From: Anjou <anjou@rocketmail.com>
Date: Sun, 6 Jun 1999 20:10:48 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: Speechless

Speechless 
by Anjou


Title:  Speechless

Author:  Anjou  (Anjou@rocketmail.com)

Posting Date: May 1999

Rating:  PG-13, R for occasional language 

Classification:  MSR(UST), A, X non-paranormal casefile 

Keywords:  None

Spoilers:  slots into the US6 timeline post-Tithonus, assumes a
general level of knowledge of all preceding action.  Assumes that,
unlike what we saw onscreen, there is sufficient time for Scully to
have healed between cases.

Summary:  First in a series. "Perfect" is story two.  A road trip
with Mulder and Scully; a trip inside their heads and hearts.  While
on assignment to A.D. Kersh on a seemingly innocuous case in
Nebraska, Mulder and Scully reflect on their relationship and its
progress. 

Disclaimer:  No harm, no foul.  I know 1013 and Fox own them.  I
just wanted to play with them for a while. Lyrics from the song
"Spirit" by Dead Can Dance reprinted without permission, but with 
love. 

Thanks to Paula and Laurie for commentary and courage building.  
Thanks to Miss Moe for aiding and abetting my psychosis.

This story is dedicated to my sister Suzanne, who wanted me to tell 
her a story, just like when we were little girls.  I hope that
you've enjoyed these stories as much as I've enjoyed writing them. 

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~  

February, 1999
Friday, 1:00 PM

  It was the quiet in the car that woke her from her dreamless
sleep.  She was warm and safe, but it was too quiet.  Scully opened 
her eyes to the rolling vista outside her window.

  Nebraska.  

  Again.

  Mulder's coat had somehow made its way from its rightful place on
his own body to serve as a blanket for her during her nap.  Scully
smiled sleepily under the cover of its soft collar, which lay almost
at her nose.  Unconsciously, she must have been pressing her face
into the lingering scent of him on the cloth.  *Oh well.  Too late
to change the facts now.*  Scully wondered vaguely through half open
lids how he had managed to take his coat off alone behind the wheel.
Years of road trips had taught them many kinds of navigation skills.
They were both masters of the assisted coat and suit jacket removal
at 70 miles per hour as they churned the miles away in their various
cars.  They didn't even have to ask anymore.  Mulder's arm would
appear in her line of vision and she would automatically pull his
sleeve down over his hand as he shrugged out of it, then undid the
seat belt.  He would wiggle out of the left side, tossing it onto
the seat behind him or lifting up for Scully to pull his coat out
from underneath him.  Then he would bring the seat belt back down to
 his hip and Scully would fluidly buckle it while he adjusted the 
length of it over his torso.  Unnoticed and unremarked upon
teamwork, more often than not complicated by the fact that they were
frequently eating when this would occur, half of a sandwich or
burger dangling dangerously out of Mulder's mouth.  But today he
must have accomplished this maneuver on his own, without waking her 
or slowing down.  Without confirmation, Scully knew that he had been
keeping the pace of their car steady to keep her lulled to sleep.

  Scully sighed and rubbed her hand across her cheek as the flat
landscape continued unaltered for miles in every direction outside
her window.  Mulder was too quiet, she decided.  She turned her head
to look at him in the strong midday winter sunlight.  His eyes were
fixed on the unwavering roadway, their color a silvery gray that she
associated with deep thought.  His hands held the wheel in the ten
and two o'clock positions, his right index finger lying atop the
wheel speculatively as if he were posing a question in some interior
conversation.  Scully reached for the radio knob but was not really
startled when Mulder's hand closed over her own, pulling it gently
away from the console and placing it back on the seat between them. 
He squeezed it lightly before starting to return his hand to the
wheel, and Scully felt the small, startled motion he made when she
turned her hand slightly under his so that his palm was cupping
hers. His hand stayed where it was and Mulder's silvered glance 
turned her way with a soft smile of pleasure at holding her hand.  

  "Go back to sleep, Scully," he said quietly.  His voice was
neither command nor plea.  His thumb rubbed over the backs of her
fingers and her knuckles as he spoke.

  "I'm awake now," Scully answered, just as quietly.  Mulder's eyes
returned to the road, after a quick nod in her direction.  Scully
watched his hand moving quietly on her skin as the silence returned
to the car.  She knew that he was worried about her passively, with
the part of his mind that wasn't focused on whatever problem he was
working.  He had argued with her heatedly about accompanying him on
this trip.  She had been back at work for three days now, but she
was still healing from her bullet wound.   Under the cover of his
coat, she worked her fingers underneath her clothes to pull the
elasticized girdle away from her body.  Sometimes the thing was too 
damned tight; her slack and injured muscles would protest the
squeezing support it gave.  Stretching it with her fingers eased the
pressure on her subtly aching middle and she gave a little sigh.

  This time it was her thumb that spoke of reassurance on Mulder's
skin in response to his worried intake of breath and another glance
in her direction.  Scully was struck again by the burgeoning
intimacy between them, wondering over its growth in the past few
months. Mentally, she shook her head at herself.  To anyone watching
their relationship from the outside, their baby steps down this road
would seem glacial.  Mulder and she had been partnered for years now
in every conceivable way except sexually.  It should seem odd, but
it didn't to her.  Compared to the rest of the life they had led
together, this path they were on seemed right somehow.  It was their
own, after all, and like the world in which they lived, it was
inexplicable to outsiders.  They carried a burden of knowledge about
several kinds of unseen worlds that should have made them go mad
many times over.  But they didn't, they hadn't, because each had the
other.  It was unexpressed mostly, except for their occasional coded
conversations, the looks they shared that seethed with unspoken
truth, and one clear statement of belief that Mulder had made in the
hallway of his apartment building.  

  Scully looked down at their clasped hands again, at the beauty of
his strong hand holding her own so loosely and wondered if she
should include his drugged confession to her in that category as
well.  She glanced over at his face, still unsure if he had any
memory of that. She wondered what she had said to him when she came 
to consciousness in the hospital in New York, his face, his smile 
the only things she wanted to see.  The relief in his eyes at her 
continued existence, his hands in her hair while he covered her 
hairline with soft, urgent kisses, and his voice murmuring richly 
to her were the only things she was aware of for days of 
drugged semiconsciousness. 

  Scully remembered her disappointment when she had truly awakened
and he was not there in the room, but downstairs getting coffee for
her mother and himself.  Her mother had been slightly put out by her
lack of responsiveness, but when Mulder had come into the room with
two cups of coffee in his hands, Maggie had turned away with an
indulgent smile and taken the coffee from him.  Scully clearly
remembered the expression on Mulder's face as he tenderly held her
outstretched hand, his eyes filling with tears.  He had leaned over
her, looked her in the eye and kissed her gently on the corner of
her mouth, then kissed her eyes one after the other, beaming at her
in between.  He had clasped her hand to his chest, pressing it 
against his heart when he spoke to her in a fierce whisper, his 
beautiful voice choked with tears and possessiveness.   "Never
again, Scully. Don't you ever do this to me again."  A kiss had 
landed on her temple.  "You are my partner."  

  She had reached up and touched his tired face then, sliding her
hand over the warm flesh before closing her eyes on a sigh and
falling back asleep, feeling her hand clasped in between his even in
her dreams.  

  Since then, holding Mulder's hand in private had become part of
their relationship repertoire, another step.  Maybe.  Mulder cursed
quietly next to her and then suddenly jerked his hand from hers. 
The car skittered suddenly on a patch of black ice that was nearly
invisible against the roadway.  Scully was jostled against the seat
belt although she tried to avoid it and the wince that followed. 
She glanced sideways at Mulder and he was wincing along with her,
his expression tight and worried.
  
  "I'm fine, Mulder."  That remark earned her both a flat stare and
an eyebrow arch, mocking her before his grim countenance turned back
to the road.  "OK," Scully said, drolly. "That hurt a little, but
basically I'm healing well."

  Mulder shook his head.  "It's too soon, Scully.  Too much strain
on you."  She sighed.  "You wouldn't have let me come."  He stated
this matter-of-factly, his tone expecting neither answer nor
argument.  

  Scully considered this statement while she stared at his hands on
the wheel.  His eyes were sweeping the road more vigilantly than
before.  The car lapsed back into silence and as Scully watched, she
saw whatever problem with this non-case they were on move to the
forefront of Mulder's mind.  She knew that he was purposefully
switching gears to keep from overtly worrying about her and she was
grateful for that fact.  She looked at her hand lying on the seat
between them, outside of the shelter of his coat, and then at the
length of Mulder's hand spanning the wheel easily.  It was only now,
after the fact, that she was struck by the disparity between their
sizes as she recalled how easily his hand could have engulfed her
own.  But it didn't, somehow.  When, she wondered, had he stopped
using his size against her as a weapon, a defense mechanism, a means
of intimidation?  He had at first she mused, as she watched his hand
on the wheel again, her eyes drifting to the endless horizon as she
waited silently for him to speak to her.  She could turn the radio
on now but made no move to do so, sensing Mulder's need for this
comfortable quiet between the two of them.  Mulder's requests for
silence, his lapses into absolute quiet, were few and far between in
the nearly seven years they had been together.  She could indulge
them now and then.

  He shifted in his seat, his long frame constrained by the confines
of the car perhaps, or maybe it was just a sign of his return to his
usual restless state.  Scully turned her face a little toward him
expectantly, waiting.  His brow was knitted slightly, his eyes
turning a little more blue than grey.  Scully was glad that he had
eschewed his sunglasses so that she could observe his eyes changing
color.  Mulder's eyes were like a mental barometer, a kaleidoscope
of thoughts and feelings as his mercurial mind fitted together a
thesis, gathering and discarding referential information,
processing. His left elbow rested against the sash of the window and
he was playing with the knot of his tie, tapping himself in the
chest thoughtfully.  He shook his head.

  "Something's not right, Scully."  His voice should have seemed
loud in the too long silence of the car, but Scully only felt
reassurance at his words, his warm tones filling the space between
them.  She said nothing, merely watching him, content to let the
words tumble forth from his slightly frowning mouth as they would. 
She knew he was not talking about them, but about this latest in a
series of ridiculous make-work cases on which Kersh had sent them. 
Her silence was neither challenge nor acquiescence, merely
expectant.  It was her way and she knew he accepted that about her,
at least in this familiar situation.  She was the quiet one in their
relationship. 
 
  "He had perfectly good reasons to have as much fertilizer as he
did, but they were almost..." Mulder drifted off, glancing over his
right shoulder to his blind spot as he slid their car over to the
exit ramp, "too perfect.  Something is wrong with this picture.  I
can't put my finger on it," he said, unconsciously re-extending the
long index finger of his right hand.  His eyes focused on the light
midday traffic of Omaha and he said no more as they swiftly made
their way back to the federal building.  

  Scully had still not said a word, her mind only absently dwelling
on what he had said.  She wondered at his ability to stay focused on
this mundane task.  Here they were again, six months after the
reopening of the X-Files and not a day closer to the fulfillment of
their quest.  Spender and that odious Diana Fowley occupied the
positions that they should have, doing nothing, wasting space and
time.  It was galling, to say the least, as was the fact was that
she could have died a month ago, for a case of no consequence like 
this one.

