From: "Khyber" <khyberpass@mail.geocities.com>
Date: Tue, 16 Jun 1998 20:27:01 -0600
Subject: RESUBMISSION "Reach" by Khyber


Reach

by Khyber

khyberpass@geocities.com



CLASSIFICATION: TRA  (Non-X adventure, Mulder/Scully)


RATING: R for mature content, non-explicit sex, language,

and brief extreme violence.


SYNOPSIS: Mulder and Scully are called off an X-file to an

emergency assignment where they have some time alone

together. Their reflections and thoughts about the events of

the past year lead them both to make certain decisions.


KEYWORDS: Mulder/Scully UST, Mulder/Scully romance


Time/Spoilers: This story essentially starts an alternate

universe after "The Red and the Black." There's loads of

spoilers for everything, and conversely if you haven't seen

US5 plenty of this won't make sense.


Disclaimer: Fox Mulder, Dana Scully, Melissa Scully,

"Emily", and AD Skinner are property of Chris Carter, 1013,

Fox, etc.


Acknowledgements: The biggest thanks to recently promoted SPECIAL

Agent Sabine, my unfailing beta editor, a heckuva writer, and

incidentally one of the most terrifically interesting people I have

even had the good fortune to meet. Sabine is responsible for any part

of this story which makes tense, I mean sense. The very talented

Alanna Baker provided invaluable editing assistance and crucial

feedback on timelines and storylines, as well as reassurance from a

damn fine writer that I was on something resembling the right track.


This story is dedicated to all you 'shippy writers out there who

managed to prove to me that I wasn't completely insane to have these

ideas I've been having!


Availability: Please inform me if you want to archive this story so I

can provide the best version for you. It is also available on the Web

at http://www.geocities.com/athens/academy/8747/khybarchive.html


Feedback: Greatly appreciated! This is my first piece of this length

and in character terms is providing the foundation for more work to

come, so let me know what you think!



Reach

Part 1/6


Agent Dana Scully, FBI forensics instructor, thirty-two

years of age. Dead of a rare form of cancer, so young, such

a shame. And so soon after her father, too.

Mother of a child she never met, also shortly to be

deceased.

Melissa would be there, with Bill's family.

No husband, no boyfriend, friends from the Academy. No

partner.

No Mulder. No quest, no awareness of what has happened to

me. So much less pain, less knowledge. Who would that Dana

be?

Who would her last conscious words have been to? Her sister?

Her mother?

God?

Mine would have been to Mulder, but for Mulder himself who

brought me back.


Congratulations, Dana, you've actually reached a new

morbidity level. By midnight you'll be fantasising about

your own autopsy.


Dana Scully rolled over on the motel bed, onto her stomach.


I've got a new habit now. Dana's Early-Evening Self-

Flagellation, guaranteed to aid digestion. It's less than a

year now, until my thirty-fifth birthday. I have a small

apartment. No car, though I could afford one. I've had sex

once in the seven years since I last made love. Though I had

never considered before the actual fact of bearing a child,

of being a mother, it has been taken from me. The awareness

that that too, is closed to me...


Stop it, Dana, she told herself. Your mantra is the same as

last night, and the night before, and every one for the past

two weeks. And it passes, every night, and nothing is better

and nothing is changed by pushing at it, no matter how hard.

Though doing it in a motel bedroom in North Dakota in your

underwear adds a certain grit to the picture that you don't

normally get in your apartment.


The headboard of the motel bed gave her nothing that could

be categorised as a response. It was as uncommunicative as

the walls of her apartment which steadfastly refused to

accuse, would not encourage tears, and wouldn't press upon

Scully echoes of voices she would never hear again despite

her best efforts to listen. Most evenings her best efforts

at psychic scarification dwindled to a vague feeling of

resignation and a complex, irritating twinge of guilt about

not feeling guilt in the first place.


Dana had never been good at therapy, directed or self-

inflicted. She couldn't accept the randomness of feelings

and the capriciousness of regret, and her evenings, like

this one, were frequently occupied by an attempt to say, I

am going to let myself hurt *now.* Let it begin.


It never worked, of course. Certainly, never as well as one

of Mulder's looks of concern that came during meetings when

eyes met, or looking up from a file over the desk, or when

she turned around and he would be standing just that half-

inch closer than your partner would stand. Then Special

Agent Scully frequently ended up in front of washroom

mirrors, around convenient corners, or out in her parked car

at eleven o'clock in the morning, choking back unwelcome

sobs and digging small, clean nails against porcelain or

vinyl.


And then he would put his hand on my shoulder, or need Dr.

Scully, or bring me a goddamn donut with sprinkles,

whichever was the one thing that would pull me back and

then, dammit, everything would actually be fine for a while.


She didn't know if she was fine right then, hearing the

shower running in Mulder's room. She felt the faint,

satisfied tiredness of a day of searching loading docks and

reading unfamiliar maps, of her partner's mind and hers

pressing against each other until they simultaneously

decided which way to go. In the absence of any great

insight, she was mostly hungry and unable to decide whether

to wear jeans or slacks that evening--and that was going to

have to do for now.


She rolled over again, drawing her knees up in a half-

hearted attempt to do some ab crunches, succeeding only in

sinking into the motel mattress, and trying to focus on the

parts of the past three days that were absolutely hilarious

as opposed to interminably frustrating. It was not yet

firmly established in her mind that Mulder hadn't been

kidding from the start.


**


He had spent nearly six days straight squirrelled in the

office, as Scully wandered around the federal courthouse

drinking burnt-tasting coffee as an expert witness in a year-

old case. He was "getting organised," he said. That seemed

to entail taking out every single folder in the X-files and

finding new and exciting piles to lay them in. When she came

down to the headquarters building at the court's lunch

recess every day, Mulder would have his glasses on, more

often than not a pen behind his ear, and a morning's worth

of Mulder-plans for her brimming behind a slight grin.


"North Dakota, Scully."


"North of South Dakota. Distinguished by cold Arctic boredom

fronts moving down from Canada. How long did it take them to

notice it was missing?"


"Very funny. All we saw last time were missile silos, and

now you're an expert?" Mulder actually seemed almost

disappointed. His submarine sandwich (extra banana peppers)

paused halfway, dripping every dressing available.


"My father's belief was that his kids' love for their

country could be strengthened by long road trips to places

most people want to leave." Scully had decided that just

pulling the falafel out of the collapsing pita with her

fingers was a slightly better bet than keeping it rolled. Do

not tempt Fate with tahineh, and a charcoal blazer that has

a date on the witness stand. "I became quite an authority on

motel playgrounds."


"I know, you told me. But North Dakota? Just because it's

there? Scully, that's so touchingly middle-America."


(When did I tell you that, Mulder? I guess we do have twelve

thousand frequent flyer miles and I don't want to imagine

how many miles of tire rubber behind us together.)


"I guess you went to Disneyland or camp with the rest of the

rich kids?"


"What do you mean, rich kids?"


"Uh, summer house on Martha's Vineyard rich kids?" Scully

elegantly nipped a pickle, marking one point on the cosmic

scoreboard. Mulder was probably winning, but she did have

some good ones on the highlight reel. "So what about North

Dakota?"


"No motel playgrounds, I promise."


Scully had been almost in the mood to pick that one up and

push it a little bit further. The past few days had reminded

her of the best of the past five years she had spent with

Mulder, on a purely personal level. Alone in the office, he

seemed to virtually store up things to tell her and smartass

ways to tell them, and waiting in the courthouse all day

made her just edgy enough to let go and tangle minds with

him. The spring had been unusually kind thus far, and after

Scully roused him out of the basement she and Mulder would

walk to somewhere with a patio for lunch.


And what did you observe, Special Agent Scully? They seemed

comfortable, relaxed. There's definitely something between

them, they seem very, I don't know, intimate. She steals his

French fries, and I think he pays maybe four times out of

five. They laugh sometimes, and tend to stay very close to

each other physically.


There had been two painfully serious weeks in the office

prior to her starting the trial. They were released from

eighteen hours in military police custody when no one could

explain how or why the truck Mulder had been pulled from had

left the base, nor could he explain what he was doing in it.

The drain of the hospital stay and the stress of the

hypnotic regression had tumbled the emotional balances she'd

built for herself since Emily's death.


Naturally, she responded by deciding not to have any

emotions at all.


Her best attempts at cold professionalism were interrupted,

of course, by Mulder the Protector, bringing her things she

didn't ask for (mainly herbal tea by the gallon), giving her

the little questing eye that asked if she felt up to talking

when the office phone was for her, and calling her each

night within seconds of eleven p.m. to see how she was and

to tell her to get some sleep.


His concern irritated her. It made her lose her

concentration.


But it also set off enough secret, hidden crying jags and

wall punches, little broken moments that could heal, that

almost three weeks after she had watched something take

Cassandra Spender away, Dana felt a little light creeping

in.


She'd broken the cycle five nights ago, after her first day

on the trial, by calling Mulder at three-thirty AM with a

sheet of lawyer jokes that had been circulating the

courthouse.


"OK Mulder, what's black and brown and looks good on a

lawyer?"

Thanks, Mulder. I'm back now.

"I dunno."

No problem, Scully.


They talked for nearly an hour, first about the trial and

then whatever direction Mulder's fertile brain chose to

sprout in. After ten minutes, as always in their late-night

communications, their voices dropped to a pillow whisper. If

Scully had turned on the light to answer the phone, she

would put herself in the dark again. Sometimes, when Mulder

was off on a particularly long tangent, she would hover at

the edges of sleep, riding slight waves on the low cadence

of his voice. Dana lay still, listening to Mulder by the

syllable without bothering to collate words until a melody

strung through them.


"Rock-a-bye Scully, in the treetop, when the wind blows, the

cradle will rock..."


Hmmm.? Wonderful fool. I can't believe he's doing this.


"...the cradle will fall..."


"And Mulder will catch her..."


Did I say that or did I think that?


"...Scully?"


said it.


"Have to go be an expert tomorrow, Mulder."


"G'night Scully."


"G'night."


I will worry about this later.


***


They had driven back to the motel in Fargo that afternoon

mostly in silence. Mulder was not as disconsolate as he

often was when a file led to a dead end, or in this case

went absolutely to shit in the most ludicrous and

embarrassing fashion possible. Scully was driving this time,

Mulder with his elbow on the window frame looking out at

dried fields scrapped with thin remnants of snow. The backs

of his nails were tapping gently high on the glass.

     

"Scully?"


"Hm?"


"We have established almost beyond a doubt that no one is

smuggling large, humaniform vegetable pods into North Dakota

from Saskatchewan."


"But Sgt. Preston of Moose Jaw back at the border will call

you if he sees any." Scully tried to contain herself. She

still wasn't exactly certain Mulder didn't have yet one more

bizarre lead up his sleeve, and wasn't going to suddenly

tell her to turn around so they could drive to Moose Jaw. I

should control myself. He has conducted himself in a very

professional fashion under trying circumstances, and has

never deserved less than my utmost respect.


It still wasn't any use.


She remembered the Canadian police officer nodding gravely

as Mulder had tried to explain.


