Title: Eclipse
Rating: R
Archive: Gossamer, Ephemeral yes -  all others please link directly to 
the story at my site and if possible, drop me a line.
Category: MSR, heavy angst. Conspiracy. Where Season 8 coulda gone.
Spoilers: Lots, for "Rain King", and for season 8 through "Via 
Negativa."
Summary: "There's been a war going on since longer than either one of 
us has been alive, a fucking turf war. Over who was here first, and who 
has big enough guns to make their claim stick. And whose experiments 
are going to pay off first. And it looks like finally someone's 
winning."


"The prologues are over. It is a question, now,
Of final belief. So, Say that final belief
Must be in a fiction. It is time to choose."
	From "Asides on the Oboe," Wallace Stevens



Skinner

They are sitting across from one another at wobbly table, a 
factory reproduction of mosaic, rendered in unconvincing 
plastic. The table is outside of a cafe in the Georgetown 
neighborhood. 

It's nearly too cold out for this, but summer is trying for 
a comeback. Scully wears a trenchcoat, in spite of the 
weather, in spite of the fact that it's a Saturday 
afternoon. She sips at her cup. Skinner is leaning slightly 
toward her; she is sitting with her back barely touching 
the back of the chair, her free hand curled in her lap. It 
is a gorgeous fall day and the leaves swirling along the 
pavement are orange, yellow, red, brown. 

He has gone down to the basement office more often in the 
last two months than he had in the preceding two years. 
Almost always, he finds Scully studying satellite reports, 
other arcana, at Mulder's desk. Sometimes Doggett is there, 
too, shuffling files in the background, watching Scully 
with part trepidation, part curiosity.

Skinner remembers an afternoon session in his eleventh 
grade English class, a complicated explanation from Mrs. 
Hullpeper about irony. He was a B-plus student, but he 
didn't understand it at all. 

He understands now.

Doggett came back from his last field assignment with 
Scully looking ill and disturbed. After reading the case 
report, Skinner understands why: hacking a massive parasite 
out of the creamy plane of Scully's back would have 
disturbed him, too. 

He wonders when she's going to start to show.

He got everything that he could from Doggett, which was 
nothing, before he asked her out for a cup of coffee. He 
wants to rail at her, and doesn't. He broaches the subject 
by asking if she thinks Doggett is passing information to 
anyone.

Scully shakes her head. 

"Have you told him?" He doesn't even know when she's due. 
They haven't talked about the details. 

"No." 

He nods. "If you can't work with Doggett, call me. I'll see 
if I can do anything for you."

A level stare. "I'll take him with me next time." She sips 
at her cooling tea.

He gets it. It's not Doggett. It's that Doggett isn't 
Mulder. Obvious, but there it is.


_______________________________


Scully

Mulder and Scully at a roadside cafe in Kansas. Actually, it's 
more of an outdoor airport bar, with tables listing against the 
pull of the uneven concrete patio and their own warped legs. 
Jaunty little cardboard triangles decorate each table, 
advertising cheap beer on one side and luridly detailed 
'specialty' drinks on the other. Their plane is late and the fact 
that the one-runway airport even has a bar seems like a gift from 
above.

Mulder orders a margarita when the waitress shows up. 
Scully says, "Two." The waitress eyeballs Mulder, and 
Scully adds, "No salt." 

She puts extra emphasis on 'salt' that makes it sound like 
it's the waitress' fault that margaritas usually show up 
with a nasty, crusty ring. 

Mulder says, "Same."

After the woman is out of earshot he asks her, "You really 
never waited tables when you were a teenager? Some summer?" 

"I babysat."

"Not the same thing."

Mulder drums his fingers on the table and hums something they were 
playing at the dance. It's Blondie. She's pleased that she knows. 

It's the rarest kind of case, the sort that ended happily. Their report 
will cover nothing worse than a flattened motel room and a dead cow. No 
disappearing evidence, psychopaths, or mutilated bodies (except the 
poor cow) and neither of them are injured in any way, although Mulder 
will probably duck and run the next time any blonde looks as though she 
might try to kiss him.

Not that this is a problem.  

"Scully, did you go to your high school prom?" Mulder asks, as if it's 
just occurred to him.

She opens her mouth intending to remind him that he's already heard all 
about it and realizes he hasn't. Eddie van Blundt heard it. This washes 
away the odd swell of happiness that followed the question. 

"Yes, I did."

He cocks his head. "And?"

"And what?"

"Scully, don't make me beg."

She smiles in spite of herself. The margaritas show up, crust-free. She 
lets a long, frosty swallow ease the way. "There was a theme, something 
to do with rock stars. They had all these foil-covered stars in the 
gym, with names written on them - Stevie Nicks, The Rolling Stones, Led 
Zeppelin. One of my friends didn't know Led Zeppelin was a band, she 
thought 'he' was a person, we made jokes about it all night." She tips 
up the wide rim of the glass again. The margarita is pretty good, 
tasting like limes and trouble. "Not everyone had, you know, a 'date' 
date -- there were a few couples but mostly just friends."

"Did you have a 'date' date?"

Trust Mulder to pick that up. "Yes, I did." She lets him think about 
that one for a minute. "We had fun. Although after the actual prom part 
was over we all ended up getting busted for setting an illegal bonfire 
that got out of control. And we all had to ride back with the firemen. 
On the pumper truck." Not the extended dance-mix version of the story 
van Blundt got, but it'll do.

"So no passion in the back of Dad's Buick with your date?" Mulder looks 
keenly interested. Naturally, he goes right for the good part. He 
probably skips to the juicy chapters in books, fast-forwards to the 
dirty scenes in movies. Actually, that's already been proven.

"Well, yes. Afterwards. I had to sneak back out, the firemen took us 
home. I climbed out my bedroom window and went down to the road. Marcus drove me-"

"Marcus?"

"My date." She drinks most of the rest of her margarita.

"Date, or boyfriend?"

"Boyfriend." This is weird, but in a good way. Mulder is absolutely 
rapt. She signals the bored waitress for another margarita, and Mulder 
hurriedly gulps at his and holds up two fingers. 

"So Marcus drove you where?"

"To a park. It was a Lincoln." She sizes him up; he's still engrossed. 
"It had a nice, big back seat with burgundy plush upholstery. Very 
seventies luxury." Mulder actually leans forward. "So, yes, we did it."

"Was it good?" 

His expression is halfway between prurient interest and honest concern. 
She basks in it like a lizard on a sunny rock. "To tell you the truth, 
it hurt like hell. I assumed it wouldn't, for some reason, and it was 
such a shock - I had built it up in my mind to the point that it was a 
huge disappointment when it turned out that it was painful and not 
enjoyable. I expected... rapture, the stuff I read about in romance 
novels, I guess. And I bled like I'd been stabbed." She winces at the 
memory. "It felt like I'd been stabbed."

He winces, too. "I'm sorry, Scully."

She wants to ask about his senior prom but she's afraid to. Mulder 
doesn't seem to have any nice childhood memories. And the afternoon is 
turning into a hazy evening with buttercup light on the plains and the 
tart sting of margaritas buzzing on her lips; she doesn't want to let 
anything eclipse this moment. This is as easy as it ever gets for them. 

She looks up over the rim of her second drink and sees he's still lost 
in her story, still thinking about her bleeding and hurting. She sets 
the glass down and reaches across to run a fingertip across his 
knuckles, one at a time. He smiles faintly. 

