From partous@total.net Mon Dec 23 11:37:23 1996
CRUISE (1/12)

by Madeleine Partous
email: partous@total.net

"Feedback both pro and con is deeply appreciated"

This is the first time I write a long thing that's entirely from Scully's POV
-- something I find hard because I'm much more comfortable with Mulder.
So if you feel like it, let me know if you think it's working or what's
missing if you think it's not. I'd really appreciate it.

I know some of you are still mad at me about the Pact, but I can
assure you I haven't given up on it. It's just that other things seemed to
demand to be written.

That said, I've learned a valuable experience -- which is never to start
posting unless the story's finished or close to finished.

Unfortunately, I still prefer not to post an entire long tale at once, and this
is a personal call because it's true that many readers won't read a story
until it's complete, but I'm not like that -- I find long postings
overwhelming and much prefer a serialized story... as long as parts are
posted regularly, of course. Ahem.

So I apologize in advance to those of you who hate this kind of thing; you
can always wait until it's archived. Or ignore it altogether, of course <g>...

Category: MSR, x-file.

Rating: R (NC-17 postings will be duly noted, if applicable)

** Summary: A series of mysterious deaths aboard its ships leads a cruise
line to contact the FBI as rumours of a vengeful ghost begin to fly. Is the
killer striking from beyond the grave?**

Very vague season 4 spoilers.

Okay to archive. Please do not publish or circulate otherwise without my
permission.

*************************************************************
DISCLAIMER: The X-Files and its characters are not the property of this
writer and are borrowed lovingly with no intention to infringe upon
copyright or achieve financial gain. All other characters and situations
below are the author's own and as such are tragically flawed.

This is a work of fiction. The cruise line and ships referred to in this story
are imaginary and any resemblance between these and real cruise lines or
ships is purely coincidental.
*************************************************************




The night was coal black and it caressed the body of the ship like a
petulant lover.

Petulant because the wind had whipped whitecaps on the water and now it
slammed against the rails as if in random fits of pique.

As lovers go, though, the night was apparently still in love with
something; it was warmer and moister than it had been just an hour
earlier.

She could smell the tropics on the breeze as she stood next to the
sea-speckled railing.

This. This was the kind of sailing she'd always yearned for, and even the
monstrous size of the ship, the sheepishly tacky interiors and the crowds
of rambling seniors in pressed white shorts couldn't undermine the
majesty of the moment.

They could keep their grotesque ice sculptures, kitschy stage shows and
endless midnight buffets. As she leaned into the night, salt air drying on
her skin, she silently blessed the folks at Dutch-American Cruise Lines for
having the decency to keep the teak decks, the wooden deck chairs and
the varnished salt-gnawed wooden railings.

Someone at Dutch-American knew what sailing was all about. They'd
made concessions for the convenience of the blue-haired set, but dammit,
she thought as she stood there: This could be the Queen Mary on its way
to England 50 years ago.

Well. Except for the sultry humidity that said Caribbean all the way.

Which was fine. Which was great. Who needed to sail the tempestuous
Atlantic these days, with its mood swings and indifference to the frailty of
human stomachs? She loved the sea but knew damn well a little too much
rolling on the waves would have her retching in her tiny cabin next to all
the other moaning landlubbers below deck.

She was a hopeless romantic, but she was also pragmatic.

She'd learned to be.

A youngish woman alone on a cruise always raises a few eyebrows, as
though the minute the ship sets sail, everybody forgets they're living in the
'90s.

Oddly enough, this was the one contingency she hadn't planned for.

She'd been prepared for everything else, including the barely disguised
lust on the part of the Indonesian waiters and cabin stewards, slight
young fresh-faced boys whose faces seemed paralyzed with frustration and
far too much hard work.

Apparently, the fact that she was travelling alone -- and had paid a hefty
premium for a stateroom by herself -- had spread through the belly of the
ship on the very first day.

She'd been fighting off unsubtle, if tentative, advances ever since.

But she'd expected this. What she hadn't expected were the disapproving
harrumphs of her fellow passengers.

Not all of them, to be fair, but just enough to cause resentment and a faint,
tiresome feeling of guilt.

Being single wasn't a crime, was it? Not yet, anyway.

It was true that virtually everyone else on the cruise was hopelessly
coupled come hell or high water, as she put it to herself, gazing at some of
the resigned faces she saw.

At least half of the couples she saw looked like they were only barely
resisting the urge to push their significant other overboard.

A little voice teased her inside her head: Maybe they're not judging you
after all. Maybe they're just *jealous* and those looks they're firing at
you are a silent plea for help.

Maybe.

Probably not.

She'd lived long enough to realize that most people embraced their long
suffering with a smug and vaguely triumphant superiority.

She reclined on a long deck chair most afternoons, rebelliously sipping
short serious drinks without paper umbrellas, and thought as she studied
the strolling couples through smoked glasses: These people are living
amputated lives.

She, at least, had no illusions about her own unhappiness.

But, the same little voice whispered in the back of her mind -- she'd grown
to loathe it, even though, when all was said and done, it was the
only voice she trusted -- does it matter that they're unhappy when they
believe they're not?

Good question. Dammit.

She'd been cursed with clarity of vision, and what had it brought her? A
fabulous well-paying career with a lot of free time, true: clarity tended to
make other people believe you were supremely competent.

Which, as it happened, she was.

But the price she'd paid for this intuitive understanding that nothing was
ever as simple as it seemed (nor as complicated as you hoped) and
that few people, if any, really understood their own fundamentally banal
motivations, was a life alone.

Of course, it wasn't as bad as it sounded. She was surrounded by friends
who loved her in their own way, but who much more specifically needed
her.

The fact that she always seemed to grasp something that left others
confused and uncertain made her extremely attractive as a friend.

She knew it also made her disconcerting.

Her friends liked to be around her. To a point.

But when they'd gleaned from her all she would give them in one sitting,
they invariably laughed, shook their heads and said something like well I
feel a lot better thanks a bunch and then bye-bye, out the door they went.

Or, if she happened to be at their place, they'd look at their watches and
suddenly shriek with feigned astonishment about the time and where does
it go gosh Fred'll be home any minute kiss kiss I'll call.

And she'd be standing on the stoop within seconds.

As for men, well, forget about them. She had no patience for dinner and
flowers and all the other subterfuge that was a wearily transparent coverup
for the hope that they maybe just maybe might get a chance to fuck her
before the night was through.

It wasn't that she didn't like sex. She prided herself on her normalcy. She
was attractive and she knew it; men looked at her often in that way,
women too at times, and that was fine.

She knew enough to know that everyone likes to feel wanted -- including
her.

And it wasn't that she didn't like men, or at least she liked them as well as
she did women, more in fact because at least they were usually
more direct, which was actually a relief.

It was only that more and more all of it was so *fatiguing* somehow, so
stale and predictable that quite honestly she'd rather slit her own wrists
these days than dance the dance for a 20-minute tumble in the sheets.

But all this silliness was about to change.

On that cruise, the first of many, she realized she had a mission.

It came to her in a blinding flash of clarity one night when she'd tucked
herself away in her narrow bed on the soothing swaying sea.

This realization was spurred in part by a nascent conviction that while it
was true most people didn't realize they were unhappy, this fact alone
couldn't save them from a life of misery.

She, on the other hand, could.

It was, she suddenly saw, her destiny.

It was, well, a kind of sacred trust, a duty of sorts.

People lived like rats in a maze.

It was sad.

It was unnecessary.

More importantly, removing them from the maze would give her a sense
of meaning which so far had eluded her.

Besides, as she discovered on that first cruise, she loved sailing and killing
was kind of fun.




CONTINUED IN PART TWO
--------
CRUISE (2/12)

by Madeleine Partous
email: partous@total.net

"Feedback both pro and con is deeply appreciated."

DISCLAIMER & SUMMARY IN PART ONE




WASHINGTON DC
DOWNTOWN
MONDAY, 9:11 AM


It had been a bad weekend, at least as far as Dana Scully was concerned.

She was stuck in a traffic jam no more than 10 minutes from the office
and she was already late and it didn't look like she was going anywhere
fast.

The weekend hadn't been bad in any ordinary sense of the word. Nothing
terrible had happened.

Nothing had happened at all. Which was the problem.

She was finding this predictable lack of anything happening increasingly
irritating.

What the hell was the matter with everything anyway?

She wasn't unattractive. She had outside interests. She wasn't particularly
boring -- was she?

Scully was beginning to wonder.

It seemed the more the years passed and the more time she spent working
with Fox Mulder, the harder it became to relate with the real world.

Okay. That wasn't altogether fair. Life with Mulder wasn't entirely
divorced from the real world.

Not entirely.

But the fact remained that she'd drifted away from most of her friends, just
from the sheer impossibility of sustaining meaningful relationships when
she was always on the road or on stakeouts are just working late.

As for dating, that was an even bigger laugh. The only males she ever saw
these days were Mulder, Mulder, Mulder, Pendrell, Skinner and -- she
shuddered -- the Gunmen.

Look on the bright side, Dana, she smirked as she pounded the horn and
veered around some guy who'd obviously passed out at the wheel. Out of
this select group of six men in your life, two have the hots for you.

Pendrell and Frohike. Great. Fabulous. 

Oops. Apparently the other driver was in fact conscious, judging from the
finger he'd just flung at her.

Scully sneered and cut in front of him.

Buying the Explorer was the one independent act she'd taken in a long
time -- and it felt great.

"You bought a *what?*" Mulder had stood gaping in the parking lot when
he'd walked her to her new prize possession.

"You heard me. Feast your eyes on that baby."

He stood and stared at both of them. "Scully, that damn thing is 400 times
bigger than you are.

Which was precisely the point. She glared at him.

"I've had it with sharing a vehicle with you, Mulder. This is my first step
towards getting a life."

"But we get the Taurus free, Scully." He looked genuinely perplexed.

It figured. Mulder wouldn't spend a penny on anything he couldn't write
off.

"One car per partners, Mulder. And only when we're on assignment. And
always a goddam Taurus. I hate Tauruses. Besides, you almost always
keep it."

To his credit, he chose not to point out that this was his prerogative since
he was technically her superior.

He didn't have to. He knew that she knew.

Scully admitted grudgingly that he rarely pulled rank on her, although he
had his own ways of making sure she never forgot it.

Of course, she realized he also knew that as a medical doctor, she actually
made more money than he did.

Bureau logic. And a skewed kind of sexism, as far as she could figure.

But it seemed he was in a flirtatious mood that day; all he'd done when
she'd mentioned the Taurus was pout at her because he knew it was
disarming.

Manipulative bastard.

"The fact is, Mulder, I want my own method of locomotion. You're
starting to cramp my style."

"But, Scully..."

God. He was whining.

"*Please* do not start."

And then he smiled beatifically, one of those rare smiles he rarely showed
anyone, the kind that revealed his slight rather fetching overbite.

Down, Dana. You're sick of him, remember?

"I was just going to point out that you don't have a style to speak of,
Scully."

He looked insufferably smug.

Scully considered slapping him just for the hell of it, but decided the jump
up wasn't worth the trouble.

"As a psychologist, Mulder, you should be better acquainted with the
pitfalls of projection."

That had shut him up. At least for a moment.

She'd been pissed off at him for awhile after that, but relented when it
became clear to her that he was actually hurt by her move towards
greater independence.

Hurt and maybe even a little jealous.

It was normal for agents to spend a lot of time together. It was even
encouraged -- to a point.

The Bureau knew full well that unattached agents were more likely to get
immersed in their work.

Family life wreaked havoc with that particular agenda.

At the same time, Bureau policy made it clear that agents shouldn't get
overly attached to each other. Made them absentminded.

In other words, the Bureau did everything it could to foster singleminded
dedication without distraction. 

Scully knew that she and Mulder weren't the only two agents faced with
the same predicament. Virtually all the best ones, the crack ones, were
single and on-call 24 hours a day.

Great. Look where it had got her.

Nowhere.

Unlike most of her colleagues, who at least got credit for some of the stuff
they did, she'd sacrificed everything for the sake of derision on a good day
and overt hostility on a bad one.

She and Mulder were important all right. Important enough to be feared
and loathed by the good and the bad guys alike.

