TITLE: Dispensation

AUTHOR: VS12Producers

EMAIL: vs10producers@yahoo.com

RATING:

CONTENT: Casefile; mytharc

SPOILERS: Continued from Displacement

SUMMARY: Season Premiere

FEEDBACK: Always welcomed.

DISCLAIMER: 1013 and FOX own these characters.

DISTRIBUTION: This story belongs exclusively to the Virtual Season 12 site for two weeks; thereafter, please contact the author for permission to archive.

J. Edgar Hoover FBI Building

Washington, D.C.

3:44 p.m.

Mulder carefully rolled up the grainy black-and-white poster that had left a discolored rectangle on the basement wall of the J. Edgar Hoover FBI Building. The poster, cheap, available on the Internet or, probably, through any comic book or head shop, was priceless, if only in Mulder’s estimation.

It was the successor to Mulder’s original hanging, given to him by a dear, late friend who had suffered for her belief and, indeed, for her very existence. “I Want to Believe,” the cheap and grainy poster stated. It had been Mulder’s mantra, and had become Scully’s.

Some might have seen the poster’s removal from these sacred halls as a victory for rational thought, for bureaucratic protocol, for the general order of things. The ex-agent smiled unconsciously as he regarded the rectangle its removal had left in the regulation federal paint — clean, unsullied by the pollution that had seeped into Mulder and Scully’s sanctum but failed to contaminate their spirit or belief.

Skinner had their resignations. He’d promised to process them quickly, but had suggested that the agents might make use of their considerable amount of accumulated vacation time before having to pay the increased costs of health insurance after terminating employment.

Their belief was one thing the bureau couldn’t take away, and the rest, Mulder left as garbage. He set the poster aside and returned to the desk and pondered the inexplicably fused coins Scully had given him years before with no memory of their origin. As he worked through the scarred desk, he began to feel a sort of fond melancholia for the years he’d toiled in the belly of this black-suited beast.

Mulder found it in the bottom drawer, behind a stack of magazines of the paranormal and paranormally endowed. He gently pulled the small, bound journal from the niche where he’d tucked it soon after he and Scully had read it at the safe house a year ago It had gone into the drawer after he had determined it held no clue to his mother’s cryptic suicide. Mulder had avoided the journal since then, unconsciously (or subconsciously) ignoring the painful memories. Now, chest tightening, he fanned through the book, willing himself to look at Teena Mulder’s finely wrought script.

“Writing it all down has come so easily, but to tell you to your face is what I have craved for so long.” He could almost hear her calm-but-tortured tone.

“Far too long. Now, I fear, there isn’t time. I know it will come to an end soon.

“I’m going to hide this book in a place where you will be able to find it. Somehow, I’ll get a message to you.”

Emotions tearing at him, Mulder slapped the book closed. What had she meant? Why had she been so cryptic? Had she lived in fear those final years after his father, her husband, had been murdered? Worse, Mulder pondered, had she lived in abject guilt? What was this weight she had carried alone, and what had she needed so desperately to tell him, but couldn’t? He peered down at the journal’s cover, as if it somehow would provide some answer, some clue. The blithely ironic words “Polite Conversation” blurred before his eyes, and a fat droplet of moisture struck the pebbled cover.

**

Mulder hoisted his packing box as he exited the elevator into the sub- basement parking garage. After cleaning out his effects, he’d stopped by Administration and dropped off his ID, his key card, and his Bureau parking pass. It had felt something like giving up a kidney, but by the time the elevator had hit bottom, Mulder felt as though he’d shed a huge, sharp- edged kidney stone.

He’d also turned in the agency vehicle a week before. The new Nissan — compact, casual, in a sunny yellow that screamed sacrilege in the bleak government garage — beckoned from its space beyond a concrete support post. Mulder had half-expected the Bureau to have it towed to the center of the Potomac the second he’d turned in his credentials.

Mulder the Civilian leveled the electronic key fob at the cheerful import as he approached the post. The car whooped, it’s headlights blinking. Then, as he passed the post, a dark object flashed in his peripheral vision. Mulder doubled over as it slammed into his gut, and his attacker pivoted and caught him in the jaw with his other leg. The box skidded to a side-busting halt against a van.

Mulder fumbled to regain his feet, but a pair of strong hands yanked him up and into the post. Suddenly, a familiar face was nose-to-nose with him.

“Krycek, you fu–!” Mulder croaked, bringing an arm up for a swing at the handsome and apparently furious young man. With a speed-of-light motion,

Krycek’s forearm came up to pin Mulder to the cold concrete.

“You stupid bastard!” Krycek snapped. “You’ve got the key.”

“Yeah, and I was about to use it,” Mulder rasped despite himself. “What the hell do you want, Krycek? I’m out now. You and I have no business anymore.”

Krycek thumped Mulder’s skull against the post. “You asshole. You’re closer than you’ve ever been, and you throw it away! For what? To watch Oprah and play house with your partner?”

“Screw you, Krycek!” Mulder growled, trying to wrench free. “What the hell do you care anyway? I give up. We give up. It’s all yours’ now. If you think it’s worth it.”

Krycek’s arm eased up, and he smiled incredulously at Mulder, as if the newly retired agent were a child. “God, you just don’t get it, do you? This is the point of no return. You’ve got the key, and you’re just going to walk away.”

As Krycek relaxed the pressure on his throat, Mulder had shifted his weight to his right arm. Now he pile-drove his fist into Krycek’s stomach. Mulder threw an elbow into his face, and kicked him squarely in the ribs as he rolled onto the concrete floor.

“Quit talking in riddles!” Mulder yelled.

Krycek wiped a bead of blood from his lip and held up a conciliatory palm. “Let me up. You need to see something.”

Mulder braced for another kick. “What? You stay put, Krycek.”

“It’s in the box,” Krycek said through his teeth, nodding at the split cardboard box spilling mementos and documents across the garage floor.

Mulder glanced quickly at the box; it was the split second of distraction Krycek needed. His leg swept out and hooked Mulder’s calf, bringing him to the concrete. Krycek was up in a nanosecond, grabbing the fallen Mulder and wrenching his arm behind him. He shoved him over to the van, slammed him against the side, and swiftly scooped an object from the floor.

“The key, you idiot!” Krycek shrilled, thumping Mulder twice on the temple with Teena Mulder’s journal. “You’ve got the key to everything. You can close this all down.” He leaned into Mulder’s ear. “If you quit, they win. You hear me? They win.”

Krycek gave Mulder a final punch in the kidney, and as the former X-Files curator dropped to the hard gray floor, he heard swift footsteps retreat toward the exit.

“Krycek!” he shouted weakly before the garage lights momentarily dimmed. Mulder flailed as firm fingers grasped his arm.

“Christ, Mulder, will you let me help?” a voice snapped. It was Vollmer, one of the guys from upstairs who’d always viewed Mulder and his mission with amused contempt. “Jesus, what happened to you? You let somebody get the drop on you in the FBI garage?”

Mulder rose uneasily to his feet, dusting himself off and grinning at the frat boy-handsome Vollmer. “Couldn’t help it. She had spike heels, and she swung her walker at me.”

Vollmer sighed and turned on the heel of his Italian loafer. “Have a nice life, Spooky.”

3605 N Street NW

Washington, DC

5:15 pm

Dana Scully stood in front of the kitchen cabinets and tried to figure out the best items to put on the top shelf. Secretly, she knew Mulder could  always reach up and get those items, even if she never got around to pulling out the stepstool, but her height challenged albeit independent inner self refused to allow anything useful to rest that far out of her reach.

She looked in the box of fragile mysteries concealed in newsprint and pulled out the first one, discarding the protective paper. It was a thin vase, suitable for only one long stemmed rose. She remembered immediately when she’d received it. Bill had sent it to her after she’d come home from visiting him at Christmas several years ago, after Emily’s funeral. He hadn’t said a word to her about the child from the day of the funeral until she’d boarded the plane. But when she got home, her neighbor across the hall had told her the florist had delivered something for her. A single cream colored rose with a simple note: “I’m sorry, Love Bill.”

Fighting back tears, she climbed the stepstool to the highest level and placed the vase on the top shelf, out of sight but still preserved. She quickly finished that box and tossed it in the laundry room to break down later. The kitchen was almost unpacked. She looked around the room with more than a little apprehension. After the last box was emptied, what was she going to do?

Two weeks since the funeral and they still hadn’t talked about their lives. In the furor around subletting her old apartment, moving the furniture — to the near constant complaining of the Gunmen who felt they could have done it all the first time when Mulder moved in — she and Mulder had tap danced neatly around what would happen next. They had a place to live, they had each other, but what would they do with the rest of their lives?

She’d thought briefly about teaching. Georgetown was just a stone’s throw away; she could easily get a slot on their faculty. Mulder had been a repeat ‘customer’ at the University Medical Center, she was known by almost all the teaching staff. But when she really stopped to consider teaching the idea bored her to tears. She couldn’t see herself standing for hours in front of a class, hoping to capture their attention, hoping to get them to open their ears and listen. No, been there, done that, moved on. She didn’t want to teach.

Going to work for the District police department held even less appeal. She knew many of the detectives on the DC force, and was very familiar with the chief Medical Examiner, whom she considered at best a quack, at worse a criminal. She couldn’t fathom working under the man, even if he was less than two years from retirement.

What did that leave her? She could work in a path department at one of the District’s many hospitals. Did she want to spend all day looking at tissue samples through microscopes? Never getting out of the windowless lab except for lunch? At least she’d have a definite 8-hour day, unless someone called in sick or they were backed up. Seven to three, maybe three to midnight. Night shift, graveyard — wasn’t that where everyone started?

Leaving for work in the dead of night and sleeping through the day. The thought almost brought her to tears.

Of course, she was far ahead of Mulder. For all she could gather, he was happy to live off his accumulated vacation pay and maybe tap into his seldom-used trust fund. The closest he’d come to fiscal responsibility was to casually mention selling the house on the Vineyard and maybe his mother’s house in Greenwich, but how long would that money last? He’d written a few articles in the early years of their partnership, but that had gone by the wayside after it became apparent that it only got the attention of people like Max Fenig. She doubted he would consider writing as a living.

She sighed and reached for the last box, feeling dread as she lifted it to the countertop. The sound of tires on gravel halted her actions. Mulder was home. She had to smile at herself. All things considered, she certainly didn’t regret agreeing to the move. She loved the new place, loved being able to slip into bed at night and into Mulder’s arms. ‘His and hers’ suits were lined up in the closet, her shoes taking up most of the floor space.

Mulder had threatened to make her a ‘shoe closet’ out of the spare bedroom, but she’d convinced him to make it an office. Again, they avoided discussing what purpose the office would serve.

Scully resisted the urge to stand at the back door and watch him come up the steps. Instead, she pretended to be occupied with the task of  unpacking the last box. As a result, she didn’t get a good look at him as he grunted a greeting and headed straight for the side by side refrigerator. She was a little surprised when he asked her for a plastic bag, but when she turned to look at him she instantly understood.

“Mulder, my god, what the hell happened to your face?” she demanded as she grabbed a tea towel from the drawer next to her hip and rushed to load it with ice. Carefully folding it, she held it up to his left cheek and eye, which was already sporting a darkening bruise. “That has to hurt,” she murmured.

“You should see the other guy,” he muttered and allowed her to sit him down in the dining room. He took a corner of the towel and dabbed at the blood from his split lip.

“Who did this? Were you mugged?” she asked, getting her first aid kit out of the pantry. “You only went to the Bureau,” she added. “You didn’t get into a fight with Skinner, did you?” she accused.

“Not guilty. And for the record, I didn’t ‘get into a fight’ with anybody. I was attacked.”

“Fine,” she relented. “By whom?”

He wiggled his jaw then stuck his finger in his mouth, feeling his back molars. “Damn, lost another filling,” he cursed.

“Mulder, who did this? Did you see the attacker?”

“I smelled him, Scully. Eau de sewer. It was Krycek.”

“Krycek!” she exclaimed, sitting back in her chair. “What in the world — ”

“I don’t know, not exactly. I got the rest of the stuff from the basement, handed my parking pass and office key in to Lydia in Admin and was in the garage heading for the car when he came out of nowhere and started pounding the crap out of me,” he said with annoyance. “I need to get to a dentist, I think he cracked a tooth.”

“Did he say anything, give you any indication why he didn’t just shoot you?”

He flashed her an impatient look. “Thanks for thinking of me, Sweetheart,” he sneered. “Glad you weren’t around to give him any ideas!”

“Mulder, the guy comes out of nowhere and just starts beating on you? That’s not his normal MO! He usually only surfaces when he’s trying to get us on a wild goose chase.” She took the ice pack from his face and looked at the bruise growing even darker. “Does it hurt when I press here?” she asked as she gently prodded his cheek.

He slapped at her hand as he flinched away. “Yes, it does, thank you! Stop that, Scully, you’re making it worse,” he growled.

She leaned back and crossed her arms. “Fine. So, he just decked you and left?”

“No, no he was talking the whole time. I wasn’t totally uninvolved, Scully. I got a few licks in,” he pouted, his pride wounded more than his face.

“So what did he say?” she asked again, prodding another sore spot from his reaction, but this time not physical.

“He said . . . he said if we quit now, they win.”

Scully propped her elbow on the table and ran her thumb over her lip. “I would expect something like that. Then they know we left the Bureau. What did you think they’d do, Mulder?”

“I figured they’d be relieved,” he admitted. “At least that smoking bastard. We’re out of their hair, Scully. Why send the dogs to try and drag us back?”

“They’re evil men, Mulder! Maybe this was just their way of showing they can still hurt us,” she said, chewing her thumb nail.

“Cracked tooth aside, it’s just bruises, Scully. If they wanted to prove they can hurt us, he could have done a hell of a lot worse,” he pointed out reasonably. “He said something else. He said we’ve got the key to everything. Then he hit me with the book,” he said with a frown.

“What book?”

He sat there a moment, not answering. Suddenly, he got up so fast that she was afraid he was going to be sick. But instead of heading for the half bath off the dining room, he headed out the back door. She trailed after him, concerned and confused. “Mulder?” By the time she got to the door he was jogging out to his car. “Mulder? Where are you going?”

He didn’t answer, only opened the trunk and dug around. She finally reached his side when he lifted a book from the depths of the trunk. It had a smear of blood on the binding. He looked determined as he slammed the trunk lid.

“The smoking gun?” she asked derisively.

He looked over at her in shock. “More than you know, Scully,” he said as he turned the book so she could see the title. _Polite Conversation_

“Your mother’s journal?” she asked, taking the book from his hands gingerly, as if it could bite.

“He knew about it, Scully. Spooky, huh?” he quipped with as much grin as his split lip would allow. “The answer is in here, Scully. If there’s a key to all this, it’s in this book.”

“Mulder, what if . . .”

“No ‘what if’. It’s here. I know it. She was my mother, Scully. I might not have known everything about her, but I knew how her mind worked. Somewhere in here is what we need and we have to keep looking until we find it.”

“All because Krycek decked you in the Bureau parking garage?” she asked with a raise brow.

“Because it’s been too long since we looked here, Scully. Krycek was just a coincidence.”

Somehow she couldn’t quite bring herself to believe him. She wondered if he believed himself.

Act I Scene 3

Scully made soup and grilled cheese while Mulder pored over the journal again. Reading the manuscript was a little easier than the first time, but there were moments when the words of his deceased mother still caused an ache deep in his heart.

Scully gave up any hope of getting him to eat at the table. She brought the soup bowls and sandwiches out to him in the living room, placing them on the coffee table while she went back to get their iced teas. When she returned, the soup was still cooling while Mulder ignored everything and flipped quietly through the pages of the journal.

“Hey, it’s going to get cold and you hate cold soup,” she told him, nudging his leg off the sofa so she could sit next to him. He grunted to acknowledge her presence but turned another page without looking at her.

“Mulder, he could have been pulling your chain, you know. It’s just like him to do something like that,” she commented casually. She sipped at her soup but ended up putting the bowl back down next to her own untouched sandwich. “Why do I bother?” she asked herself aloud

“Because you love me,” he reminded her and lowered the book enough to give her a grin. Laying the book on the table, he picked up the bowl, sipped and grimaced when the acidic tomato broth hit his wounded lip. “Ouch. What, no chicken noodle?”

“All we have is tomato. Anything would hurt, Mulder. Unless you’d prefer a milkshake?”

“No, it’s not the first time I’ve learned to eat around the pain,” he said with a wink and sipped more of the soup before putting the bowl on the table.

“Have you found anything new?” Scully asked, finally picking up her sandwich and taking a bite.

“New? No. I must be overlooking something. I’ve gone over the whole thing, Scully, and I’m at a loss. Every time she got close to telling me something, she backed off and got cryptic. Like this for example,” he said, picking up the book and quickly finding a page.

“‘You’ll find out what they did to me, and you’ll have to expose them. It won’t be easy. Be careful, Fox. They’ll do it to others and they’ll try to stop you. You have little protection left.’ Scully, wouldn’t you think she’d give me some direction to go in there? But no, not my Mom. She goes off on a tangent about what a lousy job she did as a mother!” He tossed the book on the sofa, took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. “It’s so damned frustrating.”

“Krycek said you have the key. Mulder, your mother might have had her faults, but she knew you. She knew you well enough to know that you wouldn’t give up, no matter how little information she gave you. It’s what you’ve done all your life, at least all the years I’ve known you.”

“So what are you saying, Scully? You’re going to give me a spoon and turn me loose in the desert?” he asked with a grin.

“Well, if we were a little more confident of our future finances, I’d rent you the backhoe I offered once,” she shot back with a wink. “C’mon, finish your dinner. Let’s put the journal aside for now. We can come back to it after we clean up.”

A few minutes later, he followed her into the kitchen and handed her his dishes as she started the water. “Wow, you really got the job done while I was gone,” he commented as he looked in the cupboards and noticed everything in place.

“I set it up pretty much as my old kitchen was. The canned goods are in the pantry.”

“My Spongebob Squarepants cereal?” he asked, pulling a drying towel out of the drawer closest to the stove.

“Next to my Shredded Wheat. Second shelf, left hand side.”

“How cozy,” he said, drying the bowl and finding others like it in the cabinet. He was reaching for another bowl to dry when something on the countertop attracted his attention. “Scully, why is there a knife sticking out of your _Joy of Cooking_?”

Scully quickly followed his pointed finger and chuckled. “Oh, I forgot I put it there,” she said, sliding a serrated bread knife from the back binding of the cookbook. At his questioning look she smiled. “Mom always put the sharp knifes in the spines of her cookbooks when we moved. That way there was no sharp edges exposed when we unpacked.”

“Must have been a Navy thing,” Mulder said dubiously and watched as she washed the knife and handed it to him to dry. “Utensils?”

“Drawer under the towels,” she directed and he complied. It took only a few moments and the clean up was complete. Scully made a pot of coffee and they retreated to the living room.

Two hours later, Mulder threw the book down in disgust. “There is no key anywhere in that journal, Scully. The only key is the key to my possibly less than sterling heritage and even that is incomplete. God, I was a fool to think she’d come right out and tell me anything!” He pushed himself off the sofa and started to pace the room angrily.

“Mulder . . .”

He held up one finger to silence her. “Don’t say it, Scully. Don’t you dare try to tell me she was only protecting me.”

She tilted her head to try and assuage his tirade. “Mulder, she lived a very dangerous life. She’d seen one child taken from her. It’s only natural that she would want to protect the child remaining. Hell, it’s the main reason Bill– ” She caught herself before continuing.

“It’s why Bill hated me so much. I know, Scully. I don’t deny he had his reasons,” Mulder said with a sigh, pulling on his lip. “He only wanted to keep you safe from me.”

She shook her head. “We are not going there, Mulder. Not tonight.” She picked up the journal and turned it in her hands. “So much pain, so much hurt,” she said quietly, gliding her finger over the embossed letters of the title.

Mulder’s brow furrowed and he took the book from her hand. Suddenly, he shook it, hard.

“Mulder, what are you — “Before she could stop him, he’d grabbed at the binding of the book and  ripped the spine complete from it. A small key and  folded piece of paper fell to the floor from their hiding place in the binding.

“The ‘key’ to everything, Scully,” Mulder proclaimed as he picked up the key and the paper.

“How in the world . . .”

“Your mom’s knife trick, Scully. Keep the sharp edges hidden.” He was unfolding the paper quickly, scanning the words.

“What does it say?” She rose from the sofa and walked around the coffee table to stand next to him.

He licked his lips and smiled over at her. “I know what this is, Scully. I know where she was telling me to go.” He held out the paper to her, a small claim tag like those given out at repair shops and dry cleaners. Across the top in faded red ink was stamped the name ‘Tommy’s’. “First thing tomorrow, we’re taking a road trip,” he told her.

She shook her head. “And here I thought we were getting ‘out of the car’.”

Act 2 Scene1

South Road

Just outside Chilmark

Marthas Vineyard, Massachusetts

1:05 pm

They’d started out early and managed to catch the ferry to the Vineyard just in time for lunch. Mulder took Scully to a little seafood restaurant he’d gone to as a child. They’d feasted on crab cakes and thick homemade clam chowder, Scully complaining that she’d have to join him at the track for a week to work off the calories. He’d placed his hand at the small of her back as he guided her to the Nissan and they headed out of town.

“Shouldn’t we have called first, Mulder?” Scully asked as he sped along South Road toward the tiny hamlet of Nabs Corner.

“Tommy’s was here to greet the boats that landed at Plymouth, Scully. I know he’ll be there. Or at least one of his sons.”

“So what is this place?” she asked, looking out the window so that her skepticism wouldn’t be so obvious.

“One of a kind, Scully. One of a kind.”

Fifteen minutes later

It was a grey saltbox with white trim and shutters. Set back on the rocky soil it looked like it was waiting for the shore to come to meet it. An iron pole supported a weathered wooden sign proclaiming “Edward Thomas, esq. Dry Goods and Repairs” in classic New England typeface.

Mulder pulled the car into a parking spot along the east side of the building. Sand encroached on the asphalt and a few stray sea oats struggled to take hold on the windswept dunes. A wooden platform served as the sidewalk leading to the red painted door at the front of the building.

