From: "Wintersong" Date: Fri, 28 Dec 2001 01:52:43 -0400 Subject: Submission Source: direct Title - "The Lost II: Found" Author - Wintersong E-Mail address - wintersong@animatrix.ns.ca Rating - R (language), sexual references, graphic violence Category - Casefile, Profiler Mulder/Scully Summary - In the midst of an explosively escalating serial arson case, Mulder and Scully must come to terms with the changes that six months in the wilderness have wrought in themselves and those around them. Disclaimer: They belong to CC and 1013. Author's Notes: This is the sequel to The Lost and second in what is turning into a series . The next book is Alphas. Technically, I would call this MSR, and that is definately where the series is going. This lays the groundwork for much of what happens in Alphas - but it is not NC-17. It is not even RST. Sorry-I tried, but there was too much other stuff to get out of the way first! Lots of Bill Scully though. You could probably get away with not reading The Lost if you really had too - just realize that everyone thought Mulder and Scully were dead for six months and that the X-Files Division now has five new agents. However, some of the off-canon changes in the characters might not make alot of sense without having read the first story. Timewise, The Lost and Found can be assumed to have taken place after Soldiergirl and Games. I accidentally reused Bravo team, so if you've read any of Retrieval, it's the same team but different universe. For now anyway, until I can figure out how to fix it :o) Many thanks need to go to my beta-reader T. Kaufman for her fantastically helpful feedback and encouragment. Also the gang at The Haven and the pointy stick crowd for all the determined stalking, ego-stroking and support-especially the assistance in filling in the plot holes. Any continuity gaps are purely my fault . Feedback lovingly appreciated (even if it does take me forever and a day to write back). Hope you enjoy the story! Wintersong ******************************************** Old Farmstead Outside San Diego 1996 Methane is - quite literally - a natural gas. It is the waste product of the digestive process, a major component of the greenhouse effect and the reason you absolutely do not want an open flame behind a cow when it farts. One kilogram of organic material can theoretically produce 800 - 1200 liters of the gas when decomposed in an anaerobic or low oxygen environment and , most recently, is the reason that landfills generally ban the uncontrolled dumping of organic waste. Because at a five to fifteen percent mixture of fuel to air, it doesn't just burn. It explodes. A schizophrenic phenomena of many faces, it has belched in the murky depths of a rotting bog, stolen the breath from coal blackened miners and sealed the fate of many of those same men with flashfire heat and concussion. It's gassy rumblings have masqueraded as the discontented turning of the restless dead while angry flames have torn through the heart of a landfill with just a single spark. Colorless. Odorless. Deadly. Given its druthers, it will spend itself into the atmosphere, rising out of the earth on the path of least resistance. Thwarted, trapped beneath the surface by heavy layers of impermeable soil, it will gather, forming a pocket, a reservoir of uneasy potential. Twisting, turning, thrusting tiny fingers of itself into the surrounding soil, it will move laterally as far as the earth will allow. It knows nothing of time or patience, although the speed of its passage is guided by the temperature of the seasons. Given the warmth of the summer, it will race through the looser soil, eagerly searching a route to the sun. Winter, with its heavy damp and frozen demeanor forces it to check its pace, taking on a form of elemental hibernation. It has no innate malevolence, no desire for transformation. It follows no inbred mandate that demands its fiery conversion. But it can kill just the same. Creeping silently through the cracks in ancient concrete, the uninvited houseguest seeps through floorboards, rising through the walls and curling into pockets of wood and plaster. Unaware of trespass, it glides past dusty wiring until it reaches the attic...and stops. Unable to go further, as trapped by wood and glass as it was by clay and stone it swirls in ever deeper concentrations until the day someone all unknowing, opens the wrong door. And creates a spark. On a cheery April morning, the fuel to air mixture was just above threshold. It would burn, but it wouldn't explode. Not until Deborah Sullivan opened the front door and ushered in a family of clients she hoped would finally buy this old white elephant and take it off the county's hands. The change in pressure was hardly enough to notice. But it was just enough. And then the smoker in the family lit a match. Death was almost instantaneous. Almost. In a searing blast of heat and light, a shockwave exploded outward from Fred Dunn and his wife, leaving behind seared corpses and lungs empty of oxygen. For all it's speed relative to human perception however, this was a deflagration, not a detonation . The shockwave, moving far below the speed of sound, raced away from the blast epicenter picking up speed as the unburned gas ahead of the flame front heated. But, despite the fact that in absolute terms a deflagration is less damaging than a detonation, human flesh and ancient wood is poorly protected. Deborah Sullivan, nine year old Kathleen Dunn and her younger brother Toby heard the explosion a bare instant before they felt the flames. There was no time to run. Deborah and Kathleen were smashed against the wall of the old house, lungs ruptured by the concussive change in pressure, bodies seared by the steadily increasing temperature of the flames just behind. Toby, being lighter, was physically lifted off his feet and thrown into the window. Assaulted by the pressure wave as well as the weight of a six year old boy, the glass shattered. A detonation is a high speed concussive blast that shatters through the supersonic speed of the shockwave and turns rubble into deadly secondary missiles. Not so with a deflagration. The slower, subsonic shockwave allows for shifting, cracking, and venting. The amount of damage done is directly related to the amount of reactive material , the proportions of fuel to air and the number of obstacles placed in the path of the blast. In this particular case, while they heaved and groaned and buckled in places, the walls of the old house held. Once through the window, Toby fell below the path of the blast, protected by the shell of the house and escaping the hungry flames chasing after him. He was burned in places where parts of his body fell a bit more slowly than others, but it wasn't enough to kill him. The driver of a passing car had seen the smoke and the flames and was already using his cell phone to dial 911. Despite the damage to the boy's lungs, the fire department could have him on high flow oxygen within ten minutes and at the hospital in another fifteen. But he was only 45lbs of soft tissue and immature bone. In the arms of a shell-shocked insurance salesman, Toby bled to death from a severed abdominal artery two minutes before the fire truck pulled in the driveway. He could not tell them what had happened. The complete story of his death was closed to the first responders and emergency personnel pouring onto the scene. It would take an autopsy and a medical doctor to fully understand his injuries...and by then it was far too late. Because the reservoir still waited. The firefighters did not know it existed, because they did not yet know what had caused the explosion. Nor would they have realized that at one time there had been a tunnel connecting the house to the source of the gas. A tunnel that stretched almost 200 feet, had a diameter of just under four feet and was filled with an explosively lean mixture of air and methane. The tunnel had been the primary route of conveyance for the methane, an underground highway linking reservoir and structure. But while the route itself was unblocked, it was tightly sealed by doors at both ends and the entrance into the basement of the old farmhouse was concealed behind a movable shelf covered in empty mason jars. It had taken years for such a destructive quantity of methane to seep into the house. Enough years for the landlord to have replaced the main floor door to the basement with a tight-fitting weather stripped one. Ostensibly it was to keep cold drafts from forcing their way through the cracks. In reality, it was used to block the slight odor of rotten eggs that the landlord assumed resulted from a seepage of ground water into the basement. Methane is odorless, but it isn't the only gas created by rotting flesh ...just the primary one. By this time, the fire chief had pulled up in his car along with three patrol cars, a second ambulance and a small blue pinto belonging to the local newspaper reporter. A dozen cars had stopped along the curb, families out for a Sunday drive joining the growing crowd of locals drawn by the commotion they could see from their front windows. Figuring that it made as good an artificial boundary as anything, the patrolmen blocked off the driveway, clearly announcing that on-lookers were to go no closer than the roadside shoulder. The only thought that many of them had that morning was the fact that the 600 feet between them and the house meant that they could not get a good look at the destruction. Had they known what the firefighters did not, they would have tripled that distance. They did not know that the door which had prevented the smell from rising into the house, had also prevented the methane below from igniting. Nor did they know that the doors concealing the tunnel were old and heavily damaged by dry rot. Which is why, while ambulance attendants were dealing with a hysterical salesman, and three men and one woman were unrolling hose and setting up control lines, two firefighters with Scott air-packs and axes forced the basement door of a burning house hoping that someone may have survived the blaze. The secondary explosion killed them both. It also shattered the hidden door and, far worse, ignited the gas in the tunnel. Despite the angry cries of blame that later fell on uniformed shoulders, there was no way that the patrolmen could have known. No way for them to realize that they were facing a worst case scenario better suited to an oil refinery than the sleepy backyard of a quiet rural road. As far as they knew, this was just another fire. They were not to blame. It was not their fault. But ignorance does not protect the innocent. The ignition and secondary blast collapsed the tunnel entrance and sealed it with several tons of debris. Closed at both ends, there was still more than enough oxygen to support combustion and in less than a second, the fire had raced from one end of the tunnel to the other, eagerly consuming methane and oxygen in a chemical combination of fiery birth and rebirth. Partway down the tunnel the forward speed of the advancing flame front slowed almost to a stop even as the combustion turbulence increased wildly, not because of lack of fuel, but because of the incredible increase in pressure building up as the heating and expansion of gases raced away from the head of the blast...and were left with no place to go. No one will ever completely reconstruct what happened next. It is remotely possible that the firefighters standing near the ruins had a split second to recognize the rumbling vibrations beneath their feet as something odd. It is physically impossible for them to have heard the muffled whomp that would have signaled the catastrophic transition of explosion from deflagration to detonation. They could not have heard it for the simple fact that by the time the sonic waves traveled far enough through earth and rock for their ears to have heard them, the supersonic detonation wave had already killed them. Engineers will point to steel pipes with great rounded bulges as evidence of the unbelievable strength of detonation potential. Only here, there was no steel to bent, to shatter, or resist. Explosive potential comparable to that released by TNT or military C4 explosive disintegrated the door on the far end of the tunnel and slammed into the cement room just behind. Only there was no exit, no place for the blast to vent to and the room was already overpressurized with a huge reservoir of pure methane. The roof exploded. Driven by the titanic fury of a concussive blast wave, the non-reinforced concrete ceiling, degraded and rotted over the years by exposure to groundwater, literally tore itself apart in an agonizing rending of concrete, earth and sod, Even as the earth ripped apart with the wet sound of ripping silk, over one million liters of high pressure methane spewed through the gaping wound, forced outward by the reservoir's own massive overpressure and the conflagration howling along behind. Then the flames from the first underground detonation reached the trailing edge of the vapor cloud now fully formed over the vent in the earth... ...and it detonated too. In an eerily silent explosion of light, onlookers saw the flash first. Reflected light travelling at over 186,000 m/s to reach their eyes long before the super sonic blast wave swept over them, exploding lungs, rupturing eardrums and hurling bodies into cars. It shattered every window within 200 meters and rattled others almost a half a kilometer away. Then the flames took the survivors. Bleeding from the eyes and ears, firefighter Graham Wilson crawled out from behind the twisted wreckage of the fire truck which had taken the brunt of the blast and sheltered him in it's shadow. Lungs burning, eyes swollen, he tried to climb to his feet, only to collapse as the leg beneath him twisted and failed. He gasped and stared in numb horror at the gleam of bone protruding from his thigh...then he started vomiting uncontrollably when he realized that the bone was not his. Later, he would recall that he remembered thinking how eerily silent it was. How he should have been hearing the screams of people over the flames that he could see only as bright orange glare reflecting off a scene that could have been cast from a vision of Hell. Something landed near his feet. It took a moment before he could make out what the object was. A skull. A human skull. Sitting in the middle of a debris field covered in the decayed and burning remnants of a charnel house of bodies which had hidden beneath the earth for almost two decades, Graham Wilson watched as fire consumed the brittle hair and remaining flesh. The jawbone chattered, moving in a silent semblance of speech as the heat caused the decomposing jaw muscles to split and snap. Three days later, drugged to the eyeballs, Wilson's screaming finally stopped. His nightmares never did. ******************************************* The guard at the front door must have been new...he never even blinked. He was the only one who did not. By the time they got to the elevator, her headache was coming back. Mulder had crowded even closer than usual although she was not sure whether it was due to his own unease or because he sensed hers. His hand had settled into the small of her back a half dozen times before fluttering away like a startled bird. The fact that he was so unusually self-conscious about touching her was disturbing both for the level of agitation that blank face was hiding and for a far more personal reason. She missed him. It was crazy. She had spent fifty percent of her waking hours and all of her sleeping ones for the last six months with her partner. But somewhere between collecting their cars, reopening their bank accounts, buying groceries for empty cupboards and retrieving his fish, Mulder had gone away. She wanted him back. As soon as the elevator doors closed she did something she had never done before. Not in the elevator of the Hoover building. She allowed herself to lean against her partner and wrapped her arms around his waist for a brief hug. She felt him stiffen in shock. Of all things, she knew he had not thought that she would allow herself this. And when other people were present she probably would not. But here, at this moment, she needed him. He needed to know that. He still had not decided how to respond when the elevator slowed to a halt and her arms fell away. But the hand that he had been second- guessing crept back to where it belonged. If she wanted to get technical about it, she supposed she could blame Skinner. It had just never occurred to them that they had changed all that much. As far as she could tell, Mulder was still Mulder. And now, back among the familiar, she was actually having trouble remembering that the missing months