Subject: NEW: Point of Origin, by Rachel Howard. (1/4) Rated R
From: snowrider5@aol.com (Snowrider5)
Date: 15 Sep 1997 18:13:17 GMT

NEW: POINT OF ORIGIN,  By Rachel Howard (snowrider5@aol.com) (Part 1/4)
R for violence, adult situations and sexual innuendo.
Classification - XA
Spoilers - Fourth season, especially Gethsemane, Memento Mori, Demons, Elegy
Keywords - Heavy Mulder/Scully UST, angst, conspiracy. 
Summary - What happened after "Gethsemane." We don't need no stinkin'
cliffhangers.

Author's Note:

This isn't much like the first story I posted, "Gypsy", and it's even less
like my second story, "Swept Away." Anti-'shippers ought to make it through
this one intact - barely - except for you sick bastards who actually think
Mulder and Scully see each other as brother and sister; and let me tell
you, if my brother *ever* behaved the way Mulder does with Scully on the
show, you'd see me run screaming to the nearest therapist. 

Apologies to all the fine authors who already wrote stories resolving the
season-ender using some of these same devices. For all the folks who were
convinced when I said (thanks for the forum, `dith) that Scully couldn't be
in on it because she can't act...sorry. I lied.

Anyway. I sat around thinking about Gethsemane, and when I fell down the
rabbit hole, this is where I landed. 

Come on down. 

All rights reserved. The characters of Fox Mulder, Dana Scully, Walter
Skinner, the Lone Gunmen, Samantha Mulder, the Kurt Crawfords and the
Cigarette Smoking Man are the property of Ten Thirteen Productions and are
used without permission; no copyright infringement is intended. Author's
permission given for electronic duplication only.
All feedback/comments welcome - email to snowrider5@aol.com.

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POINT OF ORIGIN


i.

I wait in the doorway across the street.

Some days it seems I have spent all my waking life in dark doorways.

Her mother did not bring her for the treatments tonight; she came alone.
She will come out of the huge sterile building a little more tired, a
little more hurt, and no better at all. She knows this, and she comes
anyhow. It makes good cover.

I like her. I always did.

She will leave, drive home and turn on lights in her apartment, make it
look like she's there. Then she will slip out by the basement exit and make
her way stealthily to 3364 G St. NW. 

Tonight I will not follow her.

I have a package to deliver.

She has done well, has fooled nearly everyone. I suspect that without the
post-hypnotic suggestion, she could not have managed the funeral, let alone
the weeks that followed. I think it must have been his idea; for who else
could have convinced her to try such methods?

The Kurt Crawfords are getting close, but they still lack the one critical
element. Whatever they have harvested from Agent Mulder's body has not
proven effective. They need a live specimen. They are nervous, hurrying;
they know we know. They have not told Agent Mulder that we know, fearing
his paranoia will disrupt their research, lessen their chances of finding a
cure for their mothers. They think he will make her stop coming, or leave
himself.

They are right to worry.

I cannot tell him the things he most wants to know; I have no truths for
him or anyone else. I still believe in what I do.

I do not know if he is my son.

But for the love I still bear his mother, I will roll the dice for him one
more time. I will play another card from the deck.

I have a package to deliver.


I.

Washington is hotter than hell in the summertime, even at night. I hate
the humidity that makes the backs of my legs stick to the vinyl seats of
the cab I take to Union Station. It makes my thin blouse transparent with
sweat under the arms after only a few blocks of walking. I didn't bother to
change into my usual cat-burglar getup tonight before going to the lab,
feeling somehow that my dark gray suit would do the trick, feeling, with a
tickle of unease, that it doesn't matter anymore. Where did that instinct
come from? I push the thought away ruthlessly.

Mulder notices right away, though, and can't let it slide. "Why didn't you
change?"

I shrug. "Gray, black, what's the difference."

His eyes narrow, appraising. "Pink blouse, though. Don't get careless,
Scully. Not now."

I get pissed. "Peach."

"What?" He looks at me like I'm speaking Swahili.

"Never mind."

The charade we are acting out so carefully should have drawn us closer
together, erased some of the lines drawn between us over the last few
months. For a few days, it did: the night he and Kurt came over, told me
what they had found, the link between the black cancer and the real cancer
in my head - for a short time it seemed like we were in tandem again, the
old Mulder and Scully. 

Hearing that he had, all this time, carried in his body what might be the
cure for the thing in my head that is eating me alive - that did for Mulder
what nothing else could. It gave him hope, and a reason to value himself.
He arrived at my apartment with the plan already formed and falling into
place. A good plan, I admit to myself, for all its drama and complexity.
Trust Mulder to conceive of and execute something so morbidly perfect as
his own suicide, and convince me to go along with it.

Kurt comes into the cold, poorly lit room with the matching cots. I have
stopped trying to differentiate between them. They are true clones,
identical down to reaction, emotion, feeling. I no longer even refer to
them in the plural - they are collectively and singly Kurt. 

He has us lie down, side by side on the cots, and roll our sleeves up.
This procedure will not be as painful for Mulder as some of the others have
been. After they found residue from the alien organisms in his body fluids,
we reasoned that perhaps the residue alone would be enough. So I have had
Mulder's blood and platelets - thank God he's type O - injected into my
body more than once. It was only last week that they first hypothesized the
necessity of fresh residue; thus, the patient-to-patient transfusion. 

Tiny bits of unidentifiable biological material. Particulate matter.

Kurt is swabbing our arms, preparing us. Mulder says nothing, watching
Kurt surreptitiously as he arranges our limbs, rolls the cart with sterile
pads, needles and tubing next to the cots. Mulder doesn't trust him, even
now, my half-son, the only one I am ever likely to have. I don't fool
myself. I know that each procedure we try gets a little more speculative, a
slightly wilder guess. I know time is running out: mine, Kurt's, Mulder's. 

Mulder takes the needle first, not even wincing as it goes in, as Kurt
tapes it tightly to his arm. Every attempt we have made to extract a live
specimen from Mulder has failed. I know how hard it is to reach reasonable
scientific conclusions without adequate resources. Kurt wishes he had
rhesus monkeys, control subjects, an electron microscope and other
impossibilities. With none of those things, we are forced to make intuitive
leaps that would leave my colleagues in mainstream aboveground medicine
gasping. 

The needle sliding into the inside of my elbow stings briefly, then again
as Kurt secures it. He bleeds the air out of the line, releases the small
plastic clamp, and I feel a slight, growing warmth in my arm. 

Mulder's blood. 

Inside of me. 

Suddenly the intimacy of this act overwhelms me. Kurt is leaving the room
and I am glad, needing to be alone with Mulder. I feel the warmth of him
travel up my arm, into my torso. I know there is no way that I could really
be feeling his cells making their way down the pathways of my veins and
arteries, but I do. His blood curls through the vessels of my abdomen, down
my thighs. They have tested his spinal fluid, his mucus and his semen as
well as his blood. The next highest concentration of the residue is in his
semen. Unbelieveably, this thought arouses me more, and I feel my nipples
contract, harden. I sneak a glance at Mulder, and see instantly that his
jeans are too snug around the crotch to hide his erection. 

I drag my eyes up to his face and catch him catching me looking. He takes
everything in at once: my sheer blouse and cotton bra give everything away
just as his jeans betray him. Our eyes accidentally meet in a moment of
blazing, shared embarrassment, and then, incredibly, he grins. 

"What the hell is wrong with us?"

I laugh. I can't help it. The sound of it, rusty and unused, shocks me,
and I realize I can't remember the last time I laughed. Not with Mulder.
Not at all. 

And, just like that, it's better. Better than it's been in a long time. 

"Mulder..."

"Shush. Right now I'm trying real hard to concentrate on when the hell the
Knicks are going to have a decent draft pick."

The giggle that rises out of my chest is met, matched, by a dusty rumble
from Mulder. We lie there, grinning like idiots at each other, in silence
until Kurt returns, too soon, to check the flow of blood between us. When
he reaches for the clamp I almost protest, not wanting it to end, but I
manage to keep quiet, let the connection be broken. Except that it isn't,
not really. I can feel it humming in the air between us like a low note.

II.

Nothing on television. Not a fucking thing. No old movies I haven't
already memorized, no sports highlights, not even a goddamn Gilligan's
Island rerun. How the fuck can anyone live without cable? I could go look
in the library for a video I haven't already seen eleven times, but to get
to the den I'd have to go past about four of those creepy bastards' rooms
and I'm sure one or two or all of them will wake up and come out to "check"
on me; and I've seen enough of them already to last a lifetime. 

This sucks.

I knew this was going to be a long night. 

What I wouldn't give for a decent skinflick. One without any redheads in it.

I roll onto my back, stare at the ceiling, and instead of counting sheep,
count procedures and experiments. One for the skin cell culture. Two for
the spinal tap. Three for the fucking agonizing bone scrapings. That really
hurt. Four for the live transfusion, oh, god...