“Tommy, or rather Ed Thomas the third, and his family live upstairs. At least they did when I was a kid. I went to school with his youngest boy, Jim,” Mulder explained as he guided Scully to the door and reached around to open it for her. A bell tinkled their arrival in the dim interior.

Inside, it was like stepping into a flea market, or a junk yard. Small appliances fought for space with bins of nuts and bolts, cans of pork and beans on long counters that ran the length of the front room. Shelves covered every square inch of wall space, some of them almost audibly groaning under the burden of weight they carried. An ancient cash register sat amid cigar boxes and a display of buttons, their cards yellowed with age.

Behind the cash register, on another counter, sat a new Dell laptop and a small Hewlett-Packer printer.

Footsteps announced the approach of the proprietor. “‘Hello, folks. What can I help you find?” the man in his early forties said pleasantly before looking at Mulder with surprise. “Fox? Fox Mulder? Well, I’ll be! That is you! How’ve ya been?”

Mulder found his shoulder slapped and his hand pumped before he could answer. “Good, Jim. Really good. Oh, Jim, this is my, um, this is Dana Scully,” he said turning to his . . . what was she now? ‘Significant other’? Housemate? To Mulder she would always be only one thing — his partner.

Jim took her hand in a firm shake. “Nice to meet you, Ms. Scully.” He turned back to his old friend. “So, how long’s it been, over twenty years now? After you moved to Connecticut we lost track of you. What have you been up to?”

“Well, went to Oxford for college, joined the FBI, got partnered with Scully here. Just resigned recently and found something in an old book of Mom’s I’m trying to track down.” Scully fought to hide her amusement at her partner’s rather abridged version of the last 20 years of his life.

“How is your Mom? Sorry to hear about your Dad passin’, by the way,” Jim interrupted.

“Mom died a couple of years ago,” Mulder said soberly.

Jim shook his head in sympathy. “Darn. She was a nice lady. My Mom passed just last summer. Cancer. Dad took it hard. I took over the store after that. He just didn’t have the heart for it anymore.”

“I’m sorry to hear about your mother, Jim,” Mulder said with a sad shake of his head. “She and your Dad knew every piece of junk, er, appliance in this place.”

Jim perked up with pride at the compliment. “You can say that again! Mom used to have this way of findin’ stuff. It never ceased to amaze me. Someone would come in looking for an item and she’d say ‘give me a second’ and before they could turn their head, she had it in their hands. Boy, I miss her around here these days,” he added glumly. “But you said your mom had a book here?”

Mulder fought to keep his patience. “No, I found something in a book of hers. A key and this claim check.” He handed the pieces over to Jim. “I assume the key is to whatever was left here.”

“Wow, the old numbering system,” Jim said with a low whistle. “Mom tried this system, gee whiz, must have been 15, maybe 20 years ago. Dad could never get the hang of it.” He chewed his lip and looked at the counters and all along the shelves that made up the small room. “Gee, Fox. It could be anywhere. Do you know what it is?”

Mulder bit the inside of his cheek in frustration. “Not a clue, Jim. Like I said, I found it in a book. She didn’t leave a note with it, just the claim check.”

“Well, when Mom was around, that would have been enough,” Jim admitted.

“I just don’t know where to start.”

Scully tugged at Mulder’s sleeve. “Maybe we should look through the journal again,” she suggested.

“No, Scully. I think that’s a dead end. Whatever clue she left, she didn’t want anyone to just stumble on it. That’s why she brought it here. Only people on the Vineyard know about this place. It’s safer than a Swiss bank.”

“So safe that we can’t even find it,” Scully muttered.

“Wait a minute,” Jim said, brightening. “Let me try something.” He went back to the back of the building and called up the stairs. “Mary, could you ask Dad to come down for a bit?”

“He’s been so down in the dumps since Mom died, but Dad always loves a mystery. Maybe he can give us a clue. ‘Sides, he liked your folks, Fox. He was sorry all that happened with your little sister.”

Mulder held his tongue and Scully took his arm, giving what support she could. In a few minutes they heard heavy footsteps on the stairs. A tall man, but now stooped over and just barely shuffling along, made his way toward the front of the storeroom.

“Dad, you remember Fox Mulder? Bill and Teena’s son?” Jim said amiably as he took the old man’s arm and helped him over to a chair near the laptop.

The old man squinted up at Mulder, assessing if he really was ‘the’ Fox Mulder. “You favor your mother, but I see plenty of your dad in your face,” Ed Thomas said succinctly.

Jim found the floor interesting for a moment, no doubt wondering how to proceed after such an odd greeting. “So, Dad, Fox found this claim check and key in a book that his mother left him. It’s Mom’s old system, I don’t have a clue where to find it.” He handed the slip of paper and the key to his father.

The old man held the paper out at arm’s length in order to read it through his bifocals and then examined the key, hefting it as if to judge its weight. Finally, he looked up at Mulder. “I was wondering when someone would be by to pick that up,” he said, slowly rolling to his feet. Jim shot Mulder a surprised shrug and helped his father stand. “I do believe it’s over there, Jimmy.” Ed shuffled over to the eastern wall of the room, counted the shelves under his breath and scanned the contents. “Ah, there it is. Be a good boy and fetch that clock there, would you?”

Jim grabbed a folding ladder from the corner and quickly reached the shelf his father had indicated. He brought down a wooden clock about fifteen inches tall with a worn face and missing the glass faceplate. With careful steps he brought it over and placed it on the counter next to the cash register.

Mulder looked at it for a moment, not daring to touch it. Finally, he looked over at Mr. Thomas. “How much do I owe you? How long did you hang on to this?”

“Oh, your mother paid in advance. She brought that in about 10 years ago. I asked her if she wanted me to fix the face, but she said no, she just wanted it to be in a safe place. Lots of folks ’round here have me store little things. I try to make sure they ain’t hiding it from divorced spouses and the like. But your dad had just passed on, so I figured there’d be no harm.”

Ten years ago, just after his father had died. Mulder did the calculations. She might have brought it in when he was still missing in New Mexico. He took a deep breath and gently picked up the clock.

“Well, thanks, Mr. Thomas. I guess we’ll be going,” Mulder said with a nod to Jim.

“If you want that face fixed, just bring it back, Fox. Jimmy’d be real glad to set ya up,” Mr. Thomas said cheerfully.

“Thank you. I might take you up on that,” Mulder replied. “Jim, it was nice seeing you again.”

“Nice to see you, too, Fox. And you, Miss Scully. Keep him in line,” Jim called out as they left the store.

Mulder was deep in thought, so Scully got in the driver’s side. “Where to?” she asked when he’d settled into his seat.

“Dad’s house. We can stay there tonight.”

She nodded and pulled out of the parking lot. She’d never been to the house in West Tisbury, although she was aware that Mulder had been there with John Roche half a dozen years before. When they got to the outskirts of town, he gave her directions to the right street and she parked in front  of the long, winding stone steps.

Mulder pulled his key ring out and found the correct key. “I let a real estate lady rent it out to mainlanders during the summer,” he told her as he pushed the door open with his shoulder. Scully was holding the clock and having a hard time convincing herself it wasn’t going to explode at any moment.

The house was stuffy from being closed up, but still furnished. Mulder directed her to put the clock on the kitchen table and he checked the faucet to see if the water was still turned on. It was, as were the lights. “All the comforts of home,” he said dryly as he joined Scully at the table.

He took the small key out of his pocket and used it to open the door to the back of the clock. “I remember watching Mom wind this sucker all the time. I could never understand why we needed this old thing when we had electric clocks and battery operated clocks all over the house. Mom said it was her mother’s and it had sentimental value.” He looked inside the back and licked his lips. “It also was a great place to hide things,” he said, withdrawing a white business envelope, bulging with contents. Quickly he tore open the side and dumped the hidden objects on the table top.

“Oh my God,” Scully gasped as she picked up a tissue collection box identical to the ones they’d found at Strughold’s mining operation in West Virginia. Mulder picked up the second item — an old audio tape reel. “I had this old tape recorder. It had been Dad’s and he got a new one. It played these tapes,” he said, holding it close to inspect it.

Scully turned the envelope upside down and shook it. A business card fell out. “Strughold Mining, this belongs to a Mr. Crofts.”

“It’s at least 10 years old,” Mulder noted, taking the card from her hand.

“I’m not sure calling the main switchboard would be the best idea,” Scully commented, as she sat back and crossed her arms.

“There’s a number on the back, handwritten,” Mulder told her, flipping the card for her to see. He pulled his cell phone out and quickly punched in the numbers, then waited. After a moment he frowned. “Disconnected.”

“Another dead end,” Scully said, picking up the tape reel. “Wonder what’s on this,” she said to herself.

Mulder was punching in more numbers. “Byers, hi it’s me. Hey, can you guys find a phone number for me? I have a number, but it’s disconnected. I think it’s at least 10 years old. Yeah, here, I’ll give it to you.” He rattled off the ten digits. Can you track that down? We think it belonged to a guy named Crofts. Yeah, we’re trying to find him. Anything you can get would be helpful.

He started to crumple the envelope, preparing to throw it away, when Scully touched his hand.

“Mulder, look.” She pointed to the small precise script at the bottom of the envelope. “What is that?”

Mulder straightened the paper and squinted at the writing. “Numbers and letters. It looks like coordinates.”

“Guess we need to hang on to that,” she said and nodded and put the envelope and the business card in his pocket.

Two hours later, as Mulder helped clean up the remains of their take out Chinese, his phone rang. Scully leaned against the counter as he spoke to one of the gunmen, raising her eyebrow as he disconnected the line.

“I have an address. Devil’s Fork, North Dakota. I’m going to head out there tomorrow and see if I can find this guy.”

“Mulder, I’ve been thinking about that tape. Since we don’t have the Bureau to analyze it, maybe we should give Chuck Burks a call.”

He pulled her to his chest and kissed the crown of her head. “Good idea. Why don’t you do that back home while I meet up with Mr. Crofts.”

She pulled away enough to look up at him. “Are you ditching me, Mulder? We’re not out of the Bureau three weeks and you’re leaving me behind?” she teased.

“You know better than that,” he growled. “C’mon. Let’s finish out here and then hit the sack. I have a feeling we’re going to need the rest.”

Act 2 Scene 2

Devil’s Fork, N.D.

1:56 p.m.

Crofts’ trailer was located well out of the path of Charlie, Francis, Ivan, or any of the tropical terrors that had drunkenly rampaged a half-continent away. It was at least two or three states off Tornado Alley, a scuffed silver Airstream content to succumb slowly to the alternating forces of sun and ice on its scrubby lot next to the diner advertising Bison Wings and Custer’s Pie.

But, inside, the geologist’s aluminum home appeared to have sustained the ravages of a tropical storm, a cyclone, a minor force earthquake, and a guerrilla raid. Pizza boxes shared surfaces with plat books, Miller cans with mining maps. A pre-Jenny Craig Anna Nicole Smith displayed her ample charms between a sepia photo of a group of Appalachian miners and a danger sign that had once graced an orifice in the earth. An orange tabby slunk through the wreckage like a mobile safety cone, rubbing Mulder’s leg frantically as if in warning.

“You wanna beer? Cause I ran out yesterday,” Crofts said with casual regret.He was splayed across a dusty floral couch that may have constituted a mother or some aunt’s sad legacy. He obviously had not completed Jenny Craig, but he did own a masters’ in geology, hydrology, and engineering. “You wanna screw over Strughold? That I will happily assist you with.”

Crofts also possessed a pedigree from and nursed a white-hot grudge against Strughold Mining. When Mulder had cautiously approached him for background on his ex-employer, the sixty-ish man had gone on like a MUFON chapter president at a Roswell potluck. The ex-agent had hopped the first plane to Bismarck and made a bee-line forDevil’s Fork “I was hoping you might be able to tell me a little bit more about the company and particularly about the mines around here,” Mulder ventured once the tabby had settled across his lap. “There are reasons I didn’t want to do this over the phone.”

Crofts sucked at a right molar, regarding his visitor. “Yeah, I wouldn’t be surprised those bastards were up to something hinky. Festus, you piss on that man, I’ll line my bleeping boots with you!” Festus looked up, annoyed, and stretched across Mulder’s now-tensed thighs.

“See,” Crofts resumed, “most companies take a few short-cuts with the Bureau of Mining and Labor Department regs — not practical not to. Mining still leads the nation in occupational deaths, and that’s the biggest reason why. But the old kraut — Strughold — he wouldn’t have any part of it. Every safety guideline followed to the T, every ‘I’ on every piece of paperwork dotted. Or you were out on your ass, no exceptions. Now, that’s not being respectful of the law — that’s being scared shitless. Like Strughold and his gang had something to hide, something the feds likely would like to know about.

“Not to mention the occasional shutdowns for no reasons, the little ‘cultural  exchange’ tours we’d get coming through, the weird calls from–”

“Cultural exchange tours?” Mulder murmured, straightening. Festus growled menacingly, and he settled back into the cigarette-burned recliner.

“Mostly Japanese, some European guys. Older guys, mostly. Management always said they were investors, or foreign mining interests wanting to get a peek at the technology. Shit. They couldna cared less about the operations, and the middle management types acted as though Satan himself had sent them to shop for souls. And we were to keep a wide berth from ’em. I asked you if you wanted a Miller?”

“You don’t have any left. If I showed you some pictures, do you think you might be able to ID any of these VIPs?”

Crofts scowled and adjusted a cheek on the cushions. “I may look like an ad for malt liquor, bub, but I got a few hundred textbooks’ worth of mining know-how in this pickled brain. And I don’t forget faces — I wanna be ready when it’s time for Mike Wallace.”

“Mike Wallace? You mean about Strughold?”

Crofts held up a nicked finger and grunted as he climbed to his feet. He wobbled over to a glass-front bookcase and withdrew a dozen thick binders.  “Maybe Diane Sawyer — she’s got a nice rack. Mr. Mulder, I’ve made Strughold my business over the last 15 years since they canned my ass. You think I stuck around this rectal boil of a Podunk because of the galleries and the fine cui-zine next door? I could’ve got on with any other mining company  or university with my experience. But I knew something sucked at Strughold, and someday, I’ll have enough to take to CBS. Or ABC. Or maybe Joan Lunden.”

He dropped a half-dozen binders on the cushion next to Mulder, sending a cloud of dust aloft. Festus murmured and flexed his claws. Mulder began leafing through the scrapbooks filled with notes, clippings, records, photos, and Crofts’ obsession. He was halfway through a third binder when a grainy, grayscale image took his breath. A group of grubby men in coveralls were grinning, arms draped around shoulders, while an Asian man glanced at a piece of heavy equipment perhaps 10 feet behind them.

“Zama,” Mulder mumbled, looking up at Crofts.

“That Washingtonian for ‘Yowza?’,” the geologist queried.

“When was this photo taken?” Mulder demanded, turning thebook around.

“Oh, yeah — that’s one of the few times we got any of those goomers on film. I think that was back in ’63. Yeah, it was — I remember, ’cause Kennedy had just got shot about a month before. One of the guys had had his 20th anniversary with the company — there’s something to celebrate — and I took some shots. The Japanese guy wandered over, but he didn’t pay any attention to us. Or the camera.” Crofts edged forward. “Why? Who is he?”

“A very bad man,” Mulder stated. He was certain it was Zama, 30 years younger than when Scully had caught a fleeting glimpse of the scientist nearly a decade ago.

Crofts leaned back, rubbing his coarse chin. “That figures. Once, I was poking around somewhere I ‘spose I shouldn’t have been, and I see them trucking in some heavy gear, I don’t know exactly what, but it wasn’t any kind of mining equipment. Anyways, one of the crates busts open, and I catch this Japanese writing — some kinda logo — on thegizmo inside.

“Never did work out what they were bringing in, but a few years later, I saw that logo in one of the trade journals. Katsuhiru. One of the big companies that popped up after the Big War, major family dynasty. Big into pharmaceuticals, medical technology, that kinda thing. But here’s what’s interesting. The CEO of Katsuhiru back then had been one of Hirohito’s hotshot generals — may even have had something to do with Pearl Harbor, some say. We were more interested in Nuremberg than Tokyo after the war, in rounding up Hitler’s boys even while Uncle Sam was setting up housekeeping for their top rocket and missile guys. For all I know, Strughold himself was Der Fuhrer’s proctologist.”

“Zama’s a scientist,” Mulder muttered. “Smallpox…”

“There ya go — Mengele’s fraternity brother,” Crofts exclaimed, planting his palms on his thighs and jerking to his feet. “I need a brewski. You?”

“First, I need you to help me with something. You know all these mines around here, the local geology, right?”

“Like the back of my, uh, my…Yeah, I know my way around.”

Mulder pulled the Strughold card from his pocket. “So if I gave you some coordinates, you think you could show me where Strughold might’ve been able to build an installation without having to blast?”

“What? A new shaft?”

“No, bigger. An underground installation. Very likely several laboratories.”

“Sons of bitches,” Crofts grinned. “Got the freaking Fourth Reich right under my feet. Let’s flush the bastards out. Hey, you want a beer?”

****

The Dakota Consolidated Power “lineman” belched up another gobbet of onion and grease. He’d been unable to locate a Mickey D’s or a Hardee’s or even a Subway on the 135-mile trek to the universe’s dusty rectum, AKA Devil’s Fork, and dire hunger had driven him to an ill-advised Buffalo Patty Melt across the street from the geologist’s ramshackle Airstream.

“Got the freaking Fourth Reich right under my feet,” Crofts crackled over the lineman’s earphones. The balding, deceptively flabby man adjusted the parabolic microphone. The old drunk had been gunning for Strughold for years, but he was deemed essentially harmless and they’d decided he’d draw more attention dead. But when the FBI agent — the ex-agent — had contacted the geologist, they’d ordered the surveillance. Surveillance wasn’t The Lineman’s specialty, but he’d been ordered to stand down for the time. He could step out of this van, walk across to the trailer, and simply make the long-dispensable Crofts and the newly disposable ex-fed vanish with an absence. But for some reason, the FBI guy was off limits.

“Yeah,” Crofts grunted in The Lineman’s ear. “These are longitudinal and latitudinal coordinates, all right. I know where this is — just southwest of No. 76. Makes sense — company closed that mine years ago.”

“How heavy’s the security around the mines?” the ex-fed asked.

“Routine. You think those Nazis are gonna risk attracting attention by putting a squadron of commandos on a bunch of mined-out wormholes?”

“We still need to scout out the site…” Ex-fed’s voice dissolved into static, and The Lineman adjusted the tuning on the parabolic mike. “…is the problem.”

“Don’t get your federal-issue jockeys in a knot. I know a guy.”

“What does that mean?”

“You heard of slant-drilling? Well, I know a guy who can help us give No. 76 a good proctological exam…”

The noise amplified, and The Lineman ripped off his headphones, belching loudly in the stifled confines of the utility van.

Act 2 Scene 3

Scully’s eyelids drooped as she stared at the monitors. Small wonder that her eyes were getting tired; she didn’t remember blinking once in the last ten minutes. Vertical patterns, like spiky evergreens on the horizon of a shiny lake expanded and contracted with every syllable that resounded from the high-definition earphones. Men’s voices droned on, sometimes becoming louder with emotion, but they were all abstract shapes to her at this point. Something that needed identification, not the thoughts vocalized from a thinking human being. Her senses were going on overload.

How on earth did these guys do it? And still have enough brain power to bicker over the hierarchy of this project like a pair of old biddies? Still, when she and Mulder had to call in a favor, they were always there for them. This time, though, they’d called on too many resources, it seemed. Chuck Burks had arrived at the apartment early that morning, arms full of equipment meant for dissecting the tape found in Teena’s clock. On the second trip back from his car for another load, he’d arrived not only with more wires and speakers, but with Langly escorting him by the elbow, his own backpack full of gear slung over his other shoulder.

“Friend of yours, Agent Scully?” he’d said with a pleading grimace crinkling his face.

She’d asked–no, demanded–that Langly let him go.

“You know we could have handled all this for you, don’t you Scully?” Langly defended the reputation of the Lone Gunmen while attempting a puppy-dog gaze that only worked when used by Mulder.

Well, two heads were better than one, she thought silently as she ushered the two into the new living room. But when two great brains collided, some amount of repulsion was bound to occur. The gist of the afternoon was a little rocky. Burks was a workhorse, doing his best to get the job done. Langly watched Burks over his shoulder every so often to make sure he wasn’t gaining headway too far past himself. Every time Scully made a suggestion, Langly’s ears perked up to see how his rival would respond.

But despite a little healthy competition, like magnets, they sometimes came around and stuck, and they *were* making progress.

She’d zoned out so completely at one point, that she didn’t even notice Burks had left her side for a bathroom break and a fresh cup of coffee until she heard running water filling a clean pot in the kitchen. She must have dozed off. Pulling the headphones off, she stretched and meandered into the kitchen, following her nose to the beginnings of some fresh brew.

“What’d I miss?” she yawned, reaching into a yet to be unpacked box of mugs. There was one big mug she was looking for in particular. As she sifted through the newspaper- wrapped bundles, she noticed Burks’ voice was rising in excitement. Slowly, Scully noticed that she wasn’t giving him her full attention.

“What did you say?”

Politely as ever, Burks took a deep breath and repeated — slowly — his recap during Scully’s cat-nap. “Aside from your initial recognition of Spender and Klemper we’ve concluded for sure the other voice is definitely Strughold.”

“Okay, go on,” Scully prompted, re-encouraging Burks’ deflated enthusiasm.

“Well, Langly tracked down the rest of the scientists we thought would be most likely to take part in this conversation. I’d researched a little last night, which sped up our time considerably, but I was pulling things randomly without direction. Anyway–”

“–we’ve come up with the three most likely candidates,” Langly interrupted.

” Zama, Takguchi and Katsuhiro.”

“Yeah, and you’ll also be pleased to know that I’ve managed to clear up that section of tape you were reviewing, Dana.”

“Yes?” Scully stood to attention. She really didn’t remember where she’d left off. There was some background noise they had yet to determine. Whether it was important or not depended on what it turned out to be. Burks led the two others to the dining room table, where his equipment was stationed. He violently pulled the headphone chord from the side of the laptop, and turned up the external speakers.