had been more than an unusually vivid dream. Everything had seemed so bright, so real ,not seven days ago. The circumstances of survival had seemed so immediate that she would have thought they would have been engraved on her memory forever. Or at least have made their return to DC a bit more awkward. But nothing had changed. Not their apartments, not her mother...not even Mulder's fish. Nothing outward at least. Whatever internal changes she may have had regarding the way she was viewing her partner and his role in her life was not something that should be visible. The familiar reached out and wrapped them in their old lives, resurrecting old habits with frightening ease. Yet something must have changed. Something they could not see. Because every once in a while Skinner would pause, a startled look appearing in his eyes. Instantly he would wipe all expression from his face, hiding thoughts and conclusions beneath the bland professionalism of an FBI bureaucrat. But they had both started rethinking every action they made. Was this how they would have done it before? Was this normal? For her, it was easy. She had rarely touched her partner unless he was injured. Therefore every gesture, every touch, was new. It physically hurt to suppress the instinct to reach out, but it was easy to see the edge where old rules and new habits collided. Only Mulder had never followed the rules. He had simply stopped wherever she drew the line. And she had lost her certainties on that issue. The basement hallway was silent. She was not even sure why they were here. Their keys had been lost along with everything else that Corman had dumped. None of their personal belongings had ever been recovered. Skinner had hesitated when Mulder had asked him about the X-Files, said something about getting them reassigned after they were cleared by the counselors to go back to work, then changed the subject. Both agents had exchanged uneasy glances, but let it go. Now, Scully wondered if she should have pressed a little harder. As it turned out, they did not have to worry about the state of their office. They no longer had one. Scully gazed blankly at a row of frosted glass wall wearing big black letters that spelled out "X-Files Division" while Mulder made a sound that her nightmares recalled from the day that she had shot him. The lights were off, but the door was open. Soundlessly both agents stepped into the room. Scully had to fight down a hysterical laugh. Proof indeed that the world had gone on without them. Mulder just looked dazed. The door they had entered used to be the entrance to the conference and training room located next to their office. Light seeping through the glass wall revealed a command center layout that Mulder remembered intimately from the VCU. Whiteboard and corkboard covered the left wall. The back of the room supported some sort of basic lab set-up in the right corner while the left held a dedicated computer system with all the peripherals and more whiteboard on the wall behind and beside it. The logo blazing on the monitor said VICAP. The horseshoe table arrangement in the center of the room surrounded the slide projector which was aimed at the right-hand wall connecting the conference room to their old office. A row of gleaming new filing cabinets sat three drawers high and ran the length of the glass wall. Stripped of files, projector and coffeemaker, their old room now hosted five desks and a sectioned off corner that was probably an office. The old door was gone, plastered over to give the room more wall space. The only thing that remained familiar was a blue and white poster stating "I want to Believe" placed prominently on the far wall where anyone walking into the office area could not help but notice it. At least they had left the poster. A faint noise behind them had both agents spinning defensively. Hands reached reflexively for weapons that were no longer there, but they were not in danger. The agent that stood gaping at them, paper cup of coffee in his hand seemed to have enough trouble breathing let alone offering a threat. His mouth gaped like a fish trying to breath air. Once. Twice. Scully glanced once at her equally bemused partner then made the mistake of moving toward the shocked agent. His mouth open again. Then he screamed. Before either of the older agents could do more than reach reassuring hands toward the terrified young man, his coffee fell from nerveless fingers and Agent Harris, newly graduated agent of the FBI and current member of the new and improved X-Files Division, keeled over in a dead faint. Both Mulder and Scully were seconds too slow in leaping to catch him and when Agent Vickery and Agent Lewis barreled through the door, all they saw were two dark forms bending over the body of their fellow agent. Vickery tackled Scully just as the agent was rising to her feet. Instinctively, Scully grabbed the younger woman's arm, twisted and yanked as she finished standing. Unfortunately she failed to consider the natural result of six months of hard labor and she watched in horror as Vickery flew through the air and slammed into the far wall. As the woman sagged to floor, taking photos, papers and case reports with her, Lewis reached Mulder. Despite his longer limbs, Mulder was facing a woman who had been on the receiving end of three months of brutal self defense training which included bouts against physically larger and stronger male opponents. Considering that he was still mentally off balance over the attack while she was in full defense mode, it should have been easy. But Mulder had spent over six years working, fighting and training with a physically shorter partner. He knew her center of gravity almost as well as he knew his own. And he never underestimated an opponent because she was a woman. Lewis made the mistake of underestimating him. He let her throw him...and then he took her down with him. Three seconds later she was face down on the floor and he was looking for handcuffs. Then the calvary arrived. Maybe if Mulder and Scully had been wearing suits, sanity would have prevailed. Maybe if they were not already accustomed to being attacked without warning. Maybe if the five new agents had not spent the last four weeks riding the thin edge of madness as they went bungie-jumping in the Abyss. Maybe... But maybe was not to be. AD Skinner had planned to introduce everyone together at the meeting this morning. Accordingly he had rounded up all the current X-Files agents except for Agent Harris who was already on his way to the basement. Harris's terrified scream had echoed down the hall just as the elevator doors had opened. Vickery and Lewis exploded into the hallway, but Skinner reflexively grabbed Landers in an attempt to explain. Her leg swung out to counter the pull and Mike tripped taking all three of them down together. By the time they had sorted themselves out, Vickery and Lewis were gone, Landers and Mathews were right behind them and Skinner was still trying to remind his lungs how to breathe...a side effect of Landers' 135 pounds landing square on his ribcage. In the space of the seconds that it took him to make his way to the door, the X-Files office had turned into a free-for-all. Skinner stopped dead in shock as bodies hurled through the air, slammed into desks, and ricocheted off walls. He drew a deep breath and was about to bellow out an ear- cracking order to cease and desist when it occurred to him that Mulder and Scully were winning. The ex-marine hesitated. They were outnumbered and several years older than at least two of their opponents, but they had something the other agents did not. Both of them had an almost preternatural sense of where the other was at any given time. Twice , Skinner winced as one of the new agents whirled and clocked his own side. Nor did Mulder and Scully seem to be limited to just one dimension. Desks and tables that represented obstacles to their opponents became safety zones and jumping off points for new attacks as both agents leapt easily from floor to desk top like demented mountain goats. They also seemed to be less bothered by the dark. Skinner was not sure whether they were actually seeing in the dark, but the chairs and edges that seemed to hurtle out of the shadows to attack their opponents never seemed to bother them. The FBI agent wanted to be horrified. The bureaucrat was seeing paperwork and lawsuits if one of these idiots broke somebody. The soldier was thinking about wolf packs and pissing contests. Then the choice was taken from him. Landers remembered that she was armed. Mulder must have seen her go for the gun out of the corner of his eye. Landers was focused on Scully and Skinner was not sure if she considered her the greater threat...or if she just did not see Mulder. Skinner barely had time to curse as he saw the train heading for the busted tracks. Mulder had no idea what he was doing. The agent leapt in Landers' direction and Skinner cringed. During practice, Mathews always did the same damn thing. What was it about tall men that made them want to close and grab when their opponents were women? How many times had he seen Mike go down with just that move? Landers' head turned, her arm reached... And Mulder threw a perfect right cross that took her square across the cheekbone. He had her gun in his hand before she hit the floor. Then Scully tossed Mathews into his line of sight and Skinner had just enough time to draw breath and yell. "Enough!" Everybody froze. Everyone except Harris. In the sudden silence, the moan of the agent who had started all of this echoed loudly and his eyes opened to fix wildly on his AD. Then they slid past him to widen even further in mortal terror. "G..g..gh...ghosts!" Then his eyes rolled back into his head and he passed out again. Skinner looked over at his two wayward agents and started to shake as he finally realized what Harris had seen. After a moment, he identified the emotion as laughter. Both of the astonished agents were wearing the black sweaters and blue jeans they had purchased last week to replace their leather. It was doubtful that Agent Harris had actually gone home last night. The current case had hit him particularly hard. Nerves stretched by too much caffeine and mind blurred by not enough sleep, all the exhausted agent had seen were the disembodied heads of two dead agents emerging from the shadows. I want to believe, indeed. Landers had figured it out. So had Mathews. Still, a formal introduction was only proper. Skinner took another long look at the destruction surrounding them and considered it an appropriate homecoming. "Agent Mulder, Agent Scully. Say hello to the rest of your team." ****************************************** Washington, DC Day 1 Monday, 9:05 am Seven FBI agents limped after their AD like a line of chastened ducklings. Open-mouthed bystanders silently took in bloody noses, blackening eyes and torn clothing. At least half of them had the presence of mind to check for weapons. The other half were too busy aiming incredulous disbelief at Agents Lazarus and Lazarette. Tripping over the water cooler during a double take, however, was a bit much. Landers restricted herself to a restrained sneer as Agent Chambers extricated himself from the wreckage. Skinner did not even glance at the hapless agent as he stepped around him. Mathews glared, Lewis twitched, Vickery had her gaze fixed so far forward she could have been one of the guards of Buckingham Palace, and Harris was going to trip over someone if he did not take his eyes off his shoes. Spooky Mulder and Doc Ice, on the other hand, were just plain creepy. Contemplating matching black outfits, she had been trying to decide if they were going for couple cute or specwar chic. Then Agent Scully had turned her head and Landers had been unable to control the instinctive flinch as she recalled the last time she had seen eyes like that. Oh man, not cute. Definitely not cute. She had heard the rumors. Seen the reports. But she had to wonder if maybe there was something no one was being told. Her eyes shifted back to the broad shoulders of her AD and narrowed thoughtfully. There had been plenty of rumors involving him as well. He was sleeping with Agent Scully. He was sleeping with Agent Mulder. He was sleeping with Agent Scully and Agent Mulder. He was in bed with somebody who had the power to disappear agents and evidence with equal ease and certain agents were beginning to wonder just whose side he was on. Maybe Corman never got to the agents. Maybe Skinner knew who did. Landers had filed those rumors scrupulously and kept her eyes open. There was absolutely no doubt in her mind that Skinner was up to his bald head in something ... unofficial. Scully's cold, blue gaze had contained more lethal evaluation than any FBI agent should ever understand. Maybe the rumors had not gone far enough. She had NEVER seen FBI agents move like that. Come to think of it, she had never seen plane crash survivors move like that. She had never even seen street cops, Navy SEALs, or Marine Force Recon moved like that. So where in the hell had these two agents really been for the last six months? And would Agent Scully please just pick a spot and stay the hell put? One minute behind Mulder, the next two steps ahead. Left. Right. She was ranging around her partner like Uncle Fred's blue-tick hound, Buster. Left. Right. Landers was getting a headache. What the hell was the matter with her? The really weird thing about it was that Agent Mulder did not seem to mind. Nor was he caught off guard when she suddenly stopped dead in the hallway and fixed her eyes on something or someone off to her right. His hop step to the left was gracefully controlled and he waited patiently, leaving the rest of them bottled up in the hallway behind them until she was through. Then they were off again. Very weird. AD Skinner's office was a hell of a lot smaller than she remembered it, especially once Kimberly closed the door behind them. Mike started to sit in one of the two chairs before the desk only to freeze as the AD paused to stare at him blankly during his own mid-sit. Mike glanced once at Agents Mulder and Scully, then straightened awkwardly while everyone else tried to memorize wall paneling. To give them credit, neither Mulder nor Scully looked particularly triumphant; Landers was not the only one uncomfortable with the sudden change in group dynamics. Vickery's lips were pinched into a narrow line while Harris and Lewis just looked like they wished they could be anywhere but where they were. Everyone in the room knew that the X-Files used to belong to Mulder and Scully. But it was a new division now. And Mike was their team leader, damn it. "Mulder, Scully, I want you to bring yourself up to speed on the Methane Bomber. Agent Mathews will introduce you to your team. They are assisting with the ISU investigation at the moment. As soon as you are cleared for duty I want your team to start looking at other possible angles." Landers blinked. Mike looked shocked. Forgetting about the fact that the AD had just overlooked a multi-agent brawl in the basement, these agents had either spent six months at the mercy of a Wyoming winter or six months undercover. There was a good chance they did not own many more clothes than the ones on their backs and it was doubtful that Accounting even knew they were alive again. Any way it added up, these people needed some debrief and downtime. Was the AD insane? Neither Agent Mulder nor Scully seemed surprised. And what was all that nonsense about other angles? They were doing very well with the angles they were already investigating thank-you very much. Yet, even as Agent Landers, FBI railed at the AD's decision, Elizabeth Landers, ex-marine, knew exactly what he was doing. He was giving back the X-Files. Now that they were back, he was making absolutely clear who was in charge. The X- Files division might have been working with the ISU as a team, but not as a department in charge of their own investigatory track. The ISU investigation had left Mike as the co-ordinator, the go-between, but not really in charge. It was a subtle difference--but a very real one. AD Skinner may not have handed over their weapons or badges, but he had just publicly given them everything else. Including the five other agents sitting in this room. Some signal must have passed between the AD and the two agents in front of him because both suddenly stood and headed for the door. With hesitant looks at Mike, Vickery, Lewis and Harris trailed after them. Mike tried twice to speak despite the closed expression on the AD's face. Landers just kept praying that whatever it was, he would think it through before saying it. Finally, with one last betrayed look at his boss, Mike wheeled