I get up and start pacing, instead. Better to think of what we could still
do, not what's already been done. So what haven't we tried? We haven't
actually tried digging into my spinal column and chasing the little black
fuckers out of whatever crevices they're hiding in, and I'm more than ready
to do it even if Kurt & Kurt & Kurt etcetera permanently cripple me in the
process, but they wanted to exhaust the possibility that the residue from
the creepy crawlies would turn the trick all by itself. 

Except in my gut I just don't think it's that easy or the Russians would
have hunted me down and shot me a long time ago. Can't have a man walking
around with the cure for cancer in his veins. Could change the balance of
power if anyone found out, used it. 

No. I think what we need is a live one. 

I know what happens when the host dies. They travel quickly up the spinal
column, into the cranium, and exit the host's body through the nasal
passages and eye sockets. 

I think about it every day. I could do it while Scully's here for the
treatments. Just blow a big hole in my chest and let the little critters
out. One of the Kurts would catch on, hold her down while the others give
her the little black leeches from my body. 

Except I can't do it to her. Can't leave her like that. 

Why she didn't leave me years ago I'll never know. It could have saved her
life, her sister's life, all the misery I've caused her. But she didn't. So
I can't ditch her like a bad date, not this time, not even to save her
life, although the idea of giving mine to do it seems completely fine, even
good.

 I look down at the small patch on my arm covering the needle hole and it
all comes back in a rush and right away I'm hard, thinking about lying next
to her in that cold room with a line of my blood tying us together, flowing
into her and her flushed face and her nipples poking up showing through her
shirt. 

I reach down and fumble with my zipper, hands shaking with need, thinking
just this once, I've never not in all these years, except in dreams and I
can't control that, but just this once because I can't sit here knowing
that she felt it too and not want her so badly my balls hurt...

Someone knocks on the door and I curse out loud while wondering just what
the hell got one of the Kurts outside my door at five am but part of me is
relieved because if I did what I was going to do I wouldn't be able to not
do it again.

I realize that I'm yammering inside my head and I have to get it together.
I sit down, rearrange my dwindling hard-on so it doesn't really show and
yell at whichever one's there to come in.

The door swings open and he just stands on the threshold, pale and quiet,
for a second. Then he silently holds out a rock.

Waitaminute.

*The* rock. A piece of it, anyway. Not a very big piece.

"Where...?"

"I think you should come see this for yourself, Agent Mulder."

I follow him into the lab. They have carried the body in here and placed
it on a table. It's one of them and the back of his head has been smashed
in. Brains and gook have run down the back of his neck and his eyes are
still open. 

"He was on the doorstep. The meteor sample was in his hand."

"DOA?"

"Yes."

"Where had he been last night? When was the last time you heard from him?"

"We didn't know that he had gone out. He worked in the lab until around
ten, and then went to bed, we thought." Their faces were blank, as usual,
and I couldn't tell what they were hiding.

I reach for the rock and they let me have it. "I'm calling Scully. How
quickly can you extract the black things?"

"It can be done quite easily, but we don't know how long they can survive
exposed to the air. Before we even attempt to release the organism from the
rock, certain preparations must be made. We need to set up..."

"How long?"

"A day or two."

"Too long. We do it tonight."

"Agent Mulder, we may only have one chance at preserving specimens once we
begin to cut into the rock. We don't know..."

"Tonight."

III.

I nearly passed out at the office today. I bent over to reach into the
bottom drawer of the filing cabinet and suddenly our dark office was too
bright. I had to hang onto the cabinet to keep from falling down; as it
was, I ended up on my knees on the gritty floor, sucking in quick, shallow
breaths, leaning my head against the cool metal of the cabinet.

I don't know what we have planned for tonight; I thought we had agreed
never to have me come two nights in a row; too many absences from my normal
routine would look suspicious. But there it was when I checked the
newsgroup, the Wednesday group: "vacation in sunny reticula."

The followup to the live transfusion, I remember, was some bloodwork, then
alternate body fluids - except that we all thought that if anything was
going to work, it would be blood. 

Maybe nothing will work. 

And what will Mulder do? I am so afraid that he will just choose to remain
dead; will become some shadow figure as indefinite and terrifying as the
men who have stalked us all this time. 

This time, I need to believe. For Mulder's sake. I must believe that the
cure is there, waiting to be found.

I slip out of the basement exit of my building and turn left, this time,
duck past the edge of the building and am caught completely by surprise
when a hand closes around my throat, an arm snakes around my waist. 

I draw a quick breath before the hand tightens too much for me to breathe
in, and I kick back with my left foot, seeking to connect with kneecap,
shin. Later I will say a prayer of thanksgiving that I took the time to
change tonight. I'm wearing fashionable workboots with thick treads and a
solid heel. I get lucky and my heel slams into the patella, hard enough to
damage. He grunts but doesn't let go: an amateur would have been writhing
on the ground. 

The hand on my throat does loosen enough to give me a critical breath,
though, and I use it not to scream but to fuel my sideways lunge. I feel
the knife he holds at my waist turn up in a missed slash - it grazes my
ribs. Not critical. I go limp and his weight crashes our bodies to the
ground, landing squarely on his elbow.

Another lucky break. I hear a crack, and his grunt this time is strained.
Left knee, left elbow. His throat-hold has slipped to an awkward smothering
grasp of my face, and I bite down, hard enough to taste blood. Instead of
reaching up with my right arm, I get my hand down into the small of my back
and find my gun. Bingo.

I turn just in time to catch him rising up at me, knife shifted to the
good hand. No amateur cuts right *and* left. I have no time for the safety,
the trigger - I slam the gun up into his jaw, cutting it open; on the
follow-through I kick up, into the softness of his belly.

He goes down hard, hitting his head on the foundation of the building. He
doesn't move.

Safety off, I check his pockets. No ID. Loaded syringe in the right jacket
pocket. He was supposed to kidnap me, then, not kill. I don't know the
face, marked by a thick white scar dividing the right eyebrow. 

I know the Consortium sent him. They told him I was weak from cancer. It
made him lazy. I feel a warm rush of satisfaction until I realize that
blood has soaked through my black shirt, into the lining of my leather
jacket. I fight off a wave of dizziness, apply pressure to the wound, turn
around and head for my car. Tonight I am driving straight over. No one will
follow me tonight.

By the time I get there, I am seeing double. I park sloppily and walk with
great deliberation to the door. It is already opening as I reach it - their
security cameras saw me. I must look drunk.

I step into the light, reach up for Kurt's shoulder, and I see an image
down the hall behind him. It shimmers slightly, like seeing him through
fire or steam, a mirage on a hot road; the heavyset man, with the scarred
right eyebrow. He's dead, then. This time when it gets too bright I let the
darkness come.

IV.

Fuck. Sonofa fucking bitch. When I get my hands on the black-lunged
bastard I'm not going to let go until he's dead. They couldn't leave her
alone, not even now. I plow through the doorway, the same room where we did
the transfusion just yesterday, and pull up short: she's lying there on a
cot and three of them are already working on her, setting up an IV drip,
fixing the mask on her pale face, cutting up through the soaked black shirt
she wore over here, now limp and heavy at the hem with her blood. 

She moans, moving her head back and forth. I nearly fall over one of them
getting to her.

"Scully. Come on, Scully. Come on, dammit, wake up and look at me." I
sound angry, and I don't mean to. I reach for her hand, but there are too
many Kurts in the way.

The one with the shears has gotten through the T-shirt, peeling it back to
reveal a long gash starting from the left inner edge of the ribcage and
disappearing under the cup of her bra. He moves fast, reaching up, snipping
three times, and part of my mind watches Scully's breasts spill out of the
remains of the bra, milky white and perfect, rounded, but the underside of
her left breast is marred by the end of the cut and the rest of my
horrified brain can only see the wound and the blood that bathes her torso. 

He is already probing the wound, and I hear her moan again, and curse at
him over my shoulder for hurting her, although her eyes are still closed
and I hope that means it isn't hurting her.

"It's not deep. She just lost a lot of blood." His upper lip is beaded
with sweat but he looks calm, steady. Another one of them is already
handing him new instruments. The two of them begin the process of cleaning
and dressing the wound. The third is adding something to her IV, and he
tells me, "Demerol." 

I nod. Sometimes I forget; they really do care, they are part human. Part
her. For maybe the first time I look at one of the Kurts and see his auburn
hair, his freckles. I see Scully. What does Scully see when she looks at them?

I hear a sound from under the mask and I reach up, carefully brush back
the red-gold hair caught under the edge of the mask, for an excuse to touch
her face. Her eyes flutter but don't fully open.