“Now, I managed to lower Strughold’s voice, and zeroed in on the man in the background. The one we couldn’t understand because he was  mumbling, and because of the undetermined noise distracting it even further. Here’s what we get.”

Strughold’s voice contracted to a tone akin to someone speaking through a tin can far away, while the man in the background seemed to walk towards the recording device. In fact, it was Burks’ manipulation that had caused this translation. The man was still mumbling, but not because of a low volume to his voice. He had an accent — a French accent.

“I don’t recognize this man.”

“Unfortunately, neither do we.” Burks typed fluidly, opening some background windows on the screen, and tabbed over to the same section of tape, but at yet another frequency. “But I did get that noise to come through. Take a listen.”

The mysterious man’s French mumbles returned to their original state. What was mingled within his condescending tones was a light tinkle, like glass hitting glass. Then a long drawn out whine — very low, like a tuning fork. Then a tap against a solid surface, and then glass against glass again.

There was a pause where Strughold’s voice had been omitted, and as the mysterious man’s voice came into the frame again, there was the sound of pouring liquid.

“Sounds like someone was having a little musical recital on their crystal glass before taking a healthy sip. Know any French drunks in this secret all- powerful consortium, Scully?” Langly quipped, though he was almost certainly spot-on with the identification of the noise.

“Well, they’re not sending out biographies of themselves for us to stumble over. No, I don’t know who that could be. Any luck we can match his voice up?”

Burks wiped his palm across his ample forehead. “We’ve exhausted my picks. We’d have to cross reference relationships our ‘known’ men had with anyone who’d been professionally recorded. If this guy’s kept to himself, never been in the media, or on any kind of official recording, we’re out of luck.”

“Surveillance tapes?” Langly suggested hopefully.

“FBI’s out of this for the moment, remember, Langly?” Scully sighed, a little regretfully. “There’s no way of accessing that type of information without our badges.”

Burks replayed the selection again, the three of them intent on the voices and glass clatters. They’d all been concentrating so hard that when the trill of Scully’s cell phone sounded, she nearly fell out of the chair to go answer it. Burks got up to fetch his forgotten coffee, while Langly muttered at the screen and typed in some new configurations — much to the annoyance of Burks. Buthe let him go with it, pouring his coffee and returning to sit by him. They’d begun to accept each other as teammates, though grudgingly, and as Scully left them behind, any expected arguments were happily, nonexistent.

Mulder’s number shone in the ID screen of Scully’s cell phone, and she answered immediately. “Where are you?”

“Hello to you too.” The reception faded in and out. “–I’m on my way to the mining site, but we gotta make a pit stop first.”

“We? So you found Crofts?”

“Yeah. It’ll be a bumpy ride. How are things back at the homestead?”

“Oh, you know, Ma and Pa are hard at work on the field, and I’m just trying to hold everything together.” She glanced into the dining room again, happy to see both heads down and hard at work — together.

“Mulder,” she began, “It’s definitely a consortium meeting. Lots of familiar voices, and some not so familiar. It’ll still take some time to decipher who they all are, but our initial perceptions were right. This goes internationally.”

“Looks like Mom was leading us in the right direction toward something. What that was…”

“We’ll find out, Mulder. We’ve just got to put the pieces together.”

“Yeah, but are the pieces going to tell us the truth?”

They were both silent for a long three seconds. The truth was a heavy uncertain question that they needed answered. And what were they to do with it, once they had it?

“We’re coming up to our stop now, Scully. I’m gonna have to let you go.”

“You didn’t answer me before. Mulder. Where exactly are you?”

“Going to get a key, in a matter of speaking — or, what you could call a key, it seems. Gotta break into Strughold’s some way or another.”

Apprehensive to his lack of definition, Scully’s voice wavered. “Mulder, just be careful, will you please?”

“I will. I’ll keep you updated.”

“Be sure you do.”

Scully pressed the End button and stared at the dim lighting of the phone as if she were able to hold onto Mulder for a moment longer. Then Langly called urgently from the kitchen.

“You’re not going to believe this! Burks, can you confirm this please?”

He fast forwarded to the last section of tape — a section past the mysterious Frenchman, past the debates between consortium members. It was another strange voice that had seemed familiar, but could not be identified because he spoke in such swift German to Strughold. It came in like an afterthought, like the man had been absent from the meeting until that one point, or remained silent throughout.

“I will not give up a struggle already begun! There is no such word as capitulation in my vocabulary!”

“Now, listen to this,” Langly scrolled through one of the historical recordings set off to the side. “That’s it, isn’t it?”

Burks compared both signatures, layered them one on top of another, and listened carefully to his headphones. He looked up at Langly, his eyes frozen and clear. They exchanged a silent, fearful acknowledgement, nodded, then both turned to Scully.

“What? What is it?”

“December 1940, the Rheinmettal-Borsig Works,” Burks unplugged the headphones again, and handed them to Scully. When she’d fit them over her head, he cued up the tape. Snow erupted in Scully’s ears, and a fervent voice issued forth in German. It was the voice on the consortium tape. “I am not the man to give up, to my own disadvantage, a struggle already begun,” Burks simultaneously translated. “I have proved this by my life in the past and I shall prove to those gentlemen – whose knowledge of my life until now has been gathered from the emigre’ press – that I have remained unchanged in this respect.

“When I began my political career, I declared to my supporters – they were then only a small number of soldiers and workers – ‘There is no such word as capitulation in your vocabulary or mine.'”

“That’s not… It can’t be…” Scully whispered in a dry voice, as Der Fuehrer continued to regale the throng of good Germans.

She’d suddenly lost her appetite for coffee, and hoped Mulder kept his word and knew what he was doing.

******

Act 3 Scene 1

Strughold Mine No. 76

One day later

3:23 p.m.

“Thanks, but my tires don’t need rotating,” Mulder told Crofts’ friend.

The teen blinked, scratching a threatening zit in the epicenter of his scarlet farmer’s tan. He was about 5’6″, but muscular and square-jawed. He sported a Carharrt work jacket and a regulation Midwest jock buzz, both at odds with his thick, steel-rimmed glasses.

“No, sir, this ain’t no…” the boy grinned sheepishly, looking from the old geologist to the wheeled unit he’d single-handedly hauled from his Ford flatbed.

“Ground penetrating radar,” Mulder assured him with a disarming smile. “It emits low power pulses of electromagnetic energy over soil or other material, and ‘reads’ the reflected energy. The pulses are reflected at any change in material, so it provides a cross-sectional image of the material under the scan line. They use it for mapping geological features, finding buried utilities or abandoned fuel tanks, or to check for flaws in concrete foundations.”

“Damn,” the teen mumbled with respect.

“In addition to being the region’s top high school fullback and shortstop, Scott’s the pride of the Oscagaw County FFA and two-time winner of the North Dakota State High School Robotics Competition,” Crofts informed the agent with paternal pride. “He’s a born mechanical and electronic whiz. Got this GSSI SIR 2000 used at a tax liquidation in Bismarck, and had Scott pop the hood. He souped it up, added a gig of extra data storage, and boosted the scan rate to 75 — 11 more scans per second than the factory allowed.”

“OK, now you’ve exhausted my technological jargon reserve,” Mulder surrendered.

“What Mr. Crofts means to say, sir, is this baby’ll read through 100 feet of dirt, asphalt, concrete, or rock,” Scott ventured with a mix of home-trained politeness and adolescent bravado. “Me and the guys, we been using it to look for old Indian graves and such.”

“We’ll have it back by sundown,” Crofts promised, fiddling with the controls and examining the monitor mounted above the GPR unit.

Scott’s face fell. “Hey, I thought I was gonna help out. You said…”

“I said I needed your expertise,” Crofts said gently but firmly. “What we’re doing could get a little iffy, and your mom and dad would rip me limb from limb if you wound up at the sheriff’s substation. I’ll give you a full report tonight, OK?”

“Shit,” the teen muttered, but he turned and shuffled back to the pickup. After a few seconds, the truck powered up and kicked up gravel as it glided back up the county road.

“Good kid, but he’s got no grasp of his own mortality, on the field or off,” Crofts reflected.

“Mortality? I thought you said we could get in and out without being noticed.”

The geologist spat an unhealthy wad of phlegm into the scrubby grass by the roadside, and pulled a tarnished .38 from his windbreaker. “Oh, yeah, no problem there. We just got some rattlers in these parts, that’s all.”

“Let’s boogie,” Mulder sighed.

**

Crofts’ assessment had been accurate. As Mulder scanned the six-foot Strughold Mining fence 20 feet away, he saw no signs of electrification, video surveillance, or even human presence.

The pair had hiked about a half-mile from the road to a clearing Crofts had claimed to be “dead-bang centered” on the coordinates Mulder had been provided. The geologist had brought along a hefty pack that contained God knows what, and after seeing the gun, Mulder had begun to question his judgment in recruiting the disgruntled and possibly cracked scientist.

“So how’d you leave the company?” the former agent said.

Crofts’ eyes were plastered on the radar monitor as he wheeled the unit slowly over the bumpy terrain. “I told you Strughold was a maniac for the rules – didn’t wanna do anything to attract the regulatory guys. Well, a crew found one of the miners – Pete Fulger, nice guy, two kids – at the bottom of one of the shafts around here, skull cracked wide open. Bosses claimed it was an accident that Pete’s safety gear had malfunctioned, and the Bureau and OSHA signed off on their report. But there were some hinky elements to Pete’s death. He’d been asked to fill in the night before – that’s not standard practice, especially during a slow period, which was what it was.

“And Pete was kind of an odd duck. One of those, what do they call them? Conspiracy buffs, yeah.”

Mulder coughed.

“Yeah, he was convinced he’d seen a UFO out near the badlands when he was a teenager, and he was always going on about some shadowy conspiracy that was responsible for killing JFK, Martin Luther King, Bobby Kennedy, and John Belushi, for all I know. He told me one time he thought Strughold was a Nazi.” Crofts stopped, then moved on toward the fence. “‘Course, nobody argued with him, but he was talking about the real thing. Shit, probably turn out he was right.

“Upshot was, I suggested to the bosses we might wanna look a little deeper into Pete’s accident. Next thing you know, it’s going around I’m coming to the site drunk.” The geologist glanced up. “Well, maybe there was some truth to that, but I never let it affect my work, and ain’t it odd they can me right when I’m stirring up a hornet’s nest? Well, they didn’t can me, precisely – they let me ‘resign.'”

“Ever find out anything about your friend?”

“They wouldn’t even let me pack my own office – got security to bring it out to the house. That was when I had a house, a wife, and a job. I taught a few community college classes after that, but they’d put the word out on me and I couldn’t get hired as a safety guard at a sandbox… Whoa.”

Mulder moved forward as Crofts peered at the monitor. “What’ve you got? Looks like nothing.”

The geologist tapped the screen. “Nothing sometimes looks a hell of a lot like everything, Mr. Mulder. This land’s been through primeval plate shifts, prehistoric earthquakes and volcanoes, and the mother of all glaciers. It’s a vegetable stew of rocks, minerals, fossils, and soils. What you’re seeing here is solid, unbroken material, about 24 feet down. Nature doesn’t work that way. This is manmade – maybe the ceiling to that ‘complex’ you were talking about.”

“Can you tell how large the complex might be?”

Crofts began to move again. “See if we can’t lock it in.”

As he rolled away, Mulder flipped open his cell and punched in a pre- programmed number.

“Editorial,” Byers announced, brisk-but-amiable.

“It’s me,” Mulder greeted.

“Mulder, hey. You want Langly? He’s still working with Scully and Burks on those voiceprints.”

“Nah, you’re my corporate skullduggery guy today. What’s Katsuhiru do for you?”

“Excitement mingled with a shiver of apprehension. One of Japan’s powerhouse family dynasties. Major provincial power since the 16th century, hit big in the spice trade with the Europeans in the 1800s. Moved from medicinal herbs into pharmaceuticals in the 1930s. Company had a sudden infusion of new capital, as if their research was being underwritten by somebody else – somebody powerful. You could speculate on who, based on the changes that were happening in the world at the time, but I have seen some old photos of Yoshiro Katsuhiru picnicking with Emperor Hirohito and his clan. After the war, the family laid low, then came back in the 1950s with a few major products.”

“They still pushing pills?”

“High-tech Robin Cook/Michael Crichton-type stuff, Mulder. In the eighties, the company bought up some smaller electronics, robotics, and life sciences firms. There’s been talk Katsuhiru’s been looking at nanotechnology and biomechanical systems – you know, exosuits to help the disabled walk or workers to do more heavy lifting.”

Mulder’s imaginative mind whirled on a few other possibilities. “Any connections between Strughold Mining and Katsuhiru?”

Byers paused. “I’ll work on it. What? Frohike wants to know how things are going in the hinterlands.”

“Great. I’m scouting out underground labs with a borderline twelve-stepper who smells like kitty-litter, waiting for a battalion of Strughold security goons or copperheads to come swarming out of the woods. And the Buffalo Dog I had in Devil’s Fork is beginning to claw its way out.”

“Devil’s Fork?” Byers perked. “I envy you. They’ve had an unusually high incidence of UFO sightings over the last 30 years or so.”

Mulder flashed on the “lunatic” Pete Fulger and his “delusions.” ” If I see any EBEs, I’ll get an autograph.”

The ex-agent pocketed the phone, frowning at the blue hills on the horizon.

Then he turned, scanning the clearing.

“Crofts?” Mulder called.

“Here,” the geologist shouted. Mulder froze as he peered at his companion, nearly a football field away. “I haven’t even found the edge of the thing yet. And something’s playing havoc with my signal. Something big. Godzilla big. I think it’s down there.”

**

“You OK?” Crofts “whispered” loudly as he played his lantern beam around the tunnel walls.

Mulder nodded gently, although the low-grade buzzing in his head was beginning to amplify. “You sure this is a great idea, just the two of us?”

“We made it this far without getting our brains blown out, didn’t we?” the geologist replied cheerfully.

When Crofts suggested they investigate the abandoned No. 76, Mulder had begun to suggest reinforcements. Then he remembered that there were no reinforcements. When he and Scully had turned in their papers, they had lost whatever meager federal resources they’d been able to muster over the past decade.

For the first time since their defection from the Bureau, Mulder wondered if he’d closed off all avenues to The Truth.

“Ah hah,” Crofts announced triumphantly, waving the handheld PC he’d pulled out of his pack after they’d breached the mine’s shabbily blockaded entrance. He’d surprised Mulder with his PalmV’s radiodetection Dataviewer.

Engineers used them to locate buried pipes and cable; Crofts hoped to locate Strughold’s underground chamber, which Mulder had assumed would contain a Best Buyful of electronics and computer gear. “See, signal’s getting hot near this wall, which would be just about right under where I found the lab.”

“Great,” Mulder mumbled. A dull pain was beginning to prod at his left temple with a vague familiarity. But the ex-agent was intent on finding what was behind the rock wall Crofts was now caressing. “Now all we have to do is do a Hogan’s Heroes. You bring a sharp spoon?”

Crofts turned, grinning eerily in the ghostly lantern light. He reached into his bag and gently withdrew two bricks of what looked like gray Play Dough. “I can do better than that.”

“Oh, shit, Crofts,” Mulder groaned. “Where the hell did you get plasticine?”

“Remember — Montana’s just over the border,” the scientist noted. “Lotta disenchanted militia guys looking to grow organic potatoes instead of make pipebombs these days. Find some real bargains, if you know where to go. Now, why don’t you just back off around the corner there, less you want a Caesarian lobotomy?”

“Why don’t I just back off to New Jersey?” Mulder complained. An explosion surely would alert Strughold’s security, either inside or outside the “lab.” But he’d come this far for answers, so he retreated around the curve from which they’d come. Crofts whistled “Sweet Home Alabama” off-key as Mulder listened to him strategically place the plastique on the mine wall and install the detonator caps. Within five minutes, the geologist crouched beside him, spine to the wall.

Crofts nodded his head like a metronome. “Ten, nine, eight, seven…”

Mulder’s eyes began to ache, and he reeled against the wall as a penny nail seemingly shot through his cerebrum.

Crofts sounded excited, like a boy with a new X-Box. “Four, three, two, one…”

The explosion rattled through Mulder’s already tortured skull. Crofts straight- armed his companion to keep him back. The floor of the abandoned mine vibrated, and Mulder wondered if he would spend his last hours pinned under a pile of rocks listening to the dying ramblings of this lunatic.

As they heard the last rocks crumble from the wall around the curve, the geologist withdrew his arm and gestured Mulder forward.

The ex-agent halted as he peered into the new hole Crofts had created. Networks of ductwork, PVC pipe, and color-coded electrical and computer cable lie beyond the shattered rock, and beyond that a wall of spun fiberglass insulation.

“Yeah, buddy,” Crofts crowed. “Nailed that one. My guess is there ain’t much more than drywall beyond that.” He stepped gingerly through the debris and pinched off some insulation. “This has got to be at least 30 years old. Used to have this brand in my house, ‘fore I started living in a tin can. Well, let’s get to it.”

“I don’t think so,” a voice echoed behind them.

Mulder, head throbbing, wheeled around to see a stocky man in a jumpsuit and hardhat leveling a machine pistol at the pair.

“Shit,” Crofts spat. “You utility guys really take your jobs too seriously.” The “lineman” was flanked by two beefy men in security uniforms, also holding automatic weapons. Stitched above each of their breast pockets were the initials “SM.” Mulder, slightly delirious from the pain in his temples, almost giggled even as he realized the two Strughold Mining employees weren’t into sadomasochism.

“Toss the pack over here,” The Lineman instructed Crofts. “Search FBI,” he snapped at one of the security men.

Mulder placed his palms on his head as he was frisked. The guard removed the Glock from his waistband and returned to parade rest beside the utility man.

“Did Spender send you?” the ex-agent inquired calmly. “Or is Krycek subcontracting now? This whole thing was a trap, wasn’t it?”

The Lineman looked amused, and Mulder began to wonder if he and Scully had understood the playbook at all. “C’mon. I’d do you two right now, but I’ve got orders to give you the tour.”

“Orders from who?” Mulder asked. “Look, we’re dead anyway, right?”

“You’ve watched one too many old crime shows, Agent. Move it. You know, Crofts, you didn’t do a half-bad job finding this place, but you weren’t patient enough.” He coaxed the ex-agent and the geologist along the shaft, another twenty or so yards. The Lineman’s hand disappeared into a black niche in the rock wall, and the dirt floor slid open before Crofts’ feet. Mulder glanced down at the steps descending into what appeared to be a halogen-lit corridor.

“Going dowahhhhh–,” The Lineman began to order. Mulder’s head snapped around as the command died in a strangled yelp.

“Jesus,” Mulder muttered, his jaw dropping open. The Strughold gorilla who’d frisked him had The Lineman in a chokehold, his fingers holding the man’s jaw. But The Lineman’s head was turned 180 degrees from the norm, the skin of his neck tearing with the tension. The machine pistol fired once into the shaft floor as the newly dead man’s forefinger twitched in a final spasm.

As the jumpsuited corpse dropped to the ground, Mulder looked to the security men. Their faces suddenly went slack, and as Mulder’s blood went cold, they reformed into ghastly golem, runneled scars where their eyes and mouths had been.

He turned to Crofts, expecting an expression of utter shock. Instead, Crofts’ stubbled jowls morphed into a powerful square jaw, his bloodshot eyes sharpening and his cheeks gaining craggy definition. Mulder backed up a step, staring speechlessly into the familiar and forbidding face.

“Are you ready, Agent Mulder?” Jeremiah Smith asked, gently.

Act 3 Scene 2

“Extinction is the inevitable fate of all species,” Jeremiah began as they moved down the dimly lit corridor. Unmarked doors adorned only with card/keypads lined the hallway, but otherwise, there was no sign of life. As if the place had been abandoned, Mulder thought. Or, he ventured with a twitch in his gut, whatever work, whatever project had been conducted here had been completed.

“Earth itself has experienced five major extinctions over a four billion-year span, the last roughly 65 million years ago. In our world, three have occurred over as many years. That has enabled our species to evolve both physically and technologically well beyond your scientists’ greatest aspirations. But extinction is inevitable, as is every species’ conviction that it somehow can evade its extinction.

“We discovered the first evidence of our impending, inevitable extinction eons ago. It is now at least 12,000 years away, by our predictions, but to any sentient race facing its own obliteration, that is a matter of mere minutes. This event is expected to reduce our entire galaxy to a swirling mass of plasma that within billions of years will reform into a new galaxy.

“Facing this kind of extinction, a species has but one option: To find a new home, to explore, to colonize. Our intimations of mortality drove us to develop the technology that would allow us to look well beyond the confines of our doomed galaxy. In the eons we have searched, we have found hundreds of planets that could be adapted to our use, but only three other sentient species. One is long-extinct, extinguished by a meteoric event thousands of years ago. Another…”

It was the first time Mulder had ever heard signs of uncertainty, of fear, in the inscrutable Jeremiah’s voice. He felt a tension in the two speechless, faceless aliens beside him.

“Another species contacted our scouts,” Jeremiah continued. “Where your world has experienced five major extinctions and ours’ three, its world has faced only one such cataclysm. Imagine, if you will, a species that has existed for perhaps a billion years. We were children in its presence, but were foolish enough to imagine that because of its primitive form, we were its masters.

“We had discovered a fourth species of rudimentary intelligence — a promising species, but apparently an evolutionary dead-end. It lived on a world that had developed a rich biodiversity and the resources capable of sustaining an entire race for the foreseeable future. By this point, our society had divided along two major opposing lines of thought. Some believed we should adapt livable worlds for future colonization. Others believed with an almost religious fervor that the Earth was our destiny, that we had only to tap its lifeblood to ensure our survival.

“But our new allies in the universe suggested the Earth’s promise had yet to fully mature, that our technology could be used to hasten that maturation and fully exploit the resources we would need. We had the science. Our ‘friend’ had the ability to make that science a reality.”

Mulder froze, a vague horror suddenly blossoming within his chest. He recalled the experiments he’d witnessed in Tunguska, the living black oil that had enslaved men. He thought of the vast chasms in evolutionary theory, particularly in attempting to qualify the leap from Homo neanderthalensis to the Starbucks-sucking Homo sapiens.