"You know, with leaves. Sort of long. Cigar-shaped. Like a

really big... cabbage..."


Scully's utmost respect for her partner allowed her to

maintain control of the car as they started to pass Fargo's

outlying gas stations, to not bang her head against the

steering wheel, and to refrain from doing anything that

could be defined afterwards as outright whooping.


"I'm sorry, Mulder. I really am. I just need to know

something." Scully regained her composure, dabbing at the

corner of her eye with one gloved finger.


"Scully. I'm hurt." His mouth was carefully level, but she

knew that behind his sunglasses the cycle was starting,

first his eyes, then the corners of his mouth, and then he

would smile.


"What were you thinking?"


It came then, that smile. It was useless denying the little

swell of sensation it gave her, a bell curve strongest in

the bright spectrum of "friendly affection" but with a

statistically significant taper into darker, warmer

frequencies. Scully had discovered that it was far easier to

simply let the wave pass than fight against it, and be glad

she was enough used to it to avoid joining the legion of

helpless moon-faced secretaries, witnesses, and waitresses.

Most days, anyway.


"Mostly just that we hadn't been to North Dakota for a

while..."


**


Dana lowered her legs, feeling her belly tighten as she held

them off the mattress...two...three. The cold pressure under

her naked thigh was her holster, dropped when she had half-

undressed upon returning to the motel. Picked up the dark

weight of her gun, ejected the clip into her hand, feeling

the slight oiliness, and letting it plop noiseless onto the

mattress as she held the weapon in both hands, sighting

along it at a rampaging humaniform vegetable from the depths

of Saskatchewan high on the far wall.


"You have no idea what that's doing to me." He was lolling

in the doorway, wearing Innocent Grin Number Seven, wet

hair, and a surprisingly comfy-looking bathrobe for a

roadside motel in the big empty part of America. Him in his

bathrobe and me in my tee and panties. The gun's probably a

nice touch. The Untouchables, we're not.


"Mulder, knock?"


"Scully, close door?" Mulder sidestepped behind the door

frame, back into his room. She rolled onto her side,

reaching into her suitcase. Put the gun away, Scully Galore.

"Anyway, remember how I said there was nothing interesting

in Fargo?" What did I pack? I hope I brought good socks,

it'll be cold in here later I know. "Scully?"


"Interesting. Fargo. I'm listening." Clever, Dana, the

prairies in April and no warm socks.


"Down the street, `Rudy's Roadhouse', ten cent wings..."


"Sure, whatever, sounds good." Check before you put the bag

in the car next time.


"Maybe a nice, green, leafy pod-person salad?" She heard the

zip on Mulder's garment bag. Well, this is it. He's seen you

in the morning without the filter of afterglow, he's seen

you during chemo, but this is too much. There's the last

vestige of your pride.


"Mulder?"


"Yeah?"


"Can I borrow some socks?"


***


The restaurant looked like someone's dream of a future

franchise operation, with generic pioneer-flavoured objects,

old license plates, and framed ad prints from the 1920s.

Every item on the glossy menu was "signature," "a classic,"

or "our famous," and their cheerleader/waitress seemed to be

operating on the assumption that they were incapable of

enjoying themselves unless she made it irritatingly clear

that she was.


"Did I see a margarita special on your board there?" Dana

had never been a waitress, and lived without sympathy for

them.


"You sure did! Tonight we have our fresh fruit margaritas

on..."


"Great. One, lime." You were going to call me ma'am, weren't

you, you little twerp. Mulder grinned and raised an eyebrow

at her, and Dana noticed the waitress' attention immediately

shift to the attractive `maybe-like-thirty guy with great

eyes.' Mulder decided not to press his luck on the beer

selection, asking for a glass of draft.


"What? I've been off duty since the frozen cabbage truck

this morning, Mulder, and for that alone, I have earned a

margarita."


"I at least tried to stay with it until the thing at the

weigh station, Scully. Where's that persistent scientific

attitude?"


"Waiting for its margarita, and probably another after that.

Where's that keen intuition and judgement that normally

manages to pull grains of significance out of even the most

outrageous cases?"


"Obviously it had a few margaritas itself before coming to

work Wednesday morning. Te-qui-la."


***


She's beautiful when I make her smile.


Mulder let it float for a moment while Scully looked up at

him over her menu. She did look better, Mulder thought, and

the hard, haunted glare that she had raked over him several

times daily since Emily's death hadn't put in any

appearances. Her daughter's death. Maybe her daughter.

Scully had probably figured out sometime yesterday that he

hadn't exactly brought them out here in search of some

urgent alien threat to an unsuspecting human race.

Nonetheless, she hadn't torn into him for wasting their

time, and by this morning seemed to be enjoying herself,

though she wouldn't admit it.


Mulder had long since stopped caring about whether or not he

was wasting the Bureau's time. It seemed, especially since

the incident at the dam, that somewhere behind the screen

important changes had been made. They no longer had to fight

and claw at shadows to get at the truth; it seemed to be

developing a habit of ambushing them in their apartments,

showing up on his desk, and trying to kill them at

disturbingly regular intervals.


The offers of a way out were no longer coming, and Scully

was in just as deep now. Maybe she always has been. If I

leave her behind to go deeper into the maze, they'll just

circle around and get her too.


Twenty hot wings, five teriyaki because Scully had

responsibly chosen a salad (dressing side) with her chicken

burger, and she would be eyeing them.


She did eye them, of course, ate all five, and he ended up

ordering another plateful to go with the third round of

drinks that seemed like a good idea. Mulder was off and

running tonight. He rarely talked about the time he'd spent

in England, but between three beers and little prodding he

was telling a largely pointless but nonetheless entertaining

story about the time some classmates had taken him down to

London for the weekend to break him out of a Phoebe-induced

funk.


Actually, it seemed one other classmate was in a Phoebe-

induced funk as well, adding a certain poignant male bonding

aspect to the adventure.  Dana imagined half-empty-for-the-

eighth-time pint glasses waving in the air to rechristen

Phoebe as `That Bitch.'


"So you did get out a little."


"Well, I mean, whatever you call throwing up on the

Underground I guess, if that counts as getting out. They

stopped dragging me out of the library after that." Scully's

laugh, the deep, full one, was a warm welcome to him. Two

real laughs today, even if I had to convince a Mountie I was

nuts for one and tell a puke story for the other.


There had been a brief space months ago, after Scully's

cancer went into remission, of several evenings like this, a

gradual progression. One night in a motel in Virginia,

watching a movie on cable, both lying on her bed, chins at

the foot. Mulder could not recall, then, any interest in his

life besides the play of blue and white shadows on her

features, strong chin, fine nose, the sweep of cheekbone and

brow around luminous eye. Her turn towards him silenced

everything, as senses changed and narrowed to sight and the

physical sensation of her nearness. A period somewhere

between forty seconds and a decade of  eyes meeting, and

challenge.


I will if you will.


Her cell phone did first, with lab results.

***


Mulder thought it had been normal and understandable for him to

develop the feelings he had for her. It was almost too

normal, even predictable. Of course he would fall in love

with Dana Scully.


She was his best friend, a strong, dazzlingly intelligent

woman, and his near-constant companion.


He was in his late thirties, he had been alone for more than

ten years, and he was closer to her than he had ever been to

anyone in his entire life. They were charmed, saving each

other's lives ten times over. And incidentally, she was

beautiful.


Who the hell *else* would he fall in love with?


And then he had nearly lost her, again. He no longer felt

the security of his belief, that the focus of his life was

some sort of quest or great puzzle with a flying saucer at

the middle, a quest at the end of which everything lost

would be returned in congratulations for his effort.


On a bridge, surrounded by burnt bodies, Mulder had known

for an awful span  of seconds the truth of a life without

her. The simple impossibility of living a tomorrow, a next

day, in a world without Scully.


He was not a man who frequently questioned his priorities,

though it was more for lack of trying than inability.

Disbelief, like belief, was simply a matter of accepting all

possibilities.


But there was the realisation that she could be gone. That

she would not be taken away to some secret facility where he

would always find her or deal for her in the nick of time,

but that she could be just gone, right there in front of

him. Just shot. Just fallen. Just burned.


Just dead.


It had caused him to make certain decisions.


He looked across the table at her, slightly animated and

perhaps vaguely flushed from a third drink, neat finger

tracing in glass-dew on the table, pale eyes mobile yet

never really leaving him. He saw her freckles, without the

careful coverup job she performed for work, only at special

times like this one. Times when if someone he knew happened

along he would stumble over introducing her as Special Agent

Scully, Dana, or just calling her Scully, and he would have

no idea what he meant by any of them.


It would come as a surprise even to the few people who know

Fox Mulder well that he remembered little of his own life.

Every book he had ever read, every article, every file was

there, ranging from abbreviated summaries to entire chapters

with separate annexes for movies and music. The summer of

1978 carried Lord of the Rings the second time and Lenny

Bruce, with only a faint imprint  of Liz Treyhorn's unbound

breasts in the lake or the burnt-oregano taste of a first

joint in Darren's parents' living room. Four years at Oxford

was every term paper including relevant references and

supplemental readings, random paragraphs from skimming the

shelves. Piper's The Violent Deviant and Society, overlaid

with the damp, slightly molding scent of his third-year

quarters which he would not recognise unless he had Piper in

front of him. There were memories, discrete chunks of

important time frequently referenced or retold, but each in

their place.


In the midst of this well-organised, infinitely cross-

referenced institution was the Dana Scully Archive.


It seemed to Mulder sometimes that every single moment of

which he had been consciously aware of Scully swirled near

the centre of his mind in a violent and bewildering array.

Rippling with colour and scent, tied inextricably to

physical and emotional reactions that almost shamed him and

disturbed the vast library. His vivid imagination had left

near-memories there, as well. The metal tang of a silver

stud against his tongue as his mouth closed/would close on

her earlobe, a certain play of tendons and muscles at the

base of her back as she stretched forward slightly...

Moments never truly known, but which had intruded upon his

thoughts so often that they seemed things cherished and

lost.


Scully would know, he thought, that these moments now are

joining the others. Light glowing on a fingernail. A

potentially totally new typology of the way she said his

name, with a slight catch in the middle. Only occurring in

nature thus far with head turned to the side, and a smile.

All these, which his vast network tried and failed to file

away in some coherent order, joining the great, swirling,

chaotic Scully Nebula.


***


"I don't even know why people say they're not drunk. Forget

aliens, denial of human drunkenness is the great lie of our

time, and you, Special Agent Scully, must be exposed."



"Dammit! Ah, there. You're buying, I'm drinking. Words to

live by, Mulder." She managed to get her key into her door.

It's the cold hands, not the four margaritas. Five. No four,

the other one was a vodka special. Not drunk, but a Really

Good Buzz. Mulder was fiddling for his key, turning to his

door.


"My mom's not gonna be home for two hours, Mulder, you can come in

for a while."


Two hours later Dana's Really Good Buzz had subsided into a

drowsy calm. Dana's room had been the venue for a working

dinner last night and her luggage was strewn across her bed

from her search for socks. They had migrated to Mulder's

less cluttered room, never bothering to turn on the lights.