"Easy, Scully. You're gonna be okay. You got cut, on your - your side, but
not too bad. The guys are fixing you up right now, you're gonna be fine." I
wish with all my heart that one of these guys was a plastic surgeon; that's
a hell of a place for a woman to have a bad scar. I look down, and it looks
like he's doing all right; they're getting ready to start stitching,
though, and I doubt that I can stand to watch a needle pierce that
delicate, pale skin without puking my guts out all over this bloody, chilly
room. So I look back at Scully's face, study the sweet sweep of her
cheekbones and the way her eyelashes rest lightly on the circles beneath
her eyes. 

She's thinner. Her weight wavers and I know she's happier when she's on
the thin side, like she is right now, but at this point what I really want
is to take her out for a steak dinner and watch her eat the whole thing,
about a pound of butter on her potato, and a sundae for dessert. Right now
she's too thin and it reminds me that she's sick. I know this is totally
irrational and I suspect that it's a Jewish thing, my gene pool showing through.

Without turning to look at him, I ask the Kurt working on sewing up the
cut, "Is this going to slow us down?"

He knows what I mean and replies, "A little. She should be conscious. I'd
like to wait until we're sure that infection hasn't set in. We know the
organism consumes diseased tissue." 

I shudder, thinking of the black things bypassing her tumor, eating away
at the inside of the wound. I scrub my hands over my face, try to erase the
image. "How long?"

"At least twelve hours."

I think. She can call in sick to work; Skinner won't ask any questions.
But first I have to know who did this to her. Fuckers. This means we're
almost out of time. I have to decide what the next move is going to be. 

I need to talk to Scully. I risk a look over my shoulder and am instantly
sorry; he's tying the end of a stitch and he's got a long way to go. Ten,
eleven more, at least.

Her breathing is steadier now, deeper. I back off, sit on the other cot,
find a place against the wall where if I don't look to the right their
bodies mostly block my view of Kurt sewing up the cut, but I can still see
her face, watch the slight, regular fogging of the inside of the mask which
means she's breathing. I settle in to wait. 

END 1/4

V.

Awareness returns slowly, in snatches.

Mulder's taut face inches from mine, chanting something that I can't
understand.

Cold.

My ribs burning slightly, but detached, like the itchy heat inside me is
halfway across the room.

Something snagging my wrist and I try to brush it away but Mulder's there,
soothing me, holding both my hands and I am dimly surprised because he is
so gentle and I must be hurt; isn't this backwards?

Finally, I swim up into coherence and the first thing I see is Mulder,
haggard and unshaven, looking like he hasn't slept in days. He's sitting
across the room from me, comes quickly to my side. There's blood on the
edge of his shirt.

It's an effort, but I manage, "You look like hell."

He smiles at me, a real smile, and replies, "You look worse."

Still an effort, but I'm on a roll, now. "You should see the other guy."

As soon as the words are past my lips, I want to call them back. The smile
vanishes like it was never there. "Who was it, Scully?"

I take two careful breaths before answering, "Dark guy. A pro. Scarred
right eyebrow. He's dead."

"You killed him? I checked your weapon - no sign of discharge." 

"No. Hit his head." I breathe again. "I left. Didn't know he was dead."
Breathe. "Until I got here."

His face softens right away, and I know I said enough.

"A fetch?"

I nod yes.

He checks his watch. "It's only three am. I think you should call in sick
around seven - with any luck you'll get Skinner's voicemail. Scully - you
need to stay here. We got a live specimen."

I want to know how, what they did to him to get it out, but he's shaking
his head, grimacing. "Later - I shouldn't have told you. You need to rest.
I'll wake you up early enough to call in. Try to sleep now."

A deep breath. It's already getting easier. "Who's the doctor here? *You*
sleep, too."

He shakes his head with a wry grin. "Fat fucking chance of that happening.
You gave me a pretty good scare, Scully. I'm keeping an eye on you for awhile."

I try to look stern. "Sleep, Mulder. Over there, if you have to."

"I'll try - okay?"

I'm already drifting off again. "Okay."

I think he hovers until I'm out.

The next time I wake up, my side definitely hurts, a warm throbbing ache.
I'm covered all the way up to my chin, but naked to the waist beneath the
cotton sheet and blanket. I need to see the wound; the vain part of me
wants to know if I'm going to look okay, later, when the stitches come out.
I sit up, gingerly, cupping a hand under my left breast to keep the injured
skin from moving too much and let the covers fall. 

I carefully peel the edge of the bandage back. It's not too bad. It must
have been Kurt who dressed the wound, and I count stitches: ten, eleven,
twelve, thirteen. Pretty neat job. 

I hear a rustling from the other cot and remember Mulder's there. He's
looking, and his expression is a hilarious mixture of concern,
embarrassment, burning curiosity, and barely disguised lust. I take my time
lying back down and getting covered again, so he knows I'm not trying to
hide myself from him. When I'm done, I find him still watching, fairly
relaxed, a little flushed.

"Look okay?"

"Didn't you check?"

"I couldn't watch them put the stitches in."

"Getting squeamish on me, Mulder? C'mon, how many autopsies have you
watched? Couldn't have been *that* bad."

"It's *you*, Scully." 

I feel bad. I have a lot more practice watching him get patched up than
vice versa. "I'm all right, Mulder. Tell me how they got the live specimen
out of you."

He sits up, still fully dressed, tugs the covers up to his waist anyway.
"They didn't. We got a chunk of the rock."

"How?"

He tells me. Another one of them died trying to save me. I wince, fight
back tears. Now he does look away; Mulder has never been entirely easy with
my tears. I ask, in a shaky voice, when they plan on giving me a live specimen. 

"Tonight. They want to wait until you're feeling a little better."

"What time is it?"

He checks his watch. "Time to call in sick."

I do, and I get Skinner's voicemail as Mulder predicted. I lie
effortlessly. I wonder when I developed such a talent for lying, and
remember the sessions with the hypnotist. Strange that I, of all people,
would take so naturally to a procedure I had absolutely no faith in
whatsoever. I know I probably looked and sounded a little mechanical at the
funeral, at the hearing, but I think altogether the hazy certainty the
hypnotist created in my mind was as good a shield from reality as I could
have hoped for. That, and Mulder's dogged insistence, kept me going.

I hang up the phone and look at him. He shakes his head in mock admiration
and I give him a dirty look. 

"Think you could eat something?"

"I think if I don't, and soon, you're going to hear about it."

He laughs, takes the phone away from me and heads out of the room.

Kurt comes and checks my vitals, takes the IV out, which makes it hard to
eat my cereal, but I'm not stopping and letting the little wheat squares
get soggy. He wants me to lie down so he can check the bandage, but I wave
him off until I finish the last of the milk in the bowl, tipping it up over
my open mouth to catch the opaque drops. Mulder chortles through a mouthful
of his own food and I glare at him again as I lie down, deliberately
dragging the hem of the flannel shirt Kurt has loaned me higher than
necessary, giving Mulder an eyeful for the second time today.

I don't expect him to react at all, except maybe with a Mulder-patented
sarcastic grin, but he reddens immediately and busies himself with the
remains of his breakfast while Kurt changes the dressing covering the even,
black stitches. Just when I think I know him to his bones, Mulder changes
gears again. I suffer through a wave of guilty tenderness at his chivalrous
refusal to leer at me. 

Kurt is politely oblivious to everything. He finishes with the bandage and
tells me, "It's not bad at all, really. You lost just enough blood last
night to send you into shock. What do you think of oral antibiotics from
now on?"

I consider it, nod. "Keflex."

"Sure. I'll take care of it."

Mulder finally turns around, clears his throat. "We need to do the
procedure tonight. She has to get out of here - we all do - before they
blow our cover."

He's right, of course, but it will be hard for Kurt. He's been here a long
time, safe, and we have compromised his work and his safety. I know the
Lone Gunmen have made other arrangements to get all of us out of here in
relative safety but Mulder and I are used to uncertain destinations and
surreptitious journeys at this point. Kurt isn't.

But he only says, "We're ready. She needs to rest, get another meal down."

Mulder still looks tired, but he has some of his color back. The hair
hanging down into his eyes is matted and dirty. He notices me appraising
him and says, defensively, "I slept."

"Right. About three hours last night, at best, and I bet not much the
night before." He doesn't argue. "Go lie down somewhere, Mulder. Or lie
down here. Or go shower."

That wins me a small smile. He rubs his hand through his hair and peels
his upper lip back in mock horror. "Shower first, then I come back, check
on you, then sleep."

I am actually sleepy again. I shut my eyes before Mulder and Kurt are done
rattling the breakfast dishes out of the room.


VI.

I stand under the lukewarm spray, as cold as I can stand it, and wish that
I could go running. 

We need to get out of here. Tonight. All of us. Every instinct I have is
telling me to flee. I wonder if we can get her out of here today, do the
procedure at wherever it is we're going, but I can't take the chance. I
haven't been there, I don't know if the Kurts have seen it, it almost
definitely isn't the kind of facility that this is, not a place where they
have any resources if something goes wrong.

It has to happen here, tonight.

