Way Through the Woods - The Collector's Edition by Pellinor and Rebecca Rusnak DISCLAIMER: All characters within this story are property of Chris Carter and Ten Thirteen, with the exception of anyone you don't recognize, in which case, they belong to us. We're not making any money off this, although any offers will be considered. RATING: R for violence CLASSIFICATION: TA (for MulderTorture and both Mulderangst and Scullyangst) SPOILERS: Small ones for Redux II SUMMARY: Three months ago, someone noticed something unusual about Scully. Now, in a desperate attempt to stave off the inevitable, Mulder has disappeared, and Scully's only chance of finding him include an unlikely ally and an untrustworthy informant. As they make their way through the woods, can Mulder and Scully find each other, or is the future lost? AUTHORS' NOTES: See ending of story. THANKS: To Jen Collins for beta reading, and providing moral support during a dry spell. ***** Plink. Plink. Plink. With a groan, he rolled over, eyes blinking under the onslaught of light. Plink. Splash. The voice sounded eerily close, right in his ear, and he sat up with a choked cry, one arm flailing upwards, warding off the blow sure to come. Pain and nausea threatened to lay him low again, but he hung on, grimly fighting. Splash. Slowly his eyes opened, squinting under the light. Plink. Another drop of water fell into the creek, its bubbling current inches from his feet, cramped into boots that were a size too small and pinched his feet. He whirled, eyes widening in terror. Splintery pain pierced his skull, and this time he managed to keep from falling over only by force of will. He threw frantic glances around the clearing, seeing nobody. The voices were only in his head. Her? An interrogatory sound escaped him. Who? The creek drew him forward, crawling painfully on one hand, the other held close to his side. The steel cuff still gleamed around his left wrist, the open end catching on the rocky ground as he pulled himself forward. At the water's edge he lowered his head and drank like an animal. Cold liquid ran down his chin, wetting the shirt he wore, something blue and not his own. None of these clothes were his own, but as the man had said, they were better than nothing. He was grateful just to be alive, to be free. They had been so angry at his resistance, so bent on learning his secrets that they had been willing to do almost anything to retrieve them from behind his silent refusals. Thirst sated, he sat back, wincing as his shoulder protested the sudden movement. He couldn't remember how they'd hurt it--that part was lost in the red mist obscuring his memory--but the arm hung useless at his side, and any attempts to move it brought tears of pain to his eyes. Tell who? And tell her what? Those things were lost in the red mist, too, and it hurt his head to try to remember. Slowly, head down, he got to his feet, eyes closed against the sudden dizziness that threatened to spill him to the ground again. The open cuff hanging from his wrist thumped against his thigh, and he flinched at the touch, nearly losing his precarious balance. Somehow he managed to keep his feet, and finally he raised his head, straining to hear the noises he'd heard last night. There. In the distance, hopefully straight ahead. The hum of cars, trucks, of traffic, of the highway, maybe. Up there lay his salvation; if he could make it to the road, he would be safe. He began moving, walking unsteadily, his feet squelching in the boots that weren't his, wet from his plunge into the creek last night. In the rain and the dark he hadn't been able to see anything, and when he'd stumbled to his knees beside the water, his body had given up the fight, and he'd finally slept. But it was daylight now, and he had to reach the road. He had to tell her. ***** She had felt them closing round her like iron bars on a cage, clanging into place and locking with a harsh metal click. Click. Head high, chin thrust forward, refusing to blink. "No, sir. I don't know where he's gone. No, I'm not covering for him, sir." She had met his steely eyes unflinching, then and so many times since, her hands clenched tight in her lap. Click. And soft evenings with her mother, keeping her hand steady as she helped prepare the dinner. "No, Mom. He's.... out of town. I'm okay. Of course I'm okay." The knife had slammed against the chopping board. Click. "No, Dana." A soft hand on her arm. She paused now, her hand on the door, and steadied herself against the memory of her mother's voice, her mother's touch. "I can't just watch as you do this to yourself, Dana." Three nights ago, now, and her mother had finally turned tear-stained eyes on her. "He hurt you by going. Why can't you admit that? Why are afraid to show it?" A note of anger. "You're building walls against your feelings.... I can almost feel it, Dana. You're shutting everyone out. You're shutting *me* out." "I've got to do my job, Mom." She had had to blink hard, but hadn't broken. "I've got to carry on. You *know* that." Her mother had shaken her head sadly, and turned away. "The Dana I used to know would have carried on, too, but she would have shown how she felt too." A deep sigh. "I love you, Dana, but..... What has happened to you, to make you like this? What, Dana?" She had mouthed his name silently then, and mouthed it again now. And then she had realised. She'd refused to give into the anger, refused to let him have that control over her. Carry on, ignore it, pretend it didn't hurt.... Oh, but it was killing her, freezing her up inside until nothing mattered, nothing could touch her. Even as she had tried to shut him out, he had been controlling her - she had *let* him control her. She turned round and surveyed the empty room, dark, now, and bereft of life, of vibrancy. Once it had possessed both. She tightened her grip on the door handle, and this time she let it hurt. It was a sign that she was feeling again - was living. Grieve, and move on - that's what she would do. Grieve and move on. He had left her. Three months and twelve days ago, he had left her. No letter, this time. No sign, no clue, no explanation.... no blood. She had looked, of course - gone through the motions, worried, and looked for signs of foul play - though, right from the start, she had known with a leaden feeling of acceptance. He had left her. "It's too dangerous, Scully." He had touched her face that afternoon, his fingers warm against her skin. She had been shivering, then - still shaky from the bullet that had so nearly killed her. A second later with her dive, and she would have died instantly. "It's too dangerous for you. It's too dangerous for both of us. This can't go on." He'd swallowed hard, his eyes dark. "I can't let this go on." "I've always known the risks, Mulder." Her hand had closed over his, held it for the slightest instant. "It's okay. *I'm* okay. It's worth it." But he had frowned, and looked away, and two days later he had gone. "Damn you, Mulder." She spoke aloud, now, opening the door, her eyes rigidly ahead. She corrected herself with a start. Scully was the past, now. It was a Mulder name, and Mulder was gone. She locked the door behind her, and the room became a grave. Skinner had sighed with regret as he had signed the order, but there had been no choice. The X-Files were closed. Scully raised her chin and tried to smile, but treacherous tears pricked her eyes. "Damn you, Mulder," she whispered again, wiping her face with a rough hand. For a second she saw a memory of his face, turned to her with a smile as they left the office together, and heard his soft laugh, but she pushed it away harshly. He was the past. It was time to face the future. ******* Walking was hard - harder than he had ever anticipated. Slippery rocks, uneven, and.... The haze again. His vision blurred, clouded, and there were hands there, too - grasping black hands with sharp fingers reaching at him, tangling in his feet, pulling at him. Their nails were razor sharp, tracing red hot slashes of pain over his face, his legs, his hands... Hands? Arm. Arm hurts.... He stopped, and in stopping, swayed, and fell to his knees. The clouds pulsed, loud in his ears, rushing, then faded, faded... The voice again. He tilted his head, listening. Hallucinations? He blinked, struggling hard to focus, and the black fingers were a wall of thorn only. He frowned, struggling to remember. Setting off walking - plodding in a steady rhythm, knowing, somehow, that the only way to stay upright was to enter a state that was beyond thought, beyond awareness of pain. Walking.... How long? He raised his head. A watery sun struggled through the clouds, directly above, now. Three hours? Four? Four hours walking? Each word clear and distinct, and a firm hand on either side of his face, and eyes boring into his. "No." He moaned, rubbing his face with his good arm. His sleeve came away streaked with blood. "I won't...." The woods whispered around him - branches rustling, and birds, and a distant growing rumble. The sound of cars had gone, though, and the murmur of the creek. Tears pricked his eyes, and he knew he had been bad - that he deserved punishment. "Supposed to tell her," he whispered. "Forgot to think. Just walked.... Straight line. I'm sorry..." His head jerked, pain lancing through his skull. The voice? He frowned again. A memory? A real person? He paused, fighting the urge to say it with a mischievous smile..... Telepathy? A flash, then, and he saw a woman smiling fondly, shaking her head disbelievingly, but when he blinked she was gone. He wondered.... And then the sun was blotted out and a dark shadow passed over his face as the rumble grew and grew and became *everything*. Pain swelled inside him, and his thoughts became sluggish. "Helicopter," he whispered at last, finding the right word with almost child-like pride. "Helicopter...." It hovered over the woods, as low as its pilot dared, sweeping, searching... Searching for *him*. Paralysis broke, and he spun to his left, the cuff on his wrist swinging out, sparking in the dim light. The roaring above grew louder as the machine flew his way, and in panic he threw himself downward, hitting the ground with a sick thud. Quick quick, he rolled, feet burrowing under the carpet of dead leaves on the forest floor, pushing his legs under, scooping them on top of his shirt, that deadly shade of blue that would give him away in this forest full of greens and autumn russets. "Helicopter," he panted. "Hide..." Leaves flew around his face, settled on his chest and arms. His shoulder screamed indignation at being treated this way, but he had no time for pain, for thought. There was only fear, stark terror, and, as the air over his head fairly blistered with the sound tearing through it, there came memory... Laughter. It was the clearest recall of that time. Their laughter, as he eagerly gulped at the water offered, the first water he'd seen in hours? days? He moaned helplessly as they took the cup away. "Maybe if you're good..." The cup was wiggled in front of his face, and he was powerless to stop his body from lunging forward, *needing* the contents of that cup. They all erupted in laughter then, even the ones who said nothing, but merely watched as he was beaten. He closed his eyes, let his chin fall forward, and waited for the laughter to subside. Stretched above him were his arms, he supposed, although he'd stopped feeling them long ago. Numb flesh was a mercy, he'd learned, a respite from pain, something to be savored. "What is your real name?" He jerked his eyes open, focused on the man before him. Despite the fear, he was relieved. If they were questioning him, they wanted him alive. They could have just killed him. That he should fear *why* they wanted him alive never occurred to him. He licked dry lips, struggled to gather his wits about him. If he did this right, there was a chance he could still get out of this intact... "I am Special Agent Fox Mulder, with the FBI. I--" A thin baton slammed into his ribs, knocking him sideways, stealing his breath so he could not cry out. "You will answer the question posed to you, and nothing more. Is that understood?" He nodded, tears standing in his eyes, gasping for breath. Over his head pain flared, and he managed to get his feet under him again and stand. "Now, Mr. Special Agent Fox Mulder, who do you work for?" Laughter erupted around the room, and he closed his eyes, not wanting to see their leering faces, their hideous good cheer. But he could not close his ears, and the sound swelled and grew, and covered everything, even the red curtain that dropped over his memory... "...of Investigation!" The scream choked off as a flying twig caught him in the face, and he ducked his head. Leaves and debris swirled around him, sucked into a vortex by the helicopter, dancing in the air over his head. Then the machine was gone, flying off, taking the roar of cruel laughter with it. Shriveled leaves fell through the air, landing on the figure below. They took no note of the cracked whisper it made. "My name is Fox Mulder. I work for the FBI....My name is Fox Mulder. I work..." **** He was still and silent in the deep shadows, watching, waiting - waiting for *her*. "You." Scully exhaled the word like a sigh. No anger, though - not yet. That part of her life was over. "Mulder said you were dead." "You said Mulder was dead." He stepped forward and the light fell onto his face. It seemed more lined, somehow, when seen in the brightness of her hallway, unwreathed, this time, with cigarette smoke. "It seems both reports were exaggerated." She turned her back, reaching into her pocket for her keys. "You have nothing I want to hear. It's over. Your conspiracies and threats.... It's not my life any more." But her voice wavered just a fraction, and she knew she was talking to herself as much as to him. It was so difficult just to walk away. She *couldn't*.... "Agent Scully." Two short steps and he was beside her, his hand intercepting hers. "I'm surprised at you, giving up on Agent Mulder like that - shutting down the X-Files. I thought better of you." She drew in a breath, sharp, like a hiss, and the hand fell back to his side. "He gave up on *me*. *He* shut down the X-Files." Her voice shook and she clenched her fists tight. "What do you think happened?" His voice was mild with feigned casualness. She narrowed her eyes. "I don't know where he is. You can't get any information from me." Then a harsh bitter laugh. She didn't recognise herself, sometimes, since he had gone. "He left, again - ditched me. He said almost as much the day before. He got someone to give him fake ID - or maybe he had it prepared all along, just in case. He could be anywhere." She shook her head sharply, reminding herself of who she was with. "That's nothing you didn't already know," she said, a sharp edge to her voice. His face darkened. A look of contempt, and maybe something else - sadness? Regret? "You disappoint me. *I* know Agent Mulder better." She rounded on him then, feeling the red flush of anger rise in her face. "Better than I did? You *hated* him. You...." "I always respected him, Agent Scully." His anger mirrored hers. "I *died* for him." "Died?" A harsh laugh. Her mind was racing, fighting the urge to cry, to scream, against... against *everything*. And then everything changed again, and he almost smiled. "Died? No." He shook his head slowly. "A figure of speech. They had me shot because they didn't appreciate my protection of Agent Mulder - and you." He shrugged and looked almost coy, embarrassed. "I had.... ways of eluding them." She raised her head, holding his gaze unblinking. "So you're here to tell me we've misjudged you - that you've always been a friend?" She laughed, again not recognising herself. Only three months, and she had changed - embittered and brittle, and cold. "What is it this time? A threat? A price?" Then she broke off, sighing deeply. "It's over. I won't play your games any more. I've done with that life." Doubts were clamouring in her mind, insistent. The man's voice was a surprise, cutting into her thoughts, casual, almost conversational. "My former colleagues haven't got him. They don't know where he is." Haven't got him? She frowned, clutching the key until it dug painfully into her fist. Something flickered and faded, like a small hope, dying. She hadn't.... God, no! She hadn't been hoping, somewhere deep down, that he had been taken? As if it hurt less to think of him in pain somewhere, wanting her, than to think of him happy, without her? She swallowed hard. She could say nothing of this, so she said something - anything. "Former colleagues? You expect me to believe that you've....what? Seen the light? That you want to help?" His eyes darkened. He had seen her falter, taken note of it, but would ignore it, for now. "Former colleagues. Yes." He cleared his throat. "But I am not without my contacts, my influence. I know their concerns, and they do *not* have Mulder." He lowered his eyes, and once again looked awkward, almost shy. "They do, however, have no doubt that *someone* has him." Time froze. She saw a strand of thread loose at his cuff, and the nervous twitch of his fingers that no longer had a cigarette to hold. She saw a scuff mark on the floor, and the lines between his eyes. And she saw Mulder - a flash image of Mulder's face, needing her and scared. "Where?" It was almost a croak. "Who?" He shook his head. "I don't know, Agent Scully." "Where?" She was on his in a second, the gun in her hand, her face turned up to his, eyes like fire. "Where is he?" "Agent Scully." His eyes flashed with anger. "Like I said, I *died* for protecting him. That would mean nothing if I let him die now. I'm telling you what I know - all I know." "Die?" She mouthed the word after him, and the gun fell slowly to her side. "Die?" It was a relief, though, of a sort. It was Mulder in danger, and life clicking back into place. It was fear, and anger, and hope - not the terrible not-life when he'd left her without a word - when the last five years had been nothing. "I suggest you look into your own memory, Agent Scully." He was detached again, and distant, but she could see through it now. "What case were you on before he went? Was he investigating anything else? Where did he go when he left you?" She licked her lips. "He said...." A deep breath. "He said it was too dangerous. He said it couldn't go on. He said he was going to stop it." Then she felt herself blanch - felt it like a physical blow. "Is that it? Did he confront....?" "Like I said, Agent Scully." A firm interruption, as if the man had secrets still. "Do your job. Think. Find clues." He reached into his pocket and pulled out a video tape, handing it to her slowly, reluctantly. "This is in case you still don't believe me." He cleared his throat and once more she got the impression that he was hiding something - *feeling* something. "You might find it disturbing." His footsteps were soft as a whisper as he walked away. She watched him go down the hallway, not trusting him to just walk away, but he did exactly that, and she was left alone, standing in front of her apartment. Absurdly, her first thought was that she must leave here, flee into the night, run away. Without thinking, she whirled to run, squeezing her fists, and the videocassette in her hand let out a plastic squeal. Startled, she looked down at it. Sudden anger flooded her, and she entered her apartment with a sharp twist of the doorknob. Really? How dare he presume to dictate her emotions to her! As if he had not been the one responsible for her sister's death, for Mulder's father's death, for her cancer-- Crouched in front of the VCR, her thoughts broke off cleanly. Her cancer. Mulder's voice, from a hospital room: "I was offered a deal." Was that it? Could it be so simple? Damn him! Could he be so stupid? So blind? Did he think offering himself to them would solve anything? Except the one they had called Cancerman had said his group had no knowledge of Mulder's whereabouts. The videotape was of good quality--no amateurs here. The picture was of a cinderblock cell, six feet by ten feet at most, empty but for a thin blanket in one corner, and a toilet in another. For nearly ten minutes the tape rolled, and nothing happened. Yet Scully was frozen into immobility, her hand on the remote control, her eyes glued to the screen. She stared at the blank walls of the cell and waited. And finally, something happened. A door on the right-hand side of the screen opened up, and two figures walked in. The second one stopped a few feet into the cell, then backed up and closed the door. The first man stood in the middle of the small room, still and unmoving. His back was to the camera, but there was no doubt as to the figure's identity. Haltingly, Mulder moved forward a step. His right arm hung at an awkward angle, and his left hand held the injured limb just above the elbow. He was barefoot, dressed in nondescript gray clothing, and his hair was longer than she remembered. An ugly purple bruise covered the left side of his face, the only side she could see, and for that small mercy, she was grateful. For another ten minutes nothing happened. Mulder continued to stand in the middle of the cell, swaying slightly, saying nothing. In agony, Scully watched and waited. Abruptly the screen went dark. The video was over. Disbelieving, she stared at the screen, willing the picture to come back on. "No," she breathed, barely aware she'd spoken. "No." The tape rolled, and still no image replaced that blank screen. She remained still for the next hour and a half, resolutely clinging to the remote, ready to pounce on anything that looked like a new image. Every now and then a whispered, "no," escaped her, but she was unaware of it. At last static erupted on the screen, and the tape clicked to a halt. "No!" The remote bounced off the TV. **** Warmth. He let out a soft sigh of acceptance, relaxing into the warmth like a swimmer lowering himself into water. Images flashed at the fringes of his consciousness, intangible yet comforting still. Arms holding him close and a low voice singing. A blanket on his shoulders and an anchor as he wept. A cool hand on his brow and a voice murmuring over and over, "It's okay. It's okay, Mulder. It will be okay..." A low moan escaped his throat, and the image faltered, nearly failed, but he clung to it - - and it held, just. He was awake enough to know it wasn't real, but asleep enough to draw comfort from it, to need it. "It's okay. You'll be okay." He stirred again. "Mom?" But the images of that word were steel-grey and cold - so cold. It was not her arms that comforted, and not her voice. Not Mom. Who? He saw her face then, and knew her, and spoke her name aloud in the terrible grief of recognition. "Scully?" His voice choked as he caught the fading image of a dream. "Scully...." Memory faded and he was alone again, instantly awake, but the warmth.... He looked round, wondering. The warmth was still there, and the light. Creamy walls were lit by the flickering of a fire, and there were green fields of landscape pictures, and warm smiles of painted children. He turned his head and saw the soft cushions of a flowered couch, and a woollen blanket was draped across his body. "You're awake." A female voice. Her? Slowly, too slowly, he raised his head, fighting the pain that was in every movement, but the brief spark of hope faded when he saw her. She was tall and grave, with dark hair and nervous hands which she clasped and clasped in front of her, and she watched him across the room from the doorway. "How?" A croak. He cleared his throat, then coughed, and coughed again, helpless in a sudden attack that racked his body, forcing the tears from his eyes. Through it all, he was dimly aware of her still figure, not moving, not helping. "Where?" He whispered, when it released him, scared to speak louder. "How did I get here?" Darkness pressed in through the windows. Darkness. Night already. Dimly, he could remember walking until he was on the other side of awareness, his conscious mind walled up in some tiny corner of his mind that was the only place where there was no pain. And there had been a light.... "You collapsed at our door." Her hand twitched and reached for the door frame, clutching onto it with white knuckles. "My husband and I carried you in - my husband." Those two words repeated with a desperate meaning that he did not understand. "The ambulance is coming. It takes a while to get out here, but it will be here soon. It's on its way." The pain surged then, as if it was only in the moment of safety that he could fully return to his body, to his full awareness. He let out a deep breath, though his breath caught and again he coughed, helpless in the grip of a breath-stealing attack. Words pulsed