"It was a lot better the second time. And subsequently."

He nods, sips his drink. "Same here. Much better the second time."

She lifts an eyebrow. "Your first time hurt, too?"

She gets a sarcastic grimace. "Not painful. Awkward. Fumbling. And 
short. Very, very short." He points at his wristwatch and ticks off 
one, two, three, four, five seconds on his fingers before slapping his 
hand down on the table to make his point. Her margarita sloshes and she 
snorts laughter, letting go and enjoying it when she sees he's 
snickering, too.

Her memories often trap her these days, like a butterfly in a bottle; 
she comes out shaky and bewildered at the bite of fresh air. This is 
what she thinks about when she lets herself be sucked into the past. 
Not how they were when he was taken from her; it's too painful. Instead 
she does a mental revue, the Best of Early Mulder and Scully.

She climbs out of the shower and dries herself carefully, avoiding the 
healing gash on her back, stitches still bristling through her silk 
shirts. She is really, really angry about this scar. Her upper back, a 
nice swath of skin in which she had formerly taken some pride, exposing 
it once in a while via tank tops and such. Until now. At this point, 
she's got the tattoo, the exit scar from Peyton Ritter's bullet, and 
the reminder of Doggett's hasty surgery laddering her back from top to 
bottom. Even a one-piece bathing suit is going to leave plenty of ugly, 
puckered skin on display. If she ever sunbathes again, that is. 

She feels the warning sensation of something going on in her belly and 
flips up the toilet seat with the automatic reflexes of one who has 
spent six weeks puking nearly every morning -- and stops when she 
realizes what it is.

It's the baby, moving. 

Flutter, flutter. Flutter. Flutter. It's like a songbird beating its 
wings inside her. 

"Oh, you're there," she whispers, amazed. "You're there."

The baby moves again and she looks down at her belly, astonished, awed.


________________________


Doggett


The files are organized in a system he can't quite grasp. There is an 
section on telekinesis, another for Santeria. Just when he thinks he 
has it figured out, a variation will surface, like the case regarding 
the supposed clones in California, the Eve girls, which isn't filed 
under their last names -- probably logical in this instance --  or under 
"E" for Eve, nor under "C" for cloning, but under "H". "H", possibly 
for human genetic research, or "horrible." It's bizarre, like listening 
to a song and finding that the beat keeps changing.

He wishes he hadn't come out swinging the first time he met Scully, a 
regret that quadrupled when he had to walk into her hospital room and 
tell her they had been partnered. 

He wishes he hadn't trusted Kersh. That is one mistake he won't repeat.

He walked into the office the week after they got back from Utah and 
found Scully, hands fisted at her sides, arguing with a dark-haired man 
in a leather jacket, built like a welterweight. He was holding out a 
sheaf of paper sprinkled with numbers. They stopped talking when he 
came in, but Scully's face was murderous. 

The dark-haired man looked him over coolly, then dropped the paperwork 
on Scully's desk.

"I'd appreciate your professional opinion, Agent Doctor Scully," the 
man says, and Doggett can hear the sneer even though he's never seen 
this man before. The man pushes by him and leaves without another word.

After a long moment, Scully reaches out for the papers and shuffles 
them into a neat stack. She tucks the stack into her briefcase.

It's awkward, like he just interrupted something personal. Finally he 
says, "What was that about?"

She sighs and some of the rage leaves her expression. "He used to work 
here."

Another topic to check out in the files - but when he does, he can't find 
any mention of another agent being assigned to the X-Files. Ever. 

He must have really pissed someone off to get stuck with this detail.

_______________________________


Scully

"This is getting to be a habit," he said from the darkness inside 
her living room. 

The grocery bag clattered at her feet, apples bruising in the 
same amount of time it took him to flick on the lamp next to her 
couch.

He was resting against the arm of her couch, neither sitting nor 
quite standing. She thought seriously about shooting him anyhow 
but reset the safety, feeling the frustrated adrenaline running 
freely. 

"Krycek, I nearly killed you. You aren't welcome in my home." 
Concentrating on not thinking of Pfaster, she curls her hands 
into fists. They are shaking anyway.

He settles more comfortably onto the sofa and crosses his ankles 
indolently. "I sent you an engraved invitation but you didn't 
come to the party."

She knows exactly what he means. A pair of newspaper clippings 
from a Pennsylvania newspaper, with grainy photos of funerals. 
They had turned up in her inbox in a manila envelope that yielded 
no prints. She had read the obituaries and checked with the Erie 
police. "The pediatrician and the teacher?" 

Suddenly she is angrier than she has been in weeks, angrier than 
when she found him minutes ago. "Damn it, that's not good enough 
any more, Krycek. What was so goddamn important about them?" She 
folds her arms and stares at him.

"Mulder would have gotten on a plane," he points out, 
unnecessarily. 

She loathes hearing Mulder's name on his lips, familiar as if 
they'd been drinking buddies. "Who were they?"

Krycek shifts slightly. "I think they were abductees."

"You think?"

He looks like a man who has bitten into a bad apple, but can't 
find a place to spit. "If you had gone to fucking Erie and done 
the autopsies, we'd know for sure. If they had implants."

She picks up her damaged groceries and walks deliberately into 
the kitchen to set the bags down. Krycek peers after her. She 
hears him shifting around on the couch. When she walks back into 
the living room, she says, "The county coroner couldn't determine 
the cause of death. They found him, probably within one to two 
days of the time of death, by the side of a road. She was found 
the next day in her own bed. Cause of death unknown in both 
cases, although there's some possibility he died of exposure." 
She pauses, but Krycek doesn't say anything. "So why would they 
return dead bodies?"

"They might have been alive when they were returned." 

"Why?"

"Why not? Maybe it was a bureaucratic oversight, Scully. You 
don't think they're actually afraid of us any more, do you?" For 
the first time, she can see that he's angry too, and afraid. "I 
don't fucking know." He stands up. "There have been a few other 
bodies. One in Sandusky, Ohio. The next time I leave you a 
fucking clipping, check it out."

She's seen Krycek angry before, but not scared, not even with a 
gun to his head. It scares her in turn. "Is he dead? The smoking 
man?"

"He's dead." It feels like he's telling her a secret. A swirl of 
unease; the hairs on her arms are standing on end. She doesn't 
want to be sharing secrets with this man, not ever. 

He studies her for a long minute. "A lot of them are dead." He 
drops something onto her coffee table and brushes past her, 
letting himself out. 

The door closes with a quiet click and she picks up the key he's 
dropped on the table.

The key to her apartment, with 'Scully' written on a peeling 
label in Mulder's fading scrawl.

_______________________________


Doggett is reading a file when she gets to the office. He spends a lot 
of time reading their files. He looks up and nods, then goes back to 
reading. She is aware that during the Utah case she did, in fact, fuck 
up seriously enough to endanger her own life.

"Agent Scully, have you used resources outside of the FBI to analyze 
biological specimens in the past?"

Why is he rereading the Utah file? He wrote about a third of the report 
himself, and it should certainly still be fresh in his mind. She walks 
over and looks over his shoulder. He's not; it's the one about the case 
in Icy Cape. "In that instance, yes. A biologist at the University of 
Chicago finally identified this one -- it was a species of bloodworm 
previously only found in fossils from the Triassic era." 