Scully's seen me get hurt dozens of time, soaked my naked body into ice
cold water to slow down a retrovirus, dragged me semi-delirious across the
country to New Mexico with a bullet hole in my shoulder, saved my sorry ass
another dozen times or so that I can't even remember right now. No big deal
for Dr. Scully; she dealt with it all with nothing but cool
professionalism, right up until the part where she rips me a new asshole
for getting myself hurt in the first place. She has that part down to a
science, too, but she lets herself enjoy it.

Then she gets sick, gets hurt, and I get a raging hard-on just looking at
her breasts. I'm a sick fucking bastard. 

They're gorgeous, though, rounded, her skin so pale it's translucent,
perfect pale pink nipples...

I slam my left fist hard into the side of the shower stall, into the tile,
wanting it to crack, wanting the pain to clear my head. I hit the wall two,
three times, until my knuckles bleed from the grout. It hurts like hell.
Good. Fine.  

It's not my gun hand. 

I admit it, privately, watching my split knuckles bleed into the running
water, reddening the runoff into the drain. I wanted to be able to cure
her, alone, give her the black leeches from my body and make her cancer go
away. Give her something to repay her, at least a little, for all the grief
I've caused her over the years. I can't even do that.

If this doesn't work. 

If.

I can't go there right now. 

My hand hurts.

Good.

I turn off the water and stand there, dripping silently, until I'm cold.

I know I can't sleep in that room with her, but I need to go check, once,
before I try to sleep alone in my small room down the quiet hall. I open
the door enough to see her hair spread out across the pillow, her chest
rising and falling with her breathing, before I leave.

I take Advil for the pain and wrap the cuts, clumsily, with gauze. I lie
and stare at the ceiling. 


VII.

In my dream I am walking through a dripping forest. It is raining but I am
dry, dry and warm. I can smell moss and old leaves. The air is alive with
sound and watery light.

I wake up and wonder when we will go. I know Mulder's right; we have to
leave as soon as we can. I will have to tell Skinner that the John Doe that
the DC police have found by now came for me, and that I inadvertently
killed him while trying to keep him at bay. By tomorrow they'll be running
the prints that I left on his skin, the DNA from the blood left on the
knife. We have fled strange enemies before, but always together. This time,
Skinner will worry. I know Mulder will want to stay dead awhile longer. 

I can't sleep any longer. I don't know what time it is. I think I'm hungry
again. 

I get up carefully, stiffly. I slept in the jeans I wore here and Kurt's
soft, flannel shirt. I wince at the smell of my own sweat and blood through
the cloth. I need to clean up; if I'm careful, I can wash. What I need is a
bathtub but I know they don't have one. The shower stall will have to do. I
need clothes.

Walking isn't great, because without a bra my breasts move around too much
and the cut  hurts. I make it to Mulder's room and listen at the door.
Nothing. Maybe he's actually sleeping.

I open the door as quietly as I can, but he's awake anyway, lying on his
narrow bed.

"Why are you up?"

"I need to clean up. Got a shirt and some sweats I could borrow?"

He rummages around, comes up with a Knicks T-shirt, some long gray
sweatpants that I'll look completely idiotic in, and, with a considered
look in my direction, a pair of boxers, which he waves questioningly at me.

I laugh. "No way. I'll go without."

He gives me the other stuff and I notice the hand hanging at his side is
curled up, swaddled by a piece of gauze.

"Mulder, what happened to your hand?"

He shrugs. "Slipped in the shower."

My eyes narrow. I know a lie when I hear one. "Mulder?"

"Scully, let it be." His eyes plead with me, telling me things I don't
want to know. He got mad at himself. This happens from time to time. 

"Let me clean it out and re-wrap it, then."

He doesn't want that, but he knows the alternative is discussing it. After
a moment he holds out the injured hand. I unwind the flimsy gauze and
examine the bruised, cut knuckles. He hit something solid, probably a wall.

I get the things I need from down the hall, clean out the cuts with
antiseptic, bandage it correctly. When I'm done, I don't let go of his
wrist. His beautiful eyes meet mine reluctantly.

"Just because I got hurt, Mulder, doesn't mean you have to, too."

He nods, but I know I missed the mark, somehow. 

I let go of his hand, wondering what set him off.

"Do you have a chessboard here?"

"Of course - but I stopped trying to play with Kurt and company a while
ago. They all make the exact same moves. Roy Lopez opening, every time.
It's creepy. I had their game licked after two or three tries."

That is creepy. "First, I'm going to shower and change. But then you play
me, tough guy. Show me what you've got."

I bathe carefully. I wind an ace bandage around my breasts just tightly
enough to keep them from moving much. It works, sort of. Mulder's sweats
are laughable on me. 

We play chess in the lab. After a while, Kurt comes in with sandwiches. We
play, and he watches. I imagine rooks, knights, pawns moving, black and
white, faster and faster, like ions and electrons whizzing by each other in
a chaotic dance, charged particles that never collide. 

Time passes. 

We wait.

VIII.

I wait restlessly while two of them examine Scully again. We can't put
this off any longer, but I'm dreading it now, remembering the gulag,
chicken wire crushing my face, holding me down, while the men upstairs
watched the black leeches swim into my face. I don't know if I can watch,
don't know if I can stand not to.

One of the Kurts nods. "All right."

And we're off to the races. 

They take her into a smaller room of the lab, two of them, and begin
pulling on gloves, protective goggles. The rock and a small cutting tool
sit ready on a low table. 

Scully's in scrubs. She lies down on the long table. One Kurt clips her
arms into restraints - this was her idea, after I told her what it feels
like. I see her hands flex at her sides, once or twice, but that's the only
sign that she's nervous. Me, I'm sweating like a pig, heart hammering in my
ears.

When they do it, it's actually fast. 

Kurt One cuts into the rock, hands steady, and a small slice clatters to
the table. The black things ooze out a second later, seeking. Kurt Two
deftly catches them in a glass dish, five or six of them, it's hard to tell
from here. I realize my hands are flexing in a spastic rhythm, like
Scully's. Kurt Two pivots, dish in one hand, tweezers in the other, and
flicks one, deftly, into her right nostril. Her eyes are wide open and I
can't tell if the low moan I hear is mine or hers. Another into her nose,
fast, then two, quickly, into the corners of her eyes where the slick pink
flesh meets the eyeball, and I can't breathe at all, then I know it's her
scream I'm hearing and I watch him drop the last one into her open mouth. I
scream and scream with her, and I run towards her, tearing open the closed
door of the small room, and when my knees buckle I crash to the floor next
to the table.

IX.

I come to on the bed in Mulder's room, only I hardly recognize it because
it's nearly empty. The chess set is still on the floor. He's hovering,
again, and it's almost comforting. 

There's a bandage on his forehead. I'm instantly alert and I try to sit up
but pain flares in my head and I groan, stop trying.

"Headache?" He's looking down at me, holding a glass of water. I reach out
and take it, drink it while moving as little as possible.

"Bad one."

"I had one, too, when I woke up in my cell. They don't want to medicate
you, because we don't know what it would do. I felt better after an hour or so."

"Mulder, what did you do to your head?"

He sees what I'm thinking right away, and grins ruefully. "Involuntary,
Scully. I fell down and hit my head on the table in the lab on the way down."

"I shouldn't have let you watch."

He thinks about it, then says, "It would have been worse hearing you and
not being able to see what was happening."

My throat is sore from screaming. He's right. "How long was I out?"

"Only about an hour. You're a tough cookie, Scully."

"How close are we to being ready to go?"

"Close."

I try to sit up again, and this time I make it. "Let's go."

He shakes his head, and I see he's shaved, changed his clothes. He's
wearing all black, like the night he came to see me in the hospital, the
night Penny Northern died. "Not until you're feeling better, Scully. We can
wait a little while."

I frown, testing the pain in my head. "No. I can have this headache in the
car just as easily. Let's get out of here."

He looks at me, sitting up in the bed, and finally nods. He hands me a
change of clothes, all black, and I don't bother wondering where they came
from until I unfold the shirt and the panties and bra fall out on the
floor; beige, trimmed with modest lace.

"Oh, come on. Why not black?" Of course, I can't wear the bra, yet.

"You don't think *I* shopped for these?"

"Who did, then?"

He immediately looks guilty. "Mulder."

"Uh, I think Byers."

"Mulder, dammit..."

"Okay, okay, maybe Frohike."

I shudder at the thought and then I check the sizes. "Mulder, these are
exactly right."

"I gave him some guidance."

I give him a scathing look, but only to hide my amusement. "Impressive
detective work, Agent Mulder."

He turns away from me and I realize how it must have sounded. How did I
say exactly the wrong thing? "Mulder, I'm sorry, I didn't mean that the way
it sounded."

He's picking up the chess set. "It's okay, Scully."