in his head in the rhythm of his coughs - the words he would say, the passport to warmth and comfort. In a picture, a girl smiled, holding a grey tabby cat in her arms. Her eyes were blue. As he fell silent and took deep painful breaths of air, he knew it was an image that would stay with him always. It was safety. It was her encircling arms, and the soft words that plucked him from the swirling black vortex of the helicopter, from the red haze of pain that blanketed his memory. "Scully...." The word was an idea. It was strength and comfort and protection on the woods when he was hurt. It was a word he could cry to. It was a friend, too - a "she." Maybe soon he would remember the *person*.... Then, serpent-like, a voice crept under the door, freezing him cold. His dark-haired saviour woman had gone, and now she was talking in some other room, her voice different, somehow. It was cold, and it was slashing fingers of tree branches, and it was needle-sharp stabs of pain from the baton.... "Would you use it - the gun? Really?" "Yes." A male voice, low and determined. "If I need to. We have to send him back." He was frozen between breaths, listening. The eyes in the pictures were harsh and cruel, accusing him, asking questions he couldn't answer. "But you saw him. Wherever he's been, he's been badly treated. That arm - it's not a recent injury, I can tell. Are you sure this is right?" He bit his lip, not daring to trust her. Trust was.... Oh, but it was so easy to trust, so necessary. To fall into the soft arms of sleep, beyond pain, and let someone else do the thinking.... "It's the right thing." The male voice surged with anger. "You saw the handcuff. If he's an escaped prisoner, then it's our duty to send him back." "And if he's not?" Cold. A minute ago he would have thought she was supporting him, but now.... He shivered. It was only the coldness, now, in her voice. "Then they'll know that too." There was a dull scrape of metal. "They'll be here soon. They'll make sure he goes back where he came from." It took all the force of his bite to stop a sound of horror escaping from his throat. "I'll use the gun if I have to." He pushed himself to his feet, swaying. The blanket fell to the floor and he spent precious seconds bending down and picking it up, clutching it in his good hand. The fire flickered, warm on his knees, but he could see through it this time. Fire was fear, too. Warmth was only deceit. Dozens of eyes of the walls stared at him accusingly, their hate-filled eyes asking questions he couldn't answer, accusing him. "No...." It was only a silent whisper, but even that he broke off sharply. A harsh blow, a stab of pain, and the room whirled in the black vortex of the helicopter, and the red swirling curtain of memory. "No...." A silent cry in his head. "No. I can't...." Step forward. Step. Step. He focused, calling on the strength that was beyond pain, shutting out the eyes. The window catch was cold and he clung to it, needing it, for a moment, as the only thing that could keep him steady. Outside was the dark and the monsters. Inside was the light and the harsh eyes that wanted to drag him back behind the red curtain to face the fear and pain. Outside was the.... But inside was the fire, and the false comfort, and the serpent-like deceitful promises of help. Inside was people, and people, he knew now, were his enemies. The window opened silently, and no-one came. He threw himself forward, running into the honesty of the monsters in the wood - the darkness that wanted to hurt him but played no tricks. He knew that he would die rather than go back, and people - smiling people - wanted only to send him back. He would live like a fox, hiding, hurting alone. Only *her*.... ****** She could faintly hear their outraged whispers, the thud of fists being slammed into palms. Frohike's voice rose, and the hushing of the other two drowned out his angry words. Scully smiled faintly, then rolled over onto her side. The back room of the Lone Gunmen's office was piled high with paper, videotapes, photographs, old pornographic magazines, and vinyl records. Blushing with embarrassment, Byers had led her to the old sofa there and handed over the cleanest blanket he had been able to scrounge up. They thought she was sleeping, and she let them think that. She had given them the videotape, then asked if she could lay down. The three men had fallen all over themselves in their efforts to fill her request. In truth, though, she had just wanted to be alone. Her mind kept going back to two things, worrying them over and over, like a dog gnawing on a bone. Why had he been using a fake ID? Why had he just stood there, in that video? She didn't have answers for either one. Perhaps the two were connected; more likely, not. Whoever had Mulder, whoever had hurt him and put him in that cell--she did not doubt they knew the truth of his identity. Reluctantly her eyes closed. Sleep had been long in coming for months; maybe she *should* rest, allow her mind to drift. Three months ago. She had been so bewildered when he had suddenly announced they were flying back to DC, ending the case they were on. The easy camaraderie they had shared since her sudden triumph over the cancer had vanished in the space of one hour. "It's too dangerous, Scully." His fingers had grazed her cheek, then he'd pulled back as if burned. "It's too dangerous for you. It's too dangerous for both of us. This can't go on. I can't let this go on." She had replied that she knew the risks, that she was okay, really. She'd taken his hand, the one he'd jerked away from her skin. "It's worth it," she'd said softly. Yet he had looked away, and now she knew that she had said the wrong thing. Now, three long months later, she knew the words she should have said. "What do you mean, *you* can't let this go on?" she should have said. "We're partners, Mulder. We'll do this together." But she had not. She had thought their peace would hold, their easy friendship and relaxed smiles would get them through this, the first rough period they were facing together. A bitter laugh escaped her. She had thought they would get through it together. Tears of anger and self-pity burned her eyes, and she scrubbed at them with her fists, like a child. The blanket Byers had given her was smelly, and she pushed it aside with a disgusted grunt. Had she really thought she could sleep? So they had left the northern California town they had been staying in, and flown across the country. Mulder had sat slumped in the seat beside the window, seeming to sleep. At the time she had suspected he was thinking about the case, but now she knew better. He had really been planning his escape from her. The next morning she had waited for him, and although she wanted now to be able to say she had known he wasn't coming, in truth she hadn't. He was sleeping in, or had gone to Skinner's office, or gotten stuck in traffic, or any number of things. That he had ditched her was the last thing on her mind. Their report on the case, the kidnapping of a supposed psychic was absurdly easy to write, but Mulder had all the receipts, and around lunchtime, attempting to fill out the expense report, she had finally noticed his absence. The tears threatened to fall again, and Scully squeezed her eyes shut. After that, it had all been amazingly predictable. Skinner had been alerted, a team of agents had been dispatched to Mulder's apartment, and she had been left alone. Two weeks later, a depressingly small amount of evidence having been gathered, the search had been called off, by Skinner. Orders from above, he had said, but she had not missed the angry gleam in his eye. The account of an airline clerk, reporting that a man matching Fox Mulder's description, but named "Mark Swift" had bought a plane ticket to Chicago with cash, was summarily dismissed. The gaps in his closet, the missing luggage, all ignored. Nobody seemed to care that Special Agent Fox Mulder had disappeared without a trace. "I care, dammit," Scully muttered. She sat up, knuckling away a defiant tear. In the next room the Lone Gunmen still argued. She had not asked if they had created the fake ID for Mulder. She had not needed to. Their guilt and haste to help her spoke more eloquently than words. "...what to do!" Langly cried, and was instantly hushed. Scully got to her feet, the musty blanket falling to the floor. What to do, indeed. When she walked into the main room, the men fell silent. Three pairs of eyes gazed at her with varying levels of mistrust. Finally, Frohike spoke. Somehow she'd known it would be him. "Agent Scully, sit down. We've got some things to tell you." **** White shrouds and white skin. The pale dead with their holes for eyes surrounded him, and the air was cold - so cold. He shivered, but then a dead finger stroked across the back of his neck and he knew that the shiver had been another touch, and not from any earthly cold. "He's disturbed our rest." The voice was like the wind in bare branches. "What does he deserve?" A skeleton hand closed over his shoulder and ice-cold pain radiated from the touch. "I do believe he may have killed us, too." A flesh-creeping whisper of a laugh. "I'm sure he did. It would be like him." "Cordwood. Cordwood." It was two distinct notes, like a childish chant, and it was chorused by dozens, by hundreds, by a freezing wall of voices. "Cordwood. Cordwood. The dead are stacked like cordwood." The sound was a physical pain, everywhere. "No." He tried to moan, but a hand choked his voice. But he knew what was coming, and knew, too, that it was inevitable. They were going to hurt him, and they were going to kill him. Piles of corpses led to pain - he knew that. They were going to.... "No!" He jerked awake in an instant, but the terror was slow to release its grip on him. Enough of the dream remained - the dank smell of the rotting leaves, and the cold. The association of death hung over the log pile like a miasma, and it was no longer just a shelter from the wind to him. It had reached into his dreams, and imprinted the image of the piled corpses even now on his waking vision. "To maximize space in the mass graves on the battlefield, the dead were piled "like cordwood" in carefully tessellated stacks. Eyewitnesses reported...." His lips moved in something close to wonder. He could see the book as clearly as if it was in front of him. It was a large book with shiny pages and coloured pictures of men in uniforms. A hand - his hand? - was absently fingering an upturned page corner, ready to move on. A memory. He drew in an expectant breath. A memory triggered by the wood pile. He smiled, then laughed aloud, knowing that he was being foolhardy, knowing he was being hysterical. But the *memory*.... Hope sparked inside him. It had terrified him, the first time he had looked into his past and seen only the red haze that obscured everything. It just needed a trigger - a trigger for each memory, and, snapshot-like, they would return. He closed her eyes, trying to see her face. Was *she* the trigger - Scully? When he saw her, when he *told* her. Warned her? He scrabbed at the dirt with his good hand, pushing himself upright. Warned her? She was in danger? Then how could he sleep? How could he....? Corpses. And then he looked straight into another.... dream? Memory? It was almost tangible, and the feelings of that scene reached into his throat, choking him with unshed tears. A woman had been dead at his feet, her fair hair framing her face. One hand had been stretched out, palm upwards, as if pleading. He had seen her alive, the previous day, and knew that her eyes had been blue and her face had looked as if she had smiled, before. None of them had smiled in *that* place, of course. He had crouched beside her, taking her hand in his, feeling the faintest ghost of warmth remaining. Not long dead, her and the others. A dozen of them, killed in an instant, their unblemished corpses clustered together as if, even in death, they had sought the comfort of their own kind. He was not their kind, and Scully.... "No." He had whispered his denial, tears in his eyes. "Not like this. It wasn't meant to be like this." He had barely looked up when the light had fallen on his face, and the cool air from outside. Their shadows fell over him, one, two, three, and more still. Their faces were like thunder and their faces had been deadly with cold fury. "It was you." The leader had spoken, half raising his gun and then lowering it. "You did this." He'd clutched the woman's hand closer, grief clouding his awareness of the game he had been playing. He had seen a bit of Scully in all of them, of course. "I swore loyalty," he murmured. "It wasn't me. I found them." He'd raised his eyes, defiantly, forgetting all pretence. "You killed them, all of you, and you know it. *You* got them into this. It was never their choice." "What did you do?" Again the half-aim of the gun. They had been scared of him, their fear more obvious than they would have wanted. "Did you let the killer in? Did you do it yourself? Is that why you came here, deceived us?" There had been genuine loss in their eyes, but not grief - never grief. The dead had not been human to them, and their loss was like the loss of a car or a piece of jewellery - possessions only. He had sighed wearily, knowing what was coming. He had been unarmed, not yet trusted with a gun, kneeling on the floor before their guns and their brutality. Soft scrapings behind him told him one of them was circling around, but he didn't bother to acknowledge the man's presence. "Answer us!" Fear and anger had made the voice tremble, and Mulder gazed at the speaker. He had no words to defend himself, and anything he said would be used against him. Slowly he began getting to his feet, watching the way the others all quailed from him, the guns in their hands forgotten. The noises behind him intensified, and he had whirled, fists coming up instinctively, FBI training leaping into action. He had manhandled his attacker to the ground, but by then it was too late. "He's faking!" The cry had gone up, and they were on him before he could even back away from the fallen man. The memory faded into black overlaid with red, and he jerked, his injured shoulder brushing a stick of wood. With a hissing intake of breath, he carefully scooted away from the jutting limb. He could not stay here. Sooner or later the occupants of this small house would come out to their woodpile, seeking fuel for their fire, and find him. He could not afford to let that happen. Moving slowly, painfully, he got to his feet and stood still until the world stopped spinning dizzily. Left hand clutching his arm, he started walking. He did not look back. ***** 46th St. New York City Power, the Englishman reflected, had its benefits. Having others fetch and carry for you could be addictive, and he was in danger of becoming quite lazy these days. He sipped from the brandy that a subordinate had brought him, then laid it down on a coaster on the mahogany desk he sat behind. Through narrowed eyes he gazed at the man standing in front of him. The other man was nervous but tried hard not to show it. Fine beads of sweat misted his brow. At the Englishman's continued silence, he finally spoke. "I'll catch a flight to California, head out there again. I'm sure I can pick up his trail." "Are you?" the man with shapely hands said. The light tone of his voice did not betray his inner rage. As much as he had disliked his now deceased colleague, the one with a lit Morley never far from one wrinkled hand, the Englishman had to admit that the man had had his uses. Blame, for one. When something went wrong, it was always easy to pin it on the smoker. But the man had had other knowledge, too, useful knowledge. Knowledge about Fox Mulder, for instance, who was a continual irritation to the consortium the Englishman belonged to. With the smoking man dead, they had been forced to scramble about for information, and now the FBI agent had slipped through their fingers. "Tell me again how you lost this man," he invited. The man who was psychic glanced around. He was aware, of course, of the Englishman's anger, but unsure what his fate was to be. Another product of an unholy government experiment, he owed his life to men like the well-manicured man. Not to mention his sizable bank account. "When the order came across, I acted swiftly, striking the others down. He must have been nearby, because he found the bodies quickly. I would have been able to get to him, too, but the others came in and found him." The man with the ability to kill with his mind dropped his head, an incongruous act coming from a trained assassin. "They think Mulder did it, killed those men." "Yes, I'm sure they do," the Englishman purred. "And you, of course, did not stay long enough to be fingered as the actual guilty party?" "No, sir." The man hesitated. "Nobody told me I was to stay, though. I didn't know--" "I should think a man of your talents wouldn't have to be *told* everything." Pale eyes bored into those of the man across the desk. "No, sir," the man mumbled. The Englishman steepled his long fingers together, leaned forward. "Now, let's find a way to put your talent to use again, shall we?" **** Dulles hummed with its usual activity, and Scully squinted against a headache, gazing at the bank of pay phones with a weary eye. They beckoned, their blank mouthpieces begging her to speak, to tell what she had learned. But silence had become a part of her during these last months, and it was an effort to pull out her cell phone and dial. "Hello." He sounded irritated at being interrupted at home, and she could not blame him. "Assistant Director Skinner." "Agent Scully. What do you want?" The cool tones of his voice thawed a bit, but only slightly. "I wanted to let you know my course of action, sir." She fell silent, watching people as they walked through the terminal. "Course of action concerning what?" "Concerning Agent Mulder, sir." She took a deep breath and continued. "Earlier this evening I was approached, by a man I do not trust. He gave me evidence concerning Agent Mulder's whereabouts, and possibly his current condition." "Which is?" Skinner prompted. "I believe Agent Mulder is being held against his will, sir." She shut her eyes, and the images from the videotape instantly began playing on the screen of closed eyelids. He had just stood there, making no move to check his surroundings, or to defend himself... "...Scully?" The AD sounded impatient, and she had to mentally shake herself. "Yes, sir. I spoke tonight with some friends of Agent Mulder's. They told me that he is in California, pursuing a lead he received about the last case he and I investigated." "Why are you just finding this out now?" Scully sighed. "For reasons of his own, which I do not know, Agent Mulder specifically instructed these friends not to inform me of his location. Apparently, he was afraid of his identity being discovered if he were to be contacted by me or anyone else." Skinner was silent, digesting this. "Are you telling me that Agent Mulder is on an undercover operation? One of his own design?" "Yes, sir, that is what I am saying." "You think the operation went bad." It was not a question. "Yes, sir." A long pause stretched out, and Scully reached up to rub her neck. God, she was tired. "Contact the Bureau office in Sacramento when you get there," Skinner instructed. "I'll let them know you're coming." She let out a pent-up breath she hadn't realized she was holding. "Thank you, sir." **** A dozen bodies, and he was inches from them. Unmoving, he stared down at the toes of his boots, resting at the very edge of the freshly turned earth that marked the grave - that and the grisly odor that rose from under that newly turned soil. *These* dead had been granted no monument, no epitaph. Steve Carroll blinked, feeling the movement of his eyelids force a pricking moisture from his eyes. Cold wind, he told himself. Cold wind and dirt in the air. Nothing more. He wasn't growing soft. "Damn you, Mulder," he muttered, aloud. "Damn you. Getting me into this...." Behind him, the low buildings of the compound sat, grey and deserted. The very stones radiated sadness, as if they had absorbed the years of misery of the people who were now buried at his feet. He started, jumping back as if the soil of the grave was acid, eating through his boots. Just his conscience.... probably. The dead had possessed.... powers - he knew that. Powers of the mind. He had never been trusted enough to know exactly what, nor how the exercise of those powers wrung them dry of any real life, of any real humanity. He had been a..... He swallowed hard, knowing that now was the time for honesty. A dozen people had died, and Mulder too, perhaps, and he could have stopped them all, had he been strong enough to be honest before - to tell someone. Honesty. Okay, then. He braced himself against the admission. He had been a brainless thug only, not knowing the cause, merely bringing in the recruits - the conscripts, rather - and keeping them there. "But I wanted it to stop." Again, he spoke aloud, needing some defence from the recrimination. "I told Mulder. I helped him go undercover. We were going to stop this, together. And then someone killed them...." "No." A low moan in his throat. "I can't...." The stench from the hole assailed his nostrils, and he breathed it in, accepting it as penance. The papers crackled in his pocket - notebooks and reports covered in Mulder's hurried writing. "If you get out and I don't," Mulder had hissed, only hours before the end. "Take all these with you. It's all evidence. Take it to this address." An address on a small battered card. "They're.... friends. Tell them not to tell Scully. Remember that. You *know* the danger Scully is in if she comes here." He had nodded, taking the reports, not knowing then that someone - who? - had been planning murder. Barely an hour later, and he had run - run from the death groans and the thud of falling bodies - run and waited, waited. Mulder had never appeared. The grave. He wrenched his gaze back to the two-month-old grave, wondering if there were thirteen bodies in there rather than twelve. They would have hurt him before they had let him die - he knew their methods, and their disposition. He fingered the pages again, and the cool paper felt like fire, the bound journals weighting down his pocket like a stone. Two months he had carried them, not knowing what to do. Two months.... "But I was part of it." His voice had risen with anguish, then he had hushed it, knowing others could be listening. "If I go to the authorities with this, they'll put *me* away too." Mulder had looked at him for a long time. his eyes had seemed to say, but when he'd spoken it had simply been to say, "I'll speak for you. I'll tell them how you helped me." But Mulder was gone, and he was scared - so scared. Two months now, and he had held onto the journals, and not spoken. "Oh God." This time, as he cried to a being he no longer believed in, he made no attempt to stop the moisture that trickled from his eyes. "I don't know what to do." ****** "I suggest you look into your own memory, Agent Scully. What case were you on before he went?" Words of a man she would always have called her enemy, but they were all she had to go on. The Lone Gunmen had told her so little - had, she was fairly sure, *known* so little. She knew for a fact that she would never forgive them if they were still hiding anything. Already, she wondered if she would ever forgive Mulder. Oh, she would look for him, worry about him, die inside if she failed to find him, but it didn't change anything. He had *left* her. "Mulder said it was too dangerous for you." Frohike had looked at his feet, as she wondered now if he had opposed Mulder on this, three months previously. "There was some danger specifically aimed at you - I don't know what. He said...." An awkward cough. "He said he would rather you live hating him, than die because he didn't try." "And he didn't respect me enough to give me the choice?" Her voice had risen with an anger that included the men who had covered for him, lied for him. "He didn't even need to tell me where he was going - just *something* - something to show he was okay. Why didn't you tell me?" "We were going to." The three men exchanged a look, and she had seen guilt there. "He said he wasn't sure if he could get messages out from where he was going, but...." Frohike shrugged helplessly. "We haven't heard from him in over two months. We.... We didn't know what to do. We'd *promised*...." She'd sighed deeply, and fingered her gun, knowing then that her resentment at the three men, her resentment at Mulder, would have to wait. For now, her only enemies were the men who had hurt Mulder. Her anger, her hurt, had no place in