Someone was chanting, and the sound floated upward; Scully recognized
the tone before the words, and exhaled in disgust.
"Mulder and Scully, sitting in a tree, k-i-s-s-i-n-g,
first comes love, then comes marriage,
then comes the baby in the baby carriage."
"More like the baby alien!" yelled someone, and there was the
general sound of laughter.
Mulder poked his head out of the small window on the side of the
treehouse. "Clever," he called, without rancor. "Really clever. Did
someone check with the kid to see if he had anything up here that's
missing?"
The person who answered was abruptly sober. "He doesn't want to go
up there. We might get Mrs. Raines up to see, but the kid's only
twelve. And he hasn't been up there for a while, anyway."
"Yeah," said Mulder, and pulled his head back in. "You hear that?" he
asked her.
"That Mike doesn't want to come up? Or the attempt at humor?" Scully
asked tartly.
He shrugged, twisting around from his knees to a sitting position,
legs scrunched up in front of him. "God, I feel like Gulliver in
Lilliput," he groused. He looked at her speculatively, and she could
tell that he was deciding whether or not to make a comment about
her height and Lilliputians.
Wisely, he chose not to do so. She could stand, if she hunched over.
He could not. He had been doing a good job of making himself as
small as possible, compacting himself like a winged insect
coming out of flight, but the space was still cramped. Mike Raines
hadn't been in his childhood treehouse since the age of eight or
nine, he'd said, and it had stood empty until his father had come
up here only yesterday.
"Harry Raines was taller than I am," said Mulder. "He must have been
uncomfortable up here. I wonder why he chose this place."
"He was mentally disturbed," said Scully, frowning at the obviousness
of that statement. "Who knows why he did anything?" Much less why
he had come up here, folding himself into this place like a psychotic
Jack-in-the-Box.
"I'd like to know," said Mulder simply. "Did you ever have a
treehouse?"
"At one house we lived in, yes. When I was about six."
"What'd it represent to you?"
She sat down herself, mirroring his posture. She was against one wall,
he against another, but their feet touched. "It was Bill's,
really. He and his friends built it. Girls weren't allowed, unless
he was really bored."
"So it represented what, the forbidden?"
"Maybe. Where are you going with this?"
"I don't know. Nowhere, probably. Harry Raines wasn't a six-year-old
girl. Or a typical boy who didn't want to catch cooties from his
sister."
She tilted her head back against the rough wood of the treehouse.
"So why do you think he did what he did?"
"Maybe it's the light," mused Mulder. "The pattern here is suggestive,
where the light falls among the shadows. But in all likelihood, if
it's what I think it is, this is a small place. A safe place. The
windows are small. No one--no thing--could get in here with the
trapdoor closed."
"There are a lot of places like that."
"In his house? No. The windows and doors are too big. And work, work
wouldn't be safe, would it?"
"You're assuming, Mulder," she said carefully. "You're assuming that
Raines fits into the pattern of the other cases. Even if he does,
you're assuming that Pincus was...what you claimed he was before."
"Aside from safety, this is manmade. The triumph of man over nature.
He'd appreciate that. It'd be a sort of metaphorical victory over
nature, over the perils of nature."
She shook her head. "Even allowing for the moment that you are correct,
Pincus wasn't natural."
"Insects come from nature."
"Not insects that go to work as telemarketers and wear three-piece
suits," she said. "And we don't even know that this is related to
Pincus. Much less that Pincus was what you claimed he was. You're
making assumptions."
He rubbed his face against his shoulder, his voice muffled. "You're
not going to give me an inch on this, are you?"
"I'm up in a treehouse, Mulder, having left the hospital earlier
than the doctors thought I should have, on a case that isn't even
ours, that the field office here doesn't think is worthwhile because
it's basically already solved, with the full knowledge that our boss
is going to be really pissed off if he finds out we're on this. I'd
call that giving you more than an inch."
"Yeah," he said, ruefully. "All right. I'm finished here. You?"
"Yes," she said, and started to move to the trap door, to put her
foot on the first rung of the ladder, and then
she is seven and a hand is reaching out to her shoulder to push her
back away from the treehouse and her hand stings as it scrapes off
of the rung and she is falling through empty air to the
"Hey, Scully? You with me here?" asked Mulder, and she was back in
present time, with Mulder looking at her with sympathy in his gaze.
"Flashback," she explained, unnecessarily. "You know, I never thought
of this as a possible occupational hazard when I was recruited."
His mouth quirked. "You never thought of giant mushrooms; I never
imagined giant bugs."
"The giant mushroom has been proven," she said.
"Just because the giant insect hasn't been doesn't mean it doesn't
exist," he said, quietly and obstinately.
"No," she admitted, "it doesn't. I'm not denying the possibility,
Mulder. I'm saying there are others."
"It matches, though. Raines talked about a creature who was hiding
in plain sight, who was deadening others. Not killing them. Deadening
them. The word choice suggests something, don't you think?"
"It may. All we know right now is that Harry Raines came home from
work one day, disturbed, and then holed up in his son's abandoned
treehouse with a pad of paper, a pen, and a rifle. And that when he
came down, he gave his wife an envelope to give to the newspapers,
went back to his workplace where he started waving a gun around and
holding people hostage, and then shot two co-workers because they
were, in his words, 'already dead.' And that a third co-worker
disarmed him, and in that struggle Raines was shot and killed. Yes,
it's suggestive. Yes, it matches Gary Lambert's behavior. But right
now, that's all."
She could tell, though, that Mulder, having committed himself to one
possible trajectory, was going to follow through on it. "So let's go
find out more," he said. He gestured to the trap door. "Come on, let's
get out of here."
She watched him maneuver his long legs through the trap door. He
started down the ladder, and then suddenly popped his head back in.
"Hey, Scully?"
"What?"
He grinned. "I just want you to know, if I'd had a treehouse, I would
have let you play in it anytime."
***
"Make sure to check the back of their necks," he said anxiously when
they had arrived at the morgue.
He had the grace to flush when she stared at him. "Obviously. What
do you think, that I wouldn't--"
But he was staring at a point above her head, oblivious,
eyes glazed. She sighed and waited until his eyes cleared and he
shook his head. "Whoa," he said. "That was...colorful." He looked at
her apologetically. "Sorry to zone out on you."
"Job hazard," she said, accepting the apology, which she knew had
nothing to do with zoning out on her. "Skinner's gonna have our asses
for this," she added. "We should both still be in the hospital. Or at
the very least, at home, letting the drug work its way out of our
system. Not trying to prove an entity that most people would dismiss
as a hallucination."
"Small steps, Scully. Just see what's in the back of their necks."
"While you do what?" she said suspiciously.
"I thought I'd go interview the co-worker who took Raines out. And see
if there's somebody at the company who looks like Pincus."
"No."
"What?"
"Our last case, you went off on your own to check out a lead, and we
both almost ended up dead--"
"I couldn't have foreseen getting sucked underground by a magic
mushroom," he said defensively.
"If you *are* right, Mulder, then this is a threatening situation.
The local field office is satisfied that Raines shot those people,
it's open and shut, and while they may let me do an autopsy because
it saves them time, they aren't going to want to help you out.
And you're not at your best. I may not agree that Pincus was a big
bug, but he did disappear, and he would be a threat to you. Especially
if he's capable of disguising himself as someone else."
"I'd recognize him," Mulder said darkly. "In any human guise..."
"And if you have a flashback while you're there? If you take someone
else for Pincus? You could kill an innocent person. Don't go off
without me on this one. Or else I'm going with you to cover your
back."
"And to make sure that I don't do something stupid?" he asked
sarcastically.
"Skinner's going to have our asses for this one as is, Mulder. I'd
rather not give him an extra reason." She paused. "At the very least,
he's going to have your ass."
"Do you have to dwell on *that* image?" he asked with a wince, but
she could see that his resolve had lessened.
She rolled her eyes. "Smartypants," she said affectionately, and
touched his arm beneath the elbow. "I'm going to do those autopsies
now. You'll stay here?"
He touched his other hand briefly to his forehead in a quick, sloppy
salute. "Aye, aye, ma'am."
She didn't leave him, though, and they stood there for a moment,
her hand still on his arm. She hasn't been sure what she's been
seeing in his eyes lately, since they woke up in quarantine,
reaching blindly for each other's hands.
Since they almost died in the fungal mass, she has felt Mulder
like a pulse, as if she had had radar installed that informed her
always of Mulder's location. To some extent, she'd always felt this
way, knowing when he was in danger, but it was as if the mechanism
had been switched up a notch.
They haven't talked about it, any more than they have talked about
the flashbacks or the dreams.
She walked to the door, conscious of Mulder's eyes on her, and then
turned around. "Scrubs, Mulder?" she asked, and watched amazement
bloom in his eyes. She wondered if she was being an idiot, bringing
this up now.
They kept their distance, several feet apart. His hands were fisted
in his pockets, but she felt his presence like a phantom touch of
those hands on her skin.
"Smart is sexy," he said finally.
***
Well. That had been a surprise. He leaned back against the plastic
orange couch in the hallway, moving into a reclining position, and
stared up at the ceiling. He felt...not quite bruised. More as if he'd
been out in the sun too long, and his skin was starting to burn.
But then, to him, Scully had always been closest to the element of
fire.
It was starting to wear off already, he knew, this abnormal closeness
that had developed between them while they were trapped in the giant
mushroom. In a few days, he and she would be back in their separate
bodies and minds, and the memory of their shared hallucinations would
fade. He had expected her to ignore the residual closeness until it
had passed, until the drug wore its way out of their system.
Maybe he had wanted to ignore it too. It had unnerved him when he
had begun to suspect that they were sharing dreams. It had unnerved
him even more when he had fallen out of a flashback to find that
Scully was looking at him with bewilderment. It had scared him
shitless when he had realized that the images in his mind when she
had a flashback were mainlined straight from hers.
Not clearly. The images were pastel and faded, not nearly as clear
as his own flashbacks, and they went almost too quickly to isolate
specifics, the backwash instead of the rich tide of memory itself.
He'd felt her fall, earlier today, had felt her hand trying to grasp
for the ladder and clutching only air, had seen the dim impression of
faces and hands reaching out to try to catch her. But the feelings had
been slightly removed, distant, not the full technicolor dreams of
his own flashbacks. Bare glimpses into her mind.
And (he felt his face burn) she had gotten a glimpse into his mind,
hadn't she? A memory of a younger version of herself, standing in
some unidentifiable hallway in hospital scrubs, arguing with him
vehemently, and he had not been paying attention solely to her words
but to her smell, to the tendrils of hair falling out of her bun,
to the way her lips moved when she spoke, to his own longings and
fleeting fantasies.
She'd been in a fair amount of his flashbacks, one way or another.
He wasn't yet sure how he felt about that.
He'd been in a fair amount of hers, too. He wasn't sure how he felt
about that, either.
***
"Well?" He swung his legs down off the couch, and she sat down
beside him.
"There are definitely marks at the back of the neck. We won't know
what they were injected with until the tox screens come back. And time
of death is off, maybe. The bodies are decomposed more than I would
expect, although not by much. " She rubbed at the back of her neck.
"Pincus."
"Seemingly," she said, and rolled her neck until he could hear it
crack.
"Seemingly? Scully, come on," he said, feeling anger rise in him.
"Either Pincus or someone like him," she answered. She flexed her
fingers. "Or something."
"Someone like him?" He put his hands on her shoulders, feeling the
knotted muscles, and rubbed gently. "You're saying he, or it, might
not be an isolated entity? A freak of nature?"
"If he's possible, then why wouldn't another one be? Another...God,
Mulder, I don't even know what to call it. Insect-man? That sounds
like a bad comic book."
"I kinda like the alliteration of Bug-Boy, myself. So wait, are you
saying you're buying this?" His hands stopped moving in surprise.
He saw her eyes close, lashes dark against her face. "As one of the
possibilities? Yes. As the most probable one, even."
He let his hands drop. "Why this? Why now?"
"Why are you questioning this? I thought you wanted me to give you
the benefit of the doubt."
"Not if it's not..." He sighed, remembering his words to her in the
office, what had it been, only a week ago? And remembering with equal
clarity the Scully who had stood face to face with an alien in his
bedroom, and how he had not accepted her belief then. "It worries me
when you start believing," he told her. "It means that I have to play
the skeptic then."
He saw the shadow of a smile cross her face, and then she leaned
back against the sofa, eyes still closed, face washed out, patches
of red on her pale skin where the acid had eaten at her face. "I'm
trying to follow the evidence on this. Not to leap to any rash
conclusions. Mine or yours..." Her eyes met his, suddenly and sharply.
"I dreamt, or hallucinated, in that fungus, that you had died, and
everyone was accepting the easy explanation for your death,
dismissing any possible questions. I don't want to be that close-
minded. And you're right, sometimes I have been."
"I never said that."
She raised her eyebrows slightly. "Not in those exact words, maybe.
At any rate, we have the testimony of several eyewitnesses--albeit
many of them were also mentally disturbed--that Pincus was, or
at least appeared to be, a monster of some insect-like variety. We
have the disappearance of several people who were supposedly turned
into zombies--"
He shook his head. "Not zombies, exactly. Zombification is a fairly
specific process associated with voodoo. This is something else
altogether."
"So what do you want to call them? Little bug-boys?"
