.  Scully had never put a name to it before, but 
the one Melissa had chosen fit just fine.  Of course, Melissa 
seemed oblivious to the fact that she'd already been wrestling with 
the Mulder Problem almost daily for the last two years.  That is 
when she wasn't busy wrestling with the possibility of giant 
flukeworms and liver-eating maniacs.  Yes indeed, Mulder had opened 
up a whole New World for her she thought ruefully.

But the Mulder Problem clung to her like a new puppy from the 
minute she'd put on her most confident air, walked into that 
basement office and laid eyes on Special Agent Fox William Mulder 
for the first time.  He'd looked up at her, wearing those 
impossibly cute glasses with that great head of hair with that 
strand that flopped down on his forehead, begging to be touched.  
His beautiful, deep-set eyes had sized her up openly as he'd shaken 
her hand and then he'd smiled.  Of course, she didn't know at the 
time that what she was seeing was Mulder's sarcastic smile--the one 
he gave when he least felt it.  It would be a while until she saw 
the genuine article and when she did, its slow intimacy would take 
her breath away. 

But even without that, her immediate impression was that this man 
was stunning.  The attraction she'd felt had been immediate and she 
felt a warm flush even in the cool chill of the basement office.  
Spooky Mulder was most definitely not the UFO geek she'd been 
expecting.

But then, with a strange combination of friendliness and sarcasm, 
he'd immediately proceeded to accuse her of spying on him and he 
mocked her in his laconic tone.  Baiting her.  Within moments, he'd 
managed to so completely piss her off that she'd decided on the 
spot that this guy was never going to best her in anything.  But 
then, even as she was contemplating killing him, he'd immediately 
moved on to pique her intense curiosity.  He'd shown her people who 
needed their protection from the predators of the world, be they 
terrestrial or extra-terrestrial as Mulder believed.  He'd dazzled 
her with strange theories and challenged both her mind and her 
sense of wonder.

Nothing in the last two years had changed since except along the 
way he'd begun to challenge her heart also.

Damn that bastard, she thought with deep affection.  He was the 
lethal combination of being one of the most unconsciously seductive 
men she'd ever known and yet he managed to have that brilliant, 
albeit somewhat unstable, mind to boot.  Loving a man like Mulder 
was hadn't been part of her life's master game plan, but love him 
she did and that game plan was now just a distant memory.

In the very beginning, she'd wondered which fascinated her more: 
the work or Fox Mulder.  Soon, she'd realized that the two were so 
completely intertwined that there was no separating them; even 
pondering that idea was folly.  "I'm not crazy, Scully, I have the 
same doubts you do," was his response to one of the first times 
she'd looked at him like he was demented.  But then he'd turn 
around and entice her to follow him out on the precarious limb of 
his logic and she, who'd always preferred to stay close to the 
trunk in the past, found herself edging out on that branch more and 
more.

Just what was she gonna do about the Mulder Problem?  Scully 
sighed; she had no better answer today than she'd had almost two 
years ago, when she'd made her decision as to where her absolute 
allegiance would lie.

Very shortly after her assignment to the X-Files, her former 
classmate, Tom Colton, had asked her to work with the Violent 
Crimes Section when Eugene Toomes first raised his ugly, liver-
eating head.  She'd been eager for the opportunity for she and 
Mulder to distinguish themselves.  She'd wanted them all to see 
just how good Mulder was.  However, the disrespect shown her 
partner had astounded her.  It was so blatant that the other agents 
didn't even bother to whisper when they called him "Spooky."

After a particularly ugly confrontation with Colton, Mulder had 
told her that he would understand if she decided to continue 
working with the VCS.  She knew his offer was sincere; that he'd 
realized how being his partner was beginning to affect how the rest 
of the FBI viewed her.  But even as he'd said the words, he'd 
reached out and toyed with the long pendant she was wearing, 
seemingly to just be straightening it.  As she looked up into his 
eyes, something made her feel as though he was also holding on to 
her, silently hoping she wouldn't go.

She hadn't gone of course, had never even considered going.  But 
looking back, she realized that signaled the first of many times 
she would feel subliminal messages from Mulder.  Where a look, a 
touch, or an action were very different than his spoken words.

Over the next two years, her former friends within the FBI began to 
distance themselves.  They had careers to think about and after 
all, Scully was now part of that Spooky Patrol.  Since everyone 
knew that Mulder was off, there certainly had to be a little 
something off about Scully too.  No one who valued his or her 
career wanted that stigma attached to them.

Yes, the truth was out there, she thought ruefully, and the truth 
was that it was entirely Mulder's fault that her social life became 
a dry lakebed of inactivity.  Men who'd once called her quite 
regularly stopped calling.  Female co-workers that she used to go 
shopping or to a movie with suddenly became very busy.  She even 
stopped being invited to boring FBI social functions, not that she 
particularly wanted to go, but she did want to be invited.  In 
Scully's mind, perhaps the lowest point came when the FBI softball 
team told her they were full and couldn't use her.  That was 
particularly disheartening as they were so pathetic that even a 
poodle that could play catch would have been welcomed with open 
arms.  However, they didn't want Dana Scully, AKA Mrs. Spooky.

Now, other than having the occasional need to mess with other 
people's heads, if Mulder minded their ostracization he didn't show 
it.  As long as he was given relatively free rein, Mulder didn't 
seem to mind that his assigned office had, in fact, once been the 
copy machine room and had no real windows or heat.  He didn't mind 
that it was so far away from everyone else in the FBI that it was 
something akin to being assigned to steerage on the Titanic.  He 
didn't seem to mind that the FBI hadn't provided his partner with a 
desk or even had her name inscribed on the door because he knew 
that it was because the bureau was unwilling to acknowledge that 
Scully's "temporary" assignment to get rid of him didn't turn out 
to be the slam-dunk they'd hoped and that they were both still 
there.  He didn't seem to mind that his chances for advancement 
within the bureau were now roughly the same as Cancer Man marching 
one of his little gray friends up before Congress to sing songs and 
tell tales.

But she'd minded.  In fact, it had infuriated her for the longest 
time.  Not the crap about the desk, but about how they were 
perceived.  How could it possibly be that no one, except perhaps 
Skinner, saw the value of their investigations?  Eventually she'd 
become reconciled to the fact that she and Mulder were the bastard 
children of the FBI, the kind spoken about in whispers and rarely 
invited to family reunions.  Together they had indeed become the 
FBI's most unwanted.  She never regretted her allegiance, or her 
decision to stand with Mulder in their search for the truth.  But 
of all the other injustices they'd faced, the ones perpetrated by 
their fellow FBI agents particularly galled her.

After a bit of more browsing in the travel section, she went back 
in search of Melissa.  She'd apparently moved on from the New Age 
section and after wandering up and down for sometime, Scully found 
her ensconced on the floor in front of the paperback romances.  She 
watched in fascination as her sister methodically pulled a book off 
the shelf, shook it, and started reading where it fell open.  She'd 
scan the paragraph quickly and then set the book aside in one of 
two stacks.  "Missy, what the hell are you doing?" she finally 
asked after a few moments of watching this procedure.

Melissa looked at her sister with great patience, as though Scully 
was a slightly slow child who needed extra help.  "I'm reading the 
sex scenes to see if it's worth buying," she answered.  "If that 
part is really creased in the book, it must be good."

Scully noticed that three other people in the aisle all immediately 
started shaking their books.  Scully nodded her head slightly as a 
smile at her sister's technique crossed her face.  "So what you're 
saying, is that you don't judge a book by its cover, you judge a 
book by whether or not is shakes open to great sex?"

"You got it.  You ever read these?  You can pick up some rather 
interesting tips.  Listen,  'Hank gasped as Cassandra took his 
proud manhood deep in her--'"

"I get the idea, Melissa!  Thank you."  Scully interrupted because 
she knew Melissa and she knew where this conversation would head.

Melissa looked up from the book in her lap to her sister.  There 
was nothing she enjoyed quite so much as tormenting her little 
sister just a bit.  Dana wasn't a prude by a long shot.  But she 
was also letting her best years slip by chasing down little green 
men with that partner of hers, when actually, it was the partner 
that Melissa thought she should be chasing down.  "Well, you might 
want to try reading a few of these sometime Dana; might relieve 
some of that sexual tension in your body.  I mean I bet your aura 
is a dark ugly color by now."

Scully tried to ignore the fact that the people, who'd been shaking 
their books a moment ago, had now turned to see the aura of a 
sexually deprived woman.  She gave Melissa The Look.

"I'm only trying to help," Melissa protested.  "I know it's been a 
long, excuse the expression, dry spell for you now."

Now people were actually poking their heads around the aisle to get 
a gander.  Scully knew that when Melissa was in a goading mood she 
could be relentless and she knew that Melissa blamed Mulder for her 
appalling lack of social life.  OK, so, Mulder was to blame, but 
she didn't want to discuss it in the paperback romance section of 
store.  Besides, Scully already knew her sister's next question--it 
was always the same.

"So, Dana--you ever gonna do anything about that Mulder Problem?"

Scully sighed, where had she heard that question before?  Oh, yeah, 
she asked it herself that about 10 minutes ago.  She leveled her 
best stern look at her sister.  "I'm going over to the history 
section for a while--take your time."  Scully turned on her heel 
made her way back down the narrow aisle.  Just as she was squeezing 
past an elderly matron who was pouring over the cookbooks, she head 
Melissa's voice call loudly out to her.

"You know, a little one-handed fiction won't make you go blind, it 
might even do you some good."

Scully felt her fair-skinned face turn red as the matron looked up 
at her.  Then the older woman patted her on the arm gently and 
said, "She's right you know, dearie."  As she glanced around, she 
noticed that the few other patrons in the bookstore within earshot 
all smiled and nodded sympathetically at her plight.  Scully she 
felt like she was wearing a sign: Untouched By Male Human Hands In 
Over Two Years.

Suddenly, somewhere in the back of her mind, she heard a 
Mulderesque voice in her head, "Yeah, but a few aliens may have 
copped a feel or two, huh Scully?"  Somehow, even the imagined 
sound of Mulder's voice made her smile a bit.

She liked that Mulder called her Scully.  In many ways, Dana seemed 
almost a different person to her.  Still part of her, of course, 
but a far less interesting part.  Dana seemed rather ordinary now, 
very tame.  Dana was earnest, efficient, and just slightly dull.  
Her dentist called her Dana.  

But the extraordinary man she loved called her Scully and that 
woman lived a far more extraordinary life than Dana had ever 
dreamed of having.  Mulder had opened the doors to that life.  
She'd stepped through on her own to be sure and she stayed because 
she wanted to.  But she never forgot that it was Mulder who'd made 
her realize that there was far more in the world to challenge her 
intellect than lecturing to the bored faces at Quantico.  He'd 
shown her that there were people who needed the help and protection 
that they alone could offer.  And over the last two years, she'd 
discovered that she liked being Scully a hell of a lot more than 
she'd ever liked being Dana.