this - no place at all. "But I know now, don't I?" Her voice had been weary, unable to feel any hope. The men's faces had already told her that they knew too little. "What do you know about where he went?" Frohike had opened his mouth, then shut it again, appealing to the others for help. Byers stepped out of the shadows, his face like someone breaking bad news to a bereaved relative. "He didn't say," he murmured. "It was something to do with the last case you were on - a kidnapping of someone who had psychic powers?" She had nodded impatiently, deciding not to take issue with the statement of Mulder's wild theory as if it was fact . "Yes," she said, abruptly, "but the victim was found. She was returned safely." "Mulder didn't seem to think so." Byers had spread his hands, as if indicating that he had no secrets. "He said he'd reason to believe that this kidnapping was only one of many. He said he'd found out where all the victims were being held prisoner. He planned to infiltrate this operation and bring them down." His hand had been shaking, and his eyes had been dark with reluctance. She'd known it had cost him to cause her pain. "It was very important to him. He felt it very personally." She had raised her head defiantly, though trembling inside. "Where?" she'd asked, simply - the most important question - indeed, the *only* important question. She'd clenched her fists tight. "Where did he go?" Byers had looked desperate. The silence had dragged on, terrible and painful. At last he had spoken, his voice barely audible. "We don't know." So she was back, now, following the words of advice from a man whose voice was redolent of treachery. Eight o'clock. It was time. Cars moved in the morning light, and there was movement, now, in the house. She shut her car door behind her and straightened her clothes, rumpled from her long wait. She had flown overnight, and then fought to urge to claim urgent police business and knock on the door, regardless of the time. The hours had dragged as she had sat in the dark, waiting for the time to begin. The victim, Kate Matthews. She walked up the path, remembering how this woman's disappearance had started it all - a case that, for three months, she had thought over and completed, all within one day. Friends had spoken, their stories small enough in themselves but enough to convince Mulder that the woman was psychic - that her disappearance was linked to a string of others over the years across the state. But the woman had been found, wandering confused but uninjured on the fringes of the woods. "Drugs, perhaps, or drink. Not a kidnap. She always was weird," a police officer had muttered as they had loaded her into the ambulance, giving her the customary check-up just for safety's sake. "This is not a Bureau matter. You two haven't a case here, not any more." And Mulder had agreed - so she had thought..... "Hello?" The door opened, and Scully jerked herself to full attention, clearing her throat. "Mrs. Matthews?" The woman nodded warily. "May I speak to your daughter." She showed her ID, seeing her hand shake slightly. Every minute was torture to her, now. "I want to ask her about what happened when she was missing three months ago." "She's not here," the woman snapped. Her face was deeply lined, ravaged, and not by age. "She never came back." Scully started, wondering, and the woman saw it, and laughed bitterly. "Oh, her body came back, but that's not her - that's not my Kate. Her mind's gone. There's nothing left there of the daughter I love." "I'm sorry." She felt a stab of disappointment, then guilt at the cause. It was the loss of a lead, not the loss of a young life, that she was mourning. "Can I see her?" The woman shrugged, as if she had gone far past fighting. "She's in St. Mary's Hospital - psychiatric hospital. You can talk to her, but it won't do you any good." Scully was unable to do anything more than nod her thanks, and her sympathy. She didn't trust herself to speak. Whatever happened, she was not the only one who had lost someone. ****** It was early morning now. The sun struggled to reach through the thick trees and provide light for him to see by. He had walked all night and had now reached that state beyond hunger, exhaustion, where everything was clear, seemingly disembodied from reality. Trees seemed to float in mid-air, and the sky was sometimes a thousand miles away, and other times suffocatingly close. He plodded on, concentrating on putting one foot in front of the other. The blanket he'd stolen from the woman's house bounced gently against the backs of his legs, providing some warmth from the chill morning. His mind circled aimlessly, sifting through random images, yet always returning to the same thought. Had he told her? He didn't think so. The woman, Scully, had not been told yet, whatever the information may have been. If he had told, he thought vaguely, why would he remember the command so vividly? The only problem was that he didn't *know* what he was supposed to tell her. Shocked, he stopped walking. This new voice rang in his head, and he frowned and closed his eyes, trying desperately to remember, trying to push past the red wave of pain in his head. A man, but who? Who had said that to him? Disapproval in the voice, but not censure. A friend, then. Who? He tried making his mind a blank, welcoming any images that would come, but there was nothing. "Please," he whispered, "please, I need to remember." For a moment he stood still, head bowed in thought, then tentatively, he tried saying it aloud. "You should tell her, Mulder." And the answer, his reply, was immediately there. "No! It's too dangerous, too risky for her if she shows up. Promise me you won't tell her, either." His eyes flew open. Now that he had said the words, he found he could actually recall speaking them. He waited hopefully for the rest, but there were no more words, no images to go along with them. The disappointment that followed was not as crushing as it could have been. There was someone in his past, a friend, perhaps, who knew about Scully, who maybe knew what he was supposed to tell her. Perhaps this friend had already given Scully the news, and he would be relieved of having to remember it himself. Maybe-- Behind him a twig broke in two, and his head snapped up, eyes dilating with fear. An animal? His imagination? Or a person, come to drag him back? A terrified sound escaped him, and his hand rose to his throat, fingers clutching at the edges of the blanket draped across his shoulders. He could not go back could not would not they would hurt him he had been bad he had escaped he had been disobedient and when they found out they would punish him.... A bird called out raucously, and he jerked his head in the direction it had come from. They were out there, and he could not stand here any longer, he could not let them catch him. He ran. **** Kate Matthews bore an eerie resemblance to Peggy O'Dell, and Scully felt a pang at the thought of her first X-File. The doctor was friendly, but in a harried way. He had seen cases like Kate Matthews' for years, and he held out little hope of her returning to a normal state. "She will feed herself if you begin the motions for her," Dr. Chapman said. "If you start her walking she will continue the motion until you make her stop. But we see no sign of actual brain activity, Agent Scully. It's puzzling." She still stood in the doorway, unwilling or unable to finish taking the steps that would bring her to Kate's bed. "No one knows how she became like this?" The doctor shook his head. "She can't answer any questions, and there were no signs of physical trauma." Scully looked at the still form on the bed. Kate's brown hair was longer than when Scully had seen her last, and she was thinner. But she was still the same woman, the same kidnap victim whose case Mulder had dragged her cross-country to investigate. "It all adds up, Scully," he'd said excitedly. "Kate Matthews is a genuine psychic. The stories her friends told, and her mother..." "If she's so psychic," she'd interrupted, "why didn't she know she was about to be kidnapped?" Mulder had frowned at her, but it had been that indulgent look he gave her when he knew he was right. The enthusiasm in his eyes had remained undiminished. What she wouldn't give to see those eyes again. "You can try talking to her," Dr. Chapman said, "but don't expect much. Sometimes she grunts, and once the nurse said she heard her humming, but otherwise she isn't very vocal." Scully gave him a tight smile and finally approached the bed. Kate lay on her back, her eyes open and apparently focused on the ceiling. It wasn't until she got closer that she saw the utter lack of humanity behind those eyes. "I'll be down the hall if you need me," the doctor said. He left the room, neatly sidestepping a younger man standing in the hallway, then was gone. Alone with Kate, Scully took a deep breath. She longed to ask the girl what had happened. What had happened to make her partner run away from this place? More importantly, why had he come back? "All he would say is that it was important not to tell you where he was going, and what he was doing. He made us promise not to tell you." Langly had looked at his feet as he had told her. "The only other thing he said was something like, the girl would have known." The blond man had shrugged. "Whatever that meant." Whatever it *did* mean, Scully felt sure that Kate Matthews knew. She knew, but she couldn't say, because she didn't hear and she didn't speak, and now she would never tell her secrets. Scully sighed. It had been a waste of time coming here. She gazed out the window, a window Kate Matthews was never going to open. She spoke in a low voice. "I wish you would talk to us, Kate. I wish you could tell me why Mulder came back here, why he was so scared. I know you could tell me, if only you wanted to." A voice rusty from disuse answered her. "What do you want to know?" She started, a breathy exhalation squeaking past her lips, and found herself gazing into the clear eyes of Kate Matthews. She swallowed hard, then glanced over her shoulder. Two nurses were talking in the hallway and she half opened her mouth to call them, then stopped, torn. She had sworn an oath to protect all patients, but she had sworn another too - a private oath in the darkness lit only by a flickering video. She half closed her eyes and saw Mulder's face, bruised and hurt, and the way he carried his useless arm. No contest. "Where were you, Kate?" she whispered. "When you.... went, where did you go?" "They took me." The girl's voice was a cry of anguish, though her lips barely moved. "They kept me, then I ran. I ran from the darkness there. I ran towards the moon." "Where?" She heard the irritation in her voice where she knew there should have been compassion. She had lived with so many emotions in the last few months, and for most of that time refusing to express them. She was fragile, now, to the slightest provocation, and if this girl had been faking it.... God! If she had *known*, and not said.... "Why are you angry with me?" A simple question, bewildered, even hurt. She refused to soften, looking for deceit in the girl's artless face. The image of Mulder wouldn't leave her. "Where were you when you were...." She paused, remembering how the police had hinted of drug use and a wild life. "Taken," she said, at last, trying to keep the word flat, devoid of the doubts she had. "Where did you go?" The hum of conversation in the hallway stopped, and footsteps approached. She was dimly aware of sharp voices addressing her, asking her to stop, but she ignored them. "Where, Kate?" She leant over, grabbing the girl's shoulders. "My partner's in danger because of you. Because of what happened to you," she corrected herself, quickly, not so angry that she couldn't feel shame. "I think he's gone where you went." She blinked, clinging to the anger, refusing to let the tears out. "I *need* to know where it is." Hands pulled at her shoulders, and footsteps padded urgently on the hard tile floor. "Why are you still intact?" Kate looked at her fully, her eyes human, suddenly, and full of longing. Scully frowned, deliberately blanking out the sharp voice of Dr. Chapman telling her to stop, and the angry shouts outside. The girl's eyes held her, speaking to her in a way she could not understand, could not reply to. "I ran before they had fully secured my obedience. But you...." The girl's voice grew biting, resentful. "Why did they let *you* escape?" "What?" She slammed a fist down on the bedside table, striking away a clutching arm. "Damn it, Kate. This isn't about me." The girl's head jerked suddenly, as if called, and Scully could almost feel her focus slipping away from her. The voices behind her seemed to surge loudly for a while, then faded again, a distant irritation only. Kate was staring at her, focused again, her eyes calm, now, and resigned. "You're in danger," she murmured, so quiet that her lips didn't move. "You're one of us." It was over. It was like waking from a dream. The girl's eyes shut, and the world clicked into focus again, becoming real. The angry doctor, shouting at her, and hands clawing at her shoulders. "Can't talk?" She whirled round, her fists clenched tight. "What game are you playing? Why did you try to discourage me? Are you scared of what she could say?" "Agent Scully." The doctor's face was red with barely controlled fury. "As I said, she can't talk. She can, however, hear, and understand, and be disturbed by other people's words. You do not - I repeat, do *not* - come in here and harass one of my patients like that." "But she talked." She stood up, stepped forward until she was closer to the man than would be comfortable for him. "I heard you. You heard her." She took a deep breath, consciously fighting for control. "I shouldn't have pushed her so hard, so fast, I admit, but a man's life could depend on it. I have nothing to feel regret for. Can you say the same?" She felt the silence like a physical force, pressing down and her, and hostile. There was only the soft pad of footsteps as a watcher stepped back from the doorway and walked away. Fun's over for today. She wanted to laugh bitterly - either that or cry. "Agent Scully." The doctor's voice was quiet, making an exaggerated effort at calm. "I don't...." "She's dead." A nurse looked up from Kate's side, holding her wrist in her hand, her face stricken. "Nothing. She just.... died." Scully pressed her fist against her mouth, and stared. ****** Guilt drew him to this place, and he had haunted this bench for weeks, reading and thinking. The paper was cold, and Steve Carroll's fingers ached as he held the page, ready to turn it over. The cold suited him, frozen with indecision, frozen by the words of a man who was probably dead. "I have been here three days," he read, the words clear in black cursive ink. "Three days, and already I disgust myself sometimes. "My former mentor told us that we had to become monsters in order to understand monsters. It scared me - terrified me - how easily I could do that. In my mind, I could *become* a killer, seeing as he did, thinking as he did.... *doing* as he did, in my dreams, my nightmares. So many times I woke up to the image of blood on my hands, and the dead face of a young girl beside me. "I was a monster. I could become a monster. I *am* a monster. Three days, and I'm not trusted yet, but already I can joke with them. I tried so hard. Sometimes I fear I'll forget why I'm here. "This morning one of my fellow slave-masters laughed as he told he how he'd raped one of our charges. I smiled. "I.... "Why am I here? I'll play devil's advocate - play skeptic to my fears. Why am I here? There are a dozen of them here, held prisoner, but I haven't been allowed to see them. I know what state they are in, incapable of any real living, confined to a living death, able only to do the dark work they are commanded to. I know this, but I haven't seen them. I don't feel their fates personally. I could walk away. I *should* walk away, before I lose myself in this pretense. "Walk away, and get help. 'Stop trying to save the world single- handedly,' she would say. 'It always goes wrong. Get back-up.' "I thought about it last night, in the dark waking hours of doubt that are between night and morning. I could see it as clearly as if it was happening. Dozens of law enforcement officers, proud in black, falling dead, killed by no weapon they could see. An attack by force would bring a counter-attack by force. They have a dozen unassailable weapons, and they would win. "They would win.... "No. I am doing the right thing. I know it. I will bring them down by guile. Alone. "It is a grey morning, and the doubts are speaking. That is all. Though I may lose myself, I know this is right. I will do all I can to save them. Whatever the cost, I will save *her*. "I know why I am here. I had the dream again last night - the dream about her. Dead eyes. I will *not* let that happen." Then the page trembled in his hand, and fell from his grip. The hospital door swished open, and footsteps sounded on the gravel path. She was coming. *She.* He drew himself closer into the bench, watching. The wind teased her red hair, and she reached for it, tucking it behind her ear. Her face was pale and disturbed, ravaged. As he looked, her mouth opened in a silent cry of anguish, then closed again. A private moment of raw pain. Shamed, he looked away, let her pass. Doubts were warring in his head. He half stood up, her name already on his lips, but his conscience spoke with Mulder's voice, reminding him. He sank down on the bench, letting his head fall into his hands. ****** Consciousness returned, all metal. Cold steel pain in his shoulder, and the iron of blood in his mouth. He blinked, wincing, but lay still. Images jostled in his mind, confused and full of pain. Stumbling on a rock and the world lurching. Reaching out with both arms as the ground raced closer. Red agony as his right arm took his weight. Nothing. He rolled over, and a moan escaped his lips. The sky was blue and the sun was like needles in his head. "Scully...." Sleep lapped at him like soft waves, trying to draw him away. He coughed, then whispered again, his voice so weak, now, in his ears. "I'll tell you. Soon. I just need to rest...." It came like a beam from the sun, vivid and terrible. Again and again in torturing slow-motion.... His hand, moving to her face. Hair round her face like a red halo, but her eyes, open and staring, staring at nothing. Dead eyes. Her hands limp by her sides. Dead. He touched her, but she wasn't there. She was gone. "Scully." His hands clutched, shaking her, pleading with her to come back. "Scully. No...." Her eyes were dead. "No." He wrenched himself from the memory, screaming aloud. "No. No...." Tears pricked his eyes, then flowed freely. His mind whimpered. But the truth settled in his stomach like lead. It was an old memory, he could tell. It was familiar, real. It came from the time before - before the red haze. He was sure of it. He shut his eyes and wept. The words that had driven him, always. "No." He bit his lip against the scream of anguish. He was a ship without a compass, adrift, alone. He had lost his beacon, his guide. He didn't think he would try to get up, not now. ****** The walls were a beige cocoon, wrapping themselves around her, enfolding her in silence. She didn't think this was the same room she had stayed in before, but it was hard to tell with cheap motels. The mattress was hard beneath her back, and she tossed on the narrow bed restlessly. It didn't really matter if this was the room she had stayed in for one night, three months ago. What did matter was that it was the same motel. She had decided to re-trace her steps, walk the path she and Mulder had trod three months ago, when autumn was still fresh and new, and color had blazed in the surrounding forest. Kate Matthews. Damn her! Scully clenched her fists at her sides, ground her teeth together in impotent rage. A part of her was astounded by her lack of compassion for the dead girl, but mostly there was just the anger, the frustrated helplessness. Mulder was out here somewhere because of Kate Matthews and what she represented, and now Scully's best chance of learning that information was forever beyond her reach. Memory spoke again, this time in another voice. Not Dr. Chapman, but another white-coated doctor. They had left the hospital, each disappointed for their own reasons. Mulder, so sure the girl was a psychic, had wanted to ask her about her abilities. Scully herself had been more interested in learning where she had been, who had taken her from her home by force. The day had been bright, shatteringly so, and she had been forced to squint as she had stood in the parking lot, waiting for Mulder to unlock the car. "We'll come back later," he'd said, "see what she knows." She'd nodded, and then-- "No." She said the word aloud, sitting up abruptly. The incident in the parking lot had nothing to do with Kate Matthews, nothing to do with Mulder keeping secrets from her. She was sure of it. The two were not related, not at all... A sharp rap sounded on the door, and she jerked, startled out of her reverie. "Who is it?" she called, getting off the bed. There was no reply, and she approached the door, having to stand on tiptoe to peer out the peephole. Him. Standing there smoking, without a care in the world, looking as if he had every right to show up at her motel room in an obscure northern California town. She crossed the room and picked up her gun, feeling stronger just for holding it. She opened the door a crack. "What do you want?" A grimace that might have been a smile crossed his face. "Aren't you going to invite me in?" For a moment she stood, indecisive, then she opened the door enough to allow him in. Her Sig stayed in her hand, out where he could see it. His pale eyes flicked down to the weapon, then back to her face, dismissing the threat with a casualness that irrationally angered her further. "What do you want?" she repeated, emphasizing her words with a flick of the gun. "You watched the tape." Smoke wreathed his face, swirling in lazy circles around his head. "Why did you give it to me?" she asked. The smoker dropped his head abruptly, as if suddenly entranced by the motel room carpet. He took a deep breath, then looked at her again. "I thought you should see it, you being Mulder's partner and all." "Where did you get it?" Her voice was calm and steady, and she prayed the man before her would never know what a price she was paying to keep it that way. A hand waved languidly through the air, a smoky trail following it. "Surely you don't expect me to divulge my sources?" He gave her that peculiar smile again, briefly. "However, I can tell you that the man who gave me that tape has also told me that you are not alone in seeking Agent Mulder's whereabouts." Her mind raced. "Who? Who else is looking for him?" "You didn't think my colleagues' interest in Mulder stopped with me, did you?" Now his smile looked like an expression of pain. "What *is* your interest in Mulder?" she demanded. "The truth," the smoking man replied, and she could have cried from the banality of his words. Then he surprised her. "I have too much respect for Mulder to allow him to be stopped now, by this." Scully uttered a short bark of disbelieving laughter. "You mean because you didn't have a hand in setting him up this time. *That's* why you want him to succeed." The smoker eyed her, but said nothing. "All right," she finally conceded. "So you want to help Mulder. What can you do?" He drew one final time on his cigarette before replying. "I can tell you that the man they sent is already here, and that he can find Agent Mulder with a minimum of effort." Her eyes narrowed. What was that supposed to mean? "And me? How do I find him?" The man shrugged imperceptibly. "Find where he was, then you can find where he is now." He walked to the door and opened it. The cigarette butt was dropped to the floor and crushed beneath his heel. "Find him first, Agent Scully." Then he was gone. **** When the storm of weeping passed, he was drained, devoid of energy and feeling. The cool, wintery breeze made him shiver and long for the blanket, but he had lost it somewhere on his flight through the forest, and even thinking about going back for it took too much energy. He wanted to turn over, curl into a ball, for comfort as much for warmth, but it was better, safer just to lie still...they didn't hurt him as much when he was still. No, he thought, with alarm, but even that emotion was vague, blunted by his exhaustion. No, they can't hurt me anymore. But they could, they could hurt him whenever they felt like it. He had known this from the start, from the moment he had looked up from his