She was laying on his bed, eating ice-machine cubes out of

the glass from the bathroom. Mulder, stretched across the

chair by the room's window, had successfully contained

himself on that topic though she felt up to some suggestive

sparring if he'd made the effort. It was taking what Scully

saw as the more dangerous tack, though. Their conversation

swirled through the dark room like drugged smoke heavy with

the lulling familiarity of each other, with references to

other times, knowledge twisted around experiences only they

could share with only one other. The sense of lying at the

edge of waters untraveled yet warm and welcoming was more

difficult to fight, or hone to a high-wire one could walk,

than the surges of physical desire.


Desire carried its own difficulties. She told herself many

times that her fantasies focused on Mulder simply because

she had no one else to fantasise about, and felt silly

imagining herself on a beach with Sean Connery circa

Highlander. Scully preferred a tinge of reality, but found

it hard to attribute to simple biological need the

elaborate, detailed, yet so plausible imaginings she

sometimes allowed herself now.


"Mulder?"


"Hm? Scully?"


"You asleep?"


"I dunno."


"C'mere, `s your bed anyway. I'll go."


"Don't bother." She hadn't moved anyway, nor even opened her

eyes, laying on her side with the quilt pulled around her

back. The bed weighted and shifted, and she was aware of his

presence, warm and with the scent that she might have years

ago classed as male but now knew only as Mulder.


He lay on his back, an equilibrium of distance between them

which raised questions of neither intimacy nor avoidance. A

half-extended forearm, a short span, if either chose to

reach.


***

(continued)


Reach

by Khyber

Part 2/6


***


Fox Mulder's mind followed a series of programmed responses

as his consciousness gradually began to readjust to the

external. Phone ringing. Location: not couch, bed, motel.

Ringing? Cell phone, small desk in Scully's room adjoining.


The spur of a phone call in the middle of the night was

Scully, trouble, danger, and he felt the involuntary leap

accompanied by a burst of awareness of her that his mind

used to move him. An unusually complex set of circumstances-

-this ringing could not be Scully, stirring beside him with

a disturbed whimper. The modulation of the phone's ring was

strange, and as he stood she had begun to rise as well. Full

awareness, three to four seconds. Both phones ringing,

slightly off tune with each other.


They moved together through the door into Scully's room, she

closer from her side of the bed and slightly in the lead.


"Scully." She answered first, her phone placed neatly beside

her weapon on the bedside table, where she'd had the best

intentions of retiring. Her voice was husky and slightly

cracked from sleep, a tone that gave Mulder almost physical

pleasure on the occasions he had to hear it. Mulder

retrieved his phone from the pocket of his leather jacket

tossed across the desk as Scully turned on the small bedside

lamp. She had said nothing yet, and her eyes were seeking

him out as he opened the small flat of the phone.


"This is Emergency Automated Notification for <<crack>

Federal Bureau of Investigation Authentication date oh-

three, oh-four, ninety-eight Pave Eleven Turncoat

Gray<<crack> This message will be repeated. Upon reciept of

this message, proceed to <<crack> Air Force Base Grand Forks,

Minot, North Dakota <<crack> and await further instructions.

" Scully was slowly lowering the phone, looking at it as if

it had suddenly wriggled.


Mulder knew there was a large folio of authentication codes,

issued every six weeks, somewhere in their office.


"Scully, do you remember what  we're supposed to do with

these things?" It was twenty after four in the morning, and

Mulder felt the urge to simply stomp back through time, as

if he could, to go back to the wrinkled, still made bed,

next to a sleeping Scully still in sweater and jeans. She

would wake in four hours as he came out of the shower, and

he would say he hadn't wanted to wake her. She would be

slightly embarrassed, but relaxed, fighting a small smile

while crinkling her eyes at the light through the east-

facing window. Perhaps he would shut the blinds when he

first rose. They would drive to the small airport,

connecting to Minneapolis. They'd be late getting back to

Washington, maybe they could go for a late dinner.


"No, and... I think we should call the duty desk at

headquarters." Mulder brushed past her into his room as she

spoke, weapon, wallet. "Mulder, something's..." She stepped

into the doorway, tapping the redial button, then stepping

to the phone in her room, clicking the line once, three

times. "The lines out are all dead."


She left a business card on each bed as Mulder started the

car, pulling open the map as he swung out of the parking

lot.


"Scully?"


"Yeah, east, here, this exit."


"You're awake too, right?"


"So far."


"Damn, I was hoping this was your nightmare."


"It's probably some kind of civil defence exercise or

something, Mulder."


"Where they call Bureau agents off assignment? Where the

phones are all dead?" The notification they had received was

not supposed to be selective. It was, as far as Mulder

remembered, supposed to automatically reach all personnel of

a designated service or services within a given area in case

of emergency.


"Okay, maybe it's a nuclear war and the missiles will start

landing in ninety seconds." Mulder looked across at her as

if she had suddenly suggested that they go setting fire to a

few churches.


"Y'know, Scully, even I don't think that's funny."


"Would serve somebody right, though. Here! Colonise this!

Boom." Mulder had to admit he found that at least moderately

funny. Scully's clearing the decks, getting us ready. He

imagined this joining the black jokes of a long line of hard-

jawed Scullys looking out from sentry posts or over the edge

of a trench. He made a show of peering up through the

windshield.


"Well, that's ninety seconds." He looked across at her. "At

least I didn't spend my last night on earth alone."


"Should have let me known it was your last night on Earth,

Mulder, you might have done better than chicken wings and

conversation."


"Well, Scully, if this really is it we've probably got time

for a little paradise by the dashboard light..."


"Bad memories of high school, Mulder. Drive." There we go,

thought Mulder. Got our capes on now. Have no fear, the

Spookys are here. He smoothed the finishing touches on a

hard, brittle wall of concentration.


***


It had become bitterly cold in the past hours, and there was

a new dusting of snow wind-whipping across the highway in

the cone of their headlights.


Dana remembered coming up briefly from sleep, her first

awareness of warmth, then of Mulder's sleeping features in

the faintly orange light from the lights in the motel lot.

She had found no inclination whatsoever to rouse herself

from the bed, to resume her proper place in her room, and

therefore didn't.


After all, nothing had happened.


They were tired, a little drunk, and it wasn't as if they

hadn't dozed off together before. But it had been some time

ago that it happened last, and that last time had not moved

beyond a vague urge in her throat and below her belly to ten

seconds of dizzy planning; how she could have her top off in

one motion, her thighs astride his hips, hands reaching

behind his neck, wanting to share the sudden, fiery,

intoxicating beat of life that lifted her at this strange

moment of half-awareness. She wanted to be there already, to

find herself committed in motion rather than taking that

first step even as she positioned her hand briefly at the

hem of her sweater.


Scully did not, and tried not to, understand. Despite his

place at the centre of the madness that frequently

surrounded them Mulder was often a source of peace, of

balance, and of self-awareness. Dana Scully did not lack

strength, but will and freedom from pain came at a cost.

After several days alone, as days without Mulder generally

were, she would find herself not so much calm as numb. With

a joke, the casual manner in which he showed his deep

respect for her, and even the occasional unguardedly

admiring glance at the sleek lines of her waist or calf,

Mulder was always capable of finding the hints of warmth and

feeling that her strength was not able to completely

extinguish and restore her, reminding her of the richness of

herself even in small things. Scully did not know if he was

consciously aware of the little rebirths he frequently

brought.


She had no idea how long she had been awake, though the

car's clock was telling her that she had picked up her cell

eighteen minutes ago. They had been on the outskirts of

town, and the lights rapidly dimmed.


***


The soldiers stopped them about twenty minutes later.


There was a faint lightening to the east though it was still

more than two hours to sunrise. Two wheeled armoured

vehicles were parked in the ditch, one on either side of the

highway, with spike belts on the road. The one who came to

their car was in his late teens, black, and desperately

scared. He said nothing when Mulder rolled down the window.


"Uh, we're with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, we're

supposed to..." The boy just waved them through, jogging back

to the knot of uniforms. Most were wearing parkas, other

loose, shiny grey-green ponchos. Two pulled aside a section

of the belt, and Mulder drove through slowly, stopping as

another flagged them down. Mulder couldn't see his face, the

voice generic Southern.


"Y'all got a flasher in there, a light?"


"No, it's a rental."


"OK, just go on then, don't stop, keep it about fifty." The

soldier turned around, waving them on and looking back the

way they had came as the belt was dragged back into place.


"Mulder, half those men were wearing chemical suits."


Mulder had the impression that there was a tremendous amount

of activity near the actual runways, literally miles away on

the giant base, and he could hear numerous helicopter

engines. The large sentry party at the main gate waved them

towards the office row. They'd had a cursory ID check and

been relieved of their cell phones, though not their guns,

and shepherded with about two dozen others into a briefing

room. Scully recognised one other FBI agent who seemed to be

with most of a field office staff. There were half as many

chairs as agents, and she and Mulder leaned against the back

wall. A small group of officers in fatigues were meeting

with NCO's at the front.


"We're doing this as quickly as we can because we need you

people to be out in the field as soon as possible. We've got

every federal agent over the state coming in-thanks for

responding so promptly, everybody-and more besides." The

speaker was a medium-sized man in his early fifties in

battle dress. There were two others in standard tactical

black. "I'm Colonel Treve, US Army, this is Major Delahunt

of the Defense Intelligence Agency, and, uh, Major Zhitukin

of the, uh, Russian Federal Security Service." It was

obvious which was which, the American a slim, slightly

balding, distinctly unruffled-looking man and the Russian

shorter, with black hair and a thick torso.


"To get right to the point, four hours ago we had a train

derailment just east of the Washington State border. This

train, under military supervision, was carrying chemical

agents used for research which under the terms of recent

agreements with the Sov. Russian Federation were being

transported to a disposal facility in Kansas."


"For reasons that we're still trying to get a handle on, we

had a total failure of several levels of containment, and we

had a release of a psychoactive chemical agent. I don't

think it's got a name, maybe Major Delahunt knows more about

that than I do. It's non-persistent, will have dispersed to

non-effective quantities by now, but we have reason to

believe that up to four thousand, uh, civilians have been

exposed to significant quantities of the chemical and are

currently suffering its effects. Ah, Major Delahunt."


The slim man in black fatigues stood up. Mulder disliked him

instantly. He looked as if he had been born mouthing the

words "deniability" and "acceptable risk".


"Thank you, sir. What we're dealing with is an experimental

chemical agent that was being used to test defensive

countermeasures. It's psychoactive, it's not directly fatal

or physically harmful except in extremely large dosages.

It's designed to induce certain responses in enemy personnel

as a non-lethal measure. It's never actually been tested on

humans before, so parts of this may be conjecture. In the

concentrations which we can expect people to have been

exposed to, responses are likely to include severe

disorientation, extreme paranoia, schizophrenic behaviour,

possibly vivid hallucinations, extreme aggressiveness, and

alternating lethargy and hyperactivity. The effects are

probably persistent for up to a hundred hours before the

agent starts to break down once introduced into the human

body."