“Those who favored more benign colonization were persuaded that this experiment in biological modification was a noble advance in science. That we were exploring genetic frontiers that could be used to help us survive on other worlds while fostering sustainable and intelligent life on Earth.”

“It wasn’t until our joint work was complete that some among us began to realize we had joined in an unholy alliance. But that was only the first of a series of unholy alliances we forged to ensure our immortality in the universe…”

Mulder’s effort to comprehend Jeremiah’s account had distracted him from the knife-like spasms of pain in his head. Here was The Truth, delivered to him in a single, brain-numbing package. And Mulder now realized he’d been stumbling largely in the dark for the past decade, within inches but somehow miles away from revelations that would alter the world as he knew it.

“Two worlds,” Jeremiah amended, jolting Mulder from his reflections. “I apologize; your thoughts are your own. But it’s crucial you understand completely that you may hold the key to the future of both your world and ours’.”

They had reached an unmarked steel reinforced door with a card slide and keypad.

“What’s in here?” Mulder rasped, mouth going dry as the headache returned full-force. “And why am I the key?”

The “security men” were silent, and Jeremiah turned to the door. He grasped the knob and placed a palm over the keypad, closing his eyes. Mulder heard a metallic click, and Jeremiah eased the door open.

The room beyond represented an astonishing feat of underground construction. It was easily the size of a small town, illuminated by huge, overhanging rows of lamps. Banks of computers were arranged in a rough half-ring around the room’s perimeter, manned by a skeleton crew in lab coats.

Mulder now realized the room was actually a hangar, larger than anything the military’s black ops cousins had ever conceived. But it was a hangar designed by a madman: Even from his remote vantage point, Mulder could see the shining floor ahead of the computer was unscarred, seemingly untouched. The walls and arena ceiling of the hangar were seamless.

“Should’ve hired a union contractor to build this place,” he murmured.

“Unless Wonder Woman’s renting the space.”

Jeremiah’s serene face did not shift, but there was the hint of a smile in his voice. “Agent Mulder, more than 1,000 human generations would be required to reach my solar system by conventional means. We would never have ventured beyond our system had we not learned interstellar travel necessitated movement across more than three dimensions.”

Mulder turned abruptly. “Interdimensional travel? Wormholes?”

“I’m afraid even Stephen Hawking would be unable to comprehend the concept involved. These men – the enemies of both our races – are playing with technologies at least 5,000 years beyond man’s scientific understanding.”

Mulder was full of questions, but his thoughts vanished as the floor beneath  him began to vibrate. Actually, it wasn’t a vibration – it was as if the hangar was shifting at some molecular level. The air suddenly seemed thick and liquid, and Jeremiah and his companions flickered in and out of existence before Mulder’s eyes.

Then, just as suddenly, huge, hot fingers squeezed Mulder’s brain. He reeled as the room wavered, electricity sizzling inside his skull and random, utterly alien perceptions firing through his subconscious. As he dropped to his knees, a scream rising in his throat, Mulder perceived a great shape shimmering into view on the hangar floor.

It was monstrous, created clearly by a race to which Man must seem an insect. Gray, metallic but somehow not. Heiroglyphs and symbols were etched into the craft’s hull.

“Agent Mulder. Do you recall the story of the white buffalo?”

Through pain-sharpened eyes, Mulder glanced up at the tall, rough-hewn but somehow dignified figure looming above him. “Mr. Hosteen…”

Albert Hosteen smiled fondly down at his old friend. “I told you once of the White Buffalo Woman, who brought the sacred buffalo calf pipe to the Sioux,” the old Native American windtalker continued. “Before she came, our people didn’t know how to live. They knew nothing. The Buffalo Woman put her sacred mind into their minds, and they knew how to live. When she had given this great gift to our people, she ascended into the skies.

“Since then, the birth of a white buffalo calf has been the most signific ant prophetic sign known to us. It is a sign to begin to mend life’s sacred hoop.Your return to this life years ago was marked by such a sacred birth.” Hosteen’s leathery cheeks twitched in a momentary smile.

“The Fox and the Buffalo.”

“I don’t…” Mulder whispered.

“They came as the White Buffalo Woman from the skies, to put their minds into ours. But the sacred hoop has been broken. You are the healer, the mender.”

“Mr. Hosteen…” Mulder rasped. But the old man was gone, replaced by hideous, nearly inhuman screams. He turned toward the hangar, where man and machinery were now one in a sheet of flame. Smith’s faceless companions played their flamethrowers over the shrieking technicians and guards, extinguishing their pain in an absurdist act of alien “humanity.”

A new wave of agony surged through Mulder’s brain as he tore his eyes from the nightmarish tableau. The mad images flashed through his mind, images from other worlds, other universes, and soon, he felt blackness descend as the hangar again began to shimmer.

“Agent Mulder?”

Mulder blinked. The pain, the madness, were gone. Jeremiah Smith’s fingers continued to massage his temple.

“What did you do?” the ex-agent asked. “Those people…”

“We must leave. You must leave. Come.”

Too numbed to speak, Mulder stumbled to his feet and followed Jeremiah back through the corridor and back into the dark shaft. Jeremiah seized his arm – the alien appeared to have no problem navigating through the murk. He guided the ex-agent through the turns, and eventually, they reached the light.

“Your friends…” Mulder suddenly recalled, blinking into the afternoon sun.

Jeremiah didn’t speak. Mulder clambered through the brush, wondering why the place wasn’t flooded with automatic weaponry and Kevlar. Even given the sudden and violent nature of the “massacre” in the hangar/lab, there had to be some sort of alert system, some sort of failsafe…

A steady thumping sound answered Mulder’s concerns. He looked to the horizon. Black helicopters, he mused. The oldest cliché in the book, at least Project Blue Book.

There was a trio of stealth choppers, no doubt purchased from some former police state or terrorist surplus outlet. The helicopters converged quickly toward the clearing beside the mine; Mulder hoped they hadn’t yet been detected.

“Agent Mulder,” Jeremiah called, tossing his reluctant colleague an AK he’d no doubt commandeered from the hangar. Mulder stared at the weapon for a second, then gripped the stock as the trio of birds sent up a duststorm.

Jeremiah and Mulder sprinted toward a thicket some 50 yards from the mine entrance. The snap of automatic gunfire quickened Mulder’s pace, and he wheeled around as the bark was stripped from an oak near his left arm and pulled off a volley of shots.

He turned momentarily to check on Jeremiah’s safety, only to find the alien standing, eyes closed, arms at his side.

“Jeremiah!” Mulder screamed, firing wildly at the dozen or so men now a few hundred feet away. He clipped one of Strughold’s men, and the rest fanned out. Mulder sprayed the landscape, taking out another one even as a round stitched into the dirt before his feet.

There were too many of them, he realized. Jeremiah had gone off somewhere, and he had no idea how many rounds remained in his clip.

Mulder had a feeling he was about to discover the ultimate Truth, and he replayed his last discussion with Scully.

As he pondered, the fan of approaching gunmen seemed to waver. The air grew suddenly still and silent, and Mulder turned back to Jeremiah.

Who was no longer there. “Great-” Mulder started to mutter as bullets whizzed past his head. The rest of his words were drowned out by the end of the world.

Debris buffeted Mulder as a massive blast blew the ground from under his attackers, and he rolled into a bed of dead leaves. A wave of liquid energy rolled through the air, and the airborne men simply dissolved. Mulder, squinting against the unearthly holocaust, felt radiating heat on his cheek, but Jeremiah apparently had guided him outside the blast zone.

Mulder buried his head in the leaves as clods of dirt pummeled him and shards of rock, vegetation, and god knows what else hurtled over his head. He remained horizontal, hands over head, even after the gale of matter died down. When he heard the soothing music of wild birds overhead, Mulder pushed cautiously to his feet and dusted leaves and soil from his jeans. He ventured up to the rim of the crater Jeremiah’s technology had created, unworried about radiation or airborne toxins. Somehow, he suspected there would be none. Mulder was as certain there would be no trace of Strughold’s secret facility.

Mulder’s colleagues would chalk this up to some buildup of underground gases or a negligent cache of long-forgotten TNT, possibly raising a few uncomfortable questions for Strughold’s “management.” To the civilian world, the crater near Devil’s Fork would become a new chapter in the growing tome of paranormal lore, along with crop circles, drop-ins, and doppelgangers.

As he crept along the perimeter of the hole, Mulder pondered the words of Albert Hosteen, if Hosteen indeed had been no manifestation of his temporary insanity inside the hangar. White buffaloes and witchy women.

Hands-on healing and Old Testament-style annihilation. Mulder realized he was in territory that tested even his receptivity to the unknown. He took one last peek into the blackness, then set forth on the long path home.

Epiglogue

Casey’s Bar

2 days later

5:32 pm

The bar was dark and musty, and as always, a dive that Mulder frequented during his lowest moments. This time he walked in not alone, but side by side with Scully. They found an empty booth and sat across from each other, the smooth dark wood beneath their hands. They each kept to their own side of the table, but the electricity between them, the connection from their shared anticipation of the meeting they were about to have, made them long to reach across the shiny surface and clasp their fingers together.

“You’re sure you want this?” Scully said suddenly, snapping Mulder’s gaze back to her instead of keeping a lookout on the front door.

“I want this,” he told her directly, without hesitation. “We need this. We owe it to ourselves and to the Truth and to your family… Bill… and mine. To my mother.”

Scully nodded. “Then, I want this too. I want you to know that.”

The door thumped closed, heavy from age and use. A pair of slick shiny shoes tapped their way over the worn floorboards and stopped at their booth.

“Sir, thank you for coming. Can I get you something to drink?”

“Just a beer, thanks, Mulder. Scully, did you order something already?”

Skinner asked, noticing the empty table.

Scully flashed a smile, then told Mulder, “Something strong.”

“I’ll make that two,” Mulder answered, “be right back.”

Skinner slid into the booth opposite Scully, leaving room for Mulder when he returned with the drinks.

“How’ve you two been?”

“Fine, sir,” she said, unconvincingly.

Skinner harumphed. “You know better than to pull that line on me, Agent.”

Scully flinched at him addressing her as Agent. “Sir, you do remember that we’re no longer in the Bureau.”

“Aren’t you?” he said with a smirk, just in time for Mulder’s return.

Scully caught her partner’s gaze, wondering if he’d had a conversation with the AD already, before even having this ‘informal’ meeting. She’d thought they were making this decision together.

When Mulder finally noticed her silent question, he took a quick glance at Skinner, who was rubbing his forefinger against his upper lip, and then back at the woman frantically trying to use some sort of telepathy to communicate with him.

“What?”

“Why don’t you tell me? Have we already told Skinner why we’re here?”

“We? Tell him…”

“Don’t distress yourself, Scully. It’s not Mulder’s fault. I am an investigator for the FBI too, after all. Unless, you’ve forgotten that?”

The two ex-agents sat silent.

“You want back into the FBI, right?”

Scully downed half her drink, coughed, and attempted to take control of the situation.

“Sir, well, after some careful thought and—” she fingered the rim of her glass, wishing she could drown herself now. Then with a tap of her fingers and a silent pleading toward her partner, decided to let Mulder do the talking.

“Sir, we want to come back. Now, the circumstances and reasons we had for leaving were our decision, and we thought they were right. But now… now, we realize the decision was a little hasty.”

“Hasty?” Skinner appraised the head on his beer, took a careful sip, and placed it down onto the exact center of his cardboard coaster. He chuckled.

“We need to be back in the FBI, sir,” Mulder said flatly.

“The FBI needs you, Mulder. And Scully. Which is why I thought it was a little ‘hasty’ of you to turn in your resignation letters.”

From the inside pocket of his blazer, Skinner pulled out two number ten envelopes, unmarked and unsealed. They held the resignation letters Mulder and Scully had given him a little more than two weeks ago.

Scully picked up the envelopes and peeked inside to make sure she knew what she was looking at. Confirming her assumption, she nodded at Mulder in disbelief, and they both turned to look at their former, and now current supervisor.

“We’ll chalk it up to bereavement leave,” Skinner offered. “As far as anyone at the Bureau knows, you’d taken a leave of absence. Those were never submitted, and your employment records are still safely where they should be… far away from the paper shredder.”

This time, Mulder downed his drink… the whole thing in one shot. “I guess we need the protection of the FBI more than we thought, Scully. Are we that predictable?”

“Maybe we’d better rethink this again,” she answered with a raised eyebrow.

Skinner just laughed at them both. He took one last healthy swig from his beer, and scootched Mulder out of the booth. He slapped his shoulder familiarly, and nodded a farewell toward Scully.

“Welcome back, agents.”

-end-

TITLE: Displacement

AUTHORS: The VS11 Producers

EMAIL: vs10producers@yahoo.com

RATING: PG-13

CONTENT: Case file; mytharc; VS11 Season Finale

SPOILERS: Allusions to mytharc episodes prior to

Season 8, specifically Piper Maru, and to

Virtual Season mytharc episodes “Legacy” and

“Camarilla.”

SUMMARY: When Bill Scully receives a transfer back to Washington DC, the Scully family is reunited. But reunions don’t always go as planned.

THANKS: To everyone who supports the Virtual Seasons, either by contributing their talent or their feedback, and to everyone who loves The X- files.

FEEDBACK: vs10producers@yahoo.com, thank you!

DISCLAIMER: The X-files, Fox Mulder and Dana

Scully don’t belong to us, they belong to Chris Carter, 1013 Productions and 20th Century Fox. We’re just borrowing them for a while.

DISTRIBUTION: This story belongs exclusively to the Virtual Season 11 site for two weeks; thereafter, please contact the Producers at the above address for permission to archive.

Displacement

By The VS11 Producers

Teaser

The letter came in a standard white number 10 envelope. It was embossed with the return address ‘Joint Chiefs of Staff’ in dark blue raised ink on the upper left hand corner. The addressee’s name was typed directly on the envelope, not typed to a label and stuck on. It was a letter of some importance. The young seaman who was responsible for the base mail that day took little note of the letter. He had several bags of mail to sort through and that was just one with a better address than most. He quickly tossed it in the slot for the executive offices and moved on to the next bundle. A machinist mate who’d been in a bar brawl and was serving out some time picked up the letter with a handful of others and walked the four blocks to the building holding the offices of the senior staff. He saluted the Ensign at the desk, who nodded and took the packet of mail from the  younger man. The envelope, in finer grade paper, caught his attention. With crisp military movements, the young Ensign got up from his desk and walked the letter into the inner office. He handed it to the officer seated in front of a window overlooking the base parade grounds.

“This just came for you, sir,” the Ensign said, saluted and returned to his desk in the outer office.

The officer pulled a long silver letter opener out of the top drawer of the desk and sliced open the letter. Carefully removing the single sheet of watermark paper inside, he unfolded the tri-fold and read the return address.

Joint Chiefs of Staff

The Pentagon

Washington, DC

April 20, 2004

Subject: Letter Orders

TO: Lieut. William Scully, Jr., USN

You will proceed at the earliest possible time by air transportation to Naval Headquarters, Washington, DC in connection with your new assignment with the Joint Chiefs. Priority AAA is assigned.

The officer looked further down the page and a smile grew on his face. It was everything he could do to keep from shouting out his excitement. Dropping the letter to the desktop, he reached for the phone and punched in a few digits. Waiting for the other party to pick up, he impatiently drummed his fingers, continuing to glance down at the letter on the desk.

Finally, someone answered.

“Baby, get all the boxes you can find down at the supermarket. We’re going home!”

Bill Scully laughed aloud at his wife’s screams of happiness. He picked up the letter again and read it to her.

Scully Residence

Baltimore, MD

April 24, 2004

“More sweet potato pie, Fox?” Maggie asked, not bothering to hear the reply as she scooped another piece onto his empty plate.

“I really can’t . . . oh, well, if you insist,” Mulder said in a lame attempt to ward off the calorie laden confection.

“Oh, right, like we aren’t taking the rest of the pie home with us, and I won’t find the empty pie pan in the sink tomorrow morning,” Scully scoffed, but her eyes were alight with affection and humor.

“Fox runs every morning, he needs those calories,” Maggie admonished.

“Listen to your mother, Scully. I need these calories,” Mulder mumbled around a fork full of pie.

“Talk to me when those calories catch up with your slowing metabolism, Mulder,” his partner returned with a quick swipe across his hair, messing it up in the process. She proceeded to load up the empty plates and serving dishes from their meal.

“That was wonderful, Mrs. — ah, Maggie,” Mulder said, remembering just in time that Margaret Scully was tired of him calling her by her formal title.

“Well, I’m glad you two got a chance to join me. It’s been so quiet in this house lately,” Maggie said, taking the last of the dishes into the kitchen. Just as she placed them on the counter the phone rang. Scully started the dishwater and Mulder followed them, retrieving a clean drying towel from one of the kitchen drawers. Secure in the knowledge that the clean up was in good hands, Maggie grabbed the phone on the third ring.

“Hello.”

Not wanting to eavesdrop, the two partners continued to wash and dry, Mulder pointing out invisible smudges of food that Scully’s washing had missed. She, in turn, tossed a handful of soap bubbles on his gray tee shirt. They both stopped short at the squeal that erupted behind them.

“When?” Maggie demanded, almost shaking with excitement. “Oh, I can’t believe this, this is wonderful! Yes, I’ll save the Sunday paper and maybe you can look on line. I’ll get you the web sites for some realtors in the area. Are you looking at Baltimore or somewhere closer to DC? Oh, this is such good news, can I share it? Well, Fox and Dana are here for supper. Oh, good, I’ll be sure to tell them. Yes, sweetheart, I can’t wait either. Give Bill, Matty and baby Clara my love!” When she turned, blue and hazel eyes exchanged a glance before the partners went unobtrusively back to their work. Maggie smiled and walked over to stand behind them. She wrapped an arm around her daughter and Mulder. “That was Tara. She had the best news.”

“What’s that, Mom?” Scully asked, handing Mulder a glass salad bowl.

“Bill finally got the transfer to the Pentagon! They’re moving back here in a couple of weeks!”

The sound of breaking glass startled all three people. They looked down as one at the now shattered salad bowl that had slipped from Mulder’s fingers as he heard the news.

“Oh, god, I’m so sorry, Maggie. I’ll buy you a new one,” Mulder sputtered, fishing pieces of broken glass out of the empty side of the double sink.

“Fox, it’s an old dime store bowl. I have plenty more just like it,” Maggie shooed him off. “Dana, get me an oven mitt so I can get the bigger pieces. Fox, honey, move aside. I’m an old pro at broken dishes.”

Scully handed the oven mitt to her mother, and quickly gathered up a discarded cereal box out of the recycle bin. “Will this work, Mom?” she asked.

Maggie smiled as she placed a handful of glass inside the box. “Just like old times, isn’t it? How many dishes did Charlie break when you two did clean up?” The older woman was so engrossed in her efforts that she didn’t notice the grimace on her daughter’s face. “You two run along. I’ll just be a minute. I want to see that movie you brought. I just love Jack Nicholson and Diane Keaton is so much fun to watch.”

No more was said about Bill’s transfer for the rest of the evening. The movie ended and the two agents got their jackets. “Dinner was wonderful, as usual, Maggie. Sorry about the bowl,” Mulder said, giving the woman a peck on the cheek.

“Oh, it’s perfectly all right, Fox. Now you really are part of the family,” Maggie teased, pressing a foil covered pie pan with the remains of the sweet potato pie into his hands. “Drive safely, and call me the minute you get back to the apartment. You know how I worry.”

“I will, Mom,” Scully promised.

“Oh, and Dana, don’t forget to mention to Fox about the plans for the summer,” Maggie shouted as they made their way down the sidewalk to the car. “With Bill coming home, I think we can really make it happen.”

“Plans?” Mulder asked, fishing out his car keys. “I will, Mom. I’ll call you in a bit.” Mulder detected an exasperated tone to his partner’s voice.

“What’s this all about, Scully?” he asked again, starting the car and pulling out of the driveway.

Scully sighed and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “Mom mentioned it earlier, when you were in watching the baseball highlights. She wants to  have a family vacation. Go somewhere, rent a cottage on the beach, all of us together.”

“All of us . . . as in. . .?”

“Bill, Tara, Matty and little Clara, Charlie and his family . . .”

“Scully, you can’t be serious. Besides, you don’t think Charlie would show up for it, do you? I mean, he’s made a point of avoiding all the other family gatherings of late.”

“I know, Mulder, I know. I don’t know what to tell you. Sometimes, when Mom gets on these ‘we’re all one family’ kicks I just want to grab her by the shoulders and shake some sense in to her.”

“She doesn’t understand, Scully. It’s not her fault.”

“Maybe it’s our fault, or more my fault. Maybe I should just tell her.”

“Tell her what?” he asked apprehensively.

“Tell her that her son, her baby, was the man responsible for putting you near death last fall. That he’s connected to a vile network of men who are little more than monsters, who kill and maim and torture at will. That he’s not the golden boy she envisions him to be.” Anger flushed her cheeks when she finished.

Mulder was silent for a while, letting her calm down. Finally, he took his eyes off the road for just an instant to meet her gaze. “It would kill her, Scully. You know that. And we’re not entirely sure . . .”

“You’re not entirely sure? Mulder, how much proof do you need?”

“You’re taking Krycek’s word for this, you know. And he’s not the most reliable person. I can tell you that from personal experience. Me and a bunch of Siberian cockroaches.”

“Krycek didn’t need to tell me that in an airbase in New Jersey my brother shot you, held me at gunpoint and threatened to kill me because I saw that with my own eyes. Krycek, by the way, saved both our lives on that night!”

Mulder just stared at her, the silence weighing heavy between them. She could read his thought easily.

Scully blew out a breath. “I know, I can’t tell her. I can’t tell her any of this.”

“Not to mention how much joy there’d be at any summer cottage where Bill and I were forced to co-exist,” he added.

“Look, Mulder, now that Bill and Tara are going to be living near us, you’re going to have to get used to the idea that you’re going to spend time with them. I know it won’t be pleasant — at first — but I expect you to make an effort.”

“We’re all one big family?” Mulder asked, requoting her mother.

Scully nodded emphatically. “Whether we like it or not,” she said sternly.