"Your initial report stated that the samples collected had been 
destroyed in a fire at the Icy Cape facility."

He has made coffee, and the rich aroma teases her. "We treated the 
infected team member by giving her another live bloodworm, which 
attacked and killed the original and then died. She eventually passed 
both bloodworms, which is how we got the samples analyzed by the 
Chicago researcher."

She lets Doggett digest this and pours herself a third of a cup. She 
only allows herself this much a day, although studies have failed to 
prove that moderate caffeine consumption has any effect on fetal 
development.

He looks up from the file. "I'd like to send the, uh, specimen we 
retrieved in Utah" - what a nice, euphemistic way of putting it, she 
thinks -  "to a guy I worked with once at the CDC. An expert on 
parasites. Maybe they'll have better luck." The FBI lab has absolutely 
no idea what it was that tried to crawl up her spinal cord and eat her 
brain, and Doggett is clearly not going to be happy until someone ID's 
the monster, puts it into a neat, explainable category. "Really Big 
Tick", maybe. 

"Fine," she says, and sips at the coffee. Mulder periodically brought 
her expensive boxes of imported tea. During the trip to England that he 
allegedly spent investigating crop circles, he somehow managed to find 
time to procure six boxes of boutique teas. They appeared one at a 
time; by the office coffeemaker, next to the spice rack in her kitchen, 
on his bedside table. 

She drank them greedily, loving the smoky taste of the Lapsang 
Souchong, the delicate Darjeeling, another blend simply labeled 
"Medium" that carried a faint, lingering citrus note. He gets out of 
bed faster than she does, although she wakes up earlier, and he will 
usually have a cup brewing for her when she gets out of the shower. He 
makes a ludicrous claim about the aphrodisiac effect of Oolong, and 
waves the box suggestively in the direction of his rehabilitated 
bedroom. 

Since his disappearance, she mostly drinks coffee.

"I read the file on your investigation in Bellefleur, Oregon. The Billy 
Miles case?"

Yes, the Billy Miles case. Doggett's been busy. "Yes?"

"Everyone named in that case report has since been reported as missing 
or dead. Except for you."

"You mean the original report, from 1993."

"Yes." He seems to be waiting for something. "According to your second 
report, from this year, there are a few individuals who are dead and 
the whereabouts of the rest are unknown."

She sets her cup down and turns to face him, leaning against Mulder's 
desk. "Unknown, but presumed to be the victims of alien abduction."

Doggett gets the look on his face that he always gets when the subject 
comes up, like he's just stepped in roadkill. There's no way she could 
have been this insufferable when she joined the X-Files; Mulder would 
have gotten rid of her one way or another. Then again, maybe he tried 
and she just didn't notice. "You worked closely on the original case, 
correct? With Agent Mulder?"

"I did." 

"Do you have any theory about why you're neither dead nor missing?"

She tries to read his expression, and fails. "No, I don't."

"Does AD Skinner?"

"Not that I'm aware of."

She waits, but it seems as though Doggett has run out of questions for 
the time being. She slips into the chair at Mulder's desk and sips her 
coffee.

Billy. His father. The deputy. Teresa. Teresa's baby. 

Mulder. 

Of course she noticed. Her aloneness seems to have many facets, like a 
dark ruby. She sets the cup down when she feels the baby move again. 
She is going to tell her mother this Friday over dinner.

__________________________

Scully in a diner, with a lousy cup of decaf. She had the Lone Gunmen 
wire her and they're monitoring right now, from the van. She wants 
something on tape, even if it's something not even Fox News would air, 
so that she'll have a concrete record of whatever nightmare Krycek is 
bringing her this time. 

He sits down across from her while she's checking her watch for the 
fourth time. "Relax, Dana, I wouldn't stand up a pretty redhead," he 
says, sliding far enough into the booth to press his body into the 
corner between the plastic cushion and the wall.

He has an enormous bruise running the length of his face, on the left 
side, tapering into a funny dark spot. "You look like you got hit in 
the face with a two-by-four," she says. 

Krycek does a double-take, then looks wildly around the room. Finally 
he looks back to her and stares. 

"You did, didn't you?"

"Shut up," he snaps.

He's completely unsettled, all the result of a casual guess. Better 
take advantage of it. "The satellite data is worthless, Krycek. The 
pattern fits routine transmissions from telecommunications satellites. 
What aren't you telling me?" 

He shrugs, recovering his equilibrium fast. "It makes a nice cover. 
They use our own telecom satellites to distort transmissions from their 
ships."

This is so improbable she has trouble not rolling her eyes. "I'm 
supposed to believe this?"

"You might want to take this a little more fucking seriously, Scully, 
since Mulder is on one of those ships."

"How do you know?" 

"Because that's where all of them go. All the abductees."

She sits back in the booth, at a loss. "Why are you telling me this?"

He looks uncomfortable again. "I'm running out of names in my little 
black book," he says, finally. "Most of the labs have been cleaned 
out."

She leans in. "What labs?"

"Where they bred the hybrids." 

The waitress wanders over and Scully waves her away. "Why are they 
cleaned out?"

"Jesus, Scully," he snaps impatiently. "Because they're pulling out. 
There's been a war going on since longer than either one of us has been 
alive, a fucking turf war. Over who was here first, and who has big 
enough guns to make their claim stick. And whose experiments are going 
to pay off first. And it looks like finally someone's winning."

She slams her hand down on the tabletop. "Who?"

He leans across the table. "It - doesn’t - matter," he says, slowly. "Not 
for us. We've run out of ways to stall them."

"How do I get Mulder back?" she whispers, forgetting to speak up so 
that the wires can record every word.

"You wait for them to be done with him," Krycek tells her. "Just like 
he waited for you. And watch the satellite data, so you know where 
they're putting the bodies down. Maybe he'll be alive."

"That's not good enough," she says, aware of the quiver in her voice 
and unable to do anything about it.

"Watch the satellite data," he repeats. "Your little friends in the van 
outside wouldn't be stupid enough to call the cops, would they? If they 
lost contact?" She tries to keep her face blank, but he has caught her 
off guard as surely as she caught him earlier, and his face darkens, 
dangerous under the bruise. "You should know better, Scully." 

When she doesn't answer, he says, "What we need to look out for is any 
pattern that doesn't look random. Anything that looks like they're 
spacing themselves out deliberately. Or a big increase in transmission 
data, sightings by large groups of people -- signs that they don't care 
about detection any more. There are a few others left who are 
watching." He reaches for her coffee cup and drinks what's left, 
grimacing. Then he pushes his way out of the booth.

_______________________________________________
Doggett

He's pretty sure she just saved his life. It happens, he's owed his 
life to other agents before. But Scully, sitting on his sofa with 
ankles crossed and files in her lap while he hastily washes fear-sweat 
off his body under the shower, isn't buying it. 

How can she be so calm about this? 

How is it possible that he believes in this, this -- psychic killer?

She wasn't there. She didn't see her own head, severed in his hands. 
She didn't see that Cyclops eye in his forehead, or the floating man in 
the jailhouse. He shivers, even under the scalding water, soaping his 
face for the fifth time, running his fingers across the familiar lines 
and smooth, intact skin. 

He washes and washes until he realizes that this is what rape victims 
do. Then he shuts off the water. 