There was a brief murmur among the assembled officers.

Scully glanced across at Mulder. A nerve was jumping at the

back of his jaw, and his teeth were clenched.


"We need to get these people proper assistance and

decontamination before, I'll be honest here, they hurt

themselves or someone else." The Army colonel took over

again.


"Okay, now we're not too far behind the eight-ball at this

point. What we're looking at is having MP and tactical teams

going house to house and farm to farm supported by

helicopters and trucks for evacuation, but we can project

that a lot of these people may well be on the move, most

likely on foot but some may attempt to use vehicles. We're

going to be stationing you folks, and those who come in

after you, out on some of the rural intersections where you

can hopefully make contact with any affected civilians who

may be out and about, so to speak, and call in evac for

them. We're breaking up a grid map right now, and we can get

you on your way out as soon as you're kitted up. Any

questions?"


In any room of two dozen intelligent, motivated

professionals, even at five o'clock on a Saturday morning,

there are bound to be many questions. The biggest one will

be who asks first. Scully's eyes had not left her partner.

Please Mulder, don't.


"Colonel," Damn, she thought.


"Yessir."


"Have the public in unaffected areas been notified?"


"We've only had this situation going now for about five

hours, in the middle of the night, and our biggest problem

is getting warm bodies here fast enough to close off the

area and help these people out. If we raised an alert in

surrounding areas you can bet we'd have clogged roads and a

lot more panicked civilians than we could deal with. Since

we are pretty much assured that no one outside of the

initial dispersion area is in any immediate danger, we're

gonna try and sit on this until we have the immediate

situation with the affected civilians under control. You may

have noticed that we engineered an interruption in telephone

service.  People are going to find out after sunrise, what

with AFV's blocking some highways, but I'm not exactly gonna

call up Geraldo either until we have a better handle on

this."


Mulder hated it when there was a perfectly good answer that

he didn't want to hear. He'd seen enough NRA bumper stickers

in the past two days to imagine a severely disoriented

"patriot" calling up his brother-in-law and saying that

Darth Vader was doing a house-to-house with a bunch of

Libyans. His mind wandered over just how much he was going

to hate the next twenty-four hours as the army officer

talked about communications nodes, grid references, and

available assets.


They followed a corporal out to the vehicle park where

they'd come in, standing in a loose group. Hard sodium

lights cast sharp-edged shadows of men moving boxes and

opening crates, breath drifting in short-lived nimbus. A

master sergeant in an open parka stepped in front of them.


"OK, people, officers, could you pair off and just line up

over here? Pick somebody you like, `s gonna be a long

goddamn day." Scully looked up at Mulder. He was obviously

on a long burn, his eyes darkened.


"C'mon Mulder."


***

(continued)


Reach

by Khyber

Part 3/6


Note: One segment of Part 3 includes elements of my vignette "Say

Goodnight" posted March 19 1998.


***

Most of the officers assembled with them had come in Bureau

or police vehicles. Scully realised they'd lucked out to an

extent when the sergeant checked their ID's and inquired

about their vehicle.


"No radio or anything, just a rental car? Well, looks like

you two just won yourselves one slightly used Humvee.

Corporal! Set these people up with, yeah, whatever, that'll

do. You each gonna have to sign here."


"You guys take American Express?" Mulder could and would

think of worse, and Scully was glad for small mercies.


"Just try to bring it back, sir. Your tax dollars anyway,

right? And here for the rifles."


"What do you mean, rifles?"


"Look, I'm just supposed to issue weapons to all of you."

Mulder nearly tore the chit putting his initials down.


"Your ride is right over there, sir, here's your map,

radio's set up already, stay off the net unless you need

help, we'll be giving you more instructions as we get them

here."


Scully immediately left the passenger seat and clambered

into the back of the vehicle as they headed off the base.

Two automatic rifles. Field first aid kit. Water bottles.

Four day-packs of Meals-Rejected-by-Everyone, which she

hadn't seen since the Academy. Electric heater in the back.

A couple of parkas. Sleeping bag, one.


There was a large army-issue thermos in the box with the

MRE's, and the sailor's daughter thanked an unknown corporal

back at the base. It had been her father's contention that

the Navy ran on coffee more than fuel oil. Someone had been

an enlisted man long enough to know that strong coffee was

more valuable at oh-five-thirty than satellite

reconnaissance. Scully climbed back to the front seat, and

poured Mulder a half cup. He mumbled thanks, and she

switched on the map light.


"Penny for your thoughts, Mulder."


"I just don't... I don't have any idea how to handle this.

This isn't what I do." That was really neither what Dana had

expected or wanted to hear. Come on, Mulder, she thought,

I'm almost nervous when you don't rave.


"We're federal agents, Mulder, we do what they tell us."


"Actually, we usually don't." That sounded a bit better. Not

a Mulder ready for anything, but one with a grip on reality

and nothing else. She'd had a brief, awful flash of him

trying to head straight for the supposed train derailment in

the hopes of finding. something. "I know. You're waiting for

me to go off on one of my spooky tangents."


"The thought had crossed my mind."


"Neither of those guys back at the base struck me as lying,

at least as far as they knew." Sometimes she trusted

Mulder's instincts on these things. The bug, though, the

urgent, almost irrational questioning of any official story,

was absent. And that was strange. "Honestly, Scully?"


"Okay."


"I just have a real bad feeling about this and I want to get

us out of here." Us. There it is again, she thought. When

did things start being about *us*, Mulder? "I don't know,

Scully, liver-fluke men, vampires, el chupacabra. that's

almost, well, it's not normal, but it's what we do. We can

handle that. I don't want to be driving around in a fucking

jeep with automatic rifles. There's just too much to go

wrong, I don't know what's going on."


"Mulder, left here, that one." Scully felt less like wanting

to talk now. Mulder's words had struck a similar doubt in

her as well. We're just foot soldiers here, spear carriers,

happened to be in the area. No mutant cabbages, no zombies,

no doing an autopsy while Mulder heads back to the scene.

Doing a job. Not *our* job.


The road was worse, the truck bouncing, and the map a lousy

photocopy. The transition from last night's comfortable,

dangerous intimacy to this morning's remake of Andromeda

Strain was jarring now that the initial steeling of her

nerves for action had begun to dissipate.


***


"Hey Scully, what do you want dibs on? We got... Ham and

Cheese Omelette. Two, actually. And... Ham and Cheese 

Omelette. Two more. Unless you want to just get crazy and

eat lunch or dinner for breakfast. You think they'll 

check when we get back?"


They'd sat at the intersection until full dawn when Mulder

had suggested that they could drive the gravel roads

dividing the sections of cold, dried pastureland. After

they'd done one bouncing self-defined circuit at ten miles

per hour, the radio crackled to life and told all units to

hold their positions. They were on some kind of open network

with what seemed like about a dozen other units on the same

radio node. Mulder realised he had no idea what number they

were until they deduced from ballpoint markings on the map

that they were probably Unit Four. Three helicopters had

blasted over them in a vee, barely a hundred feet up, about

a half an hour ago. Other than that, they were alone.


Scully was sitting in the driver's seat of the Humvee, one

denim-clad knee pulled up behind the steering column. The

inside of the vehicle in daylight had a faint, permanent

grime. She'd swapped her overcoat for one of the parkas,

which could have swallowed two Scullys easily. It looked as

if she had dropped into a world one-half too large for her.


"Whatever, Mulder." She prefaced it with a half yawn,

blinking widely. He quietly set down the two MRE packs and

looked at her. They were facing north, and the low morning

sun flooded through the passenger side of the vehicle. In

the five years he had known her, and what seemed like the

three or so in which Mulder willingly or unwillingly

memorised every detail of her existence, she had gone from

round and compact to slight, a spare, almost wiry frame with

former curves remaining now only in her breasts and hips.

There was almost no trace of the softness under her chin

anymore, even with her cancer in remission. There were lines

at the corners of her eyes now, a slight coarseness to the

freckled skin across the tops of her cheekbones. Under the

day's light, tired and unguarded by professional sheen, he

saw every one of Scully's thirty-four years, several of

which could fairly be counted as decades in themselves.


This is being a grown-up, then, Mulder. Even in the shortest

and most meaningless dreams, you wouldn't trade her for

anything. One line at the corner of her mouth is worth every

tawny crack-a-walnut pornstar thigh on the planet. So what

are you gonna do about it, Eddie Van Blundht with an H asked

him.


"I think it's cold ham and cheese omelettes. I forgot my GI

Joe action helmet to boil them in. "


"How cold?"


"Not frozen."


"Fine." He slid into the other front seat, opening one of

the foil packets and handing it to her with a plastic fork.


"Mmm, yummy," Mulder said, poking at the yellow-white object

in the pouch. "How do you make eggs last for three years?"


Scully was leaning her head against the window glass on the

far side. Her eyes were pale and empty.


"If you want to sleep, go ahead," Mulder continued. "I'm

sure they'll call if anything important happens. And we're

what, eighteen miles from the nearest affected area? Anyone

driving has gone by already and anyone walking won't be here

for hours."


"No, I shouldn't, two sets of eyes. Besides, people could be

unpredictable. And, Mulder, that sounds like something I'd

say." She sat up straighter, keeping her hands inside the

parka's sleeves. The truck's heater kept off the cold, but

not the chill.


"Have I ever told you how often you're right?"


"Very rarely, Mulder. You do make a point of telling me

*when* I'm right, in your opinion of course. The

acknowledgement that it's a frequent occurrence, however, is

a new one."


Mulder's frantic search for a comeback failed, but Scully's

quick response, and the tone with which it was delivered,

cheered him.


"Oh, and they're not really eggs, either."  Having shared

this with Mulder and considering the options, Scully

carefully folded the top over on the package. "Isn't there

supposed to be some granola-ey stuff in little bags in the

breakfast ones?"


The morning passed into noon, and after. Their radio

crackled once every twenty minutes, the two of them

alternating reports of nothing. Scully did not sleep. The

conversational possibilities of their current duty were

rapidly exhausted when it became clear that they were just

going to be sitting there all day. Despite the unfamiliarity

of the surroundings and situation, Dana felt relaxed. One

more stakeout with Mulder.


They were capable of drifting, part of their awareness

perfectly on their task while they carried on floating, half-

aware conversations. In this case, their task was something

less than immediately demanding. Their light sparring and

jabs rarely appeared at these times. Long stories,

interpretations and reflections of past events shared and

apart, without commentary, passing entire days, weeks to

each other. Two minds continuing a steady, unbidden but

almost instinctive process of entwining.


They had started very tentatively, things that related to

work, to their case, and moved gradually past that. It had

been something of a conscious decision for Scully, a few

weeks after Mulder had found her on her couch with Van

Blundht in Mulder's skin. She knew it had hurt him then, and

when her own natural anger with herself subsided, she began

to allow things to seep through the wall she had built

around her professional relationship with him.


Today Scully was doing most of the talking, though neither

of them was consciously aware of it. She knew Mulder was not

as comfortable. This kind of major "operation", being a

small cog in a large machine, did not agree with Mulder,

even more so when he wasn't certain of what the machine was

supposed to do.


