Glimmering Girl by Tesla

New: The Glimmering Girl
Author: Tesla
Keywords:  MSR, casefile, pregnant fic
Rating:  NC-17 for bad words and pretty explicit sex
Spoilers:  After Mulder returns from the Ship, but before the
           End of season eight
Summary:  Mulder works a child abduction with Frank Black,
          while Scully is away for the weekend, but very much on
          Mulder's mind. This is a follow-up to "After the Ship",
          But it's not necessary to read it first.
Disclaimers:  All hail Fox, 1013, and Chris Carter! There's
Definitely no money being made off this, boys, although I have
Borrowed the characters of Mulder and Scully and Frank Black.
Hey, what's the use of having action figures if you can't use them?
Archive:  Anywhere.  I like to know where I am, so let me know if
          possible.
E-mail:  tesla_321@yahoo.com
Obligatory thanks: I can't say enough to my online fan-fic friends
for being an unfailing help to me through the mundane crises
of my offline existence.  But, without MaybeAmanda, this wouldn't
have been written, let alone beta'd.  Also, Fran58; Tangential Thinker;
Kel; and Lisby for their support. (Bartle & James joke here for
those of us old enough.)



Prologue

Driving around the block after he dropped Scully off, Mulder
suddenly realized that the Lamaze class had started and he still
hadn't found a parking place. Somehow, he knew that saying he had
"missing time" was not going to help, and indeed would bring on
several responses, all negative, starting with: "Mulder, don't
joke about that!" and going through  "I can walk two blocks!" to
ending with a tight-lipped, "You volunteered to bring me. You
don't have to do this."

All of which were true.  None of which were finding him a parking
place closer than three-quarters of a mile.  He thought there had
been a decrease in the birth rates; why was this place so
crowded?  Or why the hell wasn't it held somewhere with a parking
garage?  (He didn't consider the irony of that last
thought until days later.)

The truth was, he didn't want to do it.  He wanted to be there,
and help Scully, and back her up, and he hoped he felt everything
he should feel, but----and he was guilty about it----he didn't
think he could stand it.  He felt more comfortable being the one
connected to the I.V.  If anything happened. . .

Nothing was going to happen to Scully.

Mulder saw a car pull out and jammed on the brakes.  Ignoring the
frantic horn-honking of an SUV, he reversed and shot into the
spot.  Great.  Only seven blocks.  He started walking back to the
Carter Medical Arts Building, ignoring the screamed imprecations
of the SUV driver. Too bad he didn't time to flash the badge and
terrify him, the damn gas-guzzler.  This just wasn't his day.
Afternoon.  Evening.  Whatever.

Mulder sprinted the last block with more fear than he had felt in
Tunguska.  He saw Scully standing on the steps, and jogged up to
her, unable to speak or breathe.  When his vision cleared, he
noted a look of thunder on her brow.  "Parking・" He wheezed. "No
parking."  Jeeze, the class couldn't be over, could it?  There
was no way he had driven in circles the entire time.

Scully held out her bottle of water, and waited for him to drink.
He took a huge gulp, sneaking a glance at her.  "The instructor
went into labor," she said succinctly.  She looked at his sweaty
face.  "Mulder, what on earth?"

"I couldn't find a parking place anywhere.  I'll go get the car,
it's----"

Scully frowned at him.  "I can still walk, Mulder. I won't break.
What's so funny?"


The Glimmering Girl.


Friday morning

"The perpetrator's fantasy disintegrates when he realizes he is
dealing with a child or young woman who has no wish to have a
relationship with him."

Mulder was remembering a lecture at the Academy, in a half-waking
state. He didn't know if he was giving the lecture or listening
to it. "The victim is upset, fearful, and wants nothing to do
with the perpetrator.  If the perpetrator has attempted or
completed a sexual act with the victim, she is in pain, weeping,
and begging to go home."

No, he had lectured to a class of would-be profilers.  He was
awake, now, the sound of his own voice in his ears. He squinted
at the clock out of habit, then sank back down in the sheets. He
didn't have to be anywhere at eight o'clock; not this Friday. He
hadn't begun to enjoy unemployment yet, and he had years of sleep
to catch up on. Scully had gone for a weekend pregnancy Zen
retreat.

At Mulder's barely concealed look of horror, Scully had laughed.
"I'm not suggesting you join us, I'm just giving you the phone
numbers.  I'm turning off my cell phone most of the time, but
I'll check my call log."  She had smiled up at him, tucking a
strand of hair behind her ear.

"I'm not going to need any autopsies done, Scully," he had
replied. "I'm going to play basketball at the Y."

Then, she had rather put a damper on the mood by pulling out a
fat manila envelope. "These are still coming to me, Mulder, but
I've signed them, and you can put them in your account." She was
flushed. "I cashed out the rest of the trust account and put it
in there, too...so you'd have some money."

"Who knew that coming back from the dead would be so much
trouble?" he said lightly, taking the checks. Some part of his
brain insisted that he make a gigolo joke, but the problem was,
he didn't think his situation was that funny. "I appreciate it,
Scully." He couldn't think of anything else to say.

Her face was definitely red. "It's your money, Mulder. And you
better call Mandy in Human Resources, she's giving me fits about
your back pay and the insurance co-pay."

"I'll take care of it, Scully. Go have a Zen time."


So why was his cell phone ringing?  "Mulder."

"This is Frank Black.  I got your cell number from a mutual
acquaintance.  Something's come up. I understand that you're no
longer with the Bureau?" Mulder grinned up at the mirrored
ceiling tiles.  Frank Black, Mr. Omniscient. Still with the
Bureau hard-wired into his brain.  "Yeah, that's right.  Are you
offering me a job?"

"Yes, I am.  It's about a kidnapping, and the chief of police
called me and asked for my input."

Mulder stopped smiling and sat up, swinging his legs out of bed.
"Why the hell did he do that?"

"Two reasons.  There's no ransom demand.  And the victim is the
illegitimate daughter of the assistant Director of the National
Security Agency. The chief is under a lot of pressure."

"Where can we meet?"  Mulder said, scrabbling on the floor for
his jeans.

"I'm driving to Hegel Place now.  I'm in a Jeep Cherokee; I
should be at your building in forty minutes."  The line went
dead.

Mulder had spilled salsa on his jeans the night before, so with a
sigh, he pulled out a pair of khakis and a pressed shirt from his
last dry-cleaning. Dorky but clean. If there was no note, then
someone had taken the victim, either as a crime of opportunity,
or because he had been stalking her, obsessed in some way.
Thinking he could have----thinking he did have a relationship
with her. He ignored the little scared voice in his head, the one
that said, "You're doing it again. You're seeing them again."
But it was better than spending eight hours on the Internet,
reading about everything that had happened in the real world
since he stepped into that circle of light into the otherwhere.

Mulder wondered if Black had gotten his cell number from Skinner;
and he caught himself reaching for his cell phone to call Scully.

No.  Let her have a nice weekend.  She didn't need to hear about
a little girl lost. He didn't he want to hear about it, but it
was already too late.  He was out the door and running down the
stairs.  He might even feel like himself again, instead of his
own ghost.

On the way to the victim's home, Black gave Mulder some
background. "She goes to a private girl's academy in walking
distance of her home. She ducked into a coffee shop, and never
came out.  The coffee shop employee said he saw a uniformed
school girl come in, and was met by a man who seemed to know her.
She wasn't surprised, or taken forcibly from the place.  No video
cameras in the shop."

"So she knew him, or he looked familiar. Or he gained her
confidence very quickly. A kidnapping for ransom, or a sexual
predator?"

"It's going to be treated as a kidnapping," Black said. "But
there's something odd. He wants his daughter back, but he doesn't
want it known. In fact, he's not listed on her birth certificate,
he doesn't own the house, and there's not a thing to tie him to
this girl.  The mother will be presented as a single parent."

"You don't think he wanted her gone, do you?" Mulder asked. Black
scowled, but not in surprise; he had considered it, Mulder
thought.

"No, Mulder, I don't think he would have called me. He'd rather
no one knew about her, but I don't think he'd hire someone to get
rid of her.  A poor father, but a father."

The house was a tasteful Colonial styled one in Alexandria.
There was one discreet, unmarked van, and the police chief's car
in the driveway. The mother of the child was lying on her bed,
sobs breaking through a sedated sleep.  The father was torn
between his loss, and the fear that his wife and college age
children, and the White House, would find out.  Nevertheless, he
was standing in front of the cold fireplace, promising Black and
Mulder the sun, the moon, and the stars. The chief looked like he
was trying to psychically remove himself from the scene.  Black
knew the chief; they had Bureau connections. Mulder thought that
he knew, now, how Black had received the call; but why did Black
think of him?  Mulder put the question away for later, and gave
himself over to watching everyone else.  Oddly refreshing, not to
be the one with the badge.

Very quietly, like servants, a forensics team was going through
the child's bedroom and searching every square inch. No one
wanted to miss any note, but, since she vanished on her way to
school, it was doubtful one would show up in the house.  The
phone lines were already being tapped. A pair of detectives was
at the school, interviewing teachers and fellow students.

"There's no ransom demand. Even if there is one, we don't have
the luxury of time. If there is one, the police and the Bureau
can well handle that end. "

"What if there's no ransom? What if we're never contacted?"

"It's possible that this man has concocted an elaborate fantasy
around your daughter." Black said. "Of course, another
possibility is that she's run away."

The chief spoke up. "The housekeeper has gone through her things
with the team upstairs. There's no clothing missing, all her
favorite books and teddy bears are still in her room. Not even
her gym bag is missing; she brought it home last night to have
her PE clothes washed. She took her homework assignments."

The supervising detective was nodding in agreement, and met
Mulder's eyes.  Mulder raised his eyebrows slightly, and the
other man looked up at the ceiling.

"Can we look at her bedroom?" Mulder asked. "If the initial
photographs are done?"

The detective caught his eye and nodded slightly.

"She wasn't taken from here," the father said.

"Yes, I understand," Mulder said.  "But we have to start from the
moment she woke up this morning."  Something odd about the
father, he told himself. Something there.

She was twelve.  She had a cache of cards and letters in her desk
drawer, among class schedules and old book reports, signed by
"Your Secret Pal" or with "You know who." She had a room filled
with stuffed animals, and posters of boy bands on the walls, and
a closet of plaid school uniforms.  Vicky.

Mulder took a greeting card out of Black's hand to look at it
more closely.  He heard a strange buzz, and could see---could see
a man. Waving at a girl riding her bicycle toward him. Swingset.
Trees.

"You see him, don't you?" Black asked quietly. He stood in front
of Mulder, blocking him from the view of the District detectives.