Mulder just smiled and shook his head. “Yes ma’am!” he said, giving her an abbreviated salute.

Act I Scene 1

Bill Scully Residence

Fairland, MD

May 16, 2004

12:53 PM

Scully heaved a deep, soul-cleansing sigh. Bill and Tara’s house was gorgeous. In the limited time there’d been to house hunt; Bill had done very well for himself. He’d managed to snag a freshly renovated, three-level Colonial in Fairland, Maryland. It had four bedrooms, one and a half baths, new kitchen and fully finished basement. From the deck out back, the view was both breathtaking and serene, a sharp contrast to the tension-filled aura radiating off her older brother since she and Mulder had arrived.

For the past 3 hours Scully had watched the two men size each other up like a couple of junk yard dogs. The air was thick with testosterone and Scully had sought a few minutes respite before tackling the upstairs bathroom. God, she was tired of her brother’s same old song and dance act. Bill had treated Mulder like last week’s garbage from the moment they had walked in the door. Ignoring him whenever possible and gracing him with Neanderthal-like grunts when forced to acknowledge his presence or instruct him on the destination of a packing crate or item of furniture.

And Mulder, to give credit where it was due, had taken it all on the chin. Scully felt her jaw tighten. Bill could be such a bastard.

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”

Scully turned at the sound of her mother’s voice and pasted a smile on her face. “I was just thinking the same thing, mom.”

Maggie moved closer to her daughter and wrapped an arm around her shoulders, pulling her close.

“Really? You looked more like you were expecting an audit from the IRS.”

Scully huffed a quiet snort and slowly shook her head.

“Is everything all right, Dana?”

“I was just thinking about Bill.”

“That’s the reason for the sour look on your face?”

Scully smiled and dropped her chin to her chest. “Where are Tara and the kids?”

Maggie laughed softly. “You’re changing the subject, Dana.” She pulled her arm from around her daughter’s shoulders and turned her so they were looking at each other.

“It’s Fox, isn’t it?”

Scully studied her shoes for a second then met her mother’s gaze, pausing only slightly before letting the dam break.

“No, mom. It’s not Mulder. It’s Bill. His attitude. How long do I have to wait before he accepts the fact that Mulder and I are together? I had to force Mulder to come here today because he didn’t want to cause any trouble. Mulder is a part of who I am, mom. And if Bill can’t come to terms with that, then…” Scully thrust her chin forward, defiance flashing in her eyes. “Then he is going to have to exclude me from family gatherings as well.”

Maggie stared out across the back yard. A gentle breeze tickled the treetops lining the rear chain link fence. A bird flew overhead, circled once then disappeared behind the next-door neighbor’s roof.

“Dana, when Bill was a little boy, your father drummed into him the importance of responsibility. He was the eldest and with your dad away so much of the time, Bill was expected to take care of us in his absence. He’s always taken that responsibility seriously. You know he loves you. He only wants to make sure you’re happy.”

“I *am* happy, mom. Mulder is the best thing that’s happened to me and I won’t let Bill jeopardize what we have.”

Maggie smiled, reached out and pulled her daughter into a hug. “I’ll talk to him. I can’t promise anything, but I’ll try. You know how stubborn he gets.”

Scully nodded into her mother’s shoulder.

“Mom? Dana? Is something the matter?” Tara joined the two women on the decking.

“Everything’s fine, sweetheart. Dana and I were just having a little mother, daughter chat.”

“I’ve fed the kids and thought the rest of the troops might be hungry. There’s soup and sandwiches in the kitchen.”

Scully stepped back from her mother’s embrace.

Maggie pushed up her sleeves, squeezed her daughter’s shoulder and headed towards the door, “I’ll just wash up then come and help serve lunch.”

Tara hesitated, eyeing Scully warily. “Are you sure everything’s okay, Dana?”

“Everything is fine. I’ll go let the men know lunch is ready.”

Mulder hauled another box from the back of the van and headed towards the house. Bill met him in the doorway coming from the other direction. The two of them did a quick shuffle, both blocking the other, until Bill finally grabbed hold of the box and shoved Mulder to the side. “That one goes upstairs. Matty’s room.” Without another word, he stepped past Mulder and headed for the truck.

“Ja Herr, mein Kapitaen. Whatever you say.” Mulder muttered under his breath, fighting the urge to rearrange the box over Bill’s head.

He moved into the house and headed upstairs. The house was nice. Big, airy and light but as far as Mulder was concerned it had 2 flights of stairs too many. His back was killing him and he wondered briefly if it was fate that had directed him to always pick up the box for the top story or whether Bill had strategically placed them so that Mulder would grab them first. He smiled cynically to himself. Bill was definitely bringing out the worst in him today.

“Ah, there you are.”

Scully’s head appeared over the top of the box. “Where are you heading with that?”

“Matthew’s bedroom.”

Scully stepped back to let him pass, then followed him down the hallway.

Mulder dumped the box alongside all the others and slowly straightened up, hands pressing against his lower back. He felt another pair of hands join his then gently remove them and turn him around.

“Bill’s really been giving you a work out, hasn’t he?”

In more ways than one, Mulder thought to himself but refrained from voicing his thoughts when a closer inspection of Scully’s face told him she wasn’t just referring to the amount of times he’d hauled boxes up the stairs. He knew she knew how Bill had been treating him. He also knew how much it upset her. Mulder pulled Scully to him, encircled her in his arms and kissed the top of her head.

“Hey, it hasn’t been that bad. I’m still standing and he hasn’t tried to take a swing at me. In fact in Bill terms, he’s been quite amicable.”

“You’re a bad liar, Mulder. I’ve seen the way he’s been acting.”

Mulder felt Scully shudder against him and he pulled back, tipping her chin up with his index finger so she was looking at him. There were tears in her eyes but she tried to hide them behind a weak smile. “Scully, I know Bill hates me. And in a lot of ways he has every right to, but. . .”

Scully’s forefinger over his mouth silenced him. “No.” She shook her head vehemently. “He doesn’t have the right. Ignorance does not excuse bad manners. He’s never bothered to take the time to really understand what you do. What *we* do. I won’t make excuses for him, and I don’t want to hear you making them either. I’m sorry I insisted you come with me today. I’d forgotten what a total ass my brother can be.”

Mulder clasped her face between his hands, gently caressing her cheeks with his thumbs.

“Have I told you lately how much I love you?”

This time when she smiled it was genuine. “A girl can never hear that too many times, Mulder.”

“Good.” Then he leaned down and kissed her on the lips, long and deep and hard.

“Oh for god’s, sake!”

Bill’s voice pulled them apart as effectively as a bucket of cold water. Mulder turned self- consciously towards the man standing in the doorway, and placed his hands discreetly in front of his suddenly too-tight denim jeans. “It’s bad enough that you brought him to my house, Dana, and now you’re carrying on in my son’s bed room like a couple of horny teenagers? What the hell were you thinking?” With a melodramatic flap of his hands, Bill turned on his heel and stormed down the hallway.

Scully stood and stared, mouth gaping and cheeks burning as she tried to process what had just happened. A split second later, her brain started functioning again, sending a heavy dose of outrage coursing through her body. She’d only managed one step towards the bedroom door when Mulder’s hand wrapped around her arm, tugging her back. “Don’t, Scully. It’s not worth causing a scene over.”

Scully glared at the hand encasing her upper arm, then aimed twin blue lasers at Mulder. Yanking hard to pull herself free she said, “The hell it’s not!” And stalked after her brother. She caught up with him in the living room before he could make his escape downstairs. Through a red-hot haze of anger, Scully vaguely registered the presence of her mother and sister-in-law in the kitchen as she passed by. “What the hell was that all about?” Scully hissed, grabbing her brother’s wrist and turning him around to face her.

“You don’t want to go there, Dana.” Bill threatened.

“How dare you talk to me like I’m some kind of recalcitrant child– ”

“Don’t lecture me on how I should treat you. If you have no respect for yourself, then at least try and find some respect for my family. What if Mathew had come in and seen that…” He waved his hands in the air searching ineffectually for the right description. “Seen *him* all over you like a praying mantis.” Bill swiped a hand across his brow and dragged it over his face. “Why did you have to bring *him* with you today? You know how I feel…”

“Yes I do know how you feel! You’ve made it pretty damn obvious to everyone what an ignorant pig you are. Mulder and I are a couple, Bill. How many different ways do I have to explain it? Either you accept him as part of my life or you exclude both of us.”

“Jeezus, Dana.” Bill shook his head in denial then lowered his voice, spitting his words through clenched teeth. “I thought you were a smart woman. How can you let that lunatic pull the wool over your eyes like he has? He’s a fruitcake! He believes in *aliens* for Christ’s sake!”

“Bill!” Maggie Scully appeared from the kitchen wiping her hands on a towel and staring at her eldest son in disbelief. “What’s going on?”

Scully glared at her brother, her chest heaving and pulse pounding in her ears. He glared just as menacingly back at her.

“Dana? Are you going to tell me what the problem is?” Maggie stood beside her daughter.

“You know what the problem is, mom. It’s the same problem there is whenever Mulder and Bill are within shouting distance of each other.”

Scully turned to face her mother but it was the tall figure standing behind her mom that caught her attention.

Mulder looked at Scully, silently pleading with her to let it drop. When he eventually said something, it was to Maggie. “I’m sorry, Mrs….. um, Maggie, I’ve just remembered something I had to have ready for AD Skinner tomorrow.” He dug the car keys out of his pocket and turned to Scully. ” Call me when you’re done, Scully, and I’ll come pick you up.”

Scully straightened her shoulders, thrust out her chest, then looked at her mom and her brother. “That won’t be necessary, Mulder. I’m done now.” She slid past her mother and joined Mulder. “Let’s go.”

“Scully…” Mulder tried to draw her back but she kept walking, jogging down the stairs to the front door. Mulder had no choice but to follow. When they got to the car Scully stood by the passenger side, hands on hips and chewing on her bottom lip, staring along the road.

Mulder unlocked the doors and waited for Scully to say something. But it was her mother’s voice that eventually broke the silence.

“Fox, Dana, wait up.” Maggie Scully stopped beside her daughter. “Don’t go. We can fix this.”

Scully sighed. “No mom, it’s too late. Bill’s had plenty of chances to come around. He just won’t try. Somewhere, I’ve got to make a stand.”

Mulder leaned on the roof of the car, “Scully, there’s no reason for us both to go. I’m the one he doesn’t want here. You stay and I’ll come back for you later.”

Scully’s answer was to give her mom a hug.

“We’re going. Both of us. I’ll call you tonight, mom. I love you.”

Maggie pulled her daughter closer. “Love you too, honey. I’ll talk to Bill and try and make him see reason.” She let go of Dana, and then turned to Mulder. “I’m sorry, Fox. You take care. Drive safely.”

Mulder offered a half-hearted smile and climbed into the car.

They’d traveled nearly 8 miles and neither of them had uttered a word. Scully had always had more staying power than Mulder when it came to maintaining the ‘silent treatment’ and this time was no different. He’d reached the end of his endurance about 5 miles back and now he just had to say something.

“Scully. . . I . . .” But he really didn’t know what he should say. He should have felt guilty, but he didn’t. He’d had Bill Scully up to his eyeballs and it was about time someone stood up to him. In a way he was secretly pleased that Scully had let him have it. But habit dictated that he accept at least some of the blame. “I’m sorry things turned out the way they did.”

Scully didn’t answer right away. She stared out of the side window, her right elbow perched on the edge of the door where glass met upholstery and  her hand cupping her forehead. When she moved it was sudden. She twisted in her seat so she was looking Mulder.

“You know, Mulder. I’m not in the least bit sorry. Bill has to learn he can’t keep pushing me around. Or you for that matter. At least this should get the point across.”

Mulder chewed on his lip briefly, then said, “It must have been a shock when he found out.”

“Found out what?”

“About you and I living together.”

“Mulder, we are not *living* together. You needed a place to stay and I had space.”

“Scully, we *are* living together.”

“You make that sound like a bad thing.”

“No! God, no! Far from it.”

“I sense a ‘but’ coming.”

Mulder drew in a deep breath. “It’s just… maybe till things cool down with Bill, it might be best if I found my own place.”

“Bill’s an asshole, Mulder. His opinion doesn’t matter to me.”

Mulder didn’t believe that for a second. With Melissa gone, and Charlie exposing himself as one of the main players in the consortium they’d been fighting against for the past eleven years, it had to hurt to have her only sibling questioning her wisdom in choosing him as her ‘significant other’.

“Scully, all I’m saying is don’t write your family off on my account.”

“You’re part of my family, now, Mulder. And Bill needs to accept that fact.”

This argument was going around in circles. Mulder had already made up his mind. At the earliest opportunity he’d find himself another place to live. He refused to be the cause of a rift between Scully and her brother.

Act I Scene 2

May 17, 2004

The Pentagon, Washington, DC

8:30 a.m.

Bill loved seeing his family, his mother, and even his baby sister — even if she had dragged along the twisto-strango she insisted on forcing into his life. But the calm order of a military base was really home to him. Floors were polished like glass, a salute at every entryway; yes, he belonged here. He deserved to be here, and it was only a matter of time that he would not be a new transfer any longer, but a respected part of this facility. As it should be.

As he walked down the hall with the ensign to his new office, even the tap of their heels down the corridor sounded neat and clean. Nice, orderly, quiet. “Here’s your office, Commander Scully,” the ensign announced as he swung open the door for his superior. Beyond the open door, Bill could not believe his own eyes. He’d imagined a nice office, a window, big desk, plenty of room in order to go about his daily duties. The kind of office a Commander warranted. What lay before him was nothing of the sort.

It was like Ali-Baba’s cavern, piled high with objects, only not treasures, but stacks upon stacks of files, memorabilia and boxes of random outdated office supplies. It was a complete and utter mess. “Welcome to the Pentagon, Commander,” his companion leered at him. The young man could barely hold the tittering back past his lips. “Looks like Commander Keenan left a little bit of himself behind for you. I’m sure you’ll figure out where to pick up . . . eventually. Scanning room’s down on the first floor when you need it, Sir.”

Bill gaped at him in shocked amazement, then back at the storage unit of a space that was his office. Clearing his throat and tucking his cap beneath his arm, he stood up straighter than the Washington monument. “Dismissed,” he boomed a little more loudly than was necessary. A quick salute and the ensign was marching away dutifully down the hall. Bill didn’t watch him go, but instead waited until the sound of tapping heels disappeared, and he was left alone.

He stepped into the office, carefully tip-toeing around the clutter, to make his way to the small window. He pulled violently at the chord for the wide-slatted metal blinds, slicing the closeness of the office open with the bright morning sunlight. Grumbling inwardly, he threw his cap onto one of the lower stacks of folders and planted himself into the old leather desk chair. Upon landing, a spew of dust motes shot out from the cracks in the leather and danced in the air before him. He sighed heavily in exasperation and immediately sneezed in reaction to the dusty air.

Apparently, he hadn’t left all the moving and organizing at home for the weekend. He rubbed at his eyes impatiently and then began sifting through the first stack of papers.

“What a pack-rat,” he complained, finding that three quarters of the items were expendable fax interactions, newspaper clippings or scribbled illegible notes. Was he meant to decipher all of this? It was going to be a long day.

Act I scene 3

Georgetown

May 18, 2004

6:30 am

Mulder drew in a deep breath, stretching his hamstrings and bending over. It was a beautiful morning in Washington. The azaleas were in full bloom, tulips fought with  waxwing begonias in the front yards of most of the apartment buildings nearby. He finished his warm up and started out at an easy trot, heading for the track just a few of blocks down the street. His mind kept circling back to the conversation he’d had with Scully a couple of nights before. Of course, conversation was the polite way of saying it. In reality, it had more bite to it than a normal conversation. He knew the minute Scully’s mom had announced the impending arrival of William Scully, Jr. on the east coast that his relationship with Scully would end up the worse for wear. Although theirs was a bond stronger than any force in the universe, his own failed family unit had taught him that blood wasn’t always thicker than water. He couldn’t stand by and watch Scully pull away from her family. He couldn’t live with the guilt he’d bear if that were to happen.

The track was empty, as always. It was easy to pick up speed on the cinder roadbed and just let the rhythm of his feet hitting the ground, his muscles stretching and contracting take all haunting thoughts from his mind. He lost himself in the simple endurance test of drawing air into his lungs, keeping his feet moving forward. Sweat stung his eyes, but he wiped at it absently and pushed himself a little harder.

A tiny voice that could have been Scully’s chided him for punishing himself for just being in her life, but he brushed that aside, too. He was running, running from Bill Scully, running from Scully’s anguish over her brother’s inability to accept Mulder in her life, running from all the pain inflicted by caustic comments and dismissive looks.

When his legs would carry him no further, he stopped and bent over, sweat pouring off his hair. His lungs burned, his leg muscles burned, but he welcomed it. Standing erect, he shook out his arms and jogged around the track to cool his overheated limbs. Mulder didn’t need to look at his watch to tell it was time to head back. The chimes at Georgetown University told him it was 7 am and he needed to hit the showers. He wiped his face off on the tail of his Hoyas tee shirt and started down the sidewalk to Scully’s apartment. The sign took him by surprise. “For Rent” it read in front of a quaint duplex, set off from the sidewalk with a wrought iron fence. The trees along the boulevard made the house seem like an shady, welcoming oasis. He stood for a moment, just looking up at the windows.

“It’s a beauty, ain’t it?” a just past middle aged man said suddenly behind him.

Mulder turned his head to address the gentleman. “Yes, it sure is. Are you the landlord?”

“Landlord, owner, interior decorator. At least the parts my wife lets me decide,” the man said with a chuckle. “Jake Timmons, JT Real Estate,” he added, shaking Mulder’s hand.

“Fox Mulder.”

“Are you looking for a place, Mr. Mulder? Hey, you aren’t the new associate professor of history over at GU are you?”

It was Mulder’s turn to chuckle. “Not guilty.  I’m an FBI agent.”

“Oh, well, the Hoover is just four Metro stops up the way. Not even a bad walk on nice days. Want to come in and take a look?”

Mulder looked up at the house. He really should be getting back, taking his shower, getting ready for work. Something about the townhouse was calling his name. He stared off down the sidewalk toward Scully’s apartment and then over at Mr. Timmons, who was standing there patiently, an expectant grandfather look on his face.

“Sure, no harm in looking,” Mulder said with a rush.

Mr. Timmons beamed. “That’s the spirit! C’mon, won’t take a minute. I know you’re probably in a hurry to get to work.”

It was cooler inside and Mr. Timmons flicked on lights as they went. The foyer was small but functional, with a built-in coat rack and mirror off to the side. A living room with a full bow window overlooking the street was through an archway to the right. Straight ahead was the stairway going to the second floor. Next to the stair was a narrow hall that led to the dining room and kitchen at the back of the house. “It’s got two bedrooms, one and a half baths. The laundry room is off the kitchen. Basement is a crawlspace, but there’s plenty of storage room in the attic,” Mr. Timmons rambled on as they walked through the downstairs. The dining room had a wooden chair rail of dark wood and varnished woodwork around the window and doorways. The kitchen had a fairly new stove, a matching dishwasher and a side-by-side refrigerator with ice and water in the door. Two doors were at the back of the room, one leading out to the postage sized back yard and the other to the laundry room, which doubled as a pantry with a floor to ceiling shelving unit along one wall. Mr. Timmons pointed out the half bath off the dining room and then took Mulder on a tour of the upstairs. Inside the first door at the top of the stair, a large claw-foot tub with shower dominated the bathroom. Two bedrooms, one with a window seat that matched the bow window from the living room, finished off the upper story. A pull down ladder gave access to the attic, which was large enough for Mulder to stand. When they had made their way back to the first floor, Mr. Timmons smiled at Mulder. “Well, what do you think?”

“I think it’s very nice, but definitely out of my price range,” Mulder admitted.

“What are you paying now?” Mr. Timmons asked.

Without hesitation, Mulder told the man what he’d been paying for his apartment in Arlington.

The older man beamed. “Would you be willing to go an extra 100 a month?” he asked.

Mulder was caught completely by surprise. “You’re kidding!”

“No, not at all. This place was my wife’s mother’s. It’s paid for, all we pay are taxes. We’re looking for quiet, mature renters.”

Mulder thought back to his last apartment. Somehow he doubted that any of his neighbors or even Mr. Szflarski would accuse him of being quiet. Mature, that was a matter of opinion, too. But the more he looked around the duplex, the more he liked it. It was nothing like his old apartment. If he were honest with himself, it was more the kind of place Scully would pick. But then, that was the real test, if he could get Scully’s approval. It was the only way she’d accept his moving out.

“Mr. Timmons, I’d really like a friend of mine to have a look at it, if you don’t mind.”

“Don’t mind a’tall. I just put the ‘for rent’ sign in the window, last renters bought a place out in Prince Georges’ County. They had twins last month and this place was just a little too small. Say, how about you bring your friend by after work? Give me a call and I’ll meet you here,” he said, pulling a business card out of his wallet. “My office is just up the street on M.”

Mulder took the card and then realized too late he didn’t have a place to put it. Self- consciously he leaned over and tucked the card in the instep of his running shoe. “I’ll give you a call.”

“Sounds like a plan. I’ll see you this afternoon then Mr. Mulder.” Once on the sidewalk, the two men shook hands once more and Mulder trotted off down the street, glancing once more over his shoulder at the duplex. Later that afternoon Scully wandered from the living room to the dining room and completed the circuit through the kitchen. She opened the cabinets, knelt down to inspect the pipes under the sink and peered into the broiler unit of the stove. Mulder felt like hiding his face behind his hand, but Mr. Timmons seemed to take it all in stride. She tested the banister going to the second floor, turned the water on full blast in the bathtub and flushed both the upstairs and downstairs toilets — twice each. The more she did, the more Mulder cringed, but trailed behind her like a toddler after his mother at a sidewalk sale. Finally, when he was just  about to scream, she nodded and headed down the stairs.

“Parking?” Scully inquired.

“Off street. There’s a one car garage in the back, but there’s space for two cars to park off the alley.”

“Are any utilities included?” she asked.

“Nope, that’s the responsibility of the renter,” Mr. Timmons said with a smile. “It’s got a new heat pump in the basement, great fuel efficiency.”