He had studiously avoided everything in the vehicle that

wouldn't be part of their normal routine-the radio, the

maps, and most especially the two rifles racked behind the

seats. He didn't put on one of the army-issue parkas despite

the persistent chill, a civilian in a bomber jacket.


At the same time, Mulder felt Scully's presence, Scully's

words. Scully's presence made it right, made it part of the

life he recognised as his own, their own. He enjoyed, even

cherished, the feeling of being with her as opposed to just

being around her. Mulder knew that the walls she built did

not suddenly collapse, but that small cracks would appear

into which he could insert touch, a word, a look, widening

into a breach he could step through. And then he would find

her, and they would find their way out.


***


I read a story once where time pulled a man away, as

balance, as reaction mass for the engine of history, because

he had never done anything. He stood outside of time as it

rolled around him in all directions, knowing and seeing

everything at once, but never able to go back in because he

had wasted his chance.


The only ones who'd notice if I disappeared are the ones who

are already trying to make it happen.


Except for you, Scully.


But when I call you, you're there. Home, every night. I know

you went to sleep just after midnight, every night, the last

word anyone heard from you my name six hours before.

Goodnight, Mulder. Your mother never calls on Friday because

you might be out, and she'd rather not know that you're not.

I'm not so far sunk into myself as to believe I'm that

unique. I know if there was no Scully, the only one who'd

notice before you miss Easter at Bill's is me.


I'm not even sure why we say goodnight anymore, Scully.


Maybe 7:00, I pulled some more case files and went down to

the cafeteria, the evening shift just taking their first

breaks. I don't really remember what I had for dinner.

Garbage can says tuna salad. I don't like going in there

during the day, because I don't know anyone, and they all

know me. Run away, agents, it's Spooky Mulder, come within

twenty feet and his X-Field will abduct your career. Came

back, finished up the last of the Meighe County notes.

Caught up on some reading. It's twenty past one now, should

go home, close my eyes and catch a few hours, shower, dress,

try to beat you down here so I can think of something good

to say when I see you tomorrow. I keep track, Scully, if I

get a smile out of you before eight-thirty we'll spend at

least one whole uninterrupted hour talking about something

before two.


People don't say goodnight in the middle of a conversation.


I know I love you now, Scully. A therapist would probably

say I'm grabbing onto the last thing in my life that

resembles normal. I know that's not it, because, if

anything, you're the anomaly. I've always lived this way,

Scully. Pre-Scully Mulder looked pretty much like the no-

Scully-right-now Mulder sitting here in the basement, except

the latter is wishing it was Scully-time.


The other therapist might say that loving you is just me

transferring, because you're part of my work, partner and

evidence, all rolled into one convenient and oh-so-firmly-

packed component to pull into the obsession.


I just wish you were here, Scully, and not because I need

your opinion on the last file I read. Just to hear you

shuffling paper around, watch you stretch from the tips of

your toes to your eyes slowly lidding as your lovely head

tilts back.


Maybe go for a run in the dark like we did that night it

started to snow, when we got back your little hands were

cold.


Our feet were soaked from the melt, we came banging into the

office at eleven-thirty at night. You're saying, "God, I'm

freezing" and blowing into your fists. I stand right in

front of you, tiny, tiny shimmers on your lashes, snowflakes

that met Dana Scully and melted with pleasure. I put my

hands around yours, "It's because you've got these little

fingers" and there we were...


***


Reach

by Khyber

Part 4/6


***


"Mulder, what's that?"


They were outside the truck, Scully shielding her eyes with

her hand and looking north. The novelty of using the

binoculars they'd found in the back of the truck to scan the

empty horizon had worn off for both of them after they

discovered that there was absolutely nothing to see even

with visual aids, and they had since alternated sweeps every

ten minutes.


The afternoon had been bored but companionable, broken by

one column of five military trucks that paid them no

attention, two deer sightings, a vague decision to go a

Korean buffet place a few blocks from Scully's after work

this week, and Mulder's declaration that he wished he had a

cigarette. Smoking, after all, is what you're supposed to do

on meaningless guard duty once bitching about the food was

covered.


"What?"


"I hear something." Mulder heard three, six faint pops, then

a low ripping sound. He and Scully were back inside the cab

without speaking, she turning the binoculars north, Mulder

on the radio.


"Unit Four."


"Come in, Unit Four."


"There's uh, gunfire, small arms fire to the north of us."


"Understood, Unit Four, please hold your position."


"Scully, do you see anything?"


"No, no, I don't." Mulder opened the door of the vehicle,

stepping out but staying behind it. He couldn't hear over

the slight whine of the heater fan in the rear. More

gunfire, and Scully slipping out of her door as well,

looking back at him through the truck cab. He checked his

watch. Six minutes and thirty seconds later, the scattered

noises, fading for a time, ceased.


"Unit Four."


"Come in, Unit Four."


"My partner is a doctor. Is medical assistance required?"

Scully heard a steady beat of rotary wings, but saw nothing

despite the lack of anything on the horizon to obscure the

view. Must be flying low, hugging the terrain, she thought.


"Unit Four, hold your position."


"Yes, sir," Mulder snarled. "What the hell is going on

here?" Scully, also back in the cab now, looked in the side

mirror.


"Mulder, let's back in there, the intersection's on kind of

an embankment, I think it's about four feet deep, we'll go

behind it."


***


The sensation of being dug in behind the gravel intersection

did nothing to ease Mulder's nerves. In a way it was worse,

even less like being on a stakeout and more like being in a

war. Most of the Humvee still protruded above the roadway,

but would be less instantly recognisable as a vehicle from a

distance. They were outside it now, Scully prone at the lip

of the embankment with the binoculars, Mulder sitting with

his back against the truck's front wheel.


"I'm starting to have some problems with this chemical

story."


"I would be too if I hadn't seen those troops in chemical

suits at the roadblock last night."


"I mean this is pretty hard-core militia territory, Scully.

Maybe we're just cover for a military operation against

somebody, against American citizens."


"No.I don't think so. It's just way too..." Scully rolled over

and slid down beside him. "It's what my dad or Bill would

call a cluster-fuck if they thought Mom wasn't around. If

you were going to try to do a very clean operation, and a

coverup for it, would you just round up every federal agent

over two states and chuck them out in trucks in the

countryside where they might have ringside seats to Waco

II?"


Scully was right, of course, and Mulder didn't feel like

arguing just for the sake of playing devil's advocate.


There was curling dried grass on the front of her too-large

parka, and Mulder wondered if a little Scully had saluted

her big brother and dutifully ran off to a really, really

important secret guard spot somewhere a long way from him

and his friends.


***


She thought of bodies bursting into flame, and being a dull,

thoughtless ripple in a pool of slack upturned faces when

the demons came to take sacrifice.


Dana could turn cocking her wrist to bring up the top right-

hand corner of the morning paper into an act of hyper-

consciousness, point-seven seconds of directed action and no

memory.


Photographs were opiate, not only content to minutely

consider but glosses of varnish and patterns of light

occupying still more crucial resources that might otherwise

brush for a moment on coffin handles with an unfamiliar

mother's fingers.


Last week she had spent most of one night carefully removing

all the glasses, dishes, jars, bottles, boxes from her

kitchen cupboards, carefully placing them on the counters.

Six glasses here, then these four. The matching saucers will

go here, the singletons here, careful regiments of

domesticity encamped in her kitchen for the night.


The next night, after a day at the courthouse, she bought

shelf paper on the way home, and new blades for the small

hobby knife. At one a.m. the dishes marched back in, taking

up the echelons in which she had laid them the day before

after much consideration, in newly papered barracks that

smelled slightly of ammonia pushed into dark, high corners

with a small brush.


She saw in college, pictures of young women with intricate

patterns on an anorexic thigh or inner arm that carried a

memory of a father's brutal grip, out of sight, carved with

a razor blade. The detail was often astounding.


Mulder could scent it on her, something about that nose. He

would prick her concentration by demanding reponse, or

derailing her with a casual motion.


It was very like Mulder to bring you back, hand you your

identity and the entire awareness of your being like it was

a case file he thought was sort of neat, and then wander off

in search of more comfortable falsehoods to ruin.


The memory of his interventions ruined her best efforts.

Washing her hands, a dozen brush strokes on the side of each

nail, Mulder's voice over her shoulder though it was eleven

at night and he'd already called once and wasn't here.

"Out, damn spot" with that challenge half-smile that wasn't

supposed to be friendly and the tears she had honestly tried

to make after dinner and failed came then.


Damn you, Mulder, she had said looking at her bedroom

ceiling as her stomach still twitched slightly with

remembered sobs. You just never will leave me alone, will

you. But there was one more little piece of hurt looked at,

cried on, and it was a brief feeling of his arms in the

darkness that took her to sleep that night, and even she

could not resent her own dreams.


***


Shadows started to complete the day's turn. Two other units

had reported in groups of civilians. Refugees. Those

affected. They'd been told that they'd be relieved by a

National Guard unit by twenty-one hundred, then nineteen

hundred, then back to twenty-one hundred hours again.


"What are we supposed to do when it gets dark?"


"I don't know. Listen, I guess."


Scully had been right about their assignment thus far. If

there was any sort of conspiracy at work here, it was

devilishly clever, Mulder thought sarcastically, designed to

look just like haphazardly throwing every available federal

agent into the countryside while a more organised response

was developed. He might once have suspected that, but an

overtly public catastrophe that could not help but draw

attention did not seem to fit the increasing pace and

seriousness of the activities of the consortium.


Unless, of course, it's all a distraction for something

else, Mulder thought briefly. But that way lies madness. I

know that now.


 Another small increment of evening crept towards them. When

they left, later this evening, tomorrow, there would be no

trace of their presence. Even now, the wind had pulled away

the last of the tire tracks from the thin snow on the road.


"Scully?"


"Hm?"


"How are you?"


"Bored. Strung out. Wanting a bath."


"No... I meant..."


"Oh..." There was a space then, where Scully considered

collecting her thoughts.


Now I wish I smoked, she thought, just to fill the opening

and provide a focus. I know damn well what you meant. Can't

I deflect things with a one-liner too? Why haven't I been a

zombie, as far as you've seen, for a good ten days now for a

change, you mean?


How am I supposed to tell you that you just being around and

being yourself, not trying to help, wisecracking, eating

your damn seeds, letting me steal your fries, looking at my

butt which you've incidentally seen six days out of seven

for the past four and a half years and still don't seem to

be tired of when you think I don't notice, showing me

pictures of some vapor trail like you found it under a

Christmas tree reminds me that I am, in fact, not dead?

Which, incidentally, you are responsible for as well?


Because I'd have been dead a good two years ago, and you'd

be looking at my file in your basement. `Hagopian. Northern.

Scully. Geez, she was Bureau.'


That I am alive because you went to the wizard's tower and

brought fucking *magic* for me, Mulder?


That not only am I not dead, but that my life is a strange,

horrible, terrifying, wondrous, exciting, important thing in

a way I could never have possibly dreamed it would be?


And that even when you make me angry, it reminds me of who I

really am, and how much of me there really is?