"It's not okay, Mulder." I reach out, take both of his hands, the way he
held mine to keep me from knocking the IV loose last night. He flinches and
suddenly I think I know why he punched a wall. I let go of his hands, kneel
to pick up the scattered chessmen. When I stand up, my hands are full, and
I can't meet his eyes.

X.

It's night. After the constant sterile coolness inside the lab, the hot
wet summer stink of DC smells like paradise to me. The car waiting for us
is older, American-made - maybe a Camaro. Three of us will travel in it;
four of the Kurts will go in the van parked at the end of the block. Scully
knows where we're headed, but not me. I thought it would be safer, in case
she needed to leave suddenly. 

Every bone in my body is keening at me to go, go now, and it makes me
irritable. I sling Scully's arm around my back, help her to the back seat,
get her settled, and get in myself. Kurt is already waiting in the
passenger side, tense, but steady. I start the engine and check on Scully
in the rear view mirror. I see lights at the end of the street, a car with
its brights on, and I know right away that it's not an accident.

"North, Mulder. New York state."

I peel out of the parking space and lurch toward the station, for no good
reason except that it's not where we're going. Scully and Kurt know right
away and he turns around, stares straight into the light. I wonder how it
feels to see the rest of yourself racing away into the dark, maybe gone for
good, and then I remember standing by Duane Barry's side, watching the
lights in the sky, and I know exactly how he feels.

Whatever the Gunmen have done to the engine in this car has helped it a
hell of a lot. It's faster than fucking lightning and I'm grinning like a
maniac as I throw the car into a screeching corner, double-clutch and
downshift into second, gun it up a side street, then shoot straight down a
busy wide avenue, horns blaring from all sides. Scully groans from the back
and I know right away from the sound of it that it's my driving, not her
headache, and I feel my smile widen until I think my face might crack.

I whip through the streets of DC until I know that no one, no way, could
still be back there. The guys in the van know where they're going, and I
can't do anything to help them. I move the rear view mirror to check on Scully.

She's asleep. I don't believe it.

But yeah, she's asleep, head tipped back and leaned against the seatback,
mouth open slightly and if the light were better I bet I'd catch her
drooling a little.

I laugh so loud I can barely see to drive, and even stoic Kurt cracks a
smile after he looks over his shoulder, although he's still a little
shell-shocked, and finally Scully wakes up, blinking indignantly at me. 

"Fuck you, Mulder," she finally mumbles, and it sets me off into another
gale of helpless, snorting laughter. She ignores me, snuggles more
comfortably into the seatback, and goes back to sleep. 

I get myself under control by the time I have to merge onto the highway,
northbound. I'll wake Scully up later, ask her *where* in New York state,
but we have at least three or four hours before it becomes an issue.

She sleeps through Maryland and Rhode Island and Delaware. Kurt says it's
probably a healthy reaction, letting the organism get settled. He drives
through most of Jersey, and I sleep for a while, better than I can remember
ever sleeping in a car since childhood, until we stop for gas, beef jerky,
sunflower seeds and iced tea and a piss at a rest stop on the New Jersey
Turnpike. 

Before I take the wheel again, I slide into the back seat, next to her,
and she finally begins to wake up.

"Where in New York, Scully?"

She blinks at me, yawns. "Where are we?"

"The Jersey Turnpike."

"Wow." She straightens up, stiffly, reaches back to rub her neck. "I slept
for a long time."

"Yup." I wait, knowing she'll tell me when she's all the way awake. "How's
your head feel?"

"Queechy Lake, near Albany," she says, after another stretch. "Fine. Want
me to drive for a while? I need to go to the bathroom," she adds, as an
afterthought.

"No driving for you. Get in there and make it quick - I already got snacks."

She gives me a knowing look. "What snacks?"

I don't even try it, just hand her a few bucks. "*Try* to be quick."

The next look she shoots my way is smug and irritated all at once, a real
achievement, especially when you consider that she's rapidly unbuckling her
seatbelt at the same time. 

Kurt comes back from the men's room looking pale and miserable. I don't
ask him what's wrong because I know. All we can do is hope they made it out
of the city. 

Scully's quick like a bunny and comes back with juice and popcorn. She
tells me the highways, then the county routes, then the directions to the
cabins. She does it by rote, and I get it all the first time, repeat it
back to her correctly. She immediately passes out again. I listen to her
snoring lightly until she snuffles once and I start to laugh again, loud
enough to wake her up and she scolds me for laughing before she goes back
to sleep. 

I haven't laughed this much in ages.

It takes another three and a half hours.

END 2/4



XI.

When I wake up, we're rumbling down a country road in the pale dawn light.
Everything slipping past my window is green. My neck is stiff, but the
grinding pain in my head is a distant memory. I'm thirsty. I stretch.

"You alive back there, Sleeping Beauty?"

"Yeah," I manage, too groggy for anything else.

"We're almost there."

I rummage for the juice that I remember buying at the rest stop. It's warm
but that's okay. The scenery is actually pretty, but I don't have time to
enjoy it because we're pulling up to the registration office of the Queechy
Lake Cabins. Mulder goes in. I look around but I can only see one
dilapidated-looking cabin through the thick sumac that separates us from
the dirt road. With any luck it's not ours. It doesn't look big enough.

When Mulder gets back in the car, he has keys and what looks like a
photocopied map. Kurt navigates and Mulder drives. It takes about five
minutes and the sun is almost up when we pull up to the cabin.

I get out of the car and just breathe in the fresh air for a minute. It's
beautiful here. The air is as damp as it is in DC, but sweet instead of
rotten. It's green and lush, and through the trees I can see early morning
light sparkling on the lake. Even though I have no luggage I turn, out of
habit, toward the trunk and find Mulder standing there, immobile. 

"Why here?" His voice is hoarse, weary.

"Kurt has a contact in Albany, at the university's medical center," I tell
him. "I can get in for an MRI and X-rays."

"When do we get those done?"

"Not for a few days, at least. Then probably we'll need another set or
two, to see if the tumor is showing any signs of change. It should be the
best barometer we have of how the organism is affecting the cancer
overall." He frowns. I know he's worried that we'll have to move on before
then, that the Consortium will send someone after us. "We have other
options if we have to leave here, Mulder. Chicago. Some other places. The
Gunmen have a few friends out there, too." 

"Don't tell me where."

"Mulder, you don't still think we'll have to split up?"

"I don't know, Scully," he says, and for the first time I see how tired he
looks in the early morning light. Like he hasn't slept for ages, like he's
never slept before and doesn't know how to begin. "I don't know which one
of us is the target this time."

I think about this for a while. Strange that I haven't really considered
the issue until now, but maybe having terminal cancer and having alien
organisms stuffed up my nose has distracted me more than I care to admit.
Why would they bother killing me when the cancer is already doing the job
so neatly? Why kidnap me if they think Mulder's dead? Who else would care
if I was gone? 

"Which one of us do you think they're after?"

"Don't know, Scully. As soon as I figure it out I'll know what to do."
More than tired: he's coming down off a massive burst of energy, probably
just what he needed to get us here from DC, no more. He's spent now, nearly
swaying with exhaustion.

I know what he's thinking. If it's him they're after, he's going to leave
me. I would stay here and Kurt would monitor my progress or lack thereof;
Mulder would disappear.

Something inside me rises up. I will not let him go off alone. Not this
time. Not ever again. 

I don't tell him this. 

"Mulder, you need to get some sleep."

He shrugs. "I slept in the car."

"For about an hour, I'm guessing. Before that?"

His eyes, red-rimmed, don't meet mine. "While I was supposed to be
watching you, after they sewed you up."

"Mulder, why do you always sleep so well when I'm near you?"

Why did I ask him that? 

He lifts his head, stares at me for a long time. The sun is still coming
up, and without letting my eyes release Mulder's, I wonder at how the light
pouring through the leaves turns them translucent. What you miss most of
all being holed up somewhere like the lab on G street is the changing
light. The smell of the air, too. 

This is a good place to heal.

When he finally speaks, his voice reaches me through depths of water, past
slanting bars of clear light, over the vibration of the low note that still
hums between us.

"Scully, I want to touch you."

I breathe. It was easier on Demerol, with my ribs on fire; easier when I
could still feel the organisms sliding under my skin. 

I reach for him. His hand is warm and dry in mine. "Come inside."

The cabin has only a few rooms. Dimly, I notice the location of the
bathroom; the telephone on the wall; a lumpy armchair, the seedy drapes. To
the left is a closed door - Kurt. At the end of the hall is an open
doorway, beckoning. 

The room is spare and small but the old white spread on the double bed
looks clean. I sit on the edge and draw Mulder down next to me. He is as
unresisting as a sleepy child. I unlace my boots, kick them off. After a
moment I understand that Mulder went as far as he could, that it is now up
to me. I untie his sneakers, pull them off, and he toes his socks off
slowly, like a man in a dream. I remove my socks and we sit together,
regarding our feet.