“Monthly heating and cooling costs?” Scully fired off.

Mr. Timmons handed her a printout from the District light company.

Scully nodded as she reviewed the figures. “Garbage pick up?”

“Once a week, from the alley on Thursdays. One can trash, one box recyclables. Standard for the city,” Mr. Timmons added.

“Security system?” At that Mulder blanched, but wisely kept his mouth shut.

“The last renters didn’t see the need, but if you want one, we could have one installed. I’d split the cost,” the older man offered.

“Mulder has friends in the business, they could probably get you a good deal,” Scully countered.

Mulder choked at that, but Scully pointedly ignored him, as did Mr. Timmons. “Couldn’t ask for more,” Mr. Timmons said affably.

Scully led the way out into the growing twilight. “It’s very nice,” she said with a forced smile. Mulder couldn’t read her expression and chewed on his lip. “I think I’d like to sleep on it, Mr. Timmons. Would it be all right to call you in the morning and give you my answer?”

Mr. Timmons smiled at Mulder fondly. “Sure, Mr. Mulder. You two go talk it over. This friend of yours seems to know a thing or two about real estate,” he said with a wink. “Just give me a call in the morning.”

“Thanks,” Mulder said, shaking the older man’s hand.

As they walked down the street, Scully twined her fingers in Mulder’s. “Want to get some dinner?” she asked.

“Not really that hungry,” he said quietly.

“How about grilled cheese?”

He nodded. She squeezed his hand and he squeezed back, finally giving her a weak smile. They were silent the rest of the way to the apartment. Scully got out the frying pan while Mulder pulled the cheese, bread and butter out of the refrigerator. In a few moments, they sat down to eat.

“So, what do you think of the duplex?” Mulder asked with notable trepidation.

Scully chewed her sandwich and swallowed a sip of iced tea before answering. “It’s nice. More room than you had on Hegal.”

“Well, I think the square footage is comparable, but the foyer on Hegal really couldn’t be used for much. The kitchen was bigger.”

She shrugged and continued eating. Mulder pushed his half eaten sandwich aside and sipped his tea.

“It’s closer to the track,” Mulder blurted out suddenly.

She raised her eyes to look at him. “Yes, but the track is only five blocks from here,” she said.

“Scully, this is what we’d agreed on after the fire. My living here . . . with you . . . it was just temporary.”

She bit her lip but nodded in agreement. “The price is definitely a point in its favor,” she said, sidestepping the elephant that had taken a place at the table — Mulder moving out.

“Look at it this way: now Bill won’t rag on you as much,” Mulder offered.

“Bill can screw himself,” Scully said with a pinched expression.

“As long as you and I can screw each other,” Mulder said with a barely restrained smirk.

She allowed a grin to skip across her lips. “Always,” she said, taking his hand.

“This changes nothing between us, Scully. Nothing can change how I feel about you, how much I need to be with you. Part of the problem of the old apartment was the commute between our places. That won’t be a problem now. I can stay over here, you can stay over there, and we’ll still have plenty of time to get ready at our own place in the morning. It’ll be like we’re living together, just not . . .”

“. . .living together,” she finished his thought.

“Yeah,” he agreed. They cleaned up the kitchen together, Mulder putting the dishes away. She wandered off to work on some files she’s brought home and take a long bath, he tuned in the Yankees game on the television. When the game ended, Scully was standing next to the sofa in her robe, her hair freshly shampooed and dried. “Coming to  bed?” she asked hopefully.

“Yeah,” he told her, clicking off the TV and turning out the lights. He locked the front door and followed her into the bedroom. “Are you OK with this, Scully?” he asked, coming up behind her as she shook out her hair and brushed it in front of her vanity.

“Sure. I mean it’s what you want, right?” she asked his reflection.

“Well, yeah. I can’t mooch off you forever,” he said in a lame attempt at a joke.

“You aren’t mooching,” she said softly. “You’ve been paying half the rent.”

“Well, this will give me a chance to build up my vast CD collection,” he said with a shrug.

“And your video collection?” she asked with a raised eyebrow.

“I don’t need one any more,” he said, reaching around to pull the tie from her robe and sliding the terrycloth off her shoulders. He placed gentle kisses at the base of her neck. “Come to bed, Scully.”

Without a sound, she allowed him to pull her on to the mattress. Their lovemaking was gentle, reverent. As the shadows deepened, they fell asleep, holding each other as tightly as they could, as if nothing or anyone could separate them.

In the morning Mulder called Mr. Timmons and made arrangements to sign the lease and move into the little duplex down the street.

Act II Scene 1

The Pentagon

May 20, 2004

Bill was finally making some headway with the flammable flea market that had been Commander Keegan’s legacy. One more file cabinet left. Why couldn’t the old fart build himself a library like Nixon or Clinton or every other flatulent egomaniac in this town, get a crew of flunkies in jumpsuits to crate this crap instead of one of the nation’s soon-to-be military titans? “Get your own freaking curator,” Bill grunted, flipping a photo of Nixon and Keegan, signed “Kick some Commie ass, Donny!” into a wheeled plastic barrel with a file drawerful of Vietnam War memos the Washington Post would have killed for. He peered down into the empty metal drawer and booted it shut. Bill heard a dull thump, and the drawer bounced back to catch him in the shin.

He issued a string of obscenities, and kicked the drawer again. This time, it ricocheted off its track.

The office door clattered open, and an ensign’s buzzed head popped in. “Sir? Everything all right in here?”

“Yeah,” Bill snapped, rubbing his chin. “Stand down, OK? I’m fine, fine.”

The ensign fled, and Bill knelt before the now-gaping mouth of the file cabinet. He spotted a crumpled corner of manila pasteboard ripped back to reveal yellowed pages of textured Corona type. More crap — the forestry policies of the last four presidents had done less to decimate the nation’s woodlands than had the Pentagon. The regulation cabinet was deep, and Bill groaned as he ripped his sleeve on the track’s razor edge. His thumb and forefinger finally closed about the corner of the thick folder, and he banged his forehead on a drawer handle as he tugged it free. After the injury and wardrobe damage Bill had sustained in his effort to liberate the file, he felt obliged to at least leaf through its contents. Had he not been distracted by the pain in his shin and the blood soaking into his uniform blouse, he might have wondered at the lack of dust bunnies or aged track grease on the folder. His eyes nonetheless were drawn to the stamp haphazardly positioned in the corner of each page in oxidized scarlet. Classified to the max. William Scully’s heart began to race as he examined the text on the cover page, and almost stopped when two words emerged from the crisp hand-typed memorandum. Zeus Faber. To the civilian population at large — with the possible exception of a few egghead historians – – the name would have meant nothing. But to anyone above the rank of lieutenant, it was military legend — a dark footnote in the annals of the Navy and an untold epilogue in the blood- soaked saga of World War II.

The U.S. sub Zeus Faber had been carrying an A- bomb — cousin to those dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki — reportedly for airborne delivery to an unidentified destination in Japan. Tragically, the death-dealing technology was still in its relative infancy, and some breach of protocol or a terrible accident had resulted in the mass radiation poisoning of the Faber’s crew. Capt. Kyle Sanford gave his life with 143 of his men; only seven men survived the ordeal. Few knew the rest of the story, and few ever would. Bill had been told in a bar in Miami one night, by a retired admiral half in the bag. Wanting to hedge his bets, Harry Truman had ordered nuclear detonation not only over the two villages now known to every junior high history student who cared. The straight-talking Missourian had decided to make a stronger statement, and millions might have died in and around Tokyo had fate not intervened in the lives of the Zeus Faber’s crew. While the mass destruction of two Japanese villages was a wound that had been slow to heal, the obliteration of such a teeming metropolis likely would have fueled a cultural blood feud that would have led to the eventual deaths of tens of millions more Americans and Japanese and scorched earth on both sides of the Pacific. But that seemingly wasn’t the story Bill Scully now read. He collapsed into Commander Keegan’s well-worn desk chair, scarcely breathing as he scanned the contents of the lost file. Something about “foo fighters” — the phrase came back to him from some long-ago Thanksgiving dinner, when Mom had invited Dana’s asshole partner to supper. Some story of Mulder’s about UFO sightings during WWII, of alien spacecraft being shot down over the Pacific by U.S. fliers. William Scully placed the folder carefully on his blotter, got up, and locked the door. He then settled back into his chair. A name triggered his memory: The memo had been written by a Lt. Christopher Johansen. Johansen had lived down the street from his family when he was a kid on a base in San Diego, and had been good friends with his dad. Unlike a lot of brass, Johansen had never seemed eager to relive his Pacific Theater days, and Capt. Scully had occasionally commented on Johansen’s reticence regarding certain topics. Bill started with renewed interest into Johansen’s narrative, but was interrupted when his desk phone trilled.

“Commander Scully,” he barked. It would take a little time to get used to his new title.

“Hey, Hon — getting used to your new surroundings?” Tara asked lightly.

“The old hairbag — the commander — left it a pigsty, but I’m sloughing through. What’s up?”

“You have a clock in that new office of yours?”

Bill looked up. “Yeah, sorry — guess I got absorbed in Commander Keegan’s memorabilia. Fascinating stuff.”

“Well,” Tara teased, “drag yourself away, if you can. I’ve begun emergency measures on this pork roast, and Matthew wants to know when supper is.”

Her husband glanced reluctantly at the folder, and suppressed a sigh. “Yeah, sure, Babe. Packing it up right now. Go ahead and feed Matthew — I’ll be home soon.”

“I told him we’d wait for his daddy. Love,” Tara sang.

“Yeah.” Bill cradled the phone and eyed the open folder. Sighing loudly this time, he collected the documents and swept them into his briefcase.

Act II Scene 2

Dana Scully’s apartment

May 20, 2004

6:30 pm

The wooden spoon dragged through the thick red gravy, heavy boiling bubbles breaking the surface like lava as she stirred. Scully wanted to make their last night in her apartment together special. She was particularly good at making chicken Parmesan, and knew it was one of Mulder’s special requests when she cooked. It didn’t hurt that it took longer to prepare than other meals, and required an extensive amount of clean-up afterward, which meant Mulder would be hanging around the kitchen, keeping her company. He was in the living room presently, making his last phone calls to the Ryder pick-up station, the furniture delivery guys and the Gunmen. All his bases were covered. Garment bags lay draped over the few boxes of items Mulder had accumulated during his stay. She’d insisted he take the extra care for his suits in transit, knowing full well that he would have been happy to stuff them into black lawn bags with his grubby socks and sweats. She’d forgotten how men’s clothing seemed to wear so much faster than women’s — a fact she’d learned growing up with two brothers and her father. She felt a small pang disturb the inner reaches of her heart. All the men in her life seemed to give her some kind of heartache: Ahab gone from this world, Charlie seduced by the evil of the consortium, Bill wreaking havoc on her emotions and family status, and now Mulder, although with good intentions, leaving her alone in this apartment.

But that wasn’t true, and she knew it. Nothing was going to change between them. He still loved her completely and utterly. Only a few miles were going to be the separation between them. But she was going to miss his presence. She placed the lid off-center over the saucepan so that its contents didn’t boil over, and called Mulder in for help.

“Mulder, I need you to slice the mozzarella, and grate the parmesan.” She heard his heavy footsteps as he entered he kitchen.

“Man, you just side-stepped the oldest joke in the book. I can still keep the joke alive, though. Wanna pull my finger?” Said finger was caressing the back of her neck and making its way up to her ear as she pulled out a bunch of spaghetti from the narrow blue box.

“Not while I’m cooking, Mulder. . .” she grumbled between tight lips. This was not the first time he’d managed to distract her while tending hot food. Despite her protests, she loved it when he did this, even when they were at her mother’s house two winters ago, dangerously close to being caught, she reveled in it. She pushed herself back into him and his arms enveloped her. She tried to reach the pot of boiling water to drop the dry pasta into it to cook, but she was firmly pinned within his embrace.  “Besides, I’m enjoying the smell of garlic and basil filling the kitchen.”

“Garlic? Guess I won’t be kissing you later,” he said nuzzling his cheek against her hair.

“If we’re both eating it, it doesn’t count. Trust me, you won’t notice a thing.” She turned in his arms, holding the bunch of spaghetti tightly like a bouquet of flowers.

He bent down to kiss her, mumbling his lips against hers saying, “Is that a promise?”

She moved her lips in response to deepen the kiss, pressing herself a little harder against his body so that there was a real danger of them playing pick-up sticks with fallen pasta. They separated reluctantly, Scully longing to keep Mulder as close as possible for as long as possible. Yet, practicality winning, she wheedled herself out of his clutches and threw the spaghetti into the water. “You’d better get to work, mister. I’m not letting you slack off on the chores just because you won’t be here anymore.”

The warm pinkish glow illuminating Mulder’s cheeks suddenly disappeared, leaving his skin pallid. He valiantly tried to keep his smile in place, but it just ended up feeling rigid. It was quiet as they worked — very quiet. The only sounds were the bubbling liquids, knife tapping against the cutting board with each slice and the rhythm of hard cheese grating against metal. When they sat down to eat it was the same way. Metal fork tines clinked against Corian as they spun pasta and cut into the delectable meat and cheese. Scully was trying to keep the mood light, offering to pour more wine, passing the bread. She’d even lit candles, which usually served to loosen her mood, especially if she was shooting for certain activities in lieu of dessert. But with each bite, the cheese seem more oily, the sauce more acidic in her stomach.

‘This is not a break-up,’ she kept reminding herself. But while she chewed, warm rivulets trickled down her hot cheeks, and the meat became rubbery in her mouth. She couldn’t pry her eyes away from the plate before her for anything in the world. Maybe if she just didn’t look at Mulder, he wouldn’t notice the distress pushing so hard against her insides that it was ready to explode from her in sobs, had she not been biting her bottom lip to stave it back. She no longer heard the sounds of clinking cutlery. Mulder did notice.

The next thing she felt was his large, warm hand enveloping her tight fist beside the plate. She vaguely registered it invading her peripheral vision as she insisted on studying a particularly melty piece of cheese. “Hey, love, what is it?” he asked in such a gentle and concerned tone of voice that when Scully closed her eyes to cherish it, a new stream of tears retraced the paths that had already branded her cheeks. Scully quickly dropped her utensils and pulled her hand away from his grasp to wipe at her eyes. She blew her nose, and snuffled away the rest of the tears. “It’s nothing. I’m fine.”

“Don’t do that, please.”

She cleared her throat, covering her emotions even further. “Do what?”

“Scully, you’re not fine. You’re crying.” He reached over to her shoulder, squeezed it, then moved down her arm, to once again grasp her hand. “Talk to me. Please.”

She got up from the table, taking her plate with her and emptying what was left of her meal into the garbage. Mulder followed her, but left his plate to cool where it sat. She placed the dinnerware into the sink, and ran the water at top force, both hot and cold spigots thrown open to the limit. Mulder came behind her, reached around and turned them off. The silence afterward was louder than Niagara Falls in springtime.

“This is about me finding a new place, isn’t it?”

She didn’t answer.

“Scully, it’s been fun playing house for a while, and believe me, there’s no place else I’d love to be than with you. But I have to move out of here, you know that. Us being together is everything. But when we can’t have peace of mind, it’s just. . . we need to move a little slower so that everyone can get used to the idea. And. . .”

He caressed her shoulders, felt the tension within them through her sweater. He rubbed at the knots right near her shoulder blades where he knew she held all her stress. “. . .things being what they are right now, family situations, work situations. I want to know that you’re safe, and if there’s a target on my head for whatever reason, I want you to be out of harm’s way. I can’t risk some wacko burning you up with the rest of it.”

“But. . .” she trailed off.

“But what. . .?”

“I’m going to miss you.”

“I’ll be five minutes away, Scully.”

“No,” she turned to enforce her statement, “I mean, I’m going to miss you being here. I feel like *you’re* safe here with me.”

“I’m a big boy, Scully,” he said, kissing her forehead. “I can take care of myself. Besides, I’ll be over here three days a week at least for food. You know what my cooking skills entail.”

He got a chuckle for that.

“Man does not live on Rice Krispies alone, Mulder. You’d better be over here.” She snuggled into his chest.

“Come on, let’s settle down for the night. I’ll take care of this mess in the morning.”

Scully glanced at the messy kitchen and fleetingly thought about the crusty sauce that would be caked onto the plates come morning, then obediently left it all behind. An extra push at the small of her back encouraged the decision further. She went to change into her favorite pajamas while Mulder sought for a good movie on TV. They watched later than usual, Scully lounging out and resting her head on his lap, Mulder stroking the hair behind her ear, making funny comments between lines they knew too well during movies they’d seen a hundred times. At around eleven, Mulder noticed that his partner had dozed off. He moved to lift her up, and carried her into the bedroom. She opened her eyes and yawned when he set her down upon the mattress. “Mmmm. . .. My prince charming.”

He laughed in the darkness, and felt for her lips to kiss her. Then he stripped down to his boxers like he always did for bed, and scooted under the covers with her. She automatically moved herself back against him, and he held her. “Mulder?”

“Yeah?”

There was an awkward silence before she continued. “Do you love me?”

He tensed up a little, his initial reaction to the question one of offense taken. But he relaxed easily, because the answer was not difficult to admit. “Of course I do.”

He felt her turn over. Then, her breath skim across his face when she faced him. It was true, he smelled the garlic, but it was delicious, it was wonderful. It was Scully. Then she used her fingertips to feel his cheeks, his mouth, his chin. “Really?” she whispered.

Then he realized what she was seeking. She was laying it all on the table. She had to know for sure what he felt.

“I love you, Scully,” he whispered like a secret he’d held for a long time. “I love you.” He used his own fingers to feel for her face, then pulled her close and pressed his lips against hers — wordlessly asking for more, giving her more. She pulled him to her in response, as close and as hard as she could get him.

“I love you, too,” she answered softly into his ear, her mouth muffled against his cheek as she wrapped her arms tightly about him. “Just hold me, please. I want you to hold me. Don’t let me go.”

“I have you, Scully. I’ll always have you.”

Act III Scene 1

The Pentagon

May 21, 2004

10:15 am

A week of rummaging through old documents was wearing on Bill’s nerves. He had four paper cuts the day before and was having a difficult time turning pages with both index fingers wrapped in bandages. At least he’d managed to find the flexible fabric bandages in one of the unpacked boxes in the hallway of their new home.

He was no going to come to work with a Blues Clues band-aid on his finger, come hell or high water. Most of the files were worthless and it didn’t take a second thought to toss them into the box for shredding. As he threw whole file folders into the box, the dust cloud they emitted started to cover his briefcase, sitting next to the desk. Bill hadn’t forgotten about his find the day before, he just knew he had to get the rest of the mess cleaned up before he could give it his full attention. But now he was down to the last drawer in the last filing cabinet, and his curiosity was getting to him. He knew he couldn’t put it off any longer. When the last folder was disposed of, he dusted his hands and reached for his brief case. Hefting the thick leather case on to his desk, he opened it hesitantly, as if something might jump out at him. He chuckled to himself. It was a file, nothing more. There wasn’t anything in it that could harm him. He reached in and tugged at the brittle manila folder. As he did so, his ring finger slid along the edge, the stiff cardboard slicing neatly into his flesh. Goddamn it! Another paper cut! He immediately stuck the injured digit into his mouth and winced at the taste of blood. Drawing the finger out for further inspection he saw a deep gash, deeper than the other injuries he’d endured in the newly acquired dangerous job of ‘desk jockey’.

“Shit,” he swore and with his relatively unharmed hand, dug through his top desk drawer for the cardboard box of band-aids Tara had given him just that morning. It was awkward, bandaging his right hand with his left, but he managed to staunch the flow of blood. Shaking his head, he reached more carefully into the briefcase and slowly drew out the file folder. He sighed when he saw the smear of blood across the edge of the folder. His day just kept getting better and better. Still using exaggerated care, he laid the folder out on his desk and put the briefcase on the floor. With one hand, he opened the file folder and started to read. The first few pages, he already had scanned. They contained a number of references to a submarine, the Zeus Faber. He found the name of Lt. Johansson again, and remembered the man fondly. But he needed to know more about the Zeus Faber, so he started to look further into the file. It didn’t take him long to find a transcript of a debriefing of the mission. The hand stamped ‘Top Secret’ in red letters across the top of the page didn’t serve as a deterrent at all. After all, in his current capacity with the Joint Chiefs, there wasn’t anything marked ‘top secret’ that Bill Scully couldn’t access. This gave him the confidence to keep reading. ‘Report regarding Mission 45-08-15B, 1945 August’ was printed in bold type on the top of the page. Bill read about the submarine’s original mission, to patrol the coast of California, looking for Japanese vessels that might be planning on an attack on the United States. The mission was changed when the Captain received orders to go to a specific location and search for some downed aircraft. According to the report, the squadron of aircraft each carried a weapon, an atomic bomb that was headed for Japan. The aircraft were P- 51 Mustang and the pilots had not been located by surface ships in the area. The planes had experienced engine trouble and all four of them had dropped out of the sky like rocks, according to eyewitnesses from a Naval destroyer some 3 miles from the crash. The destroyer had continued on with its mission and the Zeus Faber was tapped to do rescue. The pilots’ fates were unknown and they were all considered dead, not having time to eject from the planes before it went into the sea.

But that wasn’t the real concern of the Department of War at that time. Their primary concern was the atomic bombs aboard the aircraft, and the fear that those bombs might fall into the enemy’s hands before other similar bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in just days. The sub made good time getting to the coordinates of the crash. They were able to find the Mustangs with little difficulty. They were in the process of determining the best course of ‘rescue’ for the payload when a Japanese destroyer entered the area and they were forced into silent running. That is when the trouble began. Before the payload was even brought aboard the sub, the men started becoming ill. First is was flu like symptoms, but then burns, serious burns, started forming on their bodies. Not all the men were affected, but it was discovered that those nearest the aircraft, even through several inches of hull of the sub, were the ones to fall ill. Not long after the men started getting sick, the Captain started acting strangely. Lt. Johansson was a precise man and up until that point, the report was very thorough and very military in its presentation. Suddenly, the report took on the air of a horror movie.