She had no desire for Mulder to use her first name, never once 
believed that it would bring them any closer.  Indeed, the very few 
times he'd used her name had mostly disturbed her.  Just after her 
father had died, Mulder had called her Dana when speaking to her.  
She knew, in his way, that he was trying to be solicitous in his 
manner towards her.  But instead of creating intimacy, it had 
created distance.  It had caused her to hesitate from telling him 
what she'd wanted to tell him.

Once, long ago, she'd started to call him Fox and he'd corrected 
her.  But she'd never viewed it as a privilege he denied her but 
granted to others.  Quite the opposite, she believed he'd come to 
feel the same way about their connection as she did; felt that just 
as Fox and Dana were there for family and associates to use, Scully 
and Mulder were for each other.

Scully decided to wander over towards the fiction section.  The 
real fiction section she thought smugly, not that stuff that was 
holding Melissa's attention so adroitly.  Mulder also was a 
voracious reader, although mostly in the paranormal exploration 
areas.  Unless, of course, you could count the letters to Penthouse 
as literature, she thought with a laugh.  An Oxford graduate and 
avid peruser of Celebrity Skin, her partner was a true Renaissance 
Man.  Scully smiled thinking about Mulder's quite adolescent glee 
when he had the opportunity to zing her with some salacious 
observation or remark.  Someday, she would take him up on one of 
those innuendoes and shock the hell out of both of them.  She 
thought quite a bit about what lay behind the humorous words often 
so deftly used to divert attention from the moment.  

Over the last two years, she'd discovered other little bits of 
Mulder, tantalizing glimpses of what lay behind the merely obvious.  
In this case though, familiarity didn't breed contempt; it only 
bred a deep longing to know more.  Sometimes he had a reserve that 
was like a thick black tar that she couldn't push through.  His 
quick, deft mind easily deflected inquiries with a smart-ass, well-
aimed barb and he could go days with conversation that was no 
meaningful than the disclosure that he had dry cleaning to pick up.  
Then, in a quicksilver swing, he'd volunteer something incredibly 
personal.  He would be open about his feelings in a way that she 
never expected; it was almost always out of the blue, almost always 
under duress.  But even so, the honesty was there for her to feel.

Like the time he'd returned from the Puerto Rico fiasco with 
nothing to show but useless blank tapes.  He'd been so close and 
they'd taken the tools away to do his work when they'd shut down 
their office and sent her back to Quantico.  They'd at least 
assigned her back to her old position, something that she was 
trained for and could still use her skills in executing.  But 
they'd put Mulder on meaningless, tedious cases.  Punishment cases 
really, far below his talents and worth as they tried to break him.  
Tried to get him to just shut up and go away.

He'd thought that Puerto Rico may have been his last chance to get 
hard evidence of his beliefs and she knew that coming up empty had 
to be one of the more crushing disappointments in his life.  She'd 
feared that the loss of the tapes would be a final lethal blow to 
his spirit.  But she'd been wrong.  She'd underestimated him and 
his formidable resolve.  Instead of folding as his adversaries had 
hoped, he'd gotten past the frustrating setback, even more 
determined that they wouldn't grind him down.  "I may not have the 
X-Files, Scully, but I still have my work," he'd told her 
resolutely.  But then a moment later, he'd softly added, "And I've 
still got you."

He'd said it so quietly, as though the realization had just 
occurred to him.  It had been the first time he'd ever really 
acknowledged to her face that he knew her to be his ally.  With 
Mulder, she'd learned to rely on her gut feelings to determine what 
he was thinking and she'd become very good at it.  But tears had 
come to her eyes on her drive home as she thought about his simple 
words, actually hearing them spoken had meant so much to her.

Other words had passed between then during their time together, at 
times stubborn and bitter.  There were other times when they'd hurt 
each other, both accidentally and intentionally.  She would always 
remember the look in his eyes as she'd shut the door on the 
quarantine room in that ice-station in Alaska.  The betrayal on his 
face as he stared at her cut her so deep.  In her mind, she knew 
she'd done the logical thing, the rational thing--and never before 
had any decision she'd made felt so unconditionally wrong in her 
heart.

She'd sat outside that room for hours as miserable as she'd ever 
been in her life, knowing Mulder was just on the other side feeling 
utterly alone, scared and abandoned by her.  So near and yet so 
far.  She'd not expected him to understand her reasons for her 
actions or ever trust her again.  She'd not expected him to forgive 
her.  But he had.  "I want to trust you," he told her.  Then when 
it was over, he'd put it behind them, never once throwing it back 
in her face that he'd been right.  Apparently, he valued their 
partnership more than he needed to satisfy his ego and she loved 
him for that.

Alaska had been a turning point for her, both in this job and with 
Mulder.  She knew that she could never again allow her natural 
instincts to be totally overruled by cold logic and that she would 
have to find a way to meld the two opposing factors.  She struggled 
with that war everyday but she would rather live with that struggle 
than ever see that look in Mulder's eyes again.  

On the day they'd met, he'd asked her, "When convention and science 
offer us no answers, might we not finally turn to the fantastic as 
a plausibility?"  In the last two years, she'd discovered the 
answer was yes.  As the layers of conspiracy piled on, his once 
solitary quest had become theirs.  The more she saw, the more she 
questioned and the more she realized that the fantastic might, in 
some cases, be the only explanation she would be able to deduce.  
It was so...so....  Perhaps the word she was searching for was 
schizophrenic.  

Looking up, Scully she suddenly realized she'd wandered into the 
abnormal psychology section.  Maybe the truth was in there, she 
thought wryly.

But she loved that there was nothing half-hearted in Mulder's 
feelings; he was open to his own emotions in a way she rarely 
allowed herself to be.  He allowed himself to feel the extremes in 
a way that she was unaccustomed to and it both frightened and 
fascinated her.  She'd seen him shake with rage and with tears of 
despair.  She'd seen him consumed with bitter disappointment and 
frustration.  She'd seen him be self-centered, selfish, and 
arrogant.  She'd seen him be gentle with children and compassionate 
to victims.  He was deeply suspicious of his superiors, never 
thinking to hide it and he was incapable of suffering fools gladly.  
On rare, rare occasion, she'd even heard him laugh with genuine 
happiness and not the sarcastic glibness she was more accustomed to 
hearing.  He was both tough on her and fiercely protective to a 
fault.  The real truth of the matter was that she loved the man, 
even though he drove her fucking nuts sometimes.  

But she knew that she drove him crazy too, in more ways than one.  
Along their journey together, she'd sensed his craving for her, 
although obviously it was an unspoken topic between them.  But it 
was there, just as hers was for him.

The first time she realized he felt the same pull she did was very, 
very shortly after she'd joined the X-Files.  They'd been sitting 
closely side-by-side as he showed her something on his computer.  
His physicality beckoned to her and she'd used his distraction with 
whatever he was showing her to study him closely and openly.  As 
his voice soothed from the background, she'd surreptitiously 
breathed in his scent and noted the nape of his graceful neck in 
particular.  God, how could a man in a plain white shirt be so damn 
sexy?  Her gaze moved along that strong jaw line and she took close 
stock of that tiny dark mark on his smooth cheek, the one she had 
this insane longing to touch her lips to.  Fearing she might act on 
the impulse, she shifted her gaze slightly and it was then that she 
noticed something she hadn't before.

Mulder had a pierced ear.

There was something just so completely incongruous about that 
discovery that she'd smiled to herself and leaned in to look more 
closely.  However, Mulder chose that moment to turn to say 
something to her and they nearly bumped noses.  Their eyes locked 
together and he was clearly startled to find her so close.  Their 
faces lingered mere inches from each other and other all movement 
froze.  Neither blinked and she saw the change in his face as he 
searched her eyes for something--permission perhaps.  Scully saw 
Mulder swallow hard as they could each feel the other's slow breath 
against their lips.  The moment stretched on as the only sound in 
the room was her thudding heart; surely, he could hear it.  She 
could see the tiny gold flakes in the green hazel of his eyes and 
his lips parted softly.

"You have a pierced ear," she said quite unnecessarily, trying to 
explain her intrusion into his personal space and feeling absurdly 
pleased that she didn't stammer.  "I've never seen you wear an 
earring."

Mulder nodded slowly, never once dropping his gaze from hers.  In 
fact, he leaned in closer to her ear as though sharing a secret,  
"I don't wear the diamond drop in the office, the FBI tends to 
frown on that," he said quietly and a shiver ran through her at the 
feel of his breath against her ear.  He drew back to look at her 
again, but there was no smart-ass grin as would have usually 
accompanied such a comment.  He was waiting for her.  So close.

It was her turn to swallow slowly.  "How long have you had that?" 
she was actually whispering now because to speak in her normal 
voice with him so close somehow seemed like shouting.  She wondered 
if she was any more successful at covering the truth in her eyes 
than he was.  Probably not, because now a small smile appeared on 
Mulder's face.  The genuine smile.  The one that took her breath.  
Oh God, she was going to get lost here any second.  

He was seeing what was really going on in her head, what was 
happening behind the words.  "It was something I did back in 
school," he answered.  His eyes seemed to be looking inside her.

All she would have to do is move forward two inches and take what 
she wanted.  What he wanted.  But she didn't.  Instead, she'd 
chickened out completely as some bit of unwelcome good sense gave 
her a mental slap.  She leaned back slowly into the safety of her 
own personal space.  "At Oxford?" she'd asked in a normal voice, 
breaking the fragile and tenuous bond between them. 

Mulder held her gaze a moment and his eyes narrowed slightly as 
though making a decision.  After a moment, he blinked slowly and 
the warmth left his eyes, replaced by cool acquiescence.  He too 
leaned back and nodded.  "Yeah," was all he said, his voice 
deliberately measured as he turned back to the computer screen.  He 
then launched into a monologue about his findings on the case; his 
voice moving back into that professional cadence and clearly 
closing any further discussion on the subject that had originally 
piqued her interest.

Both the closed subject and the unrealized kiss had played in her 
mind and she'd been left with the certain knowledge that he'd 
wanted her to kiss him as much as she'd wanted to.  He'd been 
disappointed that it didn't happen.  That night had been the first 
of many that she gone home alone, but carried Mulder in her head 
all night.  It was a while longer until she allowed herself to find 
relief by her own touch that she imagined to be his.  She didn't 
know it then, but over their time together many such moments would 
come.  And go.  And always, the ridiculousness of it all ran 
through her mind and yet, she also wondered if his reasons for not 
acting on the moments were the same as hers.