Assuming the sun was shining that day and you could actually tell the
difference between them.

Meanwhile here she was stuck in traffic and late again and the weekend
had sucked despite the Explorer.

Okay. So she wasn't entirely delusional.

The fact was that the weekend had sucked primarily because Scully had
forgotten what to do with one.

It had been the first weekend she'd had free in a month. After she'd taken
care of bills and laundry and housecleaning and everything else she'd
neglected, she was horrified to discover that the only thing she could think
of doing was calling Mulder.

Appalling. Scully hadn't even spoken to her mother in six weeks.

So she'd forced herself to go out to a club on Saturday night only to be
deafened by House music, assailed by desperate single guys she couldn't
even hear over the pounding bass -- which was probably just as well -- and
ultimately bored out of her mind.

You're getting too old for this, Dana.

Too old. Christ. She'd just turned 32.

So she'd returned home alone because quite honestly she couldn't bear the
thought of bedding some sweaty accountant, and all she'd found on her
answering machine was a rambling derisive message from Mulder about
how she was probably out trying to have a good time in some club and
failing dismally.

She sat and listened and stewed and fought with every ounce of her will
against the petty desire to call him back just to insult him.

At least she'd gone out. What was he doing leaving her a long message on
a Saturday night? He was at home doing nada, that's what he was doing.

But there'd been something in his tone that had actually touched her, a
need of some kind, and she knew he'd been through hell with that past-life
business.

Scully suspected Mulder felt lonely these days, but it was so hard to tell
with him.

When he needed something, his tendency was to become sardonic, cold
and dismissive.

She recognized this tendency. She shared it.

It made it difficult for either of them to reach out, most of all to each
other.

In fact, Scully had come to believe this trait was one of three they had in
common.

The other two were an unerring dedication to the truth, even when they
didn't agree on what it actually was, and a kind of generalized
sentimentality.

The latter wasn't immediately obvious given their apparent stoicism, but
over the years Scully had come to realize that both of them, in their own
guarded way, were complete mushballs.

She knew it was true of Mulder. She just wasn't sure he knew it about her.




FBI HEADQUARTERS
FOX MULDER'S OFFICE
MONDAY, 9:52 AM


Scully breezed in and tried not to look apologetic.

Mulder was already seated behind his desk, feet up. From the icy glint in
his eye, he'd already had far too much coffee.

"Scully. How delightful of you to drop by. Hope it wasn't a bother."

"Look, I'm sorry, but the highway was a parking lot and I..."

He dumped his feet to the ground and waved his hands at her.

"Please. You don't have to explain. Anyone who works as many hours as
you do is entitled to be late every morning."

"Mulder, I'm not late every morning."

Although even Scully had to admit she was late a lot of mornings.

He smiled thinly. "Did you get my message?"

Aha. Ammunition at last.

"Which one?" She eyed him coolly, dropping her bags to the ground and
settling gingerly in one of his least grungy guest chairs.

"Uh..."

"The raving lunatic one on Saturday night which proved you have even
less of a life than I do," she continued, "or the one this morning?"

He didn't even flinch. "Let's start with the one this morning."

"Yes?"

"I thought maybe you'd missed it because you'd already left to get here
bright and early."

She ignored the sarcasm.

"No. Actually, I was still asleep. So was Lance, my lover."

That had an impact. Mulder's eyes narrowed.

"Lance?" He leaned towards her over the desk. "You have got to be
kidding."

"He's Swedish." She winced: now where the hell had that come from?

It was too late. Mulder actually laughed.

"You know, Scully, if you're gonna make up Swedish lovers, you'd be
better off naming them Bjorn."

"Not every Swede is called Bjorn, Mulder," she said stiffly, but she knew
she'd lost the advantage.

"I know. I spent the weekend with Lance's sister, Mathilda."

Scully gave in and chuckled. "You waltzed a lot, I bet."

"For hours." He grinned at her. "Help yourself to some coffee."

She glanced over at the pot.

"There's none left."

"Feel absolutely free to make some."

She sighed and got up. "Asshole," she muttered.

"Excuse me?"

"I said of course, your Lordship."

"That's what I thought you said."

Scully didn't actually mind making the coffee. At least that way she knew
it would be fit for human consumption.

"So what's this about? Your message only said I should come prepared to
leave for a week."

She could hear Mulder stirring behind her.

"Well, I've got good news and bad news, Scully."

She turned around.

"The good news is you're going on a cruise."

She gaped at him.

He smiled.

"The bad news is I'm going with you."




CONTINUED IN PART THREE 
--------
CRUISE (3/12)

by Madeleine Partous
email: partous@total.net

"Feedback both pro and con is deeply appreciated."

DISCLAIMER AND SUMMERY IN PART ONE




Scully thought it might be a good idea if she shut her mouth, which was
hanging wide open.

"A cruise?"

Really. Mulder was getting far too much enjoyment out of this.

"Yep. The New Westerdam. Very chi-chi, from what I understand."

"And this is happening when?"

"We're flying to New Orleans this afternoon. The ship leaves for the
Caribbean at six."

Scully scowled at him. "New Orleans isn't on the ocean."

He grinned. "The Mississippi, darlin'. Right to the Gulf of Mexico. You
must've aced those geography classes in high school."

She rolled her eyes and sank in a chair as the coffeemaker began to hiss
and spit.

"Forgive me, O great one. I was too busy getting straight A's in everything
else."

"That certainly explains the way you navigate when we're driving."

"You know, Mulder, that statement would really wound me if it wasn't
coming from a man who can't change a lightbulb."

He smirked. "It's the basis of psychology, Scully. You can't change a
lightbulb. It has to want to change itself."

"That joke is older than your hairstyle."

"Who's joking? Anyway, so are you."

As she bit down on the urge to retort "that's what you are, what I am,"
Scully decided she'd had enough of this juvenile nonsense. "So what's the
excuse for the trip?"

Scully caught him gazing at her affectionately as he stood up.

It wasn't the first time, and much as she hated to admit it, it was a look she
liked.

That mushball thing.

Of course, he always got rid of it the second he realized she'd seen it.

Which she wasn't in a position to object to since she did the same thing all
the time herself.

"Murder, my dear."

"Okay, so I'm listening."

Mulder hit the switch on the projector. Scully was suddenly alarmed to
discover she was actually looking forward to the slide show.

God. When had that started to happen?

A life. Get one, girl. Now.

"In the last two years, 15 people have met mysterious deaths on
Dutch-American's five prestigious ships."

"Mysterious how?"

"I know what you're thinking, Scully. Most of the passengers on these
cruises are middle-aged or elderly, and it does happen that some of them
expire of natural causes along the way. But it's actually rare."

The screen flared to life as Mulder cycled through a few generic promo
shots of ship exteriors and interiors, dining rooms, spas, poolside views.

You'd think from looking at these pictures that no one above the age of 30
was allowed on board.

"Why in God's name do you have these PR slides anyway?"

Mulder shrugged. "I wanted to get a sense of the layout. All five ships are
virtually identical."

"You still haven't answered my question, Mulder. How were the deaths
mysterious?"

"They were all violent. At least to a point. And none of the victims had
serious health problems. For one thing, most of them were fairly young,
relatively speaking."

He flicked through snapshots and obituary notices of men and women,
most of them in their 40s and 50s, although Scully noted at least three
who were considerably older.

"What kind of violent deaths are we talking about here, Mulder?"

He sat down. "That's what's interesting. Usually, a serial killer has a set
pattern, an MO. It's rare for him to deviate from it significantly. The
method is usually crucial to the satisfaction he gets from the act."

Scully grimaced. "Were the victims sexually assaulted?"

"No. Which may also explain why there's no consistency in sex,
appearance or age. As you know, that's another commonality with serial
killings. Most victims resemble each other in some way."

"So what you're saying is that these aren't serial killings."

Mulder shook his head excitedly. "No, that's not what I'm saying at all. I'm
convinced they are, Scully. It's just that they don't fit the standard
psychological profile."

Scully sighed and rose to pour herself a cup of coffee.

"Want some?"

He smiled at her.

"Sure."

"Help yourself."

She sat down again.

Mulder chuckled and got up.

"You are a vengeful, mean-spirited woman, Scully."

"And proud of it. Get yourself a bimbo if you want your coffee poured."

She watched, fascinated, as he dumped spoon after spoon of sugar in his
cup.

She didn't think she'd ever get used to seeing him do it.

He went back to his chair carefully, blowing on the hot liquid and
muttering expletives as it sloshed down the sides of the cup.

Idiot. She smiled despite herself.

"The deaths, Mulder?"

"Yeah. Four strangulations, two slit throats, three overdoses of
prescription medications -- these ones are more problematic since it's
impossible to rule out suicide entirely, although according to family none
of the victims was depressed or in dire straits -- two cases of suffocation
with pillows, and three drownings."

"Overboard?"

Mulder nodded. "In each drowning case, it took some time for the crew
and relatives to realize the individual had disappeared."

"Photographs?"

"Unfortunately, Dutch-American's desire to hush the incidents so as not to
alarm passengers means that no one recorded the crime scenes. They'd
pretty well cleaned everything up by the time the ship docked. A captain's
prerogative, Scully, especially when these things take place on
international waters with no local jurisdiction in effect. All I've got are
autopsy reports and pictures."

He handed her a thick file.

Scully glanced through the sheaths of paper quickly.

She looked up at him.

"How could any one person dispatch so many people over two years,
Mulder? Who cruises that much?"

"As it turns out, a lot of people do, Scully. You'd be surprised. Apparently,
we're hanging out with the wrong crowd."

"Since when is two a crowd, Mulder?"

He gave her his best ha-ha sneer. "And that's precisely what convinces me
that one person is responsible. Most of the ships sail simultaneously.
When these deaths occurred on one ship -- and they always came in pairs,
Scully, except once where there were three in one 14-day trip -- the others
reported no incidents."

"Two deaths per trip, Mulder?"

"Except that one time."

"If you're right, that means the killer took seven cruises."

"Exactly."

"In two years."

"Not too shabby, huh?"

"If you call setting sail to kill people a vacation, Mulder."

"Hey. To each his idea of leisure."

"So when was the last one?"

"A couple of months ago. The Noordansk."

"Which isn't the ship we're taking."

"Nope. Not much point. The killer switches each time and I'm gambling
that the New Westerdam's due for an encore. Two of the others are
docked, one's in the Mediterranean -- no murders have taken
place outside the Caribbean -- and the Noordansk just went through it."

"It's still possible that the murders are unrelated, Mulder, based on the
lack of a pattern. Or that there's more than one killer working in
tandem."

He looked at her. "Yeah, I've noticed you're keen on the 'killers working in
tandem' theory, Scully. Unfortunately, it almost never happens."

He actually sounded impatient. She bristled at him.

"It makes more sense than the idea that one person's hopping from ship to
ship and killing random people in dissimilar ways."

Mulder shook his head. "Not that dissimilar. There's been 5 methods so
far, each of which was used more than once. I think there's a pattern
here, Scully. I'm just not sure what it is yet."

She said nothing for a moment. The truth of the matter was that this was
prime Mulder territory. She'd seen him catch brilliant psychotic killers,
deciphering patterns where no one could see them, and it was the one area
where his colleagues showed him absolute respect.

Hell, his unorthodox analyses had saved her life more than once. Pfaster.
The chicken people. The lobotomist.

Scully shuddered.

She knew full well that this was his field of expertise and had been so
long before the X-Files.

Speaking of which.

"So what's the X-File, Mulder?"

He studied her before smiling.

Apparently, she'd let him see that she was going to grant him the benefit
of the doubt on this one.

"Well, in a way, that's the best part. Word has spread that the ships are
haunted."

"What?"

"Yep. Dutch-American's freaking out because people are cancelling trips
right, left and centre. There's a story circulating about the ghost of some
Dutch shipbuilder who died on the job and is now exacting revenge on the
company."

Scully stared at him incredulously.

"You're kidding."

"Cross my heart, Scully."

"And I take it that you don't believe it for once?"

He stood up and stretched. "Nope. Even though it would be easier than
trying to figure out how a single human being could've done all of it."

Scully groaned. "You're outrageous, you know that?"