Mulder flinched. "What?" He dropped the card and bent to pick it
up, to disguise his reaction to the question.

"You see part of it. A flash, a vision. Like tuning in," Black
said. "But not always."

His impulse to deny it faded away. "Yes," Mulder said. "Once in a
while, on a crime scene, I can see what happened. I always
thought I was just reading the clues and reliving it."  The image
of Scully, crawling through broken glass rose before him, as
sharp as when he had stood in her old living room, and Mulder had
to swallow the sudden taste of bile in his mouth. He picked up
the small picture of Vicky Frank had handed him earlier, and put
it in his pocket, before following Frank downstairs.

"Two things occur to me. Either he was a stalker who imagined a
relationship with Vicky, or he had a relationship with Vicky. And
even if he frightens her, or if he abuses her, he may tell her
she can't go back; that her parents would never take her back
after what has happened."

The Director said, "How could she believe that?"

"This is a secret family," Black said. "Vicky's existence is a
secret.  She broke the secrets.  You're putting pressure on the
police to keep her disappearance a secret."

"We should be calling the press," Mulder said. "Why shouldn't we
call the press?" He didn't quite mean it, of course.  It could be
quite handy to have all the leaks sealed, in the initial stage of
the investigation. Secret. Sealed. Sealed with a kiss. Secret
pal.  He walked over to the French doors, and pulled back the
curtain, but he didn't see the neat lawn.  He saw a small girl
walking to school with her backpack swinging on one strap.  He
touched a fingertip to the glass pane.

Behind him, the Director collapsed onto the Chippendale sofa, his
mouth moving soundlessly.  Mulder watched his reflection in the
glass. Another well-manicured man in an English suit. He wished
he'd worn the salsa-stained pants.

"Ah," Black said. "Why don't you tell us the full story?"

"I can't," the man replied. "I can't tell you anything."

"You don't live here," Mulder said, staring out the window into
the garden. "You have another house out on Foxhall, don't you?
And a house back home? Is this relationship even current, or do
you still go to that dominatrix in Baltimore?" He turned away
from the window and back to the Director. "It's not that big a
secret, you see."

Reluctantly, the chief cleared his throat. "We've already put out
a bulletin, Frank. Standard procedures. I agree with you that
it's not a kidnapping. Any help you can give me, I'll take.  Just
give me a head's up, okay?"

Mulder turned around. "Give me your cell number, Chief, and we'll
keep you informed if we find anything at all. I think we want to
retrace her steps to school, but you'll want to have someone
searching her locker and her computer access at school. I think
she knew the person she went to."

Slowly walking to the school, Mulder took out his cell
phone and checked for messages. Nothing from Scully.  He sighed,
and thought of last weekend.


He was glad she asked him to stay the night. After long
deliberation, and considering that she'd seen him without pants
before, Mulder took off his shoes and jeans, and went to sleep on
the couch in shirt, boxers, and socks. He rolled himself in the
blanket she gave him and tried to sleep.

From his uneasy doze on the couch, Mulder heard Scully cry out.
He was at her door, still clutching her old Navy blanket.

But Scully was asleep.  In the dim light from the desk lamp, he
saw that her eyes were closed, and she was dreaming.  She was
frowning, with one hand curled to her cheek.  It was all right,
then.

Her eyes opened. "Mulder?" she said hoarsely.

"Yeah. You were dreaming," he said, closing the door.

"C'mere," she said. She put her hand down to her bulge.

Mulder took a half-step forward. "I...." he began, and tossed the
blanket over the foot of the bed. Scully smiled up at him from
her pillow, and he took another step forward.  He bent over her,
and stroked the hair from her face. "I was just outside," he
said.  She didn't say anything about his pant-less condition.

She spoke in a teasing voice. "I'm pregnant, Mulder, I'm not
dying. This isn't like the cancer. You don't have to worry all
the time."

He sat down beside her, his hip nudging her thigh, and laid his
arm across her lap for support. "I don't think I know how to
function without worrying.  Has it ever occurred to you that we
spent an inordinate time in hospitals?" Their faces were very
close; he could feel her breath on his face.

She snorted. "Is this just now coming to you?" She moved her leg
against him. "It's why I keep telling you I won't break. I.
Won't.  Break."

Mulder kissed her. Her mouth opened to his, and she slid her
hands under his tee-shirt to caress his back.  He shuddered, and
she said something against his neck.

"What?" he managed. He hoped it wasn't, 'Stop.'

Her face was flushed. "G-good. I said, good."

They started laughing, and Scully made room for him on the bed,
holding up the sheet.  Mulder moved into her arms as if they had
been sleeping together for years. He began licking the place
where her jaw curved into her neck.  Well, they had slept
together for years, if you wanted to think about it.  As if they
had been having sex regularly.  He didn't know what he meant. He
had to stop giving himself bulletins. He had to stop describing
this in his head. Scully was pulling the shirt over his head, and
he was pushing up her gown to kiss her belly.

Her belly kissed back.  Or kicked. He sat up, dazed, to see her
looking back with an almost painful intensity. "The baby," he
whispered, and gently nuzzled her again.  The baby kicked again,
the smallest of feelings, something that was Not-Scully but was
Scully.  He put one palm on her belly, and applied his tongue
lower, lower, until now Scully moved uncontrollably. Until Scully
cried out. He substituted his hand for his tongue, and with
infinite care, knelt between her knees.  He braced himself with
one hand and guided himself into...her. She opened her eyes wide,
her mouth forming a soundless "o".

O, Scully.

Afterward, Mulder wanted to lie beside her all night and say
foolish things. Tell her about when he caught the fly ball in
right field and threw to third base to get the runner; tell her
how it felt when he got his scholarship to Oxford; how he felt
when he had read her journal entries that bad night in the
hospital. He wanted to whisper in her ear and hear her laugh in
the darkness. He wanted to tell her what he remembered about the
experiments, but he knew he wouldn't. Just like he didn't tell
her what he remembered about Cancerman's little brain surgery.
The one that nearly killed him.

But Scully seemed to feel so awkward, so incapable of resting
that Mulder got up and pulled his clothes back on and went back
to the couch. She didn't want to hear about his feelings right
now. She wanted to be matter of fact. She wanted to sleep.

Then there was that last time he had tried to tell her what he
felt, again during one of the less charming hospital stays.
Mulder had taken advantage of not being on an I.V. to get up.
He just couldn't stand being handed that urine catcher and then
having a nursing aide stand just outside in the hall, opening
the door to check on his progress.

No, he was a guy. He would pee standing up, goddamnit.

The dizzy spell took him when he was one step outside the
bathroom, and the next thing he knew, he was staring at the
ceiling.  He lay flat on his back, staring up, and wondered
dispassionately how some unfortunate managed to squirt blood on
the underside of the television shelf.

He tried to raise his head, but he saw bright specks of light
that spelled out "loser", and subsided.  At least the linoleum
was nice and cool, if a bit redolent of pine oil cleaner.  Yes,
Mulder was a connoisseur of hospital smells. If it was pine, he
was in the southeast; Lysol, he was in California; and for
the northeast, the straight-forward smell of Clorox.

And the mere whiff of a certain potpourri air freshener brought
back all the horrors of going to see Scully at the oncology ward.
Scully.  He better try to get up before she caught him on the
floor, he thought.  He twitched a foot experimentally.  Okay, on
the count of three----

The door swung open.  "Mulder," said a resigned voice. Scully's
high heels came into view.

Mulder wanted to explain, but what came out was, "Scully, I can
see up your skirt."

"No, you don't," she said firmly, kneeling beside him. Cool
fingers touched his neck. Shit, she was taking his pulse.

"Stop," he said. He sounded ineffectual even to himself.  She
cupped one hand behind his shoulder and pulled him up to sitting
position.  "Scully," he said, and managed to infuse urgency in
his voice.

Surprised, Scully looked him in the eye. "Are you hurt, Mulder? I
thought you passed out because you got up too quickly."  Bitch.
She reached for the hem of his hospital gown, and he slapped her
hand away. That was a bad idea, since it made the room spin
around, and Scully clutched at him.  He was lying with his head
in her lap when the fractured images became one.

"Oh, Scully," he said, sounding more despairing than he intended,
"I do love you."

A muscle moved in her jaw. "You say that every time someone gives
you a benzodiazepine."

"It's when I lose my inhibitions," he said. His throat hurt, but
it was an old ache. "You know---"

But the moment was lost, lost with all the moments of all their
days and years together. Scully raised her head, and shouted; an
aide came in.  "Help me get him back in bed," Scully said, as if
she did this every day; as if she had never heard of the X-files
and was about to resume her hospital rounds.

And when she looked into his eyes, it was only to check his
pupils.


That's when he first began to think that she loved him more when
he wasn't actually there. And now, of course, being massaged with
scented oil and soaking in hot mud or whatever, this weekend, he
knew she was thinking warm and loving thoughts about him. She
did. She was always tremendously pleased to be back with him
after a short time away, but all he had to do was open his mouth,
and he could manage to annoy her all over again.

"Pregnancy does odd things to women," Black said, scaring him. "I
hope Dr. Scully is all right?"

"I'm off the leash this weekend," Mulder said. "How did you know
she was...." he trailed off. "Everyone knows, huh?"

Black moved his head negatively. "I heard. I still have friends
in the Bureau. I've always been interested in you and Dr.
Scully." He stopped walking, suddenly, and pointed to a little
garden between two brownstones.

Mulder stopped and looked at the two weathered picnic tables, the
little public water fountain, all tucked under ancient elm trees
and carpeted in tiny spears of new grass.  "Looks like a great
place to meet someone. Or where you'd have a kid come meet you on
the way to school."

Black stood on the sidewalk, his hands in the pockets of his
ancient barn jacket, and watched as Mulder turned into the
garden, and began walking around, scuffing his feet through last
fall's dead leaves.

Mulder felt as though his skin had lost a layer, or as he felt
coming out of the heated swimming pool into the cold gym.
Something shimmered in his mind's eye, just beyond his thoughts.
Vicky had been here. Vicky was still alive. He would wait until
night before he tried to rape her. Of course, he wouldn't
think it was rape. He may be surprised how sophisticated grade
school girls were, these days.  But the actual physical contact
of sex was scary, icky, painful--- she would cry, she would---

He stopped, his hand to his chin. The Lover wouldn't drug her.
He'd take her on a dream date, he'd spend the entire day doing
things she wanted to do. Mulder turned to Black, unaware that the
pupils of his eyes were as dilated as if he'd been smoking pot.
"Frank," he said, "We've got to go to a mall."