  She watched Mulder moving their car fluidly through traffic.  And
their quest would have died with her.  She knew this for a fact, was
sure she knew what Mulder would have done.  He would have been
methodical in his grief, cold and quiet, stony with resolve,
absolutely the most dangerous of the many manifestations of his
personality.  He would have buried her, carried out the terms of her
will and, in his own way, said goodbye to the Gunmen, her mother and
Skinner.  Then he would have waited until enough time had passed to
lull his prey into a false sense of security.  Only then would he
have killed Peyton Ritter and A.D. Kersh.  After they thought they
were safe from his cold, cold wrath.  

  Then he would have killed himself. 

  And she would have been unable to stop him from carrying out any
of these vengeful acts.  She would dream of it when she was
recovering, waking in the middle of the night in her apartment in
Georgetown, seeking for a few desperate minutes the sounds of his
breathing from the couch in the living room or his insomniac
roamings as he searched for some amusement.  In her dreams, she
existed on the other side of the void of death from him, his acts of
murder and self-slaughter forever separating him from her.  Her
pleas to heaven fell on deaf ears, Catholic ears that judged him not
penitent for his sins, for he wouldn't have been.  No matter how
many times he asked her what started her from sleep, of what she
dreamt, she never told him the whole truth.  She was afraid of what 
response she would receive to her fear of their eternal separation, 
that he might mock her for the faith that they did not share.  She 
knew that last was unfair of her.  Mulder would never mock her for 
something that she truly believed, not anymore.  At least that much 
had changed in the year since Emily's death.  

  They pulled into the parking lot of the regional FBI office and
Scully noted with dissatisfaction that the whole area was a sheet of
ice.  She sighed and handed Mulder back his coat as he turned the
car off.  

  "Ready?" he asked, eyes twinkling.  

  "Thrilled," Scully muttered as he crossed around the front of the
car to her side.  He opened the door and helped her swing her legs
out to the icy ground, her feet clad in sturdy, utilitarian,
thoroughly ugly boots.  Mulder had protested this description when
he presented them to her with a flourish.

  "They're Doc Martens, Scully.  Very butch, very hip, very now."  

  "They're orthopedic shoes, Mulder."  Her words had fallen on smug
but deaf ears.

  "The doctor said 'no heels' quite explicitly, as I recall, and you
have no shoes other than sneakers that fit the bill."  He emphasized
this last rather heavily, with a note of incredulity creeping in. 
Scully had a lot of shoes, none of which she would be wearing for a
while.  The strain on her tender abdominal muscles was just too
much.
  
  "They make my feet look huge, Mulder."  This had earned her a
shocked but amused expression from the floor where Mulder was
putting those monstrosities on her feet and lacing them up,
whistling lightly, a practice he had continued every day when he 
put on her shoes for her and took them off at night.  

  "I worry about your body image sometime, Scully," he had said
half-seriously.  "There isn't anything about you that a sane person
could consider huge."

  "Great shoes," Mulder said to her as she placed her feet carefully
on the ground.  "Someone with excellent taste must have picked them
out for you."  

  Scully rolled her eyes and said nothing.  Mulder made this joke
often enough that it required no further commentary or notice.  She
stood up slowly, testing her footing.  Mulder had turned to stand
alongside her, circling her.  Her left hand gripped his left wrist
and his right arm slid along under hers as she stood.  She placed
her right hand in his and they took some smooth steps forward.  
Mulder kicked the door shut behind him, her briefcase and purse 
slung over his shoulder.  

  "We look like ice skaters," he commented casually as they made
their unhurried way across the parking lot.

  "Really bad ones," Scully added dryly as they wandered to the
disabled access ramp.  She knew without a doubt that if she showed
the least sign of tiring or slipped that Mulder would pick her up
instantly, as he had when they had gotten to the four steps outside
her apartment building after their exhausting trip back from New
York.  She had begun to protest but the look on his face had stopped
her.  There had been no request at all in his expression, just a
grim setermination that clearly said, 'I'm a helluva lot bigger 
than you. Make something of it.'   

  She moved faster these days, but the itch of healing deep inside
her body was a constant.  Every day showed her how debilitating her
injury had been as she struggled to gain back her independence. 
Mulder relinquished his hold on her as he opened the door of the
building, his hand returning to its usual position at the small of
her back as he ushered her through the door as if it were any other
day.  Scully was grateful for his sensitivity in this matter.  She
hated to appear weak in front of anyone and revealing it to him was
always a struggle, despite their years together.  She would not
admit to any pain in front of anyone at the Hoover Building or here 
in the field office.  She walked steadily alongside him, hesitating 
only when she had to step up the single step to the Omaha bullpen.  
That small movement using her lower abdominal muscles was painful, 
but less so than it had been two days ago.  She studiously avoided
Mulder's searching gaze as she began to shrug out of her coat.  

  Mulder's right hand drifted upward from the hollow of her back as
he took her coat from her and hung it carefully on the rack and
placed his own over it.  While his left hand followed that course of
action, his right hand rubbed absently over the muscles between her
shoulder blades, almost as if he could feel the tension that had
risen in her body with her darkening thoughts in the car.  His hand
drifted up to the top of her trapezius muscles, resting against the
juncture of neck and shoulder.  He gave her a quick squeeze, running
some of the tension out of her frame, his thumb finding and rubbing
over the small scar of the implant in her neck.  She closed her eyes
and relaxed into the warmth of his hand for a few seconds before she
looked up to see his eyes green and brown with worry above her.
  
  *Are you OK?* he asked her without words.  

  She nodded then, but no smile lit her features or turned up the
corners of her mouth.  She looked up into the depths of his unusual
eyes and saw something of her own grimness reflected back at her,
underneath the immediate puzzle his mind was turning over and the
concern that he felt for her.  She relaxed a notch more, and Mulder
moved his hand to the other side of her neck, pulling up and
soothing the trapezius muscles on her left side before his hand left
her body. She sighed again, but the sound, while sad, was calmer and
less frustrated.  

  She moved into the small bullpen of the Omaha field office behind
Mulder, casting a glance around the room.  No one seemed to have
noticed the intense nonverbal communication that they had just
exchanged.  She realized that Mulder had used his size just then,
but not against her.  He had used it as he had been wielding it for
years, as a shield in protection of her.  The smallest of smiles
curved the ends of her mouth at this thought, and Mulder turned then
to look down and over his shoulder, almost as if he had heard her
smile.  His eyes turned a clear green as he looked at her, stepping
to the side so that she could enter the tiny work area that they
were crammed into for this assignment.  His hand came back down to
the small of her back as he ushered her into the space, and, after
Scully stowed her purse she looked up to see his mouth curving at
her, his eyes holding the smile.  She touched his arm and pushed
back by him, sitting down and opening up her laptop which sat on the
cluttered short leg of this vacationing agent's desk.  Mulder sat
down at the PC on the longer leg of the desk and woke it up from its
electronic slumber.  She felt his jacket brush by her as he hung it 
off the back of his chair before settling down to follow his
intuitions. His chair squeaked backward until it was just touching 
hers, his right side behind her, his broad shoulder almost brushing 
her spine.  Although she had room to move away from him, Scully made
no move to do so.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ 

  Hours later, Scully observed her partner from across the room, his
lean form still bent toward the computer.  To any outside observer,
Scully would appear to be watching the sunset in the western facing
room, but in fact she was watching Mulder's reflection on the glass.
His tie knot was hanging loosely at chest level now; his sleeves
were rolled up, his hair disheveled.  She noted with some small
satisfaction that his hair was beginning to finally grow out of that
too short style that he had inexplicably adopted after their return
from Antarctica.  Maybe it had been a sign of his mourning she mused
silently, a kind of offering, the way Japanese widows cut off all of
their hair.  Mulder had offered his own hair up after the loss of
the X-Files.  Her mouth quirked at her small humor.  When had she 
become so morbid?  She pushed that thought away sharply, not wanting
to catalogue her own hurts again.  

  Her eyes drifted over the stacks of paper on the desk Mulder
occupied, evidence of the work the unknown occupant had yet to
finish.  On top of those stacks sat empty soda cans and the remnants
of both of their lunches, along with the occasional cup of coffee
and the inevitable bag of seeds.  She'd only recently found out that
Mulder's seed habit had begun when he'd quit smoking nearly nine
years ago.  This news had surprised her and had made her wonder
momentarily what other incongruous facts and secrets were yet
unknown about her partner, this man she sometimes felt she knew
better than herself.  She sighed again and watched as he stretched 
up out of the chair then stood to crack his back, arching his arms 
high above his head.  They were neither of them truly young anymore,
although they were not entering their dotage.  Not for the first
time, Scully noted how Mulder's pants hung from his slender hips.   
He was losing weight.  Her eyes flickered to her own reflection
again. Despite her recent trauma, she was gaining it.  A sign of
their mutual discontent?  An announcement of their entrance into 
incipient middle age?  A reaction against the stress of being 
prevented from the quest that defined them both now?  

  Their quest.  Scully closed her eyes and heard Skinner's voice as
he proclaimed, on his deathbed, that his allegiance should have been
to them, to their quest.  Her forehead connected with the cool glass
as she remembered his later words, disavowing them, ending the hopes
that she had dared to build, however tentative, of an alliance that
would aid them.    

  "Scully?"  Mulder's voice behind her startled her and she saw the
look of worry in his reflection's eyes before she turned around to
face him.   She could tell that he wanted to put his arms around
her, but he didn't.  Not for the first time, Scully wondered what 
she would do the next time he did.  Sometimes, Scully felt like he 
was waiting for her to do something, to reach out from inside the 
quiet that surrounded her.  She didn't know if she could.  Yet.

  This smaller silence continued to build between them as they
stared into each other's eyes.  Scully still said nothing.  The
silence deepened until the look of worry on Mulder's face passed,
his shoulders relaxing as he realized that she was just quiet and,
although angry, she was not angry with him.  He nodded at her with
his chin, his expression easing.  "I found it," he said quietly. 
Scully nodded.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ 

  Mulder could feel the small inscrutable force of her behind him as
he retraced his steps on the computer for her, laying the facts he
had uncovered at her feet, small offerings on the altar of
rationalism.  She was perching on the desk behind him, listening and
watching the screen.  He was happy to give her back her role in
their partnership, sensing the restlessness and the pain that hid
behind her public visage.  Ever since their return from the
Antarctic and their denial at the hands of the bureaucracy being
manipulated by the Consortium, he had been aware of Scully's
building rage, her impatience at the time being wasted.  They'd had
very small victories by pursuing leads through the Gunmen, but these
leads had to be followed unofficially, operating outside the agency
of their federal posts.  It bothered him less than it did her; for a
long time he had believed that such ostracism was inevitable.   At
the beginning of this quest, he'd had the temerity to consider
himself world-weary. In retrospect, he saw his relative innocence. 
His drive for the truth had always been connected to a need to know 
what had happened to his sister, his family, his world.  He'd had no
preconception that there would be ultimate justice with the truth, 
yet he had harbored a secret hope.
 
  Scully, however, had had those preconceptions, had walked into
their office almost seven years ago full of surety.  Slowly but
steadily, her understanding of how the world operated had been
turned inside out.  There yet remained some constants, but they were
not the ones that she had believed in from childhood.  Her faith had
been tested and torn, her beliefs in the greater good of the
government destroyed, friendships, relationships and her hopes for
her own family left at the wayside.  Science was still solid, a 
solution to the ultimate problem they faced, but somewhere along the
way each had become the only touchstone for the other in the world 
in which they traveled.  How could anyone else understand 
what it was they had seen?