"Bug-ees. Buggers. The deadened. The ungrateful dead. Deadheads.
Hey, yeah...deadheads."
She looked like she was struggling to suppress the smile, but it came
out anyway. "All right, so we have the disappearance of these
deadheads from the previous case. We have two people dead now, with
some sort of puncture wound in the back of their neck. Have you
considered that you were hallucinating?"
"I thought you just said you believed--"
She shook her head. "That Pincus injected those people, without a
doubt. But what if...you've been assuming that he's a large insect-like
creature who can trick others into believing he's human. What if it's
the other way around? What if he's a human who can trick others into
believing he's a monster?"
"Why would he want to do that?"
She shrugged. "We know that the ability exists from our experiences
with Modell. We *haven't* ever seen a similar creature."
"We've seen mutants. The fluke-guy, Tooms, the mothmen. I don't see
why Pincus would..." He was stopped as she pushed her hair behind
her ear, and he saw the redness of healing skin at the tip, and felt
a pang of compunction. He modified his tone. "I'm not saying you're
wrong, Scully, or that it isn't a possibility. But I don't know why
he would be invested in producing a hallucination of himself as a
monster. Surely that would just draw attention to himself, and if
you're poisoning people, that isn't the way to go. Why would he?"
"Why would Modell confess to those murders? Why does any serial
killer commit a crime that gives clues to his identity? Because he's
arrogant? Because some part of him wants to be caught? It's just a
thought." She sighed and rolled her neck again. "So where do we go
from here, hmm? Assuming that Skinner doesn't find out we checked
ourselves out of the hospital to come here on the basis of a newspaper
article. You do know that he's going to institute an order to keep
you away from all forms of media during hospital stays after this."
"You'll smuggle the tabloids in to me, won't you, Scully?"
"Can't live without your daily horoscope? Anyway, assuming that
Skinner doesn't call us back to Washington..."
"I want to talk to all the people who were there when Raines went in
with his gun. I've been thinking that Pincus--or whatever, if you're
right and there are more than one of these creatures--was probably
one of the bystanders. Because Raines couldn't have thought that he
would get too far after killing two people. He probably would have
tried to get Pincus in the room with them before trying anything,
like Lambert did. Maybe Pincus was the coworker who killed him, even."
She nodded. "Makes sense. We'll do that tomorrow, then?" She was
already standing, probably impatient to get to a hotel and get to
sleep.
He checked his watch. 8 pm, not too late, but then he hadn't done
two autopsies... "Tomorrow," he agreed. "Um, Scully?"
"Yes?"
"About earlier." His face felt hot. He hoped he wasn't blushing.
"Mulder, if you're going to apologize, please...don't." She was
blushing.
"Yes, but..."
"I shouldn't have even brought it up." And then she started to walk
away, the Scully form of distance, of denial.
He let her go, which was his.
***
He was already sitting in his office when she arrived, throwing
pencils at the ceiling. "I was starting to think you weren't coming
in," he said.
"How could I miss this?" she asked, and sat in the chair
across from him, glancing up at the ceiling and then reaching across
the desk for some pencils.
"You're going to join me in my pencil-throwing fest?" He asked with
surprise.
"It's not like it's going to cause much damage." She flipped a
pencil up and watched it stick, quivering, in the tile.
"True. So whose psyche do you think we're in tonight, huh?"
"*I* am having a dream."
"We're both dreaming," he said. "We're just dreaming together. Come
on, you know we are. We have been for the last few nights. You
as much as admitted that you're seeing my flashbacks today."
"I didn't say anything about sharing dreams," she said, and watched
as a pencil slowly tumbled from the ceiling, narrowly missing
Mulder's head.
"So what would you do, if I asked you tomorrow what you dreamed about?
Would you confess to this?"
"Would you?" She questioned. "If you're so sure about this, why
haven't you asked me?"
He looked vaguely discomfited, which pleased her. "I didn't want to
press you into believing something you weren't ready for," he said,
but the words were slow.
She shook her head. "That's never been a problem for you. And if so,
why are you pressing me now?"
"This *is* just a dream. Like you said. Even if I'm not sure if it's
my dream or yours."
"Admit it, Mulder, you're not any more comfortable with this whole
thing than I am."
"You're allowing that there is something to this, then?"
She considered, taking the time to send another pencil up in the
air. "In your dreams," she said finally, and he laughed, a short
bark of appreciation.
"About earlier..." he said, and blushed.
"Let it go."
"But I wouldn't want you to think that...that I don't pay attention
to you, or respect you, or..."
"Oh, Mulder. I wouldn't think that. I...look. You're a man, I'm a
woman, we've worked together for six years, of course we're going to
be...distracted, sometimes. I...I take it as a compliment. Nothing to
be sorry for."
"Mmm...you're dealing with this better than I expected."
"What, with the fact that you have the occasional lustful thought
about me or--"
"Scully!"
"With the fact that our minds somehow..." her voice faltered.
"That our minds meshed while we were in the mushroom and haven't
quite separated yet?" he suggested.
"Whatever. I can't deny it bothers me. Aside from the scientific
ramifications of it, I don't like the idea of someone being able to
rummage inside of my head, even if it's you. Don't take this
the wrong way. If I have to be..." she faltered again.
"Psychically linked with someone?"
"I think this is a little more occasional than a psychic link.
However, my point was...I've always been a very private person."
"You think this doesn't bother me?"
She regarded him curiously. "Does it?"
"I don't know. Not really, I guess. It was confusing at first, like
stepping into a cubist painting, or a collage, you know? But if
anyone's going to read my mind, I'd prefer it to be you." The words
were confident, but his face seemed troubled, and she shook her
head.
"Sometimes I think you're as secretive as you think I am," she said.
"Fox Mulder, Man of Mystery..." he grinned at her. "So what do you
think we should do in this dream?"
"As long as we're in the office, we could look up files pertaining to
psychic links."
"*That's* an exciting dream."
"What do you expect, sex on the desk with Nurse Nancy? Not if this
is my psyche."
"You're gonna take all the fun out of this. We could actually go
outside the office, see what our subconsciouses have waiting for
us." He stood up, almost bouncing with impatience.
"You're sure you want to see into the depths of either of our
subconsciouses?" she asked, but stood. He reached out a hand, and she
took it before looking down at their linked hands in bemusement.
"We don't want to get separated," he said. "Trust me, you wouldn't
want to wander around alone in my subconscious. Ready?"
"Lead the way, Man of Mystery."
He opened the door, and they stood on the threshold. "Well, it's not
the FBI," he said, chewing on his lip and watching the white,
flourescent-lighted hallway with wariness, as if he suspected that
it might shift before his eyes. Which, of course, it could.
"It could be a hospital," she said. "After all, all of our other
dreams have been in places we both know. Office, your apartment,
whatever. And we've both been to any number of hospitals."
"So we'd both have that construct in our subconscious? Okay. I'll buy
that."
"Nice of you," she murmured, and wondered why they were in a hospital,
and if she really wanted to step out into the corridor. "Which ward
do you think we're in?" If she had to guess, oncology or maternity.
Given the way the rhyme that the other agents had been chanting earlier
today had struck in her mind, she would guess maternity, and wouldn't
be surprised at grotesque alien-human hybrid babies.
"I don't know. Maybe we shouldn't..." he said.
"It's only a dream," she said. "It can't hurt us."
"If you're ready, then." He sounded like a small child. They both did,
she realized, daring each other to do something dangerous.
Mulder, as always, was the first one to take a step out the door,
and then the phone rang in the office.
"Hold on," she said.
"Let it ring." He tugged on her hand. "Come on, if we're going to
do this, let's do it."
"I need to check," she said, and pulled away from his hand, walking
over to the phone. "Hello?" she said into the receiver, and looked
back at him, waiting just the other side of the threshhold, arms
stretched out on either side and hands braced on the doorway, the
wall white, almost glowing, behind him.
The phone rang, and she woke up in confusion, reaching for it
automatically. "Scully."
"Agent Scully." Skinner's tone was very dry, and she winced, sitting
up in bed, her gaze travelling to the connecting door, and...oh fuck,
she'd *left* him there.
"Sir," she said, and then cleared her throat hastily and reached
over to the end table for her watch. Fuck again, they'd overslept.
10:00.
"Agent Scully, would you care to explain where you are, exactly?"
"Uh..." she stalled.
"And this had better be good, Scully," he growled.
"We're...well, we checked ourselves out of the hospital."
"I'm aware of that, since I called them this morning to see how
the two of you were. Imagine my surprise when they said you'd checked
out. Voluntarily, according to them."
Damn. She could hear the undertone of worry in Skinner's voice, and
knew that he must have been frantic when they'd disappeared, again.
Especially since most of their disappearances had been involuntary.
"We're both fine," she reassured him. "We're...in Missouri."
"Because your flight stops there on the way back to DC?" Skinner
asked tersely.
"Because there's a case here that required our attention."
"A case? Neither of you are fit to be on active duty. Neither of you
should be handling a gun right now, not until you're fully recovered."
Unfortunately, this was basically true. "Sir, up until now, we've
mainly offered guidance. And I did two autopsies. I assure you, we
won't put ourselves into any situations where we might hurt ourselves
or anyone else."
"You still shouldn't be out there. What case could be that important?"
She let her head fall back on her pillow. "We...there's evidence that
Pincus may be operating out of a small company in Missouri, and that
he may be...injecting poison of some sort into--"
"Pincus?" She held the phone away from her ear. "Pincus, as in...no.
No. You and Mulder are not getting involved in that."
"Sir, we are involved in it."
"Not any more. I want the two of you back in DC as soon as possible.
By the end of today."
"Sir--"
"That's an *order,* Scully. The two of you are not fit for active duty.
Especially not on that case. If the two of you are not back at DC by
the end of today, you will face the repercussions, do you understand
me?"
"Sir, with all due respect, Mulder and I have more background on this
case than the agents here. They're content to let it rest."
"Part of the background consists of Mulder trying to attack someone
he claims was a large *roach* and ending up in a mental institution."
"Which he was then taken out of, because someone tried to *attack*
him," Scully exclaimed vehemently. "Whether or not Pincus was what
Mulder claimed he was at the time, Pincus is a threat. And, if we
accept, for one moment, the possibility that Pincus might have been
what Lambert claimed he was, then who better to explore this case
than us? After all, we're used to dealing with anomalies. While I
find the idea improbable, it's not--"
"Save the lecture on open-mindedness for another time. You've told the
local agents what to look for, I'm sure. They can consult you via
e-mail if necessary. But neither of you is physically ready for that
case." He paused, and Scully heard what he hadn't said, that Mulder
might not be mentally ready either. "I'm not Kersh, Agent Scully. I'd
prefer not to treat the two of you like errant children. But if you're
not here by tonight, I'm calling the local field office to direct
them not to work with you."
"Yes, *sir*," she said through gritted teeth, and clicked the phone
off, tossing it to the other side of the bed and turning over to
punch her pillow, a not completely satisfactory substitute for
Skinner's head.
"Uh, Scully?" Mulder sounded amused, and she turned back over to see
him standing in the doorway between their rooms. She frowned, trying
to grasp at the elusive slip of color that had been her dream. He
had been standing in the hallway, in the office, and she had left
him...but the memory faded, leaving only the aftertaste of loss.
"Skinner," she said unnecessarily. "He wants us back in D.C."
"Yeah, I heard."
"I'm sorry, Mulder. I tried to convince him..."
"Yeah, I heard that too. Thanks." He shrugged and came over to sit
on the neatly made double bed across from hers. "When did he say?
By tonight?"
"Yes, tonight. And, much as I hate to admit it, he's probably right.
Neither of us should be handling a gun, not when we could zone out
on each other at any minute."
"If we went to Raines's workplace *now*..."
"Skinner will find out about it."
"You don't have to go," he said mildly. "You could head home."
She glared at him. "You think I'm just going to let you walk into
danger by yourself?" For a moment, the words hung in the air like
an echo, and she saw him cast a glance to his room, to his bed, to
the rumpled sheets, and felt again the bitterness of shame.
His eyes weren't accusing, though. "You don't have to get in trouble
on this. Skinner isn't Kersh. He won't punish you for my decisions."
"I can't let you walk in there by yourself. You should know that by
now. And honestly, I'd prefer not to get in trouble over this."
He stared at his bare feet moodily. "All right. I wanted to have a
look at those other files anyway. We may as well go back. Maybe I
can put together enough evidence to convince Skinner to let me come
back."
"To let us come back," she said firmly.
"Right. I'm going to go pack." He padded over to the doorway, and
turned around, an uneasy smile on his face. "Sweet dreams, Scully?"
She met his eyes without flinching. "Sweet enough, until the end. But
then, most of my dreams are."
***
"I think I know who Pincus is, Scully," he said, looking up from
the employee reports that the local field office had given him this
morning on their way to the airport.
"Hmm?" Scully was still reading the autopsy reports intently, as she
had been since they had been on the plane.
"There wasn't anyone who matched Pincus' description, according to
the locals. But I've been looking at these employee records, at the
list of people who hadn't been at the job that long. Robert Hand. He's
been there since...shortly after the incident in Oak Brook. And
listen to this, an employee under his command left about a month after
he arrived. Fired, because he went to the boss of the company and
started complaining about monsters. A guy named Timothy Warren. I
want to talk to him..."
"Hmm."
