"Lacrimosa" by Mozart, from Requiem

Rumors travel fast, and by the next afternoon, Teena Mulder stands with her head bowed by a fresh grave. The cemetery itself is old, the gates rusted and headstones covered with moss, but this monument is new, and it gleams beneath the failing sun.

Several years ago, the family had requested a stone with the same name and a similar sentiment, and it would have been economical to use it now, but the dates are wrong. Teena is unaware of the irony, of course, and her most predominant thought is that Dana Katherine Scully is approximately the same age as her own daughter.

"Did you know her?" The smoker leans over her shoulder, his eyes scanning the words with what she might have mistaken for detached disinterest, had he been a stranger to her.

"We met a few times." She faces him, grateful for an excuse to turn from the grave. "She and my son were close...closer than most partners."

"So I've heard." He tilts his head slightly upwards, so that the stream of smoke is directed away from her face. She remembers someone telling her once to hold her breath when walking through a graveyard, not for the sake of superstition, but out of respect for the dead. "I assume that your son is the reason you called this meeting?"

"Cut the bullshit," she responds and breathes - the dead will forgive her. "Did you kill her?"

"Really, Teena. I thought you knew me better than that by now." Her glare narrows, and he says, "No. The man responsible has been brought to justice."

"Somehow, I doubt that."

"Regardless, the matter is under investigation."

Her heart speeds up just slightly, and she asks, "Investigation by whom?"

"I thought you would have guessed by now."

"You let him out?"

Another puff of smoke. "I had no choice."

"What about Samantha?"

"She's safer on the inside. Think of it this way: at least one of them will live."

Was that what he had said the last time? She can't remember.

Movement catches her eye, and she glances away from him to see a man standing a yard away, on the hill that overlooks the grass where they stand. He is dressed in black, and in the dull fog of dead places, she thinks she catches a flash of metal by his hand. Wordlessly, she touches the smoker's arm.

At first he seems to misinterpret the gesture, washed-out blue eyes widening almost imperceptibly, but then he sees the direction of her gaze. If he recognizes the man, if he notices the weapon, if he has any fear or emotion at all, he does not show it. He moves her behind him, faces the gunman, lifting the cigarette to his lips. The face, a blur in the distance, is turned towards them, a subtle acknowledgment before the figure once again slinks into the distance, a threat made clear and a mission complete.

"Which one of us was he aiming for?" Teena asks, when her voice has returned.

"Maybe you can tell me."

She catches it then, a faint tremor, and if he had been any other man...had he been a stranger...

But he is not, and somehow that makes it all the more frightening. If he is not in control, then someone else is. Someone who has been watching them all along, waiting in the distance with an army of very patient assassins.

If he is no longer in control, then she is running for her life.

They all are.

Teena kneels before Scully's gravestone. She would offer a prayer, but she doubts it would carry very far. Besides, it is Scully who should pray for Teena, if such things amount to anything. Scully was lucky.

The fate that awaits the rest of them could very well be worse.

A long time after the smoker calls a premature ending to their meeting, Teena stands up, and leaves through the moss-covered gates.

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