He turned and went back, walking to Black's jeep and getting
inside. When Black caught up to him and got into the car, Mulder
sat with one elbow on the door frame, his head on his hand.

"You don't see it like you used to, do you?" he asked Black.
"But you still know their moves. You know what kind of guy does
this."

Black sighed. "I know the kind of guy," he acknowledged. "But I
don't know how he'll play this."

"It's all on how Vicky reacts. If he gets physical right away,
then we both now it'll be bad for her. But he won't."

Black stopped the engine. "What if it involves the Agency?" he
asked, turning in the seat. "What if he has something---no, what
if he has done something to merit revenge?"

Mulder considered it for a moment.  "Go on," he said. He took the
picture of Vicky from his pocket, weighing it in the palm of his
hand.

"If the assistant Director was involved in something dirty, he
wouldn't have called the police. He wouldn't try to get her back.
He could have told the school some story, and quietly got rid of
the mother.  His people would have cleaned this up for him."
Black gave a grimace that was almost a tic. "I'm familiar with
conspiracies and shadow agencies. This doesn't have the right
feel."

Mulder nodded.  "Yeah, so am I," he said, without irony.  "It
doesn't.  Someone saw her. Someone developed a relationship to
her in a way that would not arouse suspicion. It used be through
tutors, music teachers, coaches that pedophiles had access to the
kids.  Now, with the Internet, he could have met her anywhere.
And in that case, his own agency can crack that computer faster
than we can."

"He doesn't want them to know until he gets it fixed."

"She's his secret. A secret child. A secret life." Mulder dropped
his voice to a whisper. "Her daddy doesn't come to school to see
her play lacrosse; her mom doesn't cook dinner for them, but she
gets into a limo and flies off to the islands for a week, while
Vicky goes to school and goes to practice and does her homework."

He tapped the edge of Vicky's picture against his knee. "So she
has a secret pal. A secret friend. She reads books about secret
gardens, and Harriet the Spy, and misunderstood young girls. So
it seems like it's finally happening for her."

Black squinted, in a way that would have reminded Mulder of Clint
Eastwood's later work if he wasn't feeling so oppressed. He knew
what Black was going to say, before it even came out of his
mouth.

"Mulder, you have to get into his head, not Vicky's.  If you want
to check out the shopping malls, the metro police will do it.
You have go back in there and look at the letters."

Mulder's right hand clenched on the door handle. "It's not
voodoo, Frank. It's a science. You know that better than anyone."

"Not for you, Mulder. It's a gift."



"I'm a dangerous man," Mulder hummed to himself. "I'm a dangerous
man in a dangerous land playing a dangerous..."

He stopped, picking up the first of the tiny notes.  He had been
slightly surprised that the police had agreed to let him
"consult" but then, they wanted to find Vicky, and no one had
time for worrying about strict jurisdictions. He sat on the edge
of the bed, bathed in incongruous sunlight.  Vicky was with a
pedophile, and there was the bright blue sky of early spring
visible through her bedroom windows.  The sky. . .the sky. There
were little white clouds on a sky-blue card, and inside, the perp
had written, "to my princesse lontaine."  So Vicky had French
lessons, and the perp knew enough to know that being a faraway
princess was a romantic idea. He set it aside for

Mulder didn't want to do it. He didn't want to trace his latex-
covered finger over the scribbled initial on the card, didn't
want to pick up the little stuffed toys and the stickers and the
glitter nail polish.  He didn't want to stand up and look in the
closet, and put his hand on the plaid school jumper. He didn't
want to feel like a man who wanted a prepubescent girl. He didn't
want to know what that felt like.

"The pedophile is an inadequate personality whose primary sexual
focus is on children who have not reached puberty.  He has no
interest in sexually mature partners.  He may have been abused,
himself, as a child.  He usually collects photos or drawings of
children that are not, on the surface, erotic or pornographic to
the average viewer. These collections come from newspaper and
magazine advertisements or clothing catalogs." Black had given
him a hand-held recorder and a package of tapes.

She was unspoiled. She was sweet and tender. She was always
rapturously happy to find his notes, because he watched her.  He
had a job with flexible hours, or even a night shift position,
something that gave him plenty of time to cultivate Vicky's
interest.  Plenty of time to follow her around....and take
pictures. Take movies of her.  Sweet and tender. Check photo
shops, but he probably had a digital camera and loaded the
pictures straight into his computer.

Mulder shuddered violently.  God.  He couldn't deal with a
pervert's sexual fantasies. He couldn't even deal with his own.

Why couldn't he remember more about how Scully got pregnant?  Why
couldn't he remember the first time?  He thought it would have
been burned in his mind. He had wanted her for so long, felt
guilty about it, felt angry about it.  Some days, for hours at a
time, he had felt absurdly happy, as if she had made some
declaration of love by asking him to father her baby. And then he
thought, who else would she ask? Skinner? Who else did either of
them know?  And then the black depression came back, that he had
done it to her, he had sucked her into his obsession...

....obsessed, the perp was in love with her. He thought he was
in love.  If he felt sexually inadequate,  he may not try
anything aggressively sexual with Vicky. He may behave as he
thought an adult would romance a grown woman....

Then Mulder had crawled out of the grave like Frankenstein's
monster, and there was Scully, with baby visibly on board,
weeping over him, and there was goddamned Doggett, lurking.
Doggett thought Mulder was scum, and that Scully was co-dependent
on him. Doggett loved her. Mulder recognized that hopeless look
in a man's eyes.  He had seen it in his bathroom mirror every
day.

He had seen it this morning.

He wrenched himself back to Vicky.  Her hair as bright as the
sun. The promise of great beauty. Illegitimate. Had Vicky begun
asking questions? Had Vicky wondered who she was? Did this
guy....he could be in college. He could be a student, and that's
why he could follow her around.  If so, he was acting out some
script of his own.  Maybe.....

Mulder crushed the card in his hand. Look for a literature major.
Someone without priors.  Look for someone who was a student
teacher, or a tutor.  She knew this guy. She knew him, and he
seemed so safe, so innocent that his name hadn't surfaced in the
minds of the schoolteachers, or the maid, and certainly not to
her mother, who was sedated into a coma, but was still the trophy
mistress, still the secret affair, and certainly not to her
father, who bought out the mall for her but didn't know her.

Vicky wanted someone to love her. Someone to tell her he loved
her. She probably didn't realize that she was pretty.  It was
hard to wait.

It was hard to wait for it. You could die waiting.

You could die if you didn't wait.



Mulder couldn't make up his mind about the Lamaze classes. The
class itself was like every sitcom he had ever seen; the life-
sized dolls were just as battered.

He liked being accepted as the Dad/coach. Scully seemed pleased
to be part of a crowd; and even more pleased that other women
had partners that made worse comments than Mulder would ever
venture. Of course, he was the only one who knew that his partner
had a gun in her purse; in fact, he bet he was the only one who
had been shot by his partner.

"What are you grinning at, Mulder?" Scully asked. She was sitting
on her pillow, holding the practice baby and absent-mindedly
patting its back.

"I'm just happy to be here, Scully," he said pacifically, and
rubbed her back. "I'm happy to be _here_, with you and the baby."

Wow, for once, he had hit the right button. Scully's cheekbones
flushed slightly, and she bit her lip.  She didn't stiffen up
when he put his arm around her during the video, and even let him
sneak a sip of her bottle of water.

He had started staying the night with her after the classes.
It was a foot in the door, but half the time Scully acted like
they were on their first date instead of expectant parents.

She even had beer in the fridge, for crying out loud, although
she wasn't drinking for the duration.  "You love beer with
pizza," she told him, and who was he to disagree?  Although he
hadn't drunk Rolling Rock in years, he wouldn't complain.

Tonight, Scully seemed a little preoccupied.  Mulder licked the
tomato sauce from his finger, and studied her.  "What?" she said,
looking up from "What to Expect While Your Expecting."

"Scully, does it freak you out having the medical training, and
knowing objectively what is happening to your body? You aren't
sitting around thinking about every worst case scenario that you
heard about, are you?"

The tiny frown lines on her forehead disappeared. "Actually,
Mulder, it's kind of reassuring.  I mean, I really do know that
most of my physical sensations have a reason, and it doesn't
scare me when my ankles swell or I get a cramp in my side.  And I
did get to deliver that baby in Florida, you know."

"I was being throttled by a critter at the time," he said.  "I
should write Dales, though, he'd be thrilled.  He took quite a
shine to you."

"Yes, and your lip was out to here," she said, gesturing. "You
pouted for days."

"I don't pout," he said with dignity. "I just contemplate my
errors."

"Oh, and that's not pouting?  The silent treatment for days? That
wasn't pouting?"

"I had _spines_in my neck," Mulder said, sitting up straight.
"One hundred and thirty fucking spines in my neck. And your
tweezer action was not as gentle as it could have been."

Scully leaned back. "My hands were a little tired from delivering
a ten-pound baby," she said, smirking.  He sat there, one hand
along the back of the couch, glaring at her. "Oh, there it is,"
she snorted, "the lip." And she touched a fingertip to his bottom
lip.

He nipped at her finger, but she was too quick, and snatched her
hand away, giggling.

"Oh, how would you like to be bitten a hundred times?" he
growled, and moving his hand to the back of her neck, leaned over
and nipped her gently.  Scully went perfectly still.  He got
three nips before he felt her swallow.

"What---what are you doing?" she asked, in a small voice.

"Shut up. You have another hundred and twenty-seven bites." Even
after all their time together, Scully seemed to smell different
every time.  Although he knew she didn't wear what she called
"old lady" colognes, he usually asked, "Hmm, White Shoulders" to
annoy her.

He put his finger tips just inside the collar of her robe, and
said, "Hmm, white shoulders."

"Sung, Mulder."  she said, sounding a little faint as she tilted
her throat back to his mouth.

"No, I know you wear Alfred Sung.  I mean, white shoulders."  He
slid her robe back.  "You have no idea how erotic red hair is on
your white shoulders.  Blue eyes and red lips and white skin;
you're like a Sargent portrait."  He wasn't nipping her so much
as giving her little kisses along her shoulders and under her
collar bone.

"What are you doing, Mulder?" she murmured, her eyes closed, her
arms and thighs opening to him, as he pressed her against the
cushions. He loosened the robe.

"Shh," he said, and did a small double take at how large and
dark her nipples were now.  "Tell me if I hurt you," he breathed,
licking his lips and bending his mouth to one, then the other.
She inhaled in a hiss, and he looked up. "Hurt?' he asked,
smiling.

"No, just sensitive," she said, smiling.  "Mulder, I'm all yours.
Let's go to bed."

He followed her, turning off the television and the lights, and
taking the pizza and beer to the kitchen.  He walked back
in to see her reach for a nightgown.