Wonderful to know that he inspired such attention from her. "Scully,
are you paying attention to me?" he asked, and was annoyed to hear
the whine in his voice.
She did look up at that. "Hmm? Yes, of course. Robert Hand and
Timothy Warren. What does Robert Hand look like? I thought that the
locals said that there was no one matching Pincus' description when
you had the photo faxed to them?"
"Yeah, I *know.* I just said that. But he's been there the right
amount of time, an employee under him was fired for psychological
reasons--"
"Timothy Warren?"
"Yeah. And he's on the list of people who were there when Raines went
off his rocker."
"Off his rocker?" He'd seen that same expression on her face when she
was examining an anomalous piece of evidence, but now she was
examining his face. "I thought that, according to you, these were the
sane ones? The ones who had figured it all out."
He shifted uncomfortably under that stare. "And then they went and
shot at a bunch of people. I wouldn't have done that, even if I did
believe they were..."
"Deadheads?"
"No. Scully, these people...they were somewhat disturbed. I...can't
deny that."
"And that doesn't worry you, Mulder?"
Folie a deux, her explanation to Skinner. Madness. He shifted even
more uncomfortably. "Are you implying that anyone who sees the monster
is ready for the looney bin by definition? And that therefore--"
"I didn't say that," she answered sharply. "I'm saying that..." And
then her eyes widened and lost focus and
she is thirteen it is summer she is sitting on the back porch with
the sun warming her hair and
the images flitted through his mind, and then he felt the dislocation
that signaled his own flashbacks and he was
seventeen his body moving on the track he has to beat Ronald
Miller has to beat him has to beat him the words falling into the
pattern of his racing feet (she is thirteen and Ed Jenkins is passing
her on the street and she is torn between) has to beat him has to beat
him the stands a blur can't see anyone but that's okay because
dad moved out moved out has to beat him and mom never came
anyway has to beat him (calling out to him and staying there what
is she wearing today and Ed likes Melissa anyway not her) has to
beat him has to beat him has to beat him has to and
present time. He was sitting in a plane with Scully.
"Well." He cleared his throat. "Simultaneous flashbacks, anyway. We
can consider that a good omen, can't we?"
"A good omen for what, exactly?" asked Scully pointedly and then shook
her head. "Never mind, I don't want to know. As I was saying, I would
like to think about the people who have seen Pincus in his supposed
natural state. Why them? Why not anyone else?"
"Maybe they *were* disturbed. Maybe that opened their mind somehow.
And maybe, because they weren't used to dealing with strange
occurences, they couldn't handle it. They snapped under the stress.
That's why I want to talk to this Timothy Warren guy. He didn't
snap. He went and talked to his boss. And why I want Robert Hand
brought in for questioning."
"So call once we get off the plane. But remember, to them, the crime
that's been committed has been solved. Raines was killed. They're
not going to want to bring in a guy for questioning on your say-so."
"Exactly why I want to get Skinner to let us go back there, so we
can do it ourselves."
She didn't look terribly comforted. "Look, I'm not going to go off
and shoot a bunch of zombies," he snapped finally. "I'm not going to
run back and shoot this Robert Hand person, even if he is Pincus. I'm
not going to get myself locked up in the psych ward again. Once was
enough."
"Yes, it was. Do you think I enjoyed seeing you there?" She seemed
very serious, and he tried to break the mood.
"You're telling me you've never wanted to put me in restraints?" he
teased.
There was a flicker in her eye that warned him, a second before her
comment scorched him. "Not for those purposes," she said. "Excuse
me."
He watched her walk down the aisle to the bathroom, her hips swaying
just slightly.
***
She kept one eye on the luggage carousel and the other on her
partner, who had had his cell phone open almost as soon as they'd
gotten off the plane.
"He may not match Pincus's description, but that doesn't mean much...
look, he could have lost weight. Plastic surgery. Whatever. If he's
been poisoning people..."
Mulder rolled his eyes at her. Obviously, the locals were not being
cooperative. She sent him a look of commiseration.
"I *know* that it was Raines who killed those two people. However,
they may have been poisoned, infected, prior to their death.." She
stepped forward and pulled off her suitcase, and then Mulder's,
automatically checking the tags to make sure they were theirs. "No,
I don't know what they were infected with!" Mulder was exasperated
now. "The tox screens haven't come back yet. But if they were
poisoned, it probably wasn't by Raines, okay? It might have been this
Hand person. I'd at least like him brought in for questioning. Okay.
Okay. Exactly. *Thank* you." He broke off the phone call and glared
at his cell phone. "I'm understanding why they call it the Show-Me
State now, Scully."
"You're surprised they doubt you?"
"That doesn't ever surprise me. I'm used to it by now," he said wryly.
Humor, but it bit her. She'd been trying, dammit, to be open-minded
on this case. She opened her mouth to say as much, but he had already
grabbed his piece of luggage and started striding away, long legs
covering the distance easily.
***
He had marshalled every fact he had, every report they had, and taken
them up to Skinner's office, where he had launched into an
explanation that carefully elided the more paranormal aspects of the
case. Skinner sat in silence, fiddling with his glasses. Without
them, his eyes looked tired.
"So you want to go back there when, tonight?" he demanded finally,
putting his glasses back on.
"Not tonight, sir," said Scully. "It's 6:30 already. But tomorrow,
yes. We'd like to get to Robert Hand before he might disappear. If
he *is* Pincus, we know he's capable of that." Scully was speaking
crisply, as always, but Mulder knew that she didn't expect this to
lead any place. Skinner would probably keep them home. He hadn't yet
decided if he would go back to Missouri anyway. Scully would be
furious if he ditched her, and if he asked her to go with him, she'd
have to defy orders to do so.
"Fine, then," said Skinner, and Mulder reflexively checked to his
right to see if Scully had heard what he had.
"You're letting us go?" He couldn't quite hide his surprise.
Skinner's expression wasn't easy to read. "If Agent Scully feels that
you're both capable of working in the field, yes. But I want you to
work closely with the local office. And I'd like you to stay in
the office as much as possible. Get someone else to pick up any
suspects, or handle any situations that might turn violent. Act in
an advisory capacity. Is that clear?"
"Yes, sir. We understand. And we won't take any chances," said Scully.
She was already standing; she knew how to quit when she was ahead.
"What changed your mind?" asked Mulder, knowing he was probably
getting himself into trouble.
"You shouldn't sound so amazed when your arguments work," Skinner told
him. "Check in daily. And keep the expenses down." It was clearly a
dismissal, and Mulder followed Scully out the door, glancing back
once to see that Skinner was already shuffling through papers on his
desk.
"What changed his mind?" He punched the down button on the elevator.
"Maybe you're more persuasive than you know, Mulder."
"Yeah, but..."
"Are you having second thoughts?" she asked.
"No. No, I think we have to go down there. It just bugs me when
someone does something I don't expect them to. I was hoping that he'd
let us go, but I expected a lot more trouble than *that.*"
The elevator opened, and they stepped in, stopping their conversation
since there were other people on board. He leaned down to her as the
elevator dropped, muttering, "Did *you* expect him to concede?"
They were standing close, and her breath was warm on his neck. "Maybe
he had an ulterior motive."
"What, for me to end up in the psych ward? He wouldn't want that."
"Maybe he just thought you'd run off anyway if he didn't let you
go," Scully said, sharp and pointed.
"Um."
"You didn't tell him what you really thought."
"What I really thought?"
"You stuck to the theory that Pincus was injecting people. You totally
skirted..." She looked around the elevator and stopped talking
until the last of the other riders got off on the first floor.
"You skirted the issue of whether he really was a monster," she
finished.
It was possible, he told himself, that she did not intend for her
voice to have quite that tone, as if she was chastening a small,
foolish child.
"I'd rather not have Skinner send me to the psych ward again," he told
her. Even to himself, he sounded brittle. The elevator stopped on
their floor and they got off, instinctively heading towards the
office.
"So you didn't tell him the truth."
"I thought you didn't consider that the truth. Only one of the many
possibilities. So, fine."
"You believe it to be true. And you didn't even mention it as one
of the possibilities. In fact, the way you were talking, I started
expecting you to dismiss your own claims as hallucinations."
"What's the problem?" He fumbled for his keys. "So I'm finally
learning to shovel out the bullshit, after all these years. Next
thing you know, I'll learn how to play well with others, and then..."
He gestured her ahead of him.
"You know what I mean."
Agent Scully, disgruntled federal employee. She stood in the middle
of the office, hands on her hips, disturbingly like a little ruffled
chicken. He'd always found her sexy when she was angry, but not when
she was sanctimonious. "Would you rather I tell the truth when
it's a stupid thing to do?" he demanded.
"I mentioned the possibility of Pincus being real this morning and
Skinner didn't flinch too much."
"Not coming from you. You have credibility."
"And you have the integrity to defend your beliefs...Skinner's always
respected that in you, at least."
"I would have thought that you'd be happy that I considered the
consequences for once. Remember Tooms? I told the truth at that
hearing and look where it got us. It got Tooms out to kill another
man."
"I'm not denying that there are times when I wish you were a little
more...politic about when and where and how you should express your
beliefs. But that doesn't mean I want you to...dilute them, or
repudiate them, because you think it's the wise thing to do."
He turned away from her, striding towards the cabinets and re-filing
the files he'd pulled on Pincus. "Maybe you've found ways to walk on
that tightrope between saying exactly what you think and sounding
like a fool, or saying nothing. But then, as I said, you have
credibility." He slammed the drawer shut with a satisfying clink of
metal against metal.
"I have a lot less credibility than I did five years ago," she said.
Not snappish, just straightforward, but it burned.
"Another sin to lay at my door?" he asked her, and opened another
file drawer simply so that he wouldn't have to turn around and face
her.
Her hand on his shoulder stopped him from slamming that drawer, too,
a small warmth that seeped through the layers of suit coat and dress
shirt and t-shirt. "It hasn't been because of you that I have less
credibility. It's been because I've stood my ground on those things
that I've considered true, and some of those things have not been
easy to accept. Well. You have always given me more courage to stand
my ground, but that's the only way it could be considered your
fault."
He suddenly, desperately wished that she would step closer,
wrap her arms around him and rest her face against his back,
warming all of him. "You always have the evidence, too," he said,
grudgingly. "To back up your claims. So we find the evidence on this,
and then present it to Skinner. Because, honestly, Scully, I'm not
taking the risk that he'll be close-minded on this. Not on this one."
Lying in bed, trapped, while that thing came closer and closer,
screaming hoarsely for help...despite himself, he shivered under
Scully's touch, and cursed himself for a coward.
She tipped her forehead to rest against his shoulder, another small
warmth. "I just don't want to lose you. Not to Pincus, not to any
physical threat, but equally, not to Bureau rules and regulations."
"Oh, well, Scully, there's *no* danger of that."
She patted his back and moved away. "Good. I don't ever want you to
be...to be *less* than you are."
"Just different?"
"Sometimes I think you couldn't be different without being less."
"And the rest of the time?" He turned around and leaned back against
the file cabinet.
"The rest of the time, I'm awake." But she smiled at him, and he
was almost sure she didn't mean it.
***
If she had to dream a hotel, she didn't know why it couldn't be a
nice hotel. But no, she was back in last night's hotel room, with
a crack in the ceiling and a bed that sagged in the middle.
Surely, she and Mulder could come up with a better place to meet
somewhere in their mutual subconscious.
She went over to the connecting door and knocked, feeling absurd.
Never let it be said that she wasn't polite, even in her dreams.
"Come in," Mulder called. The door opened without any touch from her
hand.
He was semi-reclining on one of the beds, watching TV and...
"Mulder, there was no Magic Fingers in that hotel room."
"So?" he asked. "What, I can't improve on memory?" He patted the bed
beside him. "Come on over and...enjoy."
He was shirtless, slouched on the bed, wearing only sweatpants. She
briefly checked to make sure that she was appropriately clothed--
wouldn't put it past his subconscious, or hers, to strip her of her
pajamas--and then went over to sit on the jiggling bed. He sat
upright, looking slightly panicked, as if he hadn't been prepared for
her to collapse the distance between them.
"So what's on TV?" she asked, and reached over to grab the remote.
"Uh...uh, not sure," stammered Mulder. He looked at her askance,
seemed to reconcile himself to her presence on his bed, and lay back
against the propped-up pillows. She shrugged and clicked the remote
off.
"This is really you, right?" he asked. "Not some part of my
subconscious conjuring up a version of you?"
"You're the one who's gung-ho for the theory that we're sharing
dreams," she answered. "You tell me. As far as I'm concerned, this
is my dream and my subconscious."
"Huh. Well, I'm flattered to be part of your subconscious. But
seriously, Scully, you honestly don't believe we're sharing dreams? I
thought we settled this last night."
She lay back on the bed and stared at the ceiling. "For the sake of
argument, if we are sharing dreams, how would this be happening?"
"Why wouldn't we be?"
"That's not a reason."
"The drug, then. It somehow...opened our mind. Why couldn't it
happen?"
"Because it can't? Mulder, people don't just read each other's minds.
They don't share dreams. Our minds aren't...networked computers."
"What about Gibson Praise, huh?"
"He was an exception."