"So I'm told."

"You're asking me to believe one of two impossible theories."

"Before breakfast, Scully." He grinned.

"Charming. You're really pushing it this time."

He leaned over her and pat her shoulder. She caught his familiar smell for
a moment, his morning clean slightly salty Mulder scent.

"Look on the bright side. Maybe it'll be a ghost after all and you can just
go on not believing any of it."

Scully suddenly felt a profound sympathy for homicidal maniacs
everywhere.




CONTINUED IN PART FOUR
--------
CRUISE (4/12)

by Madeleine Partous
email: partous@total.net

"Feedback both pro and con is deeply appreciated."

DISCLAIMER, SUMMARY AND INTRO IN PART ONE


WASHINGTON INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT
MONDAY, 12:58 PM


By 1 pm they were sitting on a direct flight to
Louisiana.

Scully flew a lot. More than she wanted to.

She still didn't like it much.

This time the flight was booked solid. A 757,
built in the days when no engineer cared about
personal space.

Three tiny seats on each side of the aisle.

Mulder's long frame was crammed against the window
-- Scully absolutely refused to sit next to
windows -- while a man who'd had one too many Po
Boy was bulging over her from the aisle seat.

Fortunately, he was asleep within minutes, but not
before he'd got a few good leers in.

Scully found herself leaning in against her
partner simply because it was the lesser of two
evils.

Mulder seemed rather to relish her discomfort. He
lowered his headphones and gazed at her.

"If I put my arm around your shoulder we'd both
have a lot more space, Scully."

"I'm a doctor, Mulder. You can tell me. What drugs
are you taking?"

He was unfazed. "God, you're right. Someone
must've slipped me something. Everyone knows girls
have cooties."

He feigned a shudder.

She leaned against him more, out of spite.

It didn't have quite the desired effect. He
mumbled something and shifted a little so she
could settle against him more comfortably.

Scully could feel the strong thud of his heart
through his jacket. It was ludicrously comforting.

She looked up at him, suddenly suspicious.

His eyes were opaque. "Hi, there."

She sighed and moved back a bit.

"Don't go, Scully. Consider the alternative." He
wagged his chin at their snoring roomie.

"Maybe I'm ready for a window seat, Mulder."

He shook his head vehemently. "Nuh-uh. I ain't
sittin' next to that guy. He drools."

She looked over quickly. It was true.

She sighed again and nestled against Mulder once
more.

The lesser of two evils.

His slow, steady heartbeat lulled her into a kind
of pleasant doze until they reached New Orleans.




NEW ORLEANS INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT
MONDAY, 4:30 PM


Scully had a feeling that Mulder had awakened her
with a murmur and his lips against her ear, but
she'd been too groggy to be sure.

She could also have sworn that his arms were
wrapped around her, a theory she could only back
up by the fact that her clothes and even her skin
smelled like him, but by the time she'd emerged
from her haze he'd already been dragging their
carry-on from the overhead bin.

She'd squinted up at him.

"Mulder, did..."

He'd dropped her overnight bag in her lap with a
whump, knocking the breath out of her.

"C'mon, Scully. We've got less than an hour to
catch the ship."

He'd studiously avoided her eye, but Scully
thought she'd caught the ghost of a smile on his
lips as he made his way towards the front of the
plane, leaving her to lug her bag down the aisle.

Bastard.

The huge man from the seat next to hers had stood
against the bulkhead, giving her an appreciative
look.

"Ya know, honey" he drawled, "Yor boyfriend seems
to like ya well enough but I ain't shore he
appreciates you like you deserve."

"You're not kidding," she muttered.

All in all, it seemed wiser not to correct him.




As the cab crawled through rush-hour traffic,
Scully gazed at the city through the swimming
heat.

Suddenly she started and looked over at her
partner. She'd been meaning to bring this up
before.

"Mulder."

"Hmm?" He was staring out the window. "You know,
Scully," he said absently, "I've never been here
before."

"Neither have I. Mulder..."

"It's sad, you know. It's such a great town by all
accounts. I wish we had a couple days to look
around."

"So do I. But Mulder..."

"I mean, it's Halloween. Imagine: Halloween in New
Orleans. It's gotta be outrageous."

"I'm sure it is, Mulder, but..."

He turned to look at her.

"You can drink alcohol on the streets here, did
you know that?"

"You don't drink. Anyway..."

"I do too. I drink sometimes. And women dance
naked in the windows. Just like Amsterdam. Can you
believe that?"

"That's disgusting, Mulder. The point is..."

"And the music, Scully. We're here in the
America's jazz heartland and we can't even
experience it for one evening. You like jazz,
don't you?"

"I like it fine. Except..."

"Well, what is it, Scully? Spit it out, for God's
sake."

She expelled a sharp breath and punched his arm.
Hard.

"Ow." He batted his eyelashes at her and rubbed
his bicep.

"Don't play the victim, Mulder. I'm not buying
it."

"So what is it?"

"You're seasick. Remember?"

He stopped moving and stared at her. "I'm not
seasick right now," he said weakly, but it was
clear he'd forgotten all about it. 

Scully smiled. "You will be."

"That's so nasty." But he looked genuinely
terrified.

Hah. Finally. He was always so smug about flying.

She shrugged. "So charter a private jet and circle
over the boat."

"Oh, ha *ha*."

The look on his face finally made her relent.
"Fortunately for your sake, I didn't forget."

"What d'you mean?"

"Well, the fact is most of these cruises are
designed to cause as little discomfort to
passengers as possible. The itineraries, the ships
themselves... Still, I brought a powerful
intravenous anti-nausea drug just in case."

If she hadn't seen it with her own eyes, Scully
wouldn't have believed Mulder could get any paler.

"Intravenous?" His voice was barely a whisper.

Scully shrugged. "Only a doctor can administer it,
Mulder. Consider yourself lucky."

Mulder hated shots.

In fact, the last time he'd had one while he was
actually conscious, he'd fainted.

She'd been there. It was a little secret they
shared.

Rather like her abject dread of spiders, which for
some reason he never mocked despite the fact that
once she'd actually climbed up his body and
wrapped herself around his neck to get away from
one.

A big one.

A huge black hairy one.

Well. Maybe not that big. But it looked enormous
on the white tile floor of the Baton Rouge ME's
autopsy room.

Scully barely repressed a shudder just thinking
about it.

He'd held her with one arm and stomped it with his
foot while she'd babbled in his ear, but he'd said
nothing at all as he deposited her back on the
ground and bowed a little.

"Just call me the Fearless Spider Killer. At your
service."

And unbelievably, that was all he'd said.

Mulder could be surprising sometimes.

Especially since she knew he hated killing spiders
and almost always tried to set them free outdoors.

"They're great, Scully. They eat flies. Flies are
disgusting shit-eating disease-infested vermin."

As it turned out, Mulder hated flies.

She'd never heard of that one before, but phobias
were always bizarre.

Now all he said was: "Can't I wear a patch,
Scully?"

"They don't work."

"So why do they sell them?"

"Because."

"Because why?"

"I don't know, Mulder. Because they work in mild
cases. They won't work for you."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes. And even if I wasn't, you can't get a shot
for two weeks after removing a patch."

Mulder's face lit up. "Sounds perfect."

"Except the shot definitely works. It'll get rid
of the worst seasickness within six hours. And you
only need to have it if you actually get seasick,
which means no unnecessary side effects."

"Like what kind of side effects?"

"Like vomiting."

"What's the point of an anti-nausea device that
makes you vomit, Scully?"

She shrugged. "Exactly."

He looked crestfallen.

"Are you sure?"

"Positive."

Mulder sighed and leaned back against the seat as
he rubbed a hand over his eyes.

Scully tried not to sound gleeful.

It would've been mean-spirited.

"Don't worry, Mulder," she cooed, patting his
knee. "You may not even need it."

"You're enjoying this, Scully."

"I am not."

"You are."

"Well, maybe a little."

He made a strangled sound somewhere between a
groan and a chortle.

"You're an evil woman, Scully."

"Hey. I always say do what you're good at."

Mulder shook his head wearily.

"One of these days, Alice..."




PORT OF NEW ORLEANS
MONDAY, 5:10 PM


FBI membership had its privileges. Their IDs had
them skirting the long lineup through Immigration;
within minutes, they'd passed through the security
check and were headed for the gangplank.

Scully stopped in her tracks and gawked.

God. It was like a movie from the '40s.

The New Westerdam was big, but by today's
standards it looked like a real ship instead of a
floating hotel.

The prow tapered elegantly to a no-nonsense point;
she could see the warm rich woods of the deck
which lay in the shadow of squat vaguely ominous
lifeboats.

Round portholes dotted the blackness of the ship's
flank like precise, empty staring eyes.

Scully shivered and she wasn't sure why.

"Remind me, Scully. What's starboard again?"

"The right side. Just remember: port is left --
same number of letters."

"Right."

He tugged on her arm and they resumed their way
towards the staircase.

"The bow, Scully?"

"The bow is front, or forward, the stern is back,
or aft."

He mumbled to himself. "Navy brats."

"Excuse me?"

"Nothing."

She was going to retort something when she looked
up to see a crisp white-clad man striding towards
them along the pier.

Scully glanced at the braids on his arm. First
officer.

"Agent Scully. Agent Mulder." His words were
caught by the wind and almost whisked away.

She reached for the proffered hand and shook it
briskly. "Sir."

He nodded and turned to Mulder.

"Hey." Her partner smiled laconically.

The other man appraised him coolly. "Welcome to
the New Westerdam."

"Thanks."

Scully cleared her throat. The officer was
extremely... well, extremely officer-looking. And
handsome. Tall, breathtakingly blond, not quite as
tall as Mulder but just as lean. His name tag said
"T. Hagenbrendt." From his accent, she surmised he
was probably Dutch.

Big surprise.

His straight back and square shoulders betrayed
years of service at sea.

Mulder, on the other hand, was definitely
slouching.

She gazed at him. Funny this faintly rebellious
stance he assumed in front of any real or
perceived authority.

"You know why we're here, sir," she said.

The first officer nodded again. "The captain has
requested me to meet you in order..."

He paused.

"Yeah?" Mulder actually sounded interested.

Hagenbrendt coughed delicately. "In order to
reiterate the importance of discretion in this
matter."

Mulder smiled widely. "Ah."

"As you can well understand, it is essential that
this investigation should not alarm the paying
passengers."

"Of course." Mulder kept smiling.

"Already we have suffered as a result of these...
unfortunate events."

"I can imagine."

The officer gazed at Mulder. "Yes. Well, it goes
without saying that Dutch-American wants this
resolved as quickly..."

He paused again.

"...and as seamlessly as possible."

"Quite understandable," Mulder agreed amiably.

"So. I would ask that you try as much as possible
to be discreet."

"Well, as it happens, Agent Scully and I are the
very soul of discretion, sir."

Scully barely resisted the urge to kick him in the
shin.

"Ah, good. I knew we would understand one
another."

Mulder nodded and smiled even more widely. "I know
I speak for the entire United States of America
when I say that we as representatives of the
government want to cooperate in solving this...
unpleasantness as seamlessly as humanly possible."

Oh, God.

Fortunately, the sarcasm was completely lost on
Hagenbrendt, who grabbed Mulder's hand and pumped
it enthusiastically.

"Good. Good."

Scully rolled her eyes.

It was gonna be a long trip.

"I will now show you to your quarters."

Mulder saluted sharply, to the officer's obvious
delight.

"Ay ay, sir!"

The poor man. She felt sorry for him already.

He'd sailed the seven seas, but he'd never met a
Mulder.

Her partner turned to her and smiled as he
gallantly shouldered her bag.

Something he almost only ever did when handsome
men were around.

"Come on, Gilligan. The Minnow awaits."

"I beg your pardon?" The officer looked back over
his shoulder as he led them up the gangplank.

"A private joke, sir. Cultural reference."

"Ah. Yes. American humour. Very interesting."

Scully followed the two men and prayed she'd make
it.




CONTINUED IN PART 5 
--------
Cruise (5/12)

by Madeleine Partous
email: partous@total.net

"Feedback both pro and con is deeply appreciated."