That I could live ten more lives and never reach the heights

and depths I have with you?


And it seems that every time my heart picks up, every time I

smile, every time I run, every time I laugh, every time I

stand outside a closed door that I know I'm going to open,

every time I do something that nobody else but this Dana

Scully could do, Mulder, it's because of us? What we do,

what we are?


Is that what you want me to tell you?


And incidentally Mulder, even though you piss me off at

least three times a day, imagining you drilling me into the

mattress while I scratch your back and bite your lip is much

more fun than camomile tea if I can't get to sleep.


Now you've done it, Dana, it's way too late to just say

you're fine.


"I'm not fine, Mulder. But I think I'm going to be all

right."


Mulder's gaze was steady, rapt, sensing her thoughts.


This is where it's supposed to stop, Mulder, I gave you a

lot there. Stop looking at me with those eyes, Mulder. I

know you care, Mulder, don't flood me with it, because I

don't know what else I could say. Actually, there's lots of

things I could say, but I can't lie to you anymore and I

don't know if I can tell you the truth either.


Scully leaned her head back, against the glass of the

window.


Mulder felt the time between his question and her answer

stretch out, from a pause to a thought to being on the

outside of a long exchange between several facets of Dana.

The space, not retreating to her standard answers, spoke of

how deeply she had considered his question. Faint hisses of

wind through the truck's body slipped through the gaping

silence.


We're supposed to be keeping this vigil out here, Mulder

thought, someone may need us. I just need the time here,

with late snow and gravel roads and no one but us. I have

seen this place inside her, and I want to stay here, and I

don't want to leave it as another isolated moment I won't be

able to forget.


"Mulder?"


"Yeah?"


"How are you?"


The question reflected his gaze, and the slow consideration

snared him as well. It was different than the last night,

and the other nights, there is no tightrope to walk or lines

to press against, and no doors to close at the end.


I don't know why I didn't let it go, thought Dana. I want to

see in him what he saw in me just now, the long answer

reduced to something careful. For all we talk of truth, I

can't tell him everything, not until I know that I won't

lose him for doing it.


"Will you come outside with me?"


"What do you mean, Mulder?"


"I don't want to sit in this damn jeep anymore." Scully had

never known Mulder to stall, and she could see that he was

thinking. He didn't wait for her to respond, leaving the cab

and hoisting himself up to sit on the hood.


"Mulder, is that a good idea?" Sometimes I try to be an FBI

agent, a professional. It strikes me that somewhere in the

Academy they told us about avoiding silhouetting yourself

against the sky. I can feel the wind picking up, plucking at

the corners of my heavy parka.


"Who cares? I don't even know what the fuck I'm doing out

here."


"What are you getting at, Mulder?" Scully's voice did not

carry anger or annoyance. He could be infuriating,

insensitive, and thoughtless, but she knew that he wasn't

simply preparing a tirade against something else he couldn't

change.


"Why don't I just go home and read a book and wait for the

whole damn thing to fall on u... in my lap, Scully? I got what

I wanted, I'm in the centre of the whirlpool now, and all I

know is that there's more to know. What it means is waking

up in the middle of a highway with an MP's gun in my face

and praying the next one they kill isn't you."


That came out wrong, Mulder thought. We had that discussion

well within accepted bounds at the hospital. And for all I

know, she may have felt the very same ache when she saw the

body in my apartment as I did on the bridge.


"Anything else but that, Scully, I just can't... anything but

losing you." Red hair in a body bag and I am alone, and

there is no Scully in the world, and just no reason to

bother.


"And now we're just sitting out here in the... damn it..."

Terrific recovery, Mulder thought. "I just wanted some time,

Scully, some time to just..."


The truck's too tall for me. He extends an arm, on its own,

without moving, and I pull myself up on his strength.


"Mulder?" Scully said softly.


He stirred. It was an unguarded voice, the one he heard on

the phone in the middle of the night, or over a drink, or in

dark motel rooms. A voice with no need to prove its

confidence, softness over quiet strength.


"Is that why we came out here? In search of the Great

Pumpkin of Moose Jaw? The Spookys get away from it all?"

See, Mulder, she thought, I can play this game too. I

learned it from the best.


The natural inclination was to reach out, to touch his hair,

the side of his face with her chilled fingers, and perhaps

somewhere she did.


He takes it better than I do. Mulder doesn't resent being

dragged out of himself. It probably hurts in there. When he

reaches in for me, it hurts to come out. How about we go

halfway, and share a little of each.


"I got a lot of files, Scully. They can't all be winners."

Scully saw him smiling, resigned. She knew more of Fox

Mulder's secrets than he would admit, and she found this one

to be less of a surprise than it would have been proper to

expect. But it would not have been his way, their way, to

give up that easily.


"But a long drive for a cheap margarita."


"That's why they give us expense accounts, Scully."


She knew that Mulder had not intended this, not right now,

and they were still working. There would be another time,

soon, and by then she would decide which of her few

remaining secrets to share. Did I give him that much, she

thought, is he thinking of me right now as I am of him? The

sun was dropping behind Scully, and Mulder spent minutes

that would never leave him watching her cheeks slowly blush

from the cold, and the angle of the setting light change

slightly through stray wisps of her hair. Scully thought

about the vast voids of atoms and molecules, setting spring

sunlight passing through her from behind while Mulder's

love, tentatively imagined and newly allowed, filled and

coloured empty spaces.


***


Reach

by Khyber

Part 5/6


***


Eventually, the radio called them back into the warmer

confines of the truck, time moving again. The evening was

turning a hard, dry cold.


Their conversation started again sporadically, with an oddly

scripted feel to it, as if they knew they were being

listened to, or each word somehow weighed. The moment that

passed between them before would be discussed, on some

level, soon. Denial was rarely possible for Dana any more,

in any situation. Mulder tolerated it only in those he had

no respect for, and the dance they did around her former

favourite coping mechanism had become so well-rehearsed and

sophisticated that it took only seconds of exchanged

glances.


She smiled slightly, not at Mulder's well-constructed

criticism of the place in modern pop culture of a movie he

hadn't seen, but at a thought that struck her with a certain

earthy practicality.


If I'd said one more word than I did, Scully thought, Mulder

would have said a few more, and we would probably be engaged

in a very serious dereliction of our duty right now. And

some moments in your life just should not take place in the

back of a jeep.


Besides, I need a bath first.


"Scully, there." There was a figure about a hundred and

twenty yards away, in the day's last light. It--he, as far

as they could tell-- was walking slowly towards them. Cap,

camouflage jacket, jeans. A rifle loosely held in one hand

at its side. She pulled up the binoculars.


"Mulder, it's a boy, a kid, he's maybe fifteen." They looked

at each other briefly. Mulder tucked his sidearm in the back

of his jeans and opened the door. There was no false

chivalry in the action, they had established many times that

unless he was in the grip of a lead, Mulder's hi-I'm-from-

the-FBI-and-I'm-here-to-help-you was better than hers. He

stood at the side of the vehicle, one foot up on the

embankment, as Scully reached for the radio. "Unit Four."

Nothing.


"Unit Four."


Mulder had stepped up on the road. He was letting the boy

see him clearly, just a tall guy in a dark bomber jacket and

jeans. Scully scrambled quickly to the back of the Humvee.

The automatic rifle was as heavy as she'd remembered from

her last qualification, and the dark metal and plastic was

infused with the deep chill of hours in the partially heated

truck. Mulder looked back and saw her moving. She opened her

door, sliding out low, keeping herself out of the

windshield. Mulder wasn't going anywhere at that point, just

standing a few feet onto the roadbed. He waved. The boy

didn't seem to respond, still walking slowly. Scully wished

she'd brought the binoculars out with her as she held the

rifle low, out of the boy's sight behind the embankment. She

doubted that he had noticed her anyway.


"Hello there!" Mulder's voice was very open. He's good at

this, Scully thought. The figure walking toward them showed

no indication of noting Mulder's greeting, but did seem to

be moving more purposefully in Mulder's direction.


"Ah, I'm a federal agent, I'm with the Federal Bureau of

Investigation." The boy's pace had picked up slightly now.

Scully could almost make out his face, slightly dirty, with

very short hair under the cap. Lean and medium height for

his age, probably a few inches taller than she.


"We're here to help out..." Mulder had taken a few steps

forward. Scully could see now, and she brought the gun into

both hands, just above her hips, edging towards the vehicle.

The boy's face was slack but twisted, dirty. His head was

twitching in small increments, side to side. His stride was

opening up, and he was focused on Mulder. His gun was still

in one hand, a shotgun, rocking back and forth as he moved.

The knees of his jeans and below were crusted with dirt,

stained with something dark.


"Mulder..." Scully looked up at him, her voice low and

cautionary. "I think it's the toxin, Mulder."


Shit, Mulder thought. He was nine feet too far and facing

the wrong way to just leap back into the ditch. The boy was

about forty yards away, and could probably shoot Mulder

effectively first if Mulder drew his sidearm. He backed up

one or two steps.


"Everything's going to be okay. Just stop right there and

put the gun down." Twenty-five yards.


Mulder's hand flew back, fumbling slightly with his heavy

jacket. The boy's shotgun had come up just as Mulder was

leaning forward. He couldn't dive back now with his momentum

going this direction, and threw himself forward, hoping to

roll up into a crouch. Mulder knew without really hearing

the report, just the weird sound of pellets scattering into

the gravel and tinging against the Humvee, that the boy had

fired at him. Pak-pak-pak-pak from above the road. He rolled

right off the front of the embankment, fighting to point

himself in the right direction


Scully realised as she took her finger back that she hadn't

checked if the rifle was on semi or full automatic. The

barrel kicked up as four rounds loosed, reminding Scully

that she was smaller and weaker than she had been as a

trainee. Sick inevitability as she let the gun go across the

hood of the Humvee, throwing herself inside.


Mulder, rolling over, saw the young man throw his arms out

to the sides, gun flying backwards. The boy's head snapped

back and a tremendous, horrible spray arced upwards and over

from his face as he fell straight backwards, head bouncing

loosely on the ground.


Mulder got up, starting to run towards the fallen figure,

halting at Scully's voice behind him.


"Mulder! Call it in, go, go!" She was running towards him,

heavy green aid kit in front of her. He started back towards

the vehicle, their eyes meeting as they passed.


Scully was on her knees, the top shelf of the kit scattered

beside her. There was a high, horrible machine-like buzz

that Mulder realised was coming from the boy. His face was

ruined, jaw and left cheek carried away by Scully's third

round, striking eight inches up from the second wound gaping

under the collarbone, and the first which had smashed the

right hip. The left hand was reaching up, trembling, feet

beating slightly. Scully was tearing open a dressing

package, eyes frantically calculating where to try and

staunch a wound reaching from the eye orbit to the neck.


Comeoncomeoncomeon, Mulder heard her whispering as she

glanced up at him. He skidded down on his knees as well,

coppery blood smell and other things in the air down here.

The boy's horrible sound turned into a damp gurgle, and

Mulder realised then with an odd detachment that he was

witnessing someone drowning in their own blood.