His hands are calm, steady as he shaves. No cuts. There isn't any way 
to describe the dream he had to a sane person. You don't always know 
when you're dreaming, but you always know when you are awake. How does 
he tell her that this time, he really didn't know? His hands shake a 
little as he puts the razor down. This isn't like being shot at, like 
having to shoot somebody. They train you for that.

When he comes out, dressed, she is leaning back into the sofa, reading 
one of the files. She looks tired. She stands up and begins collecting 
the files. 

"I wouldn't ordinarily insist that you attend the autopsy but in this 
case, I think it's a good idea," she says, without preamble. "I don't 
know if we're going to find anything that will explain the anomalies in 
this case, but it's worth a try."

He adjusts his cuffs, which don't need adjusting. "Are you cutting him 
up just to prove to me that he's really dead?"

A ghost of a smile crosses her face. "Agent Doggett, that would be a 
poor use of the Bureau's resources."

"Okay, let's go," he mumbles. How can he thank her for this when she 
won't even let him thank her for saving his life?

She doesn't believe him. Of course not. Only a crazy person would 
believe that a man could dream-walk through space, through locked doors 
and prison walls, only to murder other men while he slept. 

She drives. He also wants to ask her what the doctors said about the 
acute abdominal pain. If she checked herself into the hospital, it had 
to have been bad. He read her files; he knows she's had cancer. 

It calms him down thinking about her instead of himself, his dreams, 
the dead people in them. By the time they get to the morgue he's put 
himself back together again well enough that no one will see the 
cracks. 

But that night he downs three scotches before he microwaves his 
bachelor's meal. Three, enough to dull his mind before he goes to 
sleep. He can still feel the cracks; he still wants to touch his 
forehead more often than he should. He wonders how many times Agent 
Scully has had a story that she could explain to no one, a horrifying 
brush with the unexplainable, something that left cracks and let the 
darkness in. 

"I don't believe any of this shit," he says out loud, to his empty 
apartment.



Scully

He sets them down in front of her. "All right, here's the list on a 
floppy, here's a dead tree copy. We like this Rollins guy the best, but 
if you're more comfortable with a woman, we'd suggest either Dr. 
Constance Kalb or uh-"

"Luella Ward," Frohike supplies.

"Yeah, Ward." 

"What did you like about Dr. Rollins?"

Langly grins. "Rollins is Catholic or at least he was - he got 
excommunicated after he joined the medical advisory board for the 
National Abortion Rights Action League. We have a copy of the letter he 
wrote to the archdiocese."

"Very thoughtful and literate," Byers says. "Not that it made a 
difference to the bishop. We think this guy is about as good as they 
come. Hard to buy off, hard to scare."

"You concluded this from reading a letter?"

"Also his psych profile from the hospital where he has privileges, his 
post-doc thesis, and his email," Frohicke says without any 
embarrassment.

"He's subversive but in a good way," Langly concludes.

She shakes her head, knowing she will probably choose Rollins. "What 
about the pharmacies?"

"Forget about it. Whatever you need, we'll get it by mail-order under 
another name."

She nods, says, "Thank you." 

They look mildly uncomfortable, as they always do when she thanks them. 
"For helping Agent Doggett, too," she adds, getting both thank-you's 
out of the way at once. 

She was surprised and a little disturbed when she found out the Gunmen 
had responded to Doggett's request for help with the cult murders. 
Skinner had recommended them as 'outside experts' Mulder would call for 
consultation on difficult cases, and Doggett had contacted them. The 
Lone Gunmen, of course, probably knew more about Doggett than his own 
family did, since they had done extensive research on the agent as soon 
as Kersh assigned him to the X-Files.

"We think he's clean," Frohicke had said. "Nothing in his police record 
or FBI file that raises any concern. He's been to mandatory counseling 
during three separate periods, after he shot and killed suspects in the 
line of duty. Took out one of the suspects at a hundred yards while he 
was trying to strangle a kid." 

"When was that?"

"1992, when he was working homicide in Boston. Good scores overall on 
the firing range."

Now, she wants to ask them about Doggett. She already knows he's not a 
mole. She doesn't grit her teeth any more when she walks in and finds 
him reading files. She can't seem to find a reasonable question to ask 
about him, though.

"He's all right, Agent Scully," Frohicke says. She looks up and sees 
that he's been watching her think about Doggett. "Pretty sharp. He 
takes the cases seriously."

"Not all of them," she mutters, having intended to say something else.

"He takes you seriously."

_____________________________________________________



Skinner

He's at a bar, not a trendy upscale place where women might be looking 
for company, but one of the old-time places that you can still find in 
Washington. It smells like worn leather, cigars and politics. He 
doesn't want a stranger's ragged breath against his bare chest tonight, 
although there are times when he does, when the evening's pleasure will 
outweigh the vague morning shame. Tonight he only wants to be alone in 
a crowd, instead of alone alone.

He has a good scotch in front of him and this simple pleasure is 
enough, for now. So it is more than a little annoying to see her 
approaching in the polished brass above the bar. It's probably there so 
the senators can watch for the right lobbyists coming in the door.

If she wanted to be inconspicuous, this was a poor choice. He knows 
every other man in the bar is eyeing her as she sidles up to him, all 
sleek hair and whispering silk.

"Mr. Skinner?" At one time he might have found her voice sexy; now it 
just irritates him. 

"Why are you here, Marita?"

"To deliver a warning." 

He hates this. If he had wanted cloak and dagger, he would have gone 
for the CIA. "About what?"

"This isn't the best place to talk." She shifts a little closer to him 
and gestures towards the door onto the alley.

"No." He sets his glass down. "This way."

She looks slightly aggrieved when he stops on the sidewalk, four feet 
from the front door. She looks around as though the shoppers hurrying 
home from the end-of-season sales might be Consortium moles. He crosses 
him arms over his chest and waits for her to talk.

Marita seems to finally get the hint and says, "It's about Agent 
Scully."

Against his will he feels a little curl of fear in his stomach. He 
knows she has been careful to conceal the fact of her pregnancy, but 
she's starting to show, and they--

"Are you aware that she's been meeting privately with Alex Krycek, Mr. 
Skinner?"

If he could believe it, that would be unwelcome news, but he's not 
buying. "Why?"

She shifts closer to him again. She reminds him of a ferret for some 
reason. "You know he can't be trusted--but does she?"

"He murdered her sister. I would think she's aware of his personal 
shortcomings." He doesn't bother trying to keep the sarcasm out of his 
voice. He is sick of it, sick to death, and even if the smoking man is 
still alive and gunning for him, he doesn't care any more. Marita 
picked the wrong night to come bait him.

"Did you come here with real information, Miss Covarrubias? If not, I 
have a nice glass of scotch waiting for me inside. And it's cold out 
here."

She shivers, and it might be the cold. "Ask for the forty-year old 
Knockando they keep under the bar," she says, tonelessly. "You'll enjoy 
it."

She walks away from him like she means it. For a minute he thinks about 
calling to her, but he finally goes back inside.

He debates all the way to the end of his glass. 

The bartender looks a little surprised when he asks. The bottle is 
actually dusty. It may be the best scotch he's ever tasted, rich and 
aromatic, smooth as butter. 

______________________________


Doggett

It's not a flying dream.