THE NEW WESTERDAM
MONDAY, 5:40 PM


Hagenbrendt led them down through a confusing maze of
stairways, landings, corridors and alcoves with a kind of
indifferent ease that led Scully to wonder whether he wasn't
subconsciously trying to lose them along the way.

She couldn't exactly blame him.

They hurried to keep up with the officer, who obviously had
more important things to worry about, but she did get a
glimpse of shops and luxurious lounges and statues of cherubs
writhing in Dionystic rapture and even an exercise room where
a few overachievers were already running on treadmills despite
the fact they hadn't left dock yet.

It should be easy to find their way back, Scully thought
wryly. There was only one place to go -- up.

Their cabins, it became increasingly clear, were in the bowels
of the ship.

"Mulder," she hissed, grabbing his arm.

"Yeah?"

"Are we gonna have to sleep with the crew?"

He stopped for a second and smirked at her lasciviously.

"Oooo, Scully. I'm sure they'll be relieved to see a woman. As
for me..."

"Oh, shut up. You know what I mean."

He shrugged and kept walking.

"What do you want me to say? We're not paying for the cabins.
And besides, we're working, remember?"

"Well, I'm sure whatever hellhole this guy leads us to will be a
step up from your usual choice of accommodations," she
muttered.

"All you do is hurt me."

She sighed.

"You okay with that bag, Mulder?"

"Actually..."

"Good. Although I'm sure Hagenbrendt would take it off your
hands in a jiffy. He looks like a gentleman."

He snorted. "Looks can be deceiving, Scully."

She jumped as Mulder suddenly yelped. Hagenbrendt had
stopped dead in the middle of the corridor and her partner had
almost got to know him better than he probably wanted to.

"What is it, sir?"

The tall officer turned to them. Scully studied his face -- it
was pale and pinched.

"Did you hear that?"

Mulder threw a glance at her. "What?"

"A voice." The officer swallowed, his Adam's apple bobbing
over the high white collar of his uniform.

"What kind of voice?"

"Unhappy. Angry."

Hagenbrendt took a deep breath and straightened.

"You hear anything, Scully?"

She shook her head.

But there was definitely a strange atmosphere in the corridor.
A heaviness of some kind.

"There's just..."

Mulder was looking at her, his eyes unusually bright.

"Do you feel it?" It was a whisper.

She caught his gaze and nodded slowly.

Her partner turned back to the officer. "Anyone else down
here?"

"No. This is the last guest level." He hesitated. "No one else
is booked on this deck; we have unfortunately not sailed at full
capacity since... the troubles."

Mulder nodded. "And this deck is part of the problem?"

Hagenbrendt shrugged a little defensively. "It's where certain
sightings were made. Foolishness, really. Hysteria."

The first officer didn't look like he meant it.

Scully understood. Seafaring men were a superstitious bunch.
Even her rational father, so level-headed about most things,
would often regale his kids with hair-raising tales of ghostly
visitations in the Pacific.

The funny thing was, he'd often looked more wide-eyed than
they did.

William Scully always wore the same socks when he set sail, and
her mother had told her how he never left on assignment
without her wedding ring on a chain around his neck.

"For your sake," he'd said. And he'd never explained it.

And for some reason, this reminded her of another thing her
mother had told her, about how Mulder had worn Scully's cross
around his own neck the whole time she'd vanished.

For the second time that day, she shivered.




Hagenbrendt recovered quickly and was obviously disinclined
to discuss the matter further.

In fact the heaviness dissipated so fast that Scully wondered
whether she'd felt anything at all.

"You have been assigned the first seating for dinner," the
officer said.

Lovely. It was a lot like being in the actual navy.

"What time?" she asked as he handed her a card key.

"6:15. Captain Jameson will be joining you tonight to brief
you."
 
Mulder pursed his lips. "Nice of him."

It was clear from the first officer's brisk manner that he felt
they should direct any other questions to his boss.

"Yes. The captain rarely dines with passengers."

"Then we're doubly honoured," Mulder said sweetly.

This time the look Hagenbrendt threw her partner was
definitely suspicious.

"Yes. Well. I'm sure I will see you later. Good luck."

They gazed at his back as he strode down the corridor.

Mulder turned to her.

"He's cute, don't you think?"

"Didn't think he was your type."

"I don't have a type. I like all kinds of people. Tall, short..."
he paused for a moment, "...blonds, brunettes, even red-
heads in a pinch."

She smiled. "Believe me, Mulder, if you could actually discern
the colour red, you'd never settle for anything else."

His eyes widened but he recovered quickly. "Well, from what I
understand, natural red-heads are rare, Scully. The
advantage with someone like me is I can't tell the difference."

He stooped a little, flashing a wicked grin.

"Even au naturel."

She leaned back.

"That would probably reassure anyone who's got something to
hide, Mulder."

The conversation was taking an uncomfortable turn.

"Besides," he added, dropping her bag at her feet, "I was
referring to the fact that you might find him attractive. I
mean, I may not have a type, but I suspect you do."

"You don't know anything about my tastes in men."

He shrugged and pushed his card key into the door next to
hers.

"Ahhh, come on. He's Aryan all the way. A perfect candidate
to father a long healthy line of straight-shouldered firm-
chinned uber-Scullys."

She wished she had something handy to throw at him.

Mulder smiled. "It's almost six. Meet you out here in 10?"

She said nothing and watched as the door swung shut behind
him.




By the time she emerged from her cabin to find Mulder
lounging against the wall, they were already late.

He'd changed his suit -- their luggage had already been
waiting for them inside the staterooms. It was one of his nicer
Armani's.

Where the hell did Mulder get the money for Armani? She'd
never had the nerve to ask.

Quite frankly, she was afraid to hear the answer, but she
suspected it had something to do with Frohike's shadier
connections.

Still. The fact was that Mulder paid more attention to his
appearance than the average male agent. The women, of
course, had no choice; they were expected to dress well.

Yet another double standard.

But as men went, Mulder's hair was always in place and his
shirts were always crisp and his suits were, well...

Armani.

It was one of the reasons rumours flew around the office that
he was gay. Scully knew it and she suspected Mulder did too.

To his credit, he didn't seem to care.

Sexual preference based on clothes and personal grooming was
an appalling stereotype, one that was unfair to straight and
gay men alike.

And of course, most people didn't know about Mulder's
resolutely heterosexual video library.

In any case he looked great, and his muted tie was actually
tasteful for a change.

"Sorry," she muttered. "I had to wash."

"Believe me, I could hear your shower running. You can hear
everything in this place."

His eyes lingered on her appreciatively. This too was a look
she'd come to recognize. And it was true she was wearing a
smart little outfit, a deep blue skirt and blouse combo that
hung exactly right.

She knew it.

"The engines aren't running yet, Mulder. They'll mask the
bulk of it."

He nodded.

"Single bed," he began conversationally as they headed
towards the stairway.

"Yeah, but there's two of them."

"Not much good unless you're planning a slumber party."

"Keep in mind the engines will only mask sounds below a
certain decibel, Mulder."

"I'll remember that. Did you notice we're a little below the
water line?"

They rounded the corner to the main landing. Ornate stairs
rose up, but none went down; it was obvious this was as far
below as passengers were expected to go.

"Yes. Means we can't open the portholes."

"I like it. It's like being in an aquarium. There's a poetic
justice to it: the fish can look in and we humans are the
trapped ones."

He said "hu-*mohns*," like a Ferengi.

She didn't want to tell him that he'd be closing the curtains on
his aquarium before too long. Already, she could feel the
rumble of the engines through the floor; the ship was
preparing to leave New Orleans. With Mulder's stomach, the
sight of waves careening wildly against the glass would be
enough to send him staggering to the toilet in a jiffy.

Actually, an inside cabin would be much better for him. Less
motion.

She didn't want to bring it up. So to speak.

For some reason, she didn't want him that far away down
there.




The dining room on Main Deck was already in full swing as
Mulder ushered her through the glass doors. At least half the
passengers were undoubtedly on the Promenade watching the
shore dwindle; through the room's yawning expanse of picture
windows, the banks of the Mississippi were beginning to
twinkle in the gathering dusk.

They were led to a small table where a man in uniform
sat, bristling with gold braids.

He rose as they approached.

"Captain Jameson, I presume."

Mulder smiled as he reached out a hand.

"Mr. Mulder."

Waiters hovered around the table, trying to achieve a delicate
balance between obsequiousness and invisibility.

They'd be getting flawless service tonight, that much was
certain.

The captain looked up and smiled at her, clasping her hand
with a firm grip. "Dr. Scully. We're grateful for your help."

American. Without a doubt. Strapping. Noble, driven, if a
little bland.

And the look on his face?

Well. Gratifying, quite honestly.

He obviously liked what he saw.

Mulder cleared his throat.

He suddenly swooped in front of a waiter before Jameson could
make a move in her direction and pulled out a chair.

"Scully?"

She stared at him and sat down gingerly, half expecting him to
yank it away at the last moment.

Instead he tucked it gently under her bottom and laid a hand
on her shoulder for a second before sitting down himself.

A proprietal hand.

If Scully hadn't known better, she would have described it as
frankly territorial.

Actually, she thought with a touch of wonder, maybe she
didn't know better.

She gazed at both men, who were now regarding each other
coolly over an elaborate floral arrangement.

Great. Just great.

What the hell was this all about? Was she supposed to sit there
like some kind of prize awaiting the outcome of a Viking
skirmish?

She didn't think so.

Men. Christ.

"So, Captain," she said evenly as she dropped her napkin in
her lap. "Why are we here, exactly?"

Jameson turned to look at her. His eyes locked with hers for a
moment before dropping down almost demurely.

"Well, Dr. Scully."

His mouth twisted in a wry smile.

"It would seem that we're haunted."




CONTINUED IN PART 6 
--------
CRUISE (6/12)

by Madeleine Partous
email: partous@total.net

"Feedback both pro and con is deeply appreciated."

DISCLAIMER AND SUMMARY IN PART ONE




The captain was still smiling, but the look on his face made
Scully suspect he wasn't altogether joking.

"So we've heard, sir. Do you believe a ghost is responsible?"

Jameson shrugged. "We sailors tend to keep an open mind, Dr.
Scully. There's something about the sea that makes you
suspend your disbelief."

Mulder fingered the menu. "It's an elemental force. Untamed,
somehow."

The captain nodded, looking at Mulder with new respect.
"Exactly. The sea does pretty much what it wants, and we're
just along for the ride. It's funny, you know, because in many
ways I find flying much less mysterious."

Scully stared at him. "How do you mean?"

"Well, you take off and then you fly over the clouds where
nothing much ever happens. You more or less know how the
plane works, why and how you're up there, what you should
expect. Planes can avoid bad weather, for the most part. They
cover miles in minutes so they can always find another place to
land. When you're sailing, you can't control nature at all.
Squalls can come up out of nowhere and then you're just in the
thick of it, hanging on for dear life until it's over."

He took a breath and laughed.

"I'm not trying to alarm you here. Of course we've got
sophisticated equipment which allows us to avoid the really bad
stuff. In fact, there hasn't been a serious disaster on a cruise
since the Titanic, and I don't have to tell you how many ships
are out there these days. This is the best place to be in a
hurricane, for example; if you're in a hotel in Miami, you can't
just outrun the thing. For the most part we can."

"But the sea's still largely an unknown." Mulder.

"Yes. That's why so many legends still persist around it.
Mythical monsters, the Bermuda Triangle, ghost ships in the
night."

He paused.

"It's lonely out here, Mr. Mulder. Sometimes you're hundreds
of miles from the nearest coastline with no other ship in sight.
And we're dependant on a medium we can't control -- the
water. Without it we wouldn't stay afloat, but as you say we
haven't really even begun to understand it."

Scully studied Mulder's face. It was clear from his expression
that he'd decided he liked Captain Jameson after all.

"That's very interesting, sir."

The captain looked almost rueful. "You'll have to forgive me.
Dr. Scully here will tell you that career sailors are a bit of a
strange bunch." He turned to her. "Your father was a
distinguished navy man himself, wasn't he?"

"It was his life."

Jameson nodded. "It always is -- at least when you're born
with the bug."

A steward suddenly appeared and whispered in his ear. The
captain looked up.