  This latest travail had only solidified their commitment to each
other.  He hadn't slept at his own apartment in weeks and didn't
know what he would do when Scully let him know it was time to move 
back home.  He would rather sleep on her couch for the rest of his 
life, pitiable as that might seem.  He watched her smooth
countenance reflected in the screen of the computer.  She was still 
paler than he liked, but her nap seemed to have done her some good. 
*I should have driven around longer, tried to let her get more
sleep.*   He was clicking away with the mouse while he thought these
things, talking to her while he observed the lovely curve of her
face only slightly distorted in the reflection in front of him.

  "OK.  Here goes.  John Rivers, owner of White Star Farms, age 41,
our purchaser of manure.  The amount of fertilizer he purchased,
although considerably larger than last year's purchase, can be
explained by his farm expansion, which is what he said to us." 
Mulder spoke calmly, reciting the facts.  

  Scully nodded behind him, considering.  "So?"

  "So.  I dug a little deeper.  His family is originally from
Northern Minnesota, where his grandfather and father were part of a
Nazi sympathizing paramilitary organization during WWII.   They are
affiliated with the Church of the Lost Tribe, which has the same
claim to fame as the Mormon faith, i.e., they believe that they are
the lost tribe of Israel."  He craned his head to see her face. 
"You know what kills me about all these guys?  They all want to be
the lost tribe, but nobody ever wants to be a Jew."  Scully arched
an eyebrow at him.  "You know it's true," he said placidly.  Scully
leaned in a little closer as he continued, planting her folded
forearms on the back of his chair.  Her little feet in the shoes he
had bought for her were propped up on the feet of his chair.  It
couldn't be comfortable for her to be bending that way.  "Do you
want to sit down in the chair, Scully?"  He tried to keep his tone
unconcerned, but Scully turned her mouth down in one corner at him. 
"Just checking," he said, dryly, before she could answer 'I'm fine.'
The corner turned back up and curved into a small smile at him on
the screen.  She knew what he had done, how he had forestalled the
pronouncement he had come to hate so much.  Mulder smiled to himself
and returned to the task at hand.  That was two smiles today, three
if you counted the one she had thought to hide under his coat when
she had awoken.  He must be doing something right.  Scully's
presence so close to him was incredible temptation, but familiarly
so.  He wondered what she would do if he turned his head and nuzzled
the temple so close to his mouth, but he did nothing.

  *Some day,* he thought. *Someday before I die.*  

  "OK.  So, the Rivers come to Nebraska and Grampa kicks.  Johnny's
born in '57.  The family continues to belong to the Church and Papa
Rivers even branches out to the John Birch Society, Aryan Nation,
the usual suspects."  Scully sighed in disgust behind him and he
nodded grimly at her dim reflection in the computer screen.  She
looked so tired suddenly.  *I know, Scully,* his nod said.  She
blinked at him and nodded slightly back.  He continued.  "Johnny
comes of age in the '70s, too late for Vietnam, but he joins the
service and does a hitch for two years, most of it stateside.  He
joins an organization of soldiers within the military who are
supposed to be doing Bible study, but are, in fact, a white 
supremacist organization affiliated with Church of God and our old 
friends Aryan Nation.  One of his platoon members and fellow 
travelers in this group is Terry Nichols."

  Scully started then in surprise and her feet flew off the base of
his chair.  Mulder saw the flash of pain that twisted her reflected
features before he turned to help her, his nose brushing through her
hair.  

  "Scully, please sit down," he said quietly, trying not to draw
attention to them, although the office was fairly deserted.  One of
her hands gripped his arm tightly as she began to lower herself to
the chair.  

  "The Terry Nichols?" a gruff voice asked and they both jumped.  

  Mulder shot a murderous glance at the speaker as he settled a far
too white Scully in his chair, knocking over the wastebasket and
putting her feet on it gently.

  "I beg your pardon," SAC Smith said, putting his hands up in a
'don't shoot me' gesture.  "I was getting ready to go home, so I was
looking for a progress report from you about whether or not I had to
be concerned."  His gaze on Mulder was steady, but Mulder would not
back down from his tense posture until Scully's hand eased on his
arm.  

  *Damn the man.* Mulder had told him about Scully's recent injury
and he should have known better than to sneak up on them.  He heard
Scully's breath ease out of her in an exhale as she relaxed and he
knew that she was better.  She let go of the death grip she had on
his arm.  He continued his debriefing.   "You do," Mulder said
frankly, his tone flat but not hostile.  SAC Smith was a generic
looking FBI man of his era.  In the same general age group as
Skinner, he had the broad flat body of the former football player
that he had been.  His nose had been broken and set badly.  His face
radiated strength, toughness and competence.  His brown eyes were
intelligent, but wary of Mulder and Scully.  Nothing new here. 
Kersh had made sure that every SAC they checked in with knew that
they were being punished, were not trustworthy, were useless. 
They'd be gone from here in two days or less and forgotten sooner, 
he was sure of it.  "I searched the police databases of the four
nearby states looking for thefts of controlled substances and I came
up with a theft in Iowa, in Walnut Creek.  50 tons of corrosive 
agents, including nitric and hydrochloric acids, were stolen from a 
metal recycling plant.  That crime was claimed by an ecoterrorist 
cell that stated their purpose was to stop the recycling of metal
that had been used in the cooling tanks of nuclear power plants or 
had been used in the vicinity of radioactive plutonium."

  "But you don't buy it," SAC Smith growled at Mulder.

  Mulder glanced at Scully momentarily before he continued.  She was
focused on Smith warily.  He winced inwardly to see that expression
on her face.  When had she become so guarded?  "No, I don't.  The
ecoterrorist cell doesn't seem to exist anywhere else.  They haven't
pulled any other actions at any other locale in the past five years.
The acid that was stolen was not part of the solvent process that
stripped the rods of their radioactivity or returned them to their
state of chemical singularity.  They were, in fact, the result of
the process which recycles those materials.  In effect, those
chemicals could be considered to be slightly radioactive due to
exposure, although they aren't technically anymore.  It was played
out in the press as a kind of 'gang that couldn't shoot straight' 
crime. There's been no correspondence with the group since this 
happened three months ago and none of the chemicals were recovered."

  "I still don't see where this is going," SAC Smith stated.  His
face had not shifted expression once during Mulder's discourse.

  "There was something about Rivers this afternoon that made me
suspicious about him.  He knew we'd be checking him out and he was
ready for us.  He was too ready for us."  Mulder eyed Smith silently
before turning to look down at Scully.  "What terrorist application
do these acids have?" he asked her quietly.

  Scully shook her head, her sea blue eyes troubled when she looked
up at him.  "Both of them are combustible, highly volatile and
lethal in certain concentrations.  They could be used as a component
for a bomb although they wouldn't be efficient to mix with the 
fertilizer, necessarily.  Either of them are highly poisonous, 
especially in a gaseous state."

  Mulder was nodding.  "Could they be dropped from a height, say
over a crowd?"

  "Jesus Christ," SAC Smith said, his face reddening.

  Scully's face was grim.  "Yes, but it would have to be from a low
elevation.  Dissipation of the acid in the atmosphere would minimize
the effectiveness."  Scully's expression was shifting as she spoke
and Mulder waited.  "It could be disbursed using teargas cannon
quite easily."  Scully was speaking right to Mulder, her eyes 
crystalline and solemn.  "It would be devastatingly lethal, 
especially in a crowded or enclosed setting."  Mulder nodded at her,
his mercurial eyes equally troubled.  "What are you thinking,
Mulder?"

  Mulder turned and addressed SAC Smith.  "How do you celebrate
Black History Month in Omaha?"  His tone was deadpan, but not light.

  SAC Smith's face fell almost immediately, his color ashen and his
voice strained when he spoke.  "We have a dedication of a new statue
to the first African American free holders in front of our Federal
Building, Monday morning.  11:00 AM.  Every notable political and
civil rights figure in the state will be there."

  Mulder nodded and turned to look at Scully, finding her blue eyes
and staring into their depths for a few seconds to calm himself, to
remind himself that there was good in the world.  Sometimes he hated
to be right.  

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ 

Saturday, 2:00 am

  Scully stood at the back of the room during the tactical briefing
watching Mulder as he stood at the front of the room, fidgeting.  He
had already done his portion of the narrative, explaining the who
and how of what they believed they would find at the White Star
Farm. Scully could feel the weight of the serious regard being given
to this situation and it scared the hell out of her.  These kind of
paramilitary operations were never ones that she was easy about and
she was particularly frightened this morning.  These people that
Mulder was exposing as terrorists would have nothing to lose once
they realized their secrets had been revealed.  And Mulder would be
out there without her, a fact that made her more uneasy than
anything else.  Bad things happened when they were separated.  It
was more than an intuition, she reasoned with herself.  It had been 
proven, over and over again.   Nobody would watch Mulder's back the 
way she did.  Nobody else valued Mulder as much as she did.  

  Add to that the fact that she knew him and she was doubly scared. 
Was he listening to what the plan was?  Was he going to go off by
himself and do something reckless without her there to reason with
him?  As if he had heard that last comment, Mulder's head snapped up
at the front of the room and he stared at her, his eyes burning
across the distance.  She kept her gaze level with his as SAC Smith
broke up the group into teams.  Mulder was assigned to the last
group.  The first group, Tactical Operations, would be going in with
ground snipers and major firepower.  The second group had domestic
terrorism training and another load of marksmen and women.  Mulder
was in the clean up crew, the group that would go in after the
compound had been secured to make the arrests and to catalogue all
of the physical evidence.  Scully was going to be in the command
vehicle with SAC Smith and the other squad leaders during the 
operation with radio and some limited visual contact.  

  Medics and ambulances would follow them.  Long-range snipers were
awaiting deployment on a nearby ridge, and would fly out on
videocam-equipped helicopters once the first team went in.  Tree
line snipers were already taking up position.  The raid was
scheduled  for 4 o'clock in the morning and Scully hadn't really 
slept in the 32 hours since Mulder had first postulated his thesis. 

  SAC Smith had swung into action almost immediately and the Omaha
office had become overrun with bodies, as all of the pieces of
Mulder's thesis were correlated and verified.   By mid-Saturday
afternoon, John Rivers and his associates had been identified and
the activity at White Star Farms had been tracked by high altitude
satellite surveillance.  One of the barns on the original property
had been identified as the most likely source of the cache of
chemical, although tactical efforts on both properties were being
mounted simultaneously.  Scully sighed, throat clenching.  There
were civilians on the farm.  Children.  She didn't know if she could
handle it if things went badly.  Mulder was worried about her. 
They'd had a particularly vicious fight this afternoon after she had
refused to be taken back to the motel to rest.  Since she couldn't
drive, he had made her lie down and rest for a few hours even though
she hadn't slept.  She knew she was being childish and pushing
herself to her limits, but she wasn't leaving.  She had seen SAC
Smith throwing her and Mulder more than a few curious stares as the
day had worn on, but she didn't care about that either.  If he
reported them to OPR, he reported them.  What the hell difference
would it make anyway?  It wasn't as if they had been out of his
sight for the past day.  He had no proof of misconduct 
at which to point. 


  The briefing was over and Mulder was moving across the room toward
her, wiggling his headset into position, tactical gear in tow, vest
flapping against his chest. He stopped in front of her, standing in
close, as usual.  