Tonight he is levitating just a few feet off the ground, drawn without 
will over the dirty asphalt of a dark street. He can taste the damp 
air, hear the sounds of traffic and wind reverberate off the building 
walls. He even feels the moisture collect on his skin. He keeps 
drifting, like a boat without any hand on the tiller. 

At the far end of the block, a rumpled figure lies huddled under the 
cover of a board resting on two trash cans. Doggett keeps drifting. He 
wants to stop, tries to put his feet down. This is subtly different 
than those dreams where you can't stop yourself from falling, but he's 
not sure how.

The man under the board wakes up and sees him when he's no more than 
ten feet away.

The man screams. Instead of the horror that is surely written on the 
man's face, Doggett sees his past unfolding like a quilt -- this is 
what remains of Darryl Sullivan, called Sully by his friends when he 
had any. 

Doggett sees Darryl's tricycle, a red lunchbox that was stolen by a 
bully named Louie Fuller, a girl named Brandy something who gave Darryl 
the clap, and the bottle of Night Train that somebody broke over his 
head at the Fourth Street Bar and Grill. He sees it all, and it's a 
dizzying rush, sweet and bitter like good, good drugs, a kaleidoscope 
of pain and glory and everything else that made up this man.

Doggett reaches up and brushes his fingertips across the lashes of the 
eye in the middle of his forehead. He feels the blood beating in his 
hands.

His hands, his hands. They are talking to him like they belong to 
someone else, telling him what he can do, what he should do. He is 
invincible. He's practically a god. 

"No," he says out loud. 

Darryl screams again, a lost, desperate sound.

"NO!"

Doggett wakes up sweating, sheets tangled around his legs. 
_________________________________


Scully


"Why Maine, Scully?" Mulder swivels his chair around and realigns his 
body rapidly so that everything is pointing in her direction. It sounds 
like he's just asked her about the meaning of life.

"Why not Maine?"

He tosses his pencil onto the desk. "You take your first actual 
vacation in, what, two years-"

"I went to San Diego for Christ-"

"-not counting holidays, especially Christmas which you practically 
have to spend with your family, I'm sure there's something on the 
flyleaf of the Scully family bible about it, 'Thou shalt not eat 
Christmas dinner except in the company of other Scullys,' something 
like that-"

This sounds oddly like one of his pre-slide show rants. He has actually 
been pondering the matter -- why she has taken a vacation, why she 
chose Maine. It's not an idle question: Mulder Wants to Know. She's 
flattered.

"-and I'm simply questioning-why Maine. Was it the beaches? Lobster? 
What else is there to do in Maine besides sit on beaches and eat 
lobster?" He spreads his arms wide, as if he's embracing the whole 
state. "Deep sea fishing?" 

She takes her glasses off and sets them down on her desk. "I just 
wanted to relax. I wasn't really thinking about activities."

He props his elbows on his desk. "What made you think Maine was the 
right place to relax?"

At first she draws a blank. "Well, I do like being near the ocean, you 
know that. I, uh, I wanted to drive someplace. Not fly. So it couldn't 
be too far. It needed to be a short vacation."

"Why?"

Of course he would ask that. The truth is, she didn't want to be away 
from the office -- from him -- for too long. 

Luckily, Mulder has already hopped to another question, like a curious 
grasshopper. "Do you try to get tan? You know, lie out on the beach?"

"Redheads burn and freckle instead of tanning, plus there's skin 
cancer," she tells him primly. She mimics him, leaning forward and 
propping her elbows on her desk, firing off a question of her own. "Why 
all the interest in my vacation, Agent Mulder?" she adds.

He looks embarrassed, and she regrets asking. After all, she did see 
the pencils in the ceiling. She already knows why, just as she knows 
why she didn't want to go too far.

"Just curious," he mumbles.

"It wasn't to get away from you," she tells him, shocking herself 
nearly as much as she does him. 

He stares at her, with dawning relief. 

Finally, she says, "Lunch?"

He nods, starts feeling around for his wallet. He hesitates, then says, 
"Scully, how many vacation days have you accrued?"

"Agent Scully?"

"Agent Scully?"

She starts, focuses on the face of the human resources clerk. "I'm 
sorry."

"Agent Scully, you wanted to know how many vacation days you had 
accrued?"

She has to stop doing this. Maybe it's a side effect of pregnancy, but 
everyone is going to think she's insane if she doesn't stop zoning out 
like this in public.

"Yes, yes, thank you." 

"I pulled your file--it looks like you have eleven unused personal days 
and twenty-six unused vacation days." The woman taps one finger against 
the manila folder. "There were eight days you didn't take in 2000 but 
the Bureau started the no-rollover policy last fiscal year, so you lost 
those." The woman looks mildly displeased at this casual abuse of 
vacation time.

"Thank you," she repeats.

"Were you thinking of taking a vacation?" The clerk's voice has 
sharpened slightly, in a way she wouldn't have recognized before seven 
years of practice interviewing witnesses.

"Thank you," she says, formally. "That will be all." She turns and 
walks out of Human Resources, resisting the impulse to look down. She's 
wearing a new suit, with a boxy jacket cut wide through the hips. She 
knows it isn't flattering but she's pretty sure it conceals her belly. 
For the first month and a half after she could see the change in her 
midsection, she was terrified someone at the Bureau would notice. 
Slowly, she deduced that, aided by some serious wardrobe adjustments on 
her part, people had either assumed she'd gained some weight, or simply 
hadn't noticed. She's five months pregnant and Skinner and Doggett are 
the only ones who know, although Kimberly has probably guessed.

_____________________________________


Doggett

She had asked him to go out for coffee, although she hardly drinks any 
herself, and he braced himself for a discussion about her cancer, how 
her remission had ended. This is something completely different.

He finds that he's staring at her stomach, and jerks his gaze hastily 
back up to her pale face. Is that why she's been wearing all the baggy 
suits lately? 

"How, uh, how--when is the baby due? Congratulations," he adds, as an 
afterthought. He's uncomfortably aware that he nearly asked her how she 
got pregnant. 

She nods. "May first."

"You're--you're--Jesus, Scully, you must be--I can't believe I didn't 
notice. You could have..." He trails off, meaning to tell her that she 
could have told him sooner, but it occurs to him that on some level, 
she couldn't. He wants to believe that it's the fact they get along 
better now that led her to tell him, not the fact of her changing body. 

He changes tack. "I'm sorry I didn't notice."

Her lips quirk upward. "You weren't supposed to."

So the ugly suits were supposed to help keep her secret a little 
longer, then. He examines her more closely, feeling less self-conscious 
this time. The slight changes in her face could have been written off 
to weight gain, the circles under her eyes to the stress of searching 
for Mulder.

Mulder. Is he the father? It would make sense.

Instead of prying, he says, "How can I help you?"

She startles. She puts her cup down and seems to be intent on studying 
its simple lines, but he saw her eyes begin to fill up. 

Maybe he should back off, but he watches himself reach across the table 
to cover her hand with his own for a second. "I wish you had told me 
sooner. I thought your cancer was back."

At this, she does look up, tears still there but not shed, overlaid by 
weary amusement and some regret. "I'm sorry about that. I wasn't ready 
for other people to know." She sniffs. "I plan to stay in the field as 
long as possible. I feel fine, just a little off-balance sometimes."

He nods encouragingly, hoping she'll keep talking. 