kneeling position on the floor and seen their guns trained on him. He shivered again, not entirely from cold, and closed his eyes. Looking up at the sky, without the comforting enclosure of the forest, was disorienting and scary. Open spaces worried him, frightened him now. He was appalled to learn it was true. A tiny part of him longed for the small cell he'd lived in for so long, for the gray blanket, for the cracked porcelain toilet, for the familiar landscape of the walls and floor. The forest, and its wonders of freedom, was too large, too vague in its lack of clearly defined boundaries. "No, I don't want to go back," he whispered. "I don't, I don't." The sun broke through the clouds, and a golden beam landed on his face, blinding him. Without thinking, he rolled onto his left side, drawing his knees up. Before the action was completed, he was cringing, waiting for the explosion of pain. A small whimper escaped him as he tensed up and waited for his punishment to descend. Gradually the sounds of the forest filtered through the bright panic in his mind, and he slowly realized that his disobedience had gone unmarked, unpunished. A small ray of hope penetrated the despair blanketing him. For the first time, he began to think that he might be able to find her, to succeed. ***** As she passed, the mirror flashed her a glance of herself, and she paused, caught, suddenly, by the resemblance. The face, closed in on itself with distrust. The hand that clutched the gun, knowing that success depended on her strength and no other. The empty room behind her - empty and alone. It was Mulder. She was Mulder, going alone into danger, distrustful, driven only by one need. Angry with the world, she saw enemies all round - Dr. Chapman, still insisting that the girl had not spoken, and the man whose smoke still permeated the air. She didn't trust him, but had to listen to him - *had* to. She had never once considered going to the authorities. She frowned, feeling a fresh spark of anger at Mulder for making her like this, alone against the world. Four years ago, she would have done it so differently. "Find out where he was," the smoker had told her. Find out where he was, and Kate Matthews had said.... She winced internally at the very thought of her. There was unfinished business there, and the guilt for that was something to be addressed. Later, though. Later. Kate, perhaps, had held the "why" of Mulder's disappearance. That video image, born constantly like the cross round her neck, hammered out an urgent demand for the "where." The "where" could still save him. They "why" was an indulgence. She holstered her gun and turned away from the mirror sharply, knowing there was no time for reflection, no time for soul-searching. Afterwards, if she failed, there would be time for an eternal torment of what ifs. "But I won't fail," she said, aloud, trying to make it sound convincing. "I know where he went." Kate had been found just after sunrise, and if she had indeed followed the moon.... It had been a simple job to plot the possible direction and distance she had walked, considering the girl's her weakened condition. Her finger had paused consideringly over the small black squares that marked a building on the map. "It's called a Retreat and Therapy Centre," the motel owner had told her. "Private sort of place. Apparently, their clients go there wanting complete seclusion from the world, so they don't allow visitors." "Therapy?" She had had to control her breathing. "What sort?" The man had shrugged, but a picture had been forming in her mind, clear and convincing. Kate Matthews, confused by her own belief in her supposed powers, had sought out this place, and they had welcomed her, using her to test some experimental technique, irreparably scarring her mind. Somehow, Mulder had found out and.... "Mulder. No...." she had whispered, seeing the image of him walking up to the same place, offering himself as a subject, hoping to find out more, hoping.... She had bit her lip against the cold fear inside her, remembering how Byers had said how personally Mulder had felt it, how driven he had been. What had they told him? What had he learnt? That his sister - his real sister - was here all along, and he had been tricked before? That the treatment could unlock memories? The memory of *that* nightmare still haunted her. She shook her head sharply, chasing away the images. It was time to *go* there. It was time to.... The telephone made her start violently, her nerves already wound up so tightly, ready for what was to come. "Scully." Her voice was abrupt, anxious. Every new fact she had learnt had only made things seem blacker for Mulder, and more dangerous. "Agent Scully?" It was a man's voice, and one she didn't recognise. He was speaking fast, as if not sure he would make it through to the end, and there was the sound of cars behind his voice. "Go home. You're in danger. Stop this. Stop this now." She clutched the phone tightly, her voice rising with anger, her fingers white with tension. "Who are you? Are you threatening me?" "No. Not me. Not now." She could hear the shuddering breath. "You must *not* follow this up. Go as far away as you can. Please." "Where's Mulder?" she all but screamed. She was on the point of anger, always, now. "What have you done to him?" The voice lowered, and she could scarcely hear him over the background noise, but his words.... She suspected they were words she would hear, would be chilled by, even if they had been a soundless whisper. "Mulder's dead." And, as she screamed inside, her voice grew calm - deadly and controlled. "Then I will not stop looking until I find his body - until I find answers. I will *not* stop this." The man grew desperate, pleading. "His death is meaningless unless you go. Your safety was the most important thing to him. He died trying to save you." Tears welled in her eyes, and she wanted to slam the phone down, to press her hands over her ears and sob, whimpering. "Threats won't stop me," she said, her voice steel, so different from the voice inside. "And neither will guilt. I knew the risks when I took this job, and I *will* find the answers." A click, and then nothing. She held the phone for a long time, staring at it. She bit her lip. Her words of defiance had been only half true, she knew. Threats meant nothing to her, but the guilt.... She looked at her gun, then back the phone, immobile. ****** His hand trembled as he hung up the phone, a cheap piece of black plastic in a phone booth. She probably wouldn't have traced the call, but he couldn't take any chances. Steve backed out of the narrow booth and walked down the sidewalk, hands dug deep in his pockets. He had done what he could, but he was miserably aware of how little it was, how unhelpful he was really being. "I *can't*," he muttered to himself, jaw clenched. Mulder had promised him immunity, but Mulder was dead now, and there was no reason for him to think that the FBI would honor a dead man's promise. He walked quickly, head down, boots thudding on the concrete. Mulder's journals lay in his coat pocket, a weight against his right hip. It was no match for the weight on his heart, a heavy stone that made it hard for him just to get up in the morning. he thought despairingly. He'd reached the intersection now, and he crossed the street. The motel was up ahead, on the left, and he would be within sight of it soon. Automatically his steps slowed. But he could not fool himself. He had not tried, not really. When the bodies had begun falling, when the others had stood there in mingled shock and horror, he had run. He had not spared a thought for Mulder until he was free from the compound, and by then it was too late. Hiding in the woods, terrified of discovery, he had known then that the federal agent would not be leaving the building alive. The motel was in front of him now, and Steve walked slowly past it, watching the doors for signs of life. When Scully left--and she would, he knew--he would follow her, watch where she went. He could not approach her, he was too afraid for that, but he owed it to Mulder to see that she didn't put herself in any danger. **** Scully had never been so sure of her own failure. She had decided, and she had come. She had been wrong. The door creaked, and her feet echoed in the deserted hallway. Scully tightened her hold on her gun, and walked forward, into yet another featureless room. Nothing. Again, nothing. The emptiness, the silence, pressed down on her like a heavy blanket, crushing her hopes. There was no-one here. If Mulder *had* been here, he was long gone. A sheen of dust covered all the surfaces, and the place was cold, so cold. She would have failed if he *had* been here, too. As she closed the door behind her, heading to the next one, she was sure of it. She could envisage it without closing her eyes. She would have been overpowered and grabbed, or picked off at a distance by a sniper's bullet. They would have locked the door and laughed as she had circled the bounds, knocking, or they would have simply ignored her. She felt bereft, choked with the shame of failure. What had she been trying to prove, coming alone? That she was strong, not bowing to the threats of the caller, the warnings of the Lone Gunmen and Kate? That she was proud and alone, not trusting anyone enough to confide in them? Alone, she had no chance. Alone, Mulder had had no chance. Together.... She choked on a stifled sob. It had been a relief, almost, when the smoking man had first told her. Before, Mulder had been gone, voluntarily, and she was alone, hurting. Afterwards, he had been in trouble, and she had never doubted that she could find him, could rescue him. Never. Until now. Dully, she opened another door, expecting the same bare room, but then she gasped. This one had.... She stepped forward, feeling as if she was wading through water, fighting resistance. It was dread that she felt, not hope - not hope, as she would have expected, if she had anticipated this scene. They were Mulder's - no doubt of that. The leather jacket flung on the bed, now covered with dust, was his. The clothes on the rail in the corner were his. She bent closer and saw a hair on the white pillow which was his, and the shampoo beside the sink which was his, and smelled of him. She felt half in a trance as she knelt down before the bed, leaning forward so her head rested on the white sheet. She knew him so well, now, and she felt no surprise when her hand encountered it, hard beneath the mattress. The cool square shape of a picture frame. But it was not what she expected, after all. Only when she saw it did she gasp, and the tears finally break free and fall. Not Samantha, after all. All red hair in the wind, and squinting into the sun. It was a picture of her. **** She did not cry for long. Tears were a luxury she could not afford. Her footsteps echoed in the deserted building, and she had to force herself not to whirl around, check to see if she was being followed. The photograph of herself was carefully tucked behind her badge; she would give it back to Mulder when she found him. She no longer believed he was dead. Room after room she came across was deserted, closets empty of possessions, desks devoid of objects. Only Mulder's room had contained personal items: clothing, a toothbrush, and of course, the picture frame. Her thoughts were confused and dark as she walked through the building, heading towards the inner chambers. The sudden abandonment of the compound could mean two things: that they were all dead, or that they had fled. Either scenario was possible, but only the latter made sense in context of the state of Mulder's room. They had left, all of them, in a hurry, and Mulder was with them. The vision of that tiny room on the video rose up before her eyes and she blinked. She had found nothing resembling it, nothing that looked like a prison cell. No, Mulder was with them, and he was alive. He was being held against his will, but he was *alive*, and that was what mattered. She turned a corner and stopped at the slightly open door revealed there. A white sign with bold red lettering proclaimed: "No Unauthorized Persons Beyond This Point." Smaller type read: "Present Your Pass." Her hand went to the butt of her gun, but only as a cautionary measure. There would be no one in this room, as there had been no one in any of the rooms, but she didn't like that sign, and what it implied. With one hand she pushed the door open. A row of bunk beds greeted her, all with a gray blanket neatly folded at the foot of the mattress, and she gasped upon recognizing the blanket. There had been one just like it in the video Cancerman had given her. Through wide eyes Scully surveyed the room. Long and narrow, it was bleak, devoid of furniture except for the beds and a long table at one end. Twelve folding chairs stood around it, five to a side, and one at each end. A bathroom was beyond the table, and the room lacked windows. In each corner of the room near the ceiling, a camera monitor stared down unblinkingly. She stared for a moment, unable to comprehend the room's meaning. A space for the staff to sleep? A daycare for children? An infirmary? The explanation for the compound given to her by the motel owner was seeming more and more unreal, as each room revealed its contents to her. On shaky legs she left the room. There were no rooms left to see, and she headed for the exit, intending to go through the other buildings in the compound. Perhaps some secrets would be revealed in them. The wind was picking up, hastening the afternoon into twilight as Scully stepped outside. The smell hit her instantly. "Oh, my God." She had driven up to the compound in a hurry, eager to be inside and begin the search for Mulder, but...my God, how had she missed that stench? The man on the phone had spoken her worst fears, and as she ran around the building, the stench grew until it hung like a miasma in the air, and she had to clench her teeth from screaming. No and no. Mulder wasn't dead, he couldn't be dead, there was a dead animal back there, a pile of garbage, anything but bodies, anything but his-- She skidded to a stop behind the building, one hand rising to her mouth, suffocating her cry. A hillock of dirt rose slightly above the earth, its edges slightly ragged, as if someone had been walking there. "No," she breathed behind numb fingers. People didn't walk around graves, certainly not huge ones like this. Against her will, her legs carried her forward. "No." Two footprints. They stood out clearly in the dirt, and the hand over her mouth balled into a fist. They were large footprints, made by a man, and suddenly she was sure they belonged to Mulder. He had died, but sometimes he stood here, waiting for her to come, waiting to tell her. The wind rose and wailed through the trees with an eerily human sound. It was all too easy to hear Mulder's voice. Leaves rattled drily in the wind, and a husky moan escaped her. He did not answer her, but she heard his footsteps then, heard him coming, crunching through the leaves behind her. The spittle dried up in her mouth, and she shuddered convulsively. He was coming, and he was so glad to see her, so *glad*... "No!" She screamed, spinning around, pulling her gun out, her hands coming up and aiming the weapon of their own accord. "Mulder, no!" The man before her let out a startled cry of his own, then his hands shot up in the air. "Don't shoot!" he cried, "please don't shoot!" For a moment her overtaxed brain still saw Mulder, saw him coming towards her with a huge welcoming grin. She blinked, and the vision shattered, and she realized the man she held at gunpoint was terrified of her. "Who are you?" Her voice shook with emotion barely held in check. "Please don't hurt me," the man said. Realization dawned, and Scully tightened her grip on the weapon in her hand. "You. You are the one who called me. You followed me." He nodded. "I have something for you, Agent Scully. Please, don't shoot me." "How do you know who I am?" The man's hands dropped a few inches, and he lowered his gaze. "Mulder told me you might come," he said. "Mulder." The word was abrupt as a bullet. She was on him, grabbing him by his collar, pressing the gun up into his throat. "What have you done to him?" she hissed, voice low and deadly, then again, a desperate shout. "What have you done to him?" His eyes flickered, meeting her gaze for an instant, then lowering nervously. She jerked his head up with the gun, forcing him to look at her. The truth was in his eyes - the truth, and his guilt. "You said he was dead." The stench reached out a hand for her, nearly choking her on the words. "Why? Is he? Did you kill him?" Her hand twisted tightly on his collar, and his face began to turn red. "Did you?" Slowly, painfully, he nodded. The world narrowed to nothing but her finger on the trigger. ****** Behind the branches, the sky was blood. He paused, heaving deep breaths of air, his cuffed hand resting on a tree trunk for support. The sunset marked another night, and night was dreams and memories and cold and fear. Memories. He was without them, now - without their guidance, or their warning. He had walked beyond his earlier dread that she was dead, but walked, too, beyond his subsequent hope, his conviction that he *would* find her. Both feelings had come from nowhere, blossomed for a while, and then left him. He was without them, now, and tired, so tired. "Scully," he whispered, then felt the cold hand of terror grab him by the throat. Her name. He had said her name. He had said her name. He had said her name.... "Who is she, Mr. Special Agent Fox Mulder?" Always they had taunted him, using his full title, their voices harsh with sarcasm. "Tell us her name. Tell us where she is." Again and again he had refused, accepting the pain and the fear and the death - accepting it for her. he had whispered silently, again and again, nails digging into his palms. He had been so scared that he would betray her, pushed beyond the point of resistance, or call for her in his sleep. But the cruel triumphant laughter was only the wind in the branches. He moved his head from side to side, scanning the forest. They were not here. He was alone. He couldn't betray her, not any longer. Oh, and he could call for her, release his fear in a single cry for help. "Scully!" He leant back his head and called with all his strength. Roosting birds cawed their harsh objection and the undergrowth rustled. "Scullleee!" And then he saw her. A figure, far distant and silhouetted against the sun, with a gun gleaming silver and red hair shining like gold. "Scully!" He stumbled forward towards her, and it seemed so long since he had smiled. But he was glad to see her - so *glad*. "I've been looking for you. Where have you been?" Leaves rustled underfoot as he ran towards her. There was no answering sound. She was immobile, and the gun wasn't lowered. "Scully. Are you okay, Scully?" And then she stepped forward out of the red sunlight, and the hair faded into dull brown, and the figure became that of a man with an angry face. A man pointing a gun at him, silently. ****** Nothing was real any more. Nothing. "You killed him?" Scully repeated. Pulling the trigger had only been an option for a moment, but she was not yet ashamed of being tempted. "How? Why?" When there was nothing left in life, and no hope, there was nothing she could do but ask questions. If she stopped asking, she would be accepting the passive role, and she would be lost. The man couldn't meet her eyes. "I got him into all this. I told him about this place. I helped him go undercover. I ran." He swallowed hard. "At the end, I ran." "Did you kill the others too?" She was acutely aware of the huge grave behind her, and the smell of it. "How many?" "I didn't...." A low moan escaped him. "I don't know who killed them. *I* didn't kill anyone, but I.... Them, too. Like Mulder.... I brought them here - all of them." Her hand was white and shaking, and she released his collar, supporting her gun with both hands. "You're saying you caused Mulder's death, but didn't actually kill him?" She shook her head disbelievingly, knowing that the true impact of those words had yet to sink in. "Who *did* kill him? Did you see him die?" Questions, questions. Her whole life - Mulder's whole life - was questions without answers. It was so futile. And if Mulder was dead, the answers were futile, nothing. She knew, though, that she could no more stop asking than stop breathing. The man sighed. He was a young man, she saw suddenly, though his face was old. "I didn't see him die, but I am sure they would have killed him, when they discovered who he was. They would have had no use for him alive." She remembered the video, and whispered desperate comfort to herself. She had not found that cell, here. She refused to let him see her hope, her emotion. Let him see the anger, only, and judge her from that. "They?" She lowered the gun, though it was still trained on him, ready to move in an instant. "What was going on here? What was Mulder on to?" "Kidnaping of people with psychic potential." He twisted his hands in front of his body. "Something was done to them to enhance their powers, but it...." His face twisted, his head shook from side to side. "I didn't know, Agent Scully. When I came here, I didn't know what it did to them. I didn't. I would never have taken them if I'd known. You've got to believe me." Those twelve bare beds in the comfortless room. She focused on them, trying to remember that she owed justice to more than just Mulder. "What were they used for?" she asked, sternly. She was Agent Scully, scientist and investigator. She would get the information, and only then let herself weep. The man shrugged and looked away. "Killing with the mind, I think. They could crush a man's heart or strangle him without touching him. I.... I don't know who killed them. They were hired out to.... to people who needed them." She gave a bitter laugh, not recognising the sound as being hers. She had changed so much these last few months, and would never be the same again. "I can imagine," she said. "Them, again. Always them." "I didn't know anything about this, Agent Scully." He looked her full in the face, though his eyes were defensive. "I was desperate. I'd just been released from prison - the other guy's fault, not mine - and couldn't get work. Someone I met inside told me about this place. They.... I needed it. I didn't know what they did. It wasn't my fault. That night I met Mulder, I was running away. I wasn't going to go through with it. He made he come back with him, introduce him to the group. I...." "Prison," she interrupted. She raised the gun again, her voice cold. "Not your fault? What happened to all this guilt? Was that just a trick, to make me relax?" He was silent for a long time, then he lowered his eyes, and his shoulders slumped. "Yes, I knew. I think I pretended to myself that I didn't know. I didn't *want* to know. Like with Mulder. I've been telling myself there was nothing more I could have done, but...." "What?" Her voice was cold steel. "These." She tensed as he reached into his pocket, half expecting a gun, but it was only a collection of notebooks and papers. "Mulder gave them to me. He told me to give them to some..... gunmen?" He frowned, doubtfully. "I didn't. I was afraid I'd get blamed. I was wrong," he finished, simply. She was silent, offering no forgiveness, no denial. "I haven't read much of them." He held them out to her, his hand shaking. Pages fluttered slowly open in the wind, and she saw Mulder's distinctive writing inside. No trick, then. "They'll tell you more than I can." Part of her craved to touch them, feeling Mulder's closeness, but part of her knew that reading them would be one of the hardest things she had ever done. Hearing his voice in her mind, telling her his hopes and fears after he was gone..... She shuddered. "Step back." She gestured with the gun, acutely aware of the feel of the papers in her other hand. "Back towards the wall." She would handcuff him, then she would..... what? Turn away, for the first thing, and let her face show what she felt, unseen. "Agent Scully." His voice shook, his hand was stretched out beseechingly. "Take these. Maybe you can use them to find who did this." "Stop." Her voice was hard. "I said back towards the wall." The man did so, his head turning in short movements over his shoulder. "Please, I don't mean you any harm. You must believe me." "Why should I believe you?" she spat. "You helped them kill Mulder." Pain twisted the man's face. "No, I didn't..." His back was to the wall now, his hands still reaching out, holding the journals. "It wasn't my fault..." "What's your name?" she demanded. Hold on to the anger, yes, she was doing good so far...if she allowed