  "I'll be fine, Scully."  He said this quietly, in a low tone only
she could hear.  God, she was tired.  Her lower lip trembled
suddenly and she felt her eyes sting with tears.  She would not do 
this here, in front of all these men.  She was just tired.  She 
nodded once, not looking up at him.  

  "I promise," he said even more quietly, his voice like silk. 
"Scully."  His voice held a pleading tone and she looked up at him
finally, her eyes heavy in her head.  "I promise."  His eyes were
green in the morning light and Scully tried to smile at him but
failed.

  "I just don't like this, you know?"  She began to seal him into
the vest, her movements precise and controlled to hide the intimacy
of her touch.  Her resolve was back.  She ignored the fact that it
had returned with his promise to her and her acceptance of it.  She
glanced up to see him smiling down at her, his eyes dancing as he
shielded her actions from the room.  "What?"

  "You get so cranky when you're tired, Scully." His tone was light
and teasing, trying to draw her back into their familiar repartee.

  "Zip it, Mulder," Scully barked at him, pulling at the vest to
make sure that all of the seams were aligned and everything held. 
"Play nice with the other kids." She patted him once, reassuringly,
right over his heart.  He smiled at her, pulling his dark field
sweater over the vest, then put his gas mask around his neck and
slung his parka over his shoulder before saluting her mockingly,
squeezing her arm as he passed by.  

  "Talk to you later," he said, pointing at the headset.  Scully
nodded, her gaze snapping to SAC Smith as he crossed the threshold.

  "Agent Scully, front and center," he said.  

  One and a half-hours later, Scully was wishing that she had taken
Mulder's advice and stayed at the motel.  Her gut was killing her
from being jounced around in the truck and she swallowed half a pain
pill with a mouthful of juice.  She thought she had been
surreptitious until SAC Smith addressed her.

  "How long ago were you shot, Agent Scully?"  He said it quietly,
conversationally.

  "A month ago."  Scully didn't want to talk about it, but she
answered politely.  She felt Smith's speculative gaze on her.  

  "Gut shot, wasn't it?"  

  Scully nodded. 

  "I took two months myself."  

  Scully swiveled her head to look at him, saying nothing.  

  "Didn't see the need of hurrying."  

  Scully didn't say anything in return.  

  "I hear you're a doctor."

  "Yes, I am," she said quietly.

  "So, I guess it's true then."  

  Scully shot him a puzzled look.  

  "You people really do make the worst patients."

  She smiled thinly at him.  He was trying to be nice to her, for
some unknown reason.  She decided to play along, for once. 
"According to my partner, I am the world's worst patient."  Her
earpiece sparked to life.  

  "Agent Scully.  Radio check," Mulder's voice intoned in her ear. 
*I'm right here, Scully.*

  "Go ahead, Agent Mulder," she answered.  

  "We are in go position," he answered.  

  "Check," Scully answered back.  SAC Smith was watching her
closely.

  "Been partners for a long time?"  

  "Seven years," Scully answered, fudging the math slightly.

  "Sucks to be behind the lines with your partner out there, doesn't
it?"  

  He was suspiciously sympathetic, Scully thought.  

  "You never know which jerk's going to have his back."

  Scully didn't say anything in response, so Smith continued.  

  "I always hated it." 

  Scully nodded again, but was mercifully kept from having to
respond when the Tactical Ops commander came on the air.  

  "Ladies and Gentlemen, we are go on my mark."  He began the
countdown, and Scully felt the tension ratchet up in the truck.  She
tried to isolate Mulder's breathing from the multitude of inhaling
and exhaling she could hear over the earpiece.  She thought she
could hear it.  She focused on it.  

  "Team One, go."

  The flurry of activity was hard to follow with the sound of
running filling their ears and orders being snarled into the mikes. 
Commanders noted their positions as they took them and Smith began
filling them in on the map.  The din of helicopters coming in from
all directions drowned out almost all of the other noise on the
radio channel.  The video feed monitors were only showing fields and
trees as of yet.  There was a flurry of gunfire that seemed oddly
dispersed in the morning air, coming as it did from two 
directions, outside their truck and inside their headsets.  

  "Identify shots fired," Smith barked into the headset.  

  One of the snipers in the tree answered, as did a helicopter
sniper.  

  "We have ground movement.  They are armed," Tactical Ops stated
calmly.

  Positions were identified, headings established.  The second
ground team went in.  Scully watched the ops board moving as the
technicians listened to all the radio chatter and located men and
targets.  More gunfire spat sporadically, but Mulder wasn't in it
yet.  The video feeds showed a turmoil of people as the teams moved
forward toward the farmhouse and the barn.  

  "We have return fire," Tactical Ops intoned.

  The field commanders barked out nearly incomprehensible orders as
the Ops team moved to contain the situation.  It was impossible to
really get a clear picture of what was happening and Scully found
herself staring at the monitor that showed the dazed occupants of
the farmhouse outside the house, half asleep.  A little girl in a 
white nightgown was standing in the predawn gloom, shivering.  *Why
doesn't someone cover her?*  She forced herself to look away and to
concentrate on the task at hand.  At 4:30, the gunfire stopped
abruptly and three minutes later one of the field commanders
declared the situation clear.  An Ops Commander came out of the barn
and confirmed the presence of the gas, already prepared for
disbursal in teargas canisters.  Mulder's team was called in. 
Scully let out a long, slow breath that she didn't realize she 
had been holding.  

  "He was 100% right," SAC Smith said to her.

  "I never doubted it," Scully answered, meeting his gaze
challengingly, before returning her eyes to the monitor.  She felt
SAC Smith watching her as she searched for Mulder's figure among the
team entering the barn.  He was there, talking in her ear to one of
the other agents, asking if the loft had been cleared.  His gas mask
hung from one side of his helmet, unattached on the other side. 
There was a wash of radio chatter suddenly and Scully lost track of
the conversation for a moment as several people tried to speak at
once.  She saw the puff of smoke on the video feed before she heard
the boom on her radio earpiece.

  "Shit!"  She and Mulder said it at the same time.  Then he was
falling as she stood, pushing out of the truck, wincing in pain,
screaming for medics and moving as fast as she could.  

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ 

  Mulder was suspended, weightless in the dark cold water.  *Where
is Scully?*  He had to talk to Scully.  He turned around heavily in
the water, searching for some sign of where he was.  He was unaware
of a need to breathe, deriving nourishment somehow from the water
holding him in its grasp.  And he could see, although only dimly
here in his current environs.  How?  He looked up.  Despite the
darkness that surrounded him, there was light.  Above him the water
was vivid in color, awash in the light of the sun, the ocean the 
Caribbean colors of Scully's eyes.  That was where he was supposed 
to be.  He fought the leaden lengths of his limbs, kicking and 
stroking upward toward the warmth of her sea borne gaze.  As he 
passed into the blue, blue waters of his dreaming, the water trailed
over the surface of his naked skin like a promise, the most 
enveloping of caresses.  He could feel her presence here in this 
light-filled environment surrounding him everywhere, the love making
him more buoyant.  His stroking became more sure as he cupped the
water in his hands, pushing it down and away from his body, the 
bubbles he made breaking against his skin like kisses.  

  Surfacing more surely now, Mulder struggled to rise from his
drugged sleep.  The feeling was too familiar after all these years
to mistake what was happening.  He was injured.  Again.  *Damn it.* 
Who would take care of Scully if he was hurt?  He could hear the
hushed beeping of machines, the occasional burst of voices over the
public address system, although it all seemed oddly muffled, even
with the drugs in his system.  Hospital sounds, unmistakable when
combined with that smell of antisepsis and illness.  Something 
different this time poked at the edge of his consciousness, flirting
then darting away.  Like the dream that had brought him back here.  
A dream of rising up through the swirling waters the color of 
Scully's eyes.  He fought to open his gritty but oddly wet eyes, 
his lips beginning to work, to say the word that would bring him 
back up from the depths.

  *Scully.*  The word was in his mind, but the pain of trying to
expel it, working his throat around it, was what awoke him.  The
world was white and ringing around him, his throat a column of fire
inside his neck.  He felt rather than heard a gasp and the sound of
something rustling nearby, then he felt her hand in his, the center
of it warming his skin as his palm was pressed into the smallness of
hers.

  "Mulder." There were tears in her voice and worry.  

  *Not fair,*  Mulder's mind said. *Other things make Scully cry,
not me.  Never again.*  He struggled to open his eyes, focusing on
the feeling of her hand in his, the cool whiteness of her fingers
against his hairline.  Why was his face so hot?  He opened his eyes
and tried to swallow, and the world went white around the edges
again, a corona of pain around his vision as he gasped without
sound. His eyes shut involuntarily but the imprint of her eyes 
looking back at him was burned into his lids, their colors far more 
beautiful than any dream.  

  "Mulder." Her voice was soothing, but was telling him to listen. 
"Don't try to speak.  Please.  You'll only hurt yourself more."  

  Mulder wanted to nod to acknowledge that he had heard her, but he
was afraid to move his head again for fear of the pain enveloping
him, untethering him from her.  How could he tell her?  

  She squeezed his hand, her voice pleading.  "Mulder?"

  *Ah.*  He squeezed back, his lips curling into a small smile. 
That didn't hurt at all.  Good thing they had started this
hand-holding business recently and hadn't stopped it or dropped it,
the way they seemed to have dropped that kissing idea from months
ago.  

  He opened his eyes again and Scully had a small smile on her face,
a reaction to his own, no doubt.  Her fingers were threading gently
through his hair as she leaned gingerly over the bed.  He frowned. 
She should not be leaning like that.  It must hurt.  He used their
linked hands to pat the bed next to him, shifting over gingerly to
make room.   

  "I can't," Scully said.  "It's too high."

  Mulder frowned again, then pointed at the end of the bed to where
the height controls were.  Years of being in hospitals hadn't been
without their lessons. 

  "It's OK, Mulder."  He closed his eyes before she said it.  "I'm
fine."  

  *She said it.*   He opened his eyes and pinned her with a gaze
that he hoped expressed just how much he hated that phrase.  He
wished fervently that she would never, ever use that fucking phrase
again.  *Can you hear me, Scully?*

  Her smile was rueful.  "Sorry.  I just don't think I can get the
bed low enough for me to sit comfortably, Mulder.  I think I'm
better off standing."  Her fingers were still in his hair and she
was gazing at him intently, her eyes telling him more than her lips.
He could see the worry in them, the pain at seeing him like this,
the pain in her own body from wounds physical and spiritual, the
anger at a fate that seemed to continually set them up to knock them
down. Yet underneath all of that, there was love.  Love for him and 
him alone. He felt himself returning to a state of dreaming, but 
this time he was swimming through the surface emotions in Scully's 
eyes, reaching for that promise of love that tethered him to her as 
surely as any gold ring on his finger.  Scully ran her thumb along 
the backs of his fingers and he could feel it there right now, as it
should have been from the beginning, the token of their partnership 
for the world to see.  Hers should have been the ring he had worn.  
Hers was the only real love he had ever known.  He surrendered into 
the blue, blue depths again, swimming for Scully's soul.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ 

  When the muffled sounds returned to him again, they were changed
from the last time he had heard them.  *No machines beeping this
time,* he thought drowsily, *or fewer.*  He opened his eyes
carefully, his eyelids feeling oddly tight and tender to him.  He
decided not to rub them, feeling the skin on his face carefully.  He
was covered with some kind of viscous substance.  Glycerine was
spread on his eyes and forehead, one of his hands, his neck.  The
rest of his face didn't feel so odd.  He continued his inventory. 
He was in an oxygen tent, with misty cool air covering him thickly. 
The gas.  He must have sucked in a lungful before he got his mask
on. His chest felt heavy and tight, and his throat...he might never
swallow again if he had to feel that pain.  His vocal cords felt
thick and distended, even with the drugs.  There was a taste in his
mouth beyond imagining, putridly metallic and full of rot at the
same time.  He wouldn't think about that.  And he would not swallow.
He turned his head to the side.  It must still be early, because
there was barely enough light for him to see Scully's outline under
the blanket.  She was in a reclining chair, half sitting,
half-laying, the same position she had slept in since she had been 
shot.  It hurt too much to lie down flat just yet, and she couldn't 
pull herself up from that position.  She seemed to be sleeping 
peacefully, not dreaming, but Mulder could see that her face held 
that look of stubborn worriedness she wore in times of trouble.  