I pull the hem of his shirt free, tug it over his head. The smooth scar on
his left shoulder gleams in the soft light filtering though the curtains
and I consider it briefly before pulling him to his feet. When I reach for
the button at the top of his jeans he puts his hands over his face,
reflexively, and I am suddenly afraid that I am pushing him too far, so I
stop. After a minute he lets his hands drop to my shoulders, eyes closed. I
undo the button slowly, unzip him, and ease the pants to the uneven wood floor. 

I look at him for a long time. He's breathtaking, all long lines and
smooth skin. I want to take his plain cotton boxers off but I'm afraid that
I've gone too far already. I put my hands on his bare shoulders and push
him gently down to the bed. He slips under the covers and opens his eyes
very slowly, looking at me. 

My hands only shake a little as I unzip my pants and tug the rough fabric
down over my hips, letting them fall. The ace bandage I'm still wearing
across my breasts is already uncomfortable; better not to sleep in it.
Mulder's still watching through half-lidded eyes. I pull the shirt over my
head and begin unwrapping myself, carefully re-rolling the bandage as I go.

When I'm done, standing there in my underwear, I look over at him. He
slides an arm out from under the covers and holds his hand out to me. I
take it, and slip in beside him. 

He runs his fingers lightly over the puckered skin that Kurt stitched
together, then, over the stippled pressure marks the ace bandage left. His
touch would not break a cobweb, would not disturb dust. Finally, he curls
an arm around my waist, draws me in. I slip one of my legs between his,
settle my head into his shoulder, try not to want more than this. 

He draws one, two lazy circles on my hip before his hand curls up and I
feel his breathing slow, drop into a rhythm. It is a long time before I
follow him. 

He sleeps on and off for twelve hours. I sleep a little. I hold him.

XII.

When I wake up, I can't remember a single dream, only a kaleidoscope of
tactile memories; Scully's leg trapped between mine, her hair under my
chin, the silky skin above the curve of her hip, her breasts brushing my
chest, the rough prickles of her stitches under my fingers.

I remember the manic adrenaline rush that carried us out of DC and up here
to New York wearing off, and the absolute lassitude that followed, but for
the life of me I can't understand how it led to Scully's hands removing my
clothing, Scully's body gracing my sleep. 

Now I'm alone in bed and I can hear voices in the other room. The words
are unclear, but I can hear the murmur, the rise and fall of the
conversation. When it stops, I hear Scully weeping.

I pull on my jeans and shirt and head into the main room in the cabin.
Scully's sitting on the old couch, and three Kurts are hovering over her.
Two of them are haggard shadows of the one that rode with us. I try to
remember how many there were when I became dead; six or seven, maybe.

"What happened?"

Scully doesn't answer, and finally one of the Kurts, one of the two that
came in the van, says, "They never made it to the van. There were men on
both sides of the street. They caught them and stabbed them right there,
while we ran. They knew exactly what they were doing. The two of us made it
to the van and drove as fast as we could. We went southwest, in case we
were followed. It was a long drive back - we went through Pennsylvania."

Scully's sobs are starting to taper off. Belatedly, I notice the third
Kurt is stroking her hair, gently, and I wish I had gone to her instead of
asking the question. Now it's too late and I watch her half-alien son, or
whatever he is, comfort her. 

"I'm sorry." I don't know who I'm saying this to, and no one replies. 

It's evening. I don't think I've slept that long since I was a kid. Scully
stands up slowly, and I suddenly recall the feel of her shoulder under my
lips, and I can't tell if I'm remembering this or wishing it.

"Are you certain you weren't followed?"

Kurt nods. "We drove around the city for an hour. We ditched the van near
Union Station. We lost them when they tried to follow us on foot through
that neighborhood behind the station; they were wearing suits, and the
locals got nervous, wanted to talk to them." I smile grimly at Kurt, and he
returns the smile. "We hid in an abandoned building for a while. Later, we
met up with Langly in Adams Morgan and got a new car."

I look out the window of the cabin and see, through the deepening dusk, an
old Lincoln. Where the Gunmen get all these cars, I don't want to know.

"She has an appointment in Albany tomorrow."

"I want all three of you away from here tomorrow after I'm done at the
hospital. You can drive to Chicago; we'll meet you there if we have to move
again." Scully's voice is hard, certain. "You can't do anything more for me
until we know if the treatment's working, and I'm already responsible for
enough deaths."

"Scully, goddamnit, stop that. They were after the guys, not you. Remember
the doctors? The Samantha clones? They're trying to kill them all to erase
their knowledge of the cure. You're not to blame for this."

Scully looks at me, her eyes still red-rimmed. Before she has an answer
ready, Kurt says, steadily, "We'll go if you want us to. But it won't stop
them from killing us."

The other one says, "No. She has a point. We'll hide, disguise ourselves.
We could go tomorrow if the tests show progress."

It's the closest that I've ever seen them come to having a disagreement.
It seems to floor all three of them, but one by one, they nod, and the last
one speaks up. "We'll be all right." He's one of the two that escaped DC
without us. For the first time I think I see some difference in them, some
variation in their expressions. 

For a while, we all move around, boiling water for pasta, making salad
with the food that Kurt bought in town while Scully and I slept. The five
of us eat, quietly, and the two tired Kurts disappear into the cabin next
to ours while the rest of us clean everything up. 

Kurt has Scully lie down on the couch so he can change her bandage again,
and he makes all kinds of encouraging sounds, telling her it looks good,
while I do my best not to look. 

When he's done, Scully asks him, "Where'd you get dinner?"

"Pittsfield. It's not too far from here."

"Was there a Wal-Mart?"

"I think so. Or K-Mart, one of those."

She looks over at me. "Mulder, I need clothes, a toothbrush, stuff like that."

It's not a bad idea; it's only eight, something's probably still open. She
could be on the road for a long time if we need to split up again for
safety. If I need to vanish. "Kurt, want to come?"

He looks away, in the direction of the other cabin. "No thanks."

I have an uneasy feeling that I asked just because I'm afraid of being
alone with Scully, but I push the thought away. "Let's go."

Pittsfield is close. We make the drive in near silence. 

Wal-Mart is closing in fifteen minutes, but Scully zips efficiently around
the place and manages to spend almost eighty bucks on a pile of stuff that
includes, from what I can see, T-shirts, underwear, a pair of shorts, a
cotton skirt, toiletries and two paperbacks. She absolutely terrifies me in
malls. I tease her about her shopping habits as I pay cash for everything
and we're a little more relaxed by the time we leave.

There's a Friendly's on main street and we stop in for ice cream,
strawberry for Scully, rocky road for me. We talk about movies we haven't
seen, how crappy all the teenagers look in their army store grunge wear,
how quiet this town is on a weekend night. 

When we head back towards Queechy Lake, I ask Scully what we're going to
do for the rest of the night, and things seem so normal that I don't even
worry about how she might take the question.

"I don't think I should swim yet; my side isn't healed enough. But maybe
we could go down to the lake, sit on the dock."

Queechy Lake is half-lit by the moon. The night is velvety damp and warm.
We sit side by side on the dock; all of the small talk has deserted us.
After a while, Scully gets up, goes back down the dock for a little while.
I don't ask her where she's going and I guess that means I feel pretty safe
here. 

When she comes back, she has a handful of small stones. We take turns
skipping them, counting the plinks as they skitter across the surface of
the still lake. The farthest any of them go are four or five plinks from
their point of origin, the spot where they first hit the dark water. 

"Where do you think the original meteor is from? The one that the pieces
of rock came from?"

I point up at the night sky, littered with stars. "Same place all the rest
of this shit came from." 

Scully sighs. "Don't you wish you knew? Where - what planet, or what solar
system, either. Who lives there. There are just so many answers that are
still missing."

"I do want to know those things," I reply, slowly, thinking it through,
"but I want to know other things more. Why our government and the Russians
decided to fight a secret battle over pieces of the meteor, instead of
advising the public of what they found, and cooperating on research on the
organism, for example."

Her hair swishes as she shakes her head. "I think my questions would be
easier to answer."

When the stones are all gone, we make our way silently back up towards the
lights of the cabin.

It's after midnight. I stretch out on the couch with one of the
paperbacks; Scully curls up in the armchair with the other. I feel
sleepiness coming on slowly, creeping up on me before I've read fifty pages. 

I dream about dark streets and cars with their brights on. There's a body
on the lab table with its brains bashed in but it isn't Kurt, it's Scully.
I wake up sweating.  

It's dark. Scully's gone, probably sleeping in the room down the hallway. 

I think about it for a long time. 

Finally I walk quietly down the hallway. The bedroom door is open. She's
all the way over, sleeping against the wall, leaving three-quarters of the
bed open. Even to my wary eyes, it looks like an invitation. I can't tell
from here if her shoulders are bare or not.

Whatever fragile compromise brought us together in that bed earlier is
gone. I know I can't be that close to her tonight without wanting more,
without exploring the rest of her small body, without making love to her. I
can't. 