"We should order. The second service starts at 8:30 sharp."

Scully leaned over to her partner. "You shouldn't eat too much
tonight," she said softly.

"But I'm starving, Scully." He looked at her.

"Seasick, Mr. Mulder?" Jameson smiled broadly.

"Uh..."

"Dr. Scully's right, you know. The Gulf of Mexico is the only
rough water we're likely to see, although it looks good at this
point. We'll be out of it by morning, but you might want to be
careful until you get your sea legs."

"I think my sea legs were amputated at birth," he muttered.
He sighed resignedly and ordered a salad.

Two soups arrived in a flurry of efficient movement. Mulder
looked at hers longingly.

"What is it?"

Scully poked at it. "Prawns and leeks, I think."

"Mmmmm. Sounds yummy."

He was giving her his best puppy-dog face. She patted his
hand sympathetically. "Have some bread, Mulder. It's good
stuff, solid nutrients; won't slosh around down there when
you're trying to sleep."

Just the image was enough to make him turn a little green
around the gills.

Scully thought she'd better distract him.




She stood against the railing as the lights of New Orleans
began to fade in the growing darkness.

It was a view she'd seen many times.

It was beginning to feel comforting to her.

Each time she boarded these ships, all of which were familiar
now -- although she'd also begun to notice subtle differences
in decor and even in the sounds they made as they creaked
and moaned in the night -- she felt as though she was coming
home. 

Home is where the heart is. She giggled.

She'd found her heart here.

This is where she felt that her power had a focus.

She had a mission. Her mission was to save the lonely ones.

The ones who were lonely and refused to believe it.

She was the one who could help them find themselves at last.

Being alone wasn't the problem.

She was the living proof of that.

The problem came when you suffered because of it, and when
your own blindness made you oblivious to it.

So many lonely people. Many of whom spent their lives in the
midst of others they considered to be loved ones.

Fools. But gentle, misguided fools nonetheless.

She would help them as she'd helped so many already.

And even though it was difficult, even though she had to be
careful, so careful, because one slip would lead those who
didn't understand to lock her away where her talents would
help no one, she would continue her work.

In fact, she had already chosen the ones she would free.

She always found them immediately.

On this trip, there were two.

A man. A man in his 60s with a shrewish wife. She'd seen him
walk up the stairs, beaten, downtrodden, as his wife nagged
him shrilly about the lineups and the expense and the kind of
people on cruises these days and it had better be worth it
because her friends would be asking.

She couldn't help the wife. She was already living in a self-
imposed hell.

But him. He was kind and he meant well, and he'd been forced
to move to hell because of her.

She would release him.

A woman. A woman in her 30s. Younger than any she'd chosen
before. Attractive, her hair like fire, tiny but strong. She'd
felt her strength as she'd brushed by her on a landing. Yet
this strength hid a deep, deep pain. Loss. Frustration.
Anger. She was with a man, a tall handsome man, but one who
didn't understand. Not wholly. He was a good man and he
cared about her. A brother, maybe -- not a lover.

No. Not a brother either. There was sex in the equation. She
could feel it. The potential of it.

She couldn't quite grasp the part which this man played in her
life.

She felt there was a connection between the two, but it had
nothing to do with the woman's pain.

Her pain was all that mattered.

She sensed that the woman had suffered much as she had
suffered herself.

Loss. Frustration. Anger.

For the first time since she'd set out on her mission, she felt
she'd met a kindred spirit.

She would release her.




Scully turned to Jameson.

"So, Captain. You're saying these recent events are the result
of a vengeful ghost?"

He wiped his mouth and shook his head, throwing a glance at
her partner, who was dejectedly applying about a pound of
butter to a roll.

"I'm not saying that, Dr. Scully, although God knows there's a
lot of people who think it's true. As I'm sure you know, it's
not clear in each instance that the... event in question was
due to an act of violence. Suicide can't be ruled out in a
number of cases."

This discretion thing was beginning to get on her nerves,
although she could well appreciate that other guests would be
alarmed by their conversation if they knew the topic was
murder.

She nodded. "Still, it's odd to find so many similar... uh,
events in a short period of time. This kind of thing is Mulder's
forte, and I'm sure he can explain much better than I could
how there seems to be a pattern of sorts here."

Mulder looked up at her and smiled warmly.

Obviously, she'd pleased him. But then he so rarely heard
supportive words from any source. Including her.

Well. To be fair she often questioned his theories to his face,
but she was sure he knew by now that she always stood by him
staunchly in front of everyone else.

Didn't he?

Yet he always seemed surprised when she agreed with him in
public.

Probably because she rarely seemed to do it otherwise.

"I'd like to hear the ghost story first, actually," he said. "If
you don't mind, Captain."

Jameson shrugged. "There's not much to say. As I understand
it, the word among Dutch-American crew is that Hans
Vanmeer, a gifted shipbuilder who designed and supervised
the construction of all five ships -- this one is the flagship, by
the way -- is responsible for the... events. He died almost
three years ago, shortly before all this started happening."

"Was it a mysterious or violent death?"

"No, although that's where the tall tales begin. In actual fact,
he died peacefully in his sleep at the age of 84. Of course,
people are now saying he was disgruntled, that he'd been fired
after some kind of scandal involving an accident which killed
seven builders during the construction of the Noordansk, and
that he never forgave the company."

"And none of these stories are true?"

The captain waved over a wine steward and ordered a bottle.
Scully was no wine expert but she recognized the name; it was
definitely a French selection that would've set both Mulder and
her back a few days' pay.

Her partner looked at her beseechingly.

"I wouldn't, Mulder."

"One glass? Just one small glass?"

He looked so forlorn that she laughed out loud. "You're a big
boy. Do what you want."

"One glass." He looked outrageously happy and it was all she
could do not to laugh again.

Mulder could be very adorable sometimes. No question about
it.

"It'll probably even help you relax."

"I'm not tense, Scully. In fact, I feel great."

She didn't have the heart to tell him that was probably because
they were presently sailing the Mississippi, one of the world's
calmest waters.

It would be a different story in a couple of hours.

"Captain?" Mulder repeated his question. "Do any of these
stories have a basis in fact?"

"Well, there was definitely an accident and it's true that seven
workers were killed. Several more were injured, if I remember
correctly. But there was nothing particularly mysterious about
it -- a scaffolding collapsed, as I recall."

"And as far as you know, no one blamed Vanmeer?"

"No. He had nothing to do with it. At that point he was already
semi-retired, and if anything, it was the workers' own fault.
The scaffolding was badly balanced and it just fell apart,
something to that effect. I certainly don't remember anything
more being made of it at the time and as far as I know Vanmeer
retired quietly with all the appropriate honours."

The bottle of wine arrived and Jameson tasted it, smacking his
lips appreciatively.

Obviously a man who liked good things. And obviously a
highly competent sailor, judging from the fact that he'd made
his rank at his age. Scully didn't know how long he'd been
captain, but he couldn't possibly be older than 45.

She wondered absently if he was single.

"So why would stories circulate around this man if he was so
patently innocent?"

"I didn't say he was completely innocent, Mr. Mulder. Vanmeer
was renowned far and wide for his abilities, but also for his
temper and his occasionally unreasonable demands. He
threatened the company many times over what he felt was
unjust treatment. Even before he died, and before anything
happened on the ships, it was rumoured that he'd put a curse
on Dutch-American, something about how he'd built the
company with his own hands and he'd make sure it didn't last
long without him."

Scully stared at him. "Really?"

"These are good ships, Dr. Scully. Some of the most solid and
most graceful ever built. That's the reason they're so
prestigious, actually. They're beautiful, particularly
nowadays when the waves are being taken over by squat
behemoths which as far as I'm concerned might as well have
been built on land for all they've got in common with the sea.
But that's a personal opinion, of course."

He smiled at her. She sipped a little wine and he grinned as
her eyes widened.

"Not bad, huh?"

"Not bad at all, sir. Thank you." 

It was the best wine she'd ever tasted. Judging by Mulder's
rapturous expression, he agreed with her.

"Vanmeer's eccentricities were tolerated precisely because he
was so talented. But he was the last of his breed. The sad
thing is that these five ships are outdated, frankly. Dutch-
American actually owns a couple of other large cruise lines,
lines which specialize in exactly the kind of ships I've just
described. That's where the money is. There's no future in
little elegant ships like this one; we can't even charge what it
costs to keep them going, really, and they've been allowed to
continue because they're recognized the world over."

"The prestige thing," Mulder said.

"Exactly. They don't have the topnotch facilities that
passengers clamour for these days: there's a limited spa, a
tiny casino, no disco at all; you might say they're ships for
people who love to sail."

"In other words, these ships are on their last sea leg."

Jameson laughed. "If you like. This one, the oldest, will be
retired next year. The others will follow gradually. Dutch-
American's new flagship, which is being built in Amsterdam as
we speak, is much bigger. It'll have all the bells and whistles
and you won't feel it move at all -- which is something you'll be
able to appreciate, Mr. Mulder. I, for one, will miss the rolling
of the sea."

Scully gazed at the captain. "So you're saying these are ghost
ships after all."

"They will be, Dr. Scully. They're headed that way."

Jameson picked up his fork. "But that doesn't mean I believe a
ghost is responsible for what's going on here."

Mulder stared sadly at his salad. "Then you agree there's a
living being behind it?"

"Or more than one, Agent Mulder. I don't see how a single
individual could keep reappearing on these ships without
attracting attention."

Scully threw a quick glance at her partner. He was examining
the leaves on his plate with what could only be described as
utter contempt.

Jameson continued. "It's not just about recognition. In fact,
it's conceivable someone could keep showing up without being
recognized. After all, we're talking about five different ships
here, five different crews. It's just that you need a passport
to sail these seas, and there's no correlation between
passenger names and all of the cruises where these events
have taken place."

Mulder looked up. "None at all?"

Scully knew he already knew this. They'd talked about it that
morning in DC.

In all the cruises in question, as many as 14 passenger names
reappeared twice. Fewer still reappeared three times. Two
names were common to four cruises. None at all past that.

Incidents had occurred on seven different trips.

If one person was responsible, it meant he'd found a way to
change his identity at least three times.

"Well," Jameson admitted, "some passengers show up more
than once, although I'm sure you know that already."

"Yes. But anyone who can find a way to change his or her
name once on a legal document can probably do it again."

The captain studied her partner.

"True. But doesn't it seem more likely that more than one
person's involved here?"

Scully opened her mouth and shut it again.

Mulder gave her a look and spread his hands. "Maybe. Or one
very determined person, Captain. One person with a mission."




CONTINUED IN PART SEVEN

From partous@total.net Mon Dec 23 11:39:58 1996
CRUISE (7/12)

by Madeleine Partous
email: partous@total.net


"Feedback both pro and con is deeply appreciated."


DISCLAIMER AND SUMMARY IN PART ONE

*** SPOILER ALERT: 4th SEASON, ESP. TFWID AND
HERRENVOLK. ***


THE NEW WESTERDAM
MONDAY, 8:25 PM


Mulder had somehow managed to detract the captain from any
further questions about his own theories.

Scully wondered why, but he avoided her questioning looks.

He'd been good, though, refusing dessert and even coffee at
the end of the meal.

He'd be grateful for it later, she thought ruefully.

Poor old Mulder. In the midst of all this luxury, it was sad that
he was plagued with such a poor excuse for a stomach.

This was the kind of lifestyle people with his income, theirs,
actually, could only dream of.

Assuming, of course, it was also the kind of thing you'd
always wanted.

Which probably wasn't his case.

Or hers, for that matter.

When all was said and done, she suspected both she and
Mulder were more the jeans, sweatshirt and hot dog types.

Although she'd never given him much opportunity to find this
out about her.

As the waiters began to flutter around them agitatedly,
Jameson finally smiled and folded his napkin.

"Well. That's it. They're dying to get us out of here."

Mulder smiled and started to rise.

"Mr. Mulder. You and Dr. Scully should feel free to ask for me
whenever you feel it's necessary."

He looked at her. "I'll do everything in my power to help, but
I have a job to do."

Scully nodded. In other words, Captain Jameson would
cooperate, but he wanted it to be clear that he wouldn't
chaperon their efforts.