herself to think beyond the current situation her grief would take over, and she could not allow that. "Steve Carroll," he said. "All right, Steve Carroll, you're under arrest," she began. "I want you to--" "No!" he cried. "You don't understand!" "No," she agreed. "But you're going to help me understand it all. Now I want you to put those papers on the ground, slowly." Carroll's eyes darted back and forth, from her to the woods, and she stepped forward. "Sir..." His hand moved, and the notebooks, the papers flew toward her. Reflexively she ducked, one arm coming up to shield her eyes. When the papers had settled to the ground, Steve Carroll was gone. **** "We have a problem." The Englishman's eyes narrowed. "The Mulder situation." A thin sigh escaped him. When *wasn't* it the Mulder situation? "What is it this time?" The fat man sat down, the brandy in his hand nearly sloshing over onto his generous thigh. "It appears your man has not been entirely successful." "What do you mean?" "The girl. Her death has raised questions." The Elder swirled the amber liquid in his glass, looking into its depths. "They are questioning anybody who was seen in the hospital that day. Your man has been detained." Was that all? The Englishman sat back. "Mulder isn't going anywhere. He will still be found." The Elder nodded, made a thick grunt. In one motion he knocked back the rest of his drink. "There's more." Silently, he waited, well-manicured hands clasped together. "Our former colleague is alive. He has been seen with Scully." He made no effort to hide his surprise. "Doing what?" "I don't know." The man looked at him. "But Scully flew to California shortly after talking to him." "Damn!" He squeezed his hands together. "How did this happen?" "I don't know," replied the Elder. "But I have taken steps to see he is not allowed to continue." The two men sat in silence. **** The woman turned at Scully's touch on her elbow. "I want to be notified of the autopsy results as soon as they come in," she said. The woman nodded, then turned back to the grisly operation of excavating the mass grave. Scully backed away, allowing the forensic team the space they needed to do their work. Steve Carroll had run into the woods, and now she had the journals. With no reason to put it off any longer, she had called for a forensic team from the Bureau office in Sacramento. The team had arrived quickly, with other agents shortly to follow, but Scully, in a moment of honesty with herself, knew she could not handle the questions of fellow FBI agents. The buildings of the compound were backlit against the sunset as she walked toward her rental car. She thought again of that cheerless room with its rows of bunk beds and shuddered. The need to come back here and investigate more thoroughly and linger in the empty rooms was strong, but even stronger was her desire to find Mulder. He was alive, she was sure of it. He had to be. When she had found herself alone amongst his writing, she had scooped up the papers and held them to her breast. With a shaking finger she had traced the letters on the page, envisioning Mulder sitting in that bleak room, writing the words, hoping someone would read them and help him. At her car she stopped walking and turned around. The forensics team was now busy setting up floodlights to hold back the dark, and nobody was out front. Nobody to see her as she walked quickly back into the building. It was worse this time, walking through the gathering shadows of twilight. She seemed to hear whispers in the doorways, footsteps behind her. She clenched her fists at her sides and went quickly to the room that had been Mulder's. She moved hastily, not wanting to still be here when the agents from Sacramento arrived. Skinner would be furious at her lack of cooperation, but he was a world away, in DC, and this was here, this was right now. When she had gathered all Mulder's belongings into the duffel bag she'd found on the closet floor, she left. This time as she moved down the halls, she heard nothing. She'd banished the ghosts. **** A jolt, and his head lolled suddenly, his chin landing on his right collar bone. His shoulder flared into pain, and the pain was the bolt of electricity that made him live again, awakening him to full awareness. "Wh....?" He licked his lips and opened his eyes, seeing the dark world racing past outside. A car. "Scully?" "It's okay, Mulder. You'll be okay." A kind voice, but male, and the pain of disappointment was greater than any physical pain. The voice murmured on, but he didn't hear it. He shut his eyes again, preferring memory. She had been waiting for him in the sun, but then the light had changed and it had not been her after all. He had felt her close, though - still felt her even as the man had pointed his gun and shouted some warning about trespassing. It had been the smell and feel of her, and he had allowed the man to lead him away, help him into a car. "Scully?" he murmured, then opened his eyes, looking at the man fully for the first time. Not like Scully at all, really. "Where is she?" The man sighed, not unkindly. "I don't know, Mulder." Something wasn't right. He raised his left hand to rub his eyes and it came easily, the cuff still dangling. Metal rattled, but the man made no comment. "Mulder." He let his hand fall with a thump, hearing the wheeze in his chest of his rapid breathing. "You know my name. How? Who are you?" But his voice shook. He felt naked, asking the questions, knowing that questions needed to be accompanied with a gun to get answers. He saw a lined face and cigarette smoke viewed down the barrel of a gun, and knew there was some sadness in the memory, but then it was gone. "You said." The man didn't take his eyes off the road. "When I found you, you were babbling something about this Scully, and telling her it was you, it was Mulder." He shrugged. "I assumed it was your name." Despair settled like lead in his stomach. "You don't know Scully?" "No." He shook his head. His hand moved in the steering wheel, revealing the black metal of the gun still in his lap. "We're going to the hospital. They'll help you find her." "Hospital," he repeated, dully. He dug his nails into his palms, and saw needles and red pain and harsh leather straps. "A hospital?" One of them had laughed harshly in answer to his blurred question. "You could say that, yes. We're *treating* you, Agent Mulder. Shame we forgot the painkillers, isn't it?" "....okay?" The voice from now, reaching into the red hurt that was his mind. "We'll be there soon." The voice softened. "You can relax, Mulder. I won't hurt you. The gun's to scare off trespassers - for defence." He heard it - heard its meaning, even - but it made no difference. Hospital. He was still *there*. He was there in mind, and the car was taking him there in body, too. Then he cut himself off with a moan of grief. They were close now. He couldn't even *think* her name. The ones with the powers were dead, but there could always be more, listening to his mind, stealing her name and hurting her. "What did they do to you?" The man's voice was so quiet. "Mulder, what did they do to you?" And a hand snaked out and touched his sleeve. *Touched* him.... "No!" Cruel faces and needles and the *hurt* of it. "Don't take me back. I can't go back. I can't...." He scrabbled at the door, using the hand that send fire shooting in his shoulder, but something was holding him, something was holding him.... "It's okay, Mulder. It's okay." The words were snaring him too, disguising their intent, knowing how much he craved the sweet rest of comfort. They had done that before - many many times before. "Leave me alone!" He clawed at the safety belt and the imprisoning grip released him. "I'm free. I'm free." The door opened and the cold wind hit him like a fist, but less pressure by the second. The car was slowing fast, and he would stop and he would catch him, he would catch him and take him back and they would hurt him so bad.... "No." A sob, stolen by the wind. He jumped. ****** She sat very still, very silent. The journals were before her on the table, but her hands were folded in her lap. If she concentrated, she would see him. Just - a - little - longer.... Scully started, shaking her head abruptly, and the world clicked into focus again. She pulled the chair forward, and the scrape of the legs was another sign of reality. She remembered suddenly another time, another scrape of a chair. Hands folded just like this, staring at a chair in another motel room, waiting.... waiting for her father to appear? But she had denied it to Mulder, and, afterwards, denied it to herself, and tried to forget it. It was time. She breathed in deeply, then reached out one hand and slowly, slowly, opened the first book. "I am here," she read, and she could hear his voice, and see his living familiar face as he bent over the page. "I am in." She let the breath out, then returned to reading. "It went as planned. My "friend" returned to them with some tale of having been chased by the police. He wanted to say FBI, but I didn't want to the put the idea in their heads. He doesn't think they knew we were involved. Certainly, when he was sent on his mission, he didn't know our names. He was given a physical description only. A woman with red hair and a lovely face, he was told. That's my S." She smiled, then rubbed fiercely at her eyes. She knew that, whatever the outcome, those words would stay with her always. "That's my Scully," he meant. There was pride in there, and something more. "S. I must never forget what my "friend" said about her. I must never forget the threat to her. I will remember her, and remember how she *must* survive as she is - strong and noble of spirit, honourable and unselfish. She would die for me. I would die for her, willingly. Only hours here, and already I fear that I will." she murmured fiercely to herself - to him. The guilt would come afterwards, when there was time. "I am a prisoner here," she read, then winced at the terrible familiar image of the cell. "My "friend" told them that I helped him hide from the police when his mission went wrong. He said that I needed a job, that I had proved my loyalty already. They didn't like it, but they accepted me quickly - too quickly, perhaps. I am to help with maintenance about the building, they say, but I don't like the way they look at me. If anything goes wrong here, I know they will blame me. My jaw is bruised already from a fist. I went too close to the sealed-off area, and asked questions. "The guard looked at me dispassionately, though I was sprawled on the ground from his blow. Initiation, perhaps. I must expect many more. 'We deal in weapons,' he said, coldly. 'We hire them out. They are a secret design, and this is where they are kept. You are *not* to see them until you have been here longer, until you have proved yourself.' "So I must prove myself. I must play the monster, and win their confidence. I must risk the fists and probe where I am not allowed. I must find proof of my "friend's" story - incontrovertible proof. "And what then? I have not thought that far. S. would tell me that I acted rashly, coming out here without a clear plan. Perhaps I did. But when my "friend" told me about S...." It ended there. She turned over, scanning quickly, but it was a new day, a new theme. Nothing. "God!" She spoke aloud, slamming her fist down on the table. Frustration surged inside her, threatening to choke her. "Why didn't you say, Mulder? What about me? *What?*" Every paragraph spoke of her guilt, her responsibility, but they would not say why. "What did I do, Mulder?" she whispered. "What did I do?" **** It was like being freed all over again. His broken shoulder throbbed sickly as he stumbled to his feet, although this time the shouts behind him were real, and not imagined. This time somebody *was* coming, ready to drag him back. A terrified whimper escaped him as he ran into the woods. "Mulder! Hey, what are you doing!" His panicky breathing was loud in his ears, almost drowning out the man's shouts. "Mulder! Listen, man, I'm not going to hurt you! I just want to help!" "No," he panted, running as fast as his weakened body would allow. "No." He'd landed badly when he'd jumped out of the car, and sharp pain lanced through his leg with every step. "Mulder!" To his horror, he realized the man's yells were not fading, not at all. The man was *coming after him*, and he moaned as bright terror leapt into his throat. "No...please leave me alone." A stitch was sinking its claws into his side, and he knew he could not run for much longer. "No...I can't go back...I can't..." "Hey! Mulder!" "No!" He screamed it, a desperate cry flung over his shoulder, and his injured leg finally buckled, spilling him to the ground. He landed with a heavy thud, biting back an agonized scream as his shoulder made contact with the hard ground. "Mulder?" The man's voice was querying now. A few feet away was a fallen tree, its mossy trunk propped against another tree, forming a vee above the ground. He dug his elbow into the ground, kicked with his feet, pushing forward, eyes latched onto the dark patch beneath the tree. Behind him the man was still calling, but he paid no attention. Long hair flopped into his eyes as he wriggled through the fallen leaves, his panic-stricken mind able to focus only on the safety of that hidden darkness in front of him. He was almost there; his left hand could now reach under the tree, and with renewed effort, he got onto his knees, crawled the last remaining inches forward. He turned, pushing his right side under the fallen tree first, ducking his head. "Mulder? Hey, man, come on! I want to help you!" The man sounded honestly puzzled, but he was not fooled. He had been lulled before by sweet-sounding voices, only to learn they sometimes carried the deadliest of tortures behind that facade. "Mulder?" Close now, so close, only his arm outside the safe darkness, and he started to pull it in, only to be stopped short. He could hear the crashing noises as the man moved through the woods, drawing steadily nearer. He tried again to draw his arm in, but it didn't want to move. Uncomprehendingly he stared at the shiny metal bracelet around his wrist, its companion firmly stuck on a root protruding from the ground. Futilely he tugged, his movements growing more frantic. Warm blood ran down his hand where the cuff bit into the soft flesh of his wrist, but he was past caring. "Mulder!" The shout was amazingly close, and with a last desperate heave he pulled, yanking the root from the ground, peeling skin back from his wrist. His hand shot toward him, and he cradled it on his chest, the loose cuff trailing in the dirt beneath him. "Hey!" Two workbooted feet suddenly filled his vision, and as they came closer, he forgot how to breathe. **** Uneasily, she slept. She dreamed. Mulder was in the dream--although it was not a dream, really, but a memory--and she was so happy to see him, and when a noise came at the window that could have woken her, her subconscious instead sent her deeper into sleep. The morning sunlight was beginning to slant towards afternoon, and she walked easily across the parking lot with Mulder. He was disappointed they couldn't talk to Kate Matthews, and she was unable to resist teasing him. "You know, Mulder, the Sheriff just thinks she ran off in order to get high." He gave her that look, the one that said, "Come off it, Scully." She squinted at him in the sun, trying hard not to smile. He sighed. "We'll come back later, see what she knows." She nodded, waiting as he came around the car, keys out to unlock her door. She heard the shot at the same she felt its passage, the hair on her face whipping up in its wake, and then Mulder was on her, slamming her to the ground, shouting for help. It all happened so fast, so quick, that by the time she realized she'd almost been shot, it was all over. Police were dispatched to the woods, and she was surrounded by other men and walked to the safety of the building. Mulder strode beside her, his face grim, his eyes dark. He said nothing until they were alone, after she had insisted the police back off, that standing over her made her more of a target for anyone still foolish enough to be lurking. Abruptly, the dream departed from reality. What *had* happened was Mulder had insisted they go to the police station. What happened now was Mulder turned to her and said, "I have to go, Scully." Stunned, she could only stare at him. "Steve told me, Scully. He told me you--" In horror she watched as he continued talking, his lips still moving, but there was no sound. She could not hear what he said. "What?" she asked frantically. "What is it? What did he tell you? Mulder, tell me! What was it? Tell me!" A wail rose in her throat, and she beat at his shoulders with her fists, driving him back, but still he did not speak aloud... With a startled cry she jerked awake. Adrenaline coursed through her body, and it took only a small movement to grab her gun and point it at the man standing in her motel room. "Move an inch and I'll shoot." **** Her heart thumped painfully in her chest as awkwardly she reached across her body and flipped on the light. The man revealed in the sudden illumination blinked, but made no move to flee. "Steve Carroll." She said his name flatly, and the gun did not waver. "What are you doing here?" "I--" Carroll gestured to the journal, still laying open on the table by the window. "I wanted to know if you'd read them yet." "So you thought you'd break into my room and find out?" A faint flush crept across his cheeks. "Yes." "Done this before, have you?" she asked snidely. But she lowered the gun to her lap. Steve nodded imperceptibly. "I--You were dreaming." Anger made her own face flush, and she half-raised the gun again. "What do you want from me?" He looked surprised. "I thought you would want to ask me about it. About Mulder. How he came to be here." Scully froze. He thought she'd read all of the journals, learned all Mulder had had to say. "...I'm not proud of what I did," Carroll was saying. "I figure this is my chance to set things right." "I'm listening," she said through numb lips. Without asking, he sat at the chair she had vacated only a few hours ago. One hand raked through his hair, and she saw it tremble before he hid it in his lap. "See," he began, then stopped. "Okay, I can't make excuses for myself, so I won't. You don't want to hear my story, anyway. You want to hear about Mulder." He cleared his throat. "He came here for you." The words made her heart beat faster. She knew this, knew it already, but hearing it spoken aloud made her stomach churn, and her hands were suddenly cold on the gun. "The group I worked for, they took people. *I* took people. I already told you that. I'm not the one who took Kate Matthews, but I helped plan her kidnapping." A bitter snort escaped the man. "Maybe it would have been better if I *had* been the one who took her. Then none of this would have happened. You and Mulder would both still be safely in Washington." He fell silent, and she realized he would need encouragement to continue his story. "What do you mean?" Carroll closed his eyes briefly. "She wasn't supposed to escape. None of them were." His eyes opened again, and they were bleak. He smiled humorlessly. "The procedure had just been started on her, and they got lax, careless. When they weren't paying attention, she ran. We couldn't let her go, of course, so we went after her." Every word was a further blow, an added pain. Kate, dead in the hospital this very afternoon, a victim after all, and all Scully had been able to do was feel angry with her for dying. She felt sick. "I went after her, with two others. One of them was the hunter, the killer. She was supposed to lead us to Kate, but Kate found you first." Steve stopped, dropped his head so far his chin nearly touched his chest. When he spoke again his voice was hushed. "Only the hunter found someone else instead. To take Kate's place." She knew, but she had to ask anyway. "Who, Steve? Who did she find?" He raised his eyes to meet hers and they were full of misery. "You. She found you." **** Darkness always brought images, and pain made them crowd more, ever more grasping, strangling his sanity. A man, smiling. He whimpered, and his fingers twitched convulsively, searching for more leaves to cover him. Cover and cover and choke and fill his throat with their cold musty dampness and... "No." He moaned, pulling his head away from the image. Fire shot through his shoulder from the movement of his head. "No..." Leaves clutching. A man smiling, calling for him, smiling to deceive him into the cruel pain-giving needles and knives and fists of a place that called itself "hospital". Hospital.... He frowned, and decided that the word was white. It was a cold world, but not without comfort. Not without secrets, too, and hurt - terrible hurt. Steel knives flashed blood, reflecting it a hundred fold. A man, smiling. He struggled and salvaged some coherence. The cold told him that hours had passed, but the man hadn't returned. he had reminded himself, when the boots had paused so close, then turned away. Fear had driven him half running, half crawling, a mile away, or even two. With fear like death in his throat, he had bent his head and run across the road. he'd thought, then had smiled - even amongst everything, he had smiled, proud that he could still be clever. Then, as sirens had wailed in his mind, his legs had buckled and he had collapsed. He murmured the word in command, or desperate appeal. A man, smiling. He shut his eyes, but the smile remained. A different man, a dangerous man. He had come from the skies in a helicopter, and he had hissed words of cold menace behind a closed door. "You will return to the terms of the agreement. We hire your hunters and we pay you what is agreed. The terms are not negotiable. You are playing a dangerous game if you try to demand more money." "You need us. Your masters need us." A laugh. He had recognised that laugh - the leader of the group, and his tormentor. "Who else can offer you this service? There is no-one who can kill as our.... people do." Another laugh on that word - not the word normally used. "We put a lot of work into training them. We need a fair price." "No-one else can do this, you think?" There had been a thin smile in the voice. "I wouldn't be so sure. You are not indispensable, and your.... people..." There had been a heavy irony in that word. "Your people are not protected." Ear pressed to the door, he had overheard the menace and known that the end was coming. The end for him, too, perhaps. It was strange to him. He could see, and could remember what he had thought and felt, then, but he couldn't *feel* it. His thoughts, then, were a memory, only, and he didn't understand. Who he was, where he was, why he had been so certain of the coming end.... It was a blank to him. The conversation behind the door meant nothing to him now. But *then*.... Footsteps towards the door, and he had straightened, feigned indifference, but the man had known. He had smiled, but he had known. Pain had stabbed between his eyes. A subtle pain, but deliberate, significant. The man's eyes had bored into his, light with smiling. the eyes had said, and the pain. "No..." He moaned now, and his hand shot up to massage his head, aching from the memory of an old pain. "No..." It was so little on top of the all-encompassing red pain that was everywhere, but it was the remembered pain that sent him, finally, into the darkness. He dreamed of Scully, there, and more. ******* Cheap walls with peeling paint. He looked, grimaced, and looked away again. He focused instead on the cigarette between his fingers. Some things stayed the same. Mulder. He half smiled, then slowly exhaled a lungful of smoke. Mulder. Another thing that stayed the same, comforting in this cheap afterlife of his. Mulder. Still a pawn, thought never to be underestimated. He was still lashing out with fire, still surprising everyone. No, not a pawn. He smiled again, almost fondly. He had always felt a fondness for the boy, even through everything. Mulder was the king, sought by everyone, attacked by everyone, but weak himself, and ignorant - the focus of so much more than he had ever understood. "You are becoming a player," he had told him once, and Mulder had indeed played harder and more wisely than any king had ever done, but still... Weak. The man thought of the video, and the rest that he knew, and was unable to soften his earlier judgement. Weak now, at any rate. Weak close to dying, and weak, perhaps, beyond ever fully recovering. He knew what they had done to him, and part of him mourned for it. Not all his explanations to Agent Scully had been lies - few of them, indeed, though he had omitted much, of