She takes a long breath, then says, "Agent Mulder is the baby's 
father." She lifts her chin like she expects the worst, and looks at 
him.

He nods again. "Is that something that you'd rather keep private?" He 
already knows the answer to this one, he just wants to let her know 
he's on her side.

Scully looks relieved, sad, frightened. Watching the emotions flicker 
across her face, he tries to identify each one, then gives up. They've 
spent months working together, and he doesn't understand his partner at 
all. 

Finally, she says, "Yes, I would. I assumed you would be curious."

He was. Scully is so private, reserved. He's never seen her tell a 
joke, flirt, laugh hard. Lately, he finds himself wanting to know a 
little more - to know her a little. It would have been easier not to 
like her.

He says, "You feeling okay?"

"Usually, yes. The first couple of months were a little uncomfortable."

He takes a deep breath, starting way down in his gut. "My ex-wife, she 
had a bad ninth month. She got hives, if you'll believe that. Doctors 
said it was normal. Then she got headaches, then something that looked 
like a cold but they said it was just a side effect of the pregnancy. 
Gina kept asking, 'What isn't normal?' She thought, if she was gonna 
have all these crazy symptoms..." 

He trails off again, losing the thread. It's probably not a good idea 
to tell a pregnant woman about all the things that can go wrong. In 
spite of having been through this once, he feels like he has no idea 
what to say or do. 

She says, "I didn't know you had a child."

Another deep breath. "We lost Jason when he was three. Acute myeloid 
leukemia." Such a simple explanation, covering none of the months and 
years of pain, treatments, hospital visits, trips to see pediatric 
oncology specialists, child life specialists, all these other 
specialists; and finally the blankness of losing his child.

Scully is looking at him with the understanding he only sees in people 
who have faced cancer themselves. "I'm sorry."

She doesn't pursue the subject, and he is grateful enough to insist on 
paying for the coffee.

That night, he dreams the traveling dream again, the one where the 
teasing itch of the third eye in his forehead seems to coax first his 
head, then his neck and torso, up, up, out of the bed, to drift through 
the night like a phantom. 

He knows now that Tipet had it all wrong. It's a window, that's all. 
You can step through, balance on the sill, or just watch as the world 
scrolls by. That's all he does, watch. He lets himself drift, like the 
dream is a gentle tide, and the terrible undertow that caught Tipet 
stays on the other side of the glass. 

He has never again experienced the horror of that first night, where 
the undertow swept him into the half-world of axes and bloody murder. 
He has learned to avoid people, after scaring Darryl Sullivan out of 
his mind. The drug-rush he felt at the time is something he'd rather 
not experience again. It's too seductive.

He is quite sure that Tipet reached out to him somehow in the hours 
before he died. It is only in retrospect that he believes this was 
inadvertent. Somehow, Tipet fell through the window and he didn't. 

He thinks it might have something to do with Scully waking him, but he 
isn't sure. He is positive that they completely misunderstood the role 
the drugs played, since he hasn't taken anything. 

Before the X-Files, he would have been sure he was going mad and sought 
some kind of help. 

Now, he isn't sure of anything. 

____________________________________

Scully

In this dream, he is smiling down at her, the relaxed affection in his 
face making him someone different from the handsome, aloof partner she 
first met and disliked in a dusty basement office that shouted of 
abandonment. He is wet from the bathtub, using his dripping finger to 
trace a love-line down her solar plexus.

Mulder likes the idea of baths more than the reality. He gets restless 
and scootches around a lot trying to get more parts of himself covered, 
when it is abundantly clear that his knobby knees are not going to stay 
beneath the surface of the water. Last month, he recklessly plugged the 
safety drain with putty. 

He climbs out of the tub and dries off, watching her the entire time. 
She feels a flush rising through her body that has nothing to do with 
the warm water. The candles flicker as he tosses his towel over the 
rack. It is entirely due to Mulder that candlelit baths no longer chill 
her to the marrow and leave her twisting her fingertips deep into the 
safety of her palms.

She spent years wondering what he would be like as 

He lights the bedroom candles, too, three on her nightstand. The liquid 
glow and the aftermath of the bath leave her sleepy but Mulder's eyes 
are purposeful and she stretches languidly in the bed, still a little 
damp behind the knees.

He climbs in behind her and she feels his hands on her shoulderblades, 
tracing their inner edges, sliding down her vertebrae, not rubbing, but 
drawing lines. His hands find her hips and give them the same 
treatment. Finally she feels his mouth on the back of her neck and she 
smiles.

Making love with him is still new enough that it seems to be an answer 
to a question as much as an end itself. The exact texture of his skin, 
the dip inside his hip bone, the rasp of his teeth against her 
shoulder, these are details that escaped her grasp for too long. Now 
that she has them at her disposal, she luxuriates in them, examines 
each at her leisure. 

His murmurs are unintelligible but the meaning is clear enough. She 
grasps his face between her hands and stills him enough for a long 
kiss, sweet as a breeze on a summer day.

"I love you," she tells him, surprising herself. 

And wakes alone in her bed, the dream-memory evaporating into the damp 
sheets tangling her legs. The baby is kicking her solidly, urgent as a 
message in Morse code. The taste of the words is still on her lips.

______________________________

Doggett

Scully is out for tests. He supposes that being out of the office is a 
relief, because at this stage there is not a single Federal employee in 
the Hoover building who is unaware of her pregnancy. People he doesn't 
know start conversations with him in the elevator, chat that 
circuitously leads to his partner and her 'condition.' He is surprised 
at just how quickly he gets pissed off when it happens.

The door opens without a knock and it's the dark haired man again, the 
one who looks like a boxer. This is the third time he's seen the man. 
Twice, in this office. Once, coming out of Scully's apartment building, 
wearing an ill-fitting pizza delivery jacket. 

The man looks around the office impatiently.

"Agent Scully's not here," Doggett tells him. 

He takes a longer look this time and the body isn't right for boxing 
after all. It's something in the way this man holds himself, as if he 
might strike or be struck at any time.

"And you are?" Doggett asks.

The man looks at him ironically. "I've got a present for her." He 
tosses a manila envelope onto Scully's desk. "I didn't have time to 
wrap it. You might want to take a look at it yourself, Agent Doggett."

He leaves a message for her at home. The file is from the county 
morgue, and it's a Jane Doe, a blonde woman whose face, in the black 
and white photograph, tells him nothing. The body was found on a bench 
by the Reflecting Pool. He calls the coroner's office and has them hold 
the body. 

Doggett has a hard time falling asleep, because he has plans for his 
dreams.

It is like steering a boat down a river. He moves in the general 
direction that he wants to go, but without precise control. He finds 
the dark-haired man asleep on a filthy sofa in a dim apartment. The 
neighborhood feels like Anacostia, although he isn't sure -- dream-
travel seems to take him at irregular speeds. Without clear landmarks, 
he isn't sure of his location. 

He moves closer and feels his fingertips begin to itch. The eye in his 
forehead centers his vision, and he moves closer.

Alexei Krushneyev. His father hits him in the face with a piece of 
rebar when he is five, and Doggett can feel the grit of his teeth 
breaking, hear the iron crunching against his jawbone. He tastes the 
words in Russian as Alexei cries out, feels the white flare of agony. 
Fifteen, at a military academy. He fires a gun for the first time and 
thrills at the power of the kick. No fear. 