"Was he?" Mulder turned over on his side, propping himself up on
his elbow, his face looming above hers. She could have reached out
and touched his bare chest. She didn't. Evidently, even her
subconscious was repressed. How depressing. "Parts of Gibson's brain
were active, parts that aren't active normally. But they're *there.*
Maybe we all have tendencies in that direction, Scully. Maybe we
dismiss it as intuition most of the time. But the drug
activated it somehow, sent it up a notch. And during the flashbacks,
or while we're sleeping, we're more vulnerable to it."
"So why each other, only? Gibson could read any mind."
He shrugged. "Physical proximity? Mental closeness? Like twins or
siblings who are very close?"
"It can't be physical proximity...our bodies are in different
*towns.*" She frowned. "And believe me, Mulder, I don't really need
another big brother. And I hope that..." her voice trailed off.
"Trust me, Scully, you're not a sister substitute. But there have
been cases where people who are very close have known when something
is wrong with the other, stuff like that. And we've been partners for
six years."
"So you're saying that we can all, under the right circumstances...
that this is latent in all of us?"
"Maybe we're really communal creatures at heart. I don't know all
the reasons why, Scully, but if you want proof...when you wake up,
write down what you remember of this dream. Have me write down what
I remember of my dreams. See if they match."
"We could dream similar things."
"You think we'd both come up with a hotel room, lying on a bed
talking about psychic links?"
She sighed. "No. All right. Maybe I will. Mulder, how did that dream
end, last night?"
The bed suddenly stilled under them. Perhaps Mulder's subconscious
couldn't keep the Magic Fingers going under stress. "Nothing. You
left. Disappeared, really."
"Did you go into the...where were we, then? I don't remember it
clearly."
"Nowhere important."
"Mulder."
"Let's just say my subconscious isn't a pretty place and leave it
at that, okay?"
"I didn't mean to leave you alone there."
"I usually am alone in here. Don't worry about it."
The Magic Fingers suddenly started working again, and there was a
blast of music. Elvis.
"You weren't kidding when you said your subconscious wasn't a pretty
place," she said, sitting up. Mulder, in contrast, flopped
completely onto the bed, turning over to bury his face in his pillow.
"Why's it coming up with Elvis, for Chrissakes?"
"I think that's my alarm," he mumbled into the pillow. "I have it set
to the radio."
"So..."
"Dammit, I want to stay here," he said, but she noticed that his
body was fading around the edges. She could see the bedspread through
his suddenly translucent arm.
She reached out for him, and for a moment touched the skin of his
shoulder, before he was gone.
And then she woke, in her own bed, alone. She reached for the phone
and then stopped.
She could call him up, ask him what he had dreamed about. It would
be proof, of a sort.
She shivered with the realization that she didn't need proof.
***
Mulder swatted at the fly that had landed on his arm with more than
usual viciousness and then, for good measure, stomped on an ant that
was innocently scurrying along on the sidewalk.
Bugs. They all deserved to die. As did the members of the local field
office. If he were a very large person with a magnifying glass, he
would focus the sun on them until they fried.
"At what time did you call Robert Hand?" asked Scully. She was
enunciating very clearly, a sure sign that she was pissed off.
"I see. No, he isn't here. And from a look inside the windows, I think
it's safe to say that he isn't coming back. No. No, he didn't call
into work today. If you called last night to...yes, I know my partner
asked you to bring him in. However, I believe Mulder intended that
you actually bring him in, not call him to set up an appointment for
today. I'm *aware* that there wasn't...I see. You thought that...
Well, plainly, he didn't feel the same way. I would suggest...yes.
Mulder and I will be here, waiting for the warrant. If it wouldn't
be too much *trouble*" (oh, that mild tone meant that someone was in
deep shit), "maybe you could issue an APB on him. *Thank* you."
And Scully had a reputation for playing nice with the locals. Maybe
they were only hearing the thank you and not the tone of voice.
She clicked her phone off. "I realize you're frustrated," she said,
and the acid in her voice had upped a notch, "but you don't need to
decimate the local ant population."
He stepped on one last ant, carefully, for good measure. "What'd
they have to say?"
"They called Hand last night in order to ask him to come in today.
Under the pretext that he might help them understand what was going
on with Raines. They didn't think it was a big deal, since Raines
had obviously killed those people, and Hand didn't match Pincus'
description."
"Dammit."
"They're calling a judge for a warrant. Someone will be here very,
very shortly and we can see what Pincus left."
"Nothing, I'm sure," Mulder said, and slouched against the piece-of-
shit rental car.
"They suggested that you start thinking about where he might have
gone."
"Where he might have gone? Jesus, Scully, I must have missed that
particular psych class. How to profile a large *bug.*" He hit the hood
of the rental car, squishing a fly, and felt vaguely ridiculous as
he bent to wipe his hand off on the grass. But, God, it had been a
crappy day, with delays at the airport and a prickly Scully. He wasn't
sure whether to attribute her crankiness to the continued flashbacks
(they were becoming more rare, but Scully could be impatient) or to
the fact that she was plainly having the bad hair day from hell.
Oh, yeah, and their suspect had absconded. That hadn't improved her
mood at all.
He straightened up, and found that her mood seemed to have improved
instantly. Probably at him making a fool of himself. He scowled at
her.
***
Mulder was not uncute when he pouted, which probably explained why
she let him get away with it more often than he deserved. He had
pouted indiscriminately until the agents had come to deliver the
warrant--at her, at the car, at the grass, at any passing bug. Then
he had glared at the agents.
They had turned to her in the hope of understanding and sanity; she
had made her voice as hard and unforgiving as possible. This seemed
to cheer Mulder up.
The house was empty. No furniture. ("Why would a bug need furniture?"
Mulder had said in a low voice to her. "He'd only need an address to
carry on this charade.") No discarded clothes. No food.
Not quite empty. In the back of the corner of one cabinet, there was
a can of bug spray. Scully almost laughed.
***
At the end of the day, she collapsed more than lay on her bed at the
hotel. God, what a day. Mulder in a mood, uncooperative agents who
had decided to blame them for Hand's disappearance, a suspect who
had made a clean getaway, and, maybe it had been the weather, but her
hair hadn't looked worse in a long time. Completely limp. She needed
to change her conditioner. Or start wearing hats.
When Mulder knocked on the connecting door, she almost hollered for
him to go away. Instead, she remained silent. He evidently took that
for assent, and came in, although only as far as the doorway.
"You're getting the tox screens on those two victims back soon,
right?" he said without preliminary.
No, Mulder, I wasn't trying to get to sleep. "Soon."
"Maybe then they'll accept that a crime's been committed and get off
their asses."
"We can hope so."
"The bug spray...that was surprising," he said. He sounded interested,
now; he'd been furious at first, and even more furious when he'd
seen the beginnings of a smile on her face.
"Surprising how? He's taunting us. That isn't surprising."
"I wouldn't have thought he--it--would be capable of that."
"Tooms was capable of reasoning. He knew that he couldn't kill the
people he lived with. He was capable of lying on the lie detector
test, too."
"Mmm." Mulder moved to the chair. "Tooms was capable of reasoning,
but I would have thought that Pincus was of a lower order than that.
And the bug spray...that's almost humorous. I would have thought of
humor as a very human quality. Remember what Lambert said, that
Pincus couldn't stand humanity, that he felt the need to suck the
life out of us?"
"Tooms was capable of setting you up, don't forget. And if the bug
spray was humor, it was fairly sick and twisted--"
"You smiled."
"Nonetheless...you're not suggesting that Pincus is capable of humor
because he's sucked it out of his prey, are you?"
His eyes gleamed. "Actually, I was commenting on an anomaly, that's
all. But you could be right. You really could. What if--"
"Oh, brother."
"What if he's somehow feeding on his prey, not only physically but
psychically? He had to learn how to dissemble as a human somehow.
Maybe he's been infected by humanity even as he's infected those
people."
"Frankly, I don't much care why he is the way he is. I just want to
catch him."
"Bullshit." For the first time that day, his tone was actually
affectionate instead of cool, pissed off, or outright venomous.
"If we catch him, you're going to be the first in line to figure out
why he is the way he is."
"When we catch him, yes. Although honestly, I'm more interested in
getting back the tox screen analysis so that we can find out what
exactly he did to those other people--I'd like to know if that's
reversible. But both of those things can wait until tomorrow morning.
Until then...good *night,* Mulder."
"Oh...you were trying to sleep?"
"Lying in bed, in my pajamas, with the alarm set..."
"Your light was still on."
She stretched out and turned off the lamp on the end table. "And the
light off..."
"I get the hint." He walked to the doorway, stepped through, and then
looked back for a moment. "Good night...may you dream of handsome
men." She wasn't sure if the mockery in his voice was directed at
himself or her.
"Don't let the bed bugs bite," she told him.
In the semi-dark, his face was hard to read. "What a keen sense of
humor *you* have," he said, and then started to close the door
behind him.
"Wait," she said, not knowing what she wanted to say, but not liking
the sharpness that had been in both of their voices, ill-disguised
as humor. Neither of them ever quite knew when to stop their sparring,
especially when they were both out-of-sorts.
"Yeah?"
"I...just wanted to make sure that the burns from the mushroom...
you are doing okay? They're healing all right?"
"Ooh, you want to check, O doctor, my doctor?"
"Mulder."
"Yeah, they're fine. Sting a little when I'm in the shower, but
otherwise fine. You?"
"Just fine. Night, Mulder."
"Night, Scully."
***
Sometimes after a horrible day, she would have nightmares. But
sometimes, just sometimes, after a generally-shitty-but-not-exactly-
hellish sort of day, she would have a good dream, as if her
subconscious recognized that she needed to be soothed and that her
usual bubble bath remedy just hadn't cut it.
On those nights, she dreamed of water and woke up refreshed.
She stood on the river's edge, and stretched out her arms in delight.
Far away, boats dotted the water, but she stood alone. The river
wasn't big; she could see the other side from where she stood. She
couldn't have swum the distance, but it wouldn't take too long to
cross it on the bridge.
Somehow, she knew that this was the last bridge, the last town, before
the river spilled out to sea.
Oh, she'd needed this, and even if it were only a dream, she was
grateful for the smell of salt.
Something nagged at her, but she pushed it away and walked down to
the water, scrunching her bare feet into sand and letting the water
lap over her feet, over her painted toenails.
Something nagged at her, and she turned her eyes back to the shore,
but there were only a few empty, picturesque houses there.
She turned back to the water and...oh, of course. Mulder. They'd
been dreaming together, hadn't they, and now he wasn't here.
He probably just hadn't fallen asleep yet. She turned back to
the water and began to walk along, breathing in the air and watching
the clouds overhead shift directions.
But it continued to nag at her, this sense of something missing, and
eventually she turned back to the shore.
"He'd better appreciate this," she said out loud to the air. "All
right, take me to whatever office or hotel room we're scheduled for
tonight."
She stood on the shore, alone, and the scenery didn't change. Crossing
her arms and blinking like Jeannie didn't work either.
"Come on," she said impatiently. "If I'm supposed to be somewhere
else to meet him, let's go there, okay? Or send him here."
But her surroundings didn't swirl and change shape around her. She
swore briefly and started heading away from the river, towards the
nearest house. When she looked down, her subconscious had sensibly
decided to put her in shoes to protect her feet against the now
rocky ground.
She went up to the nearest house and knocked at the door (the river
seemed a long way off, suddenly, although the walk hadn't been that
long), with some vague idea of borrowing their phone to call Mulder.
But the door of the house opened not onto an entrance way or living
room but into their office, where Mulder read a file. "Hey," he said,
looking up. "I wasn't sure if I'd see you here tonight."
"You were the one who told me to dream of handsome men," she said, and
watched as the reply knocked him off balance.
He recovered quickly. "How'd you know that my alternate career choice
was to be a Chippendale's dancer?"
"Well, shake your booty." She moved around the office, restless.
"Let's go outside. It's nice out there."
He grimaced. "Let's not. It's safe in here."
"Your version of a treehouse?"
That stung him, she could tell. "I tried going out of our office to
see what else our psyches had in store for us before. It wasn't a good
trip."
"It's beautiful out there now. Look, see? We can go back by the
river. I've already been there, it's beautiful."
He came to stand by the doorway, peering out with the expression of
a nocturnal lemur confronted with daylight, and then turning to
regard her dubiously. "I'm not even sure I *can* go out there,
Scully. I mean, that isn't someplace I recognize. So far, we've only
been in places that both of us know."
"I know this place," she told him. "I've dreamt of it before. Come on,
hold my hand so that we don't get separated."
"Yeah, but if this is your--" he sounded reluctant. When she
tugged at his hand, though, he followed her out the doorway and
the sky shimmered and
the earth
rocked
and settled and
beside her, Mulder fell to his knees.
"Mulder!" she bent over him. "What happened? Are you okay?"
"Yeah, yeah, fine." He sounded woozy, drunk. "Just give me a minute
here." She watched him reach out his hands to steady himself, one
on the ground, one curving around the back of her knee.
"What happened?" she asked. "Don't tell me one of us fell off of
our beds in real life."
He shook his head. "Don't know. Hold on. Okay." He started to pull
himself upright, and she wrapped her arm around his waist to hold
him.
"You okay?"
"Yeah." His arm was tightly wrapped around her shoulder, and he
wavered on his feet. "Wow. That was...wow."
"Are you okay? God, you fell on your knees, they're probably
scraped."