  *What a pair,* he thought. *Both of us almost killed in the past
few weeks because of the errors of novice agents.  Are we supremely
lucky or unlucky?*  

  Scully sighed in her sleep and her brow unfurrowed a little.  

  *What do you dream about Scully?*  Mulder thought, not for the
first time. *Do you dream of me the way that I do you? Not just
dreams of languidly making love to each other, but dreams in which
you are always there with me, sometimes unseen, but never far.  In
my dreams, Scully, I'm never alone anymore.  I haven't been alone in
my dreams since your hand first reached out for mine last spring
from the depths of your subconscious.  You needed me then and you 
asked for me, even if you didn't truly know it.  You never did that
before,not that way.  I'm waiting for you, Scully.  Right here, 
beside you.*
 
  Scully kicked a foot out underneath the covers as Mulder watched
her from under half-open lids, his interior monologue unchecked.  In
the weeks of her convalescence, he had spent hours watching her sleep,
hungry for the unguarded side of her that sleep sometimes revealed
to him when she was content and peaceful.  Those moments had become
fewer and farther between in the years of their partnership.  How
many times had he wanted to smooth the furrow in her brow as she
slept beside him on planes and in cars?  He remembered the innocence
of her sleep when he had first known her, the sweetness of her
surrender from fearsome intellect to unconsciousness that he had
seen in the time before Duane Barry.  Scully's sleep had never had
the same quality after that period of time, and he mourned the
passing of her innocence even as she continued to insinuate herself 
into the world he had been sure he would live in alone.  Part of him
yearned for the company, while the other part of him added her 
suffering to his already replete burden of self-loathing.  

  The light was brighter now in the room.  Mulder could see the rise
and fall of Scully's breast as she slept on, one hand drawn up to
the side of her face.  She still looked like an angel to him, but an
angel who knew too many of the dark secrets of humanity.  Scully had
not known sorrow when he first met her.  He scanned her tiny figure
restlessly, looking for clues as to how long she had lain there
waiting for him to awaken.  The cuff of her blouse gave him no hint
as to whether it was different than the one he had last seen, if she
had gone back to the motel maybe to rest and clean up.  

  His eyes flitted to her feet.  *No.* Her Doc Martens were still
on, laced up tightly.   She'd never have let anyone else take her
shoes off.  *Damn it.  I should have bought her slip-ons.  But her
feet would have been too cold.*  He argued with himself, an old
pastime.    

  The door opened suddenly and a nurse entered the room.  

  *It must be after 6:00,*  Mulder thought.  *Shift change, vital
signs check.*  He placed his finger over his lips warningly as the
nurse began to speak to him, pointing at Scully meaningfully.  He
hoped that his deadeye gaze was working, as Scully's surely would
have.  

  "How are we this morning, Fox?" the nurse stage whispered at him,
as she drew open the oxygen tent far too noisily on the side away
from Scully.   Mulder winced at the use of his name and at her cheer
this early in the day.

  He nodded at her.  *I'm fine, thank you.  Please shut the fuck up.
Don't wake up Scully.*  This no-talking thing sucked.  

  "Let me just put this in here." The nurse put the thermometer in
his armpit.  

  *What the fuck?*  Mulder arched an eyebrow at her, another
excellent Scully maneuver.  

  "You have contact burns in your mouth and in your ears," she
whispered.  "I could get a more accurate reading rectally, if you
like."

  *Thanks all the same,* Mulder blinked at her, hoping his telepathy
was working well today.  

  The nurse gave him a smile and took his blood pressure, peeking up
at him over the cuff with an expression he could not read.  

  *What?*

  "We're all very grateful to you here." The nurse, Margaret
according to her nametag, swallowed hard and her eyes filled with
tears.  "My husband is an aide to the Mayor.  He'll be at the
ceremony this morning."

  *It was Monday.*

  She continued in a rush.  "He'd be dead if it weren't for you and
Dr. Scully."  She kissed Mulder on the cheek, startling the hell out
of him, then took the thermometer out of his armpit, giving him a
bright smile.  "Thank you."  

  Mulder nodded, thoroughly confused.  *What the hell is going on
here?*

  Margaret pushed out of the tent and said, "Good Morning, Dr.
Scully" cheerfully to his sleepy and amused partner.

  Mulder waited until the door closed behind Margaret, then turned
to look at Scully, who was depressing the footrest to bring her
chair to an upright position.  It looked painful.  He rapped on the 
bed rail to get her attention.  She looked up at him.  He pointed 
at her, trying to look stern.  *You,* he mimed at her, *lay down.  
Go back to sleep.*

  Scully smiled at him, and his heart caught in his chest as a
chuckle escaped her throat.  "Oh, this is going to be fun," she
chortled.  "It's hard to be bossy when you can't actually talk to
me."  She shuffled to her feet.  "I'm awake now, Mulder.  Plus, I
have got to use the bathroom."  She made little mewling noises as
she moved across the room slowly.  

  *She still has the same damn clothes on from Friday.  Shit.  This
is not good.*

  Scully took her time in the bathroom, making Mulder worry that
something was wrong momentarily, but sounds of running water and
teeth brushing reassured him.  

  *I wish I could get this taste out of my mouth.*  He blew out
against his palm and the smell nearly knocked him back against the
pillows.  *Wonderful.*  He found the ubiquitous bedside mirror in
the top drawer next to the kidney shaped spittoon, *Who uses these
things?* and the hospitality pack of toothbrush, toothpaste and
horrid soap.  He studied his face in the mirror.  He appeared to be
wearing a gas mask on top of lightly sunburned skin.  His ears were
pretty red and his neck above where his sweater began was as well. 
One hand looked sunburned, from taking his glove off to reflexively
pull the mask over his face.  He sat up straighter in the bed and
tilted his head from side to side slowly.   It only made him faintly
dizzy.  No broken bones, but a sore spot on his lower back.  *Must
have passed out backward.* 

  Scully came out of the bathroom and walked slowly around the bed
to him.  He hid a smile as she stepped up onto a small stool next to
his bed and sat down gingerly next to him.

  "I saw that," she said mildly.

  Mulder put his left hand out to her, palm up and Scully placed her
hand in his after a few seconds.  He waved his toothbrush at her.

  "Does your mouth taste horrible?" she asked him, wrinkling her
nose.  He nodded.  "I don't know if you can brush your teeth yet." 
She made an 'I'm sorry' face.  "Do you know what happened?"

  He nodded at her with his chin.  *Tell me.*

  "Do you know what day it is?"  

  He rolled his eyes at her.  Dr. Scully was here.  He turned her
hand over in his, cradling it.  He wrote an M on her palm.  

  Scully nodded and left her hand in between both of his, and Mulder
began to draw lazy figure eights on the smooth skin of her palm. 
"You were unconscious for about 18 hours.  Do you remember waking up
before?"  He nodded.  "Infinity, Mulder?"  She was looking at her
palm.  "Are you asking me a question?"  She was sweetly serious,
wondering if he was trying to communicate something to her.  

  He smiled at her and shrugged his shoulders.  *Someday, Scully.* 
Paging Dr. Freud.  Talk about your symbolism.  He poked his chin at
her as she looked at him quizzically, wondering where his mind was
going.  *Tell me what happened, Scully.*  He stopped drawing his
secret wish on her hand and just held it clasped gently between both
of his.

  "You remember being at the barn?"  He nodded.  "I heard you ask if
the loft had been cleared and then there was an explosion.  One of
Knox's cousins was up in the hayloft and he shot a canister at all
of you.  If you had gotten your mask on just a few seconds later..."
Her voice drifted off.  Scully was not looking at him, but at their
hands resting on his thigh.  Mulder moved one his hands up to her 
chin, but Scully wouldn't meet his eyes.  "I shouldn't be in the 
tent with you," she said suddenly.  "I'm breathing out too much 
CO2 for you." Mulder's hand returned to cover hers and he pulled it 
a little toward himself.  

  *OK, Scully.  I won't touch you.*  He swallowed his resentment,
emotionally speaking.  

  She looked up at him then, and he could see the conflicts swimming
in her eyes.  

  *Talk to me, Scully.*

  "Does any of this make sense to you anymore?" she asked him
plaintively.  He waited silently, miserably wondering to what she
was referring.  Her eyes were searching his and there was nothing 
he could say to her.  Literally.  

  "We could have died, both of us, for nothing.  We might still. 
And it's going on, all around us, and we can't stop anything."  Her
voice had dropped to the level of a whisper as she spoke.  "They're
winning every day."  Mulder just held her hand and listened
helplessly as the pauses between her words got longer and longer. 
"I need this all to mean something, Mulder."
 
  *I understand, Scully.*  He tried to will her to look at him,
afraid to touch her again.  

  When she finally did raise her eyes to his, he felt his heart
breaking at the bone-deep tiredness he saw in them.  Her
determination was still there, but buried far below the surface,
under her brittle demeanor.  He tried to convey to her wordlessly
how he much he understood what she was saying and how much he 
needed her not to lose hope now, after all they had seen and done.  
Odd to find that now, when his words were temporarily removed from 
him, the silent communication they had always shared seemed somehow 
faulty and vague.  Scully broke the glance first, returning her 
focus to their hands.  

  "The nurse told you about your burns, which are minor, but your
throat is pretty bad.  Your vocal cords were already pretty swollen
when they intubated you and getting the tube out was even worse. 
They're really abraded."  She smiled at him ruefully from under the
cover of her sleep-mussed hair.  "It's going to be days before you
can speak, Mulder.  Think you can handle it?"   

  *Days?*  Mulder thought.  He searched Scully's face for a clue as
to how many days.  *I don't know.*  His expression belied his
confusion.

  "You don't have much of a choice, Mulder."  Her tone wasn't as
teasing as it had been. 

  In his own desperation, he couldn't figure out what it meant. 
Scully was closed off to him, her boundaries firmly in place despite
her proximity.  As if she sensed him reading her body language, she
pulled her hand from his and began to slide off the bed.  He tried
to catch her eye, but she didn't look at him until she had stepped 
onto the ground from her stool.  "I'm going to go find something 
to eat. Can I bring you anything?"

  Mulder just looked at her.  *Like what, Scully?  An explanation? 
That's all I ever want.*

  "I'll find out if you can have anything from the nurse."  She
patted his leg briefly before turning to leave the room.  