She's right, I sleep best when she's near me. She took pity on me last
night, when I ran out of adrenaline and had nowhere left to go, no volition
left. I can't take advantage of her again. I can't keep taking from her.
Tomorrow we might find out she's still dying.

I go back to the couch, but sleep eludes me. All that comes are half-lit
memories of holding Scully. 

Finally around dawn I doze.

XIII.

I wake up naked and alone in bed, with the door shut. In my heart I knew
Mulder would stay on the couch, but I was hoping to be proven wrong. 

I can't deny I took advantage of him yesterday. But I couldn't let the
moment go by, either. 

I hoped that Mulder would come to me again last night, knowing what would
happen, knowing we could always blame it on our mutual fear and loneliness.
But he doesn't work that way. 

I hear a knock. Kurt's voice says, "Sorry to wake you. But we need to head
into Albany pretty soon."

I check in as Dana Crawford. The lab technicians think I'm Kurt's sister.
We pay cash in advance.

MRI's take a while. I have plenty of time, while the machine hums softly
around my head, to worry about didn't happen, what may never happen. It
nearly takes my mind off of the results, but not quite.

Mulder, Kurt and I wait together, sipping stale hospital coffee, while the
images develop. Kurt brought the results of my last test to compare the
results of the bloodwork, the size of the tumor in the MRI results. 

No one is completely prepared for what we see when the lab tech tacks both
sets of pictures against the lighted screen.

In the old pictures, tumor is nearly egg shaped, solid looking. In the new
set, it's much smaller. The edges are ragged, like a cookie someone's
nibbled on for a while. 

Three days. Only three days.

Kurt lets out a whoop and throws his arms around me. I hug him and over my
shoulder I watch Mulder assimilate the two images of the tumor, Kurt's
reaction. When he finally smiles, it's like nothing I've ever seen before. 

Back at the cabin, Kurt and I pore over the bloodwork. There's no sign of
the cancer other than the dwindling tumor. It still seems insane to me that
this kind of enemy can be defeated so handily but Kurt points out that
cancer is most likely an earth-bound disease, that the creatures on the
planet that this parasite calls home must not suffer from this cruel trick,
where groups of cells go haywire and cannibalize their neighbors. Thinking
of my cancer as a single entity, it's simple: we introduced a foreign
enemy, something that the cancer had no natural defenses against. 

The organism isn't a parasite to me any longer. I think of ladybugs,
praying mantises, all the good bugs.

Kurt raises his head and says, softly, "We have to go."

"Where?"

"There are others who are still alive. With the kind of results we're
looking at here, we need to get to them as quickly as possible."

It makes sense, but I want to protest. I hardly know them, any of them. I
can't think of them as a single unit any more. In the wet green world
surrounding Queechy Lake, they have separated, grown apart, into
individuals. I think the change began on a dark street in Washington, but
something else, something here in this green countryside catalyzed the process.

I want to know them better. 

I look at him for a long time. "I wish you didn't have to go."

He smiles and only says, "We'll be back eventually."

END 3/4



XIV.

It's late afternoon by the time they're all ready to go. Their disguises
will be more convincing once they've all grown facial hair. We did the best
with what we had. One has a buzz cut, dyed dark brown. One went for
nondescript medium brown hair with sideburns. The one I like the looks of
best, though, is the third Kurt - he looks like he belongs in Seattle,
playing bass for a crappy band, with short, spiky white-blond hair, three
or four earrings in each ear, huge ratty pants and a weird T-shirt that he
got at the mall in Albany. He's planning on growing a goatee, although I
told him it's going to be a bitch keeping it blond. He just grinned. I
think he's enjoying himself.

They're splitting up, heading out to find the last survivors. Apparently,
of the ten or so that are left, most are sicker than Scully. They know they
don't have much time. She's supposed to get another MRI in a week, but we
all know that what we saw in the MRI results today is effectively a
miracle, that she's going to be well again. 

The two that were staying in the other cabin head back to get their things
and the third - the one who's staying in our cabin, Scully's and mine, the
one I'm now thinking of as Grunge Kurt - says to her, "I need to tell you
something."

He gives me a get-lost look, but that's something that I'm not inclined to
do, not now, because I have a sick feeling that I know what he's about to
tell her, and if I'm right, then I have a confession to make, too. 

Scully looks over at me and says, "Sit down, Mulder."

I sit next to her on the couch and Kurt twists his hands nervously, like a
kid who has to tell his mom that he's the one who broke the living room
window with a baseball.

"Uh. We, uh, found some things out a while ago, way before we knew about
the potential the organism had to treat the cancer. Before we left
the...the others. When we were still working with..." He stops, looking at me.

I know that there's a lot they haven't told us, and it's the main reason I
still don't trust these guys. But after what they've done for Scully, I'm
inclined to give them some leeway. So, although I'm tempted to drive a Mack
truck of a question through the silence he's just left hanging there, I
don't. After a moment, he tries again.

"We know certain things about the time that you were away, Dana." 

Dana. Has any of them ever called her by name before? 

"I don't know how to say this. They, when they were making us, they took
your ova. All of them." He stops again, presses the heel of his hand to his
forehead. "While they were fucking around with alien-human hybrids, they
took out your ovaries, and I'm so goddamn sorry. I'd rather not be here.
I'm so sorry."

Scully doesn't say anything, doesn't even move at first, but she shuts her
eyes. She drops her head, buries her face in her hands, but she doesn't
cry. After a minute, she asks, "What did they do with the...the stuff they
didn't use?"

He says, "They were storing it in the lab, the big one. They had it all in
cold storage. When we were exposed, I think they moved it. I don't know
what happened after that. At the termination of the project, they were
supposed to be destroyed." He rubs his hand through his hair, and says
again, helplessly, "I'm sorry. I'm sorry that you can't have children
because of us. Because of me."

Scully just looks at him, her wide blue eyes filling up with tears. Before
I lose my nerve, before she starts to cry, I blurt out, "Scully, I have
something to tell you, too." The look she turns on me is two parts
apprehension, one part disbelief. "About this. I knew about this before."

Kurt nods. "I told him, Dana. When he came and found us. When you were
first diagnosed with cancer." 

"That's not all." I have no idea how Scully's going to react to this, and
I don't even know why I never told her before. Maybe because the cancer was
enough bad news for one day. After that, I don't know. 

Maybe I wanted to keep them.

"Scully, the day he told me, I stole some of your eggs out of the cold
storage at the lab. I took them home. They're in my freezer. I did some
research, on the Internet - there's a guy at a fertility clinic in
California, he was really helpful. Anyway, I now have the fanciest freezer
on the block." I laugh a little, nervously. "I put the thing on the highest
setting and fitted a container of liquid nitrogen into the back wall of the
freezer. I have the test tube in there. The eggs are perfectly safe - I
check them every so often, and it's plenty cold enough, the guy at the
clinic says that's exactly how they keep them there, too, just the freezers
don't come from Westinghouse, but they're exactly..."

I only stop babbling because Scully is putting her arms around my neck and
covering my mouth with her own in a long, slow kiss that, even though I'm
flabbergasted, even though Kurt is about five feet away, sets me on fire,
leaves me breathless and unbelievably turned on. When she stops kissing me,
she leans her forehead against mine and whispers, "Thank you."

"You're welcome," I mumble inanely.

We stay like that for a sweet moment before she lets go of me and turns to
him. "It's not your fault, Kurt."

He nods mutely, but he still looks miserable.

"You - the three of you - saved my life. And I already have children." The
smile she gives him would melt a glacier. 

The other two are putting their things in the trunk of the Lincoln. The
plan is for them to go to the train station in Albany-Renssalear and send
one of them to New York City on the train, while the other two head west.
One of them will catch a Greyhound when they get to Buffalo. I don't know
where they're going from there. 

Scully takes my hand, tugs me off the couch. Her face is calm. "We should
see them off."

Grunge Kurt grabs his duffel bag, adds it to the stuff in the trunk. They
look so different now that I can't believe I once couldn't tell them apart.
Is this what happens to all the clones? At some point, do they mutate,
change independently, become individuals? Or was it a reaction to losing so
many of their counterparts? Maybe the survivors become strong enough to
differentiate themselves after most of the others are dead.

When his brown eyes meet Scully's clear blue gaze, he says, "I need to ask
you a favor."

The other two turn and look at her two, hopefully, a little nervous.

"Name us. Give us names."

I don't get it at first. Of course they can't go by Kurt Crawford, not
with the Consortium looking for them, but they could make something up
themselves. 

Then I get it. It's a parent's right, a parent's privilege. I half-expect
Scully to get choked up over this, but she's smiling. 

She turns to buzz-cut first, and says, "Matthew."

He nods bashfully. 

To medium-brown-haired Kurt, she says, "Luke."