Fair enough.

Mulder shook the captain's hand warmly. Judging from
Jameson's equally heartfelt handshake, Scully was relieved to
see that her partner's admiration was apparently mutual.

A nice change, all told.

But then again, career sailors were a bit of a strange bunch.

It suddenly struck her that Mulder rarely got along with other
men at all.

He was suspicious and defensive around them -- often for good
reason, as it turned out.

Mulder was more of a woman's man, all told.

He liked them. He understood them. Hell, he even thought like
they did.

All in all, he related to them better than she did herself.

Where men were concerned, Mulder generally liked nerds and
wackos.

And philosophers.

He'd always had a soft spot for Deep Throat, for example,
despite the fact it would have been sheer lunacy to trust him
completely.

Skinner, for his part, was precisely the kind of man Mulder
distrusted by default, but the AD had won his respect and
affection the hard way.

By putting himself on the line for his agent over and over
again.

His agents. She knew that part of the reason Mulder trusted
the AD, at least to a point, was because the older man had
crossed that line altogether for Scully's sake on numerous
occasions.

And Mulder had returned the favour more than once, most
particularly when he'd saved Skinner's butt during that
bizarre prostitute case.

Something had changed between the two of them at that point.

The AD was both warmer and more considerate to her partner
now, but there was also something more distant about him,
almost as though he was vaguely... embarrassed.

Yet he'd left them alone, going so far as to close the door on
the two of them when Mulder had returned from God only knew
where, shaking, in shock, stinking of gasoline, to stand at his
mother's bedside.

Skinner had understood intuitively that she and Mulder had
come to a crossroads in their relationship -- and he'd let them
have their moment alone.

Mulder had cried in front of her for the first time that night,
cried for his mother, cried for himself and the weight of his
anguish.

He'd let her in.

For the first time.

His mother had later recovered mysteriously from what Scully
had secretly believed was a terminal coma.

Believed. Christ. She'd *known* it.

And as Mulder had stood and then fallen before her, tears
coursing down his cheeks as he leaned against her with all his
defenses down, at last, in front of the empty shell that had
been his mother, Scully realized, maybe not for the first time
but fully, for once, that she loved this man as though he were
an extension of everything she held dear, of everything she
was.

Love? Love couldn't begin to do justice to the depth of emotion
she'd felt for this bruised and battered man at that moment.

She'd been suffused by it, by her connection to him, by the
link between them that ran so deep despite their own
particular natures which made it so difficult for them to draw
closer together.

It had nothing to do with sex. And that was what made the
entire thing so unusual, so precious somehow.

But since their journey through his past lives, a journey
which she hadn't yet allowed herself to process or even to
judge, she wondered whether maybe, just maybe, the
fathomless love she'd felt for him that time had something to do
with the fact that they'd been together forever.

That according to Mulder's hypnotic regression, they'd been
together since the very beginning.

Always.

Friends for a thousand years.

It wasn't something Scully could bear to dwell on for too long.
Her mind rebelled against it -- as it should. And yet... even
though she hated to admit it, it felt conceivable somehow.

More than conceivable. It felt right.

According to what he'd revealed, it had culminated with the
fact that she'd been his father in her last life.

His father.

Unbelievable. Outrageous. And yet...

If it was true, she'd been killed by Nazis in her last life in
front of his very eyes.

Which would go a long way towards explaining why he always
went ballistic when her life was in danger in this one.

He was so standoffish the rest of the time.

As you are, Dana. As you always are.

Scully didn't know what she thought about it all.

She'd seen it.

She'd witnessed her partner's experience with her own eyes;
she'd found the photograph of the man he'd said he was.

But she was afraid.

She was afraid to believe.

And now as they prepared to leave the dining room, a ship's
captain, a man they didn't know, a man who had no idea what
they'd been through, smiled a little and said:

"I hope you don't mind where you're staying. I thought that in
light of what you do, you might find it interesting to spend
your nights on the deck where most of the psychic phenomena
have been reported."

She looked up, distracted. Mulder was still smiling.

"Sounds good to me. And no one else is staying on that deck?"

"No. In fact, a quarter of the cabins on the ship are empty
this time out, thanks to all the publicity we've received of late.
I'm told Dutch-American was featured on 'Sightings' a couple
of months ago. The most haunted ships on earth. Something
like that."

Scully gaped. "You're kidding."

"I'm afraid not."

"But I thought hauntings drew curious crowds, sir."

Jameson shrugged. "As long as no actual deaths are involved,
Mr. Mulder."

Her partner pursed his lips. "That must've really pissed off
your PR people."

The captain chuckled "You're not kidding. We're still reeling
from it. But I'm sure it'll blow over -- with your help. All we
need at this point is a down-to-earth explanation. Which, I
trust, is why you're here."

With that Jameson reached for Scully's hand and held it for a
moment before swivelling sharply and heading down the aisle
towards the glass doors.

Mulder turned to her. "Down to earth, Scully? The poor
bastard. He obviously doesn't know me."




They wandered out onto the Promenade deck just as the
whistle blew, signalling their departure from the mouth of the
Mississippi.

She glanced at Mulder. They were headed into the Gulf of
Mexico, and already she could feel the increased tension of the
waves as they slapped against the bow.

He leaned against the railing and looked out at the brilliant
froth raised by the ship as it cut through water which was lit
surreally by the spotlights that dotted the deck.

The smell of salt hung heavy and Scully could just make out
the beginning of a sultry, fragrant breeze beneath the snap of
the cool fall air they were quickly leaving behind.

She watched her partner as he gazed at the water, the wind
whipping his suit, wrapping it around him, accentuating the
lean determination of his form.

The ship bucked suddenly as they cut through a particularly
earnest wave, and she caught his look of panic as she braced
herself instinctively against the deck, her feet parting and
standing firm as though it were second nature.

Scully walked towards him and lay a hand against his back.

"The trick is not to fight it, Mulder."

He looked down at her face, his own drawn and white in the
glare of the overhead light.

"What?"

"You get seasick because you keep searching for a centre in
the midst of it all."

He said nothing as he gazed at her, and she knew that for
some reason her voice had become hypnotic, rhythmic, echoing
the motion of the sea.

"Let go, Mulder. Just follow the rhythm of the waves. Let them
head where they will and then go along for the ride."

There was something in his eyes that smoldered as she spoke,
cutting through her own hypnosis and reminding her where
she was.

*Who* she was. And with whom.

She shook her head once and laughed.

"It's true, you know. People get seasick because they resist."

"How do you mean?" It was a whisper, but his eyes never left
her face.

His intensity was beginning to make her nervous, although she
suspected she'd started it.

She wasn't sure how.

"It's a perfectly understandable human reaction. Everything's
moving, so you want to enforce stability on it. But you can't
control it; the most you can do is try to force stability on
yourself. And that's what causes the nausea, Mulder. The
conflict. You can't be still in the middle of motion."

He said nothing, but she felt him lean closer to her.

She breathed in the salt air. "Or maybe you can. It's funny."

"What is?"

Scully shrugged. "Maybe the only way to gain stillness is to
surrender to the sea. To become part of its movement. Then
it's as if there's no movement at all."

Mulder looked out over the water for a moment before turning
back to her.

The ship tilted and she couldn't see his eyes, but she bit down
a gasp as he reached out and drew a finger down her cheek.

"Is that how it feels to you, Scully? Are you able to surrender
to it?"

She nodded, enthralled by the play of light on his face.

"That's amazing. I'm not sure I ever could."

His fingers danced along her lips and she couldn't figure out
why she didn't back away, except that maybe the swaying of
the sea had cast some kind of spell on both of them.

A part of her kicked her for fighting it.

"Uh, Mulder..."

Her hand reached up and stilled his own, drawing it down
away from her face.

He backed up a little.

She could see that she'd broken the spell.

"Yeah?"

"How do you feel?"

She continued to hold his hand until he pulled it gently away
and leaned against the railing once again.

"Sick, Scully. No surprise."

"Really sick?"

He shook his head. "No. Just a bit queasy."

Scully nodded, her efficiency snapping back into place.

"It won't get much worse than this, Mulder. And it'll be over
around two, when we enter the Caribbean."

She watched his jaw jump as he clenched it. "Yeah."

A thought suddenly dawned. "You know, this is the best place
for you, actually."

He looked at her.

"The night air will do wonders."

She turned and pointed to a wooden deck chair near the door.
Blankets lay heaped nearby.

"You should just stay here for awhile. And keep in mind that
there's actually a lot less motion lower down, so your room will
be fine by the time the water settles."

Mulder smiled at her wanly.

"You're very sweet."

God.

"Anyway..." she said hurriedly, "don't forget there's always
the shot. If you need it."

He groaned and turned back towards the railing.

"God, Scully. Did you have to mention it?"

For some reason, that did it. Reality clicked down firmly
around her once again.

She was back. Safe and sound.

"Come on, Mulder. By the time you regained consciousness,
you'd be fine for the rest of the trip."

He lay his head on his arms.

His voice was muffled. "I'd like to avoid it if I possibly can,
Scully."

"I don't know why. Would you rather suffer?"

"Yes."

She shrugged. "It's up to you."

Scully stared at his bowed back for a moment.

What the hell was wrong with her?

"Mulder?"

He rocked a little against the rail.

She walked up to him and leaned up against him, looking down
at his buried face as she lay a hand on his neck.

He turned his head towards her suspiciously.

"What now?"

"I should get some work done, study the victim files. I'll miss
you down there, but your staying up here is a good idea. And
don't worry about waking me up if you need anything."

He lay his cheek against his arm and studied her.

"I appreciate it, Scully."

"And, um..."

"Yeah?"

"I really will miss you."

"Really?"

"Honest."

He straightened a little. "Are you scared down there?"

She shook her head vehemently and stood up. "No. No, not at
all, for God's sake. I'm fine. It's just that it'll be good to know
you're next door when you do come down."

He looked at her.

"When you're feeling better. Only when you're feeling better,
Mulder. Otherwise I'll worry and then neither of us will get
any sleep."

He nodded. He looked better already.

"I'll be down soon, Scully," he said softly.

"Okay. When you're feeling better."

"When I'm feeling better."

He smiled at her.

Scully walked towards the door. As she swung it open, she
heard a faint chuckle.

"Don't let the ghosts bite your toes, Dr. Scully."

She stiffened and let the door slam shut behind her.




CONTINUED IN PART 8 
--------
CRUISE (8/12)

by Madeleine Partous
email: partous@total.net

"Feedback both pro and con is deeply appreciated."




THE NEW WESTERDAM
MONDAY, 10:02 PM


She watched as the red-headed woman left her friend and went
inside.

Had they quarrelled? It didn't feel that way.

She'd kept a discreet distance, and really it was quite a
coincidence that the two of them had walked out onto the side
of the ship where she was sitting.

She never killed the first night out.

It would be tacky.

In any case the best part of the thing was the buildup until the
right moment made itself known to her.

By the time she struck, her victims were ready. In fact, she
was always amazed by their apparent lack of surprise when she
made her move at last.

Sometimes it even felt as though they'd been waiting for her.

Besides, she'd already decided to release the old man first.

She liked the Promenade deck at night, when most of the other
passengers were either at dinner or watching the first kitschy
show of the night.

This evening the featured entertainer was the Magnificent
Michelle and her Performing Cobras.

She'd seen her on the Noordansk. Appalling. Ridiculous.

The funny thing was that people seemed to lap this kind of
thing up.

For a lot of people, cruising apparently caused the suspension
of all good taste.

You wouldn't pay a buck to see this kind of faux burlesque in
the real world.

She'd already seen all the entertainers booked this time around
-- most seemed to make the circuit of the ships -- and she
figured it had to be a disappointing life for them, everything
considered.

Surely no rational modern woman had ever sat at a school desk
as a child, staring out the window dreamily and imagining
herself as a snake charmer on a cruise ship.

Surely these things just happened to people when nothing else
worked out.

Well. Maybe not. Maybe Michelle really had a thing for snakes.

She'd have to find a way to ask her one of these days.

This kind of thing always made her curious.

Meanwhile, the man and the woman had walked out onto the
deck, oblivious of everything except the sea -- and each
other, she'd thought.