  Mulder watched her go and stifled the urge to throw things about
the room, to break the windows.  *Days.*   He wouldn't be able to
speak for days and Scully would be able to erect a million walls in
that period of time.  Walls that the weeks of closeness they had
shared wouldn't be able to breach.  She was already doing it, taking
her hand away, stiffening under his touch, pulling away.   

  He thought of the book back at the motel, the one he'd been
reading to her.  

  It was something he had started years ago, on one of their
innumerable plane rides.  He had begun by reading aloud case files
or interesting facts about where they were.  Then, slowly, over the
course of one too many long stakeouts, he had started reciting from
memory, reading her books he had stored in his brain.  His memory
for literature was not truly eidetic.  He had to squint to recall
the required reading of courses that had not motivated him, but 
those works that he loved rolled easily off his tongue: Donne's
poetry, Shakespeare's tragedies, the simple bright beauty of a tale
by John Cheever.  As their assignments from Kersh had intensified in
their mind-numbing simplicity, he had begun bringing books to read
to Scully, books they shared together.  On the endless nights of
fruitless stakeouts or on long drives between far distant farms of
possible terrorists, he would read while she drove or while they sat
together in a parked car, a new memory being formed in the reflected
warmth of his penlight of her hair.  Her eyes would drift unfocused
over the flat horizon of wherever they were, her head resting
against the seat, and he would allow his voice to caress her 
the way he wanted his hands to.  

  During her convalescence, when the nightmares would start her from
sleep, he would soothe her to a relaxed state, then sit beside her
on the bed, reading a chapter to her from their current novel.  When
she had fallen into a peaceful rest, he would lay there and watch
her sleep, grateful for the rise and fall of her breaths. 
Reluctantly, he would return to the couch when his own exhaustion 
threatened to leave him there until the morning.  Sometime his 
intention to leave  was his last thought before he drifted off 
into sleep next to the small sighs and movements of her body.  
Scully never mentioned it.  It wasn't as if it was the first time 
they had shared a bed, although they had never shared one as lovers.
 
  Last week, they had begun reading Gaudy Night, the second last in
the Lord Peter Wimsey series by Dorothy Sayers.  It had taken him
months to read these books to her, a planned introduction of
characters he felt had some passing resemblance to them both.  Lord
Peter, the acerbic intellectual with the Oxford education,
shell-shocked from his traumatic wartime experiences; a brilliant
investigator, flighty, arrogant, insecure and utterly focused on one
woman.  Harriet Vane was Lord Peter's intellectual equal but
diametrically opposed to him in presentation: careful, cautious,
reserved, but sharp-tongued, brittle and very stubborn.  Lord Peter
had been wooing Harriet since the day they met, five years before
this, their third investigation together.  His manner was
flirtatious, coy even, always couching his sincere feelings for
Harriet in terms of jest, aware of the fact that she did not seem to
share his longing.  Lord Peter was powerless to stay away from
Harriet, powerless to deny her anything that she requested of him. 
Just the way Mulder was with Scully.  Anything she asked of him, he
would do.  It was so rare that she asked.  She tolerated, barely
sometimes, the way that he took care of her in illness or
convalescence, and she never asked for his assistance, seeming to
depend on the fact that she did not require aid from anyone. 
  
  But Scully loved being read to by him, although she had never said
as much.  When her brother Bill had come to see her in the hospital,
he had happened upon them when Mulder was reading to her, his
shoeless feet up on the bed near Scully's waist, her arm draped over
his ankles, eyes closed, listening.  Mulder had caught the startled
expression on Bill's face as he broke off at the end of a sentence. 
As he'd left the room so that Bill could visit alone with his
sister, Mulder'd heard him ask if Scully wanted him to continue 
reading to her.  He had caught her too sharp 'No' as the door swung 
closed behind him and he walked down the hall.  When he had returned
to the room twenty minutes later, Bill had been leaving, and the 
book was clenched possessively in Scully's hand, her finger keeping 
their place in the story.  Wordlessly, Scully had handed it back to 
him,her eyes briefly meeting his.  

  "Read to me, Mulder," she had said then, her voice quiet.  She had
closed her eyes, resuming her relaxed posture.  He had hidden his
smile as he bent to take off his shoes.  

  Her request said something to Mulder.  It said that there was
something of himself that she desired, beyond the boundaries that
she had set up between them.  The intimacy of reading to her was 
not lost on Mulder, because he had made it an intimate act.  It 
was a seduction of sorts, his slow seduction of Scully with others' 
words.  And now it would stop.  What the hell could he do about it? 

  The door swung open hesitantly, a knock on the frame signaling the
intent to come in.  This wasn't Scully.  Mulder schooled his
features for his early morning visitor as SAC Smith stuck his head 
around the door.  He looked exhausted.  

  "Mulder?  Good to see you awake.  The doc said you were awake." 
Smith rubbed his unshaven jaw as Mulder's brows lifted in
astonishment.  

  *The doc?  Was he talking about Scully?*

  "I hear that they'll be releasing you this morning, right around
the time the ceremony will be taking place."  

  *News to me,*  Mulder thought.  

  "Too bad you and Scully can't be there, but I imagine that you'd
like to get her back to the motel so she can get some real rest." 
He turned and looked at Mulder.  "I tried, you know, but she 
wouldn't go.  Didn't want to leave you."  He seemed apologetic.  
Mulder was very confused as to what his motivations were in 
directing this monologue at him.  "She's tough as nails, that 
Scully."  Mulder just stared at him, unsure of how to proceed 
in this non-conversation they were having.  Smith seemed equally 
unsure, but obviously had something to say.  "Suppose she'd have 
to be, being that small in this field.  Must have made her life 
miserable at some point. Probably still does."  

  Smith wandered over toward the window.  "She'd make a great field
commander.  Incredibly focused and on point.  She had you out of
that field and with her in the ambulance with the antidote to the 
poison being administered in less than ten minutes.  EMT told me 
that when he had trouble bagging you that she knocked him out of 
the way and did it herself."   Mulder smiled to himself, his lip 
merely curving slightly as Smith stared out onto the quiet city 
streets.  Was he going to report them for consorting?

  "You know, I knew A.D. Kersh at the Academy.  He was in my class."
 
  *Oh, shit.  We're dead.*  

  "When he called to tell me about sending you out here, I should
have known then."  He paused significantly before walking over to
the bed and extending a hand.  "He was always an unthinking piece of
crap, more interested in playing politics than getting his hands
dirty.  Thank you for what you did here.  You saved a lot of
people's lives and I made damn sure everybody knows you and that
tiny terror of yours did it.  I've put in for letters of
commendation from the Director for both of you, and I made sure to 
copy my request to all the local and national newspapers.  The 
Governor is expecting to meet you both at the ceremony tomorrow."  
He paused.  "I made it clear to Kersh that for the good of the 
agency it was important that you both stick around and be rewarded 
for your roles as heroes.  I even suggested that he come on out to 
the ceremony."  Smith was grinning evilly.  "He made some excuse or 
other, but I assured him that I would save him a seat on the podium 
until the very last minute, should he be able to free up his busy 
schedule.  The Governor will be giving you both a citation.  Oughta 
fry Kersh's ass but good."  

  Mulder was too stunned to respond.  Praise was not something he
was used to from superiors on cases.  He shook Smith's hand,
dumbfounded.  

  Smith turned to leave the room but stopped before the door.  "I
only wish I could have seen Kersh's face when he saw me talking
about you on CNN.  I hope he ruptured something critical and 
painful."  He winked and walked out the door, nearly bumping into 
a returning Scully.  "Ma'am," he said pleasantly, giving her a 
small salute.  "See you tomorrow.  Take good care of him now."

  "I will," Scully echoed faintly, clearly puzzled.  She was holding
a stack of newspapers, a deli bag and some juice.  "What was that
about?"  

  Mulder put his palms up in the air at her, shrugging, *How should
I know?*  

  "Wait until you see these papers, Mulder.  We are the biggest
thing to happen in this town in ages."  She was incredulous.  "Our
file photos are in the articles.  The Governor wants to meet us. 
Two reporters stopped me in the corridor.  Why can't you talk when 
I need you to?"  Her eyebrow seemed stuck in a permanent arch.   
"What did he tell you?"  

  Mulder mimed for a pad of paper, then wrote, 'Smith hates Kersh
from way back.'  

  Scully stared down at his writing then looked up at him, a slow
smile bursting across her beautiful face.  Mulder was helpless, his
own lips curving upward in answer to hers.  His hand reached up,
touching the corner of her mouth and a small dimple appeared in her
cheek.  She pressed her face into his palm for a second, and Mulder
felt his heart stop and start again in the instant between her eyes
closing and opening.

  "Smart man," she murmured as she climbed up on the bed and settled
down next to him to eat her breakfast and read the newspapers with
him.  Mulder could smell the scent of her hair as he pretended to
read the first in the series of articles about the raid.  Maybe it
would be OK.  He closed his eyes and wished fervently. 

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ 

Monday, 8:00 PM

  Scully groaned in pleasure as the hot water of the shower bounced
off her skin.  It felt so good to be clean again.  Getting Mulder
out of the hospital had turned out to be an all-day affair, what
with all the focus on them.  There had been a press conference at 
the hospital that they had both attended, although Scully hadn't 
spoken much and Mulder couldn't.  It had been an uncomfortable day.

  The agents who had dropped them back off at the motel had brought
them dinner as well.  It had been a fairly silent, awkward encounter
as Scully tried to keep the one-sided conversation going.  She
wouldn't think about that.  It felt so damn good to have those shoes
off of her feet after four days.  Unbidden, the image of Mulder's
face as he looked at her solemnly while freeing her feet came to
her. He had been watching her as his hands flexed her cramped
arches, rubbing his thumbs hard up and down the undersides of her 
sock clad feet.  She had been distressed that he was touching her 
dirty feet and then embarrassed by the small sound of pleasure that 
his attentions had drawn out of her without thought.  The small,
delighted smile that had curled the edge of his mouth had made her
heart skip a beat, even as she moved to hastily take her feet away
from him.  That was dangerous territory and she wouldn't cross its
borders right now.  It amazed her sometimes how patient Mulder was
with her, even when she hurt him as she had just then.  She let the
water run over her scalp as she thought.  She hoped that she did the
same for him when he was assailed by his own copious self-doubts.  

  Scully wondered what Mulder was up to while she was taking care of
herself.  She had left him to rest in the adjoining room, although
she doubted he would sleep.  He seemed restless and antsy.  She had
made him promise that he wouldn't go out running as soon as she went
into the shower.  He had acquiesced far too easily, but she had
caught the fact that he was crossing his fingers behind his back and
twisted his arm out from behind him.  He was playing with her, she
knew, trying to make her relax.  

  Why was she so nervous around him when he couldn't speak to her? 
It was role reversal, maybe.  Did she depend upon him that much to
lead their communication?  Or was it because there was so much they
needed to say that they hadn't?  She shut the shower off tiredly,
shivering in the cold of the room as she opened the curtain.  It
would be a relief to sleep, to turn her brain off.  She dried
herself and smoothed lotion on her skin, padding out to the room in
her robe to find her pajamas.  On the table, there was a bottle of
juice with a post-it note affixed to it that said, 'Drink me.'   She
smiled at it and took an obliging swig before returning to the
bathroom with her pajamas and her hair dryer.  Mulder could be very
charming and solicitous, just as he could be the most annoying and
obdurate man on the planet when he chose.  She sighed, wondering if
he found her as full of contradictions as she found him to be.  