Mulder knew it was far too late, and that the arrival of the

helicopter they'd been promised wasn't going to help. Scully

made one attempt to try to ventilate what was left of the

boy's windpipe, but he was already limp, head lolling. She

fell back, onto her rear, knees and hands covered in blood,

another minute later. Mulder moved once, behind her, his

arms reaching around her waist as she slumped backwards

against him.


"Oh, damn," she breathed. "Oh, damn."


 ***


Scully went off in the chopper with the body. I paced off

the distances, marked the position of the blown shell from

the boy's gun and Scully's expended casings. Then I said

fuck it, and turned the Humvee towards the base, reading the

map in one hand. The drive had been shorter this morning

with Scully. I pulled into the vehicle park we'd left

sixteen hours ago and flashed my ID at everyone who hassled

me as I looked for our car.


"Which way's the hospital, the clinic?"


The soldier-boy had just finished his directions when I spun

away from him, actually screeching the tires. I figured the

hospital was where Scully would be, and she'd know I'd

figure that. I have a sense for hospitals now, and a sense

for Scully.


I see probably two dozen gunshot victims just in the

hallways I go down. Plenty of examples of dementia from mild

to wild.


She wouldn't be in this main room, here, so I look down the

authorised-personnel-only hall. She's still wearing the

parka, hands cleaner but blood on the sleeves, leaning

forward in a foldout chair with her elbows on her knees.


"Scully?" She almost gasps my name as she looks up.

Somewhere else again. Planning how she's going to fold

laundry tomorrow, or examining the ruined tendons of the

boy's face as his breath rasps out through his neck, and

maybe bringing Emily along for the ride either way. I

expected to find her elbow-deep in blood and wounds, the

Dana Scully M.D. I only ever see when I do something to

myself. Either she hasn't offered her services or they

haven't asked.


"Come on, let's go."


"No, I, they might need a statement or something..."


We haven't been debriefed, we haven't been dismissed, and as

far as anyone in charge here knows I'm still out on junction

whatever in a Humvee. But I think I have somewhere more

important to be right now.


"You can fax it to them, they landed a helicopter on top of

the scene anyway. Let's just get the hell out of here."


"Mulder, I..." but she's already moving. I take out my wallet,

hands shaking. I try to give someone who looks like an

officer one of my cards and end up dropping a dozen on the

floor. Again, fuck it. Here, have lotsa cards, I think

there's some of hers in there too. It was two more ID

flashes to the highway.


***


She looked out the window at first, her wonderful eyes

seeing inside, unseeing out, not that there's anything to

see. It's two AM and we're twenty minutes from the first

town out of the quarantine zone and hopefully a motel row. I

could probably drive all the way to Minneapolis or somewhere

to catch a connector right now, but I want to re-establish

reality, of a sort. Our luggage, clothes, are all back in

Fargo somewhere. I didn't want to go back and try to deal

with it, we'll figure it out later. I have more ties.


"Mulder?" I had only heard that tone of voice from her a

very few times. Her sister. Her father. Pendrell. All the

funerals. I reached across to her shoulder, wearing an FBI

jacket from out of the trunk. Something acted before I could

think, and my fingers slipped into her hair, tucking it

behind her ear.


"I know things like this have to happen, Mulder. Some agent,

somewhere, was going to have to do that today." If Scully

cries, she is going to be all right. I would happily spend

the rest of my life wiping her tears, but she wasn't crying

then. Her voice sounded like ashes. "But it didn't have to

be me today, it didn't have to be us today."


"I don't want things to just happen anymore, Mulder. Not

like this. Not when it means nothing, when it's just. I know

there's more. Even when I don't understand, and I don't

remember, I know that it matters..." My hand stayed for a

time, at the back of her neck, feeling the tense structures

slowly loosening as she drifted away


Scully is sleeping now, a half-hour later. I'm beyond tired,

I couldn't sleep if I wanted to right now. There is a faint

luminescence just outside my vision, surrounding us, that I

can't brush away. It's a feeling I have had before, of

destiny rushing wildly out of control. The changes in my,

our quest, if it is a quest anymore, that we are no longer

followers of events but perhaps an epicentre. And that no

one will guide our hands anymore. I felt it today, as

intruders in the world of everyday tragedies, where we no

longer belong and the world is poorer for our being present.


Scully.


I know that everything and yet nothing has changed. I don't

fear the possession of her eyes by Emily's tiny ghost, or

days of cold, tight-lipped efficiency with more makeup

substituting for sleep, even though I know they will come. I

am learning the way to her centre, and I know I can lead her

out from behind the walls.


Does this make me deserve her? No. Is this the least that I

owe her? Yes. Is this a reason she should love me back? No.

Should I expect anything but `that's sweet, Mulder, but

you've fucked up any chance of my ever having a normal life

and the only reason I haven't walked out on this is because

I'm in too far now?' No.


Do I care at this point, as long as she keeps sleeping in

the car with me, pulling me back from the brink, raising

that little eyebrow at my bad jokes, and being the only

thing I know is really true?


Probably not.


"Mulder?"


I look at her. She is curled in the seat, rearranging

herself.


"When I was little, I always felt sorry for the angels. You

had to die to be an angel, and then you had to do everything

God told you for eternity." Her voice is slightly fevered,

half-dreaming.


"I don't want to be an angel, Mulder. I'm the one who got to

live."


Her small hand reaches across the inside of the car, not the

quick, instinctive grasp I saw in her trance weeks ago, but

slow and measured, Scully reaching for me herself. We touch,

and her slim woman's fingers close strongly. Eyes close, her

head nodding off to the side again as she lies almost

crossways across the front seat. The memory stays there this

time, a permanent imprint on my right hand even when she

relaxes completely and I return to the steering wheel.


Motes of light, destiny swirling around waiting for us to

move, me and the angel that got away.


***


She stood silent as Mulder played, paying cash as the

Luders, making a show of bemusement in front of the TV in

the lobby. A bright map, a little red train car broken in

half, small yellow bursts where the Free Eagle Regiment was

being mopped up by BATF and the US Army.


"Can you believe this, honey? Jeez, I hope Wally and the

kids are all right."


The motel was deluged with news stringers heading east, a

guaranteed lead for the next week as soon as the roadblocks

lifted. FBI agents would be a popular attraction. Dana did

not question why he only booked one room. More than any

cover, it just felt right now.


She wasn't going to leave the room to offer interviews with

the cool, professional Special Agent Scully, just back from

the week's disaster. The cool professional had locked

herself in the bathroom for four minutes of knife-thrust

crying jags that ended with her curled on her knees on the

tile, an efficient way of leading into the next two minutes

of dry-heaving. Mulder had enough sense not to bang on the

door and ask if she was okay, at least not immediately. He

waited until he heard water running, Scully dabbing eyes and

cheeks with a motel washcloth.


"Scully?"


"Y-yeah."


"I'm right out here."


And he was right there, with open arms and her name, and

Scully's  nails dug into his shoulder as her tears soaked

his shirt. Tears for a boy in a field with his face missing,

for sisters and daughters, and the thin wall of belief and

alien that held death from her as well. This room, as the

others, failed to accuse her, and her tears were a payment

of respect and remembrance. Things to be carried forever,

their mass joining the bones and sinews that support a life

and replacing the dead weight of pain and regret. Mulder's

arms around Scully, that night, were hope and strength and

the reassurance that she had done all the right she could.


He said nothing, except after a long time when she subsided,

and he lowered her to the bed.


"We'll be all right, Scully."


They slept together again, in a way for the last time,

clothes maintaining bodies' modesty that souls have

abandoned, and were close and silent.


***


Reach

by Khyber

Part 6/6


***


"Agent Mulder, thanks for coming in, have a seat."


Assistant Director Skinner turned back to the phone.


"No, that'll be fine, just let me know. OK."


Skinner put the phone down, first leaning back in his chair,

and then standing. Mulder didn't feel particularly

comfortable sitting down just yet. "There's not going to be

any questions about your actions last weekend. A lot of

things happened no one wants to talk about, most of them

worse than two seconded FBI agents taking off before they

get their DIA debriefing. Your, ah, statements were all

they'll need, apparently. I'm not sure about official

inquiries into Scully's shooting that man." Boy, Mulder

thought. "I know neither Justice nor Reno want to get pulled

into a deathmatch over inquiries with Defence or the Army.

And, one pretty open-and-shut self-defence is the least of

their worries."


"I guess that's good, for Scully, sir."


"Two hundred and four dead." Mulder heard a Marine

lieutenant for a minute, with a warm beer, his first in

three weeks. He suddenly felt very young, and realised how

much Skinner indulged him. The older man was looking out the

window, large arms folded in front of him.


"Mulder, I just want to speak personally here for a minute,

just as somebody who... not as your superior."


Mulder made sort of a noncommittal noise.


"Agent Scully's doing all right?"


"Yeah, she went to see her mother, I think she's planning on

coming back Wednesday."


"Mulder, you and Agent Scully have been through more in the

past two, three years than people should have to go through

in their entire lives, in the line of duty or otherwise."

Skinner turned around, leaning his rampart shoulders against

the plate glass.


"I know that you two are... close."  Now it was Skinner who

was unable to make eye contact, his head canting slightly to

focus on a spot on the floor slightly behind Mulder.


"Sir, I..." The older man cut Mulder off.


"Either way, it's not my business. The two of you... I just

wanted to let you know that if you wanted to take some time,

one, both of you, I'd be more than happy to arrange it.

There's a lot of other opportunities for people with

credentials like yours that might be more..."


"You mean close down the X-files again, sir?" One last try,

huh? If I say no they're going to meet me outside and put a

bullet in the back of my head, be done with it?


"Don't call me `sir', Mulder, I'm not speaking as `sir' to

you right now. The X-files don't mean anything anymore,

Mulder, you two have attracted permanent attention

regardless of what you do from now on. Other agents at your

level who are in the kind of danger you two are would get

transferred to interstate commercial fraud in fucking Iowa

regardless of their personal preference. No questions

asked."


Mulder tried to find his breath. Skinner could do this to

him. He felt like the second wolf in the pack.


"I could sign it right now. I'm an AD of the Bureau. You

could both be seconded to Quantico as instructors by Monday

next week. Immigration liaison in Toronto is open too, not

going to be posted for a month and a three grade pay jump, I

could have either of you in there."


He still hadn't really slept in the two nights since North

Dakota, and had been on the phone with Scully last night,

twice, and the night before, as well. They hadn't discussed

the evening, the night on the road. The need for resolution

hung between them, despite the familiarity of the late-night

conversations. She had said goodnight, and he had said

goodnight, and neither of them hung up the phone. Ten

minutes passed, strange yet pleasant, in each other's

distant presence.


They both laughed softly then, and Mulder was alone on the

couch.


The part of Mulder's mind that normally handled meeting

Skinner babbled to itself at the end of its rope. One

office, on a fourth floor, a secretary. Appointments to

keep. Home at five-thirty. Sit down and read Omni cover to

cover in one go. Remember how to cook, did I used to know?

Season tickets to something, anything. If I want to talk to

Scully at four in the morning, I'll run my hand across her

belly and kiss her where her beautiful hair begins.