"No." He waved her hand away and tightened his grip on her. "No, I
don't think..." and he laughed. His eyes were full of wonder. "I don't
think anything could hurt me, here."
***
They walked back to the river, his arm still tucked around her.
"I like this place," he said softly. "It's very peaceful. You said
you've dreamed of it before?"
"A few times. When it's been a bad day. Not when it's been a really
awful day, but when it's the kind of day we had today, where all sorts
of little things go wrong."
"Pincus is a lot of things, but he wasn't little. Pretty damned big,
for a bug."
"No one died; neither of us were hurt. We were only in bad moods."
She felt tension collect in his muscles, and patted his side to let
him know it was okay. "And the bad hair day didn't help," she added.
"I wish that the bureau dress code included hats."
"Your hair looked fine," he said, and if she didn't know the sound of
his voice when he was lying she would have almost bought it.
God, her hair must really have been bad if Mulder, who alternated
between ignoring her physical appearance and looking at her with
uncritical adoration, had noticed.
"I notice there are no bugs here," he said. "Nice of your
subconscious to do that."
"I'm a lucky girl."
"You are indeed."
They had reached the water, and she toed off her shoes, motioning
for him to do the same before she walked into the water again. "We're
near the sea, here," she informed him. "And it's going to be sunset
soon. Sunset over the water is always incredible."
He joined her in the water, pants legs rolled up. "So what do you
do in your dreams, when you come here?"
"Walk in the water. Watch the sunset. Start going over the bridge."
"What's on the other side?"
"Don't know. I've never gotten there."
"Hmmm. You don't ever get lonely?"
"No," she said baldly. "Most of the times that I've dreamt this place,
it's been on days when humanity doesn't look very appealing."
He flinched away from that, wading deeper into the water.
"I wonder if other people do this," he said.
"Play on the beach?"
"Dream the same dreams. Maybe without even realizing it. I mean, most
people forget their dreams. Even if they told their dream to each
other, enough details might have been forgotten that they'd simply
say, 'Oh, funny coincidence, I dreamt something similar.'"
"You sound like you'd like that to be true."
"There's something appealing to that idea, don't you think? People
meeting again in sleep."
"You're really getting into this idea that we're communal creatures
at heart, aren't you?"
"At heart, at soul. Think about it, Scully. Even your own religion--
your God is three persons distinct yet somehow so close that they're
one God. What is the Trinity, except a representation of community?
Maybe a representation of something we lost, or something we're
striving towards."
She shook her head and wrapped her arms around herself. "Don't."
"Don't what?"
"I know that to you Christianity is nothing more than another nice
set of myths to be dissected, but...don't."
"You dissect my beliefs all the time," he protested.
"Because you ask me to! Because you ask me to believe in them. I'm
not asking you to believe in God, or to prove or disprove His
existence. I'm asking that you accept that I *do* believe."
He held up his hands in surrender. "Okay, we'll stay away from
religion and politics, like my mother always told me too."
She was not surprised, looking up, to see that the sky was suddenly
overcast. He looked up too, and then looked guilty and forlorn.
"Sorry, Scully."
"It's okay."
"I didn't mean to," he gestured at the sky, "rain on your parade."
She smiled reluctantly. "It's not raining."
"Not yet. You know, I don't have to stay here. I mean, just because
we *can* be in the same dream doesn't mean we have to be." He was
already moving from the water to the wet sand.
"Don't be ridiculous. If this *is* a paranormal phenomenon that's
going to go away as soon as the drugs wear off, then we certainly
shouldn't waste it."
"But if this *weren't* a paranormal phenomenon, a weird occurence...
what if this were a daily thing?"
"Mulder..."
"You wouldn't want it to be, would you?" His face fell.
"Honestly? No. My dreams are one area of my life that are my own. I'd
like them to stay that way. That said...I didn't have to go and find
you tonight. I didn't have to invite you here. And...religious
arguments aside...I'm glad you're here tonight, okay?"
"Is that the nice way of telling me to stop sulking just because you
wouldn't want to be in a mind-meld forever and ever?"
"Yes."
"Oh." He made an arc in the sand in front of him with his toe, and
then smoothed part of it out before he looked up and grinned suddenly.
"Okay, I'm de-sulked. Want to build a sand castle?"
The sand was wet under their fingers, and it packed well. They were
haphazard about the castle, though, and without buckets or any
substitute to act as a mold, the castle turned out lopsided. "We
should have tried to build the Hoover building instead," said Mulder.
"A big square?"
"We could have handled that." He smiled at her again. The breeze had
tousled his hair, and his collar and tie were loose. She liked seeing
him like this, relaxed and healthy, even if only in her dreams.
When he looked away from her to squint at the sky, she examined the
golden sand sifting between her fingers.
"My worst nightmares," she told him, "they aren't of the things that
have happened to me, or of the crimes we've studied. They aren't of
monsters and bogeymen, or even of something happening to you. All of
those will wake me up in a cold sweat, but the worst one, the one
that I can't shake off in the morning and it keeps me up for a week..."
"Yeah?" His hand covered hers on the sand, his fingers much darker
than hers, and as warm as the sand.
"I dream of sand, but no water. And I'm completely alone. No houses,
no boats, no sign of any human except myself for miles around, and
no water."
His fingers, still slightly sandy, touched her chin, lightly. Not
forcing her face up to look at his, simply touching it gently. "You're
such a Navy Brat." The softness in his voice came close to breaking
her; she laughed, and it sounded almost like a sob.
"So next time you dream that, give me a call, we'll do a little
weed, and when you go to sleep I'll be there."
She laughed again, and it sounded more like a laugh now, and punched
his arm lightly. "And you a Federal Officer. I'm appalled."
"We'll both take really big doses of Nyquil?"
She stood up and brushed off her knees. "I haven't had that dream in
a long time, anyway. So now that we've built the requisite sand
castle, what next?"
"I don't know. This is your psyche, not mine. We could make like
Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr, but--"
"Let's save anything along those lines for when we're both fully
conscious, Mulder."
"That a promise?"
"Possibly a threat," she said, and reached out her hands to him to
pull him up. "Come on, let's walk on the bridge for awhile. You may
as well see the scenery."
He was amenable to that, and they started up the great arc of the
bridge.
"When I was a kid, the playground at our school had these great
rumbly bridges that you could jump up and down on," he mused.
"I loved bridges, when I was a kid. I'd run on ahead of my family and
look through the cracks to see the water beneath."
"My mother hated to drive across them, though. One of her phobias.
She was afraid they'd crumble beneath her. She'd drive miles out of
her way, to avoid a bridge."
"The element of risk," she said. "A lot of people get scared."
"And that was what you liked about them," he replied, certainty
in his voice.
"Yes," she admitted. "Yes, it was. You suddenly become aware of how
close you are to nature, and how far you are from it at the same
time, and how close you are to falling back into it."
"How close *everything* is to falling apart," he said, and she
remembered that he had lost a version of his sister on one bridge, and
had almost lost her on another.
They had reached mid-point now, and as always, the other side did not
seem to be getting any closer.
"I always wonder what it would be like to jump off," she said.
"You want to?"
"What? No, I...you wouldn't be afraid of being hurt?"
"I told you. I don't think anything could hurt me, here. But why
haven't you tried before?"
"I don't...I think I usually wake up."
They both waited a minute, but the sky didn't blur to bring them
to wakefulness.
"And I don't like falling," she blurted out.
"This isn't falling: it's jumping."
"The landing part stays the same," she said, and remembered how she
had fallen from the tree when she had been seven, the freedom of
flight before the breath had been knocked from her by the ground.
"Probably not here," he answered.
"It is only a dream," she said. Overhead, the clouds seemed to have
stopped moving. She held her breath.
He grinned at her suddenly. "Double dare you," he teased, and she
thought briefly that of all the people in her life, only Mulder had
ever really understood that she could never resist a direct
challenge.
"All right, you're on," she said, and suddenly they were both
scrambling to stand on the rail, teetering. She reached out for
balance and caught his hand, their arms spanning the distance between
them.
"One, two, threeeeeeeee."
The fall was an instant, and an eternity, the plunge into the water
a shock as if she had been thrown into a washing machine with the
spin cycle on, a blend of a million different shades of greens and
blue and then their feet touched bottom.
"That was fun," laughed Mulder, and she looked over to realize that
he was dressed in a wet suit. And (her subconscious must have certain
ideas about appropriate underwater dress) so was she, although they
had no snorkeling gear or breathing apparatus.
"Mulder," she said. "You can't talk underwater." Bubbles floated
away from her mouth.
"So pretend you have gills," he said. "Jesus, look around you."
She did.
Oh, my.
Above the water had been beautiful, but underneath, the water was
full of deeper, richer colors, lights and shadows, and flashy,
bright fish.
They swam for an endless time, through plants whose fronds billowed
in the water, near coral that Mulder touched with the backs
of his fingers, the way that he would sometimes touch her face, just
as lightly and with (she admitted to herself) just as much reverence.
"I think I got half the decor in here from a fishtank that my brother
had when he was five," she called to Mulder when they approached what
looked like a large sand castle, ornate and carefully sculptured.
"I hope my fish are this happy," he called back.
When she swam upwards, he followed like her shadow, and they surfaced
into light. The land was distant; they had drifted out to sea, and
the sky was red and gold around them. She leaned back in the water and
kicked her feet to stay afloat. He did the same, hair plastered to his
head sleekly. His eyes looked dazzled.
"What?" she said, when he stared at her with those light-struck eyes.
"You have..." he cleared his throat. "You have a very beautiful
soul."
She laughed and leaned back in the water. "Tomorrow, we visit your
subconscious."
"Oh, Scully, compared to you, I'm dull earth and rock."
"Earth isn't dull," she said. "Lots of layers, and veins of gold and
silver shot through it."
She leaned back into the water, letting it take her where it would,
and after a moment she felt his hand secure hers again, as the water
carried them out to sea.
***
He woke up in a tangle of sheets and emotions, part of him mourning
the loss of communion that he'd forfeited simply by waking up, most
of him giddy, and exhilarated. He felt as if electric impulses still
fizzed around in his brain, sending tremors through his body. He
didn't know whether to laugh or cry, and ended up doing a little of
both. If he could see his laughter, it would look like the bubbles
they'd exhaled underwater; his tears were the remnants of the sea
leaking out of him.
Oh, God, he'd always known that Scully was treasure beyond price, but
that, after all these years, she had such richness in her...he had
thought she was fire, and part of her surely was, but fire didn't
cleanse and cool like the touch of her soul, fire didn't fill his
lungs until air felt thin.
He would be searching for her in his dreams forever.
***
"You got laid last night, didn't you?" said Agent Ripley with a tone
of camaraderie.
"What?" Mulder turned in surprise to the man beside him,
one of the two who had helped them explore Pincus's house yesterday.
He couldn't remember the man's first name, and had barely remembered
his last name when they had met again this morning.
"Yesterday you were a total son-of-a-bitch...no offense. Today you
look like you might break into song any moment."
"I've never really wanted to play the lead role in a musical," said
Mulder.
Although he had been humming in the shower this morning. Snippets from
the Brandenberg Concertos, which reminded him both of the quest for
alien life, and, because of Bach's liquid, dancing precision, of
Scully.
"Are you sleeping with your partner? She is a nice piece of--"
the other man stopped abruptly at whatever he saw in Mulder's face.
"No offense."
"I am not," he paused and considered. Well, he *had* been sleeping with
her, actually. "Scully and I aren't having sex," he concluded. "And
even if we were, which we're not, I wouldn't be telling you about
it."
"Yeah, sure. So if you didn't get laid, what are you so cheerful
about?"
"Why wouldn't I be cheerful? At the chance to work at this fine, fine
office?" He put on his best manic grin, and Ripley edged away.
"What was that all about?" asked Scully, coming up to join him.
"Just expressing my joy at being here," he said. She watched her
process that one, working out if he had meant that as sarcasm or not,
as his voice hadn't been quite as ironic as usual. She dismissed the
question in a blink, though, and waved the file folder she was
holding.
"Tox screens."
"And?"
"And..." She held the word out, building the suspense, and he
privately grinned. She'd been playful today, and their usual banter
had been freer, if less barbed, than usual. "And...you're going to
appreciate this."
"I'm waiting with bated breath."
"All sorts of weird things came up."
"Is that the scientific terminology for them?"
"Basically, the substance is not dissimilar to that found in some...
well, snakes, actually. I've requested that a sample be sent to the
FBI labs, and they may be able to tell us more about the exact
chemical makeup. I'm wondering if there's a way to reverse the
effects."
"You think there might be?"
"I don't know...the effects of the substance that's most similar would
be delirium, possible fever, decreased respiratory functioning. In
large quantities, it could probably kill. Children, especially."
"But Pincus doesn't kill. Not exactly. But if there were delirium
or hallucinations...damn. I wish we could find one of his deadheads
and see for sure what it does to them physically. But I can't help
but thinking that there's a mental aspect too. He was able to somehow
get them to do what he wanted them to do. Snakes don't do that. How
could the toxin do that?"
"No. I've been thinking about that. The mental aspect."
"And?" He really was waiting with bated breath now.
"Maybe it's not the bite that does that. Or it does, but...look at it
this way. We've discussed this before, how drugs might affect a
person's brain."