  The whir of the dryer droned away all thoughts that were more than
trivial.  What pantsuits did she have left to wear for the ceremony?
Should she call the airlines before or after she slept?  She
supposed that she had to call Kersh and check in with him.  That 
could definitely wait.  She turned off the hair dryer and moved
slowly back to the bed, gratefully pushing aside the covers.  She 
listened  for the sound of Mulder moving in the other room and heard
him flicking through the TV channels on the other side of the 
slightly ajar connecting door.  

  She wondered if they should have released him from the hospital so
swiftly.  It had only been a little more than 24 hours.  The bed
creaked in his room and she thought she heard the sound of the TV
switching off.  He better not go running.  She should have
handcuffed him.  

  Damn HMOs.  They never put the welfare of the patient first.  

  Smith was being so nice to them.  She should be worrying about
that.

  She was going to get an award wearing those horrid shoes Mulder
had bought her.  Maybe she could trick him into taking her shoe
shopping and she could find some nice pumps...

  Scully couldn't breathe, but breathing didn't seem necessary
anymore in some strange way.  Why?  

  She was no longer human.  She could see the world dimly through
the viscous greenness around her, as the cold stillness permeated
her body.   She was there, but not there, paralyzed in some sort of
waking coma.  

  Deep in her body, she could feel the slight quivering of her demon
child, beginning to divide, only cells now.  Only cells now, the
only child of her body, this malevolence that would erupt from her,
destroying everything.  Everything she had lived for, everything
Melissa had died for.  

  She couldn't move, couldn't scream, as she became more and more
aware of the umbilicus down her throat.  She realized she was only
the medium of birth, only the placenta, never a true mother, not
even of this thing growing unbidden inside of her.  Those thieves.  
They had taken everything away from her, her innocence, all promise 
of immortality through her children.  Her life.  

  As these thoughts assailed her, the light flickered and bent
around her in regular patterns.  She couldn't see why but it was
steady, never ending, as if there was automation nearby.  She could
hear nothing, say nothing, only see right in front of her.  The
light shifted again and a hand, a human hand appeared, distorted on 
the glass.  

  'Mulder!'  She saw him looking at her, his eyes running down her
body to where she was being perverted.  

  'Mulder!'  His eyes flickered back to her face, the desperate
seeking expression in them unchanging.  He was turning away.  

  'Mulder!'  He did not know her.  

  'Mulder...' She was no longer human.  And she could do nothing,
trapped behind the glassine walls of her narrow prison.  

  "Mulder!"  Scully sat up in bed, stifling the cry of pain from her
body as she pulled strained muscles.  He wasn't coming for her,
hadn't made a move from the other room.  "Mulder?" she called
quietly.  Was he sleeping?  It was dark, maybe he was sleeping.  

  Maybe he had left.  As if answering her, she heard a small creak
from the other room.  He was shifting on the mattress, the headboard
of his bed bouncing against hers from the opposite side of the wall.
He was still there.  Her heart rate began to return to normal. 

  She stood up gingerly, going to the bathroom.  When she came back
to her bed, she found herself unwilling to get in it just yet.  She
moved to the night table, finding the bottle of juice that he had
left for her earlier.  She took a sip and, purposefully not thinking
about it, watched as her feet moved to the adjoining door.  She'd
just take a peek and see if he was OK.  He was so quiet.  Even the
TV was off and it was only midnight.  She pushed the door open, 
wincing at the creaking noise it made.  

  Mulder was lying on his back on the side of the bed away from the
door, propped up on both pillows on top of the covers.  He was
dressed in sweats and a tee shirt.  He seemed to have showered and
shaved.  She looked around the room suspiciously, but his running
shoes and shorts were nowhere to be seen.  He had been listening to
his Walkman, something she hadn't seen him do in such a long time. 
He must have fallen asleep.  The Walkman made him look younger
somehow.  It reminded her of the first case they had ever worked on
together, all those years ago.  His expression was peaceful, almost
serene.  

  *What is he listening to?*  She could hear the faint sound of the
percussion jangling from the speakers as she moved around the bed
carefully, not wanting to disturb him.  It was unfamiliar music,
wholly unrecognizable to her.  She moved to the bathroom, shutting
off the light there and then moving to the overhead switch in the
main room.  The bedside lamp was still on and she returned to his
side, drawn to him in the glow of the lamplight.  The scraping from
the shaving had caused some of his reddened skin to peel.  Despite
her intention not to disturb him when he looked so peaceful, her
hand was drawn to the abrasion, her fingers gently trailing against 
the warm skin.  She jumped when his hand came up suddenly and 
grasped her wrist defensively.

  "It's me," Scully breathed as Mulder's eyes opened, sharp and
green in the lamplight.  She was absurdly relieved when he
recognized her instantly, dispelling some of the lingering unease 
she felt from her nightmare.  Mulder had not been asleep, she 
realized, merely totally absorbed in what he was listening to.  
He let go of her wrist and ran his fingers over her hand, staring 
at her with a question in his eyes, leaving her hand against his
face.  He took one of the small speakers out of his ears and Scully 
could hear the strange music pouring out of it.  "What are you 
listening to?"  she asked him, not answering the question he was 
asking her with his eyes.  

  Mulder continued to silently look at her, then shifted over on the
bed, making room for her.  She sat down.  He stopped the CD he was
playing.  Slowly he picked up the small speaker and placed it in her
left ear, the umbilicus of the speakers joining them together.  He
opened the Walkman and showed her the CD.

  "Dead Can Dance," she said incredulously.  "That's the name of the
band?"  

  He nodded, half smiling at her.  His green eyes were twinkling at
her in the half-light of the room and Scully fought for a little
control over the situation.  

  "I've never heard of them," she said bluntly.  

  He made a small face at her as if to say, 'And that means?'  

  "I'm not that out of it, Mulder.  You're just obscure."  He smiled
then, a small one that flashed his teeth at her.  "Which you like
evidently."  He smiled a little wider, setting the CD up to play and
chose the last song.  Scully started as a heavy bass sound, like a
heartbeat, began pulsing in her ear.  Other instrumentation joined
in, airily winding around the bass line in sinuous counterpoint. 
Mulder was watching her listen.  The music was electronic, but it
sounded ancient, faintly Arabic in its tonality.  It was
mesmerizing, dreamlike.  Mulder's eyes had tiny flecks of blue, gold
and brown in them this close up, Scully noticed.  His eyes never 
wavered from hers.  She wondered what he saw when he looked at her. 
She was very aware of Mulder's proximity, of the smell of his clean,
warm body near hers.  She folded her hands in her lap, watching them
instead of losing herself in Mulder's beautiful eyes.  And then a
man began to sing.  His voice was dark, rich, very deep, and
extremely masculine. Scully's eyes slid closed as she listened to 
him singing, enunciating the words clearly.

I thought I'd found a reason to live
Just like before when I was a child
Only to find things made of sand
Would just fall apart and slip through my hands

But the spirit of life keeps us strong
And the spirit of life is the will to carry on

Adversity 
What have I done to you?
to cause this reclusive silence
that has come between me and you

And the spirit of life remains in light
And the spirit of life remains inside

  She opened her eyes and saw that Mulder was motionless, except for
the rise and fall of his chest.  One of her hands was resting there,
although she had not been conscious of having moved it.  She looked
at it, surprised, and Mulder's long fingers closed around her wrist
lightly.  She looked up at him.  He was still watching her listen. 
"This is beautiful," she whispered to him.  He was very close to
her; the cord between the speakers lay slackened between them.  The 
man began to sing again and Scully listened to him with her eyes
open, watching Mulder watch her.   If she let herself, she could
just fall right into his green and gold gaze. 

I never thought it would be quite like this
Living outside of mutual bliss
But as long as the veins in our arms still stand up
The spirit of life will keep living on

  Mulder blinked, and, in the momentary loss of contact with him,
Scully found herself looking at his mouth, waiting for him to say
something.  *Is he saying something?*  The music wound on and on,
but the man's voice didn't return to rise above the sobbing sound 
of the guitar.  As the song ebbed, Scully watched as Mulder's hand 
left her wrist, then shut the CD player off.  Slowly, his hand 
rose toward her face, caressing her cheek as he took the tiny 
speaker out of her ear, severing the connection between them.  She 
started into action.

  "Can I hear that again?" she asked him.  Her hand came up to his. 
Her voice sounded a little breathless to her own ears.  Mulder
stilled his hand against her, then nodded.  He moved over on the bed
a little more, an unspoken invitation.  

  Scully hesitated an instant then surprised herself by lying down
on the bed next to him, resting on her good side, facing him.  *What
am I doing?* she thought, then pushed it away.  She held the tiny
speaker in her hand, giving her more room to maneuver, but she was
too far away from Mulder.  He winced a little as the tautness of the
cord pulled between them tugged on the inside of his still tender
ear.  

  Scully looked up at Mulder.  His face was serious, but very
gentle.  He lifted his left arm and patted himself on the chest, and
Scully hesitated again, wondering if she should.  He continued to
regard her with an even gaze, and she found herself wondering why
she was hesitating.  He would never do anything to her that she 
didn't want him to.  She was sure of it.  

  She smiled a little and said, "Just this one song, then I'm going
back to my own room."  

  He shrugged at her and she moved over to him, laying her head on
his chest.  He felt warm and real and alive.  She could feel the
strong beat of his heart under her as the music began again.  His
arm curled around her back and she felt the bedspread being flipped 
over her, his hand stroking her shoulder lightly, as she relaxed.  

  *Just this one song,*  she thought drowsily, as the song wound
around her in concert with the beat of his heart.  *Just this once.*
And as she fell asleep peacefully in the rhythmic darkness of his
arms, she thought she heard Mulder smile.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ 

Tuesday, 7:00 PM

  Scully was asleep again, leaning against his shoulder as the plane
wended its way back to D.C.  Mulder fought the urge to put his arm
around her and curl her to his chest, the way she had been last
night.  Only the fact that they were in public and had been
recognized more than once today stopped him.  He looked quickly
around the cabin to see if anyone was paying attention to them, then
smiled down at her and ran his chin softly over the top of her head.
Today had been a great day for Mulder and not because of the
ceremony.

  Last night, when he had awoken from a half-dreaming state inspired
by music to find Scully standing over him, touching his face, he
hoped that he hadn't looked as surprised as he had felt.  He had
wondered as he lay awake later, holding her and feeling her breathe
against him, what had driven her out of her own bed and into his. 
It wasn't just a Dr. Scully bed check on her favorite recalcitrant
patient.  It might have been a nightmare.  In his heart of hearts,
he hoped that she had simply missed him, had missed being able to
communicate with him.  

  *If that was her response to twelve hours of my silence, perhaps I
should shut up more often,*  he mused inwardly.