Probably not, was her final conclusion, for their individual 
experiences in the world had been vastly dissimilar and the end 
result was that each of them had brought very different emotional 
baggage along upon their meeting and subsequent journey together.  
She didn't need Mulder's educational training to understand that 
for most of her life she'd tried to gain her father's approval, 
never realizing until after he'd died that she'd always had it.  
She also knew that in some ways she'd substituted Mulder for her 
father.  His approval was deeply important to her because he was 
the only man she'd ever respected as much as she'd respected her 
father.

But her father's death had also shown her a valuable lesson.  She'd 
learned that feelings didn't always need the validation of being 
spoken aloud to be real.  Her father, for whatever reason, hadn't 
said the words that she'd thought she'd needed to hear.  But in her 
time working with Mulder, she'd learned to trust what she felt as 
much as what she saw or heard.  Even though she was scared to 
believe in it all, Mulder had given her that gift of trusting her 
own insight and he'd unknowingly freed her a lifetime of 
unrelenting questions about her father.

She only wished she could help to free him the same way.

Scully understood her own fears and during their time, she believed 
that she'd begun to understand Mulder's.  As she slowly discovered 
more about him, she discovered the turmoil in his head that 
wouldn't allow him the freedom that others took for granted.

Her natural love for Mulder made her wish she could erase all his 
past hurts and disappointments.  Yet, at the same time, she was 
fully conscious of the truth that the painful experiences of 
Mulder's past had combined to make the man she loved *into* the man 
she loved.  Had his past been different, he would not have become 
the singular man he was today.  He would be merely ordinary, he 
would be average, he would not be...Mulder. 

She had to stop and remind herself of the difficulty of Being 
Mulder from time to time.  He could be so driven, so single-minded 
and even arrogant that he would loose sight of the far more 
reasonable possibilities.  She'd begin to lose patience and her 
aggravation with him would begin to rise to intolerable levels.  
But then, she'd step back and recall what Being Mulder entailed.  
She would remember that he had every good reason to be the way he 
was.

For Mulder, all semblance of an ordinary family life died abruptly 
the night his eight-year-old sister Samantha disappeared while in 
his care and it was never resurrected.  Mulder had suffered for its 
demise more than anyone else had for he'd been completely unable to 
account for what happened to her.

Scully could only imagine what it must have been like for the boy 
Mulder had been.  He would have been harshly and relentlessly 
interrogated by disbelieving law enforcement officials.  He would 
have had to face the questions, whispers, and looks from 
incredulous family members, neighbors, and friends.  She wondered 
what it must have been like to have had to return to school in a 
small community where people just didn't disappear without a trace, 
where no one have believed that he didn't know what happened or 
rather, didn't remember what happened.  Scully knew the thoughtless 
cruelty of children, knew the torment and ostracization that they 
were capable of.  She knew that often, adults were little better.

It must have been an ordeal such as she could only imagine and one 
that Mulder had had to face alone with no support.  For in a very 
true sense, Mulder also became an orphan at age 12.  First he'd 
lost his baby sister to God knows what and then he'd lost his 
parents by their own choice.  From what little Scully had been able 
to ascertain, it seemed that Mulder's parents, instead of 
cherishing and loving their remaining child all the more, had done 
little of either.  In fact, Mulder had endured their blame and 
indifference towards each other.  And Scully's heart ached for both 
the boy who'd been abandoned so cruelly and for the man who still 
searched so desperately for answers.

As a child, he would not have known of the conspiracies and lies 
they knew of now.  No, Mulder would have only known that his sister 
had been lost while entrusted to his care and no matter how much he 
wanted to, how much he tried to, he could not offer any answers or 
explanations.  It wasn't until 1989, at age 28, when Mulder first 
underwent regressive hypnotherapy treatments that he finally 
recovered any memory of that night.  What he'd remembered had set 
him on the course he was on now.  No matter how fantastic that 
answer might be, she knew that he clung to it partly because it was 
his only chance for salvation from the guilt, responsibility, and 
sense of failure that fate had imposed upon a 12-year old boy.

When she'd first seen the poster in Mulder's office that 
proclaimed, "I want to believe," she'd simply assumed that he'd 
meant that he wanted to believe in the existence of 
extraterrestrial life.  But after listening to the tapes of his 
hypnotherapy sessions, she realized that she'd been very wrong in 
her initial assumption.

She'd come to understand that what Mulder wanted to believe was the 
promise made by the voice he'd heard in his head the night his 
sister disappeared.  That voice had promised him that his sister 
would be returned unharmed someday.  He wanted to believe in that 
elusive promise when all the conventional wisdom in the world would 
tell him not to.  Scully knew in his heart that there were times 
when Mulder doubted the voice's promise, even doubted the existence 
of the voice itself.  But it was all he had and because she loved 
him, as much as the possibility of that voice didn't fit anywhere 
into her scheme of the world, Scully would die before she'd tell 
Mulder to give up his hope in that promise.  Because she loved him, 
she was determined to see that that promise was kept to him in some 
manner.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

February 19, 1995
Mulder's Apartment
Alexandria, Virginia
 

Mulder could now honestly say he was alert.  The shower, hot 
coffee, and cold ravioli had revived him.  He'd expanded his 
knowledge of the world by reading the sports section.  He'd even 
managed to dump a load of laundry into the washer and dress himself 
in jeans and turtleneck sweater.

OK, a few more hours shot down--now what the hell was he gonna do?

There were some files piled on his desk that he couldn't bring 
himself to be interested in at the moment.  He thought briefly 
about calling Scully with the excuse that he wanted to talk about 
the case they were wrapping up, but then he remembered that she'd 
mentioned that she had plans with her sister today.

Scully's family both amazed and discomforted him.  They actually 
seemed to like spending time together.  It was very weird.

He remembered the first evidence he'd seen of this phenomenon.  It 
was just before Christmas in 1993.  He'd stopped at Scully's to 
pick her up on their way to the airport for an assignment.  He'd 
been early and as he waited for her to finish packing, he'd looked 
at Christmas cards on her mantle with a kind of amazement.  Scully 
actually got Christmas cards from her family, with like, real 
handwriting in them.  Seeing a particularly beautiful card, he 
picked it up and saw it was from Scully's mother.

Mulder had taken an immediate liking to Mrs. Scully, perhaps 
because she was the mother of the woman he'd come to love or 
perhaps because for some strange reason, Mrs. Scully seemed to like 
him.  That had surprised him a bit and he'd wondered what the deal 
was with that.  He knew that he wasn't exactly the kind of person 
that people immediately warmed to because of his sweet nature and 
even temperament.

Inside the card, she'd written her daughter a affectionate, warm 
note; telling her that she loved her, that she was proud of her, 
how much she was looking forward to having her family home soon 
Christmas dinner in a few weeks.

Mulder had stared at the note, re-reading it several times, 
suddenly feeling a little blue.  Wow, I bet Scully's Christmas 
present doesn't arrive by UPS on the day after Christmas either, he 
thought.

"What is it Mulder?"  Scully had returned to the living room and 
noticed his pensive look as she placed her bag by the door.

Mulder had covered his unusual outbreak of sentiment quickly as he 
placed the card back on the mantle.  "Just looking at the note from 
your Mom--Hey, you sure have her fooled."  He immediately regretted 
his flippancy.  Why the hell did he say that, he wondered, that 
wasn't what he'd meant at all.  "It's just nice that she says those 
things to you," he amended, looking at her a bit contritely.

But Scully had smiled, seeming to understand him as she usually 
did.  "I'm sure you'll be getting one too, Mulder.  Mom does like 
to spread it around.  'Tis the season to gush in the Scully family, 
you know."

"Ah well, you see that's where our family holiday traditions vary--
in the Mulder clan it's the season to be constipated."  Scully had 
laughed quietly at his joke but as she'd predicted, when they'd 
arrived back in town a few days later, he'd found a card from Mrs. 
Scully waiting for him with all his other mail.  In it, she'd 
graciously invited him to Christmas dinner, that is, if he wasn't 
busy with his own family.  He'd laughed aloud at that.  Not a 
problem Mrs. Scully.  Then she'd written something about how often 
Dana spoke so highly of him.  Mulder had smiled rather insensibly 
at the words and wondered desperately about what Scully had said.  
He felt like some dweeb in high school, but he still wanted to know 
what she'd said.

He hadn't been able to bring himself to go to the family dinner 
that year, but the invitation extended by Mrs. Scully had meant a 
lot to him.  He'd received another card from her this last 
Christmas.  It had the same kind words, this time thanking him for 
being there to support her during her daughter's disappearance and 
for his efforts to bring her back.  They were words of thanks 
Mulder didn't feel he'd earned, but he knew she offered them 
sincerely.  Mrs. Scully had extended another dinner invitation and 
again, he'd declined.  But he'd kept that card also; it was still 
in the back of the top drawer of his desk at home.  Someday, he 
might be up for the family thing on Christmas, but not yet.  Maybe 
when he and Scully were...were...

The sound of a large truck rattling down the street broke into his 
reverie, causing him to return to the present, now irritated with 
himself.  When he and Scully were what?  He didn't even know what 
the hell were they now.  What he and Scully were now fit no known 
category neatly.  His only comfort in the matter was the fact that 
he knew that not being able to categorize what they were probably 
drove the ever-analytical Scully more nuts than it did him.  Mulder 
took a mild, malicious pleasure in that knowledge.

He stared out the window as he realized that he couldn't call 
Scully, even with a lame excuse, because she wouldn't be home yet.  
Although, his little voice enticed, she did say they were coming to 
Alexandria to a restaurant in Old Town.  Granted, Scully hadn't 
asked him to join them but on the other hand, she hadn't really 
not-invited him either.  He briefly pondered the ramifications of 
accidentally running into them there.  There was a slight chance 
that Scully might buy it, after all, she still believed in 
coincidence, whereas he knew better.  Glancing at the clock he 
realized it was probably too late for that and that he'd missed his 
window of opportunity.  He sighed.  He'd missed a hell of lot of 
windows of opportunity, he thought, so what's one more?

Besides, as much as he wanted to see Scully, the thought of 
spending time with her sister Melissa was just a little too 
unnerving.  He'd met Melissa Scully for the first time three months 
ago, standing over her sister's hospital bed.  She'd told him that 
Scully had told her not to call him Fox.  He'd been too preoccupied 
at that moment to really ponder that statement, but later he'd 
thought about it a lot.

How the hell had Melissa known that?  How had she known to come to 
him later and slap him up aside the head over Scully?  Although he 
was an absolute believer in psychic abilities, he wasn't sure if 
that was what Melissa had or not.  Whatever it was, she was just 
someone who saw and understood just a little too damn much for his 
comfort.  Basically, between Scully's visions of her dead father, 
Melissa's spiritualism and their mother's pre-cognitive dreams, 
there was something just a little too damn spooky about the female 
side of the Scully family.