Strange. She still couldn't put her finger on the nature of
their relationship.

She liked them, though. By default. They seemed misplaced on
this ship, just as she did.

She knew why she sailed. She wondered why they did.

And now the man was standing against the rail alone, his eyes
fixed on the sea.

No question about it -- he was a good-looking guy.

He was tall, slim and dark with a strong nose and sensitive
mobile lips which glistened a little as he pursed them
thoughtfully.

Jewish? Possibly.

Nicely dressed. She wasn't certain, but she suspected he was
wearing Armani.

The two of them made a handsome couple.

If they were a couple.

It seemed likely they were -- why cruise otherwise, she
thought with a grin.

And yet...

She shook her head.

This one also had pain. Deep, deep pain.

Now that the woman was gone, she could feel it.

But it was different, somehow. Almost as though he'd got used
to dealing with it.

Almost as if it was inescapably weaved into the fabric of who
he was.

That was it. His pain was part of what defined him.

Perhaps this fact had made him blind to what his red-headed
companion was going through.

Yet she felt intuitively that he wasn't blind to it. Not blind at
all.

There was just... nothing he could do.

They were linked by it.

Her eyes widened.

That was the connection she felt between them.

That and... something else.

Something much more profound that was difficult to read.

Fascinating.

She got up and strolled up to him, leaning against the rail
where the red-headed woman had stood a few minutes earlier.

"Nice night."

The man started and looked at her. 

"Yes. Yes it is."

Hmm. Very good-looking indeed. Strong but gentle,
vulnerable somehow.

She didn't think she'd imagined the interest with which he
studied her for a moment before looking out at the horizon
again.

Even more fascinating.

"I love the sea," she said quietly.

He grimaced a little. "Yeah, well... you might say I've got a
love/hate relationship with it."

She nodded. "Seasick, huh?"

"A little."

"This is about as bad as it gets." She chuckled. "Usually."

He turned to her. "You sound like an expert."

His eyes ran over her features quickly, dipping down to her
body for a brief moment before he raised them to hers again.

She smiled.

She knew only too well how good she looked.

She was tall, only a few inches shorter than he was, actually;
her hair was long, lustrous and black as the night.

And her body -- well, she'd never received any complaints.

Meanwhile, while the look he'd given her didn't by any means
preclude his being involved, it did make it less likely.

And apparently he wasn't gay either.

"Your wife?" She lowered his eyes demurely.

"I'm not married." Now there was no mistaking the flirtatious
tone in his voice.

She feigned surprise. "But I saw you with a woman a few
minutes ago..."

"A friend."

This time she met his eyes.

"A good friend?"

He nodded with a small smile. "The best."

"Now you're toying with me, Mr. Seasick."

He shrugged and laughed. "I'm not. It's true. She's my best
friend."

"But a friend nonetheless."

"The best."

It was her turn to laugh. "I see."

"What about you?"

"No, no -- that's not the way it works."

He looked at her quizzically.

"As the woman, I get to ask the questions."

"Ah. Well. That's convenient."

"It can be."

"So I guess there's not much point in asking what your name
is?"

She shook her head. "None at all."

He nodded, smiling. His eyes never left her face.

"Then you can't possibly expect me to tell you mine."

"I didn't ask, did I?"

"No. No, you did not."

She smiled and began to walk away.

"Maybe we can continue this charming conversation another
night."

"Do you sleep all day?"

She turned back to him.

"I keep to myself, Mr. Seasick. The other passengers tend to
bore me."

He'd pulled away from the glare of the spotlight and his face
was in shadows, but if she knew her stuff, she'd piqued him.

My. This cruise was getting better all the time.

She wondered whether he'd be able to keep her interested.

Well. They'd just have to see, wouldn't they?

She fluttered a few fingers at him and continued walking.

If she'd turned back once more, she'd have found him staring
at her with an odd speculative look.




It had been a strange moment on the deck with Mulder and
frankly Scully was glad it was over.

Since the regression session, there was something about her
partner that made her vaguely uncomfortable.

Something that disarmed her somehow.

Scully preferred being armed. Just packing a gun made her
feel a lot better most of the time.

A bit literal as metaphors went, but there you were.

Mulder had told her he remembered only bits and pieces of
what he'd seen during his past-life regression, but she'd been
there.

Hell. She probably remembered more of the session than he
did.

And the fact that he now believed he'd known her forever put
her at a disadvantage, in a way.

She'd only known him for four years.

Apparently, he'd known her for hundreds.

She'd always been there.

Her. And the woman they'd called Melissa.

Bizarre coincidence, that name.

She'd lost her sister. Mulder had lost his sister.

Worse still, he'd lost his soul mate. Again.

Melissa.

Scully was troubled by the fact that during the session,
Mulder had said only: "Souls mate eternal."

But he'd added that souls come back together, to learn, to
grow.

Which souls?

Melissa was in all his lives; he'd confirmed it later.

A lover.

But Scully had also been in all his lives.

A friend.

It made sense.

So why this thing between them? Why this heat which she'd felt
since the very beginning?

They'd always been friends.

What were they supposed to do in this lifetime?

To learn, to grow. How?

Scully shook her head wearily and rubbed her eyes.

When she'd seen Mulder in her sleep that time, the time when
everyone thought he'd died, he'd come to tell her he was
coming back to her, to continue his work with her.

She still believed that what she'd dreamed that night was real,
real in a way she couldn't begin to explain or even justify.

Mulder had told her a little about his out-of-body experiences
when he'd hovered between life and death in that Navajo cave.

If Melissa was his soul mate, why hadn't he seen her then?

Why hadn't he realized then and there that he had to find her
at any cost?

He hadn't gone to Melissa. He'd come to her.

Unless, of course, it had just been a dream.

Or there was no such thing as a past life.

Which, after all, was the logical explanation.

And yet...

Enough.

She was getting a headache, but more importantly she was
starting to bore herself.

Scully grabbed the remote and jabbed it angrily at the tiny
television above the bed.

As the sounds of a documentary on shipbuilding in Holland
filled the room, she turned to the files stacked on the desk and
opened the first one.




It felt like hours later when she finally raised her head, but
her travel alarm clock said 11:30.

God. This case was a killer. No pun intended.

She sighed.

Scully could find no sign of any link between the victims; in
fact, from what she could see, there was no commonality
whatsoever except that certain methods were used more than
once.

Assuming some of them were methods at all; based on what she
could see, it was virtually impossible to rule out suicide in the
case of both the overdoses and the drownings, which
accounted for six out of the 15 deaths. 

On the other hand, that left nine definite murders.

A lot.

And it was true that nine murders on five ships in two years
smacked of more than simple coincidence.

What were the odds that nine different people would suddenly
get the urge to kill on a cruise?

She could see the logic of Mulder's point of view here.

But although she knew she couldn't hold a candle to his
expertise in this area, the fact remained that she'd never come
across a serial killer who didn't have a very specific MO.

If this was really the work of one killer, though, he was
definitely someone with a unique agenda.

A loud thump yanked her out of her reverie.

She sat and listened.

There it was again.

In the corridor.

It seemed to be coming closer to her door, as though...

As though what?

She strained to listen.

As though someone was walking down the corridor and
pounding on the wall as he went.

Strange. And not very polite at this time of night.

Scully rose and walked towards her door.

Whoever it was, she'd let him have it.




CONTINUED IN PART 9
--------
CRUISE (9/12)


by Madeleine Partous
email: partous@total.net


"Feedback both pro and con is deeply appreciated."


DISCLAIMER AND SUMMARY IN PART ONE


Scully opened the door and inhaled sharply as the cold air hit.

God. It was freezing. It took a moment for it to register.

And there was something else.

She suddenly realized that she could see her breath as it
billowed from her mouth.

Christ.

She squinted up at the corridor lights.

The lights.

They seemed perfectly normal, except...

They were dulled somehow, diluted, as though they were
having to cut through a veil of some kind.

The corridor was sheathed in an odd kind of half glow.

Another thump, muted somehow.

Her first instinct was to go back inside, but she fought it; her
breath curled around her head as she turned slowly and looked
down the hallway.

Nothing.

Nothing except a dent in the wall which filled in as she stared
at it.

The walls were metal, of course, coated in a kind of thin,
mousey beige carpet.

The lower decks weren't privy to wood panelling, she noted
almost coolly as some part of her mind grappled for normalcy.

Thump.

Another indentation, sharp and round like a folded hand,
which slowly vanished as she looked at it.

Closer.

It was closer to her than the last one had been.

She struggled against paralysis as a third thump came a few
feet from where she stood.

A frigid rush of air reached her, raising goosebumps on her
arms under her jacket.

And then terror.

Blind, animal terror which seized her by the throat and left
her gasping, breathless.

Something in her snapped, releasing her as she backed up and
slammed the door shut, pawing at the lock, turning it and then
scrabbling at the chain, dropping it twice before she finally
slammed it into place.

The next thump sang against her hands and she leapt back,
almost falling, as she stared in horror at the unmistakable
mark of a folded fist against the thin metal of the door.

She grabbed the desk and leaned against it, waiting.

Nothing.

The metal slowly buckled back until the door was flat again and
then she heard another thump a little further down the hall.

Scully moaned; she could feel her pulse hammering in her
throat.

She sank into the chair, finally acknowledging the shaking in
her legs.

Another thump, further still.

It was over.

Wasn't it?

Something told her it was over.

She moaned again and dropped her head in her hands.

When the gentle rap came moments later, she thought she'd
lose her mind.

"Oh God, no..."

Christ. Her teeth were actually chattering.

She knew enough to recognize shock when she saw it.

Snap out of it, Dana. Now.

The rapping came again, a little louder this time.

When she finally stood, she was holding her gun and couldn't
remember for the life of her how it got there.

"Scully?" The voice was low, tentative, but God -- so
beautiful, so familiar.

Mulder.

Relief flooded through her so fast and so completely that she
felt the absurd prickle of tears against her eyes.

None of that. She shook her head vehemently.

Scully took a deep breath and walked calmly to the door, much
more calmly, in fact, than she felt.

All her resolve dropped when she opened the door and saw him
standing there; his face when he met her eyes was a rueful
combination of concern, defiance and... what?

She suspected he was responding to the fear, the resolute
haughtiness and the vulnerability he could read in her own.

"Scully?"

What the hell.

She was tired and dammit, she was still frightened.

She shuddered and leaned against him, her arms reaching
under his to wrap themselves around his waist.

She felt his own arms snake around her to pull her closer, one
hand settling lightly on the back of her head, and she let him
rock her for a moment as she registered the pressure of his
face against her hair.

Against her better judgement, she squeezed him tightly and
gave in to the comfort.

"It's okay. It's all right." A murmur against her ear.

This too felt familiar, but she couldn't quite pinpoint why.

His body shifted and she was suddenly closer still.

Jesus. Too close.

She pulled back slightly and he felt it; she felt his spine
stiffen as he drew back a little.

They were both suddenly awkward.

Scully reluctantly withdrew her arms and pushed against him
lightly, standing straight and quickly tucking a stray strand
of hair behind her ear.

She looked up. He was staring down at her mutely.

"Scully? What is it?"

She cleared her throat nervously and looked away.

"I'm fine, Mulder."

He actually guffawed. "Yeah, yeah. I know you're fine. You're
always fine." He leaned against the wall on the other side of
the narrow corridor and eyed her ironically.

He'd recovered nicely.

"So why the warm welcome, Scully? Is that a gun in your hand
or are you just happy to see me?"

God. It was true. She was still clutching her gun.

"Uh..."

He nodded, smirking. "Wanna tell me what happened?"

And then he was suddenly next to her, grasping her arm,
prying her gun from her fingers.

She'd only vaguely sensed that her legs were giving away.

Fuck. The thought was foggy. The last thing she wanted was
to show this kind of weakness.

In front of him.

In general.

"Mulder..."

He half carried, half led her to the bed and sat her down,
lowering himself next to her as he brushed hair from her face
and raised her chin with a finger.

She dimly heard the rattle of her revolver as Mulder laid it on
her desk.

"What's wrong? Scully, please."

She stared at him. Now there was only worry on his face.

Scully shook her head. "It's..."