Alexei is a deeper well than poor Darryl had been, but the bottom is 
darker. A man's blood, spattered across his white shirt, running fast 
enough to make his throat hurt from gasping, down the alley. The 
dreadful rush of horror as the black virus invades his skin, and then, 
worst of all, blankness. Jumping forward is like switching the sound 
back on and it is blessed relief. A woman, sweat-slicked skin pressed 
against his, blonde hair, white teeth, snarling in Polish in his ear, 
the iron walls of the ship bouncing the sounds back at him. His name is 
Alex now.

And shockingly, Scully, pointing a gun at him. No, past him. At Mulder. 
She's going to save him, and the blessed rush of relief leaves him weak 
with shame and erotic desire. Scully, all determination and flushed 
pale skin. 

Doggett tears himself away and hears a keening sound break loose from 
his dream-self, a sick cannibalistic hunger for the man's dark 
brilliant soul, left behind. 

Alex wakes instantly at the sound, reaches for the Glock on the floor 
next to the couch. No fear, just animal instinct. 

What happens if your dream-self gets shot? Doggett doesn't have time to 
think about it before Alex recognizes him.

Amazement. No fear -- some confusion, disbelief. And is that envy? 

Doggett wakes, every muscle in his body tensed, a blazing itch in the 
middle of his forehead. 

"Alexei -- Alex Krycek," he says, aloud.

Scully is already in the office when he stumbles in at eight, feeling 
like he's in the grip of a bad hangover. She eyes him and doesn't ask. 
She's shrugging back into her coat. "Thank you for having them hold the 
body," she says. "I think I recognize the woman," Scully tells him, 
holding the manila folder. 

"Friend?" 

"No, someone who has been peripherally connected with the X-files in 
the past. I may not have to do a full autopsy."

She is gone without asking him where the file came from. "Alex Krycek," 
he tells the empty room.

Scully calls him before lunchtime. "The DOA is Marita Covarrubias," she 
tells him, the odd flat quality of her voice letting him know that she 
is controlling some emotion. "AD Skinner will want to know. I'm not 
done with the autopsy, but it appears that she was electrocuted." 

"How?"

A muffled sigh comes across the line. "It's unclear."

When he makes the call upstairs, Skinner asks the same question. 

"She's still doin' the autopsy, sir. She says it's unclear so far."

Skinner snorts. "It'll stay unclear. These people don't leave evidence 
behind."

It takes Scully six hours to complete the autopsy. Cause of death: 
Electrocution. The report contains little detail. 
__________________________________

Skinner

The call comes in from the third floor of the Hoover Building, of all 
places. Fortuitously, Scully is in his office when they track her down, 
and Kimberly walks in without knocking to tell them both at the same 
time. Otherwise, he is quite sure, she would have gone alone.

An unresponsive patient in a Maryland hospital. He was found 
unconscious on the sidewalk in a lousy part of Baltimore with a gun, a 
spare clip, a wallet containing nothing but cash, and a bundle of 
photos in his pocket. A clever nurse called the FBI and they ID'd a 
woman in one of the photos without needing to resort to databases or 
photo files. It's a picture of Scully, caught sipping something from a 
cup at an outdoor cafe. 

They make the drive through Beltway traffic, cars skidding over mist 
turned to ice during a rare evening freeze. It's horrendous, and his 
hands ache from gripping the wheel. She barely seems to notice, 
although the car fishtails at least twice. 

He only asks once. "Are you all right?"

"I'm fine," she replies, distant. There's a bright flush of color in 
her cheeks, like a fever.

The man resting against sterile sheets, staring blankly at the 
television, is dark-haired and hazel-eyed, all right. But it isn't 
Mulder. It's Alex Krycek.

When she sees his face, she bends forward a little, like someone has 
gut-punched her. Skinner feels the disappointment as actual pain in his 
bones, like he's been flash-frozen. 

Scully gets a long, mostly incomprehensible lecture from the doctors 
about Krycek's physical and mental condition. Skinner gets the 
important stuff and none of it is surprising. Tox screens show nothing. 
No one knows why he's in this staring, blank condition, and no one can 
tell how he got to be this way.

Scully leans over, graceful in spite of the great curve of her belly, 
and touches his hand lightly. She is blocking Krycek's view of the 
television, Skinner realizes, but his eyes haven't refocused. 

The doctor says something about long-term care.

By the time they reach the highway, there's salt on the roads. She 
wants to be taken back to the Bureau garage to get her car. When they 
reach it, they have still said nothing since leaving the hospital.

_____________________


Skinner

He thinks about Krycek's blank stare more often than he likes to admit, 
even to himself. He tells himself he's shaken mostly because their 
assumption had been that, after the death of the old man, Krycek's 
status in the syndicate would advance. Maybe it did. Maybe they missed 
a round or two of machinations. 

Whatever the reason, Krycek seems to have lost the final round, which 
is fine with him. The bastard was nothing but trouble.

He remembers going to see Scully in the hospital, first when she was 
dying from unknown meddling by aliens, later when she was dying of 
cancer. Always Mulder, in his self-flagellating misery, was the one who 
refused to accept her death when everyone around him saw it as 
inevitable. Mulder, radiating fury and dark energy until Scully somehow 
came back to life.

Impossible comebacks are nearly stock in trade in the X-files division. 
So why is he convinced that Krycek will be a vegetable for the rest of 
his life? Krycek, who used to escape death and capture regularly, like 
a comic-book archvillain.  

Why does he feel so uneasy?

Skinner dislikes his weird intuition, but knows enough to trust it. It 
saved his life more than once in Vietnam. Right now his intuition is 
telling him that something is wrong. 

The Washington Post has a page three story about an entire neighborhood 
in suburban Virginia that saw a "spaceship" land two days ago. They 
even have a quote from the county sheriff. 

He misses Mulder badly right now.

Something is wrong.
_____________________________________

Scully

"Do you want to see it? I could probably even fax it to you, there's 
right around zero chance that anyone you work with would recognize what 
the hell this is. Maybe the CIA." Langley snorts. He sounds shaky. The 
Gunmen feel Krycek's insistence on the satellite data was a red 
herring, a way to keep her watching readouts. They haven't changed 
their minds since he turned up comatose.

"No, I'll come down and get it." 

While she is parking the car, she feels something wet land on the back 
of her hand. She sees the blood at the same time she tastes it, 
coursing in a thin trickle down her philtrum, over her lip and into her 
mouth. For a moment the light around her seems too dense, too bright, 
and then she pulls it together and finds a tissue. 

They are standing close together, bunched around the numbers. Byers 
shows her the groupings. 

"Eight equidistant points," he tells her. "It's not that easy to pick 
out because there's a second pattern, one that seems random. But these 
five are all transmitting from the same distance above the earth."

She shakes her head, still tasting the ozone tang of blood at the back 
of her throat. "When did it happen?"

Frohicke is holding a cascade of paperwork. "Looks like it was within 
the last forty-eight hours."

She says quietly, "He was right."

None of them argue.

Finally Byers says, "We think it's best to be out of the city if 
something does happen. We're going up to a place in the Adirondacks. If 
you'd like to come with us." All three peer down at her expectantly.

"No, thank you." She doesn't know why, but she is certain that she 
needs to stay. 

"If we're wrong, it'll just be a weekend in the country," Byers adds. 