A restless feeling nagged at him though.  He needed to get out from 
the close confines of his apartment; he needed to just get moving 
somewhere.  Normally, when such a mood struck, he would go running, 
but he wasn't quite up to a long run yet.  After some more internal 
debate, he decided to go for a walk; after all, you never knew whom 
or what you might run into.  Mulder yanked his long black winter 
coat off the rack and headed out the door.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-


February 19, 1995
Simon's Used Bookstore
Alexandria, Virginia

 

Scully also had a restless feeling; she'd now looked at virtually 
every row the bookstore had to offer.  Who would have thought there 
could be twenty yards of books on electric trains?  Not to mention 
that wandering wasn't doing anything to get her mind off of Mulder.  
Indeed, everywhere she turned, she kept running into things that 
reminded her of him.  Even while in the biology section, she'd 
found a whole row of books on worms.  She laughed a bit thinking 
she could have used them a while back while Mulder was tracking 
down that fluke worm.  As she remembered that case, she'd 
remembered that was when Mulder had told her that he was thinking 
of leaving the FBI.

He'd told her that it was now clear that they weren't going to let 
them work as partners again and that hope had been the only reason 
he could think of to stay with the FBI.  His words had literally 
knocked the breath out of her.  It was bad enough that they'd been 
separated as partners, but the thought of him gone for good had 
rocked her.

Later, she'd tried to tell him that she didn't want him to go.  It 
had come out all so wrong.  She'd babbled something about how she 
hoped that he knew that she would consider it more than a 
professional loss if he were to leave the FBI.  It had come out 
sounding so completely lame that she'd been mortified.  Mulder had 
merely looked at her blankly and nodded slightly.  Gee, she told 
herself contemptuously, he'd probably been so underwhelmed by that 
persuasive outpouring of emotion, that he didn't know what to say.  
Scully shook her head, still embarrassed by the memory.  God, I'm 
just such a loser sometimes.

It wasn't until Mulder teamed with that bastard Krycek that it 
finally dawned on Scully that he was really no longer her partner.  
As much as that hurt, she also realized that action had also lifted 
the professional barrier between them.  Granted, as far as Scully 
was concerned, their professional relationship had been the least 
of the restraints that had separated them.  But still, it had been 
there and now it was gone.

After her pathetic little speech, she'd started to do a little 
better at communicating her feelings.  She'd played with him softly 
and seductively on the phone about his new partner, telling him 
with her words that it must be nice to have someone who didn't poke 
holes in all his theories, but her tone really asking if he missed 
her.  In response, she could almost feel his smile and surprise 
over the phone line.  He'd responded with his voice lowered to that 
soft growl as he teased her back, his slightly stammering words 
telling her that he didn't know how he'd put up with her so long, 
but his tone telling her that he'd loved every minute of it and 
that he missed her.

But before she could act any further, she'd run out of time.  Duane 
Barry, among the so many other things he'd taken from her, had 
taken Mulder away from her too.

"Dana!"

Scully was startled out of her thought when she heard Melissa 
scream her name and she went running back to where her sister had 
been only to discover that she wasn't in the paperback section 
anymore.  Scully looked about frantically, searching, but she 
couldn't see through the tall shelves and stacks of books.

"Melissa?  Melissa where are you?" she called.

She heard Melissa's voice come over the shelves.  "I'm over here."  
Scully relaxed a bit; nothing appeared to be terribly wrong.

"Where are you?" she called again.

"Here."  Melissa supplied helpfully.

"WHERE here?"  Scully yelled in irritation.

"Against the very back wall on the right.  Get over here.  Now!"

Scully ran down the main aisle to the back wall where the used 
magazines were stacked by category.  There she found again found 
Melissa sitting on the floor in front of tall stack of magazines, 
clutching a one to her chest.  She appeared to have all her body 
parts and no one was holding a knife to her throat.  I swear, 
Scully thought, if she screamed like that because she saw a cute 
purse in a 10-year old catalog, I'm gonna kill her.

"What, what is it?"

"You have to see this--I can't believe it."  Melissa was giggling 
like a 12-year old.

"See WHAT Melissa?"

Melissa held up a magazine in triumph.  It was an ancient edition 
of Playgirl sporting a stunning young surfer on the cover.  Jesus 
Christ, Scully thought in exasperation, she'd scared the shit out 
of her over that.  "Melissa, for God's sake, it hasn't been that 
long," Scully hissed, "I do remember what a nude man looks like!"

Melissa grinned and shook her head.  "Not this one, I bet."  She 
opened the magazine and held it up as Scully leaned over to focus 
in.  A very young and very naked Mulder stared back at her.

Scully screamed.  It was most definitely a girly scream.


=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Old Town Shopping District
Alexandria, Virginia



Mulder had been wandering for quite some time.  The cold brisk day 
was refreshing and he felt physically better now that he was 
outside the confines of his apartment.  In spite of his best 
intentions, he'd found himself walking down the street where the 
restaurant was that Scully and her sister were having brunch.  He 
knew this part of the city well, just a few blocks over there was a 
used bookstore that he visited often.  Feeling like a total 
blockhead, but too far gone to care, he'd casually walked by the 
restaurant a few times, surreptitiously looking in the window.  By 
the third pass, it was clear that Scully wasn't in there, although 
he was sure the patrons by the window thought him a little strange.

He stood on the corner a few moments trying to decide what to do 
and where to go as he scanned the parked cars on the street, 
looking for Scully's.  Of course, Melissa could have driven, he 
remembered.  Of course, he could always pass her a note in study 
hall on Monday too, he thought ruefully, his overt adolescent 
behavior making him somewhat foolish even as he indulged it.  Why 
was he as such a loss for words around her?  When they fought, he 
always had plenty to say.  When they were in danger, he had no 
problems talking.  When he was enticing her to investigate 
something that he knew she would balk at, words fell from his lips.  
But otherwise, he almost squirmed when it came to something 
personal.

That changed a little when he'd been partnered with that rat-
bastard Krycek.  He'd been consulting Scully on his cell phone when 
his new partner walked up.  Scully heard and suddenly her 
expressive voice turned soft and seductive on him as she'd teased 
him about how it must be nice not to have a partner who second-
guessed his every move.  He'd actually stammered as he told her 
that he hadn't known how he'd put up with her so long, but really 
longing telling her that he wouldn't have traded a moment of it.  
Then a silence came over the line; a silence where he should have 
said something else, he could have said something else because, 
after all, she wasn't his partner anymore and it wouldn't have been 
in appropriate in the least.  He'd had no professional excuse for 
his hesitation, only personal ones and so he hadn't said what he 
wanted to.  She'd opened the door but before he could step through, 
she'd been abducted.  God, I'm such a loser sometimes, he thought.

He was startled out of his reverie when someone asked him if he was 
lost because he'd been rooted to the same spot for quite some time.  
Mulder shook his head and began walking again.  He was lost all 
right, but just not quite the way the passerby had thought.  He 
continued his stroll along the quaint brick streets and historical 
buildings, winding his way towards the bay front.  A wander along 
the many parks along Oronoco Bay might be the thing he needed to 
get his mind off Scully.

As he walked, he stopped to look in the windows of Simon's Used 
Bookstore.  Mulder had frequented the store for years and knew the 
owner Simon, a long-retired DC cop, pretty well.  As he did for all 
his regular customers, the old man kept an eye out for new 
acquisitions that would be of interest to them and so he'd call 
Mulder from time to time when something new on UFOs or other 
paranormal phenomena would come in.  Mulder considered going in for 
a bit, but he knew that Simon would want to talk.  Once the old man 
had discovered that Mulder worked for the FBI, Simon had apparently 
decided they were comrades and he would regale Mulder with long 
stories about getting the bad guys.  Lately, being from the old 
school, Simon often teased Mulder about having a woman for a 
partner.  He kept asking him when he was going to bring his "lady 
friend" in.  Mulder would explain that she was a partner and not a 
lady friend.  Simon would just smile and offer up some free and 
unsolicited advice on Mulder's personal life.  Most of the time, 
Mulder didn't mind; in fact, he was kind of fond of the old guy, 
but today he just didn't want to deal with it so he moved on past 
the window.

"Fox!"

Sighing inwardly, Mulder turned to see Simon standing in doorway of 
his store.  He'd obviously seen him though the windows.  "Fox, 
you're not coming in?" the old man asked as he shuffled over toward 
him on the sidewalk.

"Hi Simon.  No, I can't today.  I have to be somewhere."

"Always in a hurry, Fox."

"Not always.  Just today."

"Off to see your lady friend?"  Simon smiled as he teased the 
younger man.

Don't I wish, Mulder thought as he played along with a half-hearted 
smile.  "Nope.  Not today, she ditched me."

"What, ditch a good looking guy like you?  Women--go figure!"  
Simon retorted.  "Come on in, I've got a new shipment you can look 
through."

Mulder begged off.  "Really, I just can't right now, but save them 
for me." 

Suddenly from deep inside the store, a playful scream emanated 
followed by some loud giggling and the sound of crashing books.  
Simon looked at Mulder in exasperation.  "Damn kids, they're always 
getting into something.  Well, take care Fox, you look tired.  Get 
that lady friend partner of yours to take better care of you."  
With that, the old man turned and headed back inside the shop to go 
make some teenaged girls get back in line.

"You take care too, Simon," Mulder said eternally grateful for fate 
stepping in and taking Simon's attention.  Mulder moved on, 
crossing the street quickly before Simon could come back and turned 
the corner, heading on to the waterfront again.  As he walked, he 
thought about his "lady friend" and about how he would love to get 
her to take care of him and about how he would love to take care of 
her.  Forever.

Yes, this was a great idea, he thought ironically; this walk was 
just doing wonders for getting his mind off of Scully.


=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-


Simon's Used Bookstore
Alexandria, Virginia



Upon hearing the screams from the back of his store, the owner came 
running.  As he came around the corner, he was surprised to see two 
grown women instead of the teenagers he was expecting.  Scully, 
who'd knocked over a stack of books as she'd snatched the magazine 
from her sister's hands, instinctively hid it behind her back as 
though the old man was going take it away from her.

"What the hell is going on here?" he asked in irritation after 
determining that neither woman was bleeding or held at gunpoint.

"I saw a mouse?"  Melissa offered lamely as she quickly went to 
work stacking the books back up.

"Lady, I got real customers and since, " he looked pointedly at 
Scully, "we already got to hear all about your sex life a little 
earlier, would you two mind moving along?"

Melissa finished replacing the last book.  "Pay the nice man for 
the magazine, Dana," she said with as much dignity as she could 
muster.  They followed the man to the counter, paid for the 
magazine, and almost ran out onto the sidewalk.  Once safely 
outside, they sat on a bench and quickly turned back to page 41.  
They looked at the magazine, looked at each other and both screamed 
again.

"How did you find this Melissa?"