course. It seemed fitting, somehow, to manipulate her, too, as a piece of a gameboard. But the essential truth, the heart of his motivations.... A noise started him from his reverie and he looked up to see a dark figure silhouetted in the doorway. He did what he always did, and put his cigarette to his mouth, controlling the situation with a slow inhale and exhale of smoke. He had long ago learnt that there was little that could not be controlled with a show of calm, of nonchalance. He had seldom needed to carry a gun, before. Without a word, the figure stepped forward into the light. "It's you." The smoker spoke, looking unflinchingly at the visitor. "I wondered how long it would take them." The figure shut the door behind him with a small click. ****** Parts of her mind were locked rooms - locked, always locked. She turned the key, slowly, deliberately. "Where is Mulder now?" She raised her gun with a violence that matched her tone. "He's not in that grave. Where did they take him?" Carroll's face flickered, but he made no answer. "Didn't you hear me?" he said, instead. "I said they were after you. I said you were in danger, because...." "Where is he?" She wanted to place her hands to her ears and press, face twisted like a little girl's. She would not listen. Could not. "Who killed those people, Steve - those prisoners?" A jab with the gun. "Did the killer take Mulder? Did your friends take Mulder? Where, Steve? Where?" "I don't know." She thought back to the hurried writing of the penultimate entry, shutting her mind to what came after. It was no time to think of the last, personal farewell of a man sure he was going to die. "Mulder said there was a man who came in a helicopter - a dangerous man. Did you read it?" He was silent, but she continued - she *needed* to continue. "Did he take Mulder, then kill everyone? Did he kill them, and leave Mulder to take the blame?" She paused, making her sudden shout all the more terrible. "Who killed them, Steve?" "I don't know." He shook his head with something close to a sob. "Before it happened, I...." "Ran away," she finished, coldly. "You ran away, leaving him dead - what you thought was dead." She suppressed the thought with a barely concealed cry, but his chilling terrible obedience remained, frozen forever on a video. He nodded, mutely, then spoke. "I thought he'd get out." His voice was a boy's, ashamed yet defiant, too. "I risked my life, too. I had been sent to obtain you, but I didn't. I told Mulder everything, then I returned, without you. *I* risked everything for you, too." "You risked everything on a lie!" she cried, desperate. Guilt clawed at her, but her denial was louder. "You're lying." Her knuckles were white on the gun. "You're lying. It's all a lie." "Mulder believed." She glanced at the journals. Steve's story made sense, filled in so many gaps, but.... "No." It was a moan, more to herself than to him. "You're saying that your hunter - your prisoner - said that I had psychic powers?" It was all she could do not to laugh hysterically - or cry. "That you were to kidnap me so they could train me to be a killer? That Mulder took it upon himself to save me from all this?" Three nods, slow, almost apologetic. "God, Mulder." She slammed her fist on the desk, scattering the papers. "How could you be so *stupid*?" "The hunter identified you." His voice was level, as if repeating an old story that was so familiar to him now. "She identified you. I was sent to retrieve you. I hadn't fully realised the human cost until then, and I didn't want to do it. When I came the second time, Mulder was...." The first sign of expression, and it was a curious shy look of apology. "Guarding you," he murmured. "We talked. I told him everything. We arranged how he would get you to safety and then return to find out more." "Stupid," she repeated, again, and then louder. "Stupid. How could be believe that I was.... that I was psychic?" "Not stupid." Carroll's eyes were cold, suddenly. "You might not believe in your powers, but my colleagues did. Rightly or wrongly, they wanted you. You *were* in danger. You still are, perhaps." His voice softened suddenly. "You say he's still alive? If you go after him, you will *definitely* be in danger. You will end up like Kate Matthews, a shell only." She swallowed. "Kate spoke to me. The doctors exaggerated." He looked down at his hands. "She spoke to you? Perhaps. They could speak to each other, and to a few trained guards. I could never hear them." "You're saying she spoke to me in my mind? Telepathically?" She did laugh then - hysterical laughter that was like no sound she had ever heard from herself before. Inside, there was a small, desperate voice. When she could see again, he was observing her gravely. He didn't answer her question, didn't elaborate, and for that she was grateful. There were some answers she did not want, not ever. "I went back there with Mulder because he promised me it was the only way I could escape a charge of attempted murder." He was tense, but seemed more sure than she had seen him. "I realise now that it wasn't the only reason. I *did* want to stop what they were doing." He cleared his throat. "I don't regret what I did, Agent Scully. I don't regret telling him, and I..." He coughed again, nervous. "What I did before.... It was rash, and wrong, but it might have saved lives. Either way, there would have been deaths." She felt a heavy dread settle in her stomach, and she knew, suddenly, what he was going to say. She half-raised her gun, then lowered it with a sharp, almost angry movement. she told herself, sharply. Words like "intuition" and "hunch" would be like poison to her, now, and to be avoided. She would be all logic and cold facts. "I shot at you, Agent Scully," he said, at last, his eyes showing that he expected no less than death from her now. "In the parking lot. I had been sent to retrieve you and I...." He shook his head with a sob. "If I failed, they would send me again and again until I succeeded, and, if not me, others who would be harsher. I *knew* they would get you. I.... I thought you were better off dead." Unconsciously, her hand raised to her head, where the bullet would have hit her. "It was you?" her voice was dreamy, and she didn't feel at all. "You tried to kill me?" "I wasn't thinking." He turned pleading. Confession done, and he seemed to treat absolution as a right. "I acted on impulse. I.... I'm sorry." "You tried to kill me." Her hand fell back to her lap. "And Mulder?" He was silent, and hope died ****** Reality was unbending, a cold straight line that never swerved or doubled back on itself. But in dreams time lost that rigidity, and he found his mind filled with a jumble of images and sounds, some that had no meaning, and others that terrified him with their portent. Scully...a woman, smiling at him, eyes full of happiness. In this image he was lying down, looking up at her, aware that for the first time in a long while he was warm again... Laughter, cruel and right in his ear. "We'll let you go if you tell us her name. What is her name?" A stunning blow to his kidneys, wringing an anguished moan from deep inside. But he clenched his teeth, said nothing. "You have to tell her." A man, bending over him. The man's face was obscured, hidden by the mist that overlaid his memories, but a hand reached out from the haze and pulled him up, to his feet. "Come on." Ignoring his pained sounds, tossing clothes at him. He stood there, unable to bend down and actually pick up the clothing until the man had snapped, "Cut the dummy act. For God's sake, boy. There's no *time* for that. Put the damn clothes on!" Scully again, sitting cross-legged on a narrow bed, typing industriously on a laptop computer. Her image was slightly distorted, and as the sleeping man realized he was watching her through a window, the vague dreams finally coalesced into a real one. So close, tonight...so close. He stood outside the window, watching her type, knowing if she were to look up and see him she would be angry. But she did not look up, and he was able to watch her unobserved. The unmistakable sound of a cocking gun made him freeze. Behind him a man spoke, his voice not entirely stable. "Don't turn around. I have something to tell you." His mind raced, gauged the time it would take to unholster his weapon. "What do you want to tell me?" "It's about your partner." Disregarding the gun pointed at him, he whirled, eyes blazing. "What about her?" His own gun was out in another second. "What do you know?" "I know she's in danger. And that you must not tell her." He woke with a start, eyes wide and searching in the utter dark of night in the woods. "You must tell her," he muttered. But...so many memories, his own voice and others, telling him *not* to tell her. Which one was right? The dark was absolute, and he closed his eyes to shut it out. His shoulder and leg burned with twin fires, and the throbbing in his head was a constant. Occasional painful twinges shot through his stomach and his throat, and he recognized dimly that he was dangerously close to dehydration, but could not summon the energy to care. All that mattered now was the woman, Scully, and that he find her. The question was, once he found her, what did he do then? **** It was almost morning again. Dawn tinted the eastern sky, and Scully stared at it through dull eyes. Behind her, Steve Carroll slept the deep sleep of the innocent, the blameless. She could not find it in herself to resent his untroubled rest. A car pulled into the motel parking lot, and a tired-looking woman emerged. She took a suitcase from the back seat of her car and walked into the office. Scully watched her enviously, knowing that woman would be asleep within half an hour, peacefully unaware that several doors down was a woman who was convinced she was a murderer. She had killed Mulder. Steve's night-time confessions had confirmed her darkest fears, and she had accepted them with a bowed head and slumped shoulders. He had gone willingly to his death because of her, because of his beliefs about her. What had she said to him once? "I had the strength of your beliefs." She whispered it now, eyes dry and unseeing as she leaned her forehead against the cool glass of the window. Mulder had had the strength of his beliefs, and all it had gotten him was imprisonment, torture, and death. Beliefs about *her*. "No," she whispered. She could not have known he suspected such a thing about her. How could she have? Certainly they had never spoken of it. And if Mulder had genuinely believed she was psychic, he would undoubtedly have teased her unmercifully about it, slyly finding ways for her to use her "ability" to their advantage on a case. Never again, she swore. From now on, only logic would determine her actions. Science would be her new religion, the laws of science her new god. The man behind her stirred in the motel bed, and she heard him rise, walk around the room. She did not turn around. "And Mulder?" she had asked. Carroll had not been able to look at her, when he had finally answered. "If he's still alive, he probably is wishing that he was dead." She could not bear to think of the implications of his words, would not allow her mind to link the statement with that horrible videotape footage. Steve had begun to weep then, softly, without hope of comfort, and she had known then she would let him stay the night, let him sleep while she stood sentinel. Let him feel peace steal over him as confession eased his soul; she would freely allow the demons of night and conscience torment her. Paper rustled behind her, and now she did turn. Steve was flipping through Mulder's journals, a frown on his face. He did not look at her until he found what he was looking for, his thumb stabbing downward to capture the page. "Here." She stepped forward. "What?" Her voice was a rusty croak, and she had to clear her throat, try again. "What?" "I thought I remembered...but I wasn't sure..." His voice trailed off as he read the words he had found. "See here, it says--" She walked to the table and looked down at the paper he was pointing to. This particular page was about halfway through the notebook, and the entry was short. "I heard two of them talking this morning, something about a depot. One of them was quite worried, about a meeting, or something--it was hard to hear through the door. "I'll ask my "friend" about this later, but not today. I have to avoid him. They look at me strangely when I talk to him for too long. My cover story has always been suspect, and for some reason the thought that he and I may become friends due to the nature of our meeting has never crossed their minds. I'm sure they would only distrust me more if I were audacious enough to suggest such a thing. They seem to discourage interaction between members, anything that resembles intimacy. "I wonder how much of it is due to their own natures, and how much due to their work. To forcibly kidnap another human being and submit them to pain must quickly take away anything resembling humanity from a person. "I must be careful that doesn't happen to me." Scully stared at Steve. "What does it mean?" she asked quietly. "I think I know where they took Mulder," he said. She swallowed hard, forced herself to take a deep breath. "Where?" "Here." He jabbed a finger at the writing again. "The Depot." She shook her head. "I don't understand that." "See," Carroll began. He backed away from the table and began pacing. "When we took our...people...to our...employers--" "The government," she interrupted flatly. "Yes," he nodded. "When a meeting was to take place, we went to a military barracks, a training camp, really. Most of the year it stood empty, although the local militia could swoop down and use it at a moment's notice. But most of the time it was empty. It was an ideal place to meet. Nobody paid any attention to the arrival of any military personnel there, and we always came through the woods, so as not to attract attention." He paused, then added, "We just called it The Depot, for short." The Depot. She tried the words out on her tongue. "The Depot." It made sense. A group who had defied their employers, who had just seen their prized possessions destroyed. What better place to hide than in the most obvious place of all, the one where your new enemy would never think to look? One hand strayed to the weapon still strapped to her side. "Let's go." **** It was the smell that had alerted them, that had saved them. Eyes stinging from the smoke and the rude dawn awakening, Larry Martin watched silently as the fire fighters departed. In the pale morning light, he was shivering, though not from the cold. The fire had taken hold quickly, consuming the chair and reaching for the ceiling. So close. So close to death by fire and choking smoke. If he hadn't wakened... He coughed, and tightened his arms around his body. His eyes felt like grit. The motel walls were thin, and the rumble of voices from the room next door had pulled him constantly out of sleep. A quiet murmur first, when his neighbour greeted the visitor, but later were bouts of shouting. "No!" he had heard, once. He had given up trying to sleep, then, and leant forward, deliberately eavesdropping. "Not on those terms. They know they need me. They must offer more." He had thrown off his blankets, listening, not judging. He had only seen the man in the next room once - a lined man who'd smoked and hadn't smiled. Mr. Hunt, he had learnt. He counted himself a curious man, and always liked to learn about a strangers. The reply had been harder to hear, but had made him catch his breath and look sharply at his phone. "They can carry on without you," the other man had spat, low but distinct. "They have no qualms about killing you. They did so before, remember?" Did so before? He'd let his breath out in a rush, leaning back in relief. It made no sense, of course, and the threat was not real. No need for him to call the police. No responsibility. And so he'd slept. A noise had awakened him - some quiet noise when he was still more than half asleep and not able to identify it. More noises had reached into his sleep, pulling him awake with growing urgency. A thud. A voice. A door opening, slow and careful, then shutting again. And the smell.... A cigarette, the firemen said. A cigarette had been left smouldering on the chair, and the whole building could have gone up within minutes. No body, though. Alive or dead, there had been no-one in the room. Mr. Hunt and his visitor had left, but.... Larry coughed against the smoke in the air, and turned his back. Fear clawed inside him, and the noises he had heard played themselves back in a constant loop, struggling for clarity. It was nothing, he told himself. Nothing. No reason for his suspicion that one of the men had not left willingly, or alive. No reason at all. But.... He coughed again, and shut the door, cocooning himself in the safe security of his own motel room where no voices disturbed the silence. ****** She had seen them on the television - women wailing in a primeval expression of grief, their mouths open in a scream, and their hands tearing at their hair. There were cultures in the world that encouraged it, she knew, and she had watched them, pained yet superior at the same time. It was her strength that she could keep it in, and their weakness that they wailed and people turned away, uncomfortable. She had never envied them before. Nails dug red into her palms, but she kept her head high, walking forward almost regally into the ruin of her hopes. "They're all dead. All of them." Beside her, Steve made no attempt to disguise his emotion. His hands were stained with rubble and blood. "I know all these people. It's them - all of them." She had no voice, and swallowed, unable to look at him. "Mulder?" she whispered, then again, louder. "Have you found Mulder yet?" "No." A single syllable without inflection. She understood. Not finding his body was hope, in a way, but it was also deep aching fear that she would never find out, never. "Who killed them, Steve?" A body was at her feet, his shirt drenched with blood. She crouched down and nearly touched him, seeing only a victim, then remembered. The man's fists were big - big enough to hurt Mulder. All the dead here could have hurt him, tortured him. *All* of them. She stepped back before she was tempted to kick the dead man. She didn't feel confident that she would resist it. "I don't know. They were *shot*." He looked ten years older now. Earlier, leading her to the place he called the Depot, he had been hopeful, as if he had known that atonement was near. "I'll go in," he had told her. "I'll tell them some tale about seeing the.... psychics killed, and the killer coming after me. I had to lie low, and then I couldn't find them - something like that. If they let me in and I find Mulder, I'll get a message out to you somehow. Either that, or try to help him escape." She'd nodded, her hand already on her gun. "Don't come yourself," he had said, his eyes darkening. "Remember what I told you. Unless you stay safe, Mulder did all this for nothing. Stay in cover all the time. If I can't get him out, you must get a team in. They'll be without their psychic weapons, remember, but you'll still need a lot of fire power." She had looked at him for a long time, then had lowered her eyes, nodding. Mulder's safety was what mattered, not her pride. "A team? Skinner will be pleased," she'd muttered, trying to smile. She had kept her cell phone turned off, knowing what he would have to say about her conduct so far. And so she had waited, crouching in the leaves, as the seconds had lengthened into what felt like long painful hours. The leaves had been an uneven brown carpet surrounding her. The wind had whipped them up into piles, and cleared other patches down to the dark earth beneath them. The piles.... Five minutes gone. She had known she was looking at hours, even days, but for now she would wait. Five - minutes - gone.... The piles. Big enough to conceal a.... And then she had started, hit by an image as strongly as by a physical blow. Mulder's pale face, with dry lips and eyes glazed with pain, frozen beneath a sheet of leaves. Frozen...? No. She'd half closed her eyes, and the image had sharpened. No. He'd been breathing, his chest rising and falling in a shallow breathing that had not been right - not right at all. "Mulder?" She'd bit back the cry, but had let it echo loudly in her mind. "Mulder!" "Scully?" His lips had moved slowly, but even this movement had hurt him. "Got..." He'd licked his lips, but there'd been no moisture there. she'd thought, in a sudden stab of fear. "Got to tell you something.... Can't go on. Find me?" "Mulder!" Again the silent cry, but then someone had shaken her, pulling her back, and the image had blinked out. "Agent Scully." Steve's face had been white, his eyes tormented. "They're all dead. All of them. Not like the others. Someone's shot them all - all of them. Recently. I.... I don't know what to do now." She shook her head, pulling herself out of the memory. There was nothing but death around her now, but maybe there were answers too. "We look again," she said, sighing. She stepped over the body at her feet without another glance. "We have to...." Despite herself, she gave a moan. The videotape again - always the videotape. "We have to see if he *was* here. There's a certain.... cell." She tried to construct an image of some faceless killer with a machine gun, killing all the guards, overlooking a small locked cell. He would be the only one living. She would take the key from the belt of the dead guard at the door, unlock the door, and just *hold* him, ease his hurt. But the image did not ring true - *could* not. When she looked for his face, she saw only dead leaves - nothing but dead leaves on his dead face. ****** Even in the brightness of a late New York morning, there was seldom light here. "It was taken care of last night." The large man spoke without preamble, his face showing nothing but impatience. "Your ineffectual assassin has been bypassed." The Englishman didn't put his newspaper down, keeping his face concealed. "My 'ineffectual' assassin, as you call him, had the situation under control. They could prove nothing of his involvement in that girl's death. He was proceeding to the next stage, as ordered." The other man gave a bark of mirthless laughter. "Which he would doubtless have mishandled as well. Or was it *you* who mishandled that little debacle two months ago?" A page turned, slowly, deliberately. "Nothing was mishandled." The voice was calm. "The group had become a security risk, and he eliminated it as ordered. He eliminated the ones with the abilities. The others are nothing without them." A large hand shot out and pushed the newspaper down. "The ones with the abilities, as you call them, could have been retrieved and retrained, perhaps, up to the standard of our current assassins." The voice was harsh with anger and contempt. "The ones your man left alive.... *They* were the threat. They were the ones who demanded too much. They were the ones who knew too much. They were the ones who were regrouping and trying to start again." "Without the raw materials? Without anyone with a shred of potential?" The Englishman raised his paper again. "Mere petty posturing. They are no threat." "They were trying everything they could to obtain some.... raw material." The larger man invested the word with a bitter sarcasm. "Either obtaining one with some potential, or - how shall I say it? - using a crude sledgehammer approach on the mind of someone without it." "Were?" The newspaper shook, then was still. "They were eliminated last night, as I said. Old-fashioned methods, of course." A pause. "And Mulder?" "A reconnaissance party saw him a two days ago. He hid from their helicopter, and they let him think he had succeeded. They broke him in there, and he will die, of course, but this way it will look natural. If he was dead from a bullet, the FBI would never let it drop." "Is he dead yet?" The Englishman lowered the newspaper, looking his colleage in the eye for the first time. A cloud passed over his face. "Getting sentimental, are you? Like our late colleague?" "Late?" Then the Englishman frowned. "You handle a lot without telling your colleagues. This can not go on." The other man straightened his shoulders and thrust his chin out. "The situation required fast action." There was no apology in his voice. "My man has not reported back yet, but I sent him with terms for reinstatment - terms our ex-colleague would never accept. If he rejected them, he was to be eliminated." "Ah." The Englishman smiled and returned to his newspaper, but his eyes stared straight ahead, not reading. ****** The building had not been entirely destroyed, but here and there