He couldn't remember, for a moment, whether they'd discussed it in
dream or memory. But she was already sweeping on, as if she wanted to
get the theory out on the table without examining it too closely.
"The venom...it's a type of drug. Maybe it--"
"Lowers mental inhibitions?"
"I'm sure it has physical effects. Blood circulation, if nothing else.
That nurse that I saw...she was *pale.* But it also--"
He could see what she was trying to say, dominos falling into place.
"Has a physical effect on the brain, on the brain's electrical
impulses, just like that mushroom did, right? And that opens the
person up to being influenced by Pincus?"
"Possibly. Although what puzzles me is, why snake venom? I had them
compare this substance to that found in some insect bites, and it
didn't match. Why snake venom? Much less...Mulder, you know I have a
hard enough time accepting telepathy in humans. But a mind-meld with
a large *bug*?"
"He wasn't a bug, exactly, more like a big bug-like monster," he
said absently, turning her words over in his mind until they clicked.
"But you're right. That doesn't make sense. Scully."
"What?"
"I think maybe you were right."
She raised her eyebrow, looking startled. "What about?"
"What you said yesterday. Yesterday? No, the day before. That Pincus
was a man trying to be a monster. What if you were right? What if--"
"But what about what you saw? What all of them saw?"
"Imagine..." he paused, formulating it in his mind. "All right, start
with a basic assumption. Telepathy, psychic linking, mind-melding,
whatever you want to call it, accept that as a given. It's not just
an anomaly; we're all capable of it to some degree, of reaching across
the gap between bodies and minds. Some of us a lot more than others.
Certain substances can help increase the probability of it. But let's
say that there are a few people who can do more with it than others.
And that instead of just...sharing mental space for the span of a
dream or a thought, they use it to *interfere* with the mental
functioning of others. Modell. Linda Bowman. They could somehow reach
into other people's brains and make them see the version of reality
that they wanted them to see. Let's say Pincus has a mind like that.
Maybe not as fully developed, but like that."
"But he's fully human."
"Fully. And then let's say he has a version of reality that he falls
into, a myth of himself that he wants to belive in, a version where
he's not a powerless telemarketer being hung up on by irate
customers but a powerful entity."
"A monster. A large bug? Why would he want to be that?"
"He'd been reading too much Kafka. I don't know. He imagines himself
as a monster, and then somewhere along the line, he finds out that
others can see this reality if he tries hard enough."
"Or if they're drugged." Scully said. Her forehead wrinkled, a thin
vertical crease appearing between her eyebrows. "He's walking along
to work one day, having his bug fantasy, and someone whose mind is
opened by drugs sees him as he wants to be, and he learns it's
possible. And he starts injecting other people, so that they'll fall
into his version of reality."
"Seeing him as their all-powerful controller, and themselves as his
subjects. And a few other people see him as he sees himself, too..."
he stopped abruptly. Damn. He didn't like where he'd taken himself.
"People whose minds were open in some way."
"Folie a deux after all, Scully. But not between you and me, or myself
and Lambert. Between Lambert and Pincus, or Pincus and myself. But
he can't anticipate that, and those situations turn out wrong. They
aren't hapless subjects under his control."
"How'd he get down two flights from your room? I saw him *fall.* If
he was just a man, how did that happen? He couldn't have gotten up
from the pavement that quickly."
"I don't know. Maybe he projected an illusion of not being there, when
he really was recovering on the ground."
She nodded slowly. "Okay. Okay, so when I saw the nurse in the
hospital, when you saw Pincus crawling across the ceiling of your
room, we were somehow seeing what he wanted us to see, what he wanted
to believe he was. And when someone got close enough, he'd inject
them, not a bite at all, so that they'd stay in his illusion."
"Yeah. Wait. Time of death. That's a problem. If these are normal
people accept for the drugs, why would they decompose more rapidly?"
"These last two bodies weren't off by much. They were on the far side
of the normal range. And the first one, Mark Backus, from the last
case...inadequate refrigeration during shipping? I don't know. Time of
death is notoriously hard to quantify, I've told you that before."
"We *know* the time of death, though."
"What I mean is, if we get time of death wrong when we guess at it,
that indicates a wide range of possibilities. That can be explained.
But you...you're accepting this?"
"It makes sense, right?" He felt the certainty that had gripped him
lessen, the momentum of sharing a theory with Scully letting him go.
"We've seen these phenomena before, at least. We know they exist.
They make sense of what happened." She nodded. "I think so, Mulder.
It's easier for me to believe than a large monster, anyway."
"Yeah, of course. It'd be easier for most people to believe, I'm
sure." He shifted his eyes away from hers for the first time since
he'd fallen into the rabbit hole of his own theory, his own voice.
"Did you want it to be that?"
"I don't know. Some people saw Pincus as a monster and themselves as
zombies because he'd injected them with drugs. Others because they
were mentally disturbed. Why did I see him? That *can't* be good."
"Because you had compassion for Gary Lambert, Mulder? Because you
actually entertained the possibility that he was right and not
crazy? That he was on to something?"
"And fell into Pincus's madness instead."
He was looking down at his shoes when her hand came into his view,
reaching out to tug on his tie to get his attention. "And I saw the
nurse, because for just a moment, I considered that you were right,
and that left me vulnerable to Pincus. I'm sorry, Mulder."
"Sorry that you believed it too?"
"Sorry that I didn't consider the possibility that you had something.
I think...I was so resistant to the idea of a monster that I refused
to believe that something else might be going on. We might have come
up with this theory a year ago, if we hadn't ended up so polarized by
my disbelief."
"No. I probably would have insisted that seeing was believing. Don't
beat yourself up for playing the skeptic then...you were right."
"Don't beat yourself up for believing, Mulder. In some ways, you were
right, too." She let go of his tie, and then reached out again to
smooth it back into place. "So how do we catch him? If he's like
Modell, he's dangerous. Maybe most people aren't vulnerable to him
unless they're drugged, but we don't know who might be. And both of
us...our minds are more open than usual right now."
"Not only how do we catch him. How do we *find* him?"
She frowned off into the distance, absently tapping the file folder
containing the tox screen results with one hand. His eyes focused
on the file folder, and he saw hers focus as well.
"The snake venom," she said, an instant before he did. "How'd he get
a hold of it? Where from? If we find out where he could, and then
contact them..."
"And see if anyone has tried to get more recently..."
"Let's get that started."
***
"Why snake venom anyway?" Scully stretched her arms up to the ceiling
as she spoke, and he heard her back crackle as she stretched.
"Why not?"
"Well, if he's trying to set up this illusion, why not do it right?
Why snake venom instead of say, spider venom?"
"Maybe it's harder to get. Or maybe he thought that snake venom was
good enough. He probably doesn't feel that he has to be consistent."
"Hmm." She closed her eyes and rotated her neck, and then melted into
her chair. "Did you find anything?"
"Some possibilities. I'll fax them a picture of Pincus tomorrow. There
doesn't seem to be any of Hand, and the descriptions of him from his
co-workers are vague, in the extreme. Ready to call it a night?"
She opened her eyes and glanced at him. "I don't believe it's only
eight o'clock. I used to be able to work until midnight without
noticing it."
"We're still in recovery," he told her. "Of course you're tired. I
am too. We could go to sleep early..."
He thought that it was probably the first time he'd ever volunteered
for sleep.
"I'm not sleepy, my eyes are just tired from reading," Scully said.
"Let's head back to the hotel, though."
By common assent, they let the subject of Pincus drop in the car, and
on the way up to their rooms. They stopped outside their respective
rooms.
"So, I'll...see you tomorrow, Scully."
She raised her eyebrow. "Unless I see you before then. Night, Mulder."
In his room, he paced around restlessly for a bit, flipping channels
as he did so.
He wasn't at all tired, and she probably wouldn't go to sleep for
another hour or two yet.
This would probably be their last night of shared dreams, he knew.
Their flashbacks had been cut to a minimum today, and they had been
faded.
Of course, much as he would miss her in his mind, he had Scully in
real time, real body, sitting in the next room over. He hesitated
and then went over and knocked on the connecting door.
"Yeah, come in."
She was small in the middle of her bed, lying on top of the covers,
reading a book through those glasses that made her look somehow
younger and more vulnerable.
"What are you reading?"
She held it up for him to catch a glimpse of the cover. "It's called
The Women's Decameron. It's by a women named Julia...Voznesenskaya."
She pronounced the last name carefully. "It's about ten women in the
Soviet Union who are all in the maternity ward at the same time, and
they tell their stories. I found it in a used bookstore."
"Any good?"
"Yes." She took her glasses off. "What's up, Mulder?"
"Nothing. So I Married an Axe Murderer was on, and I wanted to know if
you wanted to see it with me. But you're reading..."
"No, that's the beauty of it, it's in stories, so it's easy to break
off. Tell you what?" She grinned at him. "If you go down to the
vending machine and get me a twinkie while I'm finishing this chapter,
we can have a junk food fest."
"One twinkie does not make a junk food fest."
"Get some of the Hostess cupcakes, then, too."
"Such a chocolate fiend you are. I'll be right back."
"Don't get yourself blown up," she called after him, and he grinned as
he walked back through his room to the hallway, counting out change
as he went down the hallway.
Heading back to her room, arms laden with choice junk food, he heard
an unpleasant skitter and turned around, heart suddenly beating
faster.
That had sounded like...
No, he had bugs on the brain.
He opened the door to his room, juggling his key card with the food.
A shadow rushed past him, and he whipped around, but it was gone.
He did have monsters on the brain.
But the bug spray...that had been classic taunting behavior. And
Pincus had once come after Mulder in a mental institution. He might
think it a special treat to overcome two FBI agents.
If he wanted to, Pincus could probably produce the illusion of
invisibility. He dropped the food on the bed and looked around
uneasily.
"Mulder, I want my food," called Scully from the other room, through
the open door, which suddenly...
swung wide.
Oh, fuck. "Scully!" he yelled. "Get your gun! Pincus!" He grabbed his
own gun from the table and charged through the door.
"What?" she said, rolling off the bed and starting over to the table
where he could see her holster and gun. "What do you mean, he's
here?"
"I heard a sound, and then the door..."
And then the shadow dropped from the ceiling, on her, and he
heard her cry out in pain. He yelled out loud in wordless anger and
disbelief, running towards the shadow, which had resolved itself into
a darker, more solid shape, he couldn't shoot not with Scully there,
but he could rip that thing off, no, it wasn't a thing, it was a
person, don't believe your eyes on this one. He grabbed and felt
flesh, felt bone through flesh, and felt as he did so his world
fragment
he saw through several sets of eyes, several perspectives
a small round man reaching for Scully, a needle in his hand,
struggling with her
a monster, gaping mouth open to bite Scully's neck
got to get my gun stupid to leave it across the room dammit how did
he get in here take that you bastard
Scully, all adrenaline and determination and courage
not flesh and bone beneath his hand some other substance
the monster turning rising above him and the dizziness of falling
the floor hard underneath him crack of pain in his arm and the gun
fell free
"Scully!"
the first flash of fear from Scully's mind, because the monster had
turned on him
himself, with the monster looming over him, with a small man reaching
for him and he felt it through her arm as she reached out, scrambling
for his gun
can't move can't breathe fear terror every monster of his dreams
pincers holding him tight
Mulder he's just a man, just a man, don't believe what you see
her mind's touch a blazing arc of electricity that he
held onto, trying to see with her eyes, to force Pincus's mind
out of his own
Scully, throwing him a rope of clarity to cling onto
blurring the scene shifted before his eyes before her eyes and somehow
he knew
she was seeing through his eyes too
he was muddying her mind with Pincus's delusions folie a deux
no
she needed to be free of this to capture Pincus
forgive me Scully
he let go
it slobbered on him its breath hot
pain burning in his neck
"Scu..." save me
black
***
His mind ripped away from hers with a pain like skin being scraped
away.
The shock scraped Pincus's illusions away as well, and her
mind snapped back into its usual state even as she finally, finally
reached Mulder's gun.
"Get the hell away from him," she rasped at Pincus, who was now only
a small, round man standing over her fallen partner.
He sat back on his heels and looked up at her in fear. His hand,
gripping the needle, was poised still at Mulder's neck. Mulder lay
passive, unresisting.
"No," Pincus said.
"I have a gun on you. Get away from him."
"He belongs to me now."
"He'll never belong to you."
"Put your gun down. I'll bite him again, I *will.* And too much of
it can kill him."
"You won't bite him, Pincus. You'll inject him. With the needle.
You're not a monster any more than I am."
"How can you be so sure?"
For a moment, her vision wavered again, and she saw in double, the
man and the monster.
"How do you know what's true?" he asked. He laughed, a little, as if
he were a man uncertain of the meaning of a joke at a party. "How do
I know?"
"I know that if I shoot you, it will do you damage, either man or
monster. Let him go."
"No." He shook his head. "No, no, no. I...I need him."
"You don't need him."
"I created him. He belongs to me now."
"You didn't create him." Her arms trembled from the tension of holding
the gun upright, of not shifting position. She could feel sweat trickle
down the back of his neck.
He wasn't sweating. He appeared utterly calm. Had she met him at a
cocktail party, she would have categorized him as nice, dull, and
harmless.
She had classified him as nice, dull, and harmless, when she had met
him after the hostage situation. She had dismissed him as any sort of
threat at all. And for that mistake, Mulder was lying on the floor,
eyes open and staring, body limp.