"I was just digging through the whole stack and it was just there, 
about the ninth or tenth one I looked at."  Scully looked over at 
her sister pointedly.  "I was looking for an article," Melissa 
insisted.

Yeah right, Scully thought, like your stack of naked men magazines 
doesn't rival Mulder's naked women collection.  Scully turned her 
attention back to the magazine at hand.  Oh God, oh God, oh God, 
her mind chanted in mischievous and completely adolescent glee.  
Naked Mulder.  Scully flipped the magazine closed and looked at the 
date on the cover.  Mulder would have been 21 or so.

The photo wasn't one of the professional model shots; it was in the 
section where people sent in home photos of their favorite naked 
husbands or boyfriends.  It was absolutely, positively Mulder, 
clear down to the mole on his cheek.  The caption below said, "A 
Yank at Oxford."  It was a stunningly sensuous photograph in black 
and white, large, clear, sharp and leaving no doubts as to Mulder's 
religious background.

"Holy shit, what a babe," came Melissa's elegant assessment.  "That 
could be in a museum."

Scully nodded in agreement.  Mulder did look like a work of art; he 
was sprawled on his back on a huge bed filled with crumpled white 
sheets and pillows, his head rested on one arm behind his head and 
the other splayed gracefully over the flat expanse of his belly.  
One leg bent upwards and the other stretched out.  Sunlight 
streamed in to the picture from somewhere, creating shadows and 
highlights across his skin.  His dark hair was longer than it was 
now, but one strand still flopped over his forehead in that same 
manner that had teased Scully for the last two years.  The rest was 
tousled and spilled down the side of his neck and over the pillow 
under his head.  Stupidly, she reached out and touched it in the 
photograph, noticing as she did so that he was wearing a small hoop 
earring.  Her eyes moved down the lean body, taking in every 
rounded curve and flat plane...

"Who the hell would have thought a body like that lurked under that 
boring gray FBI suit?"  Melissa interrupted her thoughts as she 
peered over her shoulder.

I knew, Scully thought as she continued her slow perusal.  Oh God, 
I knew.  I knew just by the way he moved, walked, and wore his 
clothes that he was this beautiful.  Mulder's body had been 
something of much idle speculation in her mind.  She'd been careful 
to be covert in her observations of him ever since that incident on 
their second case together.  She'd been sitting on the chair in her 
dingy hotel room as Mulder stood at the window, gazing out as he 
talked.  As she listened, her eyes had wandered down from his 
profile to where his hands were placed on his hips as he shifted 
his weight to one leg.  She took in the sight of his firm, rounded 
ass encased in blue jeans.  She was just thinking that it was 
really quite impressive when he'd turned back to her suddenly.  
She'd raised her eyes quickly back to his.  He hadn't said 
anything, but she was never sure if he'd caught her looking or not.

It was true that in the last two years she'd seen him in all 
various states of undress.  But it always seemed to be while she 
was trying to keep him from going into shock after a fire, or 
trying to keep him from bleeding to death from a gunshot wound or 
conversely, trying to keep his blood from coagulating.  But none of 
it had ever seemed like the appropriate time to take full 
inventory.  The photograph simply confirmed what she'd suspected 
from the bits and pieces she'd seen.

She returned to her careful perusal.  Mulder's chest had wonderful 
definition with that beautiful hollow over his heart where a hand 
could be perfectly placed to feel its beating.  Just the right 
smattering of chest hair led down to the delineated muscles of his 
stomach and deeply set navel.  Mulder had a great navel.  The photo 
revealed long, lean, but hard-muscled legs, the thighs solid and 
merging into slim hips which then segued to another downy trail 
leading to the proverbial Holy Grail nestled in a courser bed of 
hair and lying in well-endowed repose like its owner.  That's just 
as well, Scully thought with a smile.  A photo of Mulder fully 
erect may have caused her to leave a puddle in the street.

"Well, it looks like God gifted Mulder with both a great mind and 
more than enough of the essential equipment to, ah, perpetuate his 
gene pool."  Melissa interrupted her thoughts again with a 
lascivious tone.

"Melissa!"  Scully lifted her eyes to glare at her sister.  "Do you 
mind--I think I'm having a epiphany here."

"Is that what they call them now?"  Melissa asked with a laugh.  
"Besides, I was trying to couch it in terms you would appreciate, I 
would have just said he's really well hung to anyone else!"

Scully closed her eyes and dropped her head with a sigh.  This is 
what my life has come to, she thought.  Come Monday, I'll have to 
sit across the desk from Mulder and try to look at him without the 
phrase, "well hung," springing to mind.  

Of course, the photograph only confirmed her speculations in that 
area too; after all, she hadn't been that busy while in her Doctor 
Mode.  Suddenly, she had guilt attack; I'm sitting here evaluating 
the merits of my partner's cock like it's a case file, she thought.  
Scully suddenly closed the magazine.

"Excuse me, but I wasn't through looking!"  Melissa protested.

"I feel like I'm invading his privacy," she said.

"What privacy?  It's not as if you're peeking though his bathroom 
window.  Obviously Mulder knew that quite a few women and probably 
a few men were going to get a gander when it was published."

Scully nodded in agreement, but she still felt intrusive somehow.  
The photograph itself didn't bother her in the least, it was 
beautiful, and she found nothing vulgar about it.  She would have 
loved to have such a photo of the man she loved looking at her like 
that.  No, it was the publication of the photo that confused her.  
Somehow, someway, this kind of smug and egotistical exhibition 
seemed very out of character from what she knew, or at least what 
she'd thought she knew, of her partner.

It was true that Mulder never failed to miss a sexual innuendo or 
double-entendre and judging from his rather extensive magazine and 
video collection, he was certainly not a neophyte to sexual 
innovations.  However, even knowing all that, in her mind there had 
always been something charmingly, well... nerdy about Mulder.  
Certainly not uninitiated or unpracticed sexually, but still 
somehow guileless.  But then again, maybe again she didn't know him 
at all.  This was from a long time ago, back when he was just a 
young "Yank at Oxford," she was reminded as she flipped open the 
magazine again.  Long before he became the man she knew now.

I wonder what possessed him, she thought, examining the photo in 
detail.

The expression in Mulder's eyes back then was far less wounded than 
the eyes she loved so well now.  She knew that change had less to 
do with physical youth and more to do with what those eyes had seen 
in the ensuing years.  She noticed again the manner in which he was 
gazing at the camera; his sleepy, soft gaze turned towards the 
camera as though someone had called his name and he'd awakened from 
a very good dream indeed.  His expression was both seductive and 
well satiated, his full lips parted slightly in the beginnings of a 
smile meant for the person taking the picture.

The person taking the picture.  The light finally went on in 
Scully's brain.

Phoebe Green.

Of course, she thought.  Phoebe is what, or rather who, had 
possessed him.  He'd loved her enough to pose for the thing to 
please her.  Scully just knew that if Phoebe had asked, Mulder 
would have let that snotty, upper class, egotistical bitch take and 
publish this picture just as she was sure that Phoebe would have 
liked to show off her trophy.  That beautiful gaze, that almost shy 
smile, that body--it was all meant for Phoebe Green. 

Shit.  Shit.  Shit.

Scully was immediately transported into a foul mood, even as her 
heart constricted a bit.  The knowledge that one point in his life, 
Mulder was comfortable and light-hearted with another woman enough 
to do this just somehow bugged the ever-living crap out of her as 
the jealously began to seethe within.  I can't even get him to stop 
ditching me, she thought, and yet for Phoebe he was ripping his 
clothes off and lying in splendid repose for her to show to the 
world.  In fact, the more she thought about it, the more it really 
pissed her off and irrationally she was focusing that anger at 
Mulder.  Phoebe, she thought in disgust, she should have known.

"Who's Phoebe?"

Melissa's question interrupted her thoughts and Scully hadn't 
realized that she'd spoken the name aloud--or had, she?  She never 
quite knew with Melissa.  Suddenly feeling very agitated; Scully 
closed the magazine and handed it back to her sister.  She stood up 
from the bench and started walking.  She needed to get moving, get 
some activity going besides looking at the pictures forming in her 
head of Mulder and Phoebe together.

"Dana, what it?"  When she didn't answer or turn back, Melissa got 
up and followed her down the street.

Melissa allowed her sister her silence as they wandered the brick 
streets, heading towards the bay and the parks.  Eventually, they 
ended up near the children's playground with the tall slides and 
big swings left from a time when cities still felt safe about 
letting children play in public parks without fear of parental 
lawsuit.  The park was nearly deserted due to the cold weather.  
Scully hadn't spoken a word or lifted her eyes from the ground as 
she walked.

"Dana, what's going in your head?"  Melissa asked finally.

Scully shook her head just slightly, feeling oddly close to 
frustrated tears and she wasn't sure she could make Melissa 
understand if she didn't fully understand herself.  It was well 
over a year ago that she'd first learned about Phoebe Green.  She 
still had the picture in her mind of Phoebe in Mulder's arms as 
they'd danced, of when he'd kissed her.  She hadn't planned to see 
that, it was a private moment and she'd just happened into to it.  
However, it had disturbed her more than she would have thought and 
it had been a long time fading in her mind, but it had never left 
completely.  The problem was now she had a new picture in her mind.  
Now, she was imagining Phoebe and Mulder together all those years 
ago at Oxford, back when he was the kind of person who would let 
someone love him.  She was imagining what she missed, missing what 
she'd never had.

Melissa saw the varied emotions crossing her sister's face and was 
worried.  "Dana, talk to me!"  She finally demanded impatiently, 
touching her arm.  "Look, I know how you feel about Mulder, you 
know you can't hide that from me.  So talk to me God damn it!  
What's the story here with Mulder and this Phoebe?"

Scully took a bit of time answering.  "Phoebe was Mulder's lover 
while he was at Oxford," she finally said.  "She's the one who took 
this picture, I know it."

"What makes you say that?"

"Because he loved her, because he would have done anything to 
please her."

"You don't know that," Melissa said practically.

Scully turned to her sister, exasperated at being second-guessed on 
what she knew in her gut.  God, this must be how Mulder feels she 
thought.  "Look at the damn photo Melissa.  Look at it!  Tell me 
I'm wrong about how he felt about her."

Melissa looked again at the magazine, this time concentrating on 
Mulder's face for the first time.  She shook her head slightly; she 
couldn't honestly tell Dana she was wrong.  She slid the magazine 
back into the bag and looked at her sister.  "So what do you know 
about this Phoebe?"

"I met her when she blew into town last year.  She and Mulder 
attended Oxford together and he told me she was 'brilliant'.  She's 
an agent with Scotland Yard now and she requested Mulder's help on 
a case.  He didn't seem at all happy to see her again and I'd kind 
of teased him at first because it was obvious they'd had past of 
some sort, but I hadn't realized the extent of it."  Scully fell 
quiet a moment, remembering back.  

"Like what?"