As more and more of the ship’s crew became affected, Johansson begged the Captain to return to port. At first, the Captain insisted that the mission had not been completed. They still had to retrieve the payloads. But when a couple of divers went to the Mustangs, they discovered not bombs in the bays, but something strange and rock-like. They were trying to remove one of the rocks when both divers fell ill, almost as soon as they touched the object, even though they were in full diving gear. Before the men could be brought back on the sub, they were dead. It had only been a matter of minutes, no more than an hour between onset of symptoms and death.

Johansson once again pleaded with the Captain to return the boat to the closest port, which would have been Pearl Harbor. This time, the Captain claimed that they couldn’t move because of the Japanese above them, on the surface. He stayed down there, near those planes for three days.  More and more of the men were becoming ill, some were already dead. On the third day of the stand off, one of the infected men got a gun and held it on the Captain. In the process of disarming the man, the gun went off. Their silence was broken. It would only be a matter of time before the Japanese started dropping depth charges at them. Johansson again tried to convince the Captain that they needed to leave the area immediately. Bill was so amazed by the next few lines that he had to read them twice. Johansson claimed, in a military report, that the Captain’s eyes had been ‘infected’ with a black oil that shimmered across his pupils. Johansson knew that the Captain was not going to listen to reason, and would not leave the area. The young Lieutenant considered his superior to completely insane or possibly possessed. Mutiny was the only answer. Johansson locked the Captain in with the most desperately ill of the crew in a hold near the torpedo tubes. The man who’d fired the gun picked it up again and while the Captain was trying to get Johansson to open the door, he shot the Captain. From a small window in the door, Johansson watched as the same black oil he’d seen in the Captain’s eyes started to flow out of the man’s body and ‘crawled’ across the floor to escape down a drain. It hadn’t acted like any substance he’d ever seen. The oil had seemed alive. Johansson went to the bridge of the ship and set a course for the closest port. The Zeus Faber just barely made it back to friendly waters.

Bill was barely breathing when he finished reading the report. He would have closed the file folder if not for a name on the next page. He blinked when he saw the name, it was so unexpected, and at the same time, it clicked into place. The next report was an interview with surviving crew members. The interview was conducted by two men from the State Department: CGB Spender and William Mulder. Bill wanted to cry. He wanted to throw the file against the wall and forget he’d ever seen it. Somehow, it was fitting that the son of a bitch who was ruining his sister’s life was the son of a man involved in such a disaster. After talking with Spender and William Mulder, all fifteen survivors died within the next 24 hours. Bill was certain, although there was no evidence, that Spender and Mulder were responsible for those deaths. Bile rose in his throat. He could picture the men he’d served with at sea, see them in the place of those dying crew men. What would he have done if faced with the same decision as young Lt. Johansson? Bill wondered if he would have waited the three days to mutiny. He thought back to all the conversations he’d had with Fox Mulder. Fortunately, there were damned few to remember. He could picture so clearly the discussions they’d had when Dana had been dying of cancer. He could see them in the hallway outside Dana’s room, after she’d just agreed to some crazy-ass idea that put a piece of metal in her neck in the hopes of a cure. Bill was certain the treatments the doctor had begun that day were the only reason his sister was alive. He knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that Fox Mulder had nothing to do with Dana’s remission.

But beyond all that, he tried to remember what they’d said to each other those six long years before. He’d asked Mulder if it had all been worth it, had he found what he was looking for, his little green men. Mulder had told him no. It had been a small bright spot in an otherwise black day, the idea that Fox Mulder was suffering even a tiny bit as much as Bill. Mulder’s little green men. What if . . . what if they were black? What if they were black and looked like oil? What if they were found not in a space ship, but in a squadron of wrecked P-51 Mustangs at the bottom of the Pacific? Who would believe him if he tried to tell anyone this tale? Not his Commanding Officer. Not anyone at the Pentagon.

Not his sister, he was certain of that.

Only one man would listen to him. Bill choked back the bile that kept rising in his throat. How in God’s name could he ever think to go to Fox Mulder for help? But that was exactly what he had to do. He dug through his briefcase for his planner, flipped a few pages and picked up the phone on his desk.

Act III Scene 2

The District Club

Washington, DC

May 21, 2004

12:00 pm

The club downstairs had been one of Washington’s more malodorous, if elaborately appointed, sausage factories — an abattoir of dark woods, rich leather, and fine Oriental rugs where reputations and fortunes were slaughtered, truth processed into lies, and a nation’s deepest secrets repackaged for the consumption of the mass unwashed.

Amid its alcoves and dining parlors, powerbrokers, politicians, and men whose provenance remained unclear had plotted the  deaths of two presidents and the disappearance of a popular aviatrix who’d unearthed too many federal skeletons, engineered an attack on a U.S. naval port that would engulf much of the world in war, choreographed the ultimately botched assassination of America’s most beloved first lady on a street in Dallas, and tagged the chief patsies for a break-in at a now-infamous Washington residential hotel.

Over the past few decades, the club had opened its doors to a more diverse and less Machiavellian constituency — a move deemed crucial to divert an increasingly omniscient and omnipotent media and the prying eyes of the few honorable men still left in the Beltway. But the club remained the sanctum sanctorum of America’s royalty — the men and, now, women, who made things happen efficiently and invisibly. To the men who congregated on the top floor of the club, those who supped on chateaubriand and prime rib downstairs were bugs — lower organisms that manufactured and fed on the petty carrion of human greed, misery, and weakness. These men upstairs played on a far larger field, for unimaginable stakes. At their command, any of the titans gathered three floors below could be made to vanish with their families and, if necessary, any trace of their earthly existence.

“Gentlemen, the shit’s hit the fan,” Alex Krycek announced as he crossed the threshold into the lushly appointed roomful of somber and powerful men. In any other venue, any of the handful of men here might have answered such disrespect with a bullet to the skull, delivered swiftly and unexpectedly as Krycek slept. But the handsome, smirking young man who sauntered nonchalantly into their august midst at his whim was one of the few humans they feared: Krycek owned too many secrets, and thus owned their grudging respect.

He, along with the sour, furtive man seated by the front window — a chain-smoking shadow of a human being with a sporadic death’s head grin — were among the last living survivors of a holocaust that had claimed their foolish predecessors, a similar collection of powerful men who had thought to deal blithely with the devil. Spender and Krycek obviously shared some barely subcutaneous antipathy, but everyone in this room understood such animosities paled beside the vision shared by the new Consortium.

While most in the room frowned at Krycek’s irreverent greeting, the Scarred Man smiled fondly at the young man’s brashness. The Scarred Man, ensconced in an espresso-colored Barcelona chair, sipping a sherry that would have intimidated the richest of the rabble downstairs, had been a double agent with the Resistance during Hitler’s war, and he appreciated Krycek’s ruthless disregard for class or power. “And what ‘shit,’ if I may ask, do you speak of?” he asked, calmly, unconsciously swirling his liqueur.

“Bill Scully,” Krycek murmured, waving a thick folder in his artfully designed prosthetic hand. Spender turned from the thick drapes, an eyebrow arched.

“Commander Scully?” the Scarred Man inquired. “The brother of the FBI agent, no?”

“Apparently,” Krycek said, looking down at the old man’s disfigured face, “he’s come across some not-so-ancient history. Zeus Faber. Ring a bell?”

The Scarred Man set his sherry on the table beside his chair. “It resonates. How much does our friend know?”

Krycek shrugged. “Somebody did some sloppy housekeeping. Somehow, Scully came across an old file some feeble old Naval commander forgot to shred years ago.”

“Nonsense,” Spender spat, irritation deepening in the folds of his sallow face. He crushed his Morley into a crystal ashtray on the windowsill. “Every piece of documentation, every scrap regarding the Zeus Faber and its mission was destroyed. Commander Keegan oversaw it personally — he was firmly in our pocket.”

“Well, there must have been a ripped seam somewhere, cause the cat’s out now,” Krycek countered, not looking at the Cigarette Smoking Man. Spender’s jaundiced eyes blazed.

“This man, Scully,” the Scarred Man interrupted. “Is he a threat? Can he divine the significance of this information? Could it lead him to us?”

“William Scully’s a fool, a bull-necked Neanderthal,” Spender sneered. “Beyond a certain weasel-like cunning…”

“Even a weasel can rut around enough to do some serious damage,” Krycek said. He turned to the Scarred Man. “We can’t take a chance of him taking this to Agent Scully, to Mulder.”

“He despises Mulder, and despite his abundant shortcomings, Bill Scully is devoted to his sister,” Spender protested. “Too much so to willingly place her in danger.”

Krycek laughed mirthlessly. “You’re suddenly quite the judge of psychological character, aren’t you? Just like you’ve read Mulder all these years?”

The room went silent. The Scarred Man looked to Spender expectantly. Eyes narrow, the man at the window pulled a pack of Morley’s from his jacket, tamped out a cigarette, and placed it between his thin, bloodless lips. The corners of his lips then turned up in a ghastly approximation of a smile.

“All right,” Spender said pleasantly. “Perhaps you should keep an eye on our William, find out what he knows, see if our weasel ruts or runs.” The smile disappeared. “But no violence. Not yet. We don’t want to flush Agent Scully out of the bushes on some family vendetta.”

Krycek glanced at the Scarred Man, who nodded and retrieved his sherry. Krycek half-turned to a grim Spender and offered a two-fingered salute before heading for the elevator that served only this floor. Spender located a match, fingers trembling only slightly, set his cigarette aflame. “And so,” the Scarred Man finally uttered, contemplating his sherry. “Do you think our friend should be apprised of this quite unpleasant new development?”

Rattled by the reference to Strughold, Spender drew deeply on his Morley, blue smoke leaking through the cracks in his sour smile. “Mr. Krycek has far more faith than I in William Scully’s powers of comprehension and inclination to, let us say, rock the boat. No, gentlemen — this is merely a bump in the road. No need to disturb our friend…yet.”

Act III Scene 3

3605 N Street NW

Washington DC

Friday 2:30 pm

“To the left. No, Langly, your _other_ left! Yeah, yeah, now be careful of the woodwork. Geez, have you ever moved furniture before?”

Mulder growled as the wooden cabinet shifted in his hands and suddenly he was bearing the full weight of the object as he moved up the steps and in the front door.

“What’s this thing made of — mahogany?” the blond haired conspirator complained loudly. “Damn it, Mulder, you said you didn’t have much stuff to move!”

“I don’t,” Mulder shot back. “It’s just what I have is heavy. Quit your bitchin’, everything else is clothes.”

“What about the other stuff? Chairs, tables, a bed? You gonna sleep on the floor, man?” Langly asked sarcastically.

“I have a bed, it’s being delivered. And I found a couch at a second hand store down on M Street. I paid an extra fifty for the store to deliver. Other than that — ”

“You’re living at Scully’s,” Langly finished his sentence with a note of disgust. “Man, why are you throwing away all this dough on a place where you’re only gonna keep your fish? We’ll let the fish have our storage closet for half the price your dumping down this money pit!”

Mulder shot him a vicious glare. “It’s not any of your business, Langly,” he warned. It would be impossible to explain to any of the three Gunmen why he felt the need to keep a separate residence from his partner of 11 years. He really wasn’t sure of his reasons and he darned well wasn’t going to put in the effort to make his favorite geeks understand. His favorite bachelor geeks.

“I’m just saying, it seems like you’re spending a lot of money, money you could, say, give as a charitable contribution to the free press,” Langly continued.

“Free press? As in your rag?” Mulder asked with one raised eyebrow.

“Hey, freedom of the press comes at a high price, my friend!” Langly said haughtily.

“Yeah, not to mention all the high tech equipment that you guys keep picking up on Ebay,” Mulder sneered. “Just help me get the rest of the fish tank. I have to get it set up before the fish figure out they’re living in Scully’s punch bowl and decide to stage a revolt.”

“Ewww, not to mention what the G-woman is gonna do to you when she hears what’s been living in that same punch bowl,” Langly said, making a face. “Oh, and remind me next Christmas to avoid the eggnog.”

They placed the fish tank along the wall near the bay window. It looked totally out of place in the otherwise bare room. “You gonna buy a rug, or figure you won’t need one?” Langly asked derisively as he plopped down on the floor and leaned against the wall.

“I’ll get a rug,” Mulder replied. “In due time,” he added tersely.

That comment got Mulder a well-executed snort from his friend. “Keep this up and I’m not sharing the stash of Sam Adams Scully put in the fridge,” the agent warned.

Langly had the good grace to look worried.

Quickly, he hopped to his feet and rubbed his hands together. “So, where’s all the stuff for the fish tank. Can’t keep the little critters in that cramped punch bowl forever!”

Together, they made short work of the fish tank and soon Mulder was busy filling it with buckets of water from the kitchen and adding the de- chlorination drops. Langly looked at his watch. “Well, amigo, I have to split. I promised Byers I’d stop by the cleaners on the way home and they close at 5:00.”

Mulder refrained from making any comments about the domestic chores the guys assigned each other. “Well, take a six pack with you. You earned it,” he said nodding toward the kitchen.

“Hey, thanks, Mulder! See, you aren’t such a prick all the time,” Langly teased. He disappeared into the kitchen and then reappeared with the beer under one arm. “I was just admiring the refrigerator. Probably the last time I’ll see it looking so . . . fungus free.”

“Get out. Now,” Mulder growled, but his eyes twinkled with amusement.

“I’m leaving. Tell Scully I said this is an enormous waste of money,” he called as he reached the door.

“Now, Langly!” He heard the door slam and smiled. “Speaking of Scully, where is she?” Mulder asked the fish as he added them one by one into the tank. “She was just going out to buy toilet bowl cleanser. How long can that take?”

As the last fish dropped from the net and swam happily around the fish tank, his cell phone rang. Mulder grabbed for it in his front pocket.

“If she’s asking my opinion on what brand of toilet bowl cleanser I want, I’m not going to be held responsible for my actions,” he warned no one in particular.

“Scully, did you get lost?”

“Mr. Mulder?” asked the voice on the line.

Unconsciously, Mulder stood up straight. “Bill?” He almost didn’t recognize the man’s voice, it was tight and strained. It sounded like he was whispering.

“Mr. Mulder, I have to speak with you,” Bill said hastily.

“Bill, look if this is about me living with Scully, you don’t have to worry. That was temporary and I have a place of my own now. As a matter of fact, I was just in the process of moving in. So whatever you have to say — ”

“Mr. Mulder, please, I don’t have time for this. I need to speak with you, immediately. I’ve come across something, something I think is . . . of a highly sensitive nature.”

“Why do you want to talk to me?” Mulder asked, confused.

“Look, I found some old papers. They seem to be important. I saw a name in one of the reports. William Mulder. A submarine, the Zeus Faber — ”

Mulder was listening intently now, and heard the line cut out for just a fraction of a second. It was long enough to know that they were not on a secure line.

“Bill, hold up, OK,” he said, interrupting the man in mid-sentence. “This may not be the best way to have this conversation. Why don’t we meet somewhere tonight and talk this through.”

“I can’t be seen with these papers. I have no idea what level of security — ”

Mulder frantically searched his mind for a way to give Bill a meeting place without saying it aloud to whoever else was listening. “Don’t worry about the papers, put them somewhere safe. Look, there’s a bar not far from your sister’s apartment, she really likes the place. They serve great corned beef and cabbage. Do you know it?”

“Yeah, yeah, she took us there, Tara and me, a couple of years ago.”

“Good. It’s quiet, safe. Be there at eight tonight, all right? Till then, don’t tell anyone what you have.”

“Then you think this is important,” Bill said nervously.

“I don’t know,” Mulder admitted. “But you’ve definitely got my attention.”

“I’ll see you tonight, Mr. Mulder. At eight.”

“I’ll be there,” Mulder assured him. “Bill, can I ask — why me? Why not your sister?”

He heard the other man bark out a bitter laugh. “I wasn’t sure she’d believe me,” he said honestly. “Tonight, Mr. Mulder.”

“Yeah, tonight,” Mulder replied and closed down the phone. He wondered if there would ever come a time when his lover’s brother would refer to him as anything other than ‘Mister’. Mulder startled when the door to the duplex opened suddenly.

“You would not believe the number of people who shop at Home Depot on a Friday afternoon!” Scully said in exasperation. “I got some drain opener, too. The tub seemed to be running slow when I was cleaning it this morning — ” She looked up from her inspection of the bag she was holding when Mulder didn’t respond. “I wasn’t gone that long, Mulder. Are you angry with me?”

He drew in a breath and shook his head.

“Nothing like that, Scully.” He took her into a quick hug and led her over to the stairs so they could sit down. “I got a phone call just now.”

She frowned. “From . . .?”

“Your brother. Bill.”

Immediately, Scully’s hackles were raised.

“Mulder, if Bill said something to upset you — ”

“Oh, he upset me, all right, but not in the way you might expect. Scully, somehow Bill has come into possession of some papers, old reports, he said. My father’s name was in those reports, along with a submarine — the Zeus Faber.”

Scully’s eyes grew wide. “Oh my god! Mulder, Bill might have stumbled onto — ”

“Worse than that, Scully. I think someone might have his phone tapped.”

“No! Mulder, we have to get to him, he might not be safe. Tara, the babies, . . . my god, what are we going to do?”

“I told him to meet us at the bar down the street. I didn’t give any names or addresses, I gave him a description of the menu.”

“They only serve corned beef and cabbage,” she interjected.

“Exactly. Luckily he remembered it from a previous visit home. I know the indigestion I get there has always made it a memorable experience for me,” he said, trying to lighten his partner’s worried mood. She gave him a brief smile.

“We’ll meet him there tonight, eight o’clock.”

Scully looked at her watch. “That’s in four hours,” she stated.

“He should be safe for now,” Mulder tried to reassure her. “I really don’t think they’ll try anything in the Pentagon. Too many security cameras.”

“But we don’t know who was listening. Why would anyone be bugging Bill’s office phone? Mulder, what if it was Krycek? Or Charlie?”

“Let’s not count the rotten eggs before they hatch,” Mulder advised, pulling her into a hug. “He’s a big boy. He’ll be OK.”

“I hope so,” Scully whispered into his shoulder.

“I hope so.”

Act IV Scene 1

The District Club

Washington, DC

1:30 pm

Krycek had barely closed the club “service door” that served as the entry to the private elevator when a pair of gloved hands seized the lapels of his leather jacket and propelled him into the alleyway. Only the suddenness of the attack enabled Krycek’s assailant to drag him to a dumpster behind the steakhouse across the deserted corridor.

“The hell you think you’re doing?” Charlie Scully growled, thumping Krycek’s shoulder blades against the bricks. “You brainless ape! You trying to ruin everything?”

Krycek brought up both arms and knocked Charlie’s away. “You touch me again, and I might get a little blood and brain matter on that Tommy Hilfiger ensemble of yours. What the hell are you ranting about?”

Charlie came up nose-to-nose with his foe. “You planted that goddamned file in Bill’s office, didn’t you? Thought you’d screw with all of us, see if you could use my brother to light a few fuses.”

“That’s what you’d like the old Nazi to think, isn’t it?” Krycek said, smoothing his jacket.”What’d you do, Charlie? Send in a crack squad of Kelly Girls to clean out that office? Face it, you screwed the pooch, asshole.”

“Mother–!” Charlie bellowed, throwing a left hook.

Krycek caught his fist, twisted it backward and used it to spin his opponent around. He slammed Charlie into the side of the dumpster, and kicked him in the ribs as he struggled to regain his feet.  Charlie slipped on a rotting lettuce leaf and landed on his ass. “Your girlfriend Strughold’s losing his grip,”Krycek sneered. “He’s lost his control of the situation, as evidenced by this little show of ‘muscle.'”

“That right?” Charlie said from his seat in the mingled waste grease, garbage, and likely human detritus of the alley. “You think the Morley Man up there’s a tower of strength? He’s one pack away from a respirator and a rubber room. You think it’s any coincidence Mulder’s still walking around? Spender doesn’t have the cojones, the stomach. Look, can I get up now?”

“No. And save me the NYPD Blue lingo.”

“Look, Krycek. It all comes down to who’s on the winning team and who winds up in a cloud of radioactive dust. I like my odds right now. You oughtta look at your own odds — that old man’s had it. They know it. Join the winning team, man. We got a spot for you, a good one, varsity, if you’ll just be smart about this.”

Krycek spat on the concrete next to Charlie’s left Italian loafer. “You little pimp. You have no idea what this is all about, what we’re trying to do. To you and the old Nazi, this is all some kind of power grab. Varsity, Jesus. I like my current position, Charlie. Why don’t you think about where you’re sitting right now?”

“You bastard!”

Krycek laughed and headed for the street. “Little club soda oughtta take that crap out, Charlie.”

Act IV Scene 2

The Watergate Hotel

Washington DC South West

2:00 pm

Charles Scully hurried past the red-coated doorman and toward the bank of brass encased elevators. He was late. Not woefully so, but in a business where fortunes changed in a blink of an eye, he could ill afford the luxury of even an overactive traffic signal, much less a run-in with the likes of Alex Krycek. He tapped his foot impatiently as he waited for the polished doors to spilt open and allow his entrance. The elevator chimed and he resisted the urge to push the doors open fast. Once inside the car, he stabbed at the top floor, belatedly remembering the key on his key ring that gave him access to that most secluded of meeting places. With a mild curse, he shoved the key in the slot and hit the floor button again. This time the button glowed a pale orange and the car started its ascent. He’d received the call just an hour before. He didn’t like unscheduled meetings and to make matters worse, the assistant on the phone had denied any knowledge of the agenda. Charles Scully detested not knowing what meetings were about. He was not in a pleasant frame of mind when the elevator car finally ground to a halt and the mirrored doors slid open.

Strughold glared at Charles as he made his way around the room to the only empty chair. “Were you detained?” the old man asked in a raspy accented growl.

“Unavoidably,” Charles answered automatically. “What have I missed?”

Strughold glanced around the table, his eyes falling on the select few men sitting with an air of comfortable interest. “There has been a leak, a possibly damaging leak that has just been brought to our attention.”

Charles looked at each face around the table, trying to discern who had knowledge and who did not. For the most part, the group would have been terrors in Las Vegas. Not a single pair of eyes gave Charles any information, or sympathy.”A leak concerning what, may I ask?” Charles gut twisted at this game of ‘cat and mouse’, but the old man was running the show and there was little the younger man could do to stop his gamesmanship.