Focus, Dana. Save the guilt for later.
"I did create him. It was...me." He rocked back on his heels again,
but his hand holding the needle remained steady. "I used to be a
man, you know."
"You still are. And we can work this out, you just have to put the
needle down."
"There's no needle," he informed her calmly.
"You're still a man, Pincus. You're not a monster."
"But I am." He gazed up at her with serene eyes. "And I'm going now."
He lifted the needle an inch from Mulder's neck, and tugged on his
shoulder. "Come on, get up."
And Mulder obeyed. "Stay between me and her," said Pincus.
"You can't take him," Scully said. "You won't get away with it if you
take him."
"You'll shoot me if I don't."
Mulder stared at her blankly as he got up, as he stood between her
and a clear shot at Pincus.
"Mulder, move," she said.
"He's not dangerous, Scully. Put the gun down, it's okay," Mulder
replied, and his eyes were empty.
"Mulder, move out of the way. *Don't listen to him.*"
"Don't point that gun at me."
"You've got to get out of the way." She moved towards the
doorway, and he backed up before her. She could hear Pincus moving
towards the door as well.
When she got to the door, he was there blocking her way.
"Get the hell out of my way!" Pincus was getting away, dammit,
she could hear him.
"What are you going to do if I don't, shoot me?" Mulder said--Mulder's
body said--mockingly.
She pushed past him, trying to shove him aside to get to Pincus, and
his hand grasped her wrist, her gun hand, tightly; his body pressed
her into the doorjamb. She saw Pincus walking down the hallway,
walking backwards so that he could look back at her. "I created him,"
he said.
"You did *nothing,*" she spat back, and pushed against Mulder's chest,
trying to get away from him without hurting him, without shooting the
gun at either of them by accident.
"I belong to him," said Mulder.
"You belong to me," she snapped back, and succeeded in pushing away
from him, in wrenching her wrist away from her hand, even though he
still blocked the doorway. He started out the doorway.
"Where are you going?"
"I need to follow him."
She caught up with him and blocked him this time, physically forcing
him back into the room even though he struggled. He was bigger than
her, and stronger, and not concerned about hurting her in his rush to
get away, but she had spent years at the Bureau practicing exactly
this situation, and she was prepared now as she had not been a moment
ago.
And she had had to hurt him to save him before; twisting him arm
around viciously behind his back was nothing compared to a gunshot.
"Let me go, let me go, let me go," he was chanting, as she brought
him down hard to his knees, than to his stomach, on the floor by the
bed, half-kneeling, half-lying on top of him. She pulled his
handcuffs from the back of his belt, mentally thanking God that he
hadn't changed clothes after work, and snapped one cuff on
him, the other on the bottom of one bedpost. He bucked underneath her,
and she let him shake her off, staggering to her feet and running out
into the hallway.
Pincus was gone, of course.
"God *damn* it," she said out loud, and ran down the hallway to the
stairs, taking the stairs themselves cautiously, gun held ready.
But he was gone there, too, and when she reached the lobby no one
had seen her. The clerk at the desk almost burst into tears when she
wasn't able to help, and Scully realized that she was wild-haired and
wild-eyed, her gun still out in front of her.
Wearing pajamas. Jesus.
She was calling the police on the lobby phone when she realized that
Pincus might have doubled back to get Mulder. She broke into a flat
run on the way back to the stairs.
Pincus wasn't in her room, but she didn't even have a chance to breathe
a sigh of relief; Mulder was on hands and knees, pulling against the
handcuffs, making gutteral, wordless noises. Had he been thinking, he
could have simply lifted the bed enough to slide the cuffs down and
off the bedpost, but his eyes held no thought, only blank, animal,
instinct. She set her gun--no, his gun--on the table and hurried to
him.
"I need to go need to go need to go need to--"
"Stop it, Mulder. Just stop it." She stilled his arms with all the
strength in hers. "You've got to listen to me. What he's doing to
you, it's not real, you've got to get him out of your head, you can
do that."
He stopped fighting against her hold abruptly, collapsing against
her. "I--I don't--" His voice was hoarse.
She rubbed his back. "You've got to listen to me instead of him.
You're strong, Mulder, you can do this. You don't have to listen to
him."
***
She rode with him in the ambulance, wincing whenever she caught sight
of the red, raw skin of his wrist. He seemed more lucid, now, but
still confused, and his forehead heated her cool fingers.
"Almost there," said one of the parademics cheerfully. "And then we'll
take care of that poison, okay, Mr. Mulder? You lie still now."
Mulder tugged at her arm instead. "Scully, don't let them...don't let
them put me there."
"You need to be at the hospital, okay? They'll be able to get an
antitode to the venom, and you'll be okay."
"Not the hospital...don't let them put me *there*. I'm not crazy,
I'm not."
She bent over him. "I know that. You might suffer from fever and
hallucinations from the venom, okay? But whatever's happening to you,
it has a physical cause. And whatever you may believe, it's coming
from outside of you. You're just fine."
"Don't let them put me there."
"I won't."
***
"He's doing, fine, sir. He's sleeping now, and he's not in any
immediate danger. They're taking care of him. And we have the local
field office doing everything they can to locate Pincus."
They were taking it seriously enough, now that one of their own was
in the hospital.
"So you're saying that Pincus *was* injecting those people?" Skinner
asked. "Nothing paranormal about it at all."
"I believe...we believe...that he may have some ability similar to
Modell's, actually. But no, we have concluded that he isn't a
monster."
"That's good." Skinner's tone was dry, and it infuriated Scully for
some reason. To be fair, anything would have infuriated her then;
she knew that she was not at her best as she was, still dressed in
pajamas, with a coat and shoes hastily thrown on.
"It doesn't make him any less of a threat than Mulder said he was,"
she said.
"No. He'll be okay?"
"He'll be fine."
"I want you both back in D.C. I shouldn't have let you go down there
in the first place."
"But we..."
"Don't argue on this one."
"Yes, sir."
***
His eyes were gummed shut. He rubbed at them and opened his eyes
blearily, blinking the world into focus.
White ceiling, pale yellow walls, white sheets.
Scully, a splash of color in reds and blues. She sat curled up in a
chair, reading what looked like yesterday's newspaper.
"No aliens invaded while I was out, I hope?" he asked, and she
looked up and smiled at him, letting the newspaper fall and rest in
her lap.
"How are you feeling?"
"Uh...fine." He struggled with the covers and sat up. "What'd I do
this time?"
"Well, you *didn't* head off to Bermuda again, fortunately. What's the
last thing you remember?"
"Um...Pincus. We'd been looking into Pincus."
"Do you remember him being at the hotel?"
"He was at the...?" Then he did remember, although hazily, and reached
to touch the side of his neck, encountering white gauze. "What'd he
do to me?"
"The same thing he did to the others. Injected you. Not with a large
quantity of the substance, but enough to raise your temperature, to
give you fever dreams. I think that once he wasn't there to...override
the effects of the toxin, it hit you physically. You should be doing
better now."
"Did you...you ran after Pincus, I remember that. Did you catch him?"
She shook her head; he felt the heat of shame in his face and neck.
He'd blocked the doorway.
"They're looking for him now. All out manhunt...that's Bureau loyalty
for you."
"I thought we didn't rate Bureau loyalty."
The expression on her face looked uncommonly like a smirk. "I may have
yelled a little, too." Then her face grew serious again. "In the
last..." She craned her head to look at the clock on the wall behind
her. "The last ten hours, they've found out a lot about Pincus. He
had a cousin who worked for a reptile research facility. It seems that
Pincus had visited him quite often at his job."
"Did the cousin know what Pincus was doing?"
She half shrugged. "He says not. The Bureau's pressing him. And..."
Here here face grew not just serious, but sad as well. "The family had
a summer house, a cabin. They went out there."
"They didn't find him?"
"No. They found bodies. It'll take a bit to identify them, since
they're decomposed, but I'm guessing from clothes and height that
they're the people who disappeared from Oak Brook last year."
"Dammit. How did they die?"
"It's difficult to tell yet, with the state of decomposition."
"Do you have a theory?" he pressed, since her face said that she did.
"I think...the venom that's in you, in small amounts, would do little
harm in your bloodstream. But too much of it, in a short time, could.
If he felt his hold on them was slipping, he might have tried to
reinstate it."
"And poisoned them instead," he finished.
"Yes. But, of course, that's just a hunch. We'll have to wait for
the autopsy--"
"You're still in your pajamas," he blurted out, suddenly realizing
it himself.
"You've been restless. I didn't want to leave you here."
"You should have sent someone to get your clothes."
"Agent Ripley offered." Her nose scrunched up, a delicate expression
of distaste. "I didn't want him pawing through my underwear."
"You can't blame a man for trying."
She rolled up the newspaper and whacked at his feet under the covers.
"Anything else happen while I was gone?"
She shook her head. "Not much. Skinner ordered us back to DC. Big
surprise there. And there's some interesting stuff in the news--"
"I'm sure he was glad to have it confirmed that Pincus wasn't a
monster after all...confirms his decision to snap me into the psych
ward."
"He was wrong to do that. He sounded like he regretted it."
"How long am I going to be in here?"
"Not long. They'll probably let you out now...there's not much they
can do for you after they gave you the antitode. And if Pincus tries
to come after you here...I'd prefer to get back to DC as soon as
possible." She looked down ruefully at her pajamas. "I'd prefer to get
back into clothes as soon as possible."
"Where's the fun in that?"
She only yawned in response, and he felt a pang of guilt. She'd
probably been awake most of the night... "Did you sleep at all?"
"Slept a few hours here or there." Her face took on a touch of
wistfulness. "Didn't dream. Mulder, in the hotel...why did you?..."
"How could I not, Scully? I didn't think you'd fall prey to Pincus's
illusions, not if you knew they were only illusions. Except maybe
through me."
"So to save me, you--"
"To save both of us. To give you a chance to save both of us." He
gestured to the hospital bed. "It worked, didn't it?"
She rolled her eyes and looked away from him. "I did see that nurse,
that one time. You weren't the only one in that room who could be
influenced by him."
"Yeah, but I think that, for whatever reason, maybe because I'm more
willing to believe in things, or who knows, maybe there's something
physical in the structure of the brain...I'm more susceptible to him.
Maybe I'm more susceptible to phenomena like this in general. Modell.
Bowman. John Roche, even. You aren't."
"You were taking a hell of a chance, you know. Laying it all on me."
"I trusted you."
***
They were at the airport when Mulder stiffened beside her. "Scully?"
"What?" She looked up from the newspaper she was reading. "Did you see
this article on Senator Wilkins daughter--"
His hand on her arm stopped her. "Scully, I think..."
His head was cocked to one side, and for a moment he reminded her of
a hunting dog, a pointer about to bound off eagerly after a scent.
But the look in his eyes was one of dread.
"I think...I think we'd better inform the police," he told her.
"Pincus?" she said, and felt dread start to form in her own stomach.
"Yeah, maybe. I think so. Yeah. He might have thought to come here
if he wanted to get at me, wouldn't he? Or to escape, himself."
"Come on," she said, and wrapped her hand around his arm. "We'll go
together." Damned if she was going to let him out of her sight.
Someone began to scream, and the sound of the gunshot followed, and
both of them started to run.
When they got there, the police officer was having his gun taken away
by two other police officers. "He was a thing! He was, I swear it!
He was evil!" cried the officer. The others were trying to lead him
away, but he twisted his head around, trying to see behind him, to
look at the floor.
Their gazes followed his to the body sprawled unnaturally on the floor.
A small, short, round body in a suit, face down, the blood spreading
on the white tiles of the floor.
"You killed him!" The shrill, feminine scream that had summoned them
to the scream suddenly shifted into words. "He wasn't doing anything,
he was just standing there, a harmless little man...."
Mulder wavered, beside her, and Scully caught at his arm again to
steady him. "Caught by his own fantasies," said Mulder.
"You killed him! Are you crazy!?" screamed the woman, and the security
guard looked around at the faces of the bystanders, who had formed a
loose circle around the body.
"Didn't any of you see?" he cried. "He was right out there, right out
there in the light for anyone to see..." The officer holding one arm
hushed him.
***
"So he was just a man? An ordinary man?" asked Skinner two days later.
"Well, there were parts of his brain that were abnormal in nature, but
it's hard to pinpoint how, exactly, they might have functioned without
actually seeing them at work. Which is, of course, impossible now,"
said Scully. "We know that Pincus killed several people, that he
injured Agent Mulder, and that..."
"That it was his influence that caused an airport police officer to
shoot him," finished Mulder. "A shooting which he is now being
questioned for."
Skinner nodded. "How does it look for him?"
"It could be worse," said Scully, but her eyes were troubled, and
Mulder knew that, of all that had been difficult on this case, this
bothered her the most. "He did apprehend a criminal, after all."
"But a criminal who he didn't know was a criminal, who wasn't an
imminent threat," said Skinner, and sighed.
"There's a history of Pincus causing such incidents," said Mulder, who
had remained fairly hopeful. "And the police there are supporting him
to the fullest. And he has a very good lawyer."
A lawyer Mulder knew, and had talked to recently, about...a few other
matters. He glanced at Scully again, and wondered how she would react.
"Let's hope that the lawyer does good," said Skinner. "And the two of
you? No ill effects?"