"What?"

She looked at him again. "Did you see anything when you came
down?"

"How do you mean?" He was being cautious -- or at least that's
how she chose to read it.

"Did you feel anything?"

Mulder studied her, his eyes roaming over her features. "As a
matter of fact..."

"Well?" She tried not to sound impatient.

"That same thing we felt when we first came down here,
Scully. A heaviness of some kind, as though..."

"Yes?"

He shrugged almost shyly. "You know. As though the hallway
was holding its breath."

Her lips parted and she felt her eyes grow wide. That was it.
That described it exactly.

"Yes..."

He continued to look at her.

"That's why I knocked, Scully. I mean it was late and I
thought about it. But there was something freaky about the
silence and I just wanted to make sure everything was okay."

She nodded, once, and then told him what happened.




Mulder leaned back against the headboard of the narrow bed
and gazed at her incredulously.

"Wow."

"Yeah."

"And you're not just saying this to make me feel better?"

She was outraged. "Mulder, I..."

He threw his hands up and laughed. "Okay, okay. But you
have to admit this is one of the first times you've acknowledged
the possibility of supernatural forces at work in the
universe."

Scully glared at him. "The first time I've acknowledged it out
loud in front of you, you mean."

He gaped at her.

That would keep him wondering for a while.

But God forbid he should let her get the upper hand.

"You were really scared, huh?"

There was something teasing in his tone, something seductive,
as though they were both school kids with a crush on each
other.

It was infuriating.

"Oh, and I suppose you wouldn't be?" she snapped before she
could stop herself.

Mulder grinned. "I'd've probably soiled myself, actually." He
sniffed the air pointedly. "Apparently you're a bigger man
than I am, Scully."

God. It was all she could do not to slap him upside the head,
for once that his head was at her level.

But the fact was that her fear seemed to have dissipated
completely and she wasn't sure why.

Suddenly she remembered his stomach.

"How are you feeling?"

He seemed startled. "Me?"

Scully pointed at his mid-section and said nothing.

"Oh. Fine. The water calmed down, just like you said it
would."

"No nausea?"

He shook his head. "Nope. Feel great. A little... spooked,
maybe. In light of your story."

She glanced at her clock. It was almost 1 am.

Jesus. When had that happened?

"Lost time, Scully?" He was gazing at her under drooping
eyelids as he lolled against the headboard.

Great. Now he was reading her mind.

His long legs were sprawled out over the bed; she noticed for
the first time that he'd somehow managed to park one on either
side of her so that she sat pinioned between them, although
he'd spread them carefully so that he didn't actually touch
her.

His hands were folded serenely over his crotch.

She almost laughed.

"Good night, Mulder."

He sat up.

"Don't you want to talk about this?"

She shook her head and chuckled. "What's there to talk
about?"

"I don't know. Poltergeists? Unseen spirits? Maybe there's a
ghost behind the killings after all."

He looked at her earnestly, but she could see the faint light of
laughter in his eyes.

"You don't believe it for a moment, Mulder."

He pulled his leg from around her and sat back up on the side
of the bed.

"I believe you saw something."

"But you believe it's unrelated."

He sighed, scrubbed his face with his hands and propped his
elbows up on his knees.

"Yeah. I think it's a red herring, Scully."

She nodded.

"Deliberate?"

Mulder looked at her. "I don't know. You're the one who saw
it."

She took a deep breath and leaned back against the wall, her
legs dangling over the side of the bed.

"I was out there, Mulder, and I'm prepared to swear on a stack
of Bibles that I didn't see anyone make the fist marks in the
wall."

"But you definitely saw the fist marks."

She stared at him. "I saw them, Mulder."

He was looking at her over his shoulder as he leaned forward,
his feet shuffling against the floor.

"I believe you."

"So?"

Mulder stood suddenly and stretched.

She gazed at his taut form, wincing as she heard his joints
crack.

"So nothing. So I believe you. I think there's something
supernatural going on here, Scully. I just don't think it's got
anything to do with the killings."

All at once Scully realized she was extremely sleepy.

She yawned and opened her eyes again just in time to see him
throw another affectionate look at her.

"Tell me this, Scully. Did you feel threatened by what
happened?"

It was getting difficult to concentrate. "How do you mean?"

"I mean did you feel this thing was out to get you?"

She blinked.

"No, actually."

It was true.

"It didn't feel personal at all."

Mulder said nothing.

Scully looked up at him, suddenly alert. "In fact, it was as
though I just happened to be around when it happened."

That was exactly right. Except...

Her mind rebelled. "But I was terrified, Mulder."

"Of course. Who wouldn't be?"

She almost smiled. That was pure logic.

He caught the play of her lips and smiled for her, leaning
towards her for an instant and running a finger against her
hair, tucking it behind her ear almost playfully before
straightening once again.

"I'll be right next door, Scully. Knock on the wall if you need
me."

She nodded. Interesting choice of words. She growled at
herself and blamed the exhaustion.

As he opened the door, he turned to her once more just as she
stifled another yawn.

"What you said up there. About missing me."

It was her turn to stretch, but she felt her heart thump
suddenly for no apparent reason.

It hadn't been a lie, not exactly. There was something about
this deck that made her uncomfortable, lonely somehow.

"That was a little out of character for you, Dr. Scully."

His hand hovered over the doorknob as he waited.

Right. All she needed in her life was an even smugger Mulder.

"As it happens, I just thought it might take your mind off
yakking up supper."

She saw his teeth flash in the shadows.

"As it happens, it did."

The door clicked shut softly behind him.




CONTINUED IN PART TEN
--------
CRUISE (10a/12) *** NC-17 ***

by Madeleine Partous
email: partous@total.net

"Feedback both pro and con is deeply appreciated."

DISCLAIMER AND SUMMARY IN PART ONE

***********************************************************
RATED NC-17 FOR SEXUAL REFERENCES. NOT APPROPRIATE
FOR YOUNGER READERS.
***********************************************************


Thank you for all the lovely mail, folks. I couldn't persist without you all.
Sorry about the delay, but I had a little accident which set me back time-
wise. Everything's fine, except that all my good intentions about posting
regularly have gone down the drain...

Thanks for understanding, and for hanging in there.



NEW WESTERDAM
TUESDAY, 9:27 AM


The next day slid by without incident. It was strange, really -- Scully had
lain awake in the early morning, thinking that some paranormal event was
probably due.

She could feel the engines rumble up through the bed. It was comforting,
in a strange kind of way, but she wondered whether Mulder found it as
soothing as she did.

There was also something about the rhythm of the engines that titillated
her.

She felt oddly restless as she watched the waves slap against the porthole.

The engines rumbled and rode through her; by necessity, Scully had long
gone past the stage where the thought of pleasuring herself instilled any
kind of Catholic guilt in her, but for some reason she hesitated that
morning.

Maybe it had something to do with the narrowness of the bed -- the
stateroom had a nun-like quality to it in any case, thanks in large part to its
thin, spartan quality -- but she wasn't sure she relished the idea of moaning
and tossing on a bed she knew was scant centimetres from where Mulder
lay.

That and the fact that the engines would only drown out sounds below a
certain decibel.

Scully knew from experience that she wasn't exactly quiet where sex was
concerned, whether she was alone or in good company.

And God only knew the latter hadn't happened for awhile.

She felt bashful about it, for some reason, and thought that this time, she'd
wait for the shower.

Less than an hour later, she stifled her cries and came with the water
pouring over and around her, deafening in the tiled silence of the
bathroom, both her hands convulsing between her thighs as she leaned
against the wall, gasping.

As she heard the shower next door sputter and flair into life, she blushed
and cursed herself for it; she knew Mulder was there, naked, running long
fingers through wet hair, and she'd seen nothing but his face and his body
as the orgasm hit.

She'd imagined him in her, not for the first time, his cock hard and
enormous and driving between her legs, his face contorted, his weight
pressing against her, his mouth wet and glistening as he bit on his full
lower lip, his head thrown back, dark hair glistening with sweat, the
muscles in his neck taut as he came inside her, waves and waves of
pleasure, hers, his, as he pounded against her, coming, coming, her climax
mingling with his.

God. Why him?

It had to be because he was the only man she ever saw these days.

She really needed to get a life.

Scully sighed, soaped between her legs and put the thought of him behind
her.




They'd met for breakfast and she'd told him her conclusions about the
case.

"I can't find anything in common between the victims, Mulder. But the
fact remains there are at least nine deaths here that are unaccounted for."

He bit into a piece of toast and nodded.

"Exactly."

"What about the crew? Any chance one of them could've done it?"

He looked at her as he reached for the peanut butter.

"The crew doesn't move around much, Scully. I checked. And besides, it's
hard to change your name when you're a foreign employee looking for a
transfer."

True.

"And no one shows up in more than one place?"

"Three stewards have been transferred once in the last couple of years.
None of the officers. No sailors. It looks like Dutch-American likes to
keep its people in place."

Scully pursed her lips. It made sense. Many people who cruised were
repeat customers. They chose a ship and stuck with it. A lot of that had to
do with familiarity -- and the crew was very much a part of that equation.

"So," she said, glancing up at him. "See anything suspicious yet?"

Mulder winced as coffee sloshed over the cup and onto his fingers.

"How d'you mean?"

"Well, either the ghost of Vanmeer is having a field day, or someone
who's actually alive is doing this. Knowing you, you've been people-
watching."

He shrugged. "As much as I hate to admit it, Scully, it may well be that the
killer's not on this cruise."

She stared at him. "Are you saying you're willing to admit you're wrong?"

Mulder chuckled and shook his head. "Not wrong. Just... unlucky."

"And so?"

He gazed at her under a raised brow as he blew the steam off his coffee
cup.

"And so you may as well have a good time, Scully. Inasmuch as we're
stuck here."

"We're only stuck here 'til we reach Jamaica tomorrow, Mulder."

He laughed. "I see. Are you saying we should take a plane out when we
get there?"

"If you think the killer's not on board."

Mulder shrugged. "It's too early to tell, Scully. We have to hang around
and see what happens. Whoever's doing this has a lot of experience by
now. I'd be surprised if he or she feels the need to rush into anything."

Scully looked at him. "She?"

"Why not? You think men have a monopoly on this kind of thing?"

"Serial killers are almost invariably men."

"Almost." He grinned at her. "There've been exceptions. You know that."

"Yes, but usually they do it with a male partner."

Mulder nodded. "True. But not always." He smirked and leaned over the
table to pat her hand.

"Killers working in tandem, huh? It's possible. I still don't think it's likely."

"Why not?"

He folded his napkin and squinted out the window at the sparkling blue-
green Caribbean.

"There's something lonely about these crimes, Scully."

"Lonely?"

"Yeah. I can't quite put my finger on it, but something tells me our man --
or woman -- feels left out of the loop."

"So he or she is wreaking vengence on people who aren't?"

"Maybe. Or freeing those he or she feels are stuck in it."

She stared. "You mean this individual might think he or she's doing the
victims a favour?"

"Something like that. A dark angel of mercy, Scully. I mean, look at the
victims. Ordinary people living ordinary lives."

"That applies to almost everyone, Mulder."

"Yeah. It's funny -- I just have a feeling about it."

Scully put down her cup and studied his face. "You're convinced it's a
woman, aren't you?"

He looked up, startled. "How can you tell?"

She tapped a finger against the table. "I just know."

Mulder kept looking at her. "You're right."

"A dark angel of mercy, you said. A sort of anti-Florence Nightingale who
travels at night, taking people out of what she perceives as their misery."

"Yes."

"Any proof?"

"No." He was still looking at her seriously, but suddenly he smiled. "None
at all."

Scully shook her head affectionately. "You're a case and a half, Mulder.
You know that?"

"Yeah, but you love me anyway."

She was startled for a moment until she saw the humour around his eyes.

"I've stuck around despite the fact you're crazy, haven't I?"

He nodded. "Yes, you have. Don't think I underestimate it."

Scully breathed. "So what now?"

He stood up, grinned and pointed to the glass doors which separated the
buffet room from the Lido deck. The sun was already pouring down and a
couple of passengers splashed lazily in the tiny pool.

 "So we go for a swim."




CONTINUED IN PART 10B