Scully shook her head, remembering Phoebe's rather sick game.  
"Mulder went off to Oxford at an early age, but more than that, I 
think he was pretty young and raw emotionally too.  Even Mulder 
admitted that he'd gotten in over his head with her in the past.  I 
think their relationship may have been one where Mulder was 
constantly trying to gain her approval or respect, almost like she 
was the damn prom queen and he was the high-school geek that she 
deigned to turn her gaze to."

"So what happened to them?"

"I had the impression she was the one who'd broken it off, I 
overheard him tell her that she'd driven a stake through his heart.  
But Phoebe was all over him though when she came back."

"So do you think she was on the prowl again?"

"I thought so at first, but later it became more obvious what she 
was up to.  Mulder had told me that Phoebe liked to play mind games 
and I certainly saw first-hand evidence of that."

Scully's voice was full of disdain as she continued.  "Phoebe 
called Mulder in on a arson case knowing full well that he had deep 
fear of fire.  She very deliberately pulled him into a situation 
where he was likely to falter.  She used Mulder to solve a case, 
made herself look good, and yet still had time to amuse herself by 
screwing with his head.  It was almost like a revenge of some sort.  
I think she did it because she wanted to see him struggle and 
fail."  

"Did he?"

Her sister nodded.  "Yes--at first.  There was a fire in a hotel 
and he froze."  Scully sighed, remembering Mulder's self-
recriminations.  "God Melissa, he was so ashamed, so angry at 
himself.  Later, he took control back on the case and saved the 
lives of two children, but Phoebe had already done her damage.  
She'd already screwed him over and made him feel worthless."

"Jesus, she sounds like quite a piece of work."

"She is that," Scully agreed contemptuously.

"But why would Mulder have ever become involved with someone like 
that in the first place?"

"Why does anyone?"  Scully shrugged slightly.  That was certainly a 
question she asked herself many times and she'd thought about the 
answer a lot.  "Maybe it's as simple as he couldn't see what she 
really was because he was obsessed with trying to gain something he 
thought was unobtainable.  That's very much his nature.  He can be 
blind to more obvious motivations."  Scully's voice trailed off 
again.

Melissa waited for more information and when it wasn't forthcoming, 
she asked, "So, you said she was coming on to him though.  Did 
Mulder return her attention?"

"He kissed her.  They were dancing together and I saw him kiss her.  
It seemed almost like he was testing the waters again."

"Well?"  Her sister was spilling this story way the hell too slow 
for Melissa's taste.  "Did he plunge in?"

"No."  Scully shook her head.  "We solved the case and Phoebe was 
gone as suddenly as she'd arrived."

"So you think he's still in love with her?"

Scully had thought about that question a lot too.  In spite of what 
she'd seen, she was confident in her conclusion.  "No," she 
answered honestly.  "I don't think he's still in love with her.  I 
think he finally shook her loose from his head."

"Ok, he doesn't love her, she's long gone, and you're here.  I'm a 
little confused as to why you're upset."

You're not the only one, Scully thought.  "It's not Phoebe herself, 
but what she left behind that bothers me.  She may be gone, but her 
lingering after-affects live on in Mulder.  He doesn't want to let 
anyone too near.  I think she twisted him up so badly that he may 
never get un-kinked."

Melissa reached out and touched her arm with a smile.  "Well, maybe 
kinky's not so bad.  You can work with it."

Scully gave a small laugh.  Like Mulder, Melissa could always make 
her smile in spite of a black mood.  "No, kinky is not so bad," she 
agreed.

"So I still don't get it--what's the deal?"

Scully could almost hear her sister's mind whirring away and she 
knew Melissa was gearing up to tell her the optimistic, touchy-
feely obvious.  All that bullshit romantic idealism that had so 
little chance for survival when planted in the harsh soil of 
Scully's real world.

She turned to her sister with frustration and a certain sadness in 
her voice.  "The deal is, Melissa, is that Mulder scares me.  He 
exists in such an intense and yet fragile state.  It's like his 
entire world is built on a soap bubble.  His convictions are as 
strong as his doubts and he scares me because I think that it's 
entirely possible that he's a bit unstable and yet, for some 
reason, I don't seem to care!"  Scully gave a self-mocking laugh.  
"But you know, in a weird way, I'm also scared of getting what I 
want.  I mean, I'm scared because sometimes I'm not sure if I love 
him because of all that he is or in spite of all that he is.  Even 
the fact that I've allowed myself to become so unbalanced scares 
me.  I mean really; who the hell am I to judge Mulder's stability 
when the reality is that I'm an equal mess who's just little better 
at hiding it.  The deal is that just about everything connected to 
Mulder scares me to death."

Scully ran out of gas with her tirade and fell silent.  She 
wandered over to one of the empty swings and sank down heavily in 
defeat.  Melissa dropped her purse and the paper bag on the nearby 
park bench, walked over to where her sister sat staring at her feet 
so forlornly.  She sat down on the adjoining swing.  "Wow--That's a 
lot of fucking scary," Melissa said with no sarcasm, just 
compassion.

"Yes, indeed," Scully nodded in melancholy agreement.  "That's lots 
and lots of fucking scary."


=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=


February 19, 1995
Waterfront Park
Alexandria, Virginia


Mulder had walked virtually the entire length of the bay.  The late 
afternoon coldness of the day and the warmth of his coat had 
strangely comforted him.  He should have brought gloves, but 
instead made do by burying his hands deep in pockets of the long 
wool coat he wore.

He stopped to gaze out over the water.  Mulder loved the sea, or at 
least, he liked the idea of the sea.  The reality of seasickness 
had made him realize early on that a life on the water was not 
going to work out for him, but something about its vastness and 
unknown depths appealed to him anyway.  Perhaps for the same 
reasons the vastness of space caught and held his imagination even 
before his sister had disappeared.  He watched a particularly large 
ship smooth by slowly to its homeport.  He didn't know what kind of 
craft it was and wished he did.  If Scully were here, she could 
tell him, he thought.

The daughter of a naval captain, Scully knew boats.  She could name 
virtually every naval and aircraft, which had impressed the hell 
out of him the first time he'd discovered it.  Of course, most 
things about Scully surprised and delighted him as he discovered 
them.  The far-reaching bulk of her knowledge never ceased to amaze 
him.  Beyond just loving her, beyond wanting her, he also took such 
pride in having her as his partner.

It certainly hadn't started out that way.  He'd fought Scully's 
assignment to the X-Files bitterly.  When Skinner had called him in 
and told him that Blevins had decided to assign him a partner, he 
knew what was up.  He knew the FBI didn't have any interest in 
assisting his investigations.  There wasn't a doubt in his mind 
that the partner that he hadn't asked for, didn't want and didn't 
need was there to spy on him; she was there to find reason to shut 
him down.  So he'd decided to check her out before she got there in 
order to facilitate his campaign to get rid of her.

Problem was that everything he'd discovered about Dr. Dana 
Katherine Scully impressed and intrigued him.

She'd been a navy brat and Mulder knew that meant she'd moved often 
as a child and that she would have had to learn to deal with new 
towns, new people and new schools, always leaving the familiar 
behind.  She'd earned her undergraduate degree in physics, 
graduating with honors.  In spite of himself, he'd had to admire 
that she'd even had the temerity to re-write Einstein in her senior 
thesis.  He'd read the whole damn thing, although he actually 
hadn't understood a hell of a lot of it.

From there, she'd apparently thought a degree in medicine was her 
next best move.  But instead of going into practice, she was 
recruited by the FBI--a good-old-boy outfit if ever there was one.  
She'd completed her internship, and then residency and she'd 
excelled in everything assigned to her.  Challenge was clearly not 
something she backed down from and even before he'd laid eyes on 
her, it was clear to Mulder that Dana Scully was a woman of 
substance.  He'd thought that it was almost too bad he had to get 
rid of her somehow as he geared himself up to repel the slight 
intruder in his world.

But Scully was also not a woman easily dismissed.  Over the past 
two years he'd occasionally seen some guy attempt to discount her 
simply because she was a woman.  He'd actually enjoyed watching her 
mentally slice and dice some poor sap who had quite mistakenly 
thought he'd had the upper hand solely on the basis he had a dick.  
She had a quick wit and an occasionally bawdy sense of humor, 
something her seemingly prim demeanor hid from him initially.  She 
could cuss with the best of them and as turned out she also wasn't 
half-bad at physically kicking someone's butt if needs be.  In the 
end, she'd certainly saved his ass on more than one occasion from 
the tropics of Puerto Rico to the frozen wastelands of the North 
Pole.

Mulder settled into a park bench and sipped the hot coffee he'd 
bought at Starbucks up the street.  It was pretty deserted out, 
just the occasional jogger or couple strolling by, people who had 
the privilege of living real lives.  People who didn't know what he 
and Scully knew.  People who didn't need to live and work in 
shadows, trying to determine what lie or truth to believe and 
struggling constantly to outwit those who sought to manipulate 
them.  

Scully was good at that part of the game, he thought.  She'd 
outsmarted them all on numerous occasions, including himself.  
She'd been the one to find him in Puerto Rico with the smallest of 
breadcrumbs.  Although, to this day, he still wondered why she'd 
even bothered considering his callous behavior towards her during 
that time.  He'd been a selfish bastard; he knew that now.  But at 
the time, he'd been deeply discouraged at the closure of the X-
Files project and enraged at the tedious, whitebread cases assigned 
to him.  And his separation from Scully had depressed him more than 
he'd ever thought possible.  So he'd defended himself the only way 
he knew how, by distancing himself emotionally.

His only excuse was that he'd been so used to being on his own that 
he'd just assumed that what had befallen them hadn't affected 
Scully the way it had affected him.  He'd been so involved in his 
own misery that it honestly hadn't occurred to him that Scully 
might be having difficulties too; that she might been feeling the 
same as he did about their separation and the shut-down of their 
work.  He'd just presumed that she'd moved on to her new duties and 
had gotten back on the career track that had been derailed by her 
assignment to the X-Files.  

He'd been wrong about it all.  Scully had quietly shown him just 
how wrong.  She'd come to him in that dark parking garage, having 
summoned him under false pretenses.  She'd told him that she needed 
to know how he was faring, needed to know if he was all right.  She 
actually cared.  She'd pushed all the right buttons and she'd 
looked at him with such deep disquiet that he'd finally stepped 
away from his self-absorption long enough to realize that maybe she 
might be wounded by all that had happened too, that it hadn't 
happened to just him.  God, he really could be a dumb ass on 
occasion. 

So he'd given her what she asked for; he told her of his 
frustrations, of the doubts he harbored about Samantha, of the 
jumbled mess that was his emotional state.  About how he'd begun to 
feel that he was only tilting at windmills.  And Scully hadn't 
offered any platitudes or false hopes.  With her soft firm voice, 
she'd simply insisted that he not give up, even if it all seemed 
too elusive at the time.  