"Even the lingering flashbacks from the previous case have left. We're
doing fine, sir," said Scully.
"Good," replied Skinner. For a moment, the expression on his face was
unfamiliar, until Mulder realized that he had seen it on his own
face, in the mirror. Guilt. "I'm glad that neither of you came to harm
over this."
"Even if we had," Mulder said cautiously. "It would have been our
choice to go to Missouri. Our fault if we came to grief over it."
"I let you go," said Skinner. "On a case that I permitted. If you'd
been permanently hurt on it..."
"We weren't," said Scully.
"And I'm sure you were glad we weren't here for the Wilkins thing,"
added Mulder, and Skinner's face shuttered tightly against him.
"The Wilkins thing, as you call it, isn't your concern."
"The daughter of a senator is kidnapped, with servants claiming a
bright light was hovering about the house, and that's not our
concern?" asked Scully. "It's been in the paper for days...I was
surprised that you hadn't mentioned it to us."
"Given that you found out about Pincus through the media, I didn't
think you needed my help to read the newspaper and see something
that interested you. And word on that is that nothing paranormal is
involved...they received a ransom note yesterday, as I'm sure you
read. Unless your aliens have learned to write good English and use
common stationery, I don't think it's them."
Mulder almost opened his mouth to reply that if a senator's daughter
was involved, the military or anyone else might think to cover up
a possible alien abduction by formulating a ransom note, but Skinner
was continuing. "And this is very highly political. Don't even think
about getting involved."
"It's too late now, anyway, sir," said Scully. "Any cover up would
already be fully in place, by now. Maybe not the first day, the day
we went back to Missouri, but by now..."
Mulder wondered at Scully's subtle defiance, at Skinner's sudden
edginess.
***
"You don't think he was trying to keep something from us, do you?"
Mulder asked her when they were back down in the office.
She stopped her filing to look back at him, sitting behind his desk
and chewing on a pencil. "Do you think that?"
"No, I trust him. But you were...you sounded like you were angry at
him, up there."
"I think...maybe he didn't want us on the Wilkins case, is all. I
don't know. Us being out of town was very convenient."
Mulder seemed to chew on that idea even as he chewed on the edge of
his pencil. "Well, yeah, but it wasn't like we couldn't have read
about it on our own and gone there. He's not responsible for finding
our cases for us."
"No, I know." She closed the drawer gently and leaned against the
cabinet. Skinner had supported them, he had come out to rescue them
from the magic mushroom, he had told her that he should have been
on their side...but ever since he had refused to let them investigate
his mysterious illness, she had felt frustrated around him.
"I'd buy that he was glad we weren't around for this, but I don't
think he would cover anything up. Not Skinner," said Mulder, with that
complete confidence he had in the people he trusted. "Besides, he
was just his usual grumpy self. He didn't have that constipated look
he used to have when Cigarette Man had been in his office, telling
him what to do."
"You're the one who took a long time to trust him in the first place."
"Well, yeah, Scully. I mean, the first time he called me by myself
into his office, he gave me this weirdly paternal speech and called me
Fox. It was obvious some damn thing was going on. God, I'd prefer
gruff any day, over the use of my first name."
"What are you saying, Mulder, that if he calls me Dana I should run
like hell?" she asked tartly.
"He's on our side now," said Mulder. "Maybe not all the way, and he's
for damn sure not happy about it, but..." He abruptly segued into a
different topic. "Are you doing anything later this afternoon?"
"It's 4:00 already. How much later?"
"6:00. I have a meeting with my lawyer. I'd like you to be there."
She regarded him in suspicion; he met her eyes steadily. "Please tell
me that no one is suing you on the behalf of a vampire again."
He grimaced. "Not the Bureau lawyers. The one who was in charge of
my father's estate."
Her mood shifted abruptly to concern. "Is everything okay?"
He nodded. "I've just been thinking, the last few days." His mouth
quirked up on one side. "I haven't been sleeping well."
Neither had she. Her dreams had only left her more restless. "Thinking
about what?"
"The myths we create for ourselves. Roche wanted to believe he was
saving those girls, Pincus wanted to believe he was an all-powerful
monster. We all have versions of ourselves that we want to believe
in. Just because most of us don't push those visions onto other
people doesn't mean they don't exist."
"And you're seeing your lawyer because?..."
"I think..." he ducked his head. "You asked once why you didn't have
a desk. And I guess, the reason why, is because one of the myths I
have of myself is of..."
"The Knight in Shining Armor?" she suggested, and he looked up,
wounded. She moved to lean against the side of his desk in apology.
"I have my own office now, anyway," she added.
"Yeah, but that's not the point. The point is, this image that I hold
of myself as a lone wolf, as myself against the world...Jesus, I
sound like bad James Dean now. I don't like the version of myself that
doesn't have you in it, Scully."
For a moment, she had a brief, completely paralyzing fear that he was
going to take her to meet his lawyer so that they could get married.
"And this has to do with your lawyer how?" she asked, reservation in
her voice.
"I know I told you once that my father left me money."
She nodded. It had come up once or twice, after he had found out and
again, later, when she had had the cancer...she frowned at the memory.
"I don't use it for my ordinary expenses. I--it doesn't feel right
to do so, to use what's probably blood money to get my hair cut or
buy a new suit or go shopping for gourmet fish food."
"You've told me that," she said. "But it's there, Mulder, and surely
you plan to use it for something."
"I always thought that maybe my mom might need it someday, if she had
another stroke and needed long term medical care. She came from a
wealthy family--he didn't, but she did--and she has enough money, but
just in case, you know? And if Samantha did come back." His head
ducked down again, and she reached down and put her hand on his,
clasping it firmly. "If Samantha did come back," he said evenly, "I
don't know what state she would be in, physically or psychologically.
And I would want her to have the best care possible. The best people,
ones who could be trusted. I guess, to me, it seemed appropriate that
that money should help the people who have suffered because of what
my father has done."
"That makes sense," she said, and briefly wished that he would use
some of it for suits or fish food or baseball games. It was very like
Mulder not to count himself as one of the people who had suffered
because of his father's sins.
"And I've used it for emergencies. When I needed immediate money to
go to Antarctica."
"You didn't tell me that," she said, startled. "I thought the Bureau
picked up the expenses."
"They reimbursed some of it later, yeah, but I wasn't going to go to
them for the money. They might have stopped me. I took it from my
dad's account. And a few other time. It's always been a sort of
emergency stash that I know is there if I need it, for the quest with
a capital Q. But I was thinking about it, and it's not just my quest
anymore, is it? And what if I'm incapacitated for whatever reason
and can't draw on that money? I want you to put your name on the
account."
She gaped at him. "But...that's..."
"Only fair."
"Well, all right, if you're sure that's what you want. How much money
are we talking about, anyway?"
"About a quarter of a million."
She nearly fell off the desk. "About a...what?"
"A little less than a quarter of a million. He made some really good
investments after he retired, and the accountants have kept them
going. It's been growing slowly but steadily, the past few years."
She stared at him, and he shifted uncomfortably. "I did tell you once
that we could use my dad's money if you needed any experimental
treatment that insurance didn't cover, that money wasn't an object.
What'd you think, I was talking about a few thousand?"
"Tens of thousands, maybe, not...Jesus, Mulder, I can't put my name
on that much money." She propelled herself away from the desk and
walked restlessly to stand in front of it before she turned
to face him.
"Why not?"
"Because, because...are you kidding? Surely your lawyers must have
cautioned you against this?"
He smiled a little. "They do think I've gotten myself involved with
a golddigger, and told me that even if you were my wife, they'd
recommend a prenuptial agreement."
"But what if?..."
"What if what? You decide to spend my money on expensive jewelry and
furs? Are you going to do that?"
"Of course not!"
He considered. "Although you have ruined a lots of shoes and suits
in the course of work. I guess you could take money out if you wanted
to reimburse yourself. That'd be fair. I'd ask you to keep the
expenses down, but, really--"
"Mulder, stop." She ran her fingers through her hair. "That's your
money, it should stay your money. You should use it for whatever you
see fit."
"I see fit to share it with you," he said simply, stubbornly.
"What if...what if someday you marry and your wife's name needs to
go on the account? She'd be upset."
He looked at her steadily, and she flushed and dropped her eyes.
"One could argue," he said gently, "that you deserve the money for
putting up with me all these years. More than any hypothetical
unknown woman."
"I don't need to be paid to be your partner."
"This isn't in the nature of a payment. This is practical. You might,
at some point, need a lot of money to go somewhere. I might not be
in the position to provide it. This gives you access to it. Your own
honor would prevent you from using it when it isn't necessary."
"My honor." She exhaled noisily and gestured at the back of her neck.
"What about this, then, hmm?"
He looked up at her quizzically, and touched the bandage on the side
of his own neck. "You think that I'm still under Pincus's influence?"
When she shook her head, he went on, "Then what? You're afraid that
a fake monster might inject you in the back of the neck and use you
to steal the money?"
"I'm more afraid of what real monsters have already put in the back
of my neck," she said, teeth gritted, and he had the grace to flush.
"I hadn't thought about that," he said.
"I can't forget very easily," she spat out, and they both recoiled
slightly at her words. "What if I'm called again, by this thing in the
back of my neck, and decide to get somewhere any possible way, and use
your money to do it?"
"Scully, don't be ridiculous. If you're called again, the money will
be the least of our worries."
"You say that you rely on my honor. But how do we know that honor can't
be compromised by them? That they would have me betray you in some
way through my own body?"
"Scully. Listen to me. The reason why I didn't think about the implant
was because...shit, if we're doing what ifs, what if they tried to
destroy us both by having you pull out your gun and shoot me dead?"
"Don't."
"Do you think that that possibility never crossed my mind? When you
had the implant put in, or after the mass incinerations? I put my life
in your hands every *day* on the job. I trust that you won't slip
up on the job when you're supposed to be covering my back. I trust
when I hie off to Bermuda or some other place that you'll come and
get me if I need it. I trust that you'll be honest with me about your
thoughts on a case, and probably save us both." He got up and she
watched him circle the desk and approach her. His hands were heavy
on her shoulders. "If I can trust you with my life, how could I not
trust you with this?"
She reached up, her own hands impossibly heavy, and held on to his
forearms. "I don't ever want to be the one to betray you."
***
"All right, I'm done," she said, and he moved only his eyes to look
at her. She sat cross-legged on the floor, and the papers were in
tidy collections on the coffee table in front of her.
"Questions?" he asked.
"Not right now. Maybe tomorrow. We should both probably get to...oh,
Mulder, I didn't even realize how late it was getting. I'm sorry."
"Not a problem," he said. "You needed to know where the money came
from, what investments it's in, all that."
She had pored over the documents relating to his father's account for
the last several hours, following the paths of investments and stocks
and dividends diligently, while he had sat (then slumped, then lay)
on her sofa, changing television channels over her head.
She took off her glasses and rubbed her eyes. "You can stay here
tonight if you don't want to drive." She leaned back against the
couch.
"No, I'm okay," he said, although he didn't make a move to get up.
Instead, he reached a hand out and rested it on the back of her neck,
moving his thumb gently. She let him rub her neck in a haphazard
massage, leaning back slightly into his touch. "I've missed you,"
he told her eventually.
"Me,too."
"Really?" He was surprised at that; Scully valued her privacy so
jealously.
"I don't think I would have wanted the effects from the mushroom to
be permanent, but it would have been nice if they'd had a chance to
wear off gradually, not so abruptly."
He remembered the sheer, blank terror he had felt when he had locked
himself out of her mind. "I think it'd be interesting if it was
permanent."
Her hair brushed his hand as her head swiveled. "If it were people
I knew, people I trusted, people I...loved, perhaps, but can you
imagine sharing dreams with someone like John Lee Roche forever?"
"Perish the thought." He let the conversation lapse into silence,
focusing on the way his hand moved on the back of her neck.
For a second, the small patch of skin became a palimpsest for all
their years together.
The softness of her skin the same as the first touch of his hand
on her lower back in a hotel room in Oregon.
The vulnerability of her bent head the same as it had been in Icy
Cape.
The implant under her skin like the implants that had directed
Duane Barry.
The base of her neck the same place as they had once tried to shoot
an alien, to save Scully and the woman who had not been his sister.
The raised bump of the implant scar under his touch like the time
he had placed his hand on the scar on her stomach, after Peyton Ritter.
The patch of almost-healed skin from the giant mushroom that had given
him insight into your dreams.
Impulsively, he leaned forward a little to wrap an arm around her
shoulders from behind, pressing his face into her hair to inhale her
scent. "Scully?"
"Yeah?"
"You do know that even if I get frustrated with your skepticism
sometimes...and probably will again...that I don't want you to
change."
"I'm sure you will again."
"Scully..."
"And even with all my skepticism...and I know I come across too
harshly sometimes, Mulder...you know that I wouldn't want you to
stop believing? To stop throwing yourself into each case?"
"So we just continue the same old way, huh?"
"Together," she said.
"Okay."
He pulled back, but let his hand stay on her shoulder. They watched
TV like that, neither speaking, neither moving. He let thoughts of
the case float through his head, letting them fall where they would.
"Hey, Scully?" he asked finally.
"Mmm?" she sounded half-asleep.
"You know that tree out front of your apartment building?"
"Yeah."
"Want to build a treehouse?"
End