Scully could see signs of destruction--of papers burned, or of closet doors yanked so violently they had come off their hinges. Had the people in this facility cringed and hidden from their killers? She hoped so; it gave her a vicious satisfaction to think of them afraid, in terror for their lives, forced to feel the same fears Mulder must have felt. "Here, down these steps." Steve Carroll walked ahead of her, confidently. She had explained in detail the cinderblock walls of the cell on that videotape, and Steve's eyes had lit up. "I think I know where that is," he'd said, and begun leading the way. She followed him now, past doors that bore signs saying "Military Personnel Only" and "No Admittance Without an E-7 Clearance or Higher." Corridors branched off to the left and right, but Carroll kept a straight course. At the end of the hallway he turned, pushed open a set of double doors and led her down another flight of steps. There were no signs on the walls of this hall, and Scully shivered with the chill buried in the gray stones that made up the walls. Steve stopped walking. "It could be any one of these." He would not meet her eyes. "I'd only heard stories, but they said this is where they kept the ones who made..trouble." Made trouble. Another wave of red anger swept over her. How dare they! How dare these people presume to take innocent citizens and control their lives, imprisoning and killing them if they "made trouble." Sweeping past Steve, she started off down the hall, opening doors as she went. The cells were all the same, but she moved on, knowing the particular one she wanted. God knew she had watched the video often enough. Near the end of the hall she found it. A small cell, no different than any of the others, save for the fact that it had been Mulder's. She recognized the blocks, the gray floor, the crumpled blanket in the corner, the chipped rim of the toilet seat. "Mulder." She whispered his name softly. She walked into the cell and stood in the middle, not moving, imitating Mulder's broken posture on the video. What had happened before he had been brought here? What had they done to him afterward? How long had he been here? Tears burned the backs of her eyes and she blinked them back, furious with herself. There was no time for this. No time to lay on the floor Mulder had slept on. No time to bury her face in the thin blanket and cry, muffling the sounds of her sobs. Had *he* done that, too? "Agent Scully?" Steve's voice was tentative. She blinked her eyes again, until satisfied at the lack of moisture there, and straightened her shoulders. When she turned around her chin was up, and when she spoke her voice was calm. "Coming." **** Afternoon came, but it brought no warmth. His thin body shivered convulsively, trying desperately to keep the necessary heat to stay alive. He didn't care any more. He was going to die here, and he would not find Scully, nor would she find him. Earlier he had had one shining moment when she had almost seemed to burst through the woods, right upon him. The morning sunlight had caught in her hair, turning it into a fiery sunburst. Her voice had rung out, calling his name, and she had been triumphant. But she had gone, another cruel hallucination, and now he lay with his eyes closed, unwilling to open them and be deceived again. This way he could be sure the images that played against his closed eyelids were of his own design. They were always of her, now. The fear of being found had gone, and with it the terrible images of cold faces seen through the red haze of pain. He was beyond their reach now, unable to run. Death would free him before *they* found him. Death.... "You saw me, Scully. My body was in New Mexico, I spoke to you, and you heard me." He frowned at the sudden memory of his own voice. They were not words he had uttered, but words, he knew, that he had rehearsed, once, even as he had dreaded having to say them to her. "You were asleep, Scully. You resist so much, but, asleep, you could let yourself see me. You received it *so* strong, Scully." "A dream," she would mutter, chin thrust forward defiantly, though slightly awkward about what she had to admit to. "I thought you were dead. I... I needed to see you. I let myself see what I wanted to see." "You told my mother, Scully." Soft. He would keep it soft. A touch on the hand, perhaps, if she would let him. "You've seen visions of the dead before, haven't you, and known things about people? I know it's hard for you to think about this, but, for your own safety, you've *got* to open your mind." "Mulder, I will not listen to this." Anger, but there would have been fear there too, disguised so well that not even he would have been able to see it. "I don't want to hear another word about it." "No." He spoke aloud now, speaking aloud a denial he had voiced then, slamming his fist into the wooden table in the small motel room. The details of the scene surprised him with their sudden clarity. A lifetime away, he had envisaged how he would tell her, envisaged her reaction, and decided that she was not to know - that she must never know. He'd refused to burden her with a truth that was too much for her to accept. "I remember." His lips moved in a soundless whisper, and tears welled beneath his closed eyelids. He felt no joy, no elation, only sorrow that it came too late. "I remember what I couldn't tell her, then. I remember why I have to tell her, now. I remember...." He sobbed. He knew now that there were worse things than what they did to him. "Scully," he babbled in his mind, a small part of him aware that he was close to losing everything. "I can't protect you any more. I wanted to save you from *them*. I wanted to save you from the truth about your abilities. I wanted to...." He sobbed again, and dug his fingers deep into the earth. "I can't, now. 'Tell her,' he said. I've got to tell you. You've got to face it yourself, now. You've got to save yourself." But the air was empty around him, and she was not there. "New Mexico," he murmured, opening his eyes and seeking the sun. "I died, and she heard me then." He swallowed hard. "I died...." When the sun set, or an hour or two after.... ****** He would die. Fingers idly tracing a crack in the wall, she looked south, beyond the bare branches that slashed dark silhouettes against the sun. Rough stone scraped her finger tips, then seemed to soften until she was no longer aware of the feel of it at all. He would die, unless.... She blinked back tears, almost angrily. He was not dead yet. He was close, though. Close to death, and close to her. Hurt and confused, he had walked in circles, covering a few short miles for every ten miles of painful steps. She would be there by nightfall if she followed the way the light fell under that tree there, and the shadow of that disturbed layer of dead leaves. "I've got to tell you something, Scully." His words would be broken, forced through paper-pale lips. "I've got to tell you...." "I know." She would stroke his hair. Though clogged with dirt and pain, it would be more beautiful to her than silk. "Steve told me. I know what you believed about me. I know why you did what you did, but they're all dead, now. I'm not in danger. It's over, Mulder, over." "But...." "We'll talk about it later, when you're better." Her voice would be firm, though perhaps her hand would tremble a little on his face. Though she would cherish him and smile with joy at his return, she wasn't sure she would be able to forgive him. Then reality seemed to shift, and the wall was painful again beneath her fingers, and Steve was by her side, his face deeply lined. Mulder was gone, and she half reached out for him, stricken by her loss. But then relief.... and anger. She turned her back on the woods. "Imagination," she told herself, firmly. "Nothing more. A waste of time." She ran a hand over her eyes. "Anything?" she said aloud. Steve shook his head. His face showed all the emotion she could scarcely dare even to let herself feel. If she let herself cry, she would be unable to stop. "He's not there," he said, but it was with the heavy dread of bad news. Death would be closure, and would allow rest. Now, every idle minute could be killing him, while they stood and talked - worse, while they spent long minutes in groundless fantasies. "They took him." She spoke it as fact, fighting the voice of that woodland pathway. "They came last night and killed everyone, but Mulder...." She dug her fingers into her palms. "God! Haven't they done enough to him all his life?" "What are you going to do?" Steve asked softly. "No." Abrupt, and Steve started, then shifted his weight to his other foot. "I don't know," she said deliberately, louder than necessary. She forced her thoughts to obey. Then she slammed fist into palm with sudden fury. "Agent Scully?" Her head jerked up, her heart suddenly loud in her ears. She frowned, playing it back in her memory, and there it was again - that strange double sound of her name, one of them in a voice so dear to her. She focused on the one voice that was real, though part of her felt the deep ache of betrayal. "We've done this alone for too long. *I've* done this alone for too long," she corrected. In this place of death and failure, it was time to question everything and find herself wanting. "I'll go to the police. I'll tell them everything. Someone might have seen something." She looked down at her feet, reluctant even to voice her wild irrational hope. "Fugitives in the woods, perhaps....?" "You think he escaped?" Steve's face brightened with an optimism that was painful to see. It was too much. "No. I don't think he escaped," she shouted. Steve was the voice inside her - the one she hated right now. "I don't think he's not out there in the woods, scared and dying. I don't. I.... There's no evidence for it. None at all. Nothing. But I've got to try. I've got to, even if there's no hope at all. I'm covering all possibilities. It's not because I *believe* it." Steve was silent, and she was focused, no longer seeing Mulder, or hearing it. She had won. But she felt as if she had betrayed him. ****** The man curled his lip against the cigarette and blew a cloud of smoke that would have impressed his visitor--if the man was still alive. "Your terms are unacceptable," he repeated. He unscrewed the silencer, then holstered his gun. Contempt for his colleagues made him sneer. So they had thought they could lure him back with promises, with plums dangled before his nose. He left the body where it lay, one hand lifted up as in supplication. The Consortium's hired man had begged just before dying; the smoker supposed all men did, once faced with the reality of their own death. The rental car still sat on the side of the road, the engine chugging softly. He dropped his cigarette, still smoldering, to the asphalt, and ground it under his heel. He would rejoin his colleagues, of course, but on *his* terms. He would deliver to them their biggest prize, achieve the greatest reward. And then he would explain just why that prize was not to be killed, or hunted down, or even threatened. He would make them understand. "Never underestimate Mulder," he whispered, putting the car in drive. "Never underestimate *me*." He pulled out onto the road without looking for traffic, confident the world would allow his passage unchecked, the way it always had. ***** "...no, don't think so." Scully's face twisted into a grimace; whether one of anger or grief, Steve Carroll could not tell. He had seen her run the gamut of emotions in the short time he had known her, and yet she still found new ways of expressing herself. He knew how hard she struggled to keep her feelings inside, hugging them tightly to herself until her face showed the severe strain. "Yes, sir. I will." She hung up, although Steve thought he could hear the man from the FBI still talking. "Everything okay?" he ventured. "Let's go." Her words were short and clipped. "Hollingway lives off of Route 26." He nodded and followed her down the steps. Behind them the police station hummed with activity, but the day was strangely quiet. The sun was still out, but dark thunderclouds were building in the west. Morning would bring rain. "Did you--" The federal agent whirled around. "I don't owe you any answers," she snapped, "so don't ask me any questions." Her eyes sparked blue fire, and Steve took a hesitant step back. When she spun around again her hair nearly crackled with dark energy. She was already starting the car by the time he got moving again. Already angry at the day's events, her temper had been brought to the boiling point by the conversation in the police station. "And nobody thought to inform me of this? Nobody called the Sacramento Bureau?" She had been dangerously quiet, her voice a model of controlled fury. "Well, ma'am, Mr. Hollingway is not exactly...well, he's been known to.." The officer had stumbled over his words until rescued by another fellow cop. "He's a liar, ma'am." His gum-chewing grin had evaporated when Scully had turned her forceful gaze on him. "See, we get maybe one or two calls a week from Peter. We've just learned to listen to him, maybe send an officer out if he's real upset, and then--" "You mean you ignore him," Scully had said. "Now it isn't like that," the first officer had protested. "A man comes to you and says he's seen a man--a *hurt* man! He's given this man a ride, this man who says his name is Mulder. He says this man Mulder--this *hurt* man Mulder has fled into the woods. And you, you with this flier from the FBI hanging on your walls, you ignore him." She had lowered her voice further, forcing the cops to lean forward. "Do you realize how many years in jail you can get for endangering a federal agent?" Steve had bitten the inside of his cheek to keep from howling with laughter. He was proud of her then. That pride only served to heighten his own sense of self-loathing. He had brought this about, all because he had lacked the courage to do the right thing. Beside him Scully swung the car out of the parking space with a jerk, and Steve let his body sway forward limply. He closed his eyes, and words from Mulder's journal swam before him. "They are all watching me now. I can't walk down the hall without hearing their whispers, seeing their suspicion. I am to meet with the head of the group tonight. Supposedly I am to begin training, a step that will bring me closer to the group. "I do not expect to survive the night. She was right--I should never have left her. We are partners. We belong together. Now she will never know what has happened to me, unless Steve can smuggle this out. I pray he does, that she reads this, that she comes to understand. "Forgive me, Scully. I did this for you." That was the last entry in the notebook, a hastily scrawled message, one that spoke eloquently of its writer's despair and hopelessness. That he had written down their names said more than anything--he had truly expected to die, when it would not matter who he betrayed. The car turned suddenly to the right, and Steve thumped against the car door. He opened his eyes, glanced at Scully. She drove with a single-mindedness that frightened him. She knew her partner was alive now, and God help the man who tried to interfere. **** "I know." Piercing eyes of a startling blue stared unblinking through the open car window. "I know what you are looking for, and why." The stranger's gaze made him uncomfortable, even scared, as if it could swallow him alive. He reached for his lighter, staring fixedly at a cigarette, covering his weakness. "Ah," was all he said. He was intensely aware of his gun at his side, and the knowledge that he had already killed that day. "I can help you find.... it." The stranger gave a thin smile. He took a lungful of smoke, considering. It gave him time to think, to control. "Why should I trust you?" "I found *you*, didn't I?" The man gestured at the place from where he had silently stepped in front of the car, his eyes silently informing that he *knew*. "I knew where to intercept you." His sudden smile was disingenuous. "I know what you did earlier. I know every detail. Shall I tell you?" He inhaled again, reaching all the while for the gun. He would hear more, but he would be ready - always ready, now. "Or would you rather find him now, and talk later? There is little time. Agent Scully is close now - very close." "Us?" A sudden cramp stabbed through his hand, making him snatch it from the gun. He cleared his throat, and spoke again with slow control. "And us? Are we close?" "Close?" The man smiled, but there was cold warning in his eyes. "Yes. Close enough. *Her* lead will be false - initially, at least. I, on the other hand...." He massaged his palm, understanding. He was playing a dangerous game indeed, dealing with a man like this. "You're the one who was sent to kill....?" "Yes." For the first time the man showed real emotion, and it was a terrible bitter anger. "I was sent here, then bypassed, and my orders rescinded." He crouched down, his forearms resting on the open window. "I no longer serve those masters. Perhaps I will be my own master?" He shrugged. "Perhaps I will find another master...." He breathed in slowly, then exhaled. "Perhaps." It was understood. "Good." The man stood up, smiling. "I can kill, you know. I could kill him without touching him. I could kill him before he even saw me, or heard me." "You will *not* kill him." He snapped the order out, angry. "I will take him, and keep him for now, but he is not to be killed." "No." Still that insincere smile on the man's face. "I know." And then he realised, and cursed his anger, his loss of control. It had been a warning. A dangerous game indeed. ****** Scully's arms were wrapped around her body. She felt as if she was physically holding in the urge to fight, to run away. "He ran into the woods about here. I think he was heading in that direction." Peter Hollingway shrugged apologetically, but he had told this story before. There was more pride and self- importance than real concern, now. "I tried to find him. I searched, but it was dark. He didn't want to be found." Peter Hollingway's pointing finger filled her with something close to revulsion. It wasn't his words, or his assurance that Mulder had escaped the destruction of the Depot. She was numb to those now. Time had mellowed the initial elation, reminding her that the more she hoped, the harder she would fall, *if*.... She swallowed hard. A lot could have happened since the previous evening. Too much. "You say he was running from.... over there?" Hollingway gestured across the road. She wouldn't look. If she looked, she would follow, and she would be lost. "He was terrified. He would run *away*, and as fast as he could. This is the only direction you need bother with." "Let us do our job, Peter. Just tell us what you saw, and we'll decide how to act." A tall police officer spoke, the edge to his voice showing that this was an old situation, a well-worn scenario. It was an objection for form's sake only. The man's reasoning was sound. She almost smiled, wonderingly, struck by a sudden calm. Dreamlike, she saw herself drifting away, moving like a sleep walker away from the voices of strangers, crossing the road and heading into the wood, alone. Head cocked as if listening, she would step across a fallen tree, push aside a thorn covered branch at head height, then crouch down on the moist earth. She could feel it on her knees. With shaking hands, she would reach for the dead leaves and gently part them, and.... "No." Her denial was like a physical slap. No-one turned to look at her. They were unsure how to treat her - guilty, yet sympathetic. It made her a thing apart, and she appreciated it. *His* was the only voice she would listen to, and she hadn't heard it, she hadn't heard it.... "No!" This time they looked, their faces guarded. She took a deep breath and wrenched her mind back from.... where? "Let's start looking. This side only." Three of the hardest words she had ever had to say, yet three of the most necessary. It *felt* wrong. It *was* right. But when she rubbed her eyes, she saw it still, projected like a photograph on her eyelids. Dead tree, thorn branch, and a frame of dead leaves. The first drops of rain were falling, and she could *hear* them. She opened her eyes and stepped firmly into the woods, facing the light. ****** At the very end, he understood. It was the worst torment. The red haze was gone. Images came in startling clarity, and knowledge like a knife slashing into his body. "I can't hope." He spoke aloud, needing the sound. A bird gave a harsh alarm call. "I was wrong to hope for myself." A cool hand on his brow and a voice murmuring over and over, "It's okay. It's okay, Mulder. It will be okay..." It had sustained him, the hope. He would find her, and tell her, and then he would stop hurting and be safe. Her hands would soothe away the red haze, and he could rest. "Stupid." Even now, he could cry - racking dry sobs that sapped his tiny thread of strength. "Now...." Now he understood. The veils were lifted and his broken mind was revealed to him in all its terrible reality. Memory was unfractured, now - all of it. It marched past in its terrible procession - a bullet meant for Scully; dead eyes in the living faces of a dozen slaves; light glinting off steel needles and the stickiness of blood in his hair, his eyes. "I remember." He shuddered. "I know what they made me." He had tried. Oh, how he had tried.... Nothing. Memory was there, but reasoning, intelligence.... *life*..... "Gone," he whispered, aware that he was a shadow of a man - a child, sobbing in child-like language, walking for days just because an adult had ordered him to "find her" and he'd *had* to obey. "All gone." The rain was louder now, the light fading. He had given up reaching for her, recognising the broken reasoning of his earlier hope. "Scully." His voice cracked as he saw her. Head cocked as if listening, she stepped across a fallen tree, pushed aside a thorn covered branch at head height, then crouched down on the moist earth. With shaking hands, she reached for the dead leaves and gently parted them, and.... Nothing. The image faded. If she found him now, it was for a living death, without hope. To have lost his mind, but to have been left the *awareness* of his loss.... He cried aloud with all his strength and slammed his right hand into the ground again and again, feeling the scarlet agony in his shoulder and hoping, *hoping*, that it would kill him, and.... And someone responded to his cry. Someone came. ****** In the late afternoon twilight the forest was beautiful. The trees served to protect them from the worst of the rain, but here and there a few fat drops hung from the pines, deepening their greens, creating dusky purple shadows on the fallen leaves. Scully walked on, oblivious. Two police officers joined her in the search, their feet shuffling through leaves and fallen pine needles. Steve Carroll had stayed behind, with Peter Hollingway, supposedly to talk further to the man. Hollingway, glad for the attention, had launched into a detailed account of his brief time with Mulder. Scully didn't want to hear it; she didn't *need* to hear it. The man had said everything she needed to hear. From this point on, it was up to her. Mulder was somewhere in these woods, and she would find him. She had to. When the searching, when the activity stopped she would be inundated with memories, with dangerous thoughts, ideas and images that defied her belief in herself. She didn't want to think of these things, so she concentrated on motion, on walking, on searching, on listening. "Scully." A thin voice. *His* voice. Her head came up as she whirled around. "Agent Scully?" the officer on her left asked. She ignored him. It was the wrong voice. Sudden pain flared in her right arm, jolting up from her hand to reside in her shoulder. She gasped, clutching at the offending limb, eyes widening, seeking. He cried out, and she heard it, heard the pain and wretched misery in his voice. Without thinking she ran, her arm hanging at her side, using her left hand to slap wet branches out of her way. "Agent Scully!" The voices made no impression on her, nor did Steve Carroll's aborted grab for her arm. She crossed the road swiftly, plunging into the woods, breathing hard, eyes searching for the right spot, confident she would know it when she came upon it. There. To the left. Unhesitatingly she obeyed the command that sprang from nowhere into her head. Behind those trees. She slowed down now, catching her breath. He was hurt and she didn't want to scare him. "Mulder?" Cautiously she tried his name. She stepped around two tall trees, insane hope rising in her breast. He was not alone, although that fact did not register at first. She had eyes only for