It was at that moment that he'd realized just how far they'd 
actually come together on this journey and how much they'd learned 
from the other in spite of themselves and their differences.  
They'd gained much and now, in a strange twist, he was the one 
looking for the hard proof, and she was the one encouraging a quest 
of faith.  

It'd taken a long time and he'd fought it all the way, but it was 
during that time when they'd been separated as partners that he'd 
admitted to himself that he loved her.  Admitted that his need for 
her was far deeper and complex than the simple sexual attraction 
he'd also felt.  But then, before he could deal with his 
realization, Duane Barry separated her completely from him.

Duane Barry.  Just his name made Mulder rage in anger still.  
Rationally, he knew there'd been no way to predict that Barry would 
take Scully that night.  But even so, what remained is the fact 
that when his occasional nightmares didn't revolve around Samantha 
calling out to him, they revolved around the sound of Scully's 
voice on his answering machine, calling his name, begging him for 
help that wouldn't come in time.  He'd never once, in all the time 
he'd known her and in all the situations they'd been in, heard her 
voice sound like that and it had deadened his heart as he'd 
listened to it.

He still remembered, with chilling clarity, the honestly sincere 
look on Barry's face when he'd said he hoped that they weren't 
hurting Scully "too much" with their experiments.  He'd thought he 
might die right there.  Even now, he closed his eyes, hardly able 
to stand the thought and a sweat broke out on his forehead.  He 
didn't need his Ph.D. to know that he was suffering from a kind of 
delayed stress syndrome from Scully's abduction and her equally 
perilous return just a few months ago.

The weeks immediately following Scully's abduction had so eerily 
mirrored the weeks following Samantha's disappearance that it was 
uncanny.  The hopeless unanswered questions, the dead ends, his 
inability to rectify the situation or have prevented it in the 
first place were all just further confirmation in his mind that he 
sucked at caring for the ones he loved best.

He'd been on the bleeding edge with dark rage and frustration when 
Skinner sent him out to Los Angeles to investigate the strange 
vampire-like murders occurring there.  What Skinner hadn't realized 
was that Mulder had been the perfect choice for the assignment, he 
was sending the undead to investigate the possibility of the 
undead.  Or perhaps Skinner had just hoped that when Mulder finally 
fell prey to his self-destructive behavior, he'd at least be in 
another state.  

He'd worked the case methodically, automatically, in a trance.  The 
undead wishing to be dead.  But still, his time in California had 
been a turning point for him.

Before California, he'd been despondent down to the very soul he 
hadn't thought he possessed.  During the days and then the weeks 
without Scully, hope faded and leads turned up dead.  Mulder had 
wondered if anything would provide him any alleviation from the 
ache and guilt.  When he was alone at night and tired, so very 
tired, of the struggle the promise of such relief would beckon to 
him, softly enticing him.  And he'd contemplated the possibility, 
wondering idly if it would afford him the rest he sought.  But 
after California, after Kristen, he'd changed his mind.

Kristen.  Mulder could recall her name, but not her face.  Perhaps 
it was because she'd been no more real to him than he'd been to 
her.  Perhaps it was because the whole strange matter seemed so 
completely removed from him now, as though it had happened to 
someone else.  And perhaps, in a very honest way, it had.  In the 
end, he and Kristen had used each other to feel human for just a 
moment that one night.  She'd accepted the release of his body and 
never questioned why he'd left her immediately, replaced Scully's 
cross about his neck and taken to the chair to sleep.  When Kristen 
died the next day, the only emotion he'd felt was a sadness that 
she hadn't been able to find the peace she sought in the living 
world and had chosen to seek it another way.  

But he'd also decided that Kristen's way to that peace couldn't be 
his way.

He didn't have time for selfish, self-indulgent martyrhood.  Scully 
was lost and he had to find her; she'd called out to him for help 
and he still had to answer her.  He couldn't have the last time he 
ever heard her call his name be a cry of desperate fear.  He had to 
hear her say his name again in her warm, soothing tone.  The one 
that made him go weak inside when she used it.

A few weeks later Scully had been returned to him but he could take 
no credit for it.  Her return hadn't been due to any action on his 
part.  She'd simply appeared in that hospital bed, tethered to what 
seemed dozens of machines, her eyes taped shut, and while one 
nightmare had ended, another had begun.  Yet, somehow, they'd come 
through that one together too.

Until the day he died, he'd remember the moment she'd turned 
towards him and said his name as he came into her hospital room.  
It was the moment he'd dreamed about and hung on to since she'd 
been taken from him.  Mulder was not a man used to getting wishes 
granted or prayers answered and a feeling of humbleness had 
overwhelmed him to the point where he'd had to leave the room 
within a few moments until he could get a grasp on his running 
emotions.

He'd never loved her so well or thought her more beautiful than at 
that moment.

He actually hadn't realized Scully's beauty at first.  Certainly, 
when he'd first met her, he'd noted that she was attractive of 
course.  But he'd been so completely tied up in defensively testing 
her, trying to figure out what her real motivations were that her 
deep, heart-stopping beauty had snuck up on him somehow.  But her 
pull on him had been there long before he'd finally had the courage 
to give a name to what he felt.

Originally, he'd hoped to use some moment of incompetence to get 
the little spy out of his basement office.  However, it was 
apparent before they had even gotten to Oregon on that first case 
that that just wasn't going to happen.  Scully had already gone 
through the case files, found the small facts, laced them together 
and had drawn the correct conclusions.  Reluctantly, he'd had to 
acknowledge she was good.  "Better than you thought or better than 
you hoped?" she'd asked him dryly when he'd arrogantly voiced his 
approval to her and he knew right then that getting rid of her 
would be no easy matter.  This one was smart.

Over the next few days, her demeanor was calm, assured, detached, 
and professional--and she'd questioned every move he made.  But 
he'd also discovered something else on that first case; the 
seemingly self-possessed Dr. Scully had a vulnerable side.

He'd discovered that in a way he hadn't expected either.  In the 
middle of a dark rainstorm, shaking, and clutching her robe about 
her, Scully had knocked on his hotel room door and asked him to 
look at the marks she'd found on her lower back.  He'd been 
completely taken aback.  Certainly, part of his surprise came from 
the obvious; his new partner was standing there in her underwear 
asking him to look at her body by candlelight.  It had all the 
makings of a great letter to Penthouse but he'd been so flustered 
that he'd not even had the presence of mind to take close 
inventory; an opportunity lost that he'd long since regretted.

When she'd turned into his arms in relief, the shock of her body 
pressed momentary against his rattled him physically.  But even 
more unnerving was his realization that Scully had honestly been 
very frightened and she'd come to him.  She'd believed that he 
would somehow, someway find a way to help her.  She'd accepted him 
as a partner.  As a rule, he wasn't used to that kind of faith 
being bestowed upon him and the realization she'd placed her trust 
in him like that had pretty much screwed up his resolve to be 
coolly distant to his new partner until he could get rid of her.

The storm and the darkness had somehow been conducive to letting 
down barriers and they'd talked for hours that night.  He'd told 
her of sister, something he'd discussed with almost no one, and 
about how he'd come to find the X-Files.  At one part, he'd paused 
and she'd placed her hand briefly over his arm lying on the bed, 
silently encouraging him.  Or playing him perfectly.  But either 
way, her touch was gentle and he hadn't experienced gentle in a 
long, long time.

Steeling himself against the feeling, he decided that he might as 
well be honest so he even told her that he believed she was being 
used as part of the agenda of conspiracy.  She'd denied it of 
course--any good spy would--but strangely, he'd wanted to believe 
her.

Even more strangely, just a day or so later, he started to believe 
her.

In the middle of the night, in a freezing rain, he and Scully stood 
facing each other over an open grave.  They were wet, tired, cold 
and seemingly at a dead end.  Perhaps encouraged by their talk the 
night before, he suddenly decided that now was the time to blurt 
out his entire theory on the case, including the whole alien 
abduction part.  As he looked into her increasingly incredulous 
face, it was painfully apparent that she thought he was deranged.  
Feeling more disappointment than he'd thought possible, he'd turned 
and walked away, 

But after a moment, something made him look back her way and that's 
when he saw the change in her face.  He saw that in spite of her 
initial instinct to dismiss it, her mind began to process his 
information.  She began speaking; applying the facts she knew to be 
true to his theory as though it was actual possibility, making a 
connection.  Mulder began to shiver, not with the cold, but with 
the excitement of someone finally, finally listening to him.  He 
knew better than to think she would buy into it totally, but just 
to someone give some slight credence to his notions gave him 
physical rush.

As he crossed back to her, suddenly, she'd begun to laugh.  Not at 
him, he realized, but at herself.  She laughed because she'd caught 
herself speculating on his theory as though it was actually a 
possibility.  She'd truly considered the fantastic as a 
plausibility for the first time and that realization that she was 
doing that had so astounded her that she'd broken into wild 
laughter and he'd found himself laughing along with her.

As Scully quieted down, her eyes met his for a moment before she 
looked away.  At that moment, he'd wondered for the first time what 
it would be like to kiss her, what her touch would feel like on his 
skin, how it would feel to be deep within her and have her look up 
into his eyes as he moved over her.  Caught deep in the unexpected 
grip of that thought, he'd even leaned just slightly towards her 
before an uncharacteristic jolt of good sense jerked him back to 
reality.  He'd just stood there looking down at the petite woman 
who was now his partner, the fleeting temptation in his heart gone 
for the moment, but by no means gone for good.

He supposed that because of her slight build and delicate features 
those fools might have discounted her; they might not have fathomed 
the depth of her heart and the strength of her mind.  His 
adversaries in this strange game, intending to use Scully as their 
means of destruction, had actually sent her to him.  Once again, 
Mulder realized that there were no coincidences, for instead of 
assisting in his ruin, she'd become his vindication.  They'd made a 
terrible mistake, Mulder thought, smiling at the delicious irony of 
it.  She validated his life's work with her presence.  

Mulder had never once been ashamed of his beliefs; he didn't care 
what anyone else thought of him personally, except when their own 
prejudices towards him interfered with his own ability to do his 
job.  And he was well aware that Agent Scully had most certainly 
heard ALL the stories before she'd walked in his door.

And indeed, Scully had questioned his motives, his theory, and his 
focus.  She'd challenged what he saw as the truth, even forcing him 
to look at himself through her eyes on occasion.  But in doing so, 
she'd made him realize there was value to hard evidence she 
demanded from him, even as he fought her bitterly on occasion.  And 
over time, and for reasons he still didn't comprehend, she'd become 
a defender of his faith though not a convert herself.  She'd become 
his resolute ally in his search for answers, whether they were 
found through her truth, or his.  And when he faltered, she was his 
formidable champion who protected him from evils both within and 
without.   