and strode from the room. She was very impressed that he managed not to slam the door. The AD gestured briefly, keeping her from following. With a sinking heart, Landers had a feeling that she knew what came next. She prayed she was wrong. "You and I both know what's going to happen over the next few weeks." Landers kept her mouth shut. He had no right to do this to her. None at all. She let her eyes declare both her anger at what he was about to do and her clear opinion that he had fubared this situation but good. Maybe he had no choice about how he handled things once it all went to hell, but Mike at least should have known before he came in to work this morning. That is why they invented cell phones, damn it. He blinked once, a familiar shadow of regret passing over his face, and then it was gone. Five generations of military breeding told her that that was the only apology she was ever going to get. "Agent Landers, you are probably the only person in the unit who has seen this before. " New officers brought into old units. A- fucking-firmative, Sir. She had seen it before. So had he. Probably right before the old unit fragged the shiny new twooy-louie with a hand grenade. Skinner's eyes were flat behind his glasses. "Make sure it doesn't become a problem." She fixed her eyes on the wall behind Skinner's left shoulder, "Agent Mathews has a background as a police officer, Sir. He is just as aware as I am about any potential for --difficulties." Skinner did not bother to reply. They both knew that Mike was going to be the largest part of the problem. But he at least deserved the chance to try without subversion in the ranks. This order stunk...and the AD knew it. Looking at him, she also knew that no matter how unpalatable a position he had just put her in, he was not going to rescind his order. In that moment, she reconsidered all the conclusions she had previously drawn about his loyalties. Green eyes met inflexible brown and discovered three harsh truths. Agents Mulder and Scully were back to stay. As far as this man was concerned, they had never left. Everyone else was expendable. A lifetime of practice allowed her to twist her lips with just the right emphasis to acknowledge that understanding. AD Skinner's eyes darkened, but he did not flinch. His face said it all. Suck it up marine. Do not ask...just ask how high. "Hoo-ya, Sir." she said bitterly. ****************************************** Washington, DC Day 1 Monday, 9:27 am Mulder was thankful that his partner did not try to ask him how he was feeling. He honestly had no idea. Stunned? Stunned was a good place to start. Or maybe betrayed. Why had Skinner not warned them? Maybe if he had had some idea this was coming... Christ. Five more agents. How the hell...? As soon as they passed through the doorway into the X-Files command center, Scully wrapped her hand around his wrist and he turned to stare at her helplessly. His emotions teetered on the edge of control. He tried to explain. To answer the concern in her eyes. "What are we...? I can't...." Jesus, this was one of his worst nightmares come to life. Defensive anger sparked and he glared at his partner. "We were supposed to be *safe* down here, Scully." <*I* was supposed to be safe down here.> She did not even blink, just tightened her grip. Safe. Anyone else would think he was crazy. How had the X-Files ever been safe? "We'll figure it out, Mulder." "I can't do it again, Scully." These were not people he could piss off with impunity. People he could mentally thumb his nose at while he solved their case and then rode off into the sunset. He could not leave these ones behind. These people were permanent. He would be expected to care what they thought. He would have to accept their presence into *his* territory. Hell, it was not even his territory anymore. He would have to watch them watching him as they waited for him to pull another last minute rabbit out of the god damn hat. Watch as that little niggle of doubt eyed him from the corners of their eyes as they wondered just how far into the Abyss he had fallen today. Watching. Always watching. He suddenly realized that he was shaking. " My mother was pissed at me for spending my first night back with you." Huh? He stared at her uncomprehendingly. First night back? He frowned as he remembered that she had arrived sometime after eight. After having dinner with her mother. They had fallen asleep on the couch. His words were slow, almost slurred as he struggled to switch gears, to understand what she was saying. "We watched movies." There had been no one waiting at the airport for Fox Mulder when they had stepped off the plane. He had sent his partner off with her brother and her mother and then allowed Skinner to drive him home. He had stood in his darkened apartment and fought a nagging feeling that surely he was supposed to call someone. Tell someone. Realizing that there was no one to call. He remembered thinking that you were supposed to have someone to call. He had told himself that he had people who cared about him. Skinner. Frohike, Byers and Langly. Scully. People he could actually call on if he got into trouble. People who cared whether he lived or died. More people than many had, and better friends than most. As he left a message on the Gunmen's answering machine and listened to the echoes of his empty apartment, he had tried convincing himself again that he was not alone. It just felt like it. He wondered if she had any idea what he had felt when he had opened that door and seen her standing there. For a moment, he had almost been afraid to let her in. Afraid that she would see too much. Then he had been afraid that she would see too little. That she might think he was glad to see her simply because there was no one else. So he asked her now what he had been too afraid to ask her then. "Why did you come over?" She hesitated, her eyes sliding to study the mess of papers still scattered on the floor. "I told myself it was because I didn't want you to be alone our first night back. " He knew that. Had known that. But her expression was suggesting that his understanding of the whole was only one half of the truth. "But?" She swallowed sharply and for a split second he was frightened by what she might say. "We're in this together, Mulder, because the truth is that the only time I'm not alone anymore is when I'm with you." Her smile was sad. " I used to look at them and see all the things I could never tell them. We would be in the same room--but we were not living in the same world. This time--this time it was their reality that held the dark things." Mulder watched as she started picking up papers and trying to flatten them back into some semblance of order. For six months this world had gone on without them. They had briefly lived a divergent reality, their view of the future rooted in the moment they had stepped out of time. Yet they could not pick up where they left off; those places no longer existed. Instead, they were left trying to create a place for themselves within a world which had spent six months weaving a whole and seamless tapestry with colors that did not include their own. How do you add back threads that the weaver has already cut and replaced? Carefully. For a long moment Scully said nothing further, her face revealing an inner struggle. Finally she looked up, eyes containing a mix of disappointment and bitterness. "I resent feeling like I'm supposed to owe them something for their pain." Before he could answer, there were footsteps in the hall and the lights were suddenly flaring to life. Blinking owlishly, Mulder looked to see three of the five agents-- interlopers, his mind wanted to whisper-- huddled near the door and staring across the room cautiously. One of them threw her head back defiantly and stepped forward, her body language declaring that she had every right to be here. Her body language might be confident, Mulder thought, but the pale blue eyes glaring at him held a strange mixture of anger and fear. He made a mental note to check her file for the reasons she had volunteered for the X-Files Division. Maybe Scully would have some ideas. His mind had so completely lumped all of the agents into a single entity called "them" that he it took him a minute to notice individual characteristics. The sudden realization that she was nearly as tall as he was almost had him stepping backwards as he took a closer look. High cheekbones, cafe au lait skin and naturally wavy black hair combined with those eerie violet eyes to create a beauty that was as exotic as it was hard to define. He found himself wondering if her accent would say New Orleans. He was so busy studying the threat in front of him that he almost did not see the other two closing in like velociraptors from the sides. It was not until Scully turned and gave him an amused grin that he realized that he had shifted sideways until he was standing almost back to back with his partner. Jesus. Freud lives. He had started to smile back sheepishly when a fourth hazard walked in the door. Instantly his eyes went to the bruise blazing across her cheekbone. Christ. His eyes snapped to his partner. At the time he had simply reacted to the weapon but... The voodoo priestess in front of him faded back as the military advanced. Mulder had absolutely no doubts that this woman was ex- military. She had the look. She was also perceptive enough to come to an abrupt halt when Scully shifted her weight slightly. Mulder was surprised. Most missed the implied threat. The two agents studied each other for a long moment, then the other woman unexpectedly smiled. "Your partner has a hell of a right cross. " Scully relaxed and the other agent smiled ruefully as she met Mulder's eyes, "I got sloppy. Expected you to hesitate. My ex- drill instructor would have done much worse, believe me." She stepped forward and offered her hand. "Agent Landers." That forced the others to furnish their own introductions. When he finally had names to put to faces, Mulder was startled to see all four of them looking at him expectantly. For an insane minute he had an urge to panic, then realized they were waiting for directions. Scully shrugged when he looked at her. "We have four hours until our first session with the psyche evaluators. I want to read the case file before I start going over the pathology reports. " Mulder eyed his partner, then glanced at Agent Landers, "Has the entire team been assigned full-time to the ISU?" "For the duration of the current investigation was what we were told." So there were no other open cases to worry about. Well, the arson investigation it was. They could get caught up on the X-Files later. He chewed at his lip thoughtfully. Arson. He knew the basics. He also knew that a lot more investigation had been done on the subject since his time with VICAP. Looks like he would have some homework to do. He came back to find the others in the process of cleaning up around him. Scully was cheerfully chatting with Agent Landers and both older women seemed content to ignore him. Agent Lewis, Agent Vickery, and Agent Harris on the other hand were eyeing him uncertainly beneath half lowered eyelids. Mulder flinched as memory obligingly reminded him where those looks inevitably led. Reflex and old defenses took over as he looked at all three agents in bitter challenge. That's right, boys and girls. Spooky Mulder. Get used to it. ******************************************** Washington, DC Day 1 Monday, 5:35pm The day passed in a blur of office smells, warm perfume and the lingering odors of hamburgers and Tzatiki sauce. After enduring a general assault of too loud and too bright, Scully caught Mulder's eye at five and they both escaped with a feeling of heartfelt relief. The nip in the evening air left the concourse around the Reflecting Pool fairly deserted and both agents munched on warm pretzels as they walked. "So what do you think, Scully? Is it the same guy?" Scully bit back a smile and eyed her partner as she resisted the urge to fling her arms around him and hug him simply for being himself. After eight hours of sidelong glances, wary looks and two separate psychiatrists who clearly thought she was lying about her state of mind, Mulder being Mulder was a wondrous relief. Thank god that Skinner had no problems with their working on the case even though it would probably be weeks before they were officially back on the job. She would go nuts otherwise. There was nothing wrong with them. Hell, they had just spent five weeks doing nothing but walking, eating and sleeping. Physically demanding, sure. But it was boring as hell. She was happy to get back to work. Ecstatic. Thanks to the cleaning company her apartment was spotless, her briefcase was empty and it would be another several days before her cable was reconnected. No distractions. No work. No email. No Mulder. The strength of her own sense of relief when she had seen her partner this morning had been unnerving.She was her own person damn it. She was comfortable with herself and her own company. She did not need Mulder to feel like a real person. So why was she suddenly feeling like the rest of her life could now continue? Ignoring Mulder's wistful look, she finished her pretzel and headed home. She lasted all of three hours before she surrendered and showed up at her partner's apartment bearing pizza and videos. He just grinned at her grumpy greeting and ignored the pissed expression on her face as she plopped down onto his couch. She had known it was going to be difficult. The one thing she truly missed about living with someone was the ability to curl up in the arms of another person while sleeping. That, she had valued. It was only natural that she would miss what she had had six months to get used to. So she had thought a clean break would be best. A nice swift amputation and rapid cauterization to keep the wound from infecting. The day after they got back to Washington, she went shopping. The day after that, she did her banking. On Saturday she took her mother out to lunch and they spent the day touring DC. She called her partner. She talked to him for several hours before going to bed on a mattress that seemed too soft, too cold and far too empty. But she refused to go over to his apartment. A large part of her was scared that she would not want to leave. For the first time in almost eight years, she felt lonely. There had been times, during her cancer, when she had felt utterly alone. But death is a solitary journey, so she really did not count those moments. She would have been alone no matter who she was with. The other times... ...the moment she thought Mulder dead beneath a desert sun...hiding in the closet of a madman...looking into her partner's eyes after a pyre of fire and finding the gates to his mind closed... But lonely is not alone. Alone is a physical moment in time. Lonely is a chronic condition of the soul. A lack of a connection. A something that was missing. What she was missing, was the ability to touch her partner. It had always been enough, before. How could she be lonely, when the sense of him never left her? She could have full-blown arguments with him when he was not even there. That sense of his presence, that knowledge that she had of who he was, lived always at the back of her mind. What did it matter if he was not physically present? She did not need him to be. Dana Scully had spent hours or days with her partner and then happily went home alone to her own place, her own space. It was a relief sometimes, truth be told. Especially in the early times. A way to escape from the physical realities of the job, the quest. The need to be somebody specific. An escape even from the physical intensity of her partner. When had she begun to realize that the walls of her home had ceased to be made of wood and had slowly become the skin she lived within? Had mortar and plaster simply come to mean less or had she rejected them? Consciously devalued that which she knew could be lost or broken. The photos? The memories lived inside her head. Her furniture, her belongings? A single match could destroy everything. So maybe she *had* given up what could be too easily taken away. Or maybe the realization of those potential losses had driven home just how little value these things really had. Regardless, Dana Scully had ceased to define any part of herself by that which she owned long before Corman crashed into their lives. The last six months had simply intensified the process. Things were tools. Some more essential than others. The tools that you needed to survive were important. Everything else was not. Things were just things. They were not home. They did not define home. Home was not her things. Home was a dark, snow-covered burrow, a smoky