“The incident aboard the Zeus Faber,” Strughold bit off the words precisely.

Charles stomach hit rock bottom, but he fought to keep his expression blank. “Are you certain?” he asked.

Strughold seemed to take the opportunity to cough gently. The other men in the room exchanged glances, but said nothing. Charles was aware of how far out on a limb he now was. “We are quite sure.”

Sweat was pooling down Charles’ back as he furtively scrambled for possible responses. He, more so than any other individual in the room, knew what was at stake if such information was made public. Furthermore, he knew exactly how a leak of this magnitude could play out, who might facilitate it. He swallowed the burning sensation at the back of his throat. “How far has it gotten?”

“Our sources seem to think it has not reached its intended destination,” Strughold said mildly.

That gave Charles some small measure of relief, but it was short-lived. “What do you propose?”

Strughold took a drag off the expensive cigar in his hand and smiled. “It’s a simple matter, really. The leak must be plugged. As of yet, no harm has been done. But it is imperative that the matter be resolved — quietly and with due haste, before the leak becomes a deluge.”

The little spark of humanity left in Charles Scully trembled.

“I trust that you are in agreement?” Strughold asked, his eyes never leaving Charles. It was as if the old man was testing him, testing his loyalty. After all Charles had done for this man, for this group of men, to be tested so was a dagger to his confidence. But it was all for the greater good. Eventually, everyone, even his family, would be made aware of that.

“I see no other option,” Charles said flatly.

Strughold smiled briefly. “I’m happy you see it that way. I knew I could trust you, Charles.”

Act IV Scene 3

Starbucks on G Street

Washington, DC

5:00 pm

Bill’s knuckles were bloodless, wrapped tightly about the warm china mug. Had they cast a glance at the hard-looking man in Station 2, any of the latte-sucking yuppies, wired college kids or minimum wage slaves scattered about the excruciatingly hip coffee shop might have feared a sudden shower of porcelain shrapnel and hot liquid.

But William Scully had selected this Starbuck’s, a stone’s throw from Capitol Hill, specifically for the bustling anonymity it afforded. A trio of congressional aides two tables away, stripped to shirtsleeves, ties at parade rest, jackets draped lovingly across chair backs, nattered about some piece of crucial legislation or the hot new intern or some such bullshit — it was all white noise to Bill. Their opposite numbers — a knot of university kids, fashionably disheveled in distressed GAP and Banana Republic — were in animated discourse at a table along the wall, pumped up on Grandes and ranting about Bush or the rain forests or maybe just the latest grunge/rap/pop . Ordinarily, Bill would have felt the temptation to tell the spoiled punks to shove a scone in their foul little Generation Why mouths, the impulse to dump his own steaming java over the head of the most self-important of the congressional Pep Boys.

Fortunately for all, he was light-years away from their universe, encapsulated in his own fear and cunning ruminations. The white knuckles clamped about the cup were the only signs to the world outside that William Scully was dangerously close to shaking apart like a used Yugo with a bad tranny. Those superior Marine jarheads could keep their Semper Fidelis bullshit — Bill knew those who were always faithful wound up always dead, always disillusioned, or constantly clearing tables in some pussy coffee joint. Semper Stabilis — that was William Scully’s credo. Always a rock, always cool, spine straight, hands at 10 and 2. Anyone catching a glimpse of the man at Table 7 would see a spit-and-shine remnant of a once- great society, possibly reviewing his forthcoming testimony before House Appropriations or Senate Intelligence or keeping an eye out for some Arab with a bogus visa and a shoeful of plastique. 9/11 and Navy NCIS had heightened everybody’s sense of military melodrama. Pussy pretty-boy Harmon, Bill had silently sneered whenever Tara watched that piece of crap.

His discovery of the papers had been the razor- sharp boundary between the universe William Scully had known and functioned in with no small proficiency — and, when the occasion necessitated, no small cunning — and a dank, uncertain future. The man who was destined to reign with the lions of the Republic, the soon- to-be-father, the last great scion of Admiral Scully’s family, now cowered in some D.C. coffeehouse. Semper Stabilis, he repeated. He couldn’t let the insanity that had enveloped Mulder start to flirt with his mind. Bill had always hated Mulder — for the slow deterioration of Dana’s sense of rationality and reason, for the emotional and, he was increasingly certain, physical control he maintained over his little sister, and simply for the kind of undisciplined, disrespectful, intellectualized “man” Mulder was. He was everything inimical to William Scully, to men of honor and valor, to men.

But now, Bill understood, Fox Mulder at the least was no coward. For years, Mulder had lived with and been persecuted and pursued for information that shook the very foundations of the world men like Bill Scully imagined they ruled. The revelations that now had Bill scurrying for an escape hatch had merely driven Mulder on into the darkest territory inhabited by the worst monsters mankind had ever spawned. And that made Bill now hate Mulder with a previously unfathomable new passion. The very concept that Mulder drew on some reserve of inner strength, that he possessed a decency and heroism Bill likely could never attain, turned the soldier’s universe upside-down. The knowledge of the true man that lived beneath his uniform would rapidly destroy him, or at least the illusion that had sustained him.

“Semper Stabilis.”

“Sir?”

William jumped, only to find a young nose-ringed man with a rag and spray bottle standing before him.

“You need something?” the boy asked, staring at the brawny gaping man with his paws wrapped possessively about his mug.

He’d said it aloud, unconsciously. “I don’t need shit,” Bill finally growled, loudly enough to silence the congressional butt-buddies and the member of Squirrel Jam over by the wall. “Ah, no, really, I’m cool. Sorry, OK?” The busboy nodded once, a wannabe jerk of the shaved head, and fled as rapidly as his cool would allow. The aides were still staring — Bill glared them back into hasty debate. Squirrel Jam was amused, chortling and exchanging whispered barbs. Bill contemplated violence toward the kids, and the fresh infusion of caffeine-powered testosterone momentarily revitalized him. This was Mulder’s arena, he recognized reluctantly. In fact, had it not been for Mulder, this probably wouldn’t be happening now, Bill told himself. He had to give the letter to Mulder — hell, Fox would get a blue-veiner when he read its contents. Mulder could have his precious proof, get it put in the Post or maybe the Midnight Sun. He had no future, no destiny to fulfill but an appointment with madness in the basement of the J. Edgar Hoover Building.

And if his sister’s partner didn’t make it into print, if the transfer of the letter put the hounds on Mulder’s spoor and he disappeared to Alpha Centauri, all the better for Dana. Bill shoved back from the table, casting one last homicidal glance at the kids on the wall. A titter of ridicule erupted as he headed for the door, but that was all right. A weight had been lifted — or would soon — and the air out on the sidewalk was fresh and clean. William Scully strode back toward his car with a renewed sense of purpose and confidence, his eyes darting only infrequently between the strangers with whom he shared the pavement.

“Hon?”

Bill remembered to exhale as he recognized Tara’s voice on the cell phone. He’d nearly jumped when the phone had trilled, almost creaming a homeless man. “Yeah.”

“Babe, Matthew’s got an ear infection — it’s driving him crazy. I called in a prescription for some amoxicillin at the Walgreen’s — the one near your office. If I’d known you weren’t there, I would’ve called you first.”

“Had some papers to deliver,” Bill grunted, then remembered he didn’t need to alibi himself with Tara. At least he hadn’t lied, not really. Semper Stabilis.

“Can you pick it up, Honey, please? Matt’s really in pain.”

“Sure thing, no problem,” he said, more cheerfully. “Tell the little guy to buck up — cavalry’s coming. Love you, Babe.”

“Love you, too. Lasagna sound good to celebrate?”

“Mm. Later.”

Bill couldn’t have given a rat’s ass if Tara were waiting for him at the door with a platter of equine diarrhea. But the normalcy of his new errand was reassuring, and his chest began to loosen as he looked for a good turnaround. The pharmacist at the Walgreen’s had been excruciatingly slow filling the script, and Bill had stalked among the greeting cards, the Russell Stovers, the insipid D.C. shot glasses and blasphemously unpatriotic T-shirts until his promised 10 minutes had elapsed. When the pencil-necked pill-pusher had launched into some droning monologue about drug interactions, Bill had snatched the antibiotic from the counter and made a beeline for the exit in mid-drone.

The street was lined with the usual cast of losers and miscreants, costumed in doo rags and clown pants and high-rent sneakers. A whiff of hot dog from a wagon down the block normally would’ve tempted Bill’s resolve, but in his current state, it raised his gorge. He studiously ignored the heckling cap-and-tie peddlers, and stepped off the curb.

“Yo, man!” Bill spun, heart leaping. A middle-aged man in a filthy Redskins cap and a stained, open tux shirt held out a wavering palm. “Yeah, my brother, you. You a soldierman, right? You wanna help a fellow Marine. I was in the Persian Gulf, caught me a case of the Agent Orange.”

Rather than correcting the derelict’s breach of branch and obvious fabrication (he was at least a decade beyond serving in the first War on Hussein), Bill turned and headed for his car across the broad avenue.

“They gave it to me!” the man called plaintively. “The space aliens gave it to me.”

Bill’s feet froze to the asphalt.

“Government, they know what they done to me! Hell, brother, you got to know, too. They gonna give you a scorching case of the Agent Mulder.”

Bill’s head ripped around. “Mulder?” he rasped.

“You be moulderin’ in the grave, all right, them space aliens get their hooks in you.”

“Who are you working for?” Bill demanded.

“Useta work with the U.S. Postal Service, but they found out I had the Agent Scully an’–”

Bill’s fingers flexed at his side as he stared at the disheveled assassin. “You leave her out of this, you mother–”

“Naw, man, wasn’t her. It was the supervisor. He says I’m crazy, I’m rippin’ off the TV Guides.” The man looked down the street. “Hey, brother, you might wanna–”

Bill’s muscular neck twisted, and his eyes bulged right before the black Caddy ripped the breath from his lungs with a sick organic thud. His battered body ricocheted off a parked Caravan, shattering what major bones the initial impact hadn’t, and William Scully’s open eyes fixed on the homeless man as his head lolled lifelessly.

The Caddy squealed onto K Street as a streetful of horrified onlookers stood affixed and shocked. The homeless man knelt next to the broken soldier. He started when William’s eyes blinked once and blood burbled from his lips.

“Zeus…” Bill rattled.

“No, man — Calvin, Calvin.”

Bill whispered something else.

“Favor? What you want, man? Ain’t got no money, but if I can, I’ll try.”

The last sparks of electricity faded from William Scully’s aortal node, and his eyes rolled back.

“Well, shit,” the man in the Redskins cap murmured.

**

Mulder folded his cell phone, glancing up at Scully with a look of concern and confusion. Her eyes widened.

“Nobody’s at the house, and Bill’s cell number’s no longer in operation,” he drawled, the phone hanging limply in his fingers.

Scully inhaled sharply. “God, Mulder. Do you think they could have found out? What would they do…?”

“Scully, calm down,” her partner murmured, grasping her shoulders and pulling her to him. “Tara and Bill probably went out to celebrate the big news, and you know how reliable the cell phone companies are. Let’s just drive out to the house and check out the situation. OK?”

Scully clung to him silently, then pulled back and nodded, her eyes filled with dread. “OK.”

The phone sounded as Mulder was slipping it into his pocket. “Muld –. Mrs. Scully? Hey, Mrs. Scully, Maggie, tell me what’s –. Oh, God. God.”

“What?” Scully cried out. “Mulder, WHAT?!”

Mulder looked anxiously at her. “Where?” he asked her mother. “We’ll be right there.” He ended the call and looked up, stricken, at Scully. Her lips moved, but no words escaped. “It’s Bill,” Mulder said tonelessly.

Scully’s legs wavered. “Oh. Oh. Please.”

Mulder stepped toward her.

“No, no, NO!” she shrieked, dropping to the carpet.

**

“It was a hit-and-run driver, they said,” Maggie Scully said, worrying the shredded Kleenex in her hands. Shocked, the red-eyed woman stared somewhere between her daughter and Mulder, toward the emergency ward monitor station. “Upscale car, probably some senator or diplomat not thinking about anything but tonight’s reception or party.”

Mulder glanced at Scully, who closed her eyes and squeezed her mother’s hand.

Maggie sighed. “Your father always said they drove like maniacs in D.C. Bill, your father, he said they had too many crucial things on their minds to worry about anybody’s safety. They’ll probably never catch him, you know.”

“Mom,” Scully begged, eyes overflowing. “Please.”

“They were the ones with their heads in the clouds, you know,” Maggie said, turning to Scully with clear eyes. “Both of them. Important men, full of important ideas and honor and courage and all that bullshit! Bullshit, bullshit!” A nurse, arms full of flowers, turned abruptly to regard the sudden burst of obscenity.

“Mom,” Scully whispered, pulling her to her small form. Maggie collapsed against her, her body racking with sobs. Mulder stood by helplessly, hands dead at his side.

Maggie suddenly stiffened, and her head rose from her daughter’s shoulder. “Oh, God.”

Mulder turned. A familiar figure approached from the end of the corridor, leaning on a doctor in blood-spotted scrubs as she numbly stumbled forward.

The physician passed Tara Scully into Maggie’s waiting arms, and the widowed mother stared ahead with dead eyes as she accepted her mother- in-law’s consolation…

Epilogue

Hopewell Cemetery

May 25, 2004

11:22 a.m.

“May the road rise to meet you. May the wind be always at your back. May the sun shine warm upon your face…”

The sun was indeed shining warm. It was a gorgeous day, but the mound of lilies encircling the casket emitted a strong perfume with that warm sun, and the beautiful sunny day, along with the grief surrounding the small plot where Bill Scully, Jr. lay, made Mulder’s stomach take a sickening turn.

As the priest concluded his prayers with the Irish Blessing, the group began to break up. Mulder removed himself from the crowd, beneath a nearby tree, so that those who truly deserved to mourn Bill could embrace and speak softly to those that they loved. He peeled the trench coat from his arms, sweating with the heat of the spring day. At this remote location, he truly felt that he didn’t deserve anything Scully had given him — that he belonged in the outskirts. That family over there was a unit, and one that Bill had fought hard to preserve. The moment he’d allowed Mulder to enter into it, no matter how reluctant, it seemed to accept another crack, and he felt like the ice pick.

Maggie glanced his way, curly hair sticking to her forehead beneath a black wide-brimmed hat. Her eyes were watery with grief, but she held him in her gaze, beckoning him for support. His apprehensions instantly melted. He walked the short distance to her and was drawn into her arms.

“Fox, thank you for being here,” she shuddered out, clinging to his waist. Mulder felt the back of his throat become hot, and pursed his lips to keep the sobbing back, unwilling to allow her to feel any bit of concern for him. She was the one who needed comforting the most, not him. She pulled back and wiped her eyes with a mascara-streaked handkerchief. Tara came over to them, children in tow who were cranky, hot and unhappy. She too hugged him and tried her best to keep a brave face for her mother and kids. The strength of this family was amazing. “We’re going back to the house,” Maggie said without pretense. She squeezed his arm, pointedly looked over to the gravesite where Scully stood speaking to the priest, then walked away with her daughter-in-law. It was an open invitation, expected that he follow. Also unspoken was that she expected him to get her daughter over to the house safely, that they were all meant to share this moment together. He was a part of this unit now, and he could feel the crack of sorrow becoming a fissure. Now that he knew he was allowed to care, the real pain was that of his own heart breaking.

When Scully had finished speaking to the priest, she walked over toward the casket one last time, fingering a large lily petal, her eyes red, but dry. Cautiously, he closed the gap between them, placed his hand at the small of her back and stood with her. She leaned into him then, burying her face into his chest and finally released all the pain that had been building up all morning. His dress shirt became wet with her tears, but he refused to notice. He smoothed down her hair, holding her all that much closer, accepting the sorrow she felt as his own. Her sobbing subsided after a moment longer, and she pushed her face gently away, but settled herself closely against him so that he could still rest his arm over her shoulders. Everyone else had gone to their cars by now — only the low murmur of voices, caught from a distance over the wind, lingered.

She shifted her arm slightly, so that she could hold a stack of envelopes more securely against her chest. Mulder had noticed that she was designated to accept all the Mass cards for her mother and Tara. There must have been at least twenty of them. One, however, was at the top, and this she pulled from the stack, crinkled from the force with which she held it.

“This was the only one Mom opened. It’s from Charlie.”

Mulder took it from her, removing the card from the violently torn envelope. Inside the generic Mass card was a telegram informing Maggie and the rest of the family of Charlie’s deep regret at not being able to come to the funeral of his brother. Apparently he was ‘at sea’ and unable to acquire leave.

“Why does he even bother? What right does he have!” Scully rasped out furiously, her mourning disturbed by the harsh reality of her brother’s convenient absence. Mulder rubbed her shoulder, attempting to calm her, but felt the same rage bubbling up within himself. She bowed her head to accept the caress, breathing slowly to tamp down her anger. “Mom’s furious, of course,” she said lightly. “Practically crumpled the thing up herself, but was gracious enough for appearances’ sake to just hand it to me.”

“Wrong choice, I gather,” he said, handing back the mangled envelope.

“Yeah,” she laughed out ironically. “If I had a lighter it would have been ashes right about now.”

They stood staring at the gravesite, sun beating down, birds twittering from the trees, flies and bees investigating the newly arrived bunches of pollen. Nature vibrated all around them — life continued. At length, Mulder took it upon himself to direct Scully away. “Come on, love,” he pressed his hand gently against her back, “they’re waiting for us back at the house.”

Scully obediently followed his lead, so conscience-stricken Mulder could feel it in her hesitant gait. “He’s gone too far this time, Mulder. We can’t let Charlie get away with this.”

Mulder stopped walking. “Scully, we don’t know for sure that it was Charlie. Bill’s phone was tapped. It could just as well have been Krycek. It’s his style. Whoever it was knew that Bill was going to stop by the pharma–”

“Charlie, Krycek — I don’t care! I just don’t want to do this anymore, Mulder! I can’t do this anymore! I can’t!”

The tears were flowing again. God, he’d never seen her cry so much in their whole partnership than she had in the last few days. She wasn’t crying outright this time, but just let the tears run down unacknowledged. She stood still as one of the tombstones in the line of graves stretched out behind her. She was tired. She was distraught. She was vulnerable, and all he wanted to do was let her know that he was there for her, and would always be there for her, but words escaped him.

He reached out to wipe the moisture from her cheeks, gently scrape the matted red hair away from her temples. He drew her closer, bent down to kiss her, nearly crushed her in his arms. She pulled at his back, crushing him just as much in return. Between them both, they could find strength in a single unit, an outpouring of emotion seething through them by osmosis. They had always been each other’s strength, but weakness had finally taken a hold of them both, reached up into their souls and yanked it all out of them. There was always a time to fight back, but as they pressed lips and bodies together, exposed and vulnerable, wishing they were already home, Mulder felt it. It was time to give in. They pulled apart just enough so that they could breathe, but remained clinging to one another for support. Scully lay her head upon Mulder’s chest, listening to the heavy breaths he took, the steady heartbeat, feeling that her cheeks were wet from his own tears as well as hers.

“Scully,” he said in a thick voice. She nodded, still leaning against him. He inhaled deeply, stilling himself against what he was about to say. “Maybe it’s time to stop. This is all too much for us. We have nothing to lose by leaving, but everything to lose if we keep on going.” She pulled away to look up at him. “What are you saying?”

Mulder immediately shook his head, realizing her distress, and caressed her cheek. “We can’t keep putting Maggie and Tara and the kids in danger. My whole family is already gone. We have to protect what remains of yours. They mean too much to you, and… they mean too much to me now, too.”

Still unsure of where this conversation was going, and certainly not of any strength to begin another tirade of emotion, she waited for him to finish.

“The Bureau,” he finally blurted out to clarify, noticing that she still wasn’t getting it, and berating himself for his clumsiness. “I think we should leave the FBI. The X-files, everything. It used to be my whole life, but what’s in my life now it so much more important. We need to survive, and to protect everything else we hold dear, I think it’s what we have to do.”

Scully stood silent. A thousand thoughts ping- ponged inside her head. She exhaled an internal sigh of relief that Mulder was not breaking off their relationship in order to protect themselves. Realizing now that wasn’t at all what he was suggesting, she distressed over the idea that he was willing to give up his whole quest, his life’s work at the FBI for her. *Her* life’s work had become his, and he was asking her to give it up! But it wasn’t just for her; it was for the both of them. “What about the rest of the world? What about the consortium, Krycek, Charlie, your mother’s journal . . .”

“They’ve been there for as long as I can remember,” he spat out. Then more gently, “I don’t think they’ll be going anywhere for a while. If we stop now, it’d only be for the better. We don’t know everything. Never will. Not now, anyway. At least if we’re out of the way for a while, we’ll be safe. The world will be there tomorrow, and I’d be happier if we were both still in it.”

Scully hung her head low, studying the green grass at her feet hiding her toes. “Skinner?” she asked, still staring at the ground.

“Skinner will understand.”

She pinched her eyebrows close together, rubbed her mouth with her thumb. After a long silent moment watching the breeze tickle the blades of grass around her shoes, she nodded. She shuffled the envelopes and looked up at her partner. A conglomerate of expressions melded his face. What resulted was a mirror image of her own: uncertainty, sorrow, but most of all peace. “What do we do now?”

“Now,” he pulled her close again, but began walking toward their car. “Now, we’re going to Tara’s. After that, I want you to come home with me. For good.”

This time Scully stopped them in their tracks. “Mulder?” her voice wavered.

“It won’t be ‘home’ without you, Scully. Will you come live with me?”

It didn’t take her long to answer this time. “Of course.” They strode through the cut grass purposefully toward their car, hand in hand. When Mulder started it up, and slowly navigated through the twisted drives of the cemetery, he said, “So, I guess you’ll take care of all the paperwork for your apartment in a few days, follow-up with Skinner and all that?”

Scully laughed out loud at the thought of conquering a stack of paperwork all by herself. She held down her hair against the wind whipping through the car window as they picked up speed toward the exit and their new beginnings. “Some things, Mulder… they never change.”

The end . . . for now.

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