When she looks at grunge Kurt, I'm trying to guess if she's going to name
him Mark or John. Instead, she says, softly, "Noah."

Matthew, Luke, Noah. It wasn't me that saved Scully, it was them. Them,
and their science. The three of them, standing in a half-circle around
Scully, luminous in the late afternoon sun, don't look like apostles to me.
They look like angels.

Noah says, "Thank you."

We watch the old Lincoln drive away, to points unknown.

"We should leave for Chicago after it gets dark." I'll get her there, stay
with her until she's gotten the next set of tests done. Then I'll go. 

"Not Chicago. We have to go home." 

"Scully. Don't you see that I can't do that?"

"Don't *you* see that you have to?"

We stand in the driveway, staring at each other. She starts to speak
again, but I hold a hand up, say , "Hear me out, Scully. They were never
after you. That man they sent after you wasn't there to kill you, he was
supposed to *kidnap* you, to flush me out of hiding. They went after the K
-- sorry, the guys, to try and stop them from finding the cure. Don't you
get it? Kidnap you, find me, kill them. They figured you were dying,
anyway. It would have stopped us all at once. I think they didn't expect
them to be as close as they were to finding the cure. And they sure didn't
think that we'd get a piece of the rock." I'm not sure how much sense I'm
making, but I push ahead. "Of the two of us, I'm the one they're after now,
Scully. You're safe as long as they think you're dying."

"Mulder, you have such tunnelvision, it's laughable. You're in greater
danger than you've ever been in before exactly because everyone thinks
you're already dead. What could be easier than killing a dead man? Nothing
changes. You've got to come in from the cold, Mulder, or they'll hunt you
down. You saved my life, already. Now I get to save yours. We have to go back."

I shake my head, not at her logic, but at the potential price. "I'm a
moving target, Scully. You shouldn't be near me."

She crosses her arms, gazing steadily at me. I know this expression.
Scully the Rock. "Like it or not, Mulder, you're stuck with me watching
your back. And if you try to ditch me this time, so help me God I will
handcuff myself to you." 

I grin. "Scully, that's an awfully easy opening you just left me."

Not even a ghost of a smile. "Do we have a deal?"

I wince. "We have a truce, okay? I'll go back with you. I'll walk into the
FBI and tell Skinner I'm not dead. If there's any sign of trouble after
that I'm leaving for good and you have to agree not to try and find me." 

She narrows her eyes, and I can tell she's not going for it. "The stakes
changed, Scully. They thought they had finally fucked us over for good,
that between your testimony and my death no one would ever again argue that
our work was valid. Now, you're recanting - tacitly or not - and I'm alive,
and we're both carrying e.b.e's around in our *spinal fluid*, for
godsakes." By now I'm roaring at her, but she hasn't even flinched.
"Scully, I'd rather die a hundred times than live through them killing you
or abducting you again!" 

She's reaching up for my face, tenderly, her hands so gentle that I stop,
even though I could rant for hours about my mistakes and her sacrifices. I
try to push her hands away but she catches mine, holds them tightly.
"Mulder, don't you think I know that? I know it because I feel the same
way. That's why I have to make sure you don't stay dead. I can't bear to
lose you, either."

And that's what it comes down to, I guess. The root of the whole problem.
Scully's not going to be satisfied until I make a concerted effort to stay
alive. To live.

"Scully, you never listen to me."

"Not true, Mulder. I always listen. *You* don't always make sense." She
still has my hands. "Now you listen. We're going back to DC tomorrow,
together. Tomorrow we report for work, also together. I'm not letting you
out of my sight until I know you're safe - well, as safe as we usually
manage to be, anyhow. The best way to do that is to make sure Skinner,
Matheson, everyone knows you're alive. Me, I'm going to keep my next
doctor's appointment, which is next week, and when the tests show I'm in
remission, we're just as surprised as the doctors. Got it?"

"How do we explain your disappearance?"

"We might not have to. When I called in sick, Skinner said to take all the
time I needed. So I took a few days."

"Right, Scully. And during those few days I just happened to turn up alive."

Scully's eyes narrow as she thinks this one through. "All right. Skinner
should hear the whole story, I guess. He deserves the truth about this,
anyhow. The testimony I gave was hard on him, too." She clouds over a
little when she says this.

"Hey, Scully." I give her a little shake. "Cut that out. That performance
was necessary for your safety and you know it." She nods, but I can see
that the memory still troubles her. "Scully, it was *my* idea, in case
you've forgotten. Skinner will understand when we tell him why you did it."

She sighs. "Okay. So let's start packing. And I mean it, Mulder, I will
use the cuffs if I think even for a second that you're bullshitting me and
thinking of jumping ship before we get to DC."

"Gee, I like this side of you, Scully. Got any whips and chains hidden in
your underwear drawer?"

Not even a flicker. Damn, I'm good, but she's better. "Why tonight,
Mulder? Don't you think we could wait until tomorrow to leave?"

I consider this for a second until I remember that the Consortium is not
the only danger out there. There's us, Scully and me, and the bedroom I
barely stayed out of last night. "I'd rather not risk it. Let's head out
tonight." 

"Even if I promise not to try and get you into bed again?"

How the fuck does she do that? I can feel my face turning red, so I turn
away, trying desperately to come up with something clever, but all I can
think of right now is her warm breath blowing across my neck. I hear her
suck in a breath and I want desperately to melt into the ground.

"Oh, Jesus, Mulder, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to tease about that. I'm so
sorry."

Not as sorry as I am. Nothing like having the woman you want desperately,
your goddamn partner, feel sorry for you. I think I didn't admit to myself
until right now but I know exactly what happened the other night. Doc
Scully, making sure her number one patient got the sleep he, I'll admit it,
desperately needed. 

What was it she asked me? Why I always sleep so well with her around? 

Like she doesn't know.

Great. Fucking great. Still hoping the ground will open up and swallow me.

"Forget about it, Scully. S'okay."

"I will not forget about it."

I take a deep breath, pleading. "Give a rest, willya, Scully? It's okay. I
just think we should head back tonight."

I win this one by default; she forfeited sometime during the last round,
when I was dying of shame.

In less than an hour, we're pulling out of the driveway. I stop at the end
of the lane, drop it into neutral, look back over my shoulder. I can just
see the edge of the cabin, through the thickness of the trees surrounding
it, separating it from the road, the lake. I feel like I lost something
here. Stupid, really. Scully's going to be all right. That's all that matters.

Scully looks back too, and I wonder if I'm imagining the regret on her
lovely face. 

"Ready?"

"No time like the present."

We're going back a different way, not so much because I'm worried about
pursuit, but because I love the countryside here, the smooth backbone of
the Catskills rolling away before us. I want to see it, want Scully to see
it, before we head back to smelly DC. By the time I turn onto the Taconic
State Parkway, I feel ready to chance a long look at Scully. 

The light beside her makes a blaze of her hair. She's looking out the window. 

As long as she's alive, I can stand everything else.

XV.

He can't. Not now. He's not well enough. It wasn't so long ago that I
watched him tuck the muzzle of a loaded gun underneath his chin.

I think I proved something to both of us. Mulder does want more than what
we have right now. He wants it as badly as I do, maybe worse. 

Mulder believes in the intangibles - aliens, mutants, extrasensory
perception and all the other lunacy we come across in our work - but he
can't bring himself to believe in something as absolute, as tangible, as my
love for him. 

He might never be well enough. 

I can hardly contain the rush of bitterness I feel when I admit this to
myself. At all the damage done that can't be undone. At whatever, whoever,
scarred him badly enough that he can't let me call him by his first name,
even now. At whoever stole Samantha from him, at the parents who let him
believe it was his fault. 

I stare out the window, watch the blue faraway mountains slip by, and wish
for things I may never have.

I love him.


ii.

I turn over the postcard I've just pulled from her mailbox. 

On one side is a photograph of a lake.

On the other is a short message:

"Hi, 

Wanted to let you know we're all fine. Things are going well. We're
keeping abreast of your progress. Tell what's-his-face to take good care of
you for us - if he doesn't, one of us will show up and kick his ass. Well,
not really, but it should give him a laugh.

I bought a guitar. I can play about three chords. 

It's going to be a while before any of us has a mailing address or a phone
number, but I promise to keep in touch. 

Love, Noah."

It's postmarked Grand Junction, Colorado.

How careless.

I study the card for a long time before I replace it in the box, carefully
put the key marked `U.S. Postal Service: Do Not Duplicate" back on its
keyring, the one with the coded tag that corresponds to a file marked
"Mulder/Scully" in a locked cabinet at a tasteful, poorly lit club in New
York City.

I think I will not make a copy of this particular card. 

Is it cynicism to believe in luck? Is it just easier than believing that
there are such things as guardian angels?

My cigarette has burned to a stub. I light a new one, step out of her
foyer onto the dark street. Tonight, the city smells like ripe fruit and decay.

I disappear into the night.


END 4/4