lean-to, an unexpected birdsong or fall of morning light, and a winter trail hundreds of miles from anywhere and to which she would never return. Home was the split second between punchline and the laughter in her partner's eyes. A busy airport. A crowded street. Home was a sly smile as Mulder dared her to dance on the edge of the Abyss and she could feel her walls settle every time she stretched out kinked muscles and turned back to another report. Home was wherever and whatever Dana Scully wanted it to be. For six months, that home had been shared by another. Had included his physical presence. She had been unable to maintain the artificial walls that said office, home, and Mulder. She had abandoned the rule that said when she went home, she left Mulder behind. He could visit, could leave bits and pieces of himself scattered around as a reminder that he had a place in her life, but he could not move in and live there. She was so screwed. For six months Mulder had lived where she defined home. He had crept in and become a part of her walls. His smile became a glint of sunlight on the window, his intensity a table and chairs, his irreverent humor that end table over there in the corner. Quirk and foible, he had merged with mental brick and stone and bathroom tile until she lost sight of where her home ended and he began. For six months Mulder had lived where she defined home. Now she very much feared that home was wherever Mulder lived. She looked up to find her partner's curious eyes studying her over half a piece of pizza. The words popped out of her mouth before she could stop them. "What do you miss most about being married, Mulder?" >From serial killers to marriage...the psyche evaluators would have a great time with that one. Scully almost panicked as she saw the blank look on her partner's face turn thoughtful. Shit. He was really going to tell her. Note to self...do not ask what you do not want to know. Except that she did want to know. She suddenly wanted to know what Fox Mulder valued enough about living with another person to miss when it was gone. She was also surprised to find that she truly hoped that there was something. Not because of any possibilities for the future, but because she desperately hoped that he had found happiness at some point, with someone. Jack Willis had been a mistake. They had both realized it eventually and had parted friends. But while it had lasted she had thought she was happy. How odd that she could be glad Diana was no longer in his life, but she could not forgive her for leaving him. God, she was so screwed. Mulder was looking at her face with a tiny smile of genuine amusement. Bastard. She could feel her own panic face freezing her facial muscles into a painful mask. Mulder coughed. Then he coughed again. But when she started to stalk away, he called after her. "Turn about is fair play, Scully. I'll show you mine if you show me yours." Exasperated she turned to rip him a new one for teasing when she was serious--only to find that Mulder was not teasing. Oh he had a smile on his face, but something was off with his body language. Scully frowned as she looked closer. That was not laughter in his eyes. What? Scully was surprised. Anger? She would have thought the question the reason except for the edge of bitterness that had tinged his last comment. Did he think she would not? He knew her better than that. As if she would ask something like that and then not reciprocate. She may not have meant to ask the question, but if he answered, it was only fair. Surely he knew... He did know her better than that. Puzzled she let her instinctive anger fall away and studied her partner curiously. He was watching her. What was he looking for? For a long moment he did not say anything, then his shoulders drooped infinitesimally and something faded from his eyes that she belatedly recognized as hope. Its loss left them dark and bleak for the split second before he closed them. Then it was gone and it was just Mulder looking back at her. Mulder, who terrified her with his ability to throw himself into the fire. To offer up a part of his heart on the off chance it was something she might want. Mulder who was about to deliver up a slice of his soul simply because she had asked and who would guard with his life whatever she told him in return. Which she would offer because it was quid pro quo. Scully felt the last of the spring warmth leave the day. She held up her hand to keep him from speaking, then closed her eyes and sought memory. Gods. Had she ever, even once, been the one to go first? Yes. No. Did Florida really count? Even then she had not really been offering a gift, had she? She had been leaping at life. The life she had been so sure she would never have a chance to share with him. But she had never actually come out and told him that, did she? She was not even sure why, now. It had occurred to her to wonder if she had subconsciously been giving herself an out in case she changed her mind afterwards. Oops sorry, Mulder. Just the excitement of being alive and all that. You understand. The thought had sickened her as much then as it did now, but she could not say for sure one way or another. She truly did not know. She had thought that she had thought it through. But maybe... Ah hell. So much for the nice spring day. "You know that Jack was the one that started calling me Doc Ice, don't you?" She opened her eyes to find him standing a foot away and frowning down at her. She fixed her gaze on his shoulder and absently studied the pattern of the fabric. Gods this was going to be hard. Anyone else and she could just laugh it off as a quirk. As one of those things. But this one said so much about her. And Mulder, damn his profiler's soul, would see it in an instant. "It was meant as a joke. It was...it was something between the two of us." Scully glanced up at Mulder to find his eyes fixed on hers and that he was barely breathing. " I could never get warm, you see. The path labs are so cold..." Her eyes went distant for a moment. "...so cold." The words came out in a whisper. Cold labs. Cold steel. Cold flesh. "I would come home and Jack would wrap himself around me and tease that he was the only one who could melt the ice." She had fallen asleep curled up in his arms, letting his life chase away the chill of death. " I miss that." Jack had known. He had just never understood. The ice he was melting was only surface rime. A physical manifestation of the real cold she had been trying to balance. The arctic rage that pooled like the liquefied black heart of space at the center of her soul. But he had not been able to meet or match. The first time he had truly glimpsed that part of her essential being, it scared the shit out of him. That was the last time she had felt warm at his touch. Scully made a painful attempt at a smile. "By the time he moved out, it had been months since I could bear to let him touch me. I could...never get warm." Mulder was standing perfectly still. His hand twitched spasmodically, but he did not reach for her. In that moment, she was glad that he did not. She was not absolutely sure what she would do if he did. There were so many things she had never told him. But there was one thing she could. "It was never just quid pro quo, Mulder." She knew he would believe her. She just hoped he understood. ******************************************** Washington, DC Day 1 Monday, 9:57pm The basement hallway was silent. Leyla Harrison carefully stuck her head through the stairwell door and listened for any sign that she was not alone. Hearing nothing she slid into the basement and caught the door and eased it shut. No point in taking unnecessary chances. Creeping forward, breath frozen in her lungs, she wanted to laugh at herself. Wannabe Harrison, FBI. Too scared to just walk in there and hand the damn things over. But oh, god. She knew if she met them...she just knew she would say something stupid. She would start babbling about their last case and have to watch as their eyes glazed over. She put a finger up to her mouth to scrape at her front teeth, anyway. Just in case. The office was reassuringly dark and she was halfway across the room when a voice came out of the dark right beside her. "Excuse me?" Leyla shrieked, papers exploding in all directions as her body whirled in defensive terror. She was almost as shocked by her success as by her reflex when her fist met flesh with a satisfying "thunk" and she heard the sound of another body falling to the floor. She was half up on tip toe, caught between the champagne fizz of elation and the mortal humiliation of realizing that she had just clobbered one of the seven people she envied and admired most in the world. Oh God. Please don't let it be Mulder. Scully would kill her. Oh God. Oh God. Oh...wait. Mulder was too tall. The groan at her feet had her racing for the lights. The flickering of the fluorescents revealed a shock of brown hair flopping over one eye and a hand cupped protectively over an abused nose. Wounded brown eyes looked up at her, bruised and reproachful. Ahhhh shit. She just kicked a puppy. "Agent Harris?" He squinted at her cautiously and levered himself into a more stable sitting position. "Don't tell me...you thought I was a ghost." Uncertain whether the dry tone was directed at her personally or because of the situation, Leyla inched forward and offered him her hand. The agent sighed and let her pull him to his feet. She flushed mortified shades of red when he immediately started to help gather the scattered papers. He caught her taking sideways peeks at his face and surprised her by grinning. "Don't worry. It'll blend." She gazed at him blankly. "With the others." He stopped and stared, exasperated at her incomprehension. "From this morning?" Leyla just shook her head in ignorance. "You didn't hear about our little departmental dust-up? " Leyla perked up, "Did you really have to go rescue Mulder and Scully? Everyone was wondering about that. I thought maybe that they had not really been missing but that maybe they had just been undercover...you know like when they went to Arcadia Falls and that tulpa tried to kill them. Of course, I guess you can't tell me since that's not the official story, still, I hope you told Mrs. Scully. I know she didn't have a funeral which might suggest that she knew, but she looked pretty broken up at the memorial service. But then, Scully did the same thing when she had to pretend Mulder was dead and..." Agent Harris was gaping at her. Shit. She did it again. God, and look who she was telling it too. Biting back a sudden urge to cry she did a quick check to see if she had found all the documents and then shoved everything into the surprised agent's hands. "Here. These are for Agents Mulder and Scully. I've...I've got to go. Good night. Sorry about your nose." Then before she could humiliate herself further, she ran for the door. ************************************ Special Agent Bradley Harris stared after the blond whirlwind and absorbed two facts. The first was that contrary to his expectations he had not become the laughing stock of the Hoover Building. The second was that he did not know her name. He flipped through the documents looking in vain for a signature until the nature of the paperwork struck him. He reordered the sheets of paper and leafed through them more carefully. What in the hell? It looked like every form the federal government had ever invented and then some. Changes of status, restoration of pay, explanation of cessation of pay, application for--good lord. And they were all complete. Every single one. Every single piece of paperwork the government and accounting deemed necessary when confronted with agents lost in the field, presumed dead, then returned to duty if not active agent status. It must have taken her days to fill all of this in. An appendix showed references to preliminary reports filled by Agents Mulder and Scully from the Wyoming field office. Harris checked the dates. Wednesday. Even assuming that Accounting got the file Thursday morning, there were an unbelievable number of forms. The checking, rechecking and cross-referencing alone made his head spin. His mystery lady must have spent her entire week-end filling out forms so that Mulder and Scully would not have to. No doubt she was 100 times faster at it than the agents would have been, still... Harris fingered the laboriously placed sticky tabs that indicated a place and need for a signature and stared thoughtfully at the empty doorway . ******************************************* Washington, DC Day 2 Tuesday, 8:05 am "What is it?" Scully turned away from the passenger side mirror with a frown. "I don't...have you been getting the feeling that we're being followed?" Mulder's eyebrows shot up, then he carefully surveyed the traffic behind them. After a long moment he met her eyes and shrugged ignorance. "How long?" Scully chewed on her lip thoughtfully. "Since last night, I think." After she had gone home. After they had finished watching the last of the movies. After Mulder had several times started to say something, and then stopped. After he had watched her from under half closed eyelids as she shifted on her end of the couch and tried to get comfortable . Finally he had reached out and grabbed her by the shoulders and dragged her up the length of his body. She had stiffened in shock but he had simply twisted until his back was against the couch , shifted until they could both see the television easily and wrapped his arms around her. Then he had grinned. She had glared at him mutinously, indignant that he would take advantage of her confession. On the other hand, she reasoned, he had known for six months that she had a penchant for using his body as a hot water bottle. Now he just knew why. Which sort of took the wind out of her morally outraged sails. She grumbled as she settled herself more comfortably, and Mulder wisely refrained from making lewd comments. They finished watching the movie in amicable silence and by the time the credits rolled, Scully could almost pretend they were back in their burrow. Back to where she was free to hold and touch without worrying about the potential consequences. In the end though, reality intruded itself and it was too awkward for her to stay. Sleeping together in the field had been necessary. Sleeping together in his apartment had...other implications. Implications which she was not ready to deal with while her emotions were so scrambled. So she had driven home and found herself battling the nagging feeling that someone was watching. Her mind had flashed on a vivid memory almost three months old. She had been tracking deer through semi-dense forest. She did not know how long she had been standing there, waiting for the deer to move, but suddenly she had known--absolutely positively known that she was under observation. Unerringly her head had turned- --and she had found herself staring into suspicious yellow eyes. The wolf had been cautious. Curious. Nervous about her potential danger to his family. It had been the oddest feeling staring into those eyes. The animal was completely prepared to attack--and yet, somehow she had known that he would not. Not if she did not challenge him. Not today. Her eyes had dropped submissively, and when she raised them again, the wolf was gone. She had that same feeling of being watched creeping down her spine. But nothing about this sensation felt harmless. However, on looking around, she saw nothing. No one. And she had written it off as an overactive imagination. Now she was beginning to wonder if she should have trusted her instincts. Twenty minutes later, there was no sign of any obvious pursuit and by the time Mulder eased to a stop at the tail end of a twelve block gridlock she had decided that if they were being followed it was by someone good enough that she was not going to be able to spot them. Meanwhile, Mulder had been drumming his fingers nervously against the steering wheel since they had come to a halt. Suddenly all motion on his side of the car stopped so completely her head snapped to the left to see if he had been shot. She found him staring fixedly at the taillights on the car in front of them. His voice startled her. "The ring." "What?" His head turned and she found herself looking into eyes so guarded they appeared devoid of emotion. "The ring." He repeated himself, each word enunciated clearly." That's what I miss." The ring? Scully just regarded him blankly. What the hell did that mean? Mulder fidgeted for another moment, then sighed. He would not look at her which probably meant that he was afraid that his explanation would sound pathetic. Scully's mind jumped from possibility to possibility. This was Mulder. What would a