him. He was kneeling before a fallen log, dressed in clothes too big for him, for his thin body. His damp hair was longer than she had ever seen it, and a curled, brown leaf clung to it just above his shoulders. Her eyes fixated on the leaf, on its mute evidence of his recent ordeal. Then the man next to him spoke, and suddenly her focus expanded. "I expected to find you here already, Agent Scully." A thin cloud of smoke rose from his cigarette. "You should have found him first." *** It was her. It *was*. For a moment he forgot his fear, and the pain. Scully had come, she had found him, and he would be safe now. He could cry in her arms, weep for the loss of his mind, of his ability to think for himself. She would soothe him, comfort him. She would make it better, the way only she could. They were speaking to each other, Scully and the smoker. He waited, kneeling patiently. The tall man had ordered him out from under the log, and he had unthinkingly obeyed, but now it occurred to him that leaving the sanctuary of the tree had been stupid. Out in the open, he could be taken again, could be drawn back into the nightmare. The smoker would do it, too. He worked for the same people. "...was it for, then?" Scully's voice was tight with fury. He had always been fortunate enough to not have that cold anger turned on him, to not have to face her rage. Yet when her gaze moved over him, her eyes did not soften. Was she angry that he had left her? Did she think he deserved his fate, that his punishment was just? He was powerless against the sudden terror that rose in his throat, choking him, rendering him speechless. The two people above him represented the two major forces in his life. And they both had the power to destroy him. Even his shattered mind knew that if they ordered him to close his eyes, to wait for the gunshot to pierce his skull, he would do it meekly, without protest. "No," he whined. He lurched to his feet, the movement startling Scully. Her hand flew to her side, grabbing for the weapon, and with fluid ease the smoker matched her gesture. "Mulder." She called his name, and it was heaven to hear her voice again. "Agent Mulder." The man's voice was roughened by years of smoke. Behind them there was noise, and he could see other men, uniformed cops, as well as the man who had chased him through the woods earlier. Terror exploded into panic, and he turned and ran. ***** She paused put for a moment, hatred overwhelming her, greater, even, than concern. "I'll kill you," she hissed. "I swear I'll kill you." Then she ran. There were only two sounds to her - the crashing panic of his terrified flight ahead of her, and her own breathing, fast and shallow. There was nothing else. There was no pursuit. "Mulder," she called. Even amidst everything it struck her with joy that she could really say it, that he could really hear her. "Mulder. Please.... It's me. I won't hurt you. I won't let him hurt you." And then there was nothing - a strangled cry, and then nothing. The woods were silent, and she alone was moving. It was only then that she remembered the smoker's face. "I'll kill you," she had hissed, and had wheeled away from him, racing to her dear prize. And he had remained still, and he had smiled. ****** He hadn't thought he could fall further. Branches reached for him, scratching his face with their cruel fingers, though he was beyond feeling the pain now. They were nothing. His whole body was already pain, and his mind.... Reproaches like hammer beats in his mind, as the fire throbbed in his shoulder. The cold metal of their guns shone in his memory, and her eyes.... her angry steel *eyes*.... And cigarette smoke in the air meant cruel laughter and needles and restraints and blows, and.... and being *there* again, and.... and.... "I can't." He spoke aloud, though the words were but panting grunts. Merely living required more breath than he had. "I can't. It hurt so much, Scully. I can't....." His knees buckled as though smashed by a heavy baton, and he fell face first to the ground. Clawing, clawing with fingers, but he couldn't get up - *could not*. Conscience like a cruel whip, lashing his writhing mind. But they were there again - all of them. There was no red veil to save his sanity, not this time. A dozen glittering eyes, and fingers like vices holding him down, and drops in his eyes and metal sharp in his head.... "I can't." His face twisted in a sob. "I'm too weak. I.... I can't...." And then, in the knowledge that he had betrayed her at the very end, he wept. He hadn't thought he could fall further. ****** It was like some terrible endless loop on a video tape - a deja vu that was both surreal and terrible. He was not alone, and, this time, she saw his companion first, almost afraid to look at *him*, to see how far he had fallen. In her mind, he had always been strong - cracking wry jokes, though he was hurting inside, and surviving. It was her idealised image of him, and perhaps part of her had still clung to it, still believed that that horrible video tape was a lie. "Agent Scully." It was a man, though not a stranger to her, and her eyes narrowed, remembering. He had been near Kate Matthews' bed, watching as she died, his presence nothing remarkable until now. She swallowed hard. "Step away from him. It's over now." "Yes." The man smiled, a strange rueful smile. "It's over. He is the last." "Step away from him." Louder this time. She raised her gun, levelling it on his head. His hands were on either side of Mulder's face, his thumbs lightly resting on his closed eyelids. Only the thought of those fingers digging in, gouging in a death agony, kept her finger from the trigger. "Not like that, Agent Scully." He was so smug, so arrogant, his voice scarely above a whisper. Hot anger filled her. "I'll kill...." But then the muscles of her arm went into spasm and the pain of cramp seized her from her shoulder to her fingers. The gun fell from her nerveless fingers and fell to the ground with a dull thud. "That's better, Agent Scully." One hand left Mulder's face and snaked out for the gun. She could only watch stupidly, cradling her right arm in her left. "Who are you?" Without her gun, it was a humble question, not a demand. She would forget her pride. For Mulder's sake, she would forget her pride. "I was sent to kill him," the man said, simply. Then he frowned, looking at her with genuine curiosity. "You, I'm not sure about. Would they want you dead, or would they want to train you to be like me?" He moistened his lips with his tongue. "Best kill you too, because of your history of.... trouble-making, as they'd call it." "And him?" She gestured with her head, back into the woods. The wind carried distant voices towards her, and she hoped, prayed, that help would come in time. "Does *he* give you your orders? Is *that* the sort of man you want to serve?" A shadow passed over the man's face - a look almost of anger. "He is coming," he murmured. "Answer me!" She stepped forward angrily, using her voice as her gun. She was close enough to tackle him with fists, though he was twice her weight. Perhaps she still would, soon. "Why are you doing this?" "Because it is what I was made for." His fingers were tense, pressing on Mulder's face in a rhythmic pattern, one two three four five. "I am an assassin. It's what I do." "You admit it." She felt sick. "You're *proud* of it?" He held her gaze, and her vision wavered, dizzy. The world faded to only his eyes. "No," he said, simply, and suddenly she was utterly assured of his sincerity. "They made me. They gave me no choice. They cast me aside. *He* would, too." "Then don't do it." Her own voice sounded to her as one in a dream. Her heart was beating fast, though a small part of her screamed that she was being irrational, stupid even. The man's hands were empty. He held no gun, no knife. No-one could kill with a touch.... "No." The man's voice was considering. "I won't." His sudden laughter was cruel and incongrous, his voice louder than necessary. "I wasn't going to. I don't do their bidding any more." "No?" The smoker's harsh voice sounded behind her, and the click of his gun could as well have been a bullet. The balance had shifted, tilted towards death - death for Mulder. "You know you can't do that." The man's brows drew together, his voice terrible. "*You* weren't one of the ones told. *You* don't know how to defeat me." "You were...." She had eyes for Mulder, trapped in a nightmare in which she was immobile, unable to influence the unfolding tragedy. His still lips.... She dug her fingers into her palms. His pulse fluttered in his throat. "....over." The man's voice was strangely regretful. Her neck was stiff, but behind her she saw the smoker, lying on his back. His eyes were wide and staring, his lips moving in a whistling breath of incoherent syllables. It was.... God, it gave her no satisfaction. Tears pricked her eyes. "What have you done to him?" But the question was absurd. Tears threatened to become hysterical laughter. The man hadn't even moved from Mulder's side, and no guns had been fired. "No more than has been done to Agent Mulder already." The man's face twisted into something that could have been guilt, could have been hate. "They use people. They destroy minds. I did their bidding, but I was used to. I *hate* them." "What did they do to him?" She crouched down at Mulder's side, and the man made no move to stop him. The hands on his face seemed gentle, now - a comfort, not a threat. She knew, though, that she could still be wrong. This was a cruel man. "Less than they hoped. He was strong." She shuddered internally at the tense he used. "Can you help him?" Her fingers on his face. His skin had the slackness of serious dehydration, though she knew the worst scarring was in his mind. "Please?" She would ask, and afterwards forget that she had asked. She was still half in a dream. It made no sense to hope this. The man shook his head. "I was made to destroy, not to heal." Other sounds returned. There were voices nearing, and the rustle of undergrowth. She felt she had been hours in this place, or years, and that it would forever change her. "Then...." She looked up at him, then back at Mulder. "Will he....?" "I can't answer that, Agent Scully." The man stood up. He would fade into the trees, disappear.... and to what? she thought, then caught herself up sharply. Then a cry made her look at the smoker, still twitching on the ground, and she wondered at how she could have thought it of him, too, once. "Trust no-one, Mulder," she whispered, stroking his hair. "Just you, and me. No-one else." But, as tears filled her eyes, she wondered if even that was true. **** She held him, and he waited. Waited for the turmoil in his mind to settle, for an absolution that never came. "Trust no-one," she had said, unnecessarily. He recognized this to be truth, more so than it had ever been. His own mind was not to be trusted now, and how could he ever know who was speaking truth to him, and who lied? He had to speak. "Scully." Just a small whisper, but she reacted as if burnt. Quickly she pulled back, although her hands did not leave off touching him, reassuring herself he was real. "I'm here, Mulder. It's okay now. We'll take you to a hospital, you'll be all right." Her eyes swam with tears. Hospital--no, she wouldn't, he told himself. She was not like *them*, spouting lies even as they strapped him down and raped his mind. She saw his hesitation, his fear. "Mulder?" "Agent Scully!" Two men crashed through the trees on the opposite side of the clearing, then came to a halt. One of them turned around and hollered, "Call 911! We found him!" "We," Scully muttered. She reached one hand toward his face again, and he was powerless to stop a reflexive cringe. She saw it and froze. "Mulder?" The rain began falling harder, wetting them through the trees. More uniformed men entered the clearing, and he swallowed hard against his fear. He had something to do--something he should have done months ago. "Scully...I have to tell you..." He stopped, unsure how to say it. She shook her head, one tear falling free at the motion. "It doesn't matter, Mulder. Whatever it is, it doesn't matter." "No!" he insisted. She *had* to listen. "Scully...you...there are men who...who think you are--" Abruptly her eyes hardened. "No. Mulder, no. That was a lie, it isn't true." She already knew then, and he seized on this. "You read my notes, Scully. You know what you are." "Dammit, no!" She backed away from him, still on her knees, and now a look of betrayal crossed her face. her eyes pleaded. "Agent Scully." One of the policemen walked up to Scully and gestured to two women bearing a stretcher betwen them. "The EMS team is here." Scully stood and watched as they came closer. "You're going to be fine, Mulder," she said, but the earlier vitality was gone from her voice. "Sir?" The woman's voice was gentle and encouraging. He closed his eyes in defeat and let them do what they wanted to him. **** The swinging doors opened and she sat up straighter in anticipation, but the doctor that came through did not even look at her as he went down the hallway, and Scully slumped back in her chair. She glanced at her watch. Three hours now, and still no one had come out to give her any news. No reassuring smiles from a nurse, or kind words from a doctor. Nothing. She let her head fall back against the wall with a soft thump. To her left stood a bank of pay phones, and she sighed. She knew she should call Skinner, fill him in on the details, but she told herself it could wait until she had learned more about Mulder. Some things she could tell the AD, however. The smoking man had vanished shortly after being taken to the hospital, and none of the medical personnel had been able to identify him. How he had disappeared was a mystery. Steve Carroll had been arrested, but was making plans for a plea-bargain. Scully bore him no ill will--he had, after all, been instrumental in helping her find Mulder. He would probably spend a couple of years in jail, then move on, drifting from one town to the next. Maybe he'd even settle down eventually. The mass grave at the compound in the woods, and the destruction of the military barracks was being investigated, but already the NSA had stepped in, and with a cynicism unusual for her, Scully knew that nothing would ever be done about either case. Which left Mulder. And her. Wearily, she closed her eyes and surrendered, let her circling thoughts finally land on something. ...Melissa. At her own kitchen table, a cup of tea nestled between her hands. ...standing in the woods by that hole in the ground, so sure it was Mulder coming up behind her..., knowledge born of "women's intuition....a cry in the woods... "No." She sat up, unaware she'd spoken. She had heard Mulder's call with her *ears*, dammit, not her head. He had only been across the road, after all. It was entirely plausible that the wind could have shifted enough to carry the sound to her. "Oh, God." She dropped her head into her hands. She forced herself to get to her feet, to move down the hallway toward the drinking fountain. She needed some water, something to clear her head. Because if she had known how to find Mulder, why on earth had it taken over three months? Why had she stumbled through the woods for two days? "Miss Scully?" A hesitant voice spoke behind her, and she turned around, water spraying from her bottom lip. The young woman that faced her looked tired, and her green scrubs were blood-stained. Scully felt her heart sink into her stomach, where it sat like a stone. "What is it?" she asked. "What's wrong?" The doctor paused, and in that pause she almost panicked. her mind screamed, but then, "his condition has been stabilised," the doctor said. "He's exhausted, malnourished, dehydrated. That can be rectified. His shoulder caused more concern. It had been broken and had begun to heal wrongly." She gave a false smile. She looked so tired. "With the correct physical therapy, it will probably heal, but I'll be frank - there's a *possibility* of permanent damage." "Possibility," she repeated, her mouth dry. Soon, she would be Dr. Scully, studying his records, asking questions. but now.... She licked her lips. "And his....?" She was unable to say it. "What did they do to him, Miss Scully?" The doctor's voice was tight with outrage. "He's just...." "What, doctor?" She tensed, making her own voice cold, reminding the woman of her professional duty. She *needed* it. Sympathy and outrage.... It was more than she could take. The doctor took a deep breath, but her voice was flat. "We believe that his physical injuries are the least of his problems. We found evidence of.... of invasive procedures in his brain. And when he was conscious...." Her hands twitched to cover her ears, to hide from the truth forever. But, "What?" She raised her chin, her eyes steady. "He was terrified, Miss Scully. Terrified beyond all reason." The doctor lowered her eyes apologetically, and Scully realised what she should have realised hours before. She should have been there, comforting him. *She* had been afraid, too, clinging to her unreal fantasy in which he was okay, in which she had found him and it was all over. "He was terrified," the doctor repeated, "but he didn't fight. We told him to hold still and he just.... he just.... did." She swallowed hard. "I need to see him." It was only afterwards that she realised she had not said "want." ****** There was a brown stain on the white ceiling. The man pulled the thin sheet up against his chin, and watched it. It was shaped like a.... a dog, he thought, then wondered why it mattered. Once, he was sure, it hadn't. Voices lapped around him, and he had a dim idea that *they* mattered - that they held his future in their unintelligible words. "Heal him?" He blinked, and saw a strong face - a killer's face, and a body all muscle. He had a sudden irrational memory of seeing this man in a different face - in many different faces. "I can. Do you want me to?" "We'll see." The other voice had an accent. 'English', his mind supplied, though it meant little to him. Their footsteps receded and he was alone again. What sort of dog? He twisted the sheet in his fingers, and let his mind return to matters of importance. ****** She twisted her hands in her lap. And then he moved. "Scully." He licked his lips, but when he spoke again his voice was no stronger. "Scully, you.... you're...." She leant over and touched him. "I'm here." Her voice was almost sharp. "I'm here, Mulder." He breathed out - a breath that seemed too deep for his frail body. "I thought you were...." she thought, and tensed, preparing to stop him. "Dead." She relaxed, slightly. "Or that I was dead. I.... I couldn't remember." She smiled. "We're both alive, Mulder. It's over." "Did I....?" He tried to grab her arm, but the movement was beyond his strength. "I had to tell you something. Did I.... Did I do it right?" she whispered inside, and tears welled in her eyes. This wasn't Mulder - not the man she knew. "You told me, Mulder. You did it. It's over." "You believe now?" His expression was wondering. "You know what you are?" "I know what I am, and it's not that.... that.... God, Mulder!" She pressed her hands against her eyes, rubbing deeply. "How could I be? How could you think that of me?" He was silent. She didn't dare look at him, see what she had done. "I can't, Mulder." She reached for him, her voice soft, speaking the least of the truth. More than that she would not say. "If it's true, then it.... it justifies what you did - what they did to you. Can't you see that?" But, even as she said it, she wondered if it was not the truth after all, or part of it. If he had suffered all this just because he'd been stupid enough to believe *that* about her, then it absolved her of blame? She dug her nails into her palms, suddenly knowing that she deserved that pain. "If it's not true...." He was almost quivering with the fear of talking, of opposing her. "If you ignore the warning, then it was all for nothing. I.... I would dream of you listening, of you believing. It was all for...." His voice faded, then rallied. "I need that justification." She hated herself then. "Mulder," she began, but knew she would get no further. "We'll talk about this when you're stronger. Not now, Mulder." she added silently, mentally softening her peremptory tone. He flinched as if slapped, but said nothing. "Mulder." Oh, but she wanted to weep for the tragedy of it. She had been three months without him. It shouldn't be like this. "I'm sorry, Mulder. It's not the right time. Something like this.... I need time." She had a sudden flash then, and knew she was seeing the future - a possible future. Years from now, speaking to her own thoughts. "We'll talk about it when you're better." She spoke loudly. There were so many things to drown out. "If...." He swallowed. He seemed even smaller than he had only minutes earlier, his voice even weaker. "I've lost my mind, Scully. They took it from me. I.... I can't think. I can't make connections. I can't...." "You will, Mulder." On this, she had to let no doubt into her voice. "When your body's healed - when your mind truly knows you're safe - then you'll get better. Right now, you're just...." She struggled for the right word. "Traumatized," she said at last. It covered so much. "Really?" She had to turn away, to wipe at her eyes without him seeing. "You're strong, Mulder." *That* she believed. The assassin in the woods had said.... She pulled away from that thought as if it burnt her. He couldn't have known. There was no way he could have known. "Do you know?" He looked so trusting, so needy. "Can you f...." He broke off, sudden fear in his eyes. she thought, but he continued before she could speak. "There was a man earlier. He.... he *felt* me. He said I wasn't as bad as I seemed. He knew." She bit back her angry response and managed a weak smile. She had to choose her words carefully, now - to make sure everything came only from sound reasoning. "I know, Mulder, because I can hear you. We've had a conversation. You've been coherent. You've thought. You've made connections....." Her laugh sounded so unconvincing to herself. "We've *talked*, Mulder. You.... We can go back to where we were before, as if this hasn't happened." He frowned, and was silent for so long that flashed into her mind in a sudden irrational panic. "Mulder?" His lips curved in something that could have been a smile. "I'm tired, Scully. Can I sleep now. Please?" She nodded, unable to trust herself to speak. It was ironic, perhaps, that, among all her many ill-judged words, this silence would prove to be her greatest mistake. But, now, while he slept, she watched him, and thought of the past.... and of a future that she would build until it was like the past - *exactly* like. There were things that had happened that would never be thought about, never be talked about. There was the future. **** FINIS **** NOTES: (from Pellinor) This story jumped out on us totally unexpectedly, when a chance suggestion in an email led us to an opening scenario that neither of us wanted to hand over. Like our previous joint writing venture, "Nothing So Loud", this story was written as a tag-team, in which we took turns to write sections, cackling evilly as we handed over the most devilish cliff-hangers. Initially it was written with no planning, although the nature of the emerging back story soon demanded a few long Trans-Atlantic phone calls. Writing it was an.... experience. For the entire writing period my computer had been alternating between total death and a sort of zombie- like near-death, necessitating lots of desperate dashes across town with a floppy disc clutched in my hot little hand, ready to appropriate the computer at work for my own nefarious purposes. Oh how life likes to test poor defenseless angst writers by giving them hands-on experience of what they write about. Apart from that, though, it was great fun - so much so that we're already making vague noises about POSSIBLY writing a sequel, if - please note the "if" - people let us know that they would like to see one. All letters will be replied to, although your reply may come with the sound effects of a screaming computer as, once more, I try to beat it into submission. Notes From Rebecca: Everything she said, gender flipped. As Elspeth said, writing this story was tremendous fun, and yet utterly exhausting. With our last joint venture, we allowed the story to dictate where it wanted to go. With this one, we found ourselves in the peculiar position of having to meticulously outline a back story, while keeping the plot open-ended. Quite a challenge! Let us know what you thought, or if you think a sequel is necessary. Our evil brains are already plotting, so any feedback is more than welcome.