"Mulder, I wouldn't put myself on the line for anyone but you," 
she'd said to him once in a simple honest affirmation that he knew 
in his heart was true.  Those words and the knowledge that he was 
no longer alone in this had both rocked him to his core and 
terrified him.  In trusting her, he'd lost his singular edge for 
now he thought in terms of "we" more often than "I."  In allowing 
himself to love her, he'd given her a certain dominion over himself 
now too.  Scully owned him, certainly by soul if not by body yet, 
but if she was aware of that power she never let on, she'd never 
used it to her advantage.  She'd never acted without the reason 
that ruled her mind or the compassion that ruled her heart.  
However, there were times when a look or the tone of her voice made 
him feel that she was aware of his feelings and that she was 
waiting--just like him.

In a lot of ways, his life was really much easier when he'd just 
been a solitary selfish spooky bastard.  Really, he'd managed just 
fine with no one but himself to consider.  But Mulder never lied to 
himself for very long.  He knew he was going to crack.  He wasn't 
sure where or when, but he knew it was going to happen because 
otherwise, he was going to go insane.  Really insane, not just the 
simple insane that everyone already thought he was.

With a sigh, he got up from the bench, tossed the empty coffee cup 
in the trash and continued his northern walk along the bays.


=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-


February 19, 1995
Children's Playground
Alexandria Virginia


Melissa began to rock her swing gently, reaching over and giving 
her sister a push as she had when they were young.  "Hey, I haven't 
done this for a while have you?"

Scully glanced over at her sister and smiled a bit.  "No--one of 
many things I haven't done in a while," she said with no small 
amount of irony.

Melissa laughed softly as she wondered why two of the smartest and 
most intuitive people she knew could actually be so damn dim.  Fate 
was going to have to take a hand because these people needed help.  
She wondered if her sister's belief in the hopelessness of her 
situation was as resolute as she claimed.

"Dana, I think you should ask for a transfer."

Scully brought her swing to a halt, turning to stare at her sister, 
truly in shock.  "What?"  she shook her head as though to clear it, 
"What?"

"From what you just got through saying, Mulder is a mess and he's 
turning you into one.  You have to get out now."

"What is this Melissa, reverse psychology?"  Scully asked with 
quiet anger.

Melissa ignored the challenge.  "If it's as bad as you say, you 
can't live like that.  You're living in twilight."

Scully fell silent.  What Melissa said was true, but she just 
couldn't imagine her life without Mulder in it.  No longer her 
partner, no longer her friend, never her lover.  She wouldn't want 
to live a life where Mulder was just someone she'd send a Christmas 
card to once a year.  The thought of it was draining on her 
emotionally and physically.  "I don't know that I could ever walk 
away."  She admitted quietly.  "I don't know that I could go back 
and live another way."

"Sure you can--you did before you started working with Mulder."

"It was different then, I wasn't..." Scully trailed off.  She 
wasn't what?  She's been about to say, "involved."  However, she 
wasn't "involved" now.  What the hell was she?  She closed her eyes 
a moment.

The last rays of the setting sun glinted off Scully's gold cross 
necklace, catching Melissa's eye.  She reached out and gently 
lifted the tiny symbol of faith to look at it more closely, 
noticing that it fit entirely on the very tip of her index finger.  
Melissa remembered something vaguely from her childhood Sunday 
school days about all that it took for a miracle was faith the size 
of a mustard seed.  Maybe her brilliant sister just didn't get that 
miracles can be born of the heart too.

"You know, it's really amazing that Mulder found this," she said as 
Dana nodded in agreement.  "Mom told me that he'd tried to give it 
to her but that she made him hold on to it.  She thought he'd 
needed it more."

Scully smiled a little wistfully.  "That sounds like Mom."  Her 
mother had always been the finder of lost things, the one to bring 
home the abandoned puppies and the birds with the broken wings.  
Mulder had been no different and her mother had taken to him 
immediately.  Oddly, Mulder seemed to like her mother and he 
allowed her familiarities that he didn't allow others.  Scully 
suspected that in his heart, he was lonely for the ordinary family 
life the Scully's shared as much as he shied away from it.

"Dana," Melissa interrupted her thoughts as she let the cross fall 
gently back to its resting spot, "did you know Mulder wore this 
over his heart when you were gone?"

Scully shook her head slowly not sure what to make of the 
implication of such a seemingly un-Mulder like gesture.  "No.  I 
didn't know that.  How would you have known that?"

"I can tell," she said cryptically.  At Dana's look, she continued 
with a smile, "OK--he also was wearing it when I came to his place 
to ask him to come to the hospital to see you."  Melissa leaned 
forward to look her sister straight in the eye, serious now.  
"Dana, Mulder wants you to love him."

Scully sighed as she shook her head.  "Wearing my cross as a 
remembrance doesn't mean--"

"No," Melissa interrupted firmly.  "It wasn't a remembrance; it was 
faith.  He wore it because  he knew that he was going to place it 
back in your hand, because you two had things left to do, things to 
say to each other."

Scully eyes narrowed with obvious exasperation at her sister's 
optimism.  "And just how the hell would you know all that?"

How indeed, Melissa wondered in frustration.  She just knew.  But 
she also knew that wasn't the kind of answer that her sister could 
accept and she had to try to make her understand.  "Dana, the first 
time I met Fox Mulder was in your hospital room.  He made damn sure 
that I knew that he thought my beliefs are trite and that he was 
going to somehow fix all the problems.  He was obsessed with 
looking at all the tangibles not the intangibles.  Later, we argued 
about whether or not your life support should be terminated as 
you'd requested.  He couldn't even bring himself to be in the room 
when your ventilator was turned off.  He never said a word to Mom 
directly, but he looked at me with such a sense of betrayal."  
Melissa's voice cracked a bit and long-suppressed tears began fall 
silently in long suppressed guilt over her decision.

In shock, Scully reached over and took Melissa's hands in hers.  
"Missy, I've never felt you or Mom betrayed me.  Never.  You did as 
I'd asked you to.  You did nothing wrong, please don't feel you 
did.  Please."  Scully pleaded with her sister, "I can't explain 
why I made it back, but I do know you did nothing to hinder the 
journey.  I believe that in my heart, Melissa.  Please don't carry 
that burden."  Melissa held on to her hands tightly and Scully 
could see Melissa finding her self-forgiveness in the truth in her 
words.

Melissa blinked back and controlled her tears as she raised her 
eyes.  "But Dana, I think I do understand how you made your journey 
back, that's what I'm trying to tell you.  At first, I thought 
Mulder's actions were just a stubborn denial of your wishes or that 
he was on his own macho ego-trip that he could somehow fix 
everything by bringing the men responsible to justice.  But I was 
wrong, it wasn't about him, it was about you.  He was afraid of 
failing you.  He didn't believe he had anything within himself that 
would help you."

She cleared her throat as Scully looked at her with great 
curiosity.  "After your ventilator was turned off and your 
condition began to deteriorate I went Mulder's apartment to tell 
him.  I found him sitting alone in the dark.  He clearly didn't 
want me there.  He seemed to be waiting for someone, I don't know 
for who or what.  Look, I know you don't really believe me when I 
say things like this, but I sensed a heaviness all around him.  He 
wanted to stay in that dark place because he thought he deserved it 
somehow.  A few days earlier, I'd told him that the people who'd 
done this to you would suffer an equal horror.  He looked me 
straight in the eye and said, 'including myself?'  I thought at the 
time that that was such a strange thing for him to say."

Dana closed her eyes a moment, sighing inwardly.  Not so strange at 
all, she thought.  Of course, Mulder would believe her abduction to 
be his responsibility because she wouldn't have even been involved 
in the Duane Barry's case had she not been trying to help him.  One 
more thing for him to shoulder alone.  "Melissa, what happened was 
not Mulder's fault," Scully said adamantly.  She paused, thinking 
about all she knew, all she'd seen and shook her head.  "God, there 
are times when I'm not even really sure it was Duane Barry's 
fault."

"Oh Dana, I know that.  Mom knows that," Melissa assured her.  "But 
something far more insidious than guilt was holding on to Mulder 
that night.  He even refused to come to the hospital and I finally 
just left him sitting there in the dark.  But whatever it was, he 
shook it loose and he came for you that night after all."  Seeing 
Dana's puzzled look, Melissa paused.  "Didn't you know that?"

Scully shook her head slightly.  She'd had so many crazy remnants 
of dreams and visions that she didn't know what was real and what 
wasn't.  So much of it had been so frightening.  When she first 
woke up, she would have sworn that he'd been there the night 
before.  She would have sworn that she'd heard his voice, speaking 
quietly to her, falling silent and then speaking again, the words 
never quite clear but the tone so beckoning, so beguiling.  She'd 
felt his touch, sensed his warmth and strength in the cold of that 
night.

But then again, she would have also have sworn she'd earlier heard 
Fro hike's voice too.  She would have sworn that there'd been a 
nurse Owens who'd looked over her, spoken with her and even kissed 
her on the forehead.  But she been told sternly that there'd been 
no Nurse Owens and feeling foolish, she hadn't asked Mulder or her 
family anymore about the voices she'd heard or what she'd seen in 
her mind. 

Melissa nodded her head in confirmation.  "He was there.  I'd gone 
back to the hospital and found Mom in Dr. Daly's office.  He was 
insisting that she go home, she'd been there for days with no 
sleep, little food.  She refused and went across the hall to the 
ICU but she was back just a moment later.  She said she'd looked in 
and saw that Mulder was there with you.  She said that you'd be 
safe with him and she let me take her home." 

"You wanted to go that night Dana, you were tired of the struggle, 
I could feel that in you."  Melissa gripped her sister's hand and 
Scully nodded slowly in agreement.  "And Mulder could have let you 
go, you know.  It would have been kind to let your suffering stop 
and it would have been easier for him in a way.  He could have 
lived with an idealized memory of you--a nice, safe fantasy of what 
might have been.  But he wanted all the risks and messiness of 
loving someone in real life.  That's exactly what he wants, that's 
why he called you home.

"Mulder moved past his own fear and reached out across mortality 
for you even though it scared him to death that the only thing he 
had to offer you wouldn't be enough.  Dana, you were dying and then 
you weren't.  You might think that coincidence but I don't.  And 
don't give me that crap about him being afraid.  The fact that 
you're here proves that wrong."
   
Scully looked into her sister's eyes at the gentle scolding, 
shaking her head slightly.  "I didn't know Melissa.  I didn't know 
it was true.  I though it was like the other dreams I'd had."

Melissa was silent a moment as she watched her sister first absorb 
and then believe the truth of what she'd been told.  "Dana, even if 
he hasn't figured out a way to act on it yet, I should think that 
should tell you all you need to know about the kind of love he's 
capable of harboring and the risks he's willing to take."

She saw Dana's resistance ebb away as the