ring mean to him? It was not the religious significance that was for sure. Mulder took the oaths he made to himself a hell of a lot more seriously than he would to a god he did not believe in. The promise to never leave him. Was it as simple as that? Scully considered that thought dubiously. She would have thought Mulder to be faintly cynical about public avowals of forever. Public avowals... " Did the girls in your school wear their boyfriend's jackets or class rings, Scully?" His faintly wistful tone pulled her away from her current chain of thought. She answered cautiously, "I suppose. As long as their parents knew they were dating." Mulder nodded, eyes still on the car in front . His voice was soft," Do you remember what it was like the first time you fell in love? " She really did not want to hear this. She did not want to hear how another faithless Phoebe or Diana had torn out his heart out and stomped on it. How he had fallen in love and she had left him. "How old were you, Mulder?" The side of his mouth quirked upwards, "Seventeen." Scully tried to imagine what he must have been like. Mulder intensity with all the headlong passion of untried youth. Scully could see her now. She had been blonde of course. No reminders of Samantha. A cheerleader? Had he accidentally seen her staring at him from the sidelines as he caught the ball and drove in the perfect lay-up. Had he stumbled perhaps. Tripped on oversized feet still waiting for the rest of his body to catch up with them? "She wasn't from the Vineyard. I met her while I was in the city library. It was pure luck that we met at all. At the time I thought it was destiny. " His smile was wry. " Of course, the fact that I overheard her tell the librarian that she needed a copy of John Donne for a book report had something to do with it." Scully narrowed her eyes, "You didn't." Mulder grinned, "Every damn copy. I shoved the last one behind Milton five minutes before she got to the aisle." "Offered to show her your etchings, huh?" Mulder's eyes twinkled at his partner's dry tone," Well, my copy of John Donne, anyway." Scully had to smile back. "So what happened?" "I got busted. Had one of them tucked in the waistband of my jeans. It slipped." Scully could not stop the spurt of laughter as she imagined the horrified expression that would have graced his face as both teens watched the book do a slow slide down the inside of his pantleg. Mulder, of course would have cracked a self-deprecating but bitingly clever remark. The girl would have been charmed. "The librarian thought I was stealing the book. Heather was mortified. We were the center of attention and to makes matters worse, I was sporting the biggest boner in my life. I think it was three days before I could speak in complete sentences." "But you got the girl." "Six weeks, forty-eight roses, twelve sonnets, two haikus and a box of chocolates later. It was a mercy date. She was trying to put me out of her misery." Scully snorted, "So...?" Mulder smiled slyly, "I did cute and pathetic really well at seventeen, Scully." "You have hidden depths, Mulder." Her partner just grinned. Then Scully watched helplessly as his smile faded and she wondered just how long Heather had strung Mulder along before she dumped him. Or maybe she was being unfair. God knows that Mulder's passionate focus and single- minded commitment were as frightening as they were exhilarating. Scully doubted that he had changed much. Maybe it had simply been too much for a seventeen year old who suddenly found that love was not as the movies said it should be. "So what happened?" "She didn't want the ring." Scully froze. What the hell did that mean? Surely he had not ... At seventeen? Well, okay--this was Mulder. Single-minded focus and all of that. But he had asked about class rings and school jackets. Scully mulled that one over for a second. Diana had worn a ring. Had made the commitment. Scully's unthinking comment was out before she could decide whether she was trying to offer consolation or making a knee-jerk acidic observation about Diana. "No ring can truly promise forever, Mulder." He was silent for a moment, then he glanced at her with an oddly frustrated look in his eyes," I never thought it did." His lips quirked up in a self-depreciating smile. " I was so proud of her, Scully. Everything about her--her intelligence, her sense of adventure, her humor, her beauty. And she had chosen me. The guy who may or may not have killed his sister and who was just too damn smart for his own good. I wanted the whole world to know that she was mine. Hell, billboard signs wouldn't have been over the top." She had not even wanted to wear a class ring. Had Mulder given Heather an ultimatum? Was that when she had left him? Scully picked her next words as carefully as if hammering steel nails in a hold full of gunpowder. "So what happened?" His lips twisted. "I discovered that being loved in spite of myself instead of for myself is a very lonely place to be. " His eyes slanted sideways then, expression dark with the knowledge of her assumptions. "She wasn't the one to leave, Scully." A hint of challenge tinged his words. " I was." ******************************************** Ten minutes from the Hoover Building, four FBI fleet sedans suddenly pulled away from the curb and by the time Scully had shaken herself out of her silent contemplation of the disarranged inner landscape of her mind, the two agents found themselves bracketed by the government vehicles. Mulder's knuckles whitened on the steering wheel and Scully was bracing for a kamikaze bid for freedom when her cell phone rang. She had just thumbed the talk button when the FBI building came into view. All hell was breaking loose. Skinner's voice echoed tinnily from her right hand and she hastily raised the phone to her ear. "Agent Scully?" "Yes, Sir." "Where are you?" Scully glanced out the window as Mulder was forced to a stop when the anonymous sedans surrounding them slowed to a halt. "Agent Mulder and myself appear to be in protective custody about a block from the Hoover Building. Can we assume the other cars are friendly, Sir?" Skinner snorted, "Friendly is not exactly the word I would use as this could be considered to be your fault. We have a problem." Both Mulder and Scully had originally jumped to the conclusion that there had been a bomb threat or explosion. News crews thronged the streets while the DCPD appeared to be trying to bring some order to the chaos. Two ambulances and a fire truck were on the scene and a tow truck was vainly trying to get through a cordon of news vans that were being uncooperatively stationary. Scully turned her head to look as Mulder started swearing under his breath and the underlying pattern jumped out at her. The press was laying siege to the FBI. Two huge news vans blocked the entrance to the underground parkade and the throng of vehicles surrounding them kept the tow truck from moving in to remove them. Camera crews and newscasters argued heatedly with police but even from where they were sitting Mulder and Scully could see that plausible deniability was in effect. No one was giving anybody an excuse to arrest anyone. As a result, it was one big convoluted mess of obfuscation and obstructionism. And it was planted squarely between them and the door. "Crap." Skinner snorted again, obviously hearing Mulder's muttered commentary. "What's all this about, Sir?" As if the sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach was not sufficient warning. "You and your partner are breaking news, Agent Scully. It seems that an anonymous source has notified the press that you and Mulder are being called in on the MethBomber case." Scully winced at both the nickname and the venom in Skinner's voice. The anonymous source had better hope he or she remained anonymous. "Add in the fact that you have just returned miraculously from the dead and you two are now the guest fish in a feeding frenzy. I expect that both of your apartments will be under siege within the hour. " Scully frowned, "My mother, Sir?" "I have a team of agents at her house and she is packing to fly to San Diego as we speak. The agents will make sure she gets on the plane safely." Scully nodded reflexively, then pinched the bridge of her nose. They had expected a certain amount of publicity as a result of their return, but frankly, unless it was a slow news week they should have been a flash in the pan. A couple of feel good articles and on to the next kitten-up-a-tree story. The fact that their return had now been associated with a high profile case like the MethBomber was...unfortunate. Mulder had leaned over far enough to catch most of Skinner's conversation and the expression on his face was grim. He, more than she, knew exactly how out of hand media coverage could get during a major serial murder case. Add the human interest factor, the drama of an apparent schism among the FBI profilers and Mulder's history with the BSU and the blood was in the water. Mulder looked over at her as Skinner continued with instructions regarding their relocation to the Quantico base for the foreseeable future of the investigation. Then he smoothly turned the car in a 180 degree turn and docilely followed the sedans as they accelerated in the general direction of the highway. "Should I have them pick up my fish?" Scully just sighed. ******************************************** San Diego Naval Base Day 15 1137 hours Commander William Scully was having serious second thoughts about what he was about to do. Second thoughts. Third. Not the least of which was his lingering sense of disbelief that he was actually considering this as a viable option. His mother... ...his mother would kill him when she found out. For once, Charlie was of a like mind with his brother. Of course, his mother did not have access to the Top Secret file that Charlie had had delivered to Bill's office last week. He swallowed back nausea as he remembered high gloss photos of blackened bodies and heat twisted limbs. Then there was the hand written Post-It note stuck to the case summary. In other words, the FBI did not have a clue. Ten homes burned to the ground, families burned alive. The only link was the Navy. The photos flashed again in memory and Bill wondered if he was cursed to remember those pictures until the day he died. God, he hoped not. Because the sour feeling in the pit of his stomach told him there were going to be more. He wondered if this was how the FBI felt, looking at the results of failure and knowing there was nothing you could do to stop the next one. Nothing you could find, no one you could question, no magic clue that would make everything right and stop one more set of glossy photos from joining the ones in the file. Nothing that Bill could do. But maybe not Mulder. Details had been sketchy, but one fact had become perfectly clear. Despite their near brush with death, and despite the fact that they were no where near to being approved for active duty, Dana and her partner were working a case. An arson case. A case here in San Diego. He did not have to work for Naval Intelligence to figure out which case the FBI deemed more important than the sanity of two of their agents. The MethBomber was getting an obscene amount of press ink. His mother might be livid, but it had given her eldest child an idea. When Dana had first joined the FBI, he had used his contacts to check into both the X- Files and Special Agent Fox Mulder. It had, he acknowledged now, been a superficial check at best. Mulder had apparently cracked up while working as a profiler and been shuffled off to the basement where he subsequently chased down little green men. That was all Bill had needed to know. He had never bothered to look any further. Not until recently. Not until some Navy SEALs had made it fairly clear that maybe there were things hiding in the shadows that he had simply been too blind to see. Maybe. Maybe not. But he was open to the possibility that Mulder was not as cracked as he had originally thought. Not about werewolves, anyway. Bill considered a second folder lying accusingly in the center of his desk, it's very existence a testament to the fact that there were questions that someone did not want asked. What he had found had not changed his mind ...much. He still thought his sister's partner had ripped a gaping jagged hole in all their lives. He was still an insensitive, self-centered jerk who took advantage of her loyalty without returning one tenth of the commitment or self- sacrifice he seemed to demand . But he had been one hell of a profiler. Even if he did scare the shit out of everyone. "Avoid this guy if you can possibly manage it, Billy Boy." Jack had taken a quick swig of beer and dropped a moderately thick file folder on the table. Dropping his voice so that it couldn't be heard by the other lunchtime customers, NCIS officer Jack McFadden had stared straight into Bill's eyes, "You do not want to get involved in this shit." "He's FBI, Jack. Not the bloody CIA " Jack tapped the folder for emphasis," Classified, Bill. Almost all of the cases from this-what did you call it?" "The X-Files" "Yeah, that. Almost all of them were classified. Not before - after the fact. This department gets caught up in some serious high-level shit. Need-to-know only. And what I could find that wasn't classified? Forget Project Blue Book and the Kennedy assassinations. He's into everything. Witchcraft, voodoo, werewolves...you name it. Christ, I don't know if I'm more scared that the federal government would actually pay someone to investigate this shit, or the possibility that they are serious about paying someone to investigate this shit." Bill had hesitated for a moment then asked the question," What are the chances that all of this classified crap is just that? Crap. This guy...he breaks into military bases like it's a week-end hobby. And he gets caught. But the worst that happens is a slap on the wrist. Only... I heard he used to be some wunderkind for the Violent Crimes section. A bona fide psycho sniffer. Could all this...could he be that good?" "What? They let him run around doing his thing just so they have him available when they need him?" "Put like that, it sounds pretty stupid." Jack shuddered, then drained his beer and signaled the waitress for another. "No," He said quietly," It's not stupid at all." Alcoholics made bad spies and Jack was a very very good spy. Intelligence agent. Whatever. So what would put him a bare three second delay away from legitimately being able to call himself a two-fisted drinker? What the hell had had him so scared? No. Not scared. Out of his mind terrified. "Tell me." Jack's hoarse bark of laughter reminded Bill of the seals off the coast of Newfoundland. "You sure? 