"Oh, don't hide, Scully.  You're beautiful."

Her eyes teared up. "I'm short and fat! The kid is standing on
my bladder; how can you say that, and don't say a I have a glow."

Mulder left his tee-shirt and boxers on, and crawled into the
bed. He left her bedside light on. "Come here, Scully," he
said, and sulkily, she wrapped herself in her robe and got
into bed, presenting him with her back.

He began stroking her back and arms with long, slow, soothing
motions.  "You have a beautiful baby. Our baby.  You're beautiful
inside and out.  You were beautiful to me when you were in the
cancer ward. You were beautiful when you used to wear the little
red velvet jackets and the hair bands. You were sweet.  Now,
you're sexy, and you're professional, and you have Skinner and
Doggett at your feet.  Hell, Doggett wants to take you to
Lamaze."

"Oh, Mulder," she said, but relaxed slightly into his hands.
"Doggett does not..."

"Wake up and smell the devotion, Scully.  He's bringing you
flowers! That's not part of Academy training.  And Skinner, he
faced down Krycek for you."

"That was for you, Mulder."

"No, honest Walt came to me and admitted that he tried to kill me
to protect me from becoming an alien.  He wanted to remove
threats from you."

It was very strange to Mulder, but the more harrowing the
subjects they discussed, the more relaxed Scully got.  Not his
idea of bedroom chatter, but then he wouldn't have thought last
year that he would be a regular in Scully's Zen nun-like bed.  He
tried one more kiss, under her ear, and he was pleased when she
turned, both hands on her belly, into his arms.

"You sleep well when you're here, don't you Mulder?" she asked.
"You're not here just to keep me company or to seduce me, are
you?  You don't want to stay at your apartment."

"I want to seduce you, Scully," he said, and buried his face
between her breasts and the baby bump.

"Oh, move down here, and you'll feel its arm," Scully said,
getting more interested. She draped her arm around his shoulders,
her fingers in his hair.  Mulder looked up at her from under her
hand, his expression one of concentration.  Then his face
changed. "I feel it, Scully. That's an arm?"

"I think so, from the last sonogram." She stroked his hair.

"Maybe he'll pitch." Mulder kept his face on her belly, listening
intently.

"Maybe she'll pitch," Scully corrected.

Mulder propped his chin on one hand, and began talking directly
to the baby.  "Pitching is good, but if you hit, too, you can
write your own ticket. I'm a Yankees fan, but your mother is an
atheist.  She doesn't even watch." He stroked her belly as he
talked.  Scully seemed to like this; her eyes closed slowly.

Mulder looked up, and then straightened his back to kiss her
cheek. With a murmur, she turned into his arms, one hand up
to caress his neck.

With a lump in his throat, Mulder turned off the light. Family
man, he thought unironically.



Mulder was pacing Vicky's room, sweating from his hair to his
socks. Something very weird here.

He heard someone rap gently on the door.  He turned, and a short,
stout blonde woman in a suit stood there. He blinked. Not stout,
but pregnant. More pregnant than Scully, in fact.

"Mr. Mulder? I'm Detective White," the woman said, and gestured
with a little notebook she was holding. "I'm in charge of this
investigation, and I'd be interested in any help you can give
me."

"I'm here as a consultant," he said, trying not to look at her
belly. "The chief gave us permission." Jeeze, he could imagine
calling Scully and saying he was on a case with a Detective
White. Some old memories were better left in the file cabinet.

"Yes, and I'm fine with that. I know you used to be with the
Bureau, and this way, we get the benefit of your advise[ADVICE]
without
having to admit we called the Feds."  She eased herself to sit
down on the window seat. "Don't be embarrassed. I feel like the
woman in _Fargo_."

"No, I'm not embarrassed. My---partner is pregnant. I'm trying
not to ask you who your obstetrician is." He grinned at her, and
she blinked for a second. "What can I tell you, Detective?"

Detective White opened her notebook. "Well, we have someone at
the school, interviewing the teachers and the other kids.  She
didn't get there, of course, but we want to see if they saw her
with anyone.  We're pulling a couple of surveillance videos to
see if we get anything." Mulder nodded, going down his own mental
checklist. "The housekeeper has volunteered to be hypnotized to
see if she remembers any details, such as a car passing when
Vicky started walking down the sidewalk.  The mom is out cold.
The father is trying to keep it quiet, but we're going wide open.
We have a couple of pictures we're giving to the media, and our
media spokesman is downstairs getting ready to talk to the press.
He'll do that from City Hall, but we can expect the neighborhood
to be crawling with trucks by this evening. Anything else we need
to do before the dogs are loose?"

"Check the school internet access," he suggested. "I see you've
got her computer. And look into the mother's friends, ask the
housekeeper who came here socially. Or service people.  Who
would have seen Vicky? If he planned it, he had to be hanging
around here for sometime, even to get her school schedule."

"But you don't think releasing the information will hurt the
case?" she asked.

"This isn't the crime scene," Mulder said. "We don't know at
which point she was taken.  Treat 'em well; the reporters may
just find out something you can use. And that'll deflect the
attention away from the parents.  Single mother, nice house,
beautiful little girl. That's enough.  Ask the public to help,
all that.  Tap the phones, see if there's a ransom demand, but I
don't think you'll get one."

"No," Detective White said regretfully, "I think it's a sex
crime. It's really a question of whether this was a crime of
opportunity, or if he had been watching her for a while." She
paused. "Do you think you're going to be able to give us a
profile?"

Mulder looked up from the carpet. She was looking at him with
honest, professional admiration. "Oh, you know what I used to
do?"

"I was working in Manassas when you found Addie Sparks in
Bosher's Run Park," she said, as if that explained everything. It
did, in a way. She thought he could solve cold cases in his
sleep.

"That was an old case," he said. "The fourteenth of sixteen. He
had confessed to thirteen."

"Yes, I followed it. I'm glad you killed him," she said. She
stood up slowly, one hand on the small of her back. "This gets
old. Is it your first?"

Mulder stared at her, collecting his scattered thoughts. "Yes, it
is."

"Our second," Detective White groaned. "Well, here's my card.
Please call me if you have something." She turned, and made her
sway-backed way out.

"I'm not enjoying this," Mulder said to himself. "Not at all."



"Mulder," Scully had said, "I don't know about you being my birth
coach."

It was so abrupt that his heart started pounding. The mouthful of
coffee he had just swallowed almost came back up. "Oh," he said,
and carefully set his cup down.  "I, I don't, understand."

"I just don't feel comfortable," Scully said, not looking at him.
"You being there."

"Don't give me that crap," he said.  "I didn't feel comfortable
each and every time you stood around and watched people ramming
tubes down my throat and up my dick, but I didn't tell you to
leave." He was trying to make her smile, but she only assumed her
"I'm-a-medical-doctor" expression.

"I only walked in when they were taking out the catheter that one
time.  You are not the best patient in the world, you know.  They
called me because the nurse was certain you'd kill her. And
that's not the point."

"I get the point, Scully," he said in a monotone. He stood up,
and carefully picked up his jacket from the chair back.

"You're not getting the point," she said, her face flaming.

Breathe, Mulder, breathe, he told himself. Deep cleansing
breaths. "You don't want me to be in there when you have the
baby.  I get it. So, I guess I'll just...see you...later." He
bent and gave her a fraternal kiss on the cheek. She took a firm
hold of his arm, preventing him from standing up.

"Mulder," she began. "You're upset."

"I'm not upset," he said patiently. "I have fish to feed,
unemployment to file, dry cleaning to pick up, bills to pay.  So
if I'm not going to class, I need to go do it. Call me if you
need me." He carefully removed Scully's fingers from his sleeve.

And he left, walking out on rubbery legs.

He did have all those things to do, so he drove home and did
them.  Well, not the unemployment.  He got fat checks from his
mother's trust fund, and he would get more from his father's
estate when he turned forty.  Strange age. Kind of insulting, his
lawyer had said indignantly, and wanted to break the trust.

"I'd like it to go to Scully's baby, anyway," he told her.

His lawyer shook her head. "Can't do it until the baby's here.
And you can't transfer your interest to other than your heir.
Otherwise, it goes to the Republican Party. Your dad evidently
expected you to think that taking his money was the lesser of two
evils."

At any rate, the checks didn't have Roush on them, so he took
them.  He had to live, and he had never thought much about what
he would do after the Bureau.  That's what fighting nameless
conspiracies did to you, he supposed [COLON] narrowed one's
focus.

He wasn't too surprised by Scully getting cold feet about having
him with her.  From his reading, he knew that she had to be
feeling insecure about the pregnancy, and from being around her,
he knew she felt uncomfortable about him. About them, about them
being a couple, rather than partners.  She didn't seem to know
what to do with him, without the X-Files as a focus. He didn't
know what to do with himself, for that.

But he didn't feel uncomfortable around Scully.  It felt natural
to go to sleep with her snuffling little snores at his ear;
natural to walk around "ToysRUs" and price the mountain of
equipment that was apparently necessary for minimal maintenance
of a baby. He had even tried on one of those harnesses to carry
around the baby while Scully had been busy reading all the small
print on the packages of disposable diapers.

He decided to go for a run.  Lying in a coffin had really screwed
up his muscle tone.  And when he felt more like himself, and
Scully had this baby, he was going to hash it out with her about
this crap.  He was the one with the abandonment issues, after
all.

He was going to need years of recovery after this one summer was
over. That, or some of Langly's hash. Lots of hash.


That night, he had fallen asleep with "Psychological Aspects of
Pregnancy."  He awoke to someone knocking on the door. Yawning,
he tossed the book under the sofa and got up to look through the
peephole.

It was Scully. He undid the bolts and chain.

"What are you doing running around this time of night?" he
demanded, opening the door. "We're not on a case. Well, you may
be."

She winced.  "I started thinking and I didn't want---" she
stopped, taking in his rumpled hair and pajama bottoms, the
silent television. "Were you asleep?"

"Yeah, but that's all right, I don't have to get up," he said.

"Cut it out, Mulder, you quit. You quit!"

He raised his eyebrows. "Oh, did you come over to take back
everything you said about that?"

Scully sat on the arm of the chair. "I didn't come over here to
fight," she said, looking at the toe of her shoe.

"If you wore decent shoes your feet wouldn't hurt," he observed
unkindly. "I've been telling you that for years, and now, with
the baby throwing off your center of balance, you're looking at
a lot of back pain."

She looked up at him, her expression hard to read. "You know
a lot about pregnancy."