  Scully murmured in her sleep, shifting in her seat next to him. 
Mulder bent the arm she was pressing against and ran it comfortingly
along hers.  She seemed to ease and returned to quiet.  He moved his
cheek across her hair again, enjoying the nearness of her.  His
silence had really unnerved Scully.  Her expression during dinner
last night had been just short of terror and, despite his feeble
efforts to cajole her and tease her, the tension had continued to
rise unabated until she had come in to his room.  She had come to
him and touched him and listened to music with him, staring in his 
eyes as the song circled around them both.  He had been sorry that 
he hadn't been listening to a symphony.  But the song had ended far 
too soon and he had started reluctantly to take the speaker back.  
And then Scully had asked to hear it again.  He smiled against her 
hair again.  She had asked to stay connected to him.  And then she
had fallen asleep in his arms.  He had dozed off himself after the 
CD had ended, waking when he felt Scully shivering against him in 
her sleep, nestling into him for warmth.  He had made his decision 
in an instant, pulling the covers down on the side of the bed they 
weren't occupying.  He had bundled her close to him, trying not to 
wake or jostle her too much as he slid them over to the uncovered 
side of the bed, holding Scully in the semi-recumbent position that 
eased her aching middle.    

  It was too much to hope that the movement wouldn't wake her. 
Scully had roused in his arms, her eyes dark blue and heavy with
sleep.  She had looked momentarily confused and then stated in a
husky voice, "I should go back to my own room."  But she had made no
move to do so.  

  Mulder had held her gaze with a neutral expression on his face,
trying to communicate to her that she didn't have to go anywhere. 
She had blinked at him sleepily, her hands lying limply against her
chest, the back of one of them just barely touching his skin where
he held her against himself.  She had made no move to break away
from him.  So he had reached down slowly and picked her small, 
white legs up from where they rested outside of the covers.  He had 
tucked them under the covers, still watching her, still holding her 
close to his chest.  

  "I should," she had said quietly, as if telling herself.  	

  Mulder had said nothing, just waited for her to move away from
him.  When she didn't, he had reached over her and taken the pillows
from the other side of the bed where they had been laying together. 
Her eyes had followed him, blinking slowly in the harsh light of the
bedside lamp.  He had piled the pillows on the side of the bed where
they were now resting and laid her against them carefully, letting
her go.  When she still made no move to get up, he had he reached
across her again to shut the lamp off.  He had heard her swallow in
the darkness at the deliberateness of his movements.

  "I should..." she had started to say, as he had pulled the covers
up to her chin, tucking them around her.  She had stopped speaking
when he had slipped an arm underneath her, his hands circling her
tiny waist carefully, lifting her gently.  He had heard her sharp
intake of breath and stopped to assure himself it wasn't pain,
looking down at her questioningly.  Scully had been quiet against
him, unsure of what he was doing.  She was holding her breath, he
had realized.  He had lain down again in the heavy quiet, putting
her back where she had been when he had woken, head on his chest, 
her upper body lying atop his.  He had circled her with his arms
loosely, not wanting her to feel trapped.  

  "I..." she had begun again and he had stroked her hair, willing
her not to leave.

  *Go back to sleep, Scully.  That's the only place you need to go.*
He had kept his touch light, letting her know that she was welcome,
that she was safe, that there were no strings.  He had felt her
swallow again, the column of her throat working against his chest. 
She had sighed and some of the tension had eased out of her body. 
He had plucked at her hair, feeling the texture of it against his
hands,listening to her breathing as it evened out and she fell back 
to sleep.  He had lain awake in the dark for a long time, savoring 
the feel of her body in his arms.  

  When he had awoken in the morning, Scully had been trying to
disengage herself from his embrace quietly.  He could tell that she
was embarrassed, but he wouldn't let her be.  He had touched her
face and then gotten out of bed, helping her to sit up as he had 
done most mornings since she had been shot.  He had acted as if 
there were nothing different about this morning than any other, as 
if her waking up in his bed, in his arms, was the most natural thing
in the world.  Because it should be.

  The ceremony had been strange; full of people eager to shake their
hands and tell them they were wonderful.  It amused Mulder that
people assumed that he had lost his ability to hear as well as to
speak.  He had endured hearty handshakes accompanied by bellowed
compliments from more than one politician during the luncheon before
the actual ceremony.  He could feel the heat of Scully's annoyance
at one man's boorish behavior and had plucked at her sleeve to let 
her know that he was fine, undisturbed by his ignorance.  He had 
turned back to the politician in question, who was still bellowing 
away and fixed a mild, guarded expression on his face, to find ASAC 
Smith watching him and Scully.  Smith had smiled speculatively at 
Mulder, his thoughts unintelligible, and then turned away.  

  At the official ceremony, which was held outside the Governor's
mansion on a raised podium, there had been too many television and
still cameras to comprehend.  Mulder could feel Scully's terror at
the melee in front of them, but was powerless to do much more than
occasionally press his leg against hers to remind her of his
presence.  A telegram from the President had been read,
congratulating them on their heroism and ingenuity.  Scully had
looked beautiful, pale but strong in the winter sunshine.  She
looked well rested, he had decided and hoped that he'd had something
to do with that.  During the question and answer session, they had 
stood at the microphone together. Scully had answered the questions 
quietly after wordless consultations with Mulder, weathering all 
this with typical stoicism, until she had smiled up at him once 
with real pleasure when a reporter had complimented Mulder on his 
inductive reasoning skills.  That smile, of course, had resulted in 
a barrage of picture taking that had left them both nearly blinded, 
Scully's hand reaching for his behind the cover of the podium for
reassurance.

  SAC Smith had driven them to the airport himself, full of
desultory chat and gossipy anecdotes about the people they had just
met.  After saying a gentlemanly goodbye to Scully, Smith had waited
until she was out of earshot at the check-in desk before tapping
Mulder on the arm to get his attention away from his partner.

  "You did a good job here, Agent Mulder," he began, extending his
hand.  "Do not let Kersh and Washington politics wear you down."  He
looked over at Scully thoughtfully and added, "Or run your life." 
Mulder felt the finger of foreboding he felt whenever Smith seemed
to be observing him and Scully together.  "It's a mistake to allow
the petty concerns of bureaucrats to have any sway over your life." 
He clapped Mulder on the shoulder companionably and leaned in to
deliver his parting shot, words that had been echoing in his head
ever since. "It took me ten years to marry my partner.  Try and
break my record, would you?  Fuck 'em if they can't take a joke." 
Then he smiled, turned on his heel and walked away.

  The plane began its descent into National and Mulder wondered if
he should wake Scully up.  He fingered the book in his lap, checking
once again to see that he had the right page.  Scully had surprised
him by pulling Gaudy Night out of her overnight bag when they had
been airborne for a while.  

  *Are you going to read to me, Scully? * he had asked her with an
arched eyebrow.

  "How about we read it together for a while?" she had asked him,
handing him the book.  

  *What?*

  Scully had smiled at him, tucking her Doc Martens up on the seat
and turning a little so she was pressed into his side, her head
leaning against his bicep lightly.  

  *Oh.* He had opened the book, surreptitiously watching Scully read
along with him, waiting for the uplift of her beautiful blue eyes to
his when she asked him to turn the page.  Eventually she had fallen
asleep, just as she always did when they read together.  

  *I might need to work on my technique,* he thought ruefully as the
plane bounced its way to the terminal and Scully woke up, starting
to fall forward a little.  He caught her in his arms and watched,
smiling, as she stretched and yawned against him.

  "You're better than a sleeping pill Mulder," she commented wryly.

  Around them, the other passengers began reaching for their
possessions, eager to leave the plane.  Scully watched them
blearily, still not quite awake.  Mulder's arms circled her loosely,
but she made no move to break away from him, public place or not.  
He watched the progress of the other travelers as they jockeyed to 
be first out the door, content to wait his turn.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ 

  Dana Scully regarded herself in the harsh fluorescent light of the
terminal bathroom. *Not too bad,* she thought. *At least I'm caught
up on my sleep.*  

  She smiled at herself in the mirror.  She wondered how many people
at the FBI would win money in the 'are they or aren't they?' pool if
they knew how much she had been sleeping with Fox Mulder in the past
few weeks.  Sleeping near him, sleeping next to him, sleeping in his
arms, sleeping on top of him, but not having sex with him.  *Yet.*

  She smoothed the makeup out of her creases and gave her hair a
quick going over.  She had ducked in the bathroom telling Mulder
that she would meet him in baggage claim.  She hadn't gone to the
bathroom in hours and her abdominal muscles had been screaming at 
her as soon as she was jostled awake.  Jostled awake, then cuddled 
by Mulder. She smiled at her reflection in the mirror, then turned 
and checked the back of her extremely wrinkled suit before putting 
her overcoat back on.  *Everything I own needs to go to the dry 
cleaners.*  

  She exited the bathroom, wondering what they should get for dinner
tonight.  Mulder had been really happy when she had pulled out Gaudy
Night and curled up next to him.  She wondered if he'd stay in bed
with her tonight if she fell asleep again while they were reading. 
She smiled again, glancing at her watch.  She was unused to feeling
so hopeful, but she tentatively welcomed the feeling.

  They should be able to get a cab relatively easy at this time.  It
was post rush hour.  She rounded the corner to baggage claim and
picked Mulder's form out easily.  He had her bag resting against one
long calf as he peered over the heads of the other passengers
looking for his own.  He was biting his lower lip unconsciously. 
She smiled at him softly, aware that he couldn't see her.  He was
holding Gaudy Night, one of his long fingers marking their place in
it.  She must still have the bookmark.  She began to search through
her purse for it, moving through the terminal to his side.

  "Fox!" She heard a voice, familiar but unwelcome, intruding on her
consciousness.  

  Diana Fowley was crossing the terminal toward Mulder.  She laughed
and held out her hands to him.  "Hail the conquering hero!"  Mulder
smiled at her.  

  Scully stopped moving.  

  Diana kissed Mulder on the cheek.   Her hand encountered the book
and Scully saw her look down, saw Mulder look down.  "What are you
reading?" she asked.  "Gaudy Night.  I always meant to read these
books, but I never got around to it."  She took it out of his hand. 
"Is it any good?"  She opened the book to where they had been and
scanned the page, then flipped forward carelessly, beginning to read
a passage aloud.  She cocked her head at Mulder, all charm.

  Scully didn't hear what Diana was reading.  It didn't matter.  She
had lost their place.  Scully dropped the bookmark back in her bag
deliberately, feeling her spine ice over with anger.   She walked
over to Mulder and Diana and pulled her bag away from where it
rested against Mulder's leg.  

  "Hello, Diana," she said calmly.  She looked up at Mulder briefly.
 "I'm kind of tired," she announced suddenly.  "I'm going to grab a
cab.   See you tomorrow."  

  She turned and walked away alone, leaving a speechless Mulder
behind her.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ 


Author's Notes: This is my first fanfic.  I'd like to thank all of
the wonderful fanfic writers who have challenged my imagination over
these past few months as I explored this strange universe.  Looking
for a good read?  Check out Morgan, Meredith, Khyber, Ann Haynes,
Dawson Rambo, Audrey Roget, Shalimar, MD1016, Suzanne Schramm, PD
Ryder, Dasha K, Plausible Deniability, Linda Phillips, Rachel
Howard, Brandon Ray, Nicole Perry, Dianora, Wen, MoJoBer and 
Louise Marin for a start.  I could go on and on, but I'll stop 
myself right here.

If you enjoyed this, I'd love to hear about it.  You can e-mail me
at Anjou@rocketmail.com.

Look for 'Perfect,' the second story in this series, for a more
satisfying conclusion.  'Perfect' begins after the events of "Two
Fathers, One Son" and assumes that the estrangement we saw onscreen
has been compounded by the emotional issues explored in this story. 
It does not pick up directly from this story. At least a couple of 
weeks have passed by. 'Angel,' the third installment in the series, 
will deal with some of the unresolved emotional issues of this
piece.