'Cause I really didn't need to know this. I really didn't need to know the lengths my government will go to catch a killer. And you want to know what the worst part of it is?" Bill could only shake his head gently. "The worst of it, is that I can't say that they were wrong." Jack's bottle hit the tabletop with a quiet thunk. "How much do you know about profiling?" Again, Bill had shaken his head and Jack decided to start his story with a bit of history. "It's changed a lot. VICAP has done a lot with their interview database and there have been several studies done here and internationally to model criminal behavior and give it a mathematical basis in probabilities. It's still as much an art as a science because we're dealing with people- severely fucked up people at that- but there's more science to it now than there was ten or twenty years ago. Profilers aren't psychic, okay? They're just observant and have a shitload of cross training in psychology , crime scene analysis and forensics. The profilers themselves don't actually investigate the crimes. They go over the evidence, the details and the photos until they have a picture in their heads as to the killer's motives, emotional state at the time of killing and all sorts of other shit that ties into who they are and why they do what they do. So everything is relative right? I mean, just because a killer covers the victim's face in one murder, doesn't mean another killer doing the same thing is doing it for the same reason. So a lot of this stuff is subjective. The profiler has to make a guess. It's an educated guess, but it's still a guess. And some profilers are better at it than others. This guy Mulder...well I've heard some people say that he's a little too good at it." "I don't understand." Bill said slowly. Jack had looked around the noisy restaurant and then leaned forward as if scared he would be overheard. " Some of the guys I was talking to, some of the reports I read ... they all say the same thing. That the profilers have to get into these guy's heads. It's hard on them, and the burn-out rate is astronomical. Most of these people, they wade through shit, but they are still relatively normal people." Jack thought about it for a moment, "Relatively." "But...?" "But the rumors I heard about Mulder is that the reason he was so good, the reason he could climb so easily into the mind of these monsters is that most of him is already there." Bill snapped upright "That's crazy, Jack." Jack had spread his hands wide, "Just repeating what I was told." "He's friggin' FBI , Jack. They let him carry a gun." "Doing classified work, in a more or less classified department, with his own babysitter." "Dana is not a babysitter!" Bill said sharply. "Huh? Look, Bill. I never said he was a total sociopath. Just that he might be a mostly one. From what I've heard - and this is from people who saw him on serial cases - the man is totally fucked up. No one will even tell me what happened on his last case. The file is completely sealed." "But he's good?" "Fuck yeah, he's good. But who can afford him?" Bill Scully came back to the present and realized that his time was up. The admiral was expecting him. It was too late to back out now. He stood, then picked up both of the folders and slowly made his way to the door. If his sister's partner could investigate one arson case, he could investigate two. The Navy needed Mulder. They would worry about paying accounts later. ******************************************** Quantico Gymnasium Day 19 2100 Mulder and Scully were two hours into a workout that had already sent Lewis, Harris and Mathews to the benches. Vickery was hanging in there, but Landers knew she would not last the full run. Amazingly, the abrasive woman had simply laughed as she collapsed each morning and taken it as a challenge to "get back in shape" as she called it. Landers had been almost afraid to ask just how in shape she had been that she currently considered herself less than optimum. The entire team had spent the last seventeen days buried in the filth that was the reflection of the mind of a murderer. To this point, Mulder had done little more than immerse himself in the casefiles as well as the new literature on the nature of the serial arsonist. Scully had spent an equal amount of time going over the autopsy reports from the original case. They did not even know how many bodies had been buried the first time. The ME and forensic team estimated that at least 250 bodies had lain buried in the old 1950's Cold War bunker that Joseph Gamble, Senior had built for his family. But that was based on the number of intact skulls they were able to identify. Based on the amount of damage, on the distance the explosion had traveled, the amount of methane the average body could produce, the engineers claimed that it could have been as high as five hundred. Five hundred. It had not taken the first task force long to narrow down a suspect. Dental records confirmed that several of the victims had been reported missing in late 1973. Joseph Gamble Sr. and his son had lived on the property, eking a threadbare existence from exhausted soil and government pension checks. Gamble, Sr had probably died in '73. Once the investigation began, it was only a few weeks before it ws discovered that someone had been signing the senior Gamble's pension checks for him. The man himself had been a misogynistic bastard who hated the world in general and spent as little time with other people as possible. Even so, there had been people who remembered when he stopped coming in to town. His son had just mentioned bad health and no one had cared enough to check further. So the investigators figured that he died sometime in '73. Gamble Jr. was turned down for military service in the same year-- probably right after his father's death. Junior had applied for Vietnam and told the recruiter he wanted to join the special forces. The recruiter had said little about Gamble except to report that he had given him the creeps. The army psychologist had been a bit more blunt. No way. No how. Psychopaths need not apply. Application denied. So they had a suspect who fit the profile of a serial killer. They had a trigger event. Hell, they had two. They had time and opportunity. They also had the fact that when the senior Gamble's pension checks suddenly stopped being cashed in 1977, the local PD investigation revealed that Junior had disappeared. Foul play was suspected in the case of both missing men, but no leads were ever discovered. The car never turned up, nor did Gamble. Ownership of the property passed to a distant cousin who had rented the property until his death without heirs in 1993. The farmhouse had then become the property and headache of the township. The forensics lab was tentatively placing the last known deaths in the late seventies. At least, none of the identified victims had been reported missing after 1977. So it all fit. For the first explosion, in any case. No one absolutely sure whether these newest murders were committed by the original killer or a copycat. The FBI in general, including the members of the X-Files division were slowly driving themselves crazy trying to figure it out. The original purpose of the group morning workouts had simply been to keep their bodies healthy while their minds were TDY in the Abyss. Landers had swiftly discovered that despite her own considerable endurance, Mulder and Scully could, and did, run her into the ground without even trying. In self defense she recommenced the martial arts lessons that the MethBomber case had interrupted. Both agents had had the obligatory FBI training, and Scully had obviously brushed up on her skills at some point in the last few years. Neither, however, were especially skilled with hand to hand and the fact that they had kicked butt that first morning said more about their agility, strength and honed instinct than any trained ability. By pairing them off against the other agents, she was able to forcibly develop their skills while leaving them pleasantly exhausted by the end of the workout. What she had not allowed them to do was spar with each other. When they had looked at her questioningly as she had forbidden it, she had simply said something about the fact that they knew each other too well and that she wanted them to learn to see the moves themselves, not just infer them from the other's body language. They were inexperienced enough that they had believed her. Special Agent Elizabeth Landers knew exactly what was going to happen when they finally did step onto the mat together and she would be damned if she let them kill each other by accident. Both agents had picked up on the training with frightening ease. Within a week they had caught up to the rest of their department. A week after that they were pushing Landers harder than she would have expected this early into the program. Partly it was their reflexes. The delay between decision and implementation had shrunk to the point that they were reacting almost as fast as thought. Scully in particular seemed to absorb the katas and defensive blocks almost faster than she could be shown what they were. Her mind and body seemed to be operating at an abnormal pitch, and she had only to be shown the move once, to practice it once before her muscles seemed to absorb the knowledge into themselves. The workouts simply gave her a chance to categorize the varied ways in which the move could be used. Mulder was learning as fast as his mind would allow, Scully seemed to be forcing herself to learn as fast as her body could take. She had actually tried to bring it up with Mulder. She had honestly been worried that this was an indicator of something really wrong. The agent had looked startled for a moment, turned curious eyes on his partner and just grinned. Then he had made a sort of shrugging motion and muttered something about stalking modes and two legged deer. And that had been that. Landers watched as Scully sent Vickery flying through the air and sighed. Those damn reflexes. Ordinarily she would have years of martial arts training behind her before she would be anywhere near to being able to pull that kind of automatic reaction. The average person had to fight to allow their mind to be overruled by their body. It was even worse for the average law enforcement officer. They were too used to having to consider consequence and collateral damage. Somewhere along the line, both agents had lost an essential human innocence. They were not just willing to believe...they believed on a bone deep reflex level that the hand coming toward them could not be trusted. As a result, there was no hesitation on reaction. In and of itself, that would have been fine. Mulder himself seemed to be on sort of passive alert. He reacted fast enough, but that was all he did. He reacted. Scully on the other hand was actively engaged in some sort of aggressive counter attack mode. She was not just prepared for attack, she was actively searching for and anticipating it. Landers kept waiting to hear that some innocent mail clerk had tapped her on the shoulder and gotten clobbered. She had lost track of the number of times Scully had reflexively misinterpreted an innocent gesture as the beginnings of attack and had started the openings of a counter- attack. Half the time, she was not even aware of what she did. No one had gotten injured. Yet. But it was only a matter of time. Her reflexes were just too damn fast. Landers let her eyes drift to the rubber- neckers seated on the benches. From the miserable expression on Harris's face and the huddled posture Lewis displayed, she could guess the topic of conversation. The ISU had been less than impressed with the X- Files Division. Landers felt the familiar burn of anger which had taken residence in her stomach over the last three weeks. They had done good work before Mulder and Scully returned and they were doing good work now. To be fair, they had gotten their shares of sideways glances even before the dynamic duo returned but no one had been able to argue with their solve rate. Grudgingly, Landers had to admit that it was no where near the percentages that Mulder and Scully had pulled in. True, they had not found a single case of paranormal activity or evidence of any crimes that did not have a perfectly rational explanation...but then, they had not exactly been chasing the really weird cases. Most of the assignments had come down to them through back channels. Cold cases handed off to Mathews from the ISU. Even that werewolf case ... Landers shook herself back to the present and narrowed her eyes at the laughing spectators. They were becoming an institutional joke and she had just about had enough. She could understand a couple of days of injured egos. The newspaper articles raving about Spooky Mulder and his eerie abilities had not endeared them to anybody. That he had genuinely scared the crap out of more than one or two profilers over the years had not helped. The fact that he had trashed a promising career with the ISU seemed to have bought him one of two reputations. First, that he had not been able to cut it and was simply riding the coattails of political backing. That reputation would be enough to earn him a serious level of disdain from agents who resented any form of political patronage. The second possibility was that he had truly lost it. The general opinion seemed to be that one day he was going to go into the Abyss and not come out. No one wanted to be around him when it happened. All of this, combined with half truths and partial rumors, leavened with a generous dollop of envy and the result was a sort of group reflex designed to turn them into the class joke. Partly it was the whole alien thing. But Landers had the sneaking suspicion that some of it was a knee-jerk reaction to uneasy belief. Many of these agents were inclined to believe. There had been too many stories not to believe some of it. So they covered up their feeling of fear or inadequacy with ill-natured humor. But some of them wanted to be proven wrong. They kept waiting for these two ordinary looking agents to pull off some miracle, to give them something tangible to hold. Some reason that they could hold up to other agents and say--"See, this is why I believe." Many of them had waited in vain, even as they sneered , for Spooky Mulder and Doc Ice to live up to their larger than life reputation. To find the Methbomber, to save the people of San Diego when everyone else could not. Some of that anger was disappointment. So...maybe it was time to give them something tangible to believe. "Mulder. Scully. Strip it down and on the mat." Both agents looked up in startled recognition of the command. This was not only the first time she had paired them off against each other, it was the first time she had let the spectators stay for this portion of the work-out. She could hear a low murmur of interest as Mulder and Scully stripped out of their loose warm up clothing and walked to the center of the combat zone. Except for the one on one training bouts, all of the agents wore t-shirts and loose sweatpants. However, Landers had her own personal feelings about clothing. First, she wanted them to get used to grabbing the actual limb, not just a convenient sleeve or pantleg. Second, she had started taping the bouts and it was easier for the trainees to see body position when it was not concealed by a layer of clothing. To that end, everyone wore a spandex body suit underneath their clothes. The catsuits gave the agents the flexibility they needed, with just enough fabric to protect the skin from contact burns. There were no easy grabs or holds and the fabric was just slippery enough to keep the hand from getting a good grip. No easy outs for these agents. They used full joint locks or nothing at all. The suits also had one other feature which Landers was actively using for the first time. They looked dramatic as hell. Too involved with the case to go shopping, too physically changed to fit into most of their old clothing, both agents had taken to wandering the Quantico campus in FBI sweats. She doubted they would have done it at the Hoover building, but here at Quantico they could have been any other agent trainee or off-duty instructor. The loose fabric had hidden most of the physical changes and Landers had seen more than one agent studying the pair with a perplexed look on the face. Trying vainly to see some sort of manifestation of the ordeal they had been through. Landers could have told them it was all in the eyes. But they wanted flashy. So, tonight, she would give them something else to think about. Something to talk about. Something to take home and mull over as they wondered what other secrets the agents kept hidden. Tonight they would get flashy. She just prayed no one would get killed. Except for a few surprised looks as skintight spandex revealed an unanticipated amount of ridged muscle, the spectators were silent. Landers almost bared her teeth. They had no idea what was about to happen. What she thought would happen. What she almost feared would happen. They had no idea at all...but they would know it when they saw it. Perhaps they might not completely understand, but they would recognize it. She would simply mourn...but that was her secret. They started tentatively enough. Thrust and block. Attack and parry. It was a courtship in its simplest form. Offer and response. Advance and retreat. As they grew more confident, the blows became harder. As they suddenly recognized familiar patterns in new forms, their bodies shifted, flowed...adapted. She could see it building. Saw it in the unthinking block, the parry in motion before the attack was barely started. They had had weeks to watch each other, to learn each other's moves. They had had years to read each other. The pace picked up. Mulder slammed Scully to the mat only to land on his back as she swept his feet out from under him. He attacked, she blocked. She attacked, he parried. Each absorbed the other's ability. Blows came more swiftly as they learned the limits of the other's reach and reflex. She saw it build. She saw it flower. She saw it happen. She saw the very instant it ceased to be a practice bout... ...and became a dance. Once, only once had she ever been where they were. When the goal became that of discovery. When you knew your partner so well that you could drop the last restraint, the last conscious control over your body and simply become. When the blows had no fall-back, no restraint. When you could risk it, only because you knew your partner would block it. When you would move...only because you knew where your partner would be. And the dance became an upward spiral as the blows became faster, as hands moved faster than