"I read," he said. "I'm interested in the subject."  He relented
slightly, and sat down in the chair she perched on. "See, my
partner is having this miracle baby." he said to her back. "So I
think it's fascinating. In fact, there's talk of it being an X-
File." He patted her hip.

"God," she said, over her shoulder, "You are such a shit."

He put his arm around her waist. "Second generation," he replied,
rubbing his face into her back. "Talk to me."

"I thought about all the things that happen in delivery.  How
the obstetrician examines you; how you have to lie there and
stick your legs straight up in the air; and how I would look to
you; and it just embarrasses me."

"You shouldn't be embarrassed, Scully," he said. He nearly
said, "you're a medical doctor," but instead, "millions of
women and millions of men do this.  We can do this.  And, after
all, I'll be at the head of the bed.  And I could faint."

She gave an almost silent chuckle. "You won't faint. Just don't
film it and show the guys, okay?"

Mulder lifted his face from her back. "It never even occurred to
me," he said. "Good God, woman, now you're just being difficult
for the hell of it."

She sighed. "You're right. The other women in the class are going
to a spa weekend next week. I think I'll go." She stood up,
patting her pocket. "Mulder. You took my keys."

"It's too late for the baby to be out," he said innocently. She
frowned down at him, then shrugged and went to his bedroom. After
a moment of disbelief, Mulder got up and locked the door, and
turned off the living room light.

Scully was in the bathroom, washing her face. Mulder, pretending
a nonchalance he didn't feel, flicked back the duvet.  Had he
really been telling himself, just ten minutes ago, that he was
comfortable as a couple? Hah. He felt like he was breaking the
ice again.  Breaking the ice. Not a good metaphor.  He scrabbled
around on the floor for one of the magazines he was reading to
find out what had gone on in the world while he was, apparently,
off it.  "Knicks prospects suck," he muttered, refusing to
concentrate on what Scully was doing behind the half-closed door.
He was forcing himself to read about the Yankees' trades when
Scully emerged, wearing his bathrobe.

"I didn't realize you read in bed," she said, smiling.  She sat
on the edge of the bed, and after a moment's hesitation, shucked
the robe before sliding quickly under the covers.

"You're breaking my concentration now," he said. But she didn't
turn over, and not letting himself sigh, he concentrated on his
magazine. But there was no need. She was sound asleep.


Friday evening

Mulder stacked Scully's mail and newspapers on her kitchen table,
as previously instructed.  Why, Scully, already reading "Parents"
magazine? He shook a subscription form out, and pocketed it.
Wouldn't hurt to see what kind of pseudo-psychology she was
reading.
He checked the plants, touching the potting soil. All moist.  Why
she asked him to do this was mystifying, but he didn't mind. If
he
wasn't working on this case, he would have been tempted to spend
the night, just so he could sleep in her bed, smelling her
Scullysmell on the linens.

That was his little secret, though.  Scully, like many women,
thought if you could smell her, it was bad.  That was just so
wrong.  Mulder bet he could pick her bathrobe out of a line-up,
just with his nose.

On Scully's television, the news was on. A reporter, with a
suitably solemn face, was giving the details of Vicky's
disappearance.  There was her picture, in her school uniform.
Detective White was right; the matter was well in hand. He
assumed that Vicky's mother would make a scripted appearance,
begging for the return of her daughter.

Something wasn't right, and neither he nor Black could figure it
out. "There's evil here," Black had said, in his hollow prophet's
voice. "But where did it come from?"

To put off the moment when he had to write his profile, Mulder
went to the coffee shop Scully liked, just down the block.  He
got a double latte, and was turning away from the counter, when
he saw a familiar military haircut.  Doggett, sitting there
reading the paper.  Waiting for Scully? No, she would have told
him she was out of town.

"Agent Doggett," he said, startling the man. John Doggett stood
up, stiffly, and after a micron of hesitation, held out his hand.
Mulder shook it. He could sense Doggett's surprise.

"Mulder," he said. "Have a seat." Not sincere at all.

Mischievously, Mulder did. "Thanks," he said, sipping at his
latte. "Slow week, agent?" One day, he would get the better of
this impulse to mess with someone's head. Not yet, though.

"It's never slow in the basement, Mulder," Doggett said. "I
thought Dana was out of town?"

Mulder raised his eyebrows. "She is."

"I asked her yesterday how you were doing, and she said she had
no idea."  Doggett gave him the same 'You sorry bastard' stare
that Bill, Jr. liked to bend on him. Jeeze.  Bill, Jr. Wonder how
he was dealing with the prospect of Mulder knocking up his
sister.

"She probably was speaking metaphorically," Mulder replied. He
caught sight of two long-legged little girls walking in, and
frowned.  Walking in after dusk. Perfect prey. Sweet and tender.
Oh, shit. He needed to go home and do this thing. Do this
profile.

He looked up to say something to Doggett, and caught the other
man studying him. Like a bug.  Fuck it. He had lost the urge to
torment Doggett, to ask him if he had Scully's apartment staked
out. Mulder picked up his latte and walked out.

No rest for the wicked, he thought. I have a date with a
pedophile.


Something was off. He felt like there was a terrible evil in that
house, but it was odd how Vicky didn't bother to hide the cards
and the teddy bears.  They were in plain view.  Was she trying to
leave a message? Was she signaling someone?

He lay on his couch, one forearm over his eyes. He could see the
guy, see him clearly; he could describe him; but he couldn't see
him with Vicky.  She would have run to the first man he thought
of, the younger man, but now he kept thinking of an older man.

It was an older man.  Most seductive pedophiles were homosexuals.
They became friendly with the child and then slowly introduced
sexual content into the relationship. But Vicky had almost
cataloged her cards and notes.

She was laying them out for someone to find.


He had the telephone in his hand, talking to Detective White,
beginning before she even had the second syllable of "Hello?" out
of her mouth.

"Detective," he said, "Look hard at the mother's contacts. Look
hard at her background."

"Mr. Mulder?" she said. Then, slowly, "Mom's a professional?"

"Maybe a retired one," he said. "But maybe she wanted to carry on
the business. Look at her finances."

"Jeeze, Mr. Mulder, if she was pimping Vicky, she wouldn't
have..." He heard a sharp click, as if she had shut her mouth
with a snap. "The school reported her," White said, again in that
slow, considering tone. "But Mom is hysterical; Mom is drugged."

"I don't know if she was going to sell her own kid," Mulder said.
"But no one saw anything. No one saw her disappear.  Tell Mom you
need to know if someone was stalking Vicky. You need to get hold
of every old guy Mom has clinked a martini glass with."  He
paused. "I know it sounds farfetched," he said.

"No," White replied. "I've seen things that I thought never
happened these days, that I thought only happened in Bangkok."
She cleared her throat. "Thanks, Mr. Mulder. I'll keep in touch."

Mulder was still sitting on the couch, with the cell phone in his
hand, when Frank Black called. "I don't think anything bad is
happening now," he said, without preamble. "I don't think this is
what it seems."

"Did you cash the check?" Mulder asked. "Because we might as well
get paid before it all goes to hell."

"First thing I did, Mulder." He paused. "Do you think it's the
father or the mother?"

"The dad didn't have to contact you," Mulder said. "He could have
gone on with his life. Despite the fact that he apparently had a
relationship with the mom when she was twelve."

"I'm betting she's not some Wellesley grad who went astray,"
Frank said. "You and I both know that a lot of young girls come
to the District before they can drive, just to hook up with
wealthy older men. It's an international disease. Middle=aged men
with power want children. When you're a father, you'll understand
how disgusting that is."

Mulder felt a headache coming on. "A lot of these guys are
fathers, Frank, and we both know they don't give a damn who's
little girl they're introducing to oral sex."

"They have kids, but they're not fathers. There is a difference."
Then, with that scary psychic knowledge, Frank said, "You'll be a
father, Mulder." And hung up.

Mulder turned off his phone. Bastard. He was still reading minds.


Early Saturday morning

He was dreaming that someone was in the room with him. Someone
small, someone who wanted to tell him...who wanted to tell him
she was alive.

He sat up and looked around for Vicky in the half-light, almost
prepared to see her standing at his side. Curiously, he wasn't
scared. Instead, he felt elated.

He had felt oddly elated sitting next to Scully at the doctor's
office. Scully didn't really like driving any more. She had
casually told Mulder that Doggett had offered to take her to her
appointment.  Mulder loved it when Scully tried to use reverse
psychology; it was like a little kid shooting a water pistol. He
would have leapt at the chance to get out of his apartment, get
away from his obsession with his old scars and the Knicks videos
Frohike had given him.

Get to behave like a normal man, a normal father. Sit in the
waiting room, and rub Scully's shoulders and put his hand on her
knee without her even giving him a look of reproof. It was like
the Arcadian Subdivision from Hell, only Scully was going along
with the joke.

Maybe it was just a joke. She hadn't really said anything about
his place in her new world order. His place in her life, in the
baby's life.

And he noticed something suspicious; the other men were going in
with their women. To see the sonogram; it seemed not to occur to
Scully to include him in that. Or maybe she didn't want him to
see her?  No...and if he coached her in Lamaze, he'd see her in a
hospital gown and with her feet in stirrups...no.  The first
answer is usually the correct one, he had learned long ago. It
didn't occur to Scully that he'd want to see it. And maybe he
wouldn't have.  But it would be nice to be asked.

Every time he thought he had Scully in his grasp, she eluded him.
She had been with him all morning, and she still wasn't there.
She was off somewhere in her inviolate and unknowable mother-
hood, even as she stood there beside him. She put the card with
the date of her next appointment into her bag, and looked up at
him, the clear blue of her eyes as honest as the sky.

Maybe it was that he still eluded himself. First he was lost,
then he was found; dead and then alive; an FBI agent and
then...not.

Saturday morning

Who do you run to when your mother turns against you? Mulder
thought. His chest hurt, and he slowed the pace of his running.

Oh, good. Now he felt alive. He thought he was reconciled, he
thought he was at peace, but it was back, leaping into his mind
like the family dog. Who do you run to when your father is
distant and your mother turns against you?  Stop it.  Stop
turning everything back to your own psycho-drama.  You had a
family. You're going to have a family again, maybe.

He stopped, gasping ragged breaths, and swiped the sweat from his
forehead with the hem of his tee shirt.  Okay.  So when she got
scared, when she was afraid, and she knew her mother was a fool
and her housekeeper just an employee; and everyone thought "Gigi"
was a romantic French comedy, instead the story of a young girl
being brought up to be a prostitute. . .

"Gigi."  He was old.

If Detective White could only get the background on the mom, he'd
bet his video collection----oh, that's right, that *hadn't* been
kept in the Mulder Memorial Apartment----that she could find
mom's---Ginny's---history; and a look at her bank statements
wouldn't come amiss.