Frohicke tells her, "Your cellphone may not work. There are two message 
boards where you can contact us -- keep this list with you -- not that 
the Internet will work much longer either, they'll knock that out 
before the satellites if they've done their research. But land lines 
should work for a while. There's a phone number here too." He taps the 
piece of paper. 

____________________

She feels them descending, a strange resonance settling into the bridge 
of her nose, like a hive buzzing in there.

___________

They left them by the Rose Garden. 

Soon she has to stop the car, afraid of crushing the figures strewn 
across the grass. There are men and women, a few children. 

Some of them are not moving. There is a woman near her who is lying 
facedown, clutching the cold grass with both hands.

There are hundreds of them. Some of them are standing up, straggling 
away. 

She starts to run, awkward with her swollen belly. Bodies flash by her. 
She looks into the faces of the men, the men who are standing. She 
can't bear to think of him in terms of the ones who are lying on the 
ground, not moving. 

She found them by simply driving toward the lights. 

The sirens are still wailing and in a remote part of her brain, the 
part that is not entirely consumed with the events of the last two 
hours, she wonders why. Everyone already knows. They landed on the 
White House lawn.

There were great gaps in the black steel fence surrounding the White 
House lawn. It frightens her as nothing else has been able to on this 
surreal night. The remaining metal showed no evidence of twisting or 
force. In the end, she simply drove up over the curb, through one of 
the gaps, and trundled her way across the formerly pristine lawn.

"Mulder!" She had not known she would call his name, but now she can't 
stop. "Mulder!" The mixed scents of crushed roses, smoke and ozone are 
heavy in the air.

She slows to a fast walk, already out of breath. "Mulder!" A man turns 
to face her, and her heart stops, but it isn't him. 

The man puts his hand on her arm. "Please, where am I?"

She stops unwillingly. "On the lawn of the White House. In Washington 
D.C.. In America," she adds, when his expression doesn't change. 

He releases her. "Oh," is all he says. 

The doctor in her won't let it go at that. "Are you all right?"

His expression is still blank. 

"Sir, are you hurt?"

Finally, he seems to focus on her face. "Not today," he says, and 
shuffles past her, headed into the darkness at the edge of the lawn. It 
looks like the lights are out at the Lincoln Memorial. Was it a 
coincidence, or did they know?

"Mulder!"

From near her feet, a voice croaks, "Scully."

She drops to her knees, reaches into the semidarkness, and her hands 
connect with his chest. He is lying down, but her doctor's hands 
immediately recognize the regular thump of his heart through the 
breastbone, solid and real. 

"Mulder," she whispers.

He smells of chemicals and faintly, of blood. He puts a hand on her 
back and murmurs softly, a she immediately equates with comfort. "It's 
all right," she tells him in return, trying to convince them both. 
"We're going to get you out of here."

He rises slowly, leaning heavily on her. The flash of light across his 
face illuminates circular scabs that are weeping slightly. She reaches 
up to his face and realizes it's only tears, and that she is crying, 
too. 

"We have to get out of here," she tells him, as if he didn't already 
know. He turns towards the light and for the first time she sees the 
extent of the devastation of his face and body.

"Oh, Mulder," she says. Why did they do this?

"I'm here," he tells her, his voice rattling like dry bones. "We have 
to get out of here. They're going to be everywhere soon."


Doggett

The door is already open, kicked in, and he enters cautiously, weapon 
out and safety off. But the motel room is empty -- someone has 
liberated the television but forgotten the remote. The bed lies 
undisturbed.

He is tired, so tired. He fired the last round in his last clip hours 
ago. He can still hear sirens in the distance. 

He kicks the door shut behind him and lays down in his clothes and 
shoes, gun hand under the pillow, still clenched around his weapon.

And dreams.

This time, he slips over the threshold purposefully.

The feeling that he is invincible, godlike. A part of his mind that 
would never whisper to him in an ordinary dream is saying, maybe this 
time, that's right. Tipet believed some pretty strange stuff. And if 
this isn't madness, it's something close to it. 

There are the lights, the same ones he has been watching all through 
this hideous night. He drifts towards the lights.

He finds the first one less than a mile from the hotel, by his best 
reckoning. Dream-movement has become more comfortable to him, but it 
still doesn't go by the map. He moves in, and the creature sees him 
coming almost immediately.

It is worse than the blank space he found in Alex Krycek's mind, the 
space marking the dead zone the man had occupied at some point in time.
This is a dark void full of screaming, malignant hunger. And fear. Fear
of him.

The hunger is like a live thing, bigger than the creature that houses 
it. There are a few memories in there -- remembrance of Feeding 
elsewhere. He reaches for the thing with a gesture that is part reflex, 
just to be rid of that terrible hunger. The axe whistles through the 
air and bites deep into the alien's cortex. He feels a sudden rush, an 
exhilarating bursting drug-rush. When it fades, there is a corpse at 
his feet.

He looks down at the weapon in his hand. It's Tipet's axe.

Maybe it wasn't an accident. Maybe Tipet wanted to send him down this 
strange path. The eye in his forehead itches again. 

Already he wants another one.

And this is only the beginning of the night. 

He begins to walk towards the lights again.


Scully and Mulder

They drive up the Mall, scrape the bottom of her car badly against the 
curbs getting out before they reach the barricades before the Capitol. 

Mulder is holding onto the dashboard, but he lets go when she reaches 
the street. "Head towards Anacostia," he tells her. "We need to get out 
of the city, go north of here. They don't like the cold."

"Mulder, how are you?" She hates the question, is sorry she asked it as 
soon as the words are out of her mouth. But he laughs out loud.

"I'm fine," he tells her. 

The sores on his face are running after all. She is afraid to look at 
him, afraid to look down the dark streets at the carnage ahead.

He reaches for her hand on the steering wheel, brushes his fingers over 
her knuckles. "We'll get out, Scully. Remember Antartica?"

She does.

"Keep going, Scully. They make mistakes. They're going to miss a lot of 
people that manage to get out, stay hidden. We need to keep moving."

She drives up onto the sidewalk to avoid a cluster of bodies in the 
street, bumps back onto the pavement, keeps heading for the darker 
perimeter of the city, the way out.




Doggett


The third eye in his forehead casts a light like a beacon. It shows him 
the way. The blood on the handle of the axe is not human. His hands 
itch and sing feverishly to him about the pleasure of killing them.

They don't have souls. They are sky locusts, as great and terrible a 
plague as humankind has ever faced. They infect and consume their 
hosts, use all the resources a planet has to offer, and then they move 
on. 

He has killed five, or possibly five hundred. They share the same 
memories, shadowed glimpses of other places where they have Fed. With 
every one he kills, he understands a little better. 

There was a planet of liquid surfaces, of different viscous shapes in 
many luminous colors, a place of peace and light. They Fed until there 
was nothing left but darkness, and moved on.

They ate their way through a horde of lesser insects on a small planet 
at the edge of the next galaxy. They were creatures of little 
substance, but they had systems, hierarchy, government of a sort. All 
this, he can see in scattered memories.

Their hunger feeds him. 

There are regrets somewhere, to examine later. He is sorry he let Gina 
leave. He is sorry he didn't understand earlier what had happened to 
him the night Tipet died. 

Now he is unstoppable, like divine wrath. He kills them, and will keep 
killing them until they are all dead. 

He can sleep forever.



END