thought, as the body literally reacted in a violent tango that had nothing of violence at it's heart. It was truth. It was trust. It simply was. And then they stopped. The tension came to an almost unbearable crest and everyone in the room was poised on the edge, praying to be taken over. They stopped. The fierce grins of joy that each had worn faded as eyes locked, sharing knowledge and awareness of self. And then it was over. Across the gymnasium, the watchers stirred awkwardly, uncomfortably. A few tried to make short conversation but the words petered out when the person they tried talking to failed to respond. Harris and Lewis were staring at the senior agents in open-mouthed awe. Mathews...Mathews looked like she felt. As if he had seen something he recognized. She watched the play of emotions chase themselves across his face. Stunned comprehension, desperate envy and a confused sense of loss. Yes. He knew exactly what he had seen. But it was the look on Vickery's face which made her shift with unease. Hunger. Pure, undiluted hunger. Secrets, she thought suddenly. She was not the only one with secrets. ******************************************** Washington, DC Day 22 9:05 am "I'm not getting anywhere with her, Sir." The psychiatrist's tone was not defensive, but definite. Almost identical in both content and delivery to the conversation he had just had with Mulder's counselor. The fact that, according to both counselors, the agents were generally trying to cooperate left Skinner with a very large problem with no easy solution. Unfortunately, a personal call from the Director, relaying the wishes and desires of both upper administration and the US Navy had just made it imperative that he find one. Fast. "Sir...maybe if you tried again with a counselor who has some law enforcement or military experience?" They had already tried with FBI counselors and again with a counselor from the NYPD and Skinner doubted it was going to do any good to recross covered ground. The civilians had been a long shot. Between them, they had years of experience treating the survivors of various life threatening situations...including SAR teams from earthquake and other natural disaster situations. His pencil tapped the top of his desk in a frustrated tattoo. All three psychiatrists were worried about a mild but definitely progressive startle reflex that Agent Scully seemed to be experiencing. All agreed that it appeared to be a form of PTSD, but without more information from the agent they were unable to accurately gauge the root of the problem and likely prognosis. The agent herself repeatedly denied any feelings of anxiety regarding her experiences, actually getting annoyed to the point of belligerence when the issue was pushed. Until she trusted one of the counselors enough to be honest with herself, they were worried the symptoms would just get worse. Mulder was even more problematic. He was avoiding his partner. It was subtle. So subtle that the first psychiatrist had missed it. Either that or it was progressive as well. He was tense in her presence and from what little the agents had said, neither were spending any off duty time together. Considering the close lives they had lived for the missing six months, the psychiatrists were more concerned about that that the startle reflex. For anyone, the reverse should have been true. For long term partners... it raised red flags that no one wanted to ignore. The agents were not even having lunch together...and from observation, it was Mulder finding other things to do. According to Mulder, nothing was wrong. According to Scully, nothing was wrong. And Skinner was lost as to how to make things right. ******************************************** Defacto X-Files Office, Quantico Day 29 9:30 am "Mulder, why are you sending flowers to Accounting in DC?" He was not that far into the profile; his partner's jangling nerves were interfering too badly for that. However, he was fairly disconnected from the world in general. It took a moment for her words and curious tone to drag him all the way back to the present. "Huh?" Mathews was grumbling over several boxes containing copies of the casefile evidence and which had gotten mislabeled while Lewis and Vickery carefully attached crime scene photos to the walls. Landers and Harris were elbows deep in the paperwork that had followed them from DC and Mulder was more than happy to let Scully take over supervising that portion of the senior agent's duties. He was still trying to get into the head of their arsonist. The damn thing was, that he could not do it. Mulder had never had difficulty slipping into the minds of murders. Never. But for some reason, the crime scene photos just would not open up and let him in. He glared at the case evidence covering his desk in frustration. He had been bashing his head against this stuff for almost four weeks and the damn thing was as two dimensional today as it had been the day he cracked the file. The photos of the bodies stared back accusingly. "Mulder?" Huh? What? Oh right. "Flowers, Scully?" Scully ignored his space cadet imitation and held up a piece of paper. He squinted at it and shrugged. He had taken out his contacts four hours ago and without his glasses the print was a blur. Scully sighed and walked over. Thankfully, her guard dog tension eased somewhat as she got closer and Mulder sighed with relief as his own nerves relaxed. He eyed his partner with carefully concealed concern. She was not losing weight. If anything, the strenuous work-outs Landers was insisting upon were continuing to add to the muscle she had acquired in Wyoming. Physically she was as healthy as he had ever seen her. Mentally... Mulder felt his lips flatten. It had not seemed so bad a few weeks ago. She had been a bit more cautious, a bit more on edge. It was not exactly like she had been after Pfaster but it had been enough like it that he had allowed her to brush off his concerns. For once he had believed her "I'm fines". Partly because she had not used those particular words and partly because she had believed it. He should have...damn it. He should never have listened to her. She had known her growing edginess was keeping him from concentrating the way he needed to. Had actively abetted his withdrawal from her presence so that he could work. Normally her presence was soothing, actually reassured him enough to allow him to relax the bonds of his conscious mind more confidently than without her. Except now, her nerves kept screaming at him that something was wrong, that someone was coming...and he kept looking for phantom enemies. Her body language screamed hyperawareness of danger and as long as he could feel that, nothing else could hold his attention. The further she was from him physically while still in his prescence, the worse it got. She had sworn that she would tell him if it got too bad. He glared at the blue smudges under her eyes suspiciously. Was she getting any sleep at all? His hand grabbed her wrist as she placed the paper on his desk and he managed to keep his voice soft enough that his words went no further than her ears. "Nightmares, Scully?" Her eyes widened, startled. Then surprisingly she blushed. Her reply was little more than a mumble. "No. Just a bit of trouble falling asleep." Mulder watched fascinated as the tips of her ears flushed purple. That was an interesting reaction. He had figured out rather quickly that her anxiety level skyrocketed the minute he was out of her sight. He was fairly certain that most of it was a paranoid conviction that a piano was going to flatten him the minute she was no longer there to protect him. Hell, she was spending more time lately eyeing the people around them than the most security conscious Secret Service agent. But despite several hints and one blatantly direct suggestion, she had steadfastly refused to come over to his apartment. Scully saw only a clingy desire to attach herself like a barnacle and she was fighting herself with every inch of her considerable willpower. Not that he would have minded. In spite of her jangly nerves, as long as he was not profiling, Scully could be as barnacle-like as she wished. Then maybe she would stop stealing his clothes. He could not help the sudden grin that quirked his lips. Self-preservation instincts kept his head ducked but the grin got wider. It really was cute. He was not certain, though, just how long he could realistically pretend to be oblivious to the fact that his sweatshirts were accidentally making their way into her gymbag. Not that it bothered him. If it made her feel better she could take everything he owned and turn it into a life sized Mulder-bear. Of course, if she wanted the original model... He yanked his attention back to his partner and found her staring down at him quizzically. Ah crap. She was standing too close for the thoughts winging through his head. On the upside, her nerves had stopped jangling. Now if only he could do something about his. "Am I sending flowers to Accounting, Scully?" She peered at his eyes carefully, then grinned fleetingly. She knew darn well he was only processing half of what she was saying. Luckily she was blaming it on the profile. "According to our statements you ordered a bouquet of flowers-very nice red ones according to the price tag- about four weeks ago. The attached invoice says that they were delivered to one Leyla Harrison in Accounting. Here's the odd part. There's an attached money order along with a note that this was a personal purchase but that you would prefer to pay directly rather than have the amount deducted from your paycheck." Mulder felt his eyebrows climbing into his hairline." I'd think I was being set up for something, but that seems a rather odd way to do it, don't you think?" His muscles tensed but he was not completely sure if it was his own tension, or a reaction to hers. He had his hand reaching for the phone when he caught sight of Harris's dismayed expression. The young agent's eyes were fixed on the statement Mulder was now holding in his hand. The older agent's eyes narrowed. "Agent Harris. Perhaps you can shed a little light on this situation." Harris glanced once at the open door, then his shoulders slumped and he obediently responded to Mulder's crooked finger. He did not even bother to pretend he did not know what they were referring to. "It was a clue. For Leyla. In case she wasn't able to figure out who the flowers were from on her own. Red flowers, Red Wind Flowershop--red hair, red fox." Mulder had the brief thought that if his expression was as confused as his partner's, they were in trouble. "You were so upset when you thought it was a computer program that I didn't know how you would react when you found out that she had gone after most of the data on her own. I mean, technically, she's not supposed to have access to some of it. And she didn't want you to know it was her-so if I told you and you said something to her she would have been so embarrassed but she deserved a thank-you. Do you have any idea how much time it must have taken her?" Mulder was putting the words "computer program" and "accounting" together. He abruptly recalled Harris delivering a stack of forms for them to sign their second day back. They had been involved in an argument about something and he had redirected his anger about--what had he been angry about? Oh well. In any case, he had spent five minutes having a minor temper tantrum about how available their information was to anyone with a computer. Scully had gotten the reference to the Lone Gunmen, but Harris would not have known that. He glanced at Scully to find that she had pretty much come to the same conclusion he had. "I think we owe her more than flowers, Mulder. " Mulder was about to agree when his mind clicked in on the word "clue". He stared at Harris suspiciously, aware that the others in the room had ceased what they were doing and were watching with interest. He considered taking this into another room, but since he had the feeling he would not be taking a huge strip off the younger agent's hide he decided to let it go. He could discuss the appropriate uses of other people's credit cards at another time. "I have a feeling that may have been taken care of. Agent Harris?" The agent squirmed for a moment, then sighed. " I gave her an X-file to solve." "What!" Harris looked up at Scully's outburst, then realized what he had said, "No.No. Not a real one. I invented one. She's the one who handles our paperwork--and she takes a lot of crap over it too--so she knows a lot about vampires and werewolves and stuff. I left a clue with the flowershop and more around Washington." Scully's expression faded into something that Mulder found suspiciously bland, "You sent her running all over DC looking for clues?" Harris looked at her uncertainly, "Well, each clue had a small prize. Books, chocolates. Stuff like that." He brightened, "I found this really neat alien stuffed toy at Toy-R-Us. She liked that one. It's on her desk." Mathews was staring at Harris with an odd look on his face that Mulder recognized immediately. Mulder himself was more interested in the reactions of the women in the room. He leaned back and studied Harris curiously. How long had it taken him to plan this? "What made you decide on this Scavenger Hunt idea?" Harris shrugged, "It wasn't hard. She's got it bad for you two. Well, all of us in general, but she really admires you and Scully. And her desk is in the back." Mike sighed and Mulder closed his eyes briefly and counted to twenty slowly. "Her desk?" Harris nodded enthusiastically, "You just know she gets overlooked half the time- especially doing our paperwork. So I got a flower arrangement big enough to be seen from around the room, but she doesn't have to tell anyone who it's from if she doesn't want to. She can be as mysterious as she wants. And she gets to solve her own x-file and she gets to know that you appreciated all her hard work without actually having to meet you face to face." Mike's voice casual," And you picked these prizes based on clues from her desk?" Harris nodded. Mulder kept his own voice casual, "Did she like them?" Harris shrugged, "I think so. I saw her reading the book the other day and she seemed to like it. And she wore the scarf and I saw her transferring her keys to the silver bullet keychain last week." Mike was mumbling under his breath then he turned his head and barked, "Landers. Feminine vote. Scale of 1 to 10." Elizabeth looked startled, then narrowed her eyes on Harris contemplatively. She looked back at Mike and shrugged, "I'd do him." Mike glanced around the room and three more female hands shot into the air. Mike snorted and looked at Mulder, "Should we be taking notes?" Harris was staring around in wide-eyed horror, "That's not why I did it." Mulder ignored the protest," You were turned down twice for agent training weren't you?" Harris flushed, then looked away. Mulder winced as he recognized how that had come out, but his mind was busy focusing on another issue. He met Mathews frustrated gaze and shrugged, "Biscuits for brains." Mathews smile was ironic. Then he leaned forward and hauled Harris out of the chair. "Come on, kid. I've got some work for you to do." Harris resisted and looked back at Mulder with trepidation. "What...what happens now?" Mulder suddenly realized that the younger agent was slowly tracing the shape of his ID through the fabric of his jacket. He almost sighed. As if they were going to let him go after this. "No good deed goes unpunished, Harris." Then he bared his teeth at the kid in a feral grin. He watched as Agent Harris trailed along after Mathews, figurative tail dragging in the mud. Turned down twice? Jesus. Morons. "Could you pick a book for me that I would enjoy just from the clues on my desk, Mulder?" He looked up to find his partner staring after Mathews and Harris, a contemplative look on her face. "Biscuits for brains, Scully. Biscuits for brains." ****************************************** Harris followed Mathews, sunk into a miserable contemplation of his sins. It was only when someone cursed as they nearly stepped on him that he looked up to discover that they had entered ISU territory. What? He had been expecting anything from a trip to the SACs and a formal reprimand to being handed over to Security and escorted from the base. Damn it. He knew better than to use Agent Mulder's credit card number even if he did pay for the charge. But it had been the only way to point the finger back to Mulder and Scully if she could not solve the last clue. It had seemed harmless at the time. He was the one handling the paperwork after all. He had just been so caught up in his plan that he had not *thought*. That not thinking could be enough to cost him