And then the sky will open up one night, and they'll take

one of us away.


"Look, Mulder, we've got those professional development

seminars most of the week anyway. Just... think."


Fox Mulder went out to his car, the Bureau's car, and sat in

it for a long time.


****



She has always looked tired, Dana has. Not that it hasn't

been deserved. Doing what I do I have to fill many gaps

myself, but even what I know of Dana would have broken many

people. The cancer. Her sister. Infertility. And I know

there are others, that I will never see except as another

small line around her eyes.


"The resentment you talked about last year, that's.not

really an issue any more?"


"No, that's why it hasn't come up." She never looks at me,

and her eyes are the backs of mirrors. "There was a time...I

felt... pushed. No, bad choice of words. I felt as if every

avenue I went down, whether it was positive or negative, led

to him, and it was... a lack of freedom? As if there was

nothing to be gained except for going on? Part of me wanted

him, but I had no choice in it, and that made me angry."


"What you're saying now sounds very similar, Dana, but your

feelings about it have changed." We're in the depths of it,

now. Not everything has been about him, Dana, but you always

express it in relation to him. But I'm just the therapist. I

don't give answers.


"I don't know. The process of going on, the life I live with

him... I've changed."


She doesn't say his name, which I understand. The pronoun

itself carries a weight I can feel, a "he" of arms and eyes

and time together. If she spoke his name it would draw in

light.


"I felt as if it was wasted. I knew he would support me and

stand with me, but I took it as a given that we were

just... close. We were partners, and we had been through a

great deal together. I know now that I am so important to

him that he doubts and questions things that used to be his

obsessions. Sometimes I think I might be his obsession now."


Her eyes are as blank as always, expression and depth turned

inwards. Looking at her is difficult, deceiving. Small but

not young, fragile with sharp, bitter edges that she is

afraid to sheath. She pulls her knees up on the couch in a

decidedly unprofessional way that I like.


"I no longer want another life than the one I have with him

now. And what it might bring, regardless of what it may

become. It... the possibilities... terrify me, but I know fear,

and fear is the inevitability of the unknown. My life, my

life with him... is about knowing, and trusting, and it is not

inevitable or assured."


"Last week, when, the boy I ...shot. Things will always

happen. And he will still be there, even when it's not his

journey, because he has chosen to make mine his." She

pauses, turning outwards from herself slightly, her voice

with the tone of fact.


"And I know I made the same decision long ago."


I have never spoken this way of my own husband, though

Dana's life and mine have little in common. She speaks of

colours of a spectrum that few will ever see.


"I have ...hurt. So much. And I can always, always, just push

it down, push it away. But it takes more and more of me to

keep everything inside like that, to keep from hurting. He

helps me hurt, and feel, and acknowledge loss and pain and

free that part of myself that it holds. Without him, there

would be nothing left except just living, surviving, staying

conscious."


"Does he know this, Dana?"


"I think he knew it long before I did, though he doesn't

know how to sometimes. He doesn't make it easy. I have to

ask, one way or another. Or I used to have to. I don't know

about now."


"You're not... intimate with each other." Dana smiles. It 

is a woman's smile, a woman of thirty years and some 

beyond, that knows regret and its passing.


Do you love Fox Mulder, Dana?


Yes, I do, of course I do.


How do you love him, Dana?


I don't know. I don't think it matters. I love him in all

ways that I can think of how to love, any way that is real

to me and isn't an abstraction of white dresses and PTA

meetings.


Do you know what you want to do, Dana?


Yes.


***


The consciousness of Scully's-Dana's-his lover's nearness

forced a wedge between the part of Fox Mulder's mind that

was feigning rapt attention to "A Sharp Edge: Human

Resources Recruiting Strategy for the Bureau in the

Millennium" and the part that would normally file away

choice tidbits that he could later use to prove he had

actually attended the seminar. Her shoulder was about five

inches away from his, just within the distance at which even

in complete isolation of all sight, sound, or scent, one

could not but be aware of the presence of another as faint

traceries of forgotten senses intermingled. Instead, Mulder

turned over small, Scully-related concepts, examining them

like he would have thirty years ago an array of perfect,

beautiful cats'-eye marbles. If he were to lean over,

closing his eyes and pressing his lips against her hair she

would smell different than on any other day, as she had

showered at his apartment away from her usual shampoo and

lotions. If, as he did so, he were to pull aside the neck of

her blouse, there would be a small, just-purpling bruise low

on her left collarbone, an exchange of tiny, animal markings

that matched the light, well-manicured scratches on his

lower back and on the front of his thighs. A small, pleased

sound would come from her throat, and she would turn

sideways, her right hand up along his temple to bring his

face to hers.


Is it that simple, Dana thought. The gift of second sight

comes from great sex? The strange illumination her world had

had this morning did not fade as the afternoon wore on. She

felt as if the energy within her could penetrate walls, that

some spy satellite was right now wondering what the hell

that flare was in the Hoover building, of all places.


Normally, she took notes, or at least pretended to, during

mandatory seminars, and this time had gotten as far as

taking out a pen which was now idly clicking in her left

hand. She had pressed at the boundaries, deliberately looked

for a scar to pick at, and found nothing.


This morning, she had awoken in Mulder's--Fox's bed, vaguely

reminiscent of his slipping out a quarter hour prior. He had

scrawled a note on the restaurant receipt from the night

before, and left it next to her.


`Will be right back with breakfast.' Then two inches of

white space, and `I love you.'


She had sat up, conscious of being naked to the light and

air. Scully tried with a practised hand to find a doubt, a

fear to push against, and found none.


Today, everything is different, she told herself as she got

out of bed.


His bed.


I am naked in Mulder's apartment.


Leaving the bathroom door slightly open. Am I inviting him

in, when he returns? Or just letting him know he isn't shut

out?


She fumbled with the shower, and tried to decide which

bottle of shampoo looked newest.


I made love to Mulder last night. Waited for a surge of

fear, some little blade to turn against herself.


Instead, Dana felt a smile rise up.


Twice.


Mulder had lain awake in the early hours, as Dana slept. He

on his back, she almost sprawled across him, head under

chin, cheek against his chest, soft naked breasts pressed on

his abdomen, leg thrown across his thighs. Fine hair and the

pad of her mons against him, humid from their lovemaking.

His forearm fit neatly across her shoulders, and he lightly

stroked her with his fingertips, as if to ensure she was

aware of his presence even asleep. They had surfaced

together, the first time, with tears in their eyes, and held

each other quietly for a few minutes before speaking. Then,

in sleepover whispers and chuckles, they discussed how long

they had wanted to do that, and under what totally

inappropriate circumstances the urge had been strongest. It

was easier that way. We are animals, beautiful seals

swimming in a dark ocean, not the waters themselves. The

deep is beyond words, and cannot describe itself to those

within. Truth understood need not be said. Fox found himself

capable again in short order, and Scully had straddled him

with a purr. Their second union was playful, a celebration

of the shared space of knowing and trusting between them, of

in-jokes and experience, friendship and love between the two

rather than the engulfing, soul-sharing, nameless union of

their first, and it had ended with Dana sliding down beside

him, murmuring his name as she drifted into sleep.


Two days of Professional Development Week had Mulder testy,

unused to dealing with his own colleagues and feeling the

lack of Scully's company as he shuttled from seminar to

seminar. She had called him, to say she was back from her

mother's and she would see him the next day. They had met,

finally, late that afternoon, and Scully had been surprised

and embarrassed at the depth of feeling--many feelings, all

feelings--in her when she saw Mulder at the end of the hall;

at least, until she saw him trying to force a bright, boyish

beam back into his familiar smirk as he immediately headed

towards her.


"Feeling good and developed, Scully?" He wanted to reach

out, run his hand along the side of her beautiful face, ask

her how she was. But he knew he would find out, in her time,

and their language of caring spoke equally well this way.


"Never quite so professionally fulfilled. Special Agent

Mulder, have you ever thought of the exciting possibilities

for personal satisfaction in the Bureau's community outreach

programs?" Mulder shuddered.


"Not yet, I've got that one on Friday. I did decide what to

do when I retire at age 45 though, I'm going to start my own

federal investigative agency and not hire any human

resources counsellors." Mulder started to walk the same

direction she was, easily, obviously glad to share the

clever observations he had been thinking up all day with

her. Wanna walk me home, Mulder? Carry my books?


"Skinner actually has to make a presentation in something

tomorrow. I'm thinking of cutting my seminar to sit in the

back and pop gum. Maybe wear a Walkman and listen to KISS

really loud."


"We could just cut class and go smoke out behind the gym,

Mulder."


"Scully, you cut class to smoke?"


"No, but I wished I had the guts to. You owned KISS

records?"


"Well, one. And one of those cool T-shirts with, y'know,

the white sleeves, too." His hand waved midway down his

forearm. "Hey Scully, what are you doing tonight?"


"I, ah, nothing. I don't know."


"I've been surrounded by real FBI agents all day and I'm

afraid if I go home alone I'll start to think I'm one too.

Wanna grab dinner, rent a movie or something?"


I can think of something to say, I really can. It's time

now, isn't it. Welcome to the rest of my life, Fox Mulder,

and I to yours. I am Dana Scully, but you know that already.


"Yeah, that definitely, yeah, sounds like fun. My VCR is

broken, well, actually, it's fixed, but I haven't picked it

up yet...are you saying I'm not a real FBI agent?"


Mulder's ageing ValMart Special microwave had proven

incapable of popping more than a third of any given bag of

corn. Scully had been debating asking him where she could

find a bowl or just finding out for herself that he didn't

have one in the same way he had eleven forks but only  two

spoons, and eight knives which had all come from completely

different sets.


She was suddenly aware of Mulder's presence, his hip

touching her as he reached up over her head to the highest

shelf for an empty ice-cream bucket. Dana turned, inside the

arc of his height, and he angled his face down to her. She

saw him ready to speak, and met his eyes. Dana's sun burned

suddenly, out onto the unknown richness of the delta their

two rivers had fed. Not barren, heavy with promise, bloom

and beauty there now awaiting only light to come bursting

through, and it suddenly poured out in a silent flood. A

beat of dizzy nearness -those lips, my God, this is it- and

Scully extended herself upwards as Mulder brought his arm

down around her. His hand to her shoulder first, then, by a

few milliseconds, their lips, then her hand on his waist. It

was a soft kiss at first, and a short break -is he going to

say anything- followed by an accommodation of bodies,

lifting her arms around him, pressing herself in closer -do

you feel my breasts, Mulder- and their second kiss as

lovers. Dana's mouth opened as she tilted her head to

receive him, feeling a brush of stubble -a real kiss, so

long I'd forgotten, it's Mulder, God, yes, now, for so long

it could only be you now Mulder- and she felt as if she had

suddenly been pushed forward to mould herself to him, to

slip into any pore or crevice she could find. Her tongue

slipped into his mouth and he found it, not countering her

with a thrust but instead pressing it lightly

against his teeth with his own. -oh Mulder this is going to

be so good




*****

"we are the lost ones, in the company of bright angels"


the end


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