If only she had run to someone who would help her; if she had
gone to someone safe.  But who the hell was safe?


"Something very interesting in the e-mails on the kid's
computer," Detective White said, without preamble. "Child porn
sites. More specifically, someone sent Vicky sites on older men
and young girls. Looks like she was being introduced to the idea
of sex with an older man."  She crumbled the up her Styrofoam cup
and tossed it in the Dunkin' Donuts trash can.

"That's exactly the kind of perpetrator we were thinking about
last night," Black said. "If she had been snatched off the
street, we could profile what kind of perpetrator would do it.
But if she was being courted..."

Detective White picked up fragments of glazed sugar with her
finger tip and transferred them to her tongue. "Sue me," she said
to Mulder. "I gave up smoking." She wiped her fingers on a paper
napkin. "Well, she wasn't enjoying the courting. She put all the
stuff in a folder titled 'Creep.' Like she wanted us to find it.
Like she knew something was going to happen to her."

"Has something happened to her?" Mulder said, tying his coffee
stirrer in a knot. "Dad thinks so.  I think his fear is real. He
called Frank, and I just don't think he would hire two ex-Feds as
part of an elaborate camouflage."

"We never got to talk to Mom," Det. White said. "She was sedated
when we got there." She leaned sideways, uncomfortably, and
pulled several sheets of folded Xerox paper out of her purse.
"But it turns out that she doesn't own the house; there's a
lease葉his first one-- that is paid up until, guess when? Vicky's
twenty-one. Dad settled things nicely for Mom. She didn't even
bother to go to court for formal child support, and his name
isn't on Vicky's birth certificate. Here."

Mulder stuffed a glazed donut hole into his mouth, and leaned
forward.  "Virginia 'Ginny' Clark. Had Victoria Mary Clark when
she was nineteen. The lease was signed the week after Vicky was
born. Nice. And the signature belongs to?"

"A bank officer, the bank is the trustee of Vicky's trust fund.
They immediately froze the assets, by the way. They pay the
private school fees and make Ginny give a pretty rigorous
accounting耀how receipts, the whole deal. Seems like she got a
little sloppy last year, now they pre-approve expenses and make
her bring in proof."

Mulder smiled to himself. That must be the kind of thing Scully
was so conscientiously trying to show him.  He hadn't seen the
bills for his funeral yet, but he could wait for that.

Frank was sipping his coffee, examining the copies. "So the
assistant Director is not worried about being found out," he
said. "Because the bank gave you all this."

"Threw it at me," White said. "This case is getting murkier,
rather than clearer. Mom says its a stranger abduction. Dad
doesn't know who, but hires two very expensive consultants. The
bank says that Mom is a spendthrift but not abusive; they don't
have her personal accounts."

"Ah," said Frank. "Then, I wonder what her source of income is?
And if she's borrowing money, or into the club scene, or---"

"Works for an escort service?" White said. "Yeah. I tried telling
her that we have to look at the immediate family when there's a
kidnapping. She was pretty obstructive for a bereaved mom. My
lieutenant is ready to arrest her, just for the hell of it.
Thinks she did something to Vicky and this is a cover-up."

Mulder exchanged glances with Frank. "Do what you have to do
to get a warrant for her bank records."

White smiled a surprisingly girlish smile. "Well,
while she was upstairs screaming, I tossed her desk. One of the
guys went around the block and made copies of her bank book. I've
got a subpoena for the phone records, and the phone company is
doing them now and faxing them to the precinct. You can look at
the computer stuff at the same time."  She rapped her knuckles on
the Formica table top. "But guys, I just want to know: have I got
a kidnapping, or have I got a homicide?"

"If Vicky knew she was in imminent danger, would she have told
her father? The phone records may tell us how often they talked.
If she was just worried, would she have told her mother? There's
no diary, is there?" Frank asked.

"I didn't see one when we boxed up her room. What do you think,
Mulder? I've got a judge who would have no problem signing a
general warrant."

"Oh, so Ginny's already refused to talk?"

Detective White stopped smiling. "Yeah, she's already clammed
up."

"Fuck it, then," Mulder said. "Pop her." He shifted his weight in
the seat, wincing at his sore legs.  The dream of Vicky haunted
him, but he wasn't going to let it influence him. The last time
he followed a hunch, he did save a young girl, but he had put
that young girl in danger in the first place. Not again.



Saturday Afternoon.

Ginny, as Mulder could not help but think of her, could have been
twenty-one, instead of thirty-one, but for her hands.  But who
looked at her hands?  She was wearing what Mulder recognized as
off-the-rack designer casual; perfect for District Junior League
meetings.  When she moved, her clothes emitted discreet whiffs of
cologne.  She was money.

Next to her, Detective White looked old, faded, too heavily
pregnant, wearing shabby maternity clothes. Every flick of
Ginny's lashes showed that she was comparing herself to White,
the only other woman in the room, and enjoying the contrast.

But even twenty-one was too old for some tastes.  The Director
had finished with Ginny at twenty.  Since then, she had, no
doubt, found several protectors who paid the bills that Vicky's
money didn't cover.

Such a grimy room, with a glass door and a mirror on one wall,
battered metal chairs, a scuffed wooden table with a single
manila folder resting on top of it.  A pregnant detective with
dark roots showing through her blonde hair, and two former
federal agents in wrinkled shirts.

Detective White, leaning back in her chair with her hands clasped
over the mound of baby, was explaining the subpoenas to Ginny.
"We have to examine everyone who is in contact with the family,"
she said smoothly. "There's been no demand for money, no contact
with the family. That rules out a kidnapping for a ransom. So
then, we have to look at either an abduction by a total stranger,
or by someone who knew Vicky."

"Why aren't you looking for a stranger? Why do I have to let you
crawl all over the house?"  Manicured fingertips tapped on the
Coach handbag. White's non-response was a response in itself.

Mulder had a flash of the house, devoid of any sign of a child's
presence, except for the actual bedroom and bath.  Who was Ginny
trying to live like? Where was she from?

"It's called victimology," Black said.  "The investigation has to
look at the victim, and try to see what attracted the kidnapper."

"Oh, don't try that Hannibal Lector stuff with me, Mr. Black. I
know that Vicky's father hired you. Why isn't he here?"

"We've talked to her father," White said, her voice careful. "We
were forced to consider any national security implications.  But
he states that he doesn't visit Vicky in your home.  He has some
limited contact with her.  No one, and no group, has contacted
him and made threats or demands."


"So we need to look at your acquaintances," Black said. "Have any
of your dates come to the house?"

"Of course they have," Ginny snapped. "None of my friends would
take Vicky."

"There's no one who takes particular interest in her?" Mulder
asked, from the end of the table.  He wasn't even looking at her;
he was looking at his reflection in the two-way mirror.

"None of my friends would do that," Ginny repeated, still looking
at Black. He opened the manila folder, and showed her a copy of
the phone records. There were several highlighted calls to a
number that was an escort service.  Ginny bent her head to look
at the numbers, her eyelids flicking down and then back up.

"What about your clients?"  Mulder asked, pushing his chair back
from the table. He raised his head to stare at her. "If they were
completely average businessmen, they wouldn't hire an escort,
would they? They wouldn't need special services.  Did any of
those men come to the house?"

Ginny raised her chin and tried to stare Mulder down.  This would
be the moment in a novel, where the call girl's good looks faded,
he thought.  Where she looked hard. Instead, Ginny looked as
dewy-fresh as ever.

"I want my lawyer," she said.  And her voice was still a sexy
coo, even as she opened up her leather card case, and tossed a
business card on the table. "Call him."



"What kind of mother is that?" Detective White asked, looking
ill. Frank came back the vending machines, with three cans of
cola.  She took it, gratefully. "I mean, really? I've busted
crack 'ho's who were more involved in their kids."

"I don't know what you've found out about her," Mulder said,
staring at his palm as if he was reading the words there. "She
works for a escort service.  She's supposed to be thirty-one, but
she could have met the Director at a lot younger---she could have
come to Washington very young, herself.  If she started selling
herself, very discreetly, as a teenager, then she'd think she was
being practical.  She doesn't strike me as being connected to
Vicky like a mother is connected."

"What about the hysterics? The patrolmen on the scene said that
was real---her housekeeper made her take her Xanax."

Frank cleared his throat. "Fear of being found out. Fear that her
friend had moved too fast, before she had all the payments.
Whoever it is, is only aroused by very young girls. Or by
virginity, and that's harder and harder to guarantee. Vicky goes
to a girls' school.  She has a father who doesn't involve himself
with her. She could be expected to have a desire for a father-
figure."

"He says he doesn't involve himself, but does he? How old are his
kids?" Mulder asked.

Frank stopping drumming his fingers on the table. "He has a
daughter at Miami, and his son is here in Georgetown."

Bingo, thought Mulder. "So she hasn't heard from her friend, at
least not on the house phones, because you've got a trace on
them. Of course, she could be talking on a cell, and we'd never
know."

Detective White shifted in her chair. "I need those bank
statements. I got the phone records from her phone company, but I
need more to go in and look through all of her bank transactions.
The checkbook we copied just has deposit amounts, not where
they're from.  We need to verify that she has no visible means of
support.  I checked the city directory; she put 'model' down for
her profession."

"Never mind that," Frank said. "She realizes we know what she is.
We need to know her motivation. And we need to know if she's
already sold Vicky to someone who decided to close the deal." He
picked up the business card. "I think we can find out who is
paying for her lawyer."

A patrolman stuck his head inside the door. "Hey, White, the guys
say that the Clark woman is driving home, do you want them to
hang around and see if she goes any where?"

"No, but see if the local news has sent their raw video over
yet." White nodded at the two men. "See if any pervs show up in
the footage, just in case some stranger grabbed her."

"Good.  Mulder and I will borrow this, if we may, and see if we
can find out who is paying her attorney fees."

Early Saturday Evening

The assistant Director had been playing golf that afternoon. He
left word that he would meet them in the country club library.
Mulder wandered around the room, looking at the unopened donated
books, while Frank sat, staring out the French doors at the
rolling lawns.  It seemed like Frank was quite accustomed to
meeting gray-haired men of power, in the quiet leather-cushioned
libraries of the rich.  In the foyer, in the hallway,
preparations were being made for dinner; ladies' bridge games
were still being played in the next room. Dusk was falling, and
the grass just outside the doorway gave off the perfume of
summers past.

This was the class that Mulder's dad aspired to...may have
become, for all Mulder knew.  He never took Mulder to play golf
with him, but Mulder found old golf clubs in both of his father's
homes.  That's why he didn't like Vicky's dad; he
reminded him of Bill Mulder.

Mulder stood still, waiting for the familiar emotions of shame,
longing, fear, and grief to wash over him.  But they didn't. His
father, dead on the bathroom floor, shot by Alex Krycek. He felt
numb. Remembered it had happened, but he didn't get that
sickening jolt of guilt he was so accustomed to feeling.


Hey, They must have leached those emotions away. Yes: he was
sorry his dad was dead, but that long horror of estrangement and
lies just wasn't lurching out of the memory chest, rattling its
chains and smelling of the grave. Mulder half-smiled. He'd have
to get his high school yearbooks out, and see if he still cringed
at the sight of---

The French doors opened and Vicky's dad came in.

"Sorry I made you wait. I kept this golf date because I wasn't
able to concentrate on anything else. What have you got?" he
asked, crossing to the leather sofa beside the empty fireplace.
Mulder studied him.  There were still traces of the college
quarterback the man had been. "The chief has forwarded me
Detective White's reports, and said she was letting you have full
access. Has she?"

Black unhurriedly sat down in a chair facing him, Mulder standing
behind Frank.  Mulder shoved his hands in his jacket pockets.

"Detective White has been very cooperative. It's the case; it's
rather odd," Black said, in his uninflected monotone. "At first,
we thought it could have been a stranger abduction.  But Vicky
would have put up a struggle. So, while still pursuing that,
we also looked into her mother's background."

The Director sat up. "Ginny," he said, his tone unpleasant.

"Are you aware that she currently works for an escort service,
apparently on a part-time basis? Or rather, she's associated with
an escort service?"

"I'm not surprised.  I should have had her investigated, but
frankly, I did not wish to use Agency resources in a personal
matter, and then have it come back to bite me.  She's always
resented it that Vicky's trustees make her account for how the
money's spent, and that it ends when Vicky goes to college."
His face hardened. "Do you think one of Ginny's dates was
stalking Vicky, and kidnapped her?"

"No," Mulder said, from behind Frank. "I think Ginny was using
Vicky as bait in some way. I don't know if this man would have
married Ginny to get to Vicky, but her mom was dangling Vicky out
there."   He walked around Frank's chair, and pulled one closer
to the Director before he sat down.  "We see it, you know, all
the time.  The Lolita syndrome. Older man marries woman to get to
her daughter. These guys are very patient, but they have a
preferred age.  The man that Ginny was seeing would have had
enough money to skip all that, though. Poor men have to marry to
get to their stepdaughter."

"Rich men buy them," the man said grimly.  "Have you talked to
Ginny?"

"The police tried to, but she got a lawyer."  Frank handed him a
business card.

The Director looked at it. "I'll tell you who hired him," he
said.

"Can you find out soon?"  Mulder asked.

"Son, I'll have it for you tonight. But where is Vicky? Is
she..."

Mulder leaned forward, his hands loosely clasped. "You have a
very smart girl, sir, and she has practical smarts.  She knew
something was up. She left clues for us.  For you, probably.
She's a kid, she probably thought you'd have your agents over
there.  So I think she ran away."

The Director's shoulders dropped a fraction of an inch. "So you
think she may be safe? She went to a friend?"

Frank cleared his throat. "Has she ever met her brother? The
brother who goes to Georgetown?"

Mulder discovered that his heart could lurch in shock, after all.
Frank was going to have to stop reading his mind.

But the Director stiffened, and then, oddly, his face relaxed.
"He knows about her. They all know about her. Ginny tried to
blackmail me, a long time ago. But Tommy is back-packing in
Maine."

"Can we have his cell phone number?"

"Certainly.  You don't think Tommy's in any danger?"

Black gave him a very direct look. "Not unless you think so."

The Director stared back. "No, I don't think someone's snatching
all my children."



Saturday Night, late

Mulder kept thinking about those few times he and Scully had sex.
Like they were the different squares of a Rubik's Cube, and he
would try to see if the new pattern enlightened him.  If he could
remember the night they had made the baby.  Gaps.  Gaps in his
memories, from before he walked into a cone of light.

Like the first time together, after he had come back.

It was one of those days where Mulder felt dead inside.  Left to
his own devices, he would have gone home and listened to his Pink
Floyd collection, or watched television, or just gone running
until he couldn't hobble straight.  He didn't know why he even
went to the office. He barely knew this fecund partner of his,
this goddess of fertility. He didn't want her not to be pregnant,
no, not at all, in any way, but he guiltily missed his Scully.
The one who would walk around the Mall with him. The one who
didn't have to be near the restroom all the time.

Scully kept talking about the crib, and the crib being delivered,
and Mulder took a message from Skinner, to the effect that he was
sending a runner down with a "Vise-Grip".

"A Vice-Grip?" Mulder repeated stupidly.

Kimberly sighed. "It's pliers, Agent Mulder. Assistant Director
Skinner thought she needed one to put together her new crib. He
says for her to keep it, he had a couple in his SUV."

"Kinky," Mulder said.

Kimberly didn't sigh, as she used to do. Her tone grew
confidential. "Actually, Agent, if he didn't have a service
dinner to go to, he was going to go put it together for her."

"I'm going to take care of it, Kimberly," Mulder found himself
saying.

"Good," Kimberly said. She hung up, and Mulder stared at the
phone receiver for a moment. So it was like that, huh? Redheads.
Can't live with them, they won't let you stay buried.

Scully walked in, and said, "Mulder, you talk into it. Wonderful
invention, the telephone." She sat down, and clicked the pliers at him.

He replaced the receiver, and swiveled in his chair. "Scully, can I
put together the baby's crib for you?"

She bit her lip. "Do you know how to do that kind of thing?"

He shrugged. "I put together all my bookcases, and a futon for -
for a friend, one time.  They have instructions."

She said, "Okay, but I'll cook dinner. No take-out."


Mulder sat in the floor, and rocked the frame of the crib.
Seemed to hold.

Maybe this hadn't been such a good idea. He thought Scully would
have kept him company, or something.  This kind of project left
him with plenty of free disk space for depression.  When he was
by himself, and with nothing to listen to, he started wondering
if he was really dead inside.  He was alive, but was he really?
Had he really come back to life?  Sometimes he felt like he had
lost his inner compass.  Scully and her make-work and her
conniving with Kimberly to get him over here.

Jeeze, he was going to start singing the songs from his old
eight-tracks in a minute.

"I'm lost," he said softly.  He put his finger in the spring pliers,
and waggled it.  Well, some sensation. He opened it, and tightened
the screw slightly. He was about to pinch his lip with it, when
the door opened.

"What are doing, Mulder?"  she said.

He shrugged. "I wanted to see if it would hurt."

"Yes, it will," she said forcefully. "C'mere, Mulder. I need
you." She went out, and shrugging to himself, he got to his feet,
turning out the light.  When he emerged, she was in the bedroom,
in the closet.

"I can't reach that, Mulder. Would you get it for me?" She was
pointing to a shoebox on the shelf. "I'm kind of scared to get on
a stepstool," she said.

He got the shoebox, and stopped.  "This is my size," he said. She
nodded, and he opened the box.  "Hoop shoes," he said. "Good
brand, too.  What's up?" he asked, already dreading the answer,
already dreading the tears that glittered in her eyes.

"I got you a present," she said. "They were on sale, and I
thought---these are perfect for Mulder." She moved back, and sat
down on the side of the bed. "And then I forgot about them."  He
didn't know how she did it, but she managed to make her tears
vanish. "Try 'em on," she said.

"Okay," he said. He sat down on her chair, and began fumbling
with the laces. She had threaded the laces through the holes. He
pulled off his shoes, and put the new ones on. He laced them, and
stood up, bouncing a little. "Nice," he said, sitting back down
and untying them, "really nice of you, Scully. They had
to set you back a lot." To his own horror, he felt his throat
tighten.  He put the heels of his hands to his eyes, and breathed
in deeply.

"I guess I need to go, Scully," he said. "My eyes are killing me
from reading those instructions."  He straightened up, and gave
her a half-smile.  But she was looking at him, perfectly calmly
and seriously, from the bed, and he stood up in his stocking
feet, and crossed to give her a kiss on the cheek.

Or so he intended.  She turned her face as he bent over, and
caught his mouth with her own.  He kissed her on her lips, and
her mouth opened under his.

Stop, Scully, he thought. I haven't had...God. She was slipping
him the tongue, and he discarded his shoes and kissed her
back. This was so familiar, but he couldn't remember when
they had done this, he had been here before, here on this bed,
with Scully hot and wild...or slow and sweet and sad? The memory
was gone.

She was sliding her hands under his shirt and his tee shirt.
"Mulder," she said, against his neck, and he felt her touch all
the way to his groin. Shit. He was wearing dress pants, she had
to feel...he tilted her gently back on the bed, one foot braced
on the floor and her breasts were there, what had she done, taken
off her underwear? She undid the sash of her robe with one hand,
the hand that wasn't raking her manicure down his back.

He shuddered.  Don't think. Don't think, and he rolled on his
elbow and they both pulled his trousers off, and with a touch
that felt almost familiar ・Scully sure had no qualms - she
guided him inside her.  His knees were protesting, but he only
had time for a few strokes before Scully came, clenching hard
against him, and yanking the sleeve of his shirt from its seams.
When he felt her, he lost it and came.

Scully pulled him up on the bed so she could cradle him in her
arms, not bothering with the wet spot. "Mulder," she said, "You
were missed."

He hid his face in the collar of her robe so she couldn't see his
expression.



Vicky came to Mulder in his sleep, perching on the sofa at his
feet. She was wearing her plaid skirt and blue blazer, and she
flipped a pigtail back over her shoulder. "Pretty silly, huh? My
Mom likes to see me dressed like this. She likes to have me
around to attract the pervs. They gave her a lot of money for the
chance to see me bouncing around in this stupid uniform. Then she
puts on her uniform and...and they do yucky stuff, Mr. Mulder. I
don't want to do that stuff. I'm just a kid! I wish I could live
with Daddy, but he won't leave his wife."  She picked at a thread
on her skirt. "I met my big brother once," she said. "He's great.
He's known about my mom and me for years."

Mulder tried to say something, but couldn't. He was frozen in his
dream state. He felt a sudden pressure, as Vicky put her hand on
his foot. "I don't want to go back to her," she said, "but I
don't to get Ginny in trouble." She squeezed his toe. "That's
what I call her. Ginny. She's not really a Mom, y'know? She had
me when she was nineteen."  With a sudden movement, she stood up
beside him and pulled both rubber bands out of her hair. "I'm not
with the pervert. I ran away from the pervert. The one my mom
doesn't believe would hurt me. But she started the same way,
didn't she? She's not very smart."


Vicky turned away and start to walk into the darkness. "You've
got really big feet, huh?" and she tweaked his toe through his
sport sock.

Mulder woke up with a jolt, and sat up, feeling his foot.
Half-seriously, he looked around for a red dot. "That's never
happened before," he said.

He pulled his face out of the pillow. His cell phone was ringing.

"Mulder," he croaked.

It was Frank. "I've got a name. Apparently, the Director decided
to use a little off-the record influence.  Ginny Clark is seeing
a widower, a lobbyist, for several chemical companies." Mulder
tasted acid in the back of his throat. "And Tommy is out of
cellular range."


Sunday Morning.

Who would save you but your brother? Mulder thought.  He was
parked outside Detective White's station, waiting for Black and
White.  He couldn't believe he hadn't noticed those names before.

Okay.  So Vicky found her brother or he found her and
they had a relationship. Cellular range or not, Mulder had faith
that he would be found closer to home than Maine.

He could see Tommy leading his sister by the hand to their
father. She had to be with Tommy. He could see it.

What an optimist. This could be the biggest mistake he had made
since Roche got away from him.

Mulder wiped his sweaty palms on the knees of his jeans. A car
pulled up beside his, and Detective White scrambled out with
unbelievable quickness. She put a hand out to rap on his window,
but Mulder had already lowered it.

"The brother is bringing her in," she said. "He had her in
Maryland. We just got the call from the dad. He wants us all to
meet him at his house."

Mulder squinted hard up at her, and she patted him on the
shoulder. "I called the chief, and he's going to hold off any
announcement to the press.  I told him that I felt we didn't just
want to sign off on a runaway returning home."

"What does the Director say?" Mulder asked. "We were hired to
find her, and I'm not a federal agent anymore."

"I want to bust Miss Ginny," White said, her voice hard. "I want
to get her for pandering, or abuse of a minor, or something. And
I would appreciate your insight." They both heard the vehicle
approaching, and turned their heads to see Frank's Jeep.

"All right," Mulder said, his teeth almost chattering with the
relief. Right. He was right. Maybe he could make a living outside
the basement, after all. Frank had walked up by now, and he put
his hand on Mulder's doorframe.

"Let's ride out to Foxhall Road," he said, in that gravelly
voice. "I hope there's not some catch to this. I'm not used to
happy endings." He straightened up, so Mulder could open his car
door.

"Neither am I," Mulder said, and got out of the car.



There was nothing discreet about the Director's house.  It
proclaimed that a man of wealth and status lived here, and Mulder
could fully appreciate the grimace Detective White gave him, as
her scuffled loafers touched the flagstones of the front
entrance. Frank, in masterful indifference to his old barn jacket
and hiking boots, just raised his eyebrows, and waited for
someone to answer his ring.

A tall, slender young man, with the same dark hair and eyes as
Vicky's photographs opened the door.  "Mr. Black?" he asked. "I'm
Tommy. My dad said you were coming."  He held the door open for
them, and after closing it, led them down a hallway to a den.

Vicky was sitting on the couch with the Director, wearing shorts
and a shirt. She was eating a Pop-Tart and in earnest
Conversation. Mulder stopped so suddenly his sneakers squealed on
the hardwood floor.  Vicky stopped in mid-bite, and looked across
the room at him, her eyes widening for a second in almost
recognition. Then she looked inquiringly at her father. "Am I in
big trouble?"

Her voice was the same voice from Mulder's dream.



Sunday Afternoon.

Mulder, White, and Black returned to Ginny's house to tell her
that her child had been found. She opened the door to them, and
stood, one hand on her hip. "What now? When are you going to
actually look for Vicky?"

"Vicky's with her father," Detective White said, and started to
walk through Ginny, who involuntarily stepped backward. "You're
surprised?"  White followed Ginny through the foyer and into the
living room, with a Scully-like relentlessness that gave Mulder a
pang. "You were expecting her to be with someone else?"

"Who were you expecting her to be with?" Frank asked, also
pursuing. Mulder closed the door and slowly followed in their
wake.

Ginny had her cell phone, and was stabbing at the buttons with
complete concentration.

"Calling your lobbyist friend?" White asked in the friendliest of
tones. "That's fine.  We want to ask him about some e-mails he
sent your daughter. And some pictures he sent your daughter. And
some cards he sent your daught---"

Ginny threw the phone at her. White dodged, but barely. "Gosh,
that's assaulting an officer. I'm going to have to take you in,
Miss Ginny."

"Fuck you," Ginny said. "I want my lawyer."

"Oh, you get the lawyer later," White said, taking handcuffs out
of her pocket. "If we want to ask you questions.  But you just
assaulted me, so I don't have to read you your rights. I get to
arrest you."

"We already know the answers to the questions," Frank said.

Ginny still looked beautiful, even with her lip curled in
disdain.



"So when did you turn your first trick?" White said.

She and Frank were in a standard interrogation room with Ginny.
Mulder stood behind the two-way glass with the Chief of Police,
the Director, and a thoroughly intimidated assistant district
attorney.

"She was Vicky's age," Mulder said. "That's why it doesn't bother
her."

"You were eleven," Black said, looking up. "But you weren't
forced, were you.  It wasn't the first. Was your mother in the
life?"

Ginny stiffened. "No, it wasn't my first time. My cousin raped me
when I was eight.  He was fourteen.  My mother worked in a mill,
and I stayed with my uncle and aunt. But the mill closed, and she
had to make money somehow.  It was my idea. The johns paid twice
as much for me as for her. I was helping her. She was sick
already, and she died when I was fifteen."

"But what I don't understand is, if you had to turn tricks, why
did you---"

"Look, you know everything.  You know my entire life. I don't
have to explain myself to you. Charge me with something and let
me apply for bond. I don't need this shit."

"She was probably sexually abused throughout her childhood,"
Mulder said, his arms crossed. "It's a common dynamic. She treats
her daughter slightly better than she was treated, and thinks
she's done a good thing.  Using Vicky as bait for the
pedophiles."

"I didn't see it," the Director said.

"She concealed her history from you," Mulder stated. He felt
flat, exhausted.  Like there should be more of a payoff than this
interrogation.

You really thought Vicky recognized you, didn't you? You really
thought you were in the world of the unseen again.

"I'm very impressed with how well you and Black worked with the
detective." The Director said, but he was still watching his
former lover.

"I was an idiot," he said now. "That woman is evil."

Mulder didn't look over at him, but he wanted to say, You helped
make her what she is today. She was underage. She was a child.

On the other side of the glass, Ginny looked up, past Detective
White, and straight at Mulder. She smiled.



Sunday Night

Mulder left Frank and drove to Scully's apartment. He felt as
bad, as if they hadn't found Vicky. She had saved herself, or
Tommy had saved her; Mulder couldn't even tell Scully that he had
done any good. Earned a little money, though. The Director seemed
well-deposed towards him. Maybe he had joined the wrong federal
agency, long ago.

He wanted Scully. He wanted to tell her about it, like it was an
X-File, and let her second-guess him, and tell him he was
irrational. It would be like old times. He wanted to decompress.

But when he let himself in, the living room was dark. He almost
tripped over a shopping bag she had left beside the door. Her
bedroom door was closed, in mute reproach.

He sat down on the couch, not sure what to do next.

I'm too old for this shit, Mulder thought.  We've had sex. She's
having my baby. She's been my partner for eight years. Scully
knows me better than anyone possibly could know me. Isn't that
what you've wanted? To know and be known? To hold and be held?

If he wasn't so old, and so tired, and not a Lifetime Channel
type of guy, he could have wept.

Should he wake her up?  "Scully, I know you've probably been
driving up all day, and your feet are swollen, but we have to
talk."

And then he would end up asking her what baby names she had
thought of, like the fucking coward that he was.

His eyes hurt, and his shoulders ached.  He wished he could go to
sleep. He wished he could go to sleep with Scully, like some
regular guy with his pregnant partner. He wished he could take
life for granted.

She didn't even have a drawer for him to keep his sweatpants and
socks in.  If he didn't have a gym bag, he wouldn't have any
place to disturb the symmetry of her condominium.  All feng
shui'd...He smiled. Scully, you little believer, you.  You
sneaked all this Eastern mystical shit on me. Who'd of thought a
trip to the crop circles would have....he almost remembered
something, but it was gone.

Why couldn't They have removed some of the rotten memories, like
the time he had to guard the goddamned burned house?  Or about
how he felt when his mom...they could have scooped that shit out,
and he'd been grateful.

His chest hurt. He was too old to feel like he was seventeen. Too
old for this. He sat, elbows on knees, head in his hands.

He heard a noise, and raised his head just as Scully put her
hands on his shoulders.

"Hey, I know I hog the entire bed, but you can push me over," she
said, her voice rough with sleep. She gently massaged his
shoulders.  "You're stiff. What are you doing in here? The TV's
not even on."

Mulder closed his eyes and let his head fall back against her
belly.  "I didn't want to wake you up," he murmured. She pressed
her strong fingers into his neck, and he almost purred.

"What's on your mind, Mulder?" she asked, her voice warm and
intimate.

He covered her hands with her own, stopping the massage.
"Scully," he said, his voice raw, "Don't you love me?"

"God, Mulder," Scully said, sounding shocked, and his eyes stung.

"Tell me you love me, Scully," he said.  Mulder pulled away from
her hands and lurched to his feet, facing her. "Tell me."

Scully put her hands on his chest. "Mulder. I love you. I do,"
she said, and burst into tears.

#


The Song of Wandering Aengus
by William Butler Yeats

I went out to the hazel wood,
Because a fire was in my head,
And cut and peeled a hazel wand,
And hooked a berry to a thread;
And when white moths were on the wing,
And moth-like stars were flickering out,
I dropped the berry in a stream
And caught a little silver trout.

When I had laid it on the floor
I went to blow the fire aflame,
But something rustled on the floor,
And some one called me by my name:
It had become a glimmering girl
With apple blossom in her hair
Who called me by my name and ran
And faded through the brightening air.

Though I am old with wandering
Through hollow lands and hilly lands,
I will find out where she has gone,
And kiss her lips and take her hands;
And walk among long dappled grass,
And pluck till time and times are done
The silver apples of the moon,
The golden apples of the sun.


Notes and acknowledgments:  It's been a long time since I was in
D.C., myself, and after reading the Haven boards, I feel terribly
amateurish.  I didn't look up anything, except my own little
notes on representing deviant sexual offenders, and all the
errors are my own. The Yeats poem is straight from one of the
pages devoted to poetry on the Internet.




--
"Some days it just doesn't pay to chew through the restraints."--Anonymous

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