his badge. He was fingering the precious piece of leather and tin when Mathews suddenly grunted and thrust several heavy books into his hands. He juggled them briefly, then stared at the agent blankly. Mathews laid a restraining hand on the cover of the book on top. "Rule one: Have more than coffee in your stomach when you read these. It hurts less when it comes back up. Rule two: If you have a significant other, sleep on the sofa for the next few weeks. It'll be less painful for everyone. Rule three: No alcohol. None. Nada. Zip. Got it? Harris found that he could barely breathe. Surely this was not what he thought it was. He glanced down to read the title of the top book. Introduction to Criminal Profiling. Shit. These were textbooks. He stared at the older agent in mute astonishment. Mathews just looked back grimly. "There's one more." Harris waited. "Don't puke on the books." ******************************************** FBI Headquarters Washington, DC Day 31 The figures on the monitor were etched in shadows and highlights. The gray tones were surprisingly effective in capturing individual emotion. AD Skinner would not normally have been authorized to watch these sessions. Particularly not when two of his direct subordinates were participating. But the FBI was at a loss as to what to do about the two resurrected agents and this experimental program had been Skinner's idea. Officially it was a multi-departmental resource. Skinner had been shocked when he went looking and found more than one government agency wrestling with similar problems. Agents, officers, and soldiers all suffering from some form of work related PTSD as a result of survival in atypical and borderline situations. All unable to find the treatment they needed from traditional sources-partly because the therapists found it difficult if not impossible to relate to the patients. All valued by employers willing to spend money to get them back on beam. While the various agencies might not suspect the FBI of hidden agendas, however, AD Skinner and the senior management knew the truth. This program had one mandate and one mandate only--get Spooky Mulder and Doc Ice back in the saddle and do it right damn quick. The Navy was getting impatient. The media were getting persnickety. The people of San Diego were getting dead. Unfortunately, what had seemed like a brilliant idea at the time looked like it was about to explode in everyone's faces. After three sessions of watching the agents sit in oddly synchronous silence, the other inmates were getting restless. If he had not been a witness to all the previous sessions, he might have assumed that the agents had worked their usual magic. However, in this case, all they had been was honest. Or at least as honest as they were prepared to be. Skinner had learned through painful experience that there was a fine line between what they believed and what they were willing to admit. He could also understand that there was no one in that room more convinced that everything they said could someday come back to haunt them. Skinner was even prepared to admit they were right. So he had been half expecting sideways answers to pointed questions regarding certain aspects of their personal lives. He snorted. They had surprised him again. When the subject came up, they were brutally honest in regards to any aspect that impacted directly on how they had functioned in the field. Which was not to say that they had not made the therapist's life hell on earth. He had seemed like a good choice at the time. Experience up the wazoo. Unfortunately, he kept trying to couch his questions to the female participants so inoffensively that Skinner could almost see him trying to avoid harassment charges. Maybe he was being too hard on the man. But pussyfooting around Mulder and Scully just pissed them off. Skinner could see the minute Mulder stopped playing nice. Scully sat through five minutes of psychiatric doublespeak and Mulder's baffled "I don't know what you mean" and " Could you be more explicit" before she finally cracked. "Sex. Mulder. He wants to know about sex. Ours. As in our sex lives." Skinner almost blew his coffee out his nose. Hazel eyes widened in seeming astonishment, but Skinner almost groaned as he recognized that evil gleam. "Sex lives? We have sex lives?" Blue eyes narrowed, "You don't?' "You do?" Two sets of FBI eyes gaped at each other and then mouths rounded in a soft "Ohhh" of discovery. Then they turned wide eyes back to the annoyed therapist. Skinner just closed his eyes and counted to twenty. The SEAL sitting in the farthest corner of the room surprised everyone by snickering. Of all of them, Commander Todd Barrett was the most damaged. The physical harm was minimal, limited to the loss of the last two fingers of his left hand and several healing scars hidden under his clothes. But the shadows in his eyes tended to have people stepping lightly around him and he had so far failed to respond to much of anything or anyone around him. The rest of the group caught the humor if not the warning. Most of them chuckled, certain that this exchange gave them enough information to pigeon-hole the agents. Skinner could have warned them, but it was too late. Through some form of group osmosis the entire room seemed to have decided that the agents were ducking the issues the rest of them were trying to get past. The police officer from the NYPD asked Scully how she felt about Samuel Corman. Skinner winced as he anticipated a biting reply along the lines of "no worse than my male partner." but apparently she considered it a legitimate question. Her shrug was easy and her "Nothing, really." held no hidden meanings. The group, led by the therapist persisted. Skinner found that years as her superior actually gave him the ability to translate the thoughts passing across her face with each question. Either that or Scully had stopped playing nice, too. "No nightmares?" "No." "No regrets about killing him?" "None." "How did the attack change the way you view the world around you?" "It didn't." "What about what you did to the body?" "I don't understand the question." " You said you sliced him open and left him for bait." "I still don't understand the question." "Do you feel badly about that?" "No." "You're sure?" Mulder piped up from the sideline, "It was that or eat him." This time, Commander Barrett laughed as half the room turned various shades of green. Then he shrugged at the agents as if to say, "They asked." Mulder smiled a particularly profiler kind of smile. The questioners regrouped and tried a flanking maneuver. "How do you feel about the kidnapping itself? "We're alive. He's not. Mulder didn't get hospitalized. " "Gee, thanks Scully." Skinner watched the whole show with a growing sense of puzzlement. The answers were glib, easy and tinged with dark humor. In short, they were everything he expected from them under normal circumstances. Was it possible that the psychiatrists were reading too much into the situation? Seeing problems that would clear up if they were left alone? These two agents had been forced to rely on each other far more than the average field agent. Realistically, how dangerous did they consider a jaunt in the woods when compared to mutants and killer bugs? Skinner was just about to follow that line of reasoning further when the tone of the entire session changed. Susan Carver was Search and Rescue. Natural disaster specialist. Or at least, she used to be. Before a lunatic with a gun held her and her team hostage for three days digging his dead family out of a shattered building in a broken city somewhere south of the equator. The aftershocks eventually brought the building down and when the rescue teams finally reached them, she and the kidnapper were the only survivors. She was defensive, she was belligerent...and she was glaring angrily at Scully. "Why the hell are you here? "she suddenly demanded." I don't mean what reason...obviously you're as fucked up as the rest of us if you're in this group. I want to know why you personally even bother to show up if you can't even give the rest of us enough respect to answer honestly." Hazel eyes darkened, but Mulder simply tightened his jaw and waited for his partner's response. Scully glanced at him once, then studied the bellicose woman across the room. Her voice, when she finally answered was quiet. "What is it that you want to hear? That I wake up screaming with Corman's face in my mind? I don't. That I regret killing him? I don't. That the last few months have been a nightmare? I can't tell you that either. We were not actually in that much danger relatively speaking. I'm a field agent, Susan. None of this was...unusual for us. We had our guns and we had each other. That's every other day for us. I've had my nightmares over the years...just not about this." Susan sneered, "Well aren't you special." The therapist stirred uneasily, "Susan..." She turned on him, "No!" she whirled back to the two silent agents, "I know about you. Out saving the world from ghosts and phantasms. Well, Ms. Field Agent, while you were out chasing imaginary problems, the rest of us were risking our lives trying to accomplish some real work. How dare you sit there and pretend to be better then us. How dare you!" She glared at them, the rest of the room frozen in morbid fascination and some measure of agreement. Skinner saw the exact moment both agents wrote the group off and he cursed the therapist. He should be yanking that thumb out of his ass and doing something. Even if they were dodging issues, this kind of personal attack was hardly likely to encourage sharing. Neither Mulder nor Scully made any effort to defend themselves. Skinner suspected that Scully's last comments had primarily been an attempt to reach Susan and reassure her that she should not be comparing herself and judging herself inadequate. Susan did not want to hear that. She just wanted everyone around her to be as screwed up as she was. Skinner would have forgiven the woman a lot of things because of who she had been. But not this attempt to take his agents down with her. The saddest thing was that she probably believed the motives she was using to justify her anger. Worse, the others in the room believed her. Envy, he thought suddenly, wore an ugly face. Susan jumped back in the fray, "I guess I shouldn't be surprised. You can't even be honest with yourselves and each other so why should you be any different with us. You know...you keep saying that you are not lovers. Well guess what? I believe you. And how fucked up is that? We heard all about your little jaunt to Antarctica. It's a favorite topic of conversation around here, did you know that? Apparently, everyone in the friggin FBI figured out years ago what you two can't even admit to each other. Well...I guess a trip to the end of the world sort of makes a statement don't you?" Both of his agents had gone completely still as the woman's tirade continued. Unfortunately, she was taking their lack of response as lack of defense. Christ, she actually thought she was scoring points. Skinner took another look at Mulder and sucked in his breath. There had always been a certain amount of pain in Mulder's eyes whenever the subject came up. And it always did. The water cooler crowd thought it was romantic. But Scully never mentioned it and Skinner had always assumed that the lingering pain in Mulder's eyes was guilt. The emotion he was seeing now was a complex mixture of frustration and sad denial. And pain. Skinner hissed softly as he gained an inkling of the truth for the first time. Everyone assumed that he had done it for love. It looked like they were wrong. Was that what had Mulder so tied up in knots? Was the constant joking, the constant assumption of motive just a brutal reminder of something that he was incapable of giving? Or was it a reminder of something she did not want? Of a choice she had already rejected. Then Mulder did the worst thing he could have done at that point. He flinched. Skinner barely saw her move as, in one lithe rush, she was on her feet. The rest of the group regarded the two FBI agents with various degrees of condescension toward two blind idiots who of course had no clue what was so obvious to everyone else. Commander Barrett was suddenly sitting very very still. How very repulsive that arrogant assumption of another's inner feelings was revealed to be when seen in stark black and white. Ugly. Cruel. A flock of schoolyard bullies stabbing and scraping with bloody-edged seashells as they sought to reveal what his agents might have good reason to hide. Skinner's fists clenched helplessly. Damn it. He had done this. Put them in this situation. Left them vulnerable to attack. How many blows had they taken over the years? By colleagues? By friends and family? All desperate to stuff the square pair back into a nice recognizable round hole. How much did their partnership really cost them? On the screen, Scully's arm deliberately swept out and Skinner heard the sound of glass shattering as one of the water glasses exploded high against the far wall, showering the group into stunned silence. Her voice was edged with liquid ice and she put more rage into that controlled contempt than Skinner had ever seen in someone legally carrying a loaded weapon. "I am so *sick* and *tired* of this petty need to break down something you don't understand into something you can forgive." Skinner flinched as the rage flared higher. Oh Jesus. He abruptly recalled her nickname and had the wildly inappropriately desire to laugh. The Ice Queen. Jesus. They thought they were being cute. Mocking her control. But god, had anyone thought to remember avalanches and the titanic sheets of ice that had chiseled and gouged the face of god damn planet? Inexorable. Unstoppable. Aspects of winter in all her elemental and untamed power. Skinner felt his balls trying to crawl back inside his body in a purely instinctive reaction to unadulterated feminine rage. He wondered vaguely about Mulder's reaction as Scully whirled to face him. Then he wondered if this was something new or if this was how she treated any enemy she was not obliged to present with a professional front. "Don't you dare listen to them, Mulder. None of *them*..." her backhanded gesture was eloquent in it's contempt,"...would have gone. Not on a maybe. Not on a possibility. Not in a million years. But love makes their cowardice something that they can forgive themselves. Love gives them an excuse. Love makes weak men strong, heroes of the meek and demands the impossible. " her voice, which had held nothing but bitter mockery for the last senetence abruptly changed in pitch to conviction. " You would have gone for anyone. Not only for me. Anyone. Just because it was there. I would have gone for you -- you went because you believe in the impossible." For one tiny moment, Skinner thought it was an accusation. Then her smile shifted momentarily into a brilliance that held equal measures of respect and admiration and exasperation and angry pride. "You don't need love to make you a hero, Mulder. I will NOT let them take that away from you." Time seemed to split, pause and then bloom with understanding. It was suddenly there, just out of his reach. He could almost see it. Just beyond his grasp. The "how" of the way these two defined the word partner. The definitions of themselves as they drew themselves within that role. There was a sudden aching sense of shame---and then loss-- for the fact that he had truly not comprehended how they could be so close and yet had taken so long to cross that line. Assuming that they even had. He could have wept for the fact that he had never understood for the simple reason that he had found one love, but never the other. Not even in the jungles of Vietnam. He abruptly realized just how badly he wanted it; what they had. How much he would sacrifice to get it. Why Mulder had almost put a gun to his head when he lost it. The therapist gaped unattractively as he tried to find the words and the voice to regain control of the situation. Of the shell-shocked group, the SEAL stared at Scully with a hunger that had nothing to do with gender and every to do with the loss and darkness that held his mind trapped half a world away. And Mulder...Mulder probably could not have moved if his life depended on it. Except that the minute she turned to leave, he was right beside her. Commander Barrett just started to laugh as the group shook itself into offended coherence and instantly tried to rewrite their understanding of what had just occurred. Happy ignorance chosen over painful truth. What they could never have, they would deny. "Idiots." was